Space Access '13

[simonbp]

Yeah, Tumlinson was clearly perplexed by the fact that the capture mission had gotten as far along as it has, and I think they are still figuring out how to properly respond.

[simonbp]

Unreasonable Rocket - Paul Breed

Mainly business plans and concepts for a nanosat launcher this year
Viable but small market, good as a stepping stone
Build 15 chips with IMU/CPU
Tried canard guidance nose, lost authority at transonic
Went to thrust vector guidance, first crashed and burned
Next lost roll control at 200 kts
Added roll trim tabs, got to 400 kts under control
Going to use COTS GPS units (rated to 20 g) for future flights
Working on a small autopilot for fixed-wing UAVs
Asked to evaluate a cold fusion scheme by a "money guy"
All nanosats today are hitchhikers, not viable long-term
Much easier to do nanosats today
Very simple pressure fed launcher for 3U cubesats
Scheduled launches for $400k, custom launches for $600k
Launched at sea, from boat or plane
Reusability is trumped by low cost manufacturing
64-tube OTRAG-style with $1k per tube manufacturing cost (H2P2/Kerosene)
$125k vehicle cost
Cash flow positive after year 2
Looking for $2.5M
Fired first regen 3d-printed rocket in the world
Five staging events
Focus on the production process to improve reproducability

Shifting to cold fusion (LENR) stuff
Convinced LENR effect is real
But 95% of experiments fail
LENR wind tunnel with IR pyrometer to measure heat
Trying various stimulation methods

[simonbp]

Misuzu Onuki - Newspace Dynamics in Japan

Hayabusa a real pop culture icon in Japan
Japanese space worker numbers have been decreasing
New basic space plan, which includes suborbital
Japanese space industry ~$2 Billion

[simonbp]

World Space Programs & Projects
Clark Lindsey and Doug Messier

Canada:
Thin Red Line: inflatables, including Inspiration Mars
MDA: Space Servicing/Refueling (had a deal with Intelsat, fell through), now owns Loral

Britain:
Virgin Galactic (technically): WK2/SS2 and LauncherOne, own SpaceShip Company outright
Surrey Satellite Tech Lab
Reaction Engines Skylon
Some smaller (mostly inactive) UK commercial startups

Switzerland:
Swiss Space Systems: Dassault is partner

Denmark:
Copenhagen Suborbital: will do a lot flights before they put a person on it

Sweden:
Spaceport Sweden

Europe:
Arianespace: Plan A for dealing with SpaceX: hope they fail; Plan B is to beat on reliability (and hope SpaceX isn't reliable)

VG: Virgin Group (UK), Aabar (UAE), Spaceport America, Spaceport Sweden
XCOR: SXC (Netherlands), Cuaco

Ukraine:
Cyclone 4, Zenit, Dnepr, Antares tanks
Dim ESA membership prospects

Russia:
Angara flying the end of this year
Soyuz 2.1v: single stick R-7 with NK-33
Spaceport in Vostochny, Kazahs want to renegotiate lease to 2050 (~$150 million/year)
Vostochny to be renamed after Tsilkovski
Commercial Space Station: no funding identified
Space Adventures Circumlunar Trip, no recent news
Leads world in number of launches, but nothing else right now
Reorganizing space sector
Roscosmos only actually employs about 200 people
Having to deal with major fraud

China:
Second in launches in 2012
LM-5 delayed to 2015
Lunar lander this summer
ISS-type station in 2020
Cooperation with US blocked by Congress
Cooperation with ESA growing

India:
Privatizing the PSLV (only reliable rocket)
GSLV not very reliable
Years between launches
20-year effort to build cryo upper stage
GSLV-III test launch last year (10 tonnes to LEO)

Brazil:
Cyclone 4: Brazil-Ukraine project, hypergolics
Scaled back their Southern Cross LV program
SpaceX visited in January

South Korea:
Naro-1 finally worked, project finished
Aiming for 1.5 tonnes domestic LV by 2021

[deltaV]

Bruce Pittman - Commercial Space Scenario Planning
Refuel a Falcon upper stage at Earth-Moon L2, huge mass to Mars
To build a space entrepreneur, you don't need to build a rocket
Need better payloads
Really likes NanoRacks, small amount of money, good public-private partnership

Is that talk (or slides) available anywhere?

[simonbp]

FAA AST/Michelle Murray
Started with cool video
Three sectors: civil (NASA), defense (USAF), commercial (FAA)
Licensing for commercial launch and landing
No licensing for on-orbit yet (beyond FCC)
Re-organized to five divisions
Whole lot of actively in Texas
BO range is not a licensed site, but private-use site
Commercial space transportation is ~1 million jobs

[simonbp]

XeneCore - Joe Latrell
Warning finances are everything
Solid filled composites
Prepreg carbon fibre in conventional oven
Developed for tennis rackets
No voids
Can be rubberized for vibration damping

[simonbp]

XCOR Aerospace - Jeff Greason

XCOR is as much a creation of Space Access as anything else
All started when he went to the the first one
EZ Rocket got down to $500 per flight
Need reliability before we can do the cool things
Reusability can work if and only if:
1. Capital cost is amortized over lifetime
2. Variable cost per flight is low
Suborbital is strategic
Lynx MECO ~100,000 ft
Glass top spacecraft
Three markets: people, payloads, and upper stages
Every year more and more nanosats
Lynx status: not done yet!
Propulsion wise in great shape
No fixed infrastructure (except ex-Marine Corp bunker)
Did Lynx engine test in partnership with Boeing
20 ms non-hypergol RCS
Avionics connected during engine test
Aerodynamics: done
Underside wing fences (right under fillets), allows for larger dihedral
Used the wind tunnel at Wright-Patterson
Cut away of the structure
Four pumps, four engines, each pair of pumps feeds a pair of engines
Started on airframe 2, which might fly first
Had some lessons learned from first airframe, wanted to try them immediately on second airframe
Buzz in the cockpit
Gear are mostly build, except retracts
Wing vendor change
Nose has been surprisingly difficult structurally
Need to close thermodynamic loop for pump/engine
Test LOX tank
In parallel LH2 pump program
Being paid to learn how to handle LH2 has been useful
Have to really reimagine how to handle LH2 with low infrastructure
Orbital vehicle: conception problems solved
Carrier aircraft plus two rocket stages, second is LH2
Goal is $1 million per person
Relocating to between Midland and Odessa
Low population density and big manufacturing base
Orbital vehicle: Carrier aircraft you can buy, both rocket stages reusable
Market is corporations paying to fly personnel to orbit (like offshore oil rigs)
There is a payload market (that he won't talk about) that is not comm sats
Move is because of California, just can't lease more space
Want the development and manufacturing in separate places
Florida will be serial production location
Looking for analog electronic engineers

[simonbp]

United States Rocket Academy - Ed Wright
Lynx Cub Payload
Space Engineering Research Center, Texas A&M
6x 3U cubesat racks
USB-B and USB-PD for power
Just had PDR
Operational when Lynx is ready
Open Source hardware
Kickstarter soon
Space Hacker Workshop across from NASA Ames on May 4-5
Free to fly, but all instruments must be open sourced

[simonbp]

John Griffith, Bennet Cowdin - Harder Than It Looks: Trial & Error In A Stratospheric Balloon Project
Both 15 years old
Used chemical hand warmers
Tried three flight before iPhone camera worked
Started a kickstarter
Helium shortage, so hard to get
Got Gopro camera
Flight 4 in December first fully successful flight
5200 photos from flight
Flight 5 in March very accurate tracking, but the pressure and temp caused the camera to fog up
Apogee 93,000 ft
Flight 6 to fix condensation issues
Flight 7/8 to launch R/C plane
Inspired after a tour of SpaceX factory
Helium is $150/flight

[simonbp]

Golden Spike - Doug Griffith
Mission to create railroad that will allow routine transport to the Moon
Primary customer base: Foreign science and space agency
GS host lunar science conference in Clear Lake in October for science that can be done on the Moon
Can turn a profit at $1.5 billion per two-person expedition
Cost to get to first landing: $7.1 billion
Assumes first customer wants very conservative testing program
Can get down $4 billion for less conservative testing program
Baseline is four-launch, EOR-LOR
Can also do two-launch with Falcon Heavies
Or, Falcon Heavy plus one Atlas with Masten refueling
Might use Apollo-type lander, might be ULA-Masten Centaur-based
Jim French's paper just accepted to AIAA JSR with all technical details
27 nations paid to get in line to go on Mir
Looking at two or three different sites, in the French paper
Comparable to Apollo 14 instrument mass
Beyond the point of launching test pilots, on to launching primarily scientists
Suit designed for at least 2 EVAs
Not a reusable architecture
Grasshopper might help, but not counting on it

[simonbp]

Rand Simberg - Safe is Not An Option
We're not killing enough people in space
About 5% historical failure rate, comparable to bombers over Europe
The history of exploration is bloody
30,000 people die in cars every year
No such thing as a man-rated rocket
Orion launch abort doesn't real improve safety; half of abort still kill crew
Why does ISS need a lifeboat when the Scott-Amundsen doesn't have it
Really need redundancy on orbit
Stole a plot from Jon Goff: 5 deaths/day die from superbugs
Add one person to ISS could double science return
Have to be careful that NASA standards don't become industry standards
Baumgardener: FAA responsible for gondola safety, not jumper's safety
Extend morotorium indefinately
Kill SLS (which contributes nothing to safety) and fully fund commercial crew
Move OCST out of FAA and make it report directly SecDOT
Purge from language "human rating"
Purge unqualified word "safe"
Set value of astronaut life
Pillory anyone who says that "safety is the highest priority"
Send armadas to Mars
Act like space is actually important
5% of free divers die per year
All a mythology that accidents will kill space tourism
Grounded shuttles after accidents because the vehicles were too valuable to risk, not the crew
Risk of flying STS-1 lower with crew than without

[yg1968]

Next up is Greg Mungas of Firestar Technologies. Hopefully, we will find out why there is a delay in the flight of NOFBX to the ISS and when they intend to fly it now (it's been taken off the SPX-3 flight). 

[simonbp]

Firestar Technologies - Greg Mungas

Tech/IP Commercializing Company
6 patents issued and 25 applied
NOFBX (civil and DoD) and SonicExhaust

Case study 1: NOFBX
Started in 1999
Spent a putting private and public funding in to
Working towards a launch in 2014 on SpaceX CRS-4
Working on SSTO Mars ascent vehicle for Mars sample return
Led into some DARPA work
2 issued patents, 15 pending, most not in propellant itself
ISP Systems commercializing NOFBX, family of companies
Competitors are a Swiss company
Hydrazine heavily subsidized in the US, but Europe is really moving away from it
At TRL 6.5 today
ISS demo mounts on Columbus

Case study 2: SonicExhaust
Aftermarket automotive exhaust system, improves efficiency by 20%
>90 MPG Prius with aftermarket exhaust
2002 Explorer 13 - > 44 MPG
Certifying in California

[simonbp]

Space Frontier Foundation - Sara Meschberger

Gap in public knowledge, media knowledge of the industry
Teacher experiment to fly to ISS next year
NewSpace 2013 in July 25-27, preparing for exponential growth
Newspace business plan competition, cash prize

[deltaV]

Rand Simberg - Safe is Not An Option
Set value of astronaut life
Act like space is actually important

Yes! He's apparently writing a book on the topic (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1960236542/safe-is-not-an-option-our-futile-obsession-in-spac). From the executive sumnmary:

The implicit assignment of an infinite value to the life of a space farer, as has been the apparent and perhaps-unique default for decades, will inevitably result in a gross misallocation of resources and, paradoxically, actually increase the individual risk of death or injury. It is also a signal, regardless of how much money we spend on them, of how utterly unimportant and valueless we as a society believe that space accomplishments are, that we are unwilling to risk human life on them, compared to any other human endeavor such as commerce, mining, farming, construction, transport or even adventure seeking. If we are to open up space to humanity, this attitude must change.

[simonbp]

Jim Muncy of PoliSpace
Recent legislation allowed all commercial rocket dealing with Russia
Trying to bring participants into indemnification
VG, XCOR, Grasshopper all fly by permits, not full license
This industry leaks like a sieve, so what secrets are you really keeping
NTSB is the one agency that can ignore ITAR
Better to share problems before you crash
The main safety pressure is cost-plus contractors afraid their gravy train will end
Really need industry standards, CSF may be the means to do this
But going to take an event to cause some companies wake up and support standards
Commercial imaging consolidation last year because they got too good and threatened established providers
There is nothing legally to stop a "a particular company" from launching a crew right now, and that terrifies some people in Congress. It's just money that stops them.
Gerst really held back NASA to let SpaceX solve the thruster problem, it's a respectful relationship
You can't force a customer to buy until they are ready to buy, NASA takes time

[simonbp]

Panel Discussion: Crowdfunding Your Venture - Approaches, Pluses, And Pitfalls. Doug Griffith, Greg Mungas, Joe Pistritto, Rand Simberg

Seed: $50-500k (crowdfunding)
Early Stage: $1M+ (angels)
Series A->Z: $2-5M+ (coinvestors, professional investors)
Venture capital has not invested in space in a big way
Need to get either an accredited investor or IPO (JOBS act will change)
Angel investing is 2/3 of VC in USA
VC almost totally a US phenomenon
http://tinyurl.com/cgxuc8y
Have to know how to handle the media before, during and after the campaign
Have to have a definite start, middle, and finish
Rand's book is accidental, intended just to be an extended rant
Crowdsource works best when people feel good about what they are investing in
Only we get a space Kickstarter that reaches $1M, it will be a watershed
45% of contributors to National Space Society KS were new to crowdfunding
Start small and prove yourself gradually
Have non-tangible rewards

[simonbp]

Panel Discussion: Post-LEO Policy - We know what to do for vastly improved access to Low Earth Orbit. What policies should support the move outward from there? Phil Chapman, Jeff Foust, Jim Muncy, Henry Vanderbilt

Outer space treaties are as socialist as they could be to get passed by US Senate
Most profitable part of space is beyond LEO: GEO
Biggest thing to do is create consciousness that this is about space settlement
Most politicians think in the Apollo frame
Inspiration Mars has gotten a positive reception, but then they are giving NASA money right now
Our number one national security rocket uses a Russian engine, but congressmen don't want to spend money on engine development
All they know astronauts going to point X
The problem of prizes is that they don't know which district the winner will be in
All small companies spread all over the place
You have to have independent technology programs
It is a feature, not a bug, that SLS has no new technology
NASA is so schizophrenic right now, they can't do anything
When an SLS contractor can force a company that they own 50% of to fire employees for suggesting that SLS is not perfect, there is a problem