FYI,

"Rocketeers Try, Try Again"
MSNBC
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/06/30/1176167.aspx

: PlanetSpace may not have kept up with the ambitious spaceship-
: building schedule it set out three years ago, but the U.S.-
: Canadian venture says it's moving ahead with concepts for a new
: suborbital craft as well as an orbital launch system.

: On the suborbital front, the company is working on a quarter-
:scale, turbojet-powered version of its Silver Dart hypersonic
: glider that will be tested as an unpiloted aerial vehicle.
: Meanwhile, on the orbital front, PlanetSpace says it has teamed
: up once again with Lockheed Martin and ATK to repitch a
: proposal for resupplying the international space station.

: SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, two companies that beat out
: PlanetSpace in earlier NASA competitions, say they have also
: submitted proposals.

: Suborbital flight: Beyond the graphics

: Unlike those two other companies, PlanetSpace has not yet
: launched anything into outer space - which has led skeptics
: to complain that the company is more about computer-generated
: graphics than it is about actual hardware.

: PlanetSpace has a few things going for it, however: Its
: chairman, Indian-American entrepreneur Chirinjeev Kathuria, has
: made millions in other ventures related to telecommunications
: and medical equipment - and his cash helped keep Russia's Mir
: space station on life support for a few extra months in the
: year 2000. Its president and CEO, Geoff Sheerin, has drawn upon
: his hands-on experience at Canadian Arrow to work out technical
: details and help out with partnerships.

: One of Sheerin's current projects is aimed at turning
: PlanetSpace's suborbital dream into a scaled-down reality: The
: Silver Dart is based on the U.S. Air Force's FDL-7 design of
: the 1960s, which was proposed as a military space plane but
: never made it past testing.

: PlanetSpace envisions using the Silver Dart as a suborbital or
: even orbital craft that could be blasted into space on top of
: a rocket and glide back down to a landing, like the space
: shuttle. To verify computerized simulations of the craft's
: aerodynamics, the company plans to test the quarter-scale
: version of the plane as an UAV at Canadian and U.S. sites,
: Sheerin said.

: He said the UAV measures just less than 13 feet long and 6 feet
: wide, and weighs in at 200 pounds. Propulsion will be provided
: by three turbojet engines.

: "This bird will fly this year," Sheerin said. "It's being worked
: on right now."

: Going for 'the real contract' in orbit

: On the orbital side of the operation, PlanetSpace's biggest
: selling points are its partners: Lockheed Martin Space Systems,
: which has been involved in NASA missions ranging from the space
: shuttle program to the Pluto-bound New Horizons probe; and ATK,
: which makes the shuttle's solid-rocket boosters. Both those
: companies play roles in NASA's next-generation space effort as
: well as PlanetSpace's Plan B for space station resupply.

: Earlier this year, the trio of companies put in a bid to pick
: up $171 million in the second round of NASA's Commercial
: Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS. That program
: is aimed at supporting the development of private-sector
: launch systems for sending cargo (and perhaps crew) to the
: station during the agency's 2010-2015 "spaceflight gap."

: PlanetSpace lost out to Orbital Sciences in February, just as
: PlanetSpace lost out to SpaceX during an earlier round in the
: COTS competition. But Kathuria said the trio of companies will
: try, try again to win a piece of NASA's $3.1 billion station
: resupply contract.

: "That's the real contract," Kathuria told me.

: Kathuria said PlanetSpace's proposal was submitted in time to meet
: today's deadline, and spokesmen for Orbital and SpaceX confirmed
: that they filed proposals as well.

: It's safe to assume that all three companies will be offering the
: options they laid out for the COTS competition: For Orbital, that
: would be the Taurus 2 rocket and the Cygnus spacecraft; for
: PlanetSpace's group, that would be ATV's Athena-style rocket and
: Lockheed Martin's Orbital Transfer Vehicle; and for SpaceX, it's
: the Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon capsule.

: NASA is due to select the winners by Nov. 28, and the five months
: between now and then could get interesting. Here are other tidbits
: from the commercial spaceflight scene:

: - SpaceX: SpaceX is preparing for its third test launch of the
: Falcon 1 rocket from Omelek Island in the Pacific Ocean. Launch had
: been planned for late June, but was delayed due to a defect found
: in an engine nozzle. The next launch opportunity runs from July 29
: to Aug. 6. One of the scheduled payloads is a NASA-built
: experimental solar sail called the NanoSail-D. Other experimental
: payloads include NASA's PreSat nanosatellite and the Pentagon's
: Trailblazer experimental sensing satellite.

: - Spacehab: President Jim Royston confirmed that his company was
: letting its unfunded COTS agreement with NASA lapse, and that
: Spacehab did not submit a proposal for the NASA resupply contract.
: But Royston told me that work is continuing on the Allsat
: multipurpose satellite service system, and that vehicle may well
: make an appearance someday at a space station near you. Spacehab is
: concentrating on how the space station can be used as a national
: laboratory for microgravity research, he said.

: - Virgin Galactic: Mojave Skies photoblogger Alan Radecki passed
: along a series of photos of the WhiteKnightTwo mothership under
: construction at Mojave's Scaled Composites shop, courtesy of Virgin
: Galactic. Flight Global's Rob Coppinger presents a "spy picture" of
: WhiteKnightTwo with the wing attached. WhiteKnightTwo, which
: eventually will carry the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane up to
: 50,000 feet for its air launch, is due to be rolled out for public
: display on July 28.

: - Blue Origin: Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos generally keeps his
: private space effort under wraps, but he touched upon Blue Origin's
: future in an interview aired by NPR's "On Point" program. (Jump to
: the 37-minute point.) "Bezos confirmed suspicions some of us have
: had that he is presently developing a second testbed vehicle to
: follow up on the flights of the small 'Goddard,'" industry observer
: Charles Lurio said in The Lurio Report. One or two more test beds
: will follow before commercial service begins, Bezos said. Will Blue
: Origin hit its 2010 schedule? "We'll have to wait and see," Bezos
: said. Lurio said "it may be legitimate to ask if Blue Origin is
: going to skip suborbital commercialization in favor of going to
: orbit."

- Elsewhere: Transformational Space (a.k.a. t/Space) and
: Constellation Services International, which both have unfunded COTS
: agreements with NASA, say they're not putting in proposals for
: space station resupply. Rocketplane Kistler originally had COTS
: funding, but lost it and isn't taking part in the latest
: competition either. "I hope that the process leads to resupply of
: the space station in a financially reasonable, regular and
: repetitive manner," George French, Rocketplane's chairman and CEO,
: told me.

Mark Reiff