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#20
by
yg1968
on 13 Apr, 2012 00:08
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Commercial Spaceflight Federation, Alex Saltman, Executive Director
Chamber of Commerce for space companies. Mike Lopez-Alegria is the recently-hired President of CSF. Mix of small and large companies. Goal is make launches boringly common, but it's what you're doing that's interesting. Suborbital is really important to that making that happen. About 75% on winning people on the Hill over to commercial spaceflight.
Simon, what did Alex Saltman mean by 75%. Does he mean that 75% of Congressmen are pro-commercial crew? That seems higher than I would have expected.
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#21
by
simonbp
on 13 Apr, 2012 00:33
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Spaceworthy, Ed De Reyes, "Roadblocks To Licensing and Permitting: We Have Met The Enemy, And He Is Us"
FAA is not about preventing people from flying; it's about keeping people from crashing into stuff on the ground. Getting AST 400 certification is hard, but proper preparation helps a lot.
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#22
by
simonbp
on 13 Apr, 2012 00:34
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Simon, what did Alex Saltman mean by 75%. Does he mean that 75% of Congressmen are pro-commercial crew? That seems higher than I would have expected.
I interpreted it more as 75% of what they need...
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#23
by
yg1968
on 13 Apr, 2012 00:52
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Simon, what did Alex Saltman mean by 75%. Does he mean that 75% of Congressmen are pro-commercial crew? That seems higher than I would have expected.
I interpreted it more as 75% of what they need...
That makes more sense. Thanks.
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#24
by
simonbp
on 13 Apr, 2012 01:10
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National Space Society, Paul Damphousse, Executive Director
International Space Development Conference in May in Washington, DC. Lots of politicians, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Hugh Downs (?). Talking about doing a workshop on (and lobbying for) cryo storage and transfer.
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#25
by
simonbp
on 13 Apr, 2012 01:23
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Stratofox Aerospace Tracking & Recovery Team, Ian Kluft
Volunteer recovery of high-altitude rockets and balloons. Have recovered the highest altitude amateur rocket and balloon. Balloon record (CNSP-10) reached 136,545 ft, landed next to a pool in November. Next few flights tried to get from California to Colorado, one reached Indiana, and another crossed the Atlantic and reached the western Mediterranean! First amateur US transcontinental flight, first amateur transatlantic flight, probably first accidental transatlantic flight ever...
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#26
by
simonbp
on 13 Apr, 2012 04:07
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Jon Goff, Altius
Devices for non cooperative capture, working with JPL on synthetic gekko skin, can capture targets that are moving relative to the spacecraft. Storable compact RMS for Dragon, etc.
Direct 2 Station, sticky boom plus nanosat launchers to deliver to ISS rapidly. Enables rapid research on station. Stick boom captures passive payload beyond 200 m keep out sphere. Release into a slower elliptical orbit that will reintercept the station.
Not just station, could also work for Dragonlab.
Nanolaunch is more than just cubesats, much more potential for cargo.
Got MSR sticky boom to TRL5, then MSR killed.
Working on multi-DoF arms, metal matrix composites for STEM booms.
Internships available!
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#27
by
simonbp
on 13 Apr, 2012 04:41
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John Garvey
Building to a nanolauncher, 24 flights on 29 vehicles. Two to four years to orbital. 20 kg to 450 km clustered goal. Flew P-18 three times last year. Also flew an orbitec vortex rocket for AFRL.
Big new 4.5 klb lox propylene engine.
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#28
by
Robotbeat
on 13 Apr, 2012 04:53
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John Garvey
Building to a nanolauncher, 24 flights on 29 vehicles. Two to four years to orbital. 20 kg to 450 km clustered goal. Flew P-18 three times last year. Also flew an orbitec vortex rocket for AFRL.
Big new 4.5 klb lox propylene engine.
LOx/Propylene is a really good propellant combo if you pre-chill the propylene.
Propylene is the best on this list:
http://www.dunnspace.com/alternate_ssto_propellants.htmwhich isn't 1) pretty unstable 2) toxic or 3) expensive to prepare.
Have to pre-chill it to get the benefit over RP-1, though. But offers a significant performance improvement and is pretty cheap.
Propylene has almost exactly the same Isp as Methane, but offers significantly better bulk density.
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#29
by
simonbp
on 13 Apr, 2012 05:01
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Rocketplane
In hundreds of millions in funding regime. Mostly from the middle east and Europe.
Cecil Field in Jacksonville the first urban spaceport.
IPSOS study shows thousands of seats per year for suborbital space tourism.
Lots of places in the world with military restricted airspace. Netherlands especially. Also Barcelona.
Taking point to point and small sat launch. Japan wants small sat launch.
Point to point range is initially 400 ish miles.
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#30
by
Proponent
on 13 Apr, 2012 05:05
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Modified density Isp: Performance = Isp * (density)^(1/6). LOX/LH2 only slightly better than LOX/CH4. LOX/CH4 and NTO/MMH almost the same.
Interesting. What application was he discussing, in-space propulsion? Just playing with
Bruce Dunn's old numbers for ground-to-LEO payloads of volume-limited SSTOs, I once found Isp * density^(1/4).
...
Material selection for storables is horrible; no polymers, limited number of metals. Makes CH4 more attractive.
Did he have anything to say about propylene or propane (in general, not just wrt materials)?
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#31
by
simonbp
on 13 Apr, 2012 05:18
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HySoR
Hybrid sounding rocket by students sponsered by ULA. NOx and HTPB. Recover payload and discard booster. Combustion chamber breech in static test last year. Much lower thurst than design, removed regulator on NOx to fix.
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#32
by
savuporo
on 13 Apr, 2012 06:39
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just skimmed the summaries from here and hobbyspace. 50/50 split between presentations of pie in the sky and actual, real near development. If i'd be an angel investor, one or two presentations would have been interesting, for VCs not much on the table.
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#33
by
simonbp
on 13 Apr, 2012 07:26
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50/50 split between presentations of pie in the sky and actual, real near development.
That's fair. Though, many of the pie-in-the-sky presentations were given by people who have been involved in real hardware in the past and are capable of making them happen. There's a lot of the conference atmosphere that's hard to convey, but pie-in-the-sky isn't too discouraged, as the idea of commercial manned suborbital was exactly that back int he 90s...
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#34
by
Space Pete
on 13 Apr, 2012 11:54
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Thanks for these notes Simon.
I really like the G-lab concept - using ISS resources (discarded vehicles) to do science that would otherwise have a detrimental effect on other ISS experiments. SSI should talk to the Russians, since they're interested in a man-tended free flyer too.
Also, I really like Jon Goff's D2S.
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#35
by
baldusi
on 13 Apr, 2012 13:51
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Storable compact RMS for Dragon, etc.
This was just a possibility or something a bit more developed?
Got MSR sticky boom to TRL5, then MSR killed.
What's MSR? Does this means StickyBoom is dead?
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#36
by
Robotbeat
on 13 Apr, 2012 14:23
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MSR is Mars Sample Return. Sticky Boom isn't dead.
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#37
by
baldusi
on 13 Apr, 2012 15:51
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That was why they've got paid to test on a low pressure chamber! I asked him why low pressure, 50C temperature and not vacuum and -120C and he obviously said he couldn't comment. Silly me! Low pressure, low temp->Mars, normal pressure, cryogenic temp -> Titan, vacuum, +400C -> -120C-> the Moon, 600bar-800C -> Venus.
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#38
by
Robotbeat
on 13 Apr, 2012 15:54
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That was why they've got paid to test on a low pressure chamber! I asked him why low pressure, 50C temperature and not vacuum and -120C and he obviously said he couldn't comment. Silly me! Low pressure, low temp->Mars, normal pressure, cryogenic temp -> Titan, vacuum, +400C -> -120C-> the Moon, 600bar-800C -> Venus.
I'm pretty sure that the context was sticky boom being used to grab the sample canister in low Mars orbit, not on its surface.
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#39
by
simonbp
on 13 Apr, 2012 16:48
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XCOR Aerospace, Mark Street
The whole point of Xcor is to bring the cost of going to space down to the point that they themselves can go to space.
7.5 klb largest engine so far. All engines designed to eliminate fatigue from operation; none from first 1000s of firings. Engines core of business. Also custom values for customers, Nonburnite composites for LOX tanks, piston pumps for rockets.
First plane was the EZ-Rocket, LOX/Alcohol. Cost per flight was $900. Second was Velocity, completely service between flights in 8 minutes, once flew 7 times in one day. Lynx very similar in operations to the previous aircraft, but Mach 4 to the edge of space.
3M22 engine Lynx RCS on LOX/propriety fuel. Regen nozzle. All custom valves.
Main engine for Lynx taken up to thermal steady-state. Still working on nozzle extension. Ready to go for first flight.
Focusing engine work on with ULA on LH2 low-cost upper stage engine. Primarily working on cryogenic pumping right now. Building new 25 klb-capable, LH2-capable test stand. Working on 3-cylinder piston pump.
Lynx significantly heavier than you'd expect when fully fueled. Mark I prototype capable of 60 km, Mach 2. Nose and tail shape have changes a fair bit. No fly-by-wire at all, just manual stick-and-rudder. Wind tunnels fantastic for finding problems and fixing them. Great video of schlerin of Lynx at Mach 3. 8 weeks of wind tunnel testing. Better aero than Shuttle. One more final test for verification, and then ready to build. Primarily a carbon-fibre airplane. Metal nose cap and leading edges. Welded steel thrust truss. Landing gear last major component to start to build, and detailed design for them complete. Build the full thrust/fuel structure and test, then build airframe around it. Goal is wheels up by about end of year. Initial tank is welded Al. Plan to use 3-cylinder piston pump on first flight (for LOX). Mark II has slightly higher prop volume, but main gain is in the dry mass. Gradually build up from small hops to flying a full traffic pattern. No throttling, but can turn all 4 engines on and off. Both pilot and passenger will be in pressure suits. Glide ratio somewhere between a Cessna and the Shuttle...
