Medusa Space LLC

[Blackjax]

Does anyone know anything about this outfit?

http://hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=35827

http://www.medusa-space.com

The press release is both intriguing and extremely light on useful detail.

[Robotbeat]

Microgravity manufacturing...

It's stuff like this that is actually what's vital for opening up space... Infinite different rocket designs are not going to help without demand being generated.

God help them.

[jongoff]

Microgravity manufacturing...

It's stuff like this that is actually what's vital for opening up space... Infinite different rocket designs are not going to help without demand being generated.

God help them.

Ironically, my motivation in helping Dave start Masten Space Systems was to make money on the microgravity processing--the rocket was just a very loud part of the material processing equipment...

Now that more the suborbital companies are getting closer to reality, Medusa may have a better shot at running a business like that. They are talking suborbital microgravity processing, right?

~Jon

[Comga]

"About Medusa Space LLC
Medusa Space LLC was formed in 2012 and is focused on the business of space! Their expertise resides in merging the business plan with technologies necessary for producing specific products that can only be formed in the unique environment of microgravity. These products are identified and targeted based on market demand and then matched to the appropriate technology development program. To make the Medusa Space list, the product business plan must close with existing launch technology and costs."

They do not explicitly state orbital vs suborbital, Jon.  A a builder of payloads for orbit, I heard "orbital".  Having worked on RTLS VTVL projects, you may have heard "suborbital".

I agree with Robotbeat that payloads, the "space killer ap", is more important than rockets.  We have assumed for years that the reason the killer ap has not been found is that they are just below viable at current launch costs.  The hope has been that somewhat cheaper launch will enable one.  This goes back to generating a viable product with the current cost structure. 

PS I did not put the exclamation point on "business of space!"  That comes right after the "formed in (the last six weeks)". :-P

[deltaV]

What sorts of microgravity manufacturing work with suborbital rockets but not with airplanes (vomit comets)?

[Robotbeat]

What sorts of microgravity manufacturing work with suborbital rockets but not with airplanes (vomit comets)?

Suborbital is variable depending on the performance (from between a couple minutes to... what, 10-15 minutes? of microgravity) before you might as well be orbital.

Vomit comit sort of airplanes offer you at best ~25 seconds of microgravity at a time (and its quality is limited).

Here's a good overview of the various options:
http://www.microgravity.com/introduction.html

Personally, I think one of the big benefits of the new suborbital rockets in development by folks like XCor, Masten, Virgin, and Armadillo is that they will be easily/quickly recoverable (compared to sounding rockets which may not be recoverable at all, depending) and could allow pretty fast turnaround times, besides being perhaps an order of magnitude cheaper than existing sounding rockets. This will be a new capability which hasn't really existed before, a new environment which wasn't really available to researchers/manufacturers at this cost level or turnaround time. *shrug* That's the PR, at least. I think they have a pretty good chance of flying research payloads pretty regularly, if not for manufacturing. It's a good way to test spacecraft mechanisms before being integrated on a real spacecraft, with a lot better and longer periods of microgravity than vomit comet...

Reduced gravity airplanes are pretty expensive, too... ~$5000 per passenger/tourist... I'd imagine a research project which gets a portion of the plane to itself or even a dedicated plane would be considerably more expensive, perhaps approaching the cost of a suborbital trip on something like Lynx.

[baldusi]

BTW, how much time could you do if you did Mars gravity instead of microgravity? It could validate many systems and procedures.

[Blackjax]

...besides being perhaps an order of magnitude cheaper than existing sounding rockets. This will be a new capability which hasn't really existed before, a new environment which wasn't really available to researchers/manufacturers at this cost level or turnaround time.

I'd think that another win over sounding rockets would be that there can be human interaction with the payload.  Could be tricky to automate complex or multistep processes on a sounding rocket, but on a suborbital you could send the researcher or train the crew as a payload specialist.  Could be you could also tweak and retry something if the initial attempt to perform the experiment goes awry...smack the side of the box or something... 

[deltaV]

BTW, how much time could you do if you did Mars gravity instead of microgravity? It could validate many systems and procedures.

Don't you know enough physics to answer that question yourself?

[Comga]

BTW, how much time could you do if you did Mars gravity instead of microgravity? It could validate many systems and procedures.

sqrt(1/.38)=1.6
25 sec * 1.6 = 41 sec
Not all that much longer

[baldusi]

BTW, how much time could you do if you did Mars gravity instead of microgravity? It could validate many systems and procedures.

Don't you know enough physics to answer that question yourself?

Not really, should I refrain from posting if I don't?
BTW, I know enough to know that keeping more than zero gravity would involve some level of thrust and a plane has to keep in account the L/D, and many aerodynamic constraints that I ignore. Zero gravity can be approached by a ballistic parabola. But again, I ignore the aerodynamic and flight constraint of a plane that determine the time of microgravity. I find your answer deplorable.

[deltaV]

Don't you know enough physics to answer that question yourself?

Not really, should I refrain from posting if I don't?
BTW, I know enough to know that keeping more than zero gravity would involve some level of thrust and a plane has to keep in account the L/D, and many aerodynamic constraints that I ignore. Zero gravity can be approached by a ballistic parabola. But again, I ignore the aerodynamic and flight constraint of a plane that determine the time of microgravity. I find your answer deplorable.

Comga's back of the envelope calculation uses high school physics.

[Blackjax]

Don't you know enough physics to answer that question yourself?

Not really, should I refrain from posting if I don't?
BTW, I know enough to know that keeping more than zero gravity would involve some level of thrust and a plane has to keep in account the L/D, and many aerodynamic constraints that I ignore. Zero gravity can be approached by a ballistic parabola. But again, I ignore the aerodynamic and flight constraint of a plane that determine the time of microgravity. I find your answer deplorable.

Comga's back of the envelope calculation uses high school physics.

What is your point here?

[baldusi]

Don't you know enough physics to answer that question yourself?

[...]I find your answer deplorable.

Comga's back of the envelope calculation uses high school physics.

Now I have to correct myself. I find you extremely rude and a bad example of the sort of behavior that I would expect on NSF.

[deltaV]

Let's move this digression about high school physics and rudeness to PMs as it's off-topic here.

[Danderman]

So, I hear there is some company called "Medusa Space", what is new with them?

[simonbp]

?They're named after a terrifying monster?

[Blackjax]

I don't know that it sheds much additional light on things but here is some additional news:

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2012/03/08/medusa-space-acquires-microgravity-enterprises-intellectual-property/