FYI they spelled my name incorrectly, it is Radley, not Bradley.  Oh
well.

Best,

CFR.


--- In commercialspaceplace@yahoogroups.com, markreiff <no_reply@...>
wrote:
>
> FYI,
>
> "How to Win the Google Lunar X Prize and Beat NASA to the Moon"
> Popular Mechanics
> http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4265261.html
>
>
> The Launch Vehicle
>
> Prepare to enter a murky, secretive world where commercial launch
> providers' brochure claims may be suspect and prices are "very
> negotiable," according to space consultant Charles Bradley.

FYI,

"Challenges Ahead for New Space Investors"
SPACE.com
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080619/sc_space/challengesaheadfornews
paceinvestors;_ylt=ArL9mA8UxCCJ8rot68jWVM8E1vAI

: New startups hoping to make their mark on the space industry still
: face high entry barriers just to cover their initial costs,
: investors said Wednesday.

: The high cost and risks associated with new commercial ventures,
: as well as the bureaucratic government hoops they have to jump
: through, provide substantial barriers for nascent companies
: aiming for space, experts said during the 2008 Space Business
: Forum here presented by the Space Foundation, a non-profit
: advocacy organization.

: According to the foundation's Space Report 2008, the space industry
: generated about $251 billion in revenue worldwide in 2007, an
: 11 percent increase from $225 billion in 2006. About 69 percent of
: that 2007 revenue was the result of commercial activity, according
: to the report.


: "If anything, the market is a little bit hesitant," said Thomas
: Watts, managing director for equity research for the investment
: firm Cowen & Company, LLC. While investors might be open to
: established private firms going public today, new companies may not
: be so lucky. "Investors are open to it, but at the same time, I
: think there's a wait and see attitude to new ventures," he said.

: High operations costs remain a major barrier, investors said. That
: is particularly true at the start when major investment in basic
: launch or spacecraft development infrastructure is required before
: returns can be seen.

: "There's some parts of the business, on the operations side, where
: you're talking about significant investments of capital up front,"
: said Hugh Evans, a partner with Veritas Capital, an investment
: firm, adding that there will always be interest in affordable
: launch providers. "Some of the trends we find attractive are
: obviously the declining costs of being able to launch satellites."

: Newt Gingrich, chairman of the Gingrich Group and a former speaker
: of the U.S. House of Representatives, said the bureaucratic red
: tape inherent in approving space assets for flight — particularly
: at NASA — is a major obstacle for newcomers to space industry.

: "We need a fundamental, real change in how we're approaching
: space," Gingrich said. "We need a change that allows Americans to
: participate, not just bureaucrats."

: Gingrich said the risk-adverse focus of NASA and space-oriented
: government offices has stymied progress in both commercial and
: government-sponsored exploration efforts.

: "We have adopted an insane model of being so risk averse that we
: spend so much time and money on avoiding error that we avoid
: achievement," Gingrich said, noting that if the country today
: tolerated risk as well as it did in the first 25 years of
: aviation, "we would have a colony on Mars by now."

: Gingrich said tax-free cash prizes for major accomplishments, like
: a $1 billion purse for the ability to repeatedly launch and land a
: recoverable orbital spacecraft, could do wonders for spurring
: private innovation. If the prizes are set to be budgeted only in
: the year they are won, rather than set aside for years until a
: winner comes forward, then it might be more palatable for
: lawmakers, he added.

: "I am passionately committed to prizes," Gingrich said. "The great
: power of prizes is simple; they allow anybody anywhere who's
: competent to try and solve a problem."

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"How to Win the Google Lunar X Prize and Beat NASA to the Moon"
Popular Mechanics
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4265261.html

: The year is 2012. A quarter-million miles from Earth, a small
spacecraft is nearing the surface of the moon. When the unmanned
craft touches down in a cloud of rocket-blown dust, it becomes the
first man-made object to arrive intact on the lunar surface in 32
years.

But the logo on the side of the spacecraft doesn't belong to NASA or
any other government space agency. Instead, the images beamed back to
Earth by the small rover that emerges from the spacecraft reveal a
familiar multicolored corporate logo: Google's. Not a single dollar
of public money has been expended, or a scrap of governmental red
tape encountered, during the mission.

That's the scenario envisioned by the creators of the Google Lunar X
Prize, a $20 million reward for the first privately funded group to
land a rover on the moon by Dec. 31, 2012. To win the prize, the
rover must do more than arrive in one piece. It must ­travel at least
500 meters, or about a third of a mile, and send a "mooncast" of high-
definition video, photos and text to Earth.

The point of the contest is to encourage entrepreneurs and inventors
to participate. So, in the spirit of PM's long heritage of do-it-
yourself projects, we offer aspiring X Prizers this guide to landing
your own rover on the moon­. Don't let the tight deadline deter you
from trying: If nobody wins by 2012, $15 million will remain on the
table for late arrivals through at least 2014.

The X Prize Foundation models its efforts after contests that spurred
technological progress and public enthusiasm during the golden age of
aviation. Charles Lindbergh's 1927 flight from New York to Paris was
undertaken in pursuit of the $25,000 Orteig Prize, donated by a hotel
magnate in 1919. In 1996, the X Prize Foundation offered $10 million
to anyone who could build a reusable spacecraft. The contest inspired
aerospace maverick Burt Rutan and Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen to
create SpaceShipOne, which flew private astronauts to suborbital
altitudes twice within two weeks in 2004.

This latest, lunar addition to the X Prize franchise is meant to
focus participants' time and money on affordable innovations. At this
writing, 10 teams have registered to compete for the jackpot. "It
used to take a nation to land on the moon," says Peter Diamandis, CEO
of the X Prize Foundation. "We're throwing down the gauntlet to
challenge pri-vate groups to do it a hundred times cheaper."

The Checkbook

Even with the most frugal project managers, winning will likely cost
your team more than the prize is worth. Preliminary budget estimates
made by X Prize teams range from $20 to $100 million. With
billionaire benefactors like Allen in short supply, you'll have to
devise creative ways to make up the difference—corporate
sponsorships, perhaps, or even fees to haul precious, though creepy,
cargo. "One kilogram of cremated remains soft-landed near the Apollo
11 site could be worth $5 million," says Red Whittaker, head of the
Astrobotic team, a serious contender with backing from Raytheon and
Carnegie Mellon University. Odyssey Moon, which developed a for-
profit lunar-rover-based business plan before the X Prize was
announced, says it already has $40 million in payload fee
commitments.

Other proposed money-raising schemes include selling TV rights,
licensing toy rovers and charging earthbound drivers for the chance
to steer the rover by remote control. One team plans to enable its
rover to trade instant messages with thousands of earthlings.

Although you'll have to develop your own rover, almost everything
else you need—rocket motors, telemetry packages, attitude thrusters,
launch vehicles—can be plucked out of the parts bins of space
companies in the U.S. and abroad. "This isn't just a race to the
moon, it's a race to Russia to see what kind of stuff they've got for
sale," says Odyssey Moon CEO Bob Richards, whose space sensor company
developed the first commercial laser radar scanner flown into space.

Having a staff of veterans on your team is a big advantage: One of
the three partners in Astrobotic is Raytheon Missile Systems, which
will bring in technicians with experience from prior NASA lunar
programs.

The Broadcast Package

Your rover's cameras, transmitters and power supply are the design
linchpins for the entire mission. The mass and volume of this core
payload dictate the design of your rover, which in turn influences
the lander and, ultimately, the choice of launch vehicle.

Keeping in mind that the going rate for putting commercial payloads
into orbit is $5000 per pound, you should aim for a maximum target of
11 pounds for the package.

There's no need to reinvent the camera. A couple of RocketCams from
Ecliptic Enterprises should weigh a total of about 3 pounds and cost
in the low six figures, including a controller and cables. For a
first-class upgrade—after all, $20 million is riding on the camera's
performance—con­sider a $5 million video unit from Malin Space Science
Systems, derived from those in development for NASA's planned Mars
Science Laboratory.

Broadcasting your 1 GB data set to Earth will be a bigger
challenge. "Nothing off the shelf can do this," says Rex Ridenoure, a
former NASA deep-space mission engineer and co-founder of the space
firm Ecliptic Enterprises.

In designing a broadcast transmitter, you'll have to balance power
requirements, aiming capabilities, beam widths and data transmission
rates in order to broadcast a signal. The broadcast needs 30 to 40
watts of power, presumably supplied by solar cells on your lander or
rover.

The faint signal of your lunar broadcast will need to be downloaded
when it reaches Earth. You should first con­sider a recent offer made
to the X Prize Foundation by the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence Institute to use its recently opened Allen Telescope
Array (ATA), which scans the universe for radio signals from
intelligent extra­terrestrials. Last October the first 42 of a planned
350 dishes became operational.

But ATA only receives signals. To send commands to the rover, you can
use Universal Space Network's worldwide array of radio transmitter
receivers. The company will rent the dishes and process all
communications during the trip for a couple of hundred thousand
bucks.

The Rover

Your design goal is deceptively simple: Build the smallest, lightest
rover that will carry your broadcast package across the required 1640
ft. of lunar terrain. You'll also have to decide whether to use a
rover that separates from the lander or combine the two vehicles into
one unit.

Astrobotic's Whittaker, a long-time Car­negie Mellon rover guru who
recently won the Pentagon's $2 million DARPA Urban Challenge,
envisions a 130-pound, four-wheel rover about waist high. One side
will be draped with solar panels. As the rover zigzags across the
moon, the panels will continually face the sun. Astrobotic's
ambitious plan calls for a landing near the Apollo 11 site in
July '09, the 40th anni­versary of Neil Armstrong's arrival, and
perhaps a 15-mile journey to Surveyor 5, a 1967 NASA lander.

Taking the minimalist approach to an extreme, one team claims its
rover might be the size of a cellphone. Another, headed by geo­
stationary-satellite pioneer Harold Rosen, plans to use a "hopper"
that would fire its hydrazine rockets for a few seconds in the weak
lunar gravity and, in a series of jumps, travel the prescribed
distance. An Italian team suggests using several small robots on
mechanical legs. "Anything goes," Diamandis says. "We want to inspire
totally new thinking."

The Lander

Your spacecraft will likely be traveling at about 5000 mph during its
approach to the moon, and, without an atmos­phere, a parachute is
useless for braking and producing a gentle touchdown. "This isn't a
competition about rovers," says Bob Richards of Odyssey Moon. "It's
really a competition about landers. The winner is the team that gets
this part right."

All landers will require retrorockets to slow down during the
descent. Fortunately, ATK Thiokol Propulsion offers a variety of
tested solid-fuel motors for this task. "There's almost no margin for
error with the landing," Ridenoure says. "It'll be a nail-biter."

You may prefer to have an autonomous lander because the 3-second
delay in radio transmissions from the moon makes remote controls
sluggish. If you're going for the $1 million bonus prize for a
closeup look at a man-made artifact on the surface, you'll need a
pinpoint guidance system. Good luck trying to match Astrobotic, which
plans to guide its craft with software developed by Raytheon to steer
Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Finding lunar landing experience in the private sector is tricky. For
example, a previous earthbound X Prize, the $2 million Lunar Lander
Challenge, still awaits a winner after two years. The goal of that
contest is to build something that can take off vertically from the
New Mexico desert, hover at 150 ft. and then land at a designated
spot 328 ft. away. Only one team, computer gaming guru John Carmack's
Armadillo Aerospace, has managed even to fdevelop a contest-ready
lander—but it has yet to beat the challenge.

SpaceDev, which helped develop the hybrid rocket motor for
SpaceShipOne, recently flew a prototype lunar lander during a brief
cable-guided test for a private international astronomical group that
wants to establish a lunar telescope. Company officials say the
lander can carry an X Prize rover and that at least one team has
shown interest.

The Launch Vehicle

Prepare to enter a murky, secretive world where commercial launch
providers' brochure claims may be suspect and prices are "very
negotiable," according to space consultant Charles Bradley. Depending
on your budget and the mass of your rover/lander package, you have a
number of commercial launch options from large aerospace
corporations, small startups and international players.

If you are diplomatically savvy and also lucky, there are several
budget-friendly options, like thumbing a ride on an already planned
geostationary-satellite launch. Once in orbit around the Earth,
you'll separate from the satellite and do your own final burn to the
moon's orbit. Better yet, we hear that the Russian firm Lavochkin has
440 pounds of spare payload space available all the way to lunar
orbit on the announced Luna-Glob mission, set for 2012.

These options should be considered long shots: Experimental
hitchhikers are not usually welcomed on presold commercial launches.
That leaves more expensive alternatives. Elon Musk, the PayPal mogul
and founder of SpaceX, has spent more than $100 million to develop
the world's lowest-cost space launcher. Musk, who sits on the X Prize
board, has promised competing lunar teams a 10 percent discount off
the bargain $8.5 million list price for a ride on the still-in-
development Falcon 1.

Although SpaceX has been designated the contest's "preferred launch
provider," their base-model Falcon 1 has yet to reach low Earth
orbit, much less blast off a moonshot. Two test firings have both
fallen short; a long-delayed third attempt to reach Earth orbit is
set for this summer. Some team leaders have expressed skepticism that
the Falcon 1 will be able to handle the weight of their rovers,
landers and rocket­braking stages. Going bigger means a costlier
investment: SpaceX's much larger Falcon 9 is scheduled to fly in
2009, but at a prediscount price of $47 million. The only proven
commercially available moon rocket is Lockheed Martin's Athena II,
which in 1998 boosted NASA's Lunar Prospector into orbit around the
moon. The company claims the rocket can send about 800 pounds to the
moon. The last Athena II launch was nine years ago, and Lockheed
Martin is mum about building more. Estimated price: $25 million.

Demilitarized nuclear missiles are another good option. Orbital
Sciences' Minotaur V is a proposed modification of the surplus
Peacekeeper ICBM. The missile, not yet cleared for commercial use,
could loft nearly 1000 pounds of payload out of Earth's orbit at an
estimated price of $30 million. In a similar swords-to-plowshares
conversion, the Kosmotras Dnepr is based on a former Russian ICBM and
can now launch 1600 pounds toward the moon, for the bargain price of
$15 to $20 million.

Realistically, the odds seem to be against a prize-winning lunar
mission by 2012. But take heart: Lindbergh and Rutan beat long odds.
If you manage to snag a friendly billionaire and follow our how-to
guide, there's no reason you won't be ready to join the pantheon of
aerospace prizewinners.

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"OpEd - NRO: Stop Competing With Commercial Remote Sensing Firms"
Space.com
http://www.space.com/spacenews/archive08/JurkevicsOpEd_041408.html

: The Space News article by Colin Clark ["NRO Loses Decision
: Authority on BASIC Imaging Satellite Program," March 10, page 1]
: stated that senior defense officials have stripped the National
: Reconnaissance Office (NRO) of its procurement and milestone
: authority for the Broad Area Satellite Imagery Collection (BASIC)
: satellite program. It appears that the NRO had jumped the gun on
: initiating a BASIC space hardware procurement, a process that now
: has been arrested until the acquisition undergoes accelerated due
: process by a Joint Analysis Team, recently convened at the behest
: of John Young, the undersecretary of Defense for acquisition,
: technology and logistics.

: Thank goodness for the cooler heads over at the office of Director
: of National Intelligence and senior levels of the Defense
: Department. The NRO has no plausible justification for building and
: operating an expensive government system when there are commercial
: alternatives.

: Recall that this is the same NRO who brought us the Future Imagery
: Architecture (FIA) program, a staggering tale of mismanagement and
: cost over-runs that was extensively detailed in a November 2007 New
: York Times article by Philip Taubman, "Failure to Launch: In Death
: of Spy Satellite Program, Lofty Plans and Unrealistic Bids."
: Taubman described FIA as "perhaps the most spectacular and
: expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite
: projects."

: FIA was, without even a touch of hyperbole, a FIAsco, or in
: Taubman's words, a "debacle." Despite actual expenditures
: approaching $10 billion, five years of schedule slip, and with
: projected cost over-runs estimated at $13 billion when the program
: was canceled in 2005, all that has been launched into orbit so far
: is some inoperable space junk that had to be shot down in February
: by the Navy.

: So how then did the rogue NRO get the BASIC program onto the
: drawing board in the first place? It seems that a cornerstone of
: the justification came from a study submitted July 16 to Vice Adm.
: Robert B. Murrett, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence
: Agency, and NRO Director Donald M. Kerr. The report, "Independent
: Study of the Roles of Commercial Remote Sensing in the Future
: National System for Geospatial-Intelligence (NSG) Final Report,"
: known as the Marino Report, was written by Peter Marino, chair of
: the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Advisory Group. Kerr
: has since moved to the No. 2 position in the Director of National
: Intelligence office.

: The report recommends that the U.S. government build and launch a
: constellation of mid-resolution satellites, like those proposed in
: the BASIC program, but perhaps permit commercial entities to either
: use the satellites for commercial purposes or buy satellites
: alongside the government, thereby lowering the companies' satellite
: acquisition costs. The Marino Report would have the government meet
: their internal Tier 2 mid-resolution imaging requirements with
: NRO-built classified proprietary satellites.

: To put it plainly, the Marino Report is flawed. It is as if the
: answer was whispered into the study panel's ears by the NRO before
: the study began. And what was the answer? That the NRO needs to
: build, launch, own and operate lots of satellites just like the
: ones the commercial remote sensing firms — GeoEye and DigitalGlobe
: — are launching.

: Amongst its other weaknesses, the Marino Report makes a number of
: crucial misjudgments. The report states an overriding requirement
: that: "The U.S. government cannot rely on or be dependent on any
: external entity to responsively get needed data." This statement
: carries the false implication that only NRO-owned and -operated
: satellites can meet this requirement. However, fully cleared U.S.
: commercial firms such as GeoEye and DigitalGlobe can, through
: service-level agreements specifying tasking priority such as those
: developed for the NextView program, provide the same assured access
: to imagery data as the government gets from its own satellites.
: Moreover, commandeering provisions could be established for times
: of national emergency.

: The Marino Report goes on to assess that the government would face
: a higher risk in getting its needed capabilities from commercial
: data providers than it would from its own proprietary birds. Well,
: if the NRO is going to manage the program then that judgment
: becomes very dubious, if anyone has learned anything at all from
: FIA. In the meantime, both DigitalGlobe's and GeoEye's NextView
: satellites, though somewhat delayed, are making fine progress with
: one on orbit and the other headed for the launch pad. Both systems
: can perform broad area collection.

: The Marino Report makes a key omission when it fails to discuss one
: of the great benefits of commercial remote sensing data: it can be
: shared with anyone. While NRO source imagery remains classified and
: locked behind a firewall, commercial imagery can be readily used by
: soldiers in the field, shared with allies from any nation, and used
: by every first-responder in America. This is a benefit of
: immeasurable importance to the National Geospatial-Intelligence
: Agency's emerging mission.

: And finally the Marino Report makes what appears to be a lame
: attempt to circumvent repeated presidential policy directives to
: the intelligence community to utilize commercial remote sensing.
: National Security Presidential Directive 27 – U.S. Commercial
: Remote Sensing Policy of 2003 states that the U.S. government
: shall "rely to the maximum practical extent on U.S. commercial
: remote sensing space capabilities for filling imagery and
: geospatial needs for military, intelligence, foreign policy,
: homeland security, and civil users." It further unambiguously
: defines commercial remote sensing as "privately owned and operated
: space systems." The Marino Report has the temerity to suggest that
: satellite manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin Space Systems
: are "commercial" entities, almost no different from GeoEye and
: DigitalGlobe. Please.

: Most damning, it is unclear whether the report's recommendations
: would leave the commercial remote sensing companies with a viable
: business model, given their reliance on revenue from the National
: Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. It looks like the NRO is swooping
: in on the customer, unwilling to cede its long-held turf providing
: broad-area mid-resolution imagery to the National
: Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to support mapping.

: The NRO has a higher mission in satellite imaging: to provide very
: high-resolution imagery from a constellation of very exquisite,
: agile platforms in near real-time. This mission is vital to
: national security. The NRO is having difficulty meeting this Tier 1
: mission, because of its internal disarray as evidenced by
: spectacular program failures like FIA. The agency clearly needs to
: expend its monetary resources and management attention on solving
: this critical national requirement. Why then does the NRO insist
: upon mounting programs that can be amply fulfilled by the
: commercial remote sensing industry? It reminds you of Talleyrand's
: dismissal of the revivalist Bourbon kings after the French
: revolution: "They have learned nothing, they have forgotten
: nothing."

: Some oversight is required here. The NRO simply must learn to
: accept that the commercial remote sensing industry is very cost
: effective, can serve the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
: exceptionally well, and is here to stay. I implore John Young's
: Joint Analysis Team, chaired by Josh Hartman, to accept the
: inevitable migration of the Tier 2 imagery requirement to the
: commercial remote sensing data providers under the National
: Geospatial-Intelligence Agency service-level agreements. Any other
: outcome would contravene both the spirit and the letter of National
: Security Presidential Directive 27.

: Edward Jurkevics is a principal analyst at Chesapeake Analytics
: Corp., whose clients include the U.S. government and commercial
: remote sensing firms.

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"Rocket Racing League Sets Date for Exhibition Race"
Space.com
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080414/sc_space/rocketracingleaguesets
dateforexhibitionrace;_ylt=A9j8e9p7tANIU7YAWwAE1vAI

: Rocket mavens, mark your calendars: The date of the first Rocket
: Racing League race has been set.

: On Aug. 1-2, the league will stage a high-flying version of NASCAR
: with rockets at the EAA AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wisc., in
: its first-ever exhibition race. Two racers will fly planes powered
: by rocket engines on a 2-lap circuit around an airborne raceway.

: Pilots in the races will view the sky racecourse on 3-D helmet
: displays, while the roughly 700,000 people expected to attend will
: watch the action on multiple 50-foot (15-meter) projection
: screens.

: "We're using 21st century technology to create a 21st century sport
: for 21st century people," said Granger Whitelaw, Rocket Racing
: League CEO, during a press briefing here at the Yale Club. "We're
: very excited about announcing our first public exhibition race."

: The Rocket Racing League was founded in 2005 by Ansari X Prize
: founder Peter Diamandis and Whitelaw, an Indianapolis 500 veteran.
: The competitors will be piloted Mark 1 X-Racer rockets based on the
: EZ-Rocket design developed by the firm XCOR Aerospace in Mojave,
: California.

: "I'm very proud of the incredible progress that's been made by this
: team, " Diamandis said. "This is an incredibly important and
: exciting sport that will be as interesting to kids as it will be to
: adults."

: The league currently has six teams that will compete in four series
: of races throughout the year. After the first EAA AirVenture
: exhibition, later races will be staged at the Reno National
: Championship Air Races in Reno, Nev., between Sept.10-14; at
: Aviation Nation at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nev., on
: Nov. 8-9, and at the X Prize Cup in Las Cruces, N.M., in late
: October.

: The initial racer design was powered by XCOR's liquid oxygen and
: kerosene rocket engine, though Whitelaw announced Monday that a
: second engine type, fueled by liquid oxygen and alcohol, will also
: be available.

: Mesquite, Tex.-based Armadillo Aerospace, founded by computer
: game-developer John Carmack, will build the new engines, which can
: stopped and restarted. Since the engines burn liquid oxygen and
: ethanol, the company added a salt water solution to the fuel to
: produce a bright yellow glow from the racers.

: "We're building a robust set of technologies together that should
: be safe for the pilot, cost effective, and spectacular for the
: crowds," Carmack said via a video link.

: Full Rocket Racing competitions will be point-based competitions
: that run four laps around an aerial racetrack, with racers
: switching their engines on and off to conserve their 10-minute or
: so supply of fuel, league officials have said.

: During the exhibition races, two team-owned rocket planes are
: expected to fly, Whitelaw said. The Bridestine Rocket Racing team,
: founded by former U.S. Navy pilot Jim Bridestine, and Santa Fe
: Racing team led by Albuquerque land developer Marc Cumbow will
: reserve the first two league racers, Whitelaw said.

: "I've been seeing the tremendous amount of exposure NASCAR has
: gotten, and I think this is the next generation," Bridestine
: said. "I think it's going to be a lot more exciting [than NASCAR]."

: The Rocket Racing Composites Corp. also announced the acquisition
: of the Velocity Aircraft company of Sebastian, Fla., which will
: construct airframes for the league's Rocket Racers. The cockpit
: seats for all the Rocket Racers will be reinforced to withstand
: impacts of up to 20G forces, and the league plans to add safety
: measures to the racers similar to that of F-1 and Indy Cars.

: The composites firm and racing league itself are part of the Rocket
: Racing, Inc., an umbrella firm that also includes a research and
: development branch based in Las Cruces, Whitelaw said.

: "What's really important, and unusual in this type of business, is
: a focus on safety," said Scott Baker, president of Velocity, Inc.
: "Those advances are going to find themselves entering into the
: world of general aviation. We're looking forward to some exciting
: times ahead."

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"2-seat Rocket Planned for Space Tourism"
Associated Press
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080326/ap_on_sc/space_tourism_7;_ylt=As3L
e9bLac9EX8vhLJbkQIUE1vAI

: A California aerospace company plans to enter the space tourism
: industry with a two-seat rocket ship capable of suborbital flights
: to altitudes more than 37 miles above the Earth.

: The Lynx, about the size of a small private plane, is expected to
: begin flying in 2010, according to developer Xcor Aerospace, which
: planned to release details of the design at a news conference
: Wednesday.

: The company also said that, pending the outcome of negotiations,
: the Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded it a research
: contract to develop and test features of the Lynx. No details were
: released.

: Xcor's announcement comes two months after aerospace designer Burt
: Rutan and billionaire Richard Branson unveiled a model of
: SpaceShipTwo, which is being built for Branson's Virgin Galactic
: space tourism company and may begin test flights this year.

: Xcor intends to be a spaceship builder, with another company
: operating the Lynx and setting prices.

: The Lynx is designed to take off from a runway like a normal plane,
: reach a top speed of Mach 2 and an altitude of 200,000 feet, then
: descend in a circling glide to a runway landing.

: Shaped something like a bulked-up version of the Rutan-designed
: Long-EZ homebuilt aircraft, its wings will be located toward the
: rear of the fuselage, with vertical winglets at the tips.

: Powered by clean-burning, fully reuseable, liquid-fuel engines, the
: Lynx is expected to be capable of making several flights a day,
: Xcor said.

: "We have designed this vehicle to operate much like a commercial
: aircraft," Xcor Chief Executive Officer Jeff Greason said in a
: statement.

: Greason said the Lynx will provide affordable access to space for
: individuals and researchers, and future versions will offer
: improved capabilities for research and commercial uses.

: Xcor has spent nine years developing rocket engines in a facility
: down the flightline from Rutan's Scaled Composites LLC at the
: Mojave Airport north of Los Angeles. It has built and flown two
: rocket-powered aircraft.

: SpaceShipTwo is being developed on the success of SpaceShipOne,
: which in 2004 became the first privately funded, manned rocket to
: reach space, making three flights to altitudes between 62 miles and
: 69 miles and winning the $10 million Ansari X Prize.

: Powered by a hybrid engine — the gas nitrous oxide combined with
: rubber as a solid fuel — SpaceShipTwo will be flown by two pilots
: and carry up to six passengers who will pay about $200,000 apiece
: for the ride.

: Like its predecessor, SpaceShipTwo will be taken aloft by a carrier
: airplane and then released before firing its rocket engine. Virgin
: Galactic says passengers will experience about 4 1/2 minutes of
: weightlessness and will be able to unbuckle themselves to float in
: the cabin before returning to Earth as an unpowered glider.

: Xcor's Lynx also is intended to return as a glider but with the
: capability of restarting its engine if needed.

Mark Reiff

FYI,

: Space Access '08
: March 27-29, Phoenix Arizona
: Conference Information

: Space Access '08, our annual conference on the technology,
: politics, and business of radically cheaper space
: transportation, starts next Thursday

: - if you haven't been able to find a room in our sold-out
: conference hotel earlier, it'll soon be a good time to try
: again, as the hotel's cancellation policy is 48 hours notice
: and some rooms will likely open up at the last second. If you
: do get a room, our "space access" rate is still good, so be
: sure to ask for it. (Speakers - we have a couple spare room
: reservations in our back pocket. Contact us via email at
: space.access@... .)

: SA'08 is at the Best Western Grace Inn, 10831 S 51st St in
: Phoenix Arizona, the same place as SA'07. Call the Grace Inn
: at 1 800 843-6010 for room reservations, and if you lucky and
: they have one open, tell them you're attending "space access"
: for our $92.29 full-American-breakfast-included rate. (That's
: only $99 even after taxes.)

: The Grace Inn is ten miles from the Phoenix Airport in a
: pleasant suburban neighborhood, with shopping and dining a
: short walk away, free parking, and a free airport shuttle bus.
: (If you're driving, take Interstate 10 to the Elliot Road exit
: (exit 155) about ten miles east of downtown Phoenix. From the
: top of the ramp, you should be able to see the Grace Inn sign
: - it's one block west on Elliot to the light at 51st st, turn
: left, take your first left just past the gas station on the
: corner, and you're there.)

: Conference Schedule: (still subject to late changes for travel
: snafus, last second surprise guests, and such, but very close to
: final. Speakers, contact us ASAP if we have you scheduled at an
: impossible time.)

: Overall Schedule:

: - Thursday March 27th, sessions 2 pm - ~10 pm
: - Friday March 28th, sessions 9 am - ~10 pm
: - Saturday March 29th, sessions 9 am - 6 pm (Hospitality
: - till late)

: Thursday March 27th

: 1 pm - Registration and Hospitality open (we may have them
: open as early as noon, depending on how setup goes, but no
: guarantees.)

: 1:50 Henry Vanderbilt says Welcome, and shares a thought or
: two

: 2 pm Henry Spencer, on The Road Not Traveled, or, How To
: Return To The Moon (And How Not To)

: 3 pm Vincent Cate and Henry Cate Jr., on Fully Reusable Lunar
: Transport

: 3:30 break

: 4 pm Gerry Nordley, Brief Updates on Tethers Unlimited and the
: CONTACT Conference

: 4:20 Frontier Astronautics/Timothy Bendel

: 4:50 Jess Sponable, on The History And Future Of Spaceplanes

: 5:40 XLSpace/Michael Carden, on Hydrogen Peroxide Benefits to
: the Commercial Space Industry

: 6 pm break for dinner

: 8 pm Panel: Paths to Rocket Piloting, with Erik Anderson, Ian
: Kluft, Mark Street

: 8:40 Leik Myrabo, on Beamed Energy Propulsion Prospects And
: Projects

: 9:30 Timothy Bendel: The Angel Company (a proposed Frontier
: Astronautics spinoff)

: 9:50 Joe Carroll, on Challenges of Commercial Manned Orbital
: Space

: late - Hospitality closes

: Friday March 28th
: 8 am - Registration and Hospitality open

: 9 am Space Studies Institute/Lee Valentine

: 9:10 Charles Miller/SPC Inc for Air Force Research Lab, on the
: FAST and RASTE Projects and AFRL Commercial Partnerships

: 9:50 FAA AST/Michelle Murray and Sherman Council

: 10:30 break

: 11 am Unreasonable Rocket/Paul Breed

: 11:30 XCOR Aerospace/Dan DeLong

: 12:30 break for lunch

: 2 pm SpeedUp/Bob Steinke

: 2:30 Armadillo Aerospace/John Carmack

: 3:30 break

: 4 pm SEDS/Ben Brockert, Students for the Exploration and
: Development of Space

: 4:10 Jim Muncy/PoliSpace on Space Politics & Policies

: 4:50 Masten Space/Dave Masten

: 5:30 Jordin Kare, on Recent Laser-Launch Technology Readiness
: Progress

: 6 pm break for dinner

: 8 pm Space Propellant Depots Panel with Jon Goff, Dallas
: Bienhoff, Frank Zegler, and Rand Simberg

: 9:30 Jordin Kare, on LaserMotive, a Laser-Launch Startup
: Company

: 10 pm Robin Snelson, on Frontier Spaceport in Second Life
: - should it live or die?

: late - Hospitality closes

: Saturday March 29th

: 9 am Rocketplane Global/Chuck Lauer

: 9:40 Stratofox Aerospace Tracking Team/Ian Kluft

: 10:10 break

: 10:40 Flometrics/Steve Harrington

: 11:20 Ken Davidian/NASA ESMD Commercial Development

: 12:10 break for lunch

: 2 pm Berin Szoka (via web) on ITAR: Recent Progress, followed
: by panel discussion

: 2:50 Frank White (via web), on The Overview Effect/Overview
: Institute

: 3:30 break

: 4 pm Panel Discussion on Non-US Perspectives & Prospects, with
: Jeff Foust, Clark Lindsay, Dave Salt, Henry Spencer

: 4:50 Misuzu Onuki, Japan Update

: 5:10 Wrapup Panel, with Various Luminaries telling us What It
: All Means

: 6 pm that's all for this year

: late - Hospitality closes - see you next time!

: Space Access '08 registration once again holds steady at $100
: in advance ($10 off for anyone who's ever been a paid SAS
: member), $30 Student rate (no member discount on the student rate.)
: At the door rate will once again be $120. Day rates will be
: available at the door only.

: Practically speaking, your advance registration would have to be at
: our mailbox by early Wednesday, and the express postage may cost
: you about as much as you'd save. Our crack Registration crew
: stands ready to accept your cash, checks, or credit cards, at the
: door. See you there!

Mark Reiff

FYI,

: Space Access '08 Conference Information
: March 27-29, Phoenix Arizona

: Space Access '08, our upcoming annual conference on the
: technology, politics, and business of radically cheaper access
: to space, is just over a month away.  It's time to get serious
: about making arrangements to be there if you don't want to miss
: this year's edition.   Book your flights and rooms now - late
: March is still winter tourist (and Major League Baseball Spring
: Training) season in Phoenix, so affordable rooms and good
: airfares go early.

: We have about two-thirds of the conference  presentations
: confirmed so far - stay tuned for additions to the program right
: up through the event itself.  (One way we get the
: up-to-the-minute latest on this new industry is to stay flexible
: right up to the last minute.)  Look for a detailed program
: schedule about two weeks before the conference starts.

: Confirmed SA'08 presentations so far:

: - Air Force Research Lab  FAST and RASTE projects/AFRL Commercial
:   Partnerships

: - Armadillo Aerospace/John Carmack

: - Ken Davidian/NASA ESMD Commercial Development

: - FAA AST

: - Flometrics/Steve Harrington

: - Frontier Astronautics/Timothy Bendel
:   including discussion of a proposed spinoff, The Angel Company

: - Jordin Kare, on Recent Laser-Launch Technology Readiness
:   Progress and on his Laser-Launch Startup Company, LaserMotive

: - Masten Space/Dave Masten

: - Jim Muncy of PoliSpace on The Washington Scene

: - Misuzu Onuki

: - Pundit Panel, with Eminent Space Writers telling us What's
:   What

: - Rocketplane LLC/Chuck Lauer

: - Space Propellant Depots Panel with Jon Goff, Dallas Bienhoff,
:   Frank Zegler, and Rand Simberg

: - Space Studies Institute/Lee Valentine

: - SpeedUp/Bob Steinke

: - Henry Spencer, on Various & Diverse Subjects Of His Choosing

: - Unreasonable Rocket/Paul Breed

: - XCOR Aerospace


: Overall Conference Schedule:
: - Thursday March 22nd, sessions 2 pm - ~10 pm
: - Friday March 23rd,   sessions 9 am - ~10 pm
: - Saturday March 24th, sessions 9 am - ~ 6 pm
: - Space Access Hospitality Suite open till late all three
:   nights.

: SA'08 takes place Thursday afternoon March 27th through Saturday
: evening March 29th, 2008, at the Best Western Grace Inn at
: 10831 South 51st St in Phoenix Arizona, ten miles from the
: Phoenix Airport via free hotel shuttle, in a pleasant suburban
: neighborhood with shopping and dining a short walk away, with
: free parking.

: Our rates are the same as last year, both for SA'08 conference
: registration ($100 by check mailed in advance, $120 check cash
: or credit card at the door, student rate $30 either way) and
: hotel rooms ($99 a night including tax and full buffet
: breakfast).

: For hotel room reservations, phone the Grace Inn at
: (800) 843-6010.
: Mention "space access" for our $99-inclusive discount room rate.
: (If you're attending, this rate is good for three days before and
: after the conference too, if you want to catch some Spring
: Training action or just relax in the sun.)

: For advance SA'08 conference registration, mail checks (sorry,
: credit cards can only be accepted at the door) to

: Space Access '08
: 5555 N 7th St #134-348
: Phoenix AZ 85014.

: Print, fill out, and send along this form so we'll have all
: the info we need to have your badge ready when you arrive.

----------Space Access '08 Advance Registration---------


: Name __________________________________________________________


: Organization _________________________________________________
: (optional, will appear on badge, 20 characters max)

: email _______________________________________________
: (for conference updates and newsletter)

: amount enclosed ___________ for _____________________________

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"Virgin's Branson Unveils Commercial Spaceship Model"
Reuters
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080123/sc_nm/virgin_spaceship_dc_2;_ylt=A
tFGWHBFjn0S4_Hp_irF9WgE1vAI

: Entrepreneur Richard Branson on Wednesday unveiled a model of
: the spaceship he hopes will be the first to take paying
: passengers into space on a regular basis next year.

: Branson, whose Virgin Galactic is one of several commercial
: enterprises vying to offer the ultimate in sightseeing, said
: his SpaceShipTwo will start test flights later this year.

: "Two thousand eight is going to be the year of the spaceship.
: We're excited about this, and everything it will do," said
: Branson at a media event at the American Museum of Natural
: History in Manhattan."

: Virgin Galactic, part of Branson's airline, vacation and
: retail company Virgin Group, has more than 200 people signed
: up and $30 million in deposits for the rides, which cost about
: $200,000 per person.

: The company has signed up 150 passengers, including physicist
: Stephen Hawking, former soap star Victoria Principal and
: designer Philippe Starck.

: The space trips, from a launching pad to be built in New
: Mexico, are expected to take about two and a half hours, with
: about five minutes of weightlessness.

: SpaceShipOne and its launch aircraft WhiteKnightTwo, also
: unveiled on Wednesday, were designed by Burt Rutan, whose
: SpaceShipOne collected the Ansari X Prize for privately funded
: space flight in 2004.

: Branson teamed up with Rutan shortly after to design a
: sub-orbital spacecraft for Virgin Galactic.

: Sub-orbital flight is the easiest and briefest form of space
: travel, where the spacecraft technically reaches space
: -- about 62 miles above sea level -- but then falls back to
: Earth without completing a revolution of the Earth.

: Virgin Galactic is only one of several high-profile contenders
: in the new commercial space race.

: Others include Europe's EADS Astrium; Blue Origin, started by
: Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos; Space Exploration
: Technologies Corp (SpaceX), created by PayPal founder Elon
: Musk; Rocketplane Kistler, and hotelier Robert Bigelow.

: The leader in the budding sector is Space Adventures of Vienna,
: Virginia, which started the space tourism phenomenon in 2001
: when it put U.S. businessman Dennis Tito on a Russian Soyuz
: spacecraft headed for the International Space Station for a
: reported $20 million. It has since sent another four paying
: customers into space the same way.

------------

"Virgin Galactic Unveils Suborbital Spaceliner Design"
Space.com
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080123/sc_space/virgingalacticunveilss
uborbitalspacelinerdesign;_ylt=AjGC7hj.YdTJXu6FihaHtH0E1vAI

: Future thrill-seekers will ride a sleek spacecraft berthed
: under a massive, twin-boom mothership to the fringe of space in
: a design unveiled Wednesday by Virgin Galactic.

: The SpaceShipTwo spacecraft and its WhiteKnightTwo carrier will
: begin initial tests this summer to shakedown the novel
: spaceflight system designed by aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan and
: his firm Scaled Composites.

: "2008 really will be the year of the spaceship," British
: entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group,
: who unveiled a 1/16th-scale model of the new spacecraft here at
: the American Museum of Natural History. "We're truly excited
: about our new system and what our new system will be able to
: do."

: Based on Rutan's SpaceShipOne, a piloted and reusable spacecraft
: that won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for suborbital
: spaceflight in 2004, SpaceShipTwo is an air-launched vehicle
: designed to carry six passengers and two pilots to suborbital
: space and back.

: But unlike SpaceShipOne, which launched from beneath its
: single-cabin WhiteKnight carrier, the new craft will drop from
: a twin-cabin high-altitude jet that can double as a space
: tourist training craft. WhiteKnightTwo carries four engines and
: a wingspan of about 140 feet (42 meters), rivaling a B-29 bomber,
: and is built to handle unmanned rockets capable of launching
: small satellites into orbit, Virgin Galactic officials said.

: Virgin Galactic is offering tickets aboard SpaceShipTwo
: spaceliners for an initial price of about $200,000, though
: Branson said the cost is expected to drop after the first five
: years of operations. The space tourism firm plans to eventual
: launch flights out of a terminal at New Mexico's Spaceport
: America, with additional trips through the aurora borealis to
: be staged from Kiruna, Sweden.

: "It's fantastic," said British advertising executive Trevor
: Beattie, one of the some 100 Virgin Galactic ticketholders
: onhand for the unveiling. "I want to go now...with each
: milestone, it's getting closer and closer."

: Rutan, whose Mojave, Calif.-based Scaled has completed
: 60 percent of the first SpaceShipTwo, said his firm is building
: at least five of the suborbital vehicles - and two
: WhiteKnightTwo carriers - for Virgin Galactic.

: "This is not a small program by any stretch of the
: imagination," said Rutan, adding that his firm hopes to build
: at least 40 SpaceShipTwos and 15 carrier craft over the next
: 12 years.

: Each spacecraft is designed to fly twice a day, with their
: WhiteKnightTwo carriers capable of up to four daily launches,
: Rutan said. Over 12 years, more than 100,000 people could fly
: to suborbital space aboard the vehicles, he added.

: A roomy flight

: Virgin Galactic passengers like Beattie and others have already
: undergone centrifuge tests to sample the experience launch and
: reentry, which can exert forces of up to six times the Earth's
: gravity on the human body.

: Will Whitehorn, Virgin Galactic CEO, said each SpaceShipTwo
: passenger will be equipped with a pressure suit as a safety
: precaution, be free to move about a roomy cabin equivalent to
: a Gulfstream aircraft and peer at the Earth through wide,
: 18-inch (46-cm) windows during the several minutes of
: weightlessness offered on each spaceflight.

: "Because clearly, if you're going to go into space, you're going
: to want to see the view," Whitehorn said.

: SpaceShipTwo's cabin is much larger than the three-person
: capsule used on SpaceShipOne, and each of the two
: WhiteKnightTwo carrier craft cabins are identical that of the
: spacecraft to make it a useful training tool, he said.

: Family members of passengers or other space tourists can watch
: a SpaceShipTwo launch from inside a WhiteKnightTwo cabin, each
: of which sits just 25 feet (7.6) meters from the center-mounted
: spaceship.

: While the initial round of tests is slated for sometime this
: summer and the first spaceflights pegged for 2009, Whitehorn
: stressed that safety is paramount.

: "We're in a race with nobody, apart from a race with safety,"
: Whitehorn said.

: Rutan said he is targeting a safety factor akin to that of the
: earlier airliners of the 1920s, which should still be 100 times
: better than the safety of today's manned spacecraft used by
: large governments today.

: "Don't believe anyone who tells you that the safety level of
: new spacecraft is as safe as a modern airliner," Rutan said.

: The development and testing plan for SpaceShipTwo and its
: carrier craft has been slowed by an accidental fatal blast that
: killed three Scaled workers last July at the Mojave Air and Space
: Port. Last week, California state occupation and safety
: inspectors cited Scaled for failing to provide adequate training
: for workers and fined the firm more than $25,000.

: Rutan said his firm has been working with state inspectors and
: officials to enhance worker safety, but the actual cause of the
: blast during a rocket oxidizer flow test was still unknown.
: SpaceShipTwo's rocket engine will not be finalized until the
: source of the explosion is pinned down, he said.

: Patricia Grace Smith, the FAA's associate administrator for
: commercial space transportation, lauded the commitment of Virgin
: Galactic and Scaled to safety after SpaceShipTwo's unveiling.

: "It is the entrepreneurial spirit that will take this country
: forward," Smith said. "This is going to catch like a wild fire we
: have never seen."

----------

"Entrepreneur Unveils New Tourist Spacecraft"
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/science/space/23cnd-spaceship.html?
ex=1358830800&en=0ab3dd63f938a217&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss

: Burt Rutan took the cloak off of his new spacecraft on Wednesday.

: Mr. Rutan, the creator of SpaceShipOne, the first
: privately-financed craft to carry a human into space, traveled to
: New York to show detailed models of the bigger SpaceShipTwo and
: its carrier airplane, WhiteKnightTwo.

: "2008 will really be the year of the spaceship," said Sir Richard
: Branson, the British serial entrepreneur, at the heavily attended
: press conference at the American Museum of Natural History in
: Manhattan. Sir Richard, who founded a company, Virgin Galactic,
: that promises to take tourists on brief trips to the edge of
: space, was there to show off the sleek pod of a spacecraft and
: its spidery carrier plane.

: WhiteKnight, a two-fuselage, four-engine plane in its new
: incarnation, will ferry the smaller spacecraft high into the sky
: and release it. The spacecraft pilot then fires the craft's
: rocket engine, which burns a combination of nitrous oxide and a
: rubber-based solid fuel, and shoots the vehicle upward to an
: altitude of more than 62 miles, the realm of black sky.

: Once there, the pilot is to activate the craft's innovative
: feathered wing, which rotates into a position that greatly
: increases aerodynamic drag and slows the craft for a glider
: landing back on earth.

: In 2004, SpaceShipOne earned Mr. Rutan and his backer, Paul
: Allen, the $10 million Ansari X Prize when it carried a pilot
: to the edge of space twice in five days. Since then, Mr. Rutan
: has been working on the follow-up vehicle for Sir Richard, under
: his customary heavy secrecy.

: Officials at the press conference said that the WhiteKnight
: aircraft is 70 percent complete and that SpaceShipTwo is
: 60 percent complete. Test flights of the planes could occur
: this year. Passenger flights are not expected to begin before
: late 2009 or 2010.

: But Will Whitehorn, the president of Virgin Galactic, said that
: the company would not yet set a date for the startup of
: commercial flights, which will depend not just on testing and
: manufacturing but also on government approval. "We don't want
: to make promises that we can't meet," Mr. Whitehorn said.
: "We're in a race with nobody, apart from a race with safety."

: Mr. Rutan said that the new space travel system would have to
: be "hundreds" of times safer than present space flight, which he
: put at the level of safety of the early commercial aircraft of the
: 1920s.

: "Don't believe anyone who tells you that the safety level of new
: spaceships will be as safe as the modern airliner," he said, but
: the risk must nonetheless be brought to an acceptable level for the
: customers to come.

: "This has to be such that the fear of the risk doesn't hold down
: the growth of the industry," he said.

: Mr. Rutan's company encountered tragedy last summer when an
: explosion killed three of Mr. Rutan's rocketeers. The blast
: occurred during a "cold" test of the nitrous system.

: While the cause of the blast was being investigated to ensure that
: there was some previously undiscovered risk in the nitrous-based
: fuel, Mr. Rutan shifted design resources over to the WhiteKnight
: half of the flying pair. The California Occupational Safety and
: Health Administration fined the company $25,870 for five violations
: of regulations for workplace safety.

: Today, however, the rocketeers were focused on the future — and,
: just as importantly, on the past.

: "Most people think of going to space as Saturn V or the Space
: Shuttle," said Mr. Whitehorn, the company president. But the Rutan
: model, a descendant of the record-breaking X-15 experimental craft,
: shows there is another way, he said.

: The vehicle is meant to open space to a new generation of
: spacefarers who are more creative than the classically trained
: astronauts, Mr. Rutan said. And that will bring with it a new way
: of looking at space travel, just as personal computing opened up
: the use of computers from a military and academic tool to something
: that transformed the world.

: These newcomers, he predicted, will bring "breakthroughs that will
: come, that will tell us why we're doing this," he said, "and what
: can we do with it."

: About 100 of the company's prospective passengers were on hand at
: the unveiling in Manhattan Wednesday. Stephen Attenborough, the
: company's liaison with its clients — or, as the company calls them,
: its astronauts — said that Virgin Galactic had received 200 firm
: reservations and $30 million in deposits.

: Virgin has tested 80 of those customers for the ability to
: withstand the high-G forces of space flight by taking them for a
: centrifuge ride. Of the 80 — who included the scientist James
: Lovelock, who is 88, as well as people who have had heart bypass
: surgery and limb replacement — only two were unable to take the
: forces; the company asked three customers to put off flying.

: Mr. Attenborough said that means the company's initial premise
: — that one did not need to be in absolutely top physical shape to
: go to space — is sound.

: "We've proved that ordinary people can go to space," he said, "and
: almost all of us have the right stuff."

-----------

"First Look at SpaceShipTwo"
MSNBC
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/23/601315.aspx

: The new designs for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane and
: WhiteKnightTwo mothership were unveiled in New York today, and they
: include some unexpected twists. In fact, you could be excused if
: you think you're seeing double, or even triple.

: Today's event was the most detailed look yet at the craft that will
: carry on the legacy of SpaceShipOne, the first commercially
: developed spaceship and winner of the $10 million Ansari X Prize in
: 2004.

: The biggest twist is that the WhiteKnightTwo plane has spread out
: and sprouted another passenger cabin on its 140-foot-long wing. The
: two cabins and four Pratt & Whitney jet engines straddle a central
: mount for the rocket plane, which will be carried to an altitude of
: 50,000 feet and dropped. Then SpaceShipTwo will light up its hybrid
: rocket engine for the final push to the edge of outer space.

: The twin cabins are basically carbon copies of the SpaceShipTwo
: cabin, so riding on WhiteKnightTwo will give passengers a taste of
: what the big blast to space will be like. While commercial
: astronauts are taking their trip to see the curving earth below the
: black sky of space, the passengers on WhiteKnightTwo will
: experience a lower-altitude version of the experience - including a
: bit of weightlessness.

: "You'll be doing parabolas and floating about the cabin," Burt
: Rutan, the craft's designer and head of California-based Scaled
: Composites, told scores of journalists and dignitaries at the
: American Museum of Natural History.

: SpaceShipTwo is designed to carry six passengers and two pilots
: into space, with enough headroom to allow for free floating. More
: than 100 people are already in line for spaceflights, at a cost of
: $200,000 per person, and Rutan expects there to be thousands more:
: He said the innovations incorporated into SpaceShipTwo will make
: human spaceflight "at least as safe as the airliners of the
: late '20s."

: One of the reporters was surprised at that: Shouldn't spaceflight
: ideally be as safe as commercial aviation is today?

: "Don't believe anyone who tells you that the entry level for the
: new spaceships will be as safe as the modern airliner," Rutan
: responded. He noted that the fatality rate for orbital spaceflight
: has been 4 percent, and that he was aiming for the suborbital
: SpaceShipTwo to be "100 times safer."

: When will it fly?

: Virgin Galactic has been saying that passenger flights could start
: in the 2009-2010 time frame, but that was before last July's fatal
: accident at Scaled Composites' Mojave testing ground. The
: development of SpaceShipTwo's rocket engine has been held up
: because of the accident investigation, and today Virgin Galactic is
: saying only that WhiteKnightTwo will go into flight tests later
: this year.

: Gliding drop tests of the SpaceShipTwo craft, sans engine, could
: begin this year as well, said Stephen Attenborough, Virgin
: Galactic's commercial director. "This is very unlikely to be a
: program that will be delivered on a straight line," Attenborough
: told me.

: Several would-be passengers attended today's event, and were easily
: recognizable because of their black Virgin-branded flight suits.
: Perveen Crawford, Virgin Galactic's first paid-up customer from
: Hong Kong, told me that she was ready to go anytime.

: "It doesn't matter how it looks, just take me up there," she said.

: Virgin Galactic's founder, British billionaire Richard Branson, has
: said he'll give his 89-year-old father, Edward, a ride on
: SpaceShipTwo as a sign of his confidence in its safety. "They'll
: have to do it fairly quickly, or I won't be around," Edward Branson
: told me jokingly after the news conference.

: Edward Branson hasn't yet gone through astronaut training, but
: 80 other fliers-to-be have taken practice sessions at the NASTAR
: Center in Pennsylvania. Passengers are expected to endure
: accelerations of up to 3.5 times Earth's gravity, or 3.5 G's, on
: the way up - and up to 6 G's coming down. NASTAR's centrifuge
: duplicates that flight profile for training purposes.

: In the wake of the centrifuge sessions, Attenborough said two
: fliers have withdrawn from the flight program because of health
: concerns, and three have delayed their training - which translates
: into a higher-than-expected 93 percent success rate.

: People wouldn't necessarily be the only payload: Virgin Galactic
: President Will Whitehorn said the WhiteKnightTwo air-launch system
: could also be adapted for putting satellites into orbit.

: Making their mark

: Compared with the pointy-nosed look of SpaceShipOne, the cabin
: designs for SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo look a bit more
: rounded, more like a business jet than a Looney Tunes rocketship.
: The white-and-red colors of the first commercial spaceship were
: replaced on the scale models shown today with a white, blue and
: black motif.

: The twin tails and the belly of the SpaceShipTwo craft were
: emblazoned with a design based on the iris of Richard Branson's
: eye.

: Branson had history on his mind as he addressed today's audience.

: "2008 really will be the year of the spaceship," he said. Later on,
: Branson was asked whether he hoped he'd go down in history for
: backing the first commercial spaceline. Branson quickly gave the
: credit to Rutan, but then noted that everyone would like to leave
: their mark on earth.

: "I suppose we'd all like to make our mark when we're out of Earth,
: too," Branson said.

: You can get your own look at the new design concepts at Virgin
: Galactic. And stay tuned for further updates later today, here on
: the Log.

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"NASA Picks Finalists for Space Station Resupply Demonstrations"
Space.com
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080118/sc_space/nasapicksfinalistsfors
pacestationresupplydemonstrations;_ylt=AuJ1RG6HCHs0Hmx60OZu628E1vAI

: NASA has narrowed the field of private space companies vying for
: $175 million in public funds the U.S. space agency expects to award
: in early February for demonstration flights to the International
: Space Station, according to industry sources closely following the
: competition.

: At least eight firms, and perhaps as many as 14, submitted
: proposals in late November under the Commercial Orbital
: Transportation Services (COTS) program. Established in 2006, COTS
: aims to spur development of privately operated space transportation
: systems capable of delivering cargo and eventually astronauts to
: the space station.

: NASA selected two companies — Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
: and Rocketplane Kistler (RpK) — in mid-2006 to share about
: $500 million. But NASA has since pulled the plug on RpK's award for
: non-performance, freeing up the $175 million NASA intends to give
: to some other company next month.

: According to multiple industry sources, NASA has notified four
: companies that they are finalists for the $175 million and should
: prepare to meet with COTS selection officials in Houston in the
: days ahead to defend their proposals.

: Spacehab was one of the companies notified the week of Jan. 14 that
: it had made the cut, Eva DeCardenas, a spokeswoman for the
: Houston-based company, confirmed Jan. 17.

: The other companies, according to sources are: Andrews Space of
: Seattle; Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Va.; and PlanetSpace of
: Chicago.

: NASA spokeswoman Beth Dickey would not confirm that a downselect
: had taken place since the COTS competition remains under way.

: Industry sources said NASA intends to announce its final selection
: Feb. 7, the date by which the U.S. Government Accountability Office
: is required to rule on RpK's challenge of NASA's use of Space Act
: Agreements for the COTS program. RpK maintains that a traditional
: federal contract would be a better fit for COTS.

Mark Reiff

>Now he's trying to open the skies to his
fellow dreamers back on Earth"

Quote from someone?  Definition of a realist, someone who thinks that
space aliens will land and give us cheap safe space access technology
and solve all of earth's problems.  Definiton of a dreamer, someone
who thinks we can get our act together and solve our own problems.  ;-)

Mark Goll
19785 Marbach Lane
San Antonio, Texas
78266

210 651 6558
markgoll@...
web.wt.net/~markgoll/

FYI,

"21st-Century Pioneer - Astronaut Leroy Chiao achieved his ambition
for adventures in space. Now he's trying to open the skies to his
fellow dreamers back on Earth"
USA Weekend Magazine
http://www.usaweekend.com/08_issues/080113/080113astronauts.html

: Since then, Leroy Chiao's preoccupation with the heavens has led to
: his becoming a leading member of two of the most elite and
: exclusive groups on Earth: NASA astronauts and, now, one of many
: pioneers in the frontier of commercial space flight.

: This new quest to bring space travel down to earth, so to speak, so
: that anyone can book a flight to the stars has captured the
: imagination of a new generation of private entrepreneurs.

: In many ways, the ambitious Chiao exemplifies this handful of
: dreamers determined to commercialize space. The most famous is
: British billionaire Richard Branson, who is selling $200,000 seats
: to space in 2009.

: But as a highly experienced former astronaut, he has one of the
: most impressive resumes in the history of space travel -- as well
: as a populist notion of space travel.

: "We are on the edge of the barn-storming era of space flight," says
: Chiao, 47, who lives in Houston with his wife, Karen, and their
: 13-month-old twins. "There are several companies racing to make
: commercial space travel a reality sooner than most people think."

: After President Bush signed the Commercial Space Launch Amendments
: Act in December 2004, intended to promote the development of U.S.
: commercial space flight, Chiao felt the challenge: He decided to
: move from astronaut to space entrepreneur.

: "I had done all I could do in a flying career," he says of his
: decision to leave the space agency. For Chiao, "the real future of
: space travel and exploration was in the private sector."

: Chiao's Russian experience helped lead him to Excalibur Almaz space
: company, a private, international space venture planning to operate
: its own spacecraft and space stations commercially. "We hope people
: will be able to travel as easily on a spacecraft in the same way
: they do on an airline," says Chiao, who's in charge of Excalibur
: Almaz's space operations, which include training potential
: passengers.

: The private sector has long had access to space, however,
: communication satellites piggybacking on government rockets is a
: long way from what's hoped for. To date, only five "tourists" have
: flown to the International Space Station, and they were on Russian,
: not American, capsules.

: Chiao claims that "in the next few years," Excalibur Almaz will
: offer week-long flights that deposit tourists at modernized,
: Russian-designed space stations. His mission is to make sure such
: journeys are safe and economically efficient. The price of a seat
: is still up the air.

: "We're going to take things further and faster by using proven
: technology and spacecraft, which will ultimately bring down costs
: and make space flight available to more people," Chiao insists.
: "This [is] a chance to enter a new, exciting and growing area that
: [allows] me to share my amazing experiences with other people."

: Now, that opportunity is available -- if you have $40 million to
: spare. That's the price of a ride to the International Space
: Station in a Russian Soyuz space capsule. (Only a handful of very
: wealthy people have taken the trip, becoming the world's first
: "space tourists.")

: The rest of us are still dreaming, but affordable space travel is
: getting closer. In 2004, SpaceShipOne, built by famed aircraft
: designer Burt Rutan, claimed the$10 million Ansari X Prize for
: innovation. It is the first commercially built manned craft to
: reach space.

: Now, Virgin Galactic, the company founded by British billionaire
: Richard Branson that's behind SpaceShipOne, is selling tickets. For
: only $200,000, you can experience weightlessness, get a view of the
: Earth from space and, we hope, enjoy one heck of an in-flight meal.
: Possible departure date: as early as 2009.

: Several other companies also are planning spaceship flights, with
: the cost for passengers expected to be roughly in the same price
: range.

: Of course, a trip that costs as much as a starter home is still far
: from making space travel available to the masses. More affordable
: space voyages may be as little as 10 years away, when prices could
: fall to $30,000, Virgin Galactic's Rutan has estimated. That's
: about the price of a well-outfitted Toyota Camry. Start saving
: today.

Excalibur Almaz wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excalibur_Almaz

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"Google Shoots for the Moon - and Gets its First Taker"
San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
f=/c/a/2007/12/07/MNI7TPM9T.DTL

: It's like a James Bond film come to life. A company based on a tiny
: island in the British archipelago parachuted into San Jose on
: Thursday to become the first private team to enter a race to reach
: the moon by 2014 and thereby pocket most of a $30 million prize
: offered by Google.

: "We are challenging small private teams to do what only two
: governments have done before - land on the surface of the moon,"
: said Peter Diamandis, head of the XPrize Foundation, which is
: administering the purse that Google offered in September.

: Entrants must fly a craft to the moon, operate a robotic rover and
: transmit data to Earth to win the $20 million first prize or the
: $5 million second prize plus $5 million in bonuses.

: Out of 375 inquiries from more than 40 countries, so far only a
: company called Odyssey Moon has completed the registration process
: to become an official contender, Diamandis said at a conference
: about space investment on Thursday in San Jose.

: Among the commercial possibilities of such a mission: robotically
: mining the surface of the moon to extract silicon that could be
: refined into chips to create solar arrays on the moon that would
: eventually - by means as yet unspecified - beam power back to
: Earth.

: Gregg Maryniak, executive director of the XPrize Foundation, began
: the presentation by showing a futuristic video depicting the moon
: as "a natural storehouse of resources that we can use to enhance
: life on Earth and explore our universe."

: Maryniak likened the Google Lunar XPrize to the Apollo challenge
: issued by President John F. Kennedy in 1961.

: "Now there's a new moon race," Maryniak said, calling this "Moon
: 2.0" effort "a race to bring Earth's offshore island, the moon,
: into Earth's sphere of economic activity."

: Odyssey Moon's leaders include Robert Richards, a co-founder of
: International Space University, and Ramin Khadem, former chief
: financial officer of Inmarsat, a nearly 30-year-old satellite firm
: publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange. Officials said the
: company is based on the Isle of Man to take advantage of
: space-friendly tax policies and regulations.

: According to Odyssey Moon's Web site, the company's goal is to
: "lower the price of getting to the moon by an order of magnitude
: and in doing so help catalyze a 'moon rush' to Earth's sister
: world, which (Richards) describes as an eighth continent rich in
: energy and resources."

: Thursday's announcement was timed to coincide with NASA's pending
: launch of the space shuttle Atlantis, which was delayed because of
: an equipment problem.

: Also at the event was Red Whittaker, the robotics expert from
: Carnegie Mellon University who recently won the third in a series
: of robotic car races sponsored by the Pentagon. Whittaker has
: formed a company, Astrobotic Technology, that has announced its
: intention to compete for the XPrize but has not yet paid the
: $10,000 registration fee as part of the requirements to be accepted
: as an official entry.

: Whittaker, a larger-than-life character with a track record in
: robotics, has set an incredibly optimistic goal.

: "I intend to land (a robotic craft) near the Apollo 11 site on the
: 40th anniversary of its landing," said Whittaker, which would mean
: putting a privately built craft on the lunar surface in July 2009.

: Sensitive to the fact that exploration has, in the past, led to
: exploitation, speakers professed that the Odyssey Moon bid and the
: Google Lunar XPrize would be "responsible," without saying how.

: "We are ill-prepared in many ways for a responsible return to the
: moon," Richards acknowledged.

: The race, he said, will open a dialogue about how to divvy up the
: next frontier in a responsible way.

: The XPrize is modeled after a challenge laid down in 1919, when a
: wealthy Frenchman offered $25,000 to the first pilot to fly nonstop
from New York to Paris - a feat that made American Charles Lindbergh
: famous when he landed in France in 1927.

: Diamandis, who is involved with two firms that offer high-priced
: space tourism packages, reminded skeptics that when he concocted
: the first XPrize in 1996, disbelievers said no private firm would
: be able to put a manned craft into space. A team including
: Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and space pioneer Burt Rutan proved
: them wrong in October 2004 when SpaceShipOne made two space flights
: within a week to win a $10 million prize - versus about $26 million
: the team spent.

: SpaceShipOne now hangs in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum
: alongside Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis.

: Richards, the Odyssey official, said it was clear the mission would
: cost more than the prize but that the eventual payoff would be
: getting a head start in space exploration.

: Current government-sponsored robotic missions run from $500 million
: to $1 billion, officials said, but these private firms estimate
: they can do it for something approaching a tenth of the cost. If
: the ratio of prize to project cost in the 2004 win is any
: indication, they said, shooting the moon might carry a price tag of
: $100 million.

: Diamandis said he expects the first moon-launch efforts to get off
: the ground within roughly four years.

: "Get ready for some fun and amazing decades of private exploration
: ahead," he said.

: The lunar challenge

: -- Watch the Google Lunar XPrize rollout video at
: http://links.sfgate.com/ZBSY

: -- Find out more about the competition at http://www.xprize.org

: -- Odyssey Moon outlines its mission at http://www.odysseymoon.com

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"Bezos, Amazon.com: Blue Origin Rocket Progress"
LiveScience
http://www.livescience.com/blogs/2007/11/21/bezos-amazoncom-blue-
origin-rocket-progress

: Progress in developing a vertical takeoff/vertical landing
: suborbital spaceship has been reported by billionaire Jeff Bezos,
: chairman and chief executive officer of Amazon.com. He is
: bankrolling Blue Origin, a rocket development company with
: engineering and manufacturing teams housed in a 280,000 square foot
: facility on 26 acres in Kent, Washington.

: Bezos described Blue Origin progress during a November 19 interview
: on the Charlie Rose television show that focused primarily on
: Amazon's Kindle, a wireless, portable reading device.

: Bezos noted that Blue Origin's first development vehicle — the
: Goddard — has been flown to low-altitude several times from a
: company owned 200,000 acre launch complex in western Texas. To
: date, the tight-lipped Blue Origin group has only publicized the
: November 13, 2006 first flight of that craft.

: "We are now working on a second development vehicle," Bezos said.
: "There will be at least one more development vehicle after that…at
: least, I don't know, maybe it'll be more."

: Blue Origin is building a vertical takeoff/vertical landing
: spacecraft that will take three or more astronauts to the edge of
: space, Bezos said.

: Dubbed the New Shepard program — paying homage to the 1961
: suborbital flight of Mercury astronaut, Alan Shepard — Bezos said
: that Blue Origin's effort is built on taking one step at a time.
: The company's motto, he emphasized, is Gradatim Ferociter, "step by
: step, ferociously."

: "We're not in any hurry…because we're trying to build a very safe,
: well-engineered vehicle. [I] don't see any reason to rush on this,"
: Bezos told Rose.

: In building a suborbital, tourist-carrying vessel, Bezos said that
: he doesn't know how big the public space tourism market is.

: "People have done studies that have tried to size this market. But
: I'm highly skeptical of such studies because you don't really know
: until you do it," Bezos explained. "But I do think this can be made
: into a viable business. You have to be very long-term oriented," he
: said.

: People who complained about a seven year-long investment in Amazon,
: Bezos said, would be horrified by Blue Origin.

: Bezos said he's looking forward to his own flight into space, on a
: Blue Origin vehicle.

: "I will go. I definitely will go. I can't wait actually," Bezos
: concluded.

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"Rocket Racing League Adds 3 Teams"
Antelope Valley Press
http://www.avpress.com/n/29/1029_s14.hts

: A fledgling rocket plane racing league has announced the addition
: of three more teams, bringing its total to six.

: The Rocket Racing League, which will fly aircraft built in Mojave,
: announced the additions of Rocket Star Racing, Team Extreme Rocket
: Racing and Canada-based Beyond Gravity Rocket Racing. They join
: existing teams Bridenstine Rocket Racing, Santa Fe Racing and
: Thunderhawk Rocket Racing.

: "Our goal has been to bring diverse international teams to the
: league with highly skilled world-class pilots and flight crews
: coming from both civilian and military backgrounds," said Granger
: Whitelaw, company co-founder and chief executive officer.

: Rocket Star Racing is led by Todd White, a former Navy test pilot
: who has logged 3,000-plus flight hours in 30 different types of
: aircraft, including the F-4, F-15, F-16 and F-18, Team Extreme
: Rocket Racing is being led by an active duty Navy pilot, Lt. Bryan
: Schwartz, who has logged more than 1,600 flight hours and has made
: more than 120 aircraft carrier landings.

: Beyond Gravity Rocket Racing is led by Canadian team owner Brian
: Feeney, perhaps best known to aerospace enthusiasts as one of the
: competitors in the Ansari X Prize competition. Feeney runs a
: business called DreamSpace Group, which is geared toward manned
: spaceflight technology development, space tourism and rocket-based
: sports and entertainment events.

: The league has contracted with XCOR Aerospace of Mojave and
: Velocity, a Sebastian, Fla., company, to design and build the first
: racing planes. XCOR will base the design of the first racers on its
: EZ-Rocket plane, a Long-EZ experimental aircraft modified to carry
: two rocket engines. XCOR will build the racers with airframes
: provided by Velocity.

: Each of the rocket planes is expected to have a top speed of about
: 320 mph. Each of the airplanes will be powered by a single engine
: which should create a bright, 20-foot-long plume that will be
: visible to onlookers on the ground.

: Race courses will probably be two miles long and one mile wide at
: an altitude of about 5,000 feet. Each pilot will have an individual
: three-dimensional "track" in order to avoid collisions, league
: organizers said. Race organizers envision spectators tracking the
: progress of the racers by viewing each plane's bright engine flame
: and by watching large-screen televisions. Organizers also envision
: having spectators watch the races with handheld devices with live
: video streams from cockpit cameras.

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"Rocketplane Global Overhauls Suborbital Craft"
Space.com
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/071026-rocketplane-
overhaul.html

: Rocketplane Global, Inc. (RGI) of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma announced
: today a facelift for its first XP Spaceplane – transforming it into
: a more powerful craft that provides a roomier ride for suborbital
: patrons.

: Since 2004, Rocketplane has been building their XP Spaceplane, a
: four-seat, fighter-sized vehicle powered by two jet engines and a
: rocket engine.

: But things have changed over the last year and a half, said Dave
: Faulkner, Program Manager of Rocketplane Global. "We've learned
: quite a bit over that time and realized that we needed to make some
: changes," he said.

: The revised XP Spaceplane design revealed today here at the site of
: this year's X Prize Cup festivities is a five-passenger,
: single-pilot craft.

: Shipshape features

: Faulkner told SPACE.com that both computer modeling and wind tunnel
: testing have led the firm's design team to reshape their suborbital
: spaceship.

: A key change is that company engineers are going away from a
: souped-up Learjet concept. "We were changing 95 percent of the
: Learjet to make it a rocket plane. So it was no longer a Learjet
: ... it just so happened that we were using a few Learjet parts,"
: Faulkner said.

: The vehicle now features a new fuselage design, although, like its
: predecessor, the body of the spaceplane will be aluminum and
: utilize titanium leading edges. On the craft's nose, a set of fixed
: canards have been added for control purposes.

: Another alteration can be seen at the spaceplane's tail section – a
: T-tail instead of a V-tail is to be used, shaving off some weight
: while realizing added redundancy and extra control.

: A beefier landing gear system has also been scoped out, to be
: provided by Loud Engineering & Manufacturing, a CIRCOR Aerospace
: company located in Ontario, California.

: One major change is use of afterburning J85 engines, with the
: overall thrust to weight for the spaceplane redesign going up
: significantly – about 50 percent more thrust, he added.

: Rocketplane Global has already put their money down – a still
: hush-hush amount of cash – and is about to take receipt of 11 of
: those engines from Magellan Aerospace, a Canadian company.

: Flight plan

: Here's the flight plan for suborbital customers: The Rocketplane XP
: would take off from the runway at the Oklahoma Spaceport, scooting
: into the air just like a conventional business jet. The craft jets
: itself into climb mode, flying to a little over 40,000 feet. At
: this point, the spaceship's pilot ignites the craft's powerful
: rocket engine, pulling up into a nearly vertical climb for soaring
: into space.

: As the vehicle arcs over, all onboard will experience three to four
: minutes of weightlessness – along with an incredible view that only
: a small, select group of people have ever seen.

: Within minutes, the descent begins. Under the load of several Gs
: pushing passengers down into their seat, they are on a unique space
: roller coaster ride. The XP's specially designed thermal protection
: system transfers away the heat of re-entry, permitting safe, slow
: travel toward terra firma.

: As the Rocketplane XP slows and enters the lower atmosphere, the
: pilot restarts the jet engines and begins the final leg of the
: flight back to the spaceport and a conventional runway landing.

: For the inside look of the passenger cabin, Rocketplane Global is
: engaging the talents of Frank Nuovo, a visionary, world-class
: designer. He is a visionary force behind Vertu, the luxury
: communications company, and spearheaded Nokia's styling and global
: industrial design innovations.

: Fee-paying flyers will be treated to personal video screens, given
: the ability to pick views from different cameras on the spaceship.
: While passengers will be provided a personal DVD of their flight,
: don't be shy about stuffing your own camera in your flight suit for
: taking those keepsake images of your own.

: Investment dollars

: Rocketplane Global is deep in discussion with several investment
: groups, Faulkner said, "and they are getting serious ... we're
: progressing very well on that part."

: What amount of investment dollars is involved? Faulkner remained
: tight-lipped, noting that this information is competition
: sensitive.

: "But we need to bring in the final round of investment to take the
: craft to flight. So that's what we're busy doing," Faulkner said.
: "I believe that we bring in the investment soon ... we will be in
: flight test and have revenue operations in 2010."

: Initially, the company would start out with two vehicles,
: forecasting a fleet of five by 2012.

: "We're going to fly each vehicle about a little over once a week.
: If there are no issues with the vehicle, we're going to be able to
: turn it around in 24-hours," Faulkner explained. "That's the design
: goal right now ... and I think that's very doable. We want to be a
: service provider for space transportation."

: Recycling the spaceplane to carry the next set of passengers won't
: require a standing army of thousands, said Chuck Lauer, Rocketplane
: Global's Vice President of Business Development.

: How much will a flight on the Rocketplane XP slap your wallet or
: cause you to dig deep into your purse? At present, the standard
: rate after the first 50 Founder Flights is $200,000 per seat. That
: up front, right seat next to the pilot, is at a premium ticket
: price of $250,000 – given the wrap-around windows to gaze through,
: Lauer said.

: Degree of difficulty

: To get things rolling, quite literally, the current forecast is for
: a flight test program of 50 flights. "We'll have the vehicle
: instrumented to the hilt ... making sure that we're not exceeding
: any limits before going into operation," Faulkner added.

: Asked about degree of difficulty in fashioning the suborbital
: vehicle, Faulkner responded: "I would say it is medium difficulty.
: It is certainly not easy, but I wouldn't call it hard either.
: That's because we're not trying to develop new technology. That's
: one of the philosophies of our company ... to use existing
: technology and learn from those people that have done it before,
: rather than trying to reinvent the wheel."

: Working on the project are engineers that have gone through the
: hard knocks of trial and error, Faulkner added. The team includes
: experts tasked to develop the space shuttle main engine, as well as
: a rocket designer involved in blasting off Apollo astronauts from
: the Moon's surface once their moonwalking missions were completed.

: To date, a little over 200,000 engineering hours have been spent on
: the new Rocketplane XP that debuted today, Faulkner said. The
: company, he continued, is in negotiation with a major airframe
: manufacturer, but no details as yet.

: Going global

: Lauer said the intent of Rocketplane Global is just that – pushing
: a vision that such vehicles could constitute a distributed fleet
: flying from multiple locations. "Having a site in Asia, Europe ...
: being able to offer people views of their particular part of the
: world is part of servicing the customer," he told SPACE.com.

: Use of the vehicle to support other types of activity has also been
: detailed as part of the business strategy, Lauer said.

: "We're not basing our business plan on capturing the whole market,"
: Faulkner noted. "I think there's enough room, at least from what
: we've seen, to have a few players in the market. But I guess we'll
: see what happens when we get there," he observed.

: Faulkner said that the vehicle, with the changes that have been
: made, "just looks right and it's also relatable to the public out
: there."

: "It is like an airplane that happens to just pop up into space
: occasionally," Faulkner pointed out. "And it just looks good."

: "Looks good, flies good. That still applies, even in space," Lauer
: concluded.

: For more information on Rocketplane Global, go to:
: http://www.rocketplaneglobal.com

Mark Reiff

Exclusive:  BREAKING NEWS: Rocketplane Global Talks to the Space
Fellowship about the New Rocketplane XP configuration

http://spacefellowship.com/News/?p=3476#more-3476

FYI,

"Private Space Race Hits Bumpy Road
- Rocket entrepreneurs cope with reversals, look for new
opportunities"
MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21457371

: Three years after SpaceShipOne fired the opening shot of what
: some called a revolution, the space tourism industry is going
: through a difficult childhood.

: The past year has seen setbacks, ranging from a fatal accident
: in July to a major spaceship deal that went sour last week. But
: some of the setbacks are providing an opening for players that
: are still trying to get into the fray, including the major
: aerospace companies.

: Those setbacks and opportunities are in the spotlight here this
: week at the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight, a
: gathering of entrepreneurs and space-savvy government officials
: as well as past and future space travelers.

: Peter Diamandis, who as co-founder of the X Prize Foundation
: orchestrated the $10 million prize that SpaceShipOne won in
: 2004, told attendees at Wednesday's opening session that
: private-sector rocketeers were facing "a critical time."

: "We're in that phase where if we stop pushing, it stops,"
: Diamandis said.

: Entrepreneurs in the commercial space race are still pushing,
: as evidenced by the buzz about renewed ventures to be announced
: later in the week. And this weekend could well bring a
: million-dollar triumph for one band of rocketeers, the
: Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace team.

: Led by video-game millionaire John Carmack, Armadillo is thought to
: have a better than even chance of winning a NASA-backed prize in
: the $2 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. The
: vertical-launch contest is the marquee event at the X Prize Cup, an
: air and rocket expo scheduled Saturday and Sunday at Holloman Air
: Force Base, near Alamogordo, N.M.

: This week's symposium serves as a warmup for the X Prize Cup, and
: also as an annual assessment of the private spaceflight industry.
: Over the past year, developments have contributed to a somewhat
: more sober assessment this time around.

: Accident's aftermath

: The most significant setback came in July: Three workers died when
: a nitrous-oxide tank flew apart during an engine test at Scaled
: Composites, the California-based company that built the
: SpaceShipOne rocket plane. Scaled is building a scaled-up version
: of SpaceShipOne for Virgin Galactic, a company backed by British
: billionaire Richard Branson.

: Alex Tai, chief operating officer for Virgin Galactic, said he
: could not comment on the cause of the accident because it was still
: under investigation. He did say that the hybrid propulsion system
: being developed for SpaceShipTwo would be reviewed as a result of
: the accident, along with other aspects of the rocket plane's
: design.

: "Certainly this is a natural time to review all of this," he told
: reporters.

: Virgin Galactic is regarded as the front-runner among a half-dozen
: companies seeking to send tourists on suborbital flights to
: altitudes of 62 miles (100 kilometers) or more. From that height,
: fliers could feel a few minutes of weightlessness and see the
: curving Earth beneath the black sky of space — and scores of
: would-be passengers are paying $200,000 per seat to sign up.

: Last year, Tai told the symposium's attendees that Virgin Galactic
: was holding $15 million in deposits. Since then, the figure has
: risen to $31 million, Tai said Wednesday. It's not clear when those
: passengers would start flying, however: For now, the most
: optimistic guess would be late 2009 or 2010, the earliest possible
: time frame for finishing work on Virgin Galactic's home base at
: Spaceport America in New Mexico.

: Redoing the deal

: On the orbital side of the commercial space race, the big prize is
: NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS.
: Last year, NASA offered Oklahoma-based Rocketplane Kistler and
: California-based SpaceX almost $500 million to encourage the
: development of spaceships capable of transporting cargo between
: Earth and the international space station after the space shuttle
: fleet's scheduled retirement in 2010.

: Last week, however, NASA pulled the plug on its deal with
: Rocketplane Kistler, saying that the company failed to meet a
: pledge to bring in $500 million in private investment and as a
: result stopped work on its K-1 launch vehicle.

: Rocketplane Kistler is appealing the decision, but NASA
: nevertheless went ahead with a new call for new COTS proposals.
: Those proposals are due Nov. 21. The money that NASA held back from
: Rocketplane Kistler — $174.7 million — would be awarded to the new
: winner or winners by next February, said Valin Thorn, deputy
: program manager for NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program.

: Among those likely to compete in the COTS do-over are five
: companies that are already working with NASA on spaceship designs
: but aren't currently getting any of NASA's cash: Constellation
: Services International, PlanetSpace, SpaceDev, Spacehab and
: Transformational Space. Based on Thorn's presentation, some of the
: companies' concepts featured something old or something borrowed:

: - CSI's LEO Express concept calls for sending up a canister that
: would rendezvous with Russia's workhorse Progress spacecraft, then
: dock as a unit with the international space station.

: - SpaceDev is sticking with its Dream Chaser concept, which is
: based on the HL-20 lifting body developed by NASA in the 1980s. The
: spaceship could be launched atop a suborbital rocket, NASA's
: next-generation Ares 1 rocket or an Atlas 5 from the United Launch
: Alliance.

: - PlanetSpace could be updating as many as three old rocket
: technologies: the V-2 engines pioneered by the Nazis during World
: War II; a hypersonic glider based on the FDL-7 design of the 1960s;
: and Lockheed Martin's Athena 3 rocket, which was designed in the
: 1990s but never flew.

: United Launch Alliance, the joint venture involving aerospace
: giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin, says it is working with CSI,
: SpaceDev and Spacehab and could get in on some of the COTS funding
: — thus benefiting from a program that was designed to develop
: alternatives to the cost-plus approach favored by Boeing and
: Lockheed Martin in the past.

: Michael Holguin, a program manager at United Launch Alliance, told
: the "New Space" audience that "Old Space" was capable of evolving
: as the space industry changes.

: "We think there's a lot of synergy between us ... dinosaurs, if you
: will, and the commercial human spaceflight industry," Holguin
: said.

: SpaceX on track, for now

: SpaceX, meanwhile, has been meeting its COTS milestones along the
: way toward demonstration launches of its Falcon 9 rocket in late
: 2008 and 2009.

: "I actually feel pretty confident about getting hardware to the
: Cape by the end of next year," Elon Musk, the company's millionaire
: founder, told reporters.

: After that point, "external dependencies" such as regulatory
: requirements could conceivably force delays in the COTS timetable,
: Musk said. But for now, he saw nothing that would force SpaceX to
: deviate from what he called the "'things go right' schedule."

: In the nearer term, SpaceX's next Falcon 1 launch attempt is
: tentatively targeted for the first quarter of next year, Musk said.
: Even though the company has yet to put a payload into orbit, SpaceX
: has been taking in money for future launches. Because of that
: income from long-term contracts, Musk said SpaceX had a positive
: cash flow and would likely turn a profit this year.

: Musk, who made his fortune as a co-founder of the PayPal online
: payment service, said he was hopeful that SpaceX would yield a
: similar return when the company goes public, "maybe two or three
: years from now."

: "It actually has the potential to exceed the return on PayPal," he
: told reporters.

: Diamandis agreed with Musk's upbeat assessment: He said the
: personal spaceflight industry could sustain an "exothermic economic
: reaction" and become unstoppable in five years' time — that is, if
: space entrepreneurs continued pushing ahead. All it would take is
: that "first Netscape event," such as a successful SpaceX public
: offering, he said.

: "If you're in this business, you're an optimist," Diamandis
: said. "If you're a realist, you're selling real estate, on Earth.
: If you're not an optimist, you're not in this business. ... Sure,
: is this industry a few years behind our optimistic schedule when
: SpaceShipOne flew? Absolutely. But do I have any question that the
: industry is going to materialize? None whatsoever."

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"Entrepreneurs Envision a Sea Change in Commercial Space"
Space.com
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20071022/sc_space/entrepreneursenvisiona
seachangeincommercialspace;_ylt=Aia379fwUt3m2d7VG.MUidME1vAI

: Entrepreneurial companies are determined to reshape the commercial
: space industry in the years ahead with ventures designed to reduce
: the cost of access to space. The wide scope of projects includes
: the development of vehicles for suborbital tourism, eventually
: leading to orbital vehicles that could provide transportation to
: and from lower cost habitats and laboratories in space and even
: take advantage of one of the planned orbiting fuel depots.

: But bullish predictions such as these must be tempered by the
: realities of a gauntlet of policy, technology, finance and
: regulatory issues facing all of the entrepreneurs trying to provide
: public access across the space frontier.

: Representatives from several leading private space groups addressed
: their assessment of those challenges and their approach to solving
: them during a Sept. 19 panel discussion at a conference entitled,
: "Space: The Next 50 Years," organized by the American Institute of
: Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Boeing.

: Jason Andrews, president of Andrews Space, in Seattle, predicted
: that vehicles capable of horizontal takeoff and airplane-like
: operations not only will reduce launch costs, but also stimulate
: new business in low Earth orbit and ultimately out to the Moon.

: "I think we're going to see a sea change in space transportation
: from the Earth's surface to low Earth orbit," Andrews said, coupled
: with universal infrastructure like common interfaces and docking
: systems. Policy issues such as resource utilization, even land
: ownership on the Moon, he added, will need sorting out in the years
: to come.

: Some of the early projects are well underway. Scaled Composites LLC
: of Mojave, Calif., for example is busy building SpaceShipTwo, a
: passenger-carrying suborbital vehicle, for Sir Richard Branson's
: Virgin Galactic spaceline. Burt Rutan, Scaled's president and chief
: executive officer said that he found himself in the unusual
: position with SpaceShipTwo of having a program "that's announced,
: but not unveiled."

: Rutan said the company's long-range plan is to build perhaps as
: many as 40 or 50 spaceships in the future for a variety of
: customers. Scaled Composites already has increased its staff and
: floor space by a factor of about two-and-a-half in the last couple
: of years. "All that growth is not in commercial space ... about
: 45 percent of it is," Rutan said.

: "What we are developing is something that we expect to be
: competitive 20 to 30 years from now," Rutan said.

: Rutan said the problem with space as a business is the lack of
: payloads. For now, flying people in space is the only payload that
: makes any business sense, Rutan said. Doing so, he said, will
: foster needed breakthroughs in safety and lower operating costs.

: Jeff Greason, president and chief executive officer for XCOR
: Aerospace in Mojave said that predicting routine suborbital
: passenger spaceflight "is like predicting when the egg is going to
: drop when it's already on the way to the floor." Not only is it
: going to happen, Greason stressed, there also will be multiple
: players vying for a market larger than what was expected just a few
: years ago.

: That translates into faster price drops than first anticipated,
: "because that's what competition does," Greason said.

: Debra Facktor Lepore, president of AirLaunch LLC, headquartered in
: Kirkland, Washington, likened the current crop of space
: entrepreneurial firms as the "Wild West," forecasting that today's
: private space companies will become more mainstream – eventually
: replaced by another set of entrepreneurs with those "really wacky
: ideas."

: One big roadblock to the wider use of affordable small launchers
: and payloads, Lepore said, is the U.S.  International Traffic in
: Arms Regulations (ITAR), which make it difficult, and in some cases
: impossible, for U.S. companies to do space business abroad. ITAR,
: she said, stifles the creation of international partnerships. As a
: result, she predicted, some nations will march ahead of the United
: States in technology, putting U.S. technological competitiveness at
: risk.

: Lepore also stressed that it is important for small businesses and
: entrepreneurs to maintain their commercial and intellectual
: property rights – even if they receive full or partial government
: funding of their projects. "That's your real asset, and protecting
: that is paramount."

: Lawrence Williams, vice president for international and government
: affairs for Space Exploration Technologies of El Segundo, Calif.,
: said innovation and low prices can be realized if the U.S.
: government facilitates true and open competition. That will
: permit "hard-charging, aggressive entrepreneurs" to change the
: space industry – but only if the U.S. government removes financial
: economic inefficiencies, such as the enormous subsidies for the
: companies who participate in the U.S. Air Force's Evolved
: Expendable Launch Vehicle program.

: Rutan cautioned that the "little guys" should avoid government
: funding. "I think it's the worst place to get money. You've got
: hundreds of people who are on your board of directors and each one
: has their own agenda," he said, and it's a relationship that leads
: to not taking risks and realizing breakthroughs, he concluded.

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"Do We Need NASA?"
News.com
http://www.news.com/Do-we-need-NASA/2009-11397_3-6211308.html

: The birth of modern aviation probably lies in Charles Lindbergh's
: 1927 flight across the Atlantic, which won him a $25,000 prize and
: a ticker-tape parade down New York's Fifth Avenue.

: By showing the world to be just a little smaller than before,
: Lindbergh fathered the 20th century's transportation revolution.
: The airship named after German entrepreneur Ferdinand von Zeppelin
: took its maiden flight the next year, and by the early 1930s both
: Boeing and Douglas were selling passenger planes to fledgling
: airlines including TWA, United and American. Not long afterward,
: the famous Douglas DC-3 made transcontinental flights practical.

: Compare the rapid progress in aviation with America's experience in
: space travel. Fifty years after Sputnik 1's launch in October 1957,
: mankind has set foot on precisely one other world (a moon, at
: that), the space shuttle has at best a 1-in-50 chance of disaster
: upon each launch, and a completed space station is still a few
: years out. Since the last moon landing 35 years ago, in fact,
: mankind has not ventured beyond low Earth orbit again.

: The difference? Critics say it's the National Aeronautics and Space
: Administration. Aviation's youth and adolescence were marked by
: entrepreneurs and frenetic commercial activity: Lindbergh's
: trans-Atlantic prize money was put up by a New York hotel owner,
: and revenue from the airlines funded the development of the famous
: DC-3. The federal government aided aviation by paying private
: pilots to deliver air mail.

: Space, by contrast, until recently has remained the domain of NASA.
: Burt Rutan, the aerospace engineer famous for building a suborbital
: rocket plane that won the Ansari X Prize, believes NASA is crowding
: out private efforts. "Taxpayer-funded NASA should only fund
: research and not development," Rutan said during a recent panel
: discussion at the California Institute of Technology. "When you
: spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build a manned spacecraft,
: you're...dumbing down a generation of new, young engineers (by
: saying), 'No, you can't take new approaches, you have to use this
: old technology.'"

: Rutan and his fellow pilots, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs
: have undertaken a formidable task: To demonstrate to the public
: that space travel need not be synonymous with government programs.
: In fact, many of them say NASA has become more of a hindrance than
: a help.

: From moon landings to freight hauling

: Soon after its creation in the 1950s, NASA captured the hearts of
: America's youth with vistas of outer space and other worlds,
: illustrated by unforgettable moments like Buzz Aldrin and Neil
: Armstrong setting foot on the moon.

: But by the late 1990s, the agency seemed to have become more
: moribund than innovative. In 1999 alone, NASA lost the Mars Climate
: Orbiter (because of English-Metric unit conversion problems) and
: Mars Polar Lander (likely because of a programming error). Then,
: after spending $1.6 billion on space plane research, NASA abruptly
: abandoned the project.

: Late that year, NASA's problem-ridden Hubble Space Telescope was
: offline for more than a month. And NASA shuttle launches seemed to
: have devolved into repair missions and transportation for science
: experiments. Its mission, in other words, seemed to be shifting
: from historic accomplishments to the more matter-of-fact business
: of freight hauling.

: The shuttle had become so problematic that Time Magazine published
: an article titled: "The Space Shuttle Must Be Stopped." It
: dispassionately listed the shuttle's failings: It was intended to
: be an example of American technological prowess; instead it is
: fragile and antiquated (until recently the flight deck computers
: used 1978-vintage 8086 microprocessors). It was supposed to be
: flown every week; instead it flies a few times a year. It was
: supposed to cost $5 million a flight; instead it costs a staggering
: $1.3 billion a flight.

: NASA leadership also discouraged private space travel.
: Then-administrator Dan Goldin publicly disparaged millionaire
: Dennis Tito's choice to pay a reported $20 million to fly to the
: space station on a Russian spacecraft, calling the former NASA
: scientist "un-American" for doing so. A few years earlier, though,
: NASA had flown a lawyer and insurance executive named Jake Garn and
: Bill Nelson--who had become influential members of the U.S.
: Congress--on space shuttle missions. Also during Goldin's tenure,
: NASA also took steps to block entrepreneurs at Russia's MirCorp
: from being able to use Russian supply rockets or gain access to a
: key tether that could have helped to keep Mir aloft.

: But the Commercial Space Act of 1998 eliminated the long-standing
: prohibition on bringing vehicles and people back and forth from
: space and opened the door to what would become the commercial space
: industry of today. (Six years later, the federal government
: formally gave approval for Rutan's SpaceShipOne to launch a
: suborbital flight in pursuit of the X Prize.)

: Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation and a
: private space entrepreneur, says NASA can remain relevant--but only
: by focusing on what for-profit companies won't do. "NASA should be
: in focusing on breakthroughs in propulsion systems. They should be
: taking very high risks, funding things that are likely to fail
: because that's what government should be doing, pushing the
: envelope," he said in an interview with CNET News.com.

: For its part, NASA says it's moving in that direction, pointing to
: policy directives including one from 2005 decreeing that the
: agency "will normally procure launch services for NASA and
: NASA-sponsored primary payloads from commercial providers."

: "We're trying to get out of this low Earth orbit business," said
: Ken Davidian, program manager for NASA's Centennial Challenges
: program. "If there are commercial suppliers of space capabilities
: like launch vehicles for cargo delivery, we're required by law to
: use them. We want to use them. The premise is that those services
: will be cheaper to buy than to use ourselves."

: Is NASA worth $17.6 billion next year?

: But if private industry can reliably transport people and cargo to
: space, is it still necessary to funnel $17.6 billion a year to
: NASA? Or could that money be better spent on, say, tax breaks to
: encourage the development of a world-class private space industry?

: "One way is to have a vibrant private sector model so people can
: see that space is a place, not a government program," said Ed
: Hudgins, executive director of the free-market-advocating Atlas
: Society and editor of the book Space: The Free-Market Frontier.
: "It's a place where you can do science, you can do work, you can
: explore, you can live. None of those functions are uniquely
: government functions."

: Other free-market advocates call for a "phase out" of NASA, meaning
: privatization of the space station and enforcement of an existing
: restriction on not using the shuttle to carry cargo that can be
: handled by private launches. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
: California, a largely autonomous part of NASA that's managed by the
: California Institute of Technology, could continue unmanned
: planetary probes, and so on.

: That would reduce the risk of recurring budget overruns--which
: happened not just with the shuttle program, but the space station
: as well. It was originally supposed to cost $8 billion, have a crew
: of 12, and be complete by the mid-1990s; now it has a crew of three
: and is expected to cost at least $130 billion when it's finally
: finished in 2010.

: Politically, though, NASA privatization isn't likely anytime soon.
: The Bush administration has asked for NASA's budget to be increased
: to $17.3 billion for the 2008 fiscal year, which the
: Democrat-controlled House of Representatives upped last month to
: $17.6 billion. Much of the extra money would be spent on the space
: station.

: "We're going to be relevant in the things that commercial can't do
: -- all the exploration stuff," said Davidian, the NASA program
: manager. "We're going to push the boundaries out and hopefully
: commercial industry will be back-filling...so NASA can keep pushing
: out further." Another area would be sending signals to the
: investment community, he added.

: One change is that Michael Griffin, NASA's administrator since
: April 2005, seems less hostile to the private sector than his
: predecessor. In a speech last month, he recited NASA's current
: goals, including the Ares rockets and the Orion crew vehicle. Then
: he extended this olive branch: "This is the exploration work to be
: done over the next 10 to 15 years, and I hope to entice
: international and commercial partners to be part of turning these
: ideas into reality."

: Instead of privatization, a more modest form of legislative
: tinkering might be tax incentives. One federal bill from 2005, the
: Zero Gravity, Zero Tax Act, would create a 25-year tax moratorium
: on profits derived from space manufacturing. A more radical
: proposal would create an X Prize-like corporate tax reward: the
: first company to erect a base on the moon (or Mars) would be immune
: from all taxes for the duration.

: "Ideally I want to move to a world without NASA," said Hudgins,
: editor of the private space travel book. "For the same reason we
: don't have a world with the Western Settlements Bureau of the
: federal government. There's no need for one. The West has been
: settled, and it was mostly settled by private individuals getting
: out there through private means. The frontier is the model for
: becoming a space-faring civilization."

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"Carnegie Mellon Sets Sights on Google's Lunar X Prize"
Space.com
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20071001/sc_space/carnegiemellonsetssigh
tsongoogleslunarxprize;_ylt=AvGQgnxT0ZuPsN6Hc0byPUkE1vAI

: William "Red" Whittaker and the wizards at Carnegie Mellon
: University's Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh, hope to use their
: expertise to snag $20 million in the Google Lunar X Prize.

: Carnegie Mellon is one of seven teams so far to have sent in a
: letter of intent and a $1,000 deposit to compete for the
: $20 million grand prize, according to Brett Alexander, the X Prize
: Foundation's executive director of space prizes and the Wirefly
: X Prize Cup.

: Announced Sept. 13 at Wired magazine's NextFest event in Los
: Angeles, the Google Lunar X Prize is offering $20 million to the
: first team that can soft land a privately funded spacecraft on the
: Moon, travel a minimum distance of 1,640 feet (500 meters) and
: transmit high-definition video and other images and data back to
: Earth for viewing over the Internet. Second place is worth
: $5 million and up to an additional $5 million in bonus prizes can
: be won by completing extra tasks beyond the core mission.

: David Gump, president of Reston, Va.-based Transformational Space
: Corp. (t/Space) and an advisor to Whittaker's Team X-PLORE, said
: the team wasted no time registering for the competition, sending in
: its letter of intent via overnight delivery the day it was
: announced. Gump said the team since has translated the contest
: guidelines into 50 "expressed or implied" mission requirements.

: "We are already making great progress coming up with a mission
: design that will win the prize," Gump said in a Sept. 24 interview.

: Neither Gump nor Whittaker are strangers to planning lunar missions
: meant to be done on the cheap. Gump spent most of the 1990s running
: LunaCorp, a small firm that left no stone unturned in searching for
: the right combination of corporate and government sponsorships to
: get a profit-driven lunar lander mission off the ground.

: LunaCorp eventually signed RadioShack as a sponsor and helped the
: electronics retailer pull off a number of space-based promotions
: before Gump folded the company in 2003 to focus on the space
: transportation company t/Space.

: Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, meanwhile, not only worked
: closely with LunaCorp on mission studies, but also submitted
: multiple Discovery-class mission proposals to NASA in the 1990s for
: robotic lunar landers and rovers designed to explore the craters
: and polar regions of the Moon.

: NASA passed on those proposals, in part because the agency was not
: especially interested at that time in exploring the Moon. But
: Carnegie Mellon-built robots have been put through their paces in a
: variety of environments here on Earth, including meteorite-hunting
: expeditions in Antarctica. Whittaker and the engineers at his
: institute also contributed software to NASA's Mars Exploration
: Rovers, which have been exploring the red planet since 2003.

: Whittaker said that Carnegie Mellon is ready to meet the Google
: Lunar X Prize challenge head on.

: "Carnegie Mellon is a world leader in software and world leader in
: robotics and we have experience with and appetite for challenges,"
: Whittaker said in a Sept. 26 interview.

: In 2005, a pair of driverless automobiles designed by Carnegie
: Mellon completed a 132-mile (212.4-kilometer) trek through the
: Nevada desert, taking second and third place in the U.S. Defense
: Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Grand Challenge.

: On Nov. 3, Carnegie Mellon will compete in DARPA's $2 million Urban
: Challenge, entering a driverless Chevy Tahoe sport utility vehicle,
: dubbed Boss, that will attempt to autonomously navigate a closed
: 59-mile (96-kilometer) course in Victorville, Calif., complete with
: stop lights, speed limits and traffic.

: Neither Whittaker nor Gump would say much about Team X-PLORE's
: technical approach at this early stage, and Gump said that is
: unlikely to change even as the approach matures.

: "You have to remember that this is a race with competitors that
: shouldn't know about your strategy," Gump said.

: But both Whittaker and Gump said they believed securing early
: financing, either in the form of corporate sponsorship or a
: benevolent angel, is critical.

: "What is clear from the Ansari X Prize is that you need to have
: solid funding soon — a Paul Allen equivalent who can make sure that
: you are motoring away at a good speed," Gump said. "One of our
: team's top priorities is securing that early funding."

: Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, bankrolled the $20 million
: development of Scaled Composites' piloted SpaceShipOne suborbital
: launch system, which won the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004 by
: completing two back-to-back flights to the edge of space.

: Whittaker said the real trick of challenges like the Google Lunar
: X Prize is coming up with an approach that ensures that all
: stakeholders win, even if the cash prize exceeds the team's grasp.
: Win or lose at the Urban Challenge next month, Whittaker said,
: Carnegie Mellon's teammates and sponsors will see a return on their
: investments.

: "If a team were backed by $400 million of philanthropic money on
: Day 1, the technical and programmatic challenges for X Prize
: success would be foregone. There would be no difficulty," Whittaker
: said. "You can buy victory, but not profitably."

: The key to profitability, according to Whittaker, is making sure
: that there are a series of payoff opportunities for sponsors along
: the way to the actual competition. Auctioning off naming rights and
: holding contests to select people who will actually get to drive
: the rover once it lands were among the examples he and Gump
: mentioned.

: Similar pitches were made to would-be corporate sponsors during
: Gump and Whittaker's LunaCorp days. But Gump said there are some
: big differences between what LunaCorp tried back then and what Team
: X-PLORE is facing today, not the least of which is the involvement
: of Google, the Internet powerhouse worth more than $170 billion.

: "Two great things that Google did is they put the Google stamp of
: credibility on the overall enterprise and they also set the target
: to be relatively fixed and small effort," Gump said.

: "The Google threshold for wining the prize is pretty constrained.
: You have to land and make a broadcast, move 500 meters and
: broadcast again. This means you don't have to broadcast while
: moving which is very difficult. It means you don't have to last on
: the surface for longer than it takes to move 500 meters and you
: don't have to take along tens of kilograms of science instruments."

: But the technical challenges still are formidable. Whittaker and
: Gump said building a lander that is capable of making a soft
: touchdown on the lunar surface is probably the biggest single
: expense ahead for any team. Launch is not cheap either, with prices
: starting around $6 million for Space Exploration Technologies'
: still unproven Falcon 1 launcher and going up from there.

: Broadcasting at least 1 gigabyte of high-definition quality video
: back from the moon is no mean feat either.

: "That's the most stressing requirement in the list," said Gump,
: noting that he knows of no space-qualified high-definition (HD)
: video camera. Japanese broadcaster NHK and Silver Springs,
: Md.-based Discovery Communications got together in 2006 for the
: first live HD broadcast from space. But even in the relatively
: benign radiation environment aboard the international space
: station, "many, many pixels were being knocked out by radiation
: damage" within a matter of days, Gump said. Travel time to the Moon
: ranges from several days to a month, depending on the technical
: approach.

: "We haven't gone to Mike Malin yet to ask him what he might charge
: us for a Mars-qualified camera but you certainly cannot walk down
: to BestBuy and get an HD camera that can survive the radiation
: environment," Gump said.

: San Diego-based Malin Space Science Systems has built numerous
: cameras for NASA Mars missions and currently is working on a video
: camera for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft. That video
: camera will be capable of 720 lines of progressively scanned
: vertical display resolution — a common HD video standard known as
: 720p.

: Mike Ravine, advanced projects manager at Malin, said it is not a
: given that the camera being designed for the Mars Science Lab (MSL)
: would work as is on a lunar mission. "I can imagine a mission where
: with the overall package it would make sense to build a copy of the
: MSL camera, but I can also imagine a number of mission approaches
: were it would not make sense," he said.

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"NASA Pundits Launch Debate Over Space Flight"
CNET News.com
http://www.news.com/NASA-pundits-launch-debate-over-space-flight/2100-
11397_3-6209299.html

: At the 50th anniversary space conference here Thursday, a fight
: over the future role of NASA's space program inadvertently took
: off.

: If it were up to Burt Rutan, the aerospace engineer known for
: building a suborbital rocket plane that won the Ansari X Prize,
: NASA wouldn't be developing a spacecraft to put another man on the
: moon by 2020. That government mission has already been
: accomplished, and a repeat performance is "silly," Rutan said
: during a panel held at California Institute of Technology, CalTech,
: which runs NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.

: "Taxpayer-funded NASA should only fund research and not
: development," Rutan said. "When you spend hundreds of billions of
: dollars to build a manned spacecraft, you're...dumbing down a
: generation of new, young engineers (by telling them) "No, you can't
: take new approaches, you have to use this old technology."

: "I think it's absurd they're doing Orion development at all. It
: should be done commercially," he said, referring to the name of the
: lunar spacecraft.

: NASA Administrator Michael Griffin responded to Rutan's vision in a
: speech following his panel. "Unlike Rutan, I will continue to think
: space programs are important," Griffin said.

: Of course, Rutan has a big stake in commercial development of
: spacecraft. As founder and president of Scaled Composites, he
: develops rockets for future commercial space tourism. Rutan is
: among a cadre of technology entrepreneurs, including Amazon founder
: Jeff Bezos, Paypal co-founder Elon Musk and Virgin CEO Richard
: Branson, who are working on ventures to send people into space.

: In his speech, Griffin talked about NASA's budget for the last
: 50 years, adjusted for inflation. He said that the most money NASA
: has ever received from the government was not the period during the
: Apollo missions, but over the 10 years from 1989 to 1998. "So we
: get more money today than (what was) given the agency during
: Apollo" (during the 1960s and 1970s.) NASA's budget for 2007 is
: $14 billion, or about 15 cents a day of a taxpayer's money,
: according to Griffin.

: Part of Rutan's argument against NASA's development program was
: that after the early 1970s, when astronaut Alan Shepard golfed on
: the moon, there wasn't "much innovation."

: Griffin didn't respond directly to whether or not there is a lack
: of innovation. But in response to criticism on an earlier panel
: that NASA's science budget has waned, he said the first decade of
: NASA's budget was proportionally the same as its most recent
: budget. During the first 10 years of the space agency, he further
: clarified, 58 percent of its budget was devoted to human
: spaceflight, 17 percent to science, 6 percent to aerospace and
: 10 percent to new technologies. In contrast, in 2006, 62 percent of
: NASA's budget was earmarked for spaceflight and 32 percent was for
: space science, he said. Last year, NASA didn't have a budget to
: develop new technologies.

: "There is a mythology that science has been decimated by human
: spaceflight. That's not right." Griffin said.

: He added that the current missions back to the moon and onto Mars
: by 2035 are sustainable programs, ones that wouldn't likely be
: stemmed by a change in administrations.

: "We have here a program which is affordable, sustainable and which
: can be highly correlated to historical successes and developments
: from the past," said Griffin.

: Rutan said that the goal of private space tourism is to reduce the
: cost of space travel and exploration. "If we go through a time
: period where the focus is on flying the consumer, these 'payloads'
: who pay to fly and can be reproduced with unskilled labor...with
: tools around the house," he joked, "there will be a breakthrough to
: enormous volume."

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"Rockets to Roar at Air and Space Expo"
SPACE.com
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070920/sc_space/rocketstoroaratairands
paceexpo;_ylt=AsDpW3zsRTv3JbjDShqKWQEE1vAI

: This year's Wirefly X Prize Cup is shaping up to become a unique
: rocket festival that salutes forward-looking technology, space
: exploration and education, while showcasing a contest between
: private sector lunar lander vehicle designs.

: The Wirefly X PRIZE CUP '07 Holloman Air and Space Expo is being
: held October 27-28, staged at the Holloman Air Force Base in the
: city of Alamogordo, New Mexico.

: "It'll be a cool show," said Bretton Alexander, Executive Director
: of Space Prizes and the Wirefly X Prize Cup in Washington, D.C.
: "There won't be as much down time, if you will, that there has been
: in the past. It will be far more dynamic," he said, noting that the
: event will involve more performances, presentations and displays
: than ever before.

: In the past two years, X Prize Cup activities were held in Las
: Cruces, New Mexico. This year's larger venue covers some 30 acres
: with ground displays featuring spaceships, U.S. Air Force aircraft,
: robots and rovers, along with Jumbotrons to enable those attending
: to keep an eye on all the action.

: Personal spaceflight: next major milestone

: In many ways, the annual Wirefly X Prize Cup provides a status
: check on the blossoming variety of private space travel ventures.
: As example, prior to the expo, the Third International Symposium
: for Personal Spaceflight will take place October 24-25 at the New
: Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum in neighboring Las Cruces,
: New Mexico.

: "The personal spaceflight industry is alive and well. We continue
: to have significant and growing private investment," said Peter
: Diamandis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the X Prize
: Foundation, headquartered in Santa Monica, California.

: The personal spaceflight industry now embraces numbers of new
: systems in development, Diamandis told SPACE.com, from the
: passenger-carrying SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceliner now being
: built, the prototype Bigelow Aerospace expandable modules now in
: Earth orbit, to the Falcon 9 rocket and reusable, crew-carrying
: Dragon orbital capsule of Space Exploration Technologies
: Corporation.

: Diamandis said that the next major milestone is the routine
: commercial operations of these new systems leading up to the first
: successful Initial Public Offering, or IPO.

: "Once one of these commercial space companies conducts a vibrant
: IPO I think we'll have what I've been calling a 'Netscape event'
: where in investors will stand up and take notice and capital will
: begin to flow into the pre-IPO space companies," Diamandis
: predicted.

: Free event

: The Wirefly X Prize Cup and Holloman Air and Space Expo will be a
: free event, Alexander said, with ground and static display areas
: spotlighting private, industrial, as well as NASA hardware. Seven
: hours each day consists of live rocket competitions, launches, and
: air show performances, he said.

: "We are going to be displaying our Nova rocket this year, in
: collaboration with Doña Ana Community College (DACC), a branch of
: New Mexico State University," said Steve Bennett, head of
: Starchaser Industries. The Nova/Starchaser 4 is a single-seater
: rocket is some 37 feet (11 meters) tall – sure to be an eye-catcher
: at the expo.

: The UK-based Starchaser Industries Limited is currently working on
: larger versions of this rocket that will be used for space tourism
: purposes. Furthermore, the company's New Mexico development at
: Starchaser Rocket City is progressing well. A twenty thousand
: gallon water storage facility will be installed close by, which
: will allow the construction of Starchaser's 10,000 square foot
: rocket manufacturing and assembly building.

: On October 26, thousands of students from schools from across the
: United States will attend the Wirefly X Prize Cup education day at
: Holloman Air Force Base for rocket launches, astronaut sessions,
: career panels, and competitions, Alexander said.

: Another student-outreach initiative is the Pete Conrad Spirit of
: Innovation Award, asking high school-aged students to develop a
: new, innovative concept to benefit the personal spaceflight
: industry within the next 50 years. The award is named after Conrad,
: the late astronaut who flew Gemini and Skylab missions, and
: commanded the Apollo 12 landing on the Moon.

: Prizes on the line

: A major expo attraction will be the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander
: Challenge. The event involves rocket teams vying for $2 million in
: prize money, flying their respective lunar lander ships through the
: sky to touchdowns on simulated lunar surface landscape – under time
: constraints.

: NASA, which signed a Space Act Agreement with the X Prize
: Foundation before last year's competition will once again fund the
: prizes through the space agency's Centennial Challenges program
: – an effort that promotes technical innovation through prize
: competitions.

: This year's Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge is shaping up
: well, said William Pomerantz, Director of Space Projects for the
: X Prize Foundation in Washington, D.C. Rocketeers will demonstrate
: the ups and downs of carrying out simulated lunar lander flights
: with the $2 million in prizes on the line, he said.

: "All told, our teams have spent about 35,000 man-hours, almost all
: of them volunteered, working on this challenge thus far," Pomerantz
: added. "And what a great investment for NASA...they've gotten
: 35,000 man-hours and countless innovations and solutions, and
: haven't spent a single dollar thus far," he emphasized.

: Sensory overload

: Major emphasis is being placed on safe flight of rocket-powered
: craft taking part in the Northrop Lunar Lander Challenge, said
: Lt. Col. Angelo Eiland, 49th Fighter Wing Deputy Director of Staff
: at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

: On tap is an integration of rules from the Federal Aviation
: Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, the
: National Transportation Safety Board, X Prize, as well as Holloman
: safety regulations that govern operations on the base, Eiland
: noted.

: Rocket teams taking part in the Challenge that do not fully meet
: the necessary free-flight requirements prior to the Air and Space
: Expo may be required to do tethered launches, Eiland said.

: "The opportunity to partner with X Prize helps round out the
: picture of telling the air and space revolutions that have taken
: place over the last 50 and 60 years," Eiland told SPACE.com. Given
: the melding of top aviation and private space innovation, he added
: that the upcoming two-day Holloman Air and Space Expo could see an
: audience of 100,000 people flooding through base gates.

: The schedule of events is tightly packed, alternating between space
: and rocket activities to aircraft takeoffs, flyovers, and landings.
: Slated for public viewing are mission-ready F-117A Stealth
: Fighters, for example, and the F22-Raptor.

: "I think it's going to present sensory overload," Eiland
: explained. "The biggest challenge that I see, logistically, is just
: giving people a break so they can use the restroom or have a meal."

: For detailed information and updates regarding the 2007 Wirefly X
: Prize Cup, go to the Internet web site:
: http://space.xprize.org/x-prize-cup

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"Google Sponsors Lunar X PRIZE to Create a Space Race for a New
Generation"
X PRIZE Foundation Press Release
http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/070913/0301400.html

: The X PRIZE Foundation and Google Inc. today announced the Google
: Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon to win a remarkable
: $30 million prize purse. Private companies from around the world
: will compete to land a privately funded robotic rover on the Moon
: that is capable of completing several mission objectives, including
: roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending
: video, images and data back to the Earth.

: The Google Lunar X PRIZE is an unprecedented international
: competition that will challenge and inspire engineers and
: entrepreneurs from around the world to develop low-cost methods of
: robotic space exploration. The X PRIZE Foundation, best known for
: the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private suborbital spaceflight,
: is an educational nonprofit prize organization whose goal is to
: bring about radical breakthroughs to solve some of the greatest
: challenges facing the world today.

: "The Google Lunar X PRIZE calls on entrepreneurs, engineers and
: visionaries from around the world to return us to the lunar surface
: and explore this environment for the benefit of all humanity," said
: Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation.
: "We are confident that teams from around the world will help
: develop new robotic and virtual presence technology, which will
: dramatically reduce the cost of space exploration."

: "Having Google fund the purse and title the competition punctuates
: our desire for breakthrough approaches and global participation,"
: continued Diamandis. "By working with the Google team, we look
: forward to bringing this historic private space race into every
: home and classroom. We hope to ignite the imagination of children
: around the world."

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"Eighth Continent Project to Integrate Space Business into Global
Economy"
Colorado School of Mines Press Release
http://www.mines.edu/all_about/public/eighth_continent.html

: The Eighth Continent Project, the world's most comprehensive
: program to integrate space technology and resources into the global
: economy, was launched here today at the Colorado School of Mines
: Center for Space Resources.

: "For the first time, government, industry and academia have joined
: forces with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to forge the next
: frontier in commercializing space technology and resources," said
: Colorado Governor Bill Ritter. "With our region's unique cluster of
: businesses, IT infrastructure, research institutions and aerospace
: workforce, the Eighth Continent Project will position Colorado at
: the vortex of `Space 2.0.'"

: "'Space 1.0' was astronauts, rocket ships and billion-dollar
: government projects. `Space 2.0' is venture-backed entrepreneurs
: starting new companies with new technologies," said Burke Fort,
: Eighth Continent Project director. "Eighth Continent will bridge
: the gap between existing technologies and their commercialization
: through the industry's first research hub, incubator, venture fund
: and international chamber of commerce."

: Initial founding partners and sponsors include: DigitalGlobe, the
: Keiretsu Forum, CTEK, Broadreach, the Governor's Office of Economic
: Development, Townsend & Townsend & Crew, the Colorado School of
: Mines, and the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business
: Deming Center.

: "DigitalGlobe was one of the world's first `Space 2.0' companies
: that now provides spatial content to thousands of businesses and
: mass consumer markets," said Chuck Herring, director of corporate
: communications for DigitalGlobe. "With the Eighth Continent
: Project, the time has come to bring space down to earth, and to
: incubate and fund the industries of the future."

: "Angel investors around the world are sharing ideas and content,
: and we're always looking for dealflow into new markets," said Steve
: Murchie, Denver chapter president of the Keiretsu Forum, one of the
: largest angel investor networks in the world. "Space commerce, once
: the realm of big government, is now being driven by entrepreneurs.
: We want to help the market define new valuation criteria, develop
: dealflow pipelines, and bring new technology to the marketplace
: through Eighth Continent."

: "More entrepreneurs are getting involved and taking risks in space
: commerce," said Darin Gibby, managing partner of the Denver office
: of the intellectual property law firm Townsend and Townsend and
: Crew. "As with any industry that evolves and matures, the level of
: legal protection for intellectual property increases as well. We
: see the Eighth Continent Project as a prime driver of a dynamic,
: new marketplace that will require innovative legal solutions."

: "The immediate terrestrial application of space technologies, and
: their longer-term space applications, can make for a compelling
: long-term investment with short-term and significant revenue
: streams," said Gary Held, CTEK president. "The Eighth Continent
: Project is a 'first of its kind' and CTEK is thrilled to be a
: founding partner and to bring our angel and venture investing,
: technology transfer, and incubator experience to bear."

: "With our workforce, research community and entrepreneurial
: culture, we believe Colorado can be the next Silicon Valley of
: space commerce," said Dr. Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the
: Colorado School of Mines Center for Space Resources, where Eighth
: Continent will be headquartered. "With our expertise in mining,
: renewable energy, engineering, math, computer sciences, robotics,
: and materials research, it makes sense to base our efforts at the
: School of Mines."

: "With entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Paul Allen and Richard Branson
: now doing what only NASA would dare, it's time for the "Web 2.0"
: entrepreneurial community to start defining and driving "Space
: 2.0," said Fort.

: About the Eighth Continent

: Based out of Golden, Colorado, the Colorado School of Mines' Eighth
: Continent Project is the world's most comprehensive effort to
: integrate space technology and resources into the global economy.
: Eighth Continent provides the infrastructure and resources to solve
: a wide range of challenges from global warming to renewable energy
: development. Located in Colorado, home of the most concentrated
: entrepreneurial, investor and aerospace talent in the world, Eighth
: Continent brings space down to earth with the industry's first
: trade association, incubator, venture fund and research hub, all
: working together to develop the next generation of space business
: ventures.

: Founded in 1874, Colorado School of Mines was established to serve
: the needs of the local mining industry. Today, the School has an
: international reputation for excellence in both engineering
: education and the applied sciences with special expertise in the
: development and stewardship of the Earth's resources.

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"Online Registration Now Open for $9,000 Pete Conrad Spirit of
Innovation Award"
X Prize Foundation
http://newsblaze.com/story/2007080204003400009.mwir/newsblaze/EDUCATIO
/Education.html

: The X PRIZE Foundation's Competition in Honor of Famed Astronaut
: Rewards High-School-Aged Teams That Develop an Original Concept to
: Benefit Personal Spaceflight

: The X PRIZE Foundation announced the availability of online
: registration for a new education competition designed to interest
: students in space, science and technology. The Pete Conrad Spirit
: of Innovation Award, named in honor of the celebrated Apollo
: astronaut, will be presented for the first time at this year's
: Wirefly X PRIZE Cup in October. The award will be presented to the
: high school team that develops the most creative, new space concept
: to benefit the emerging personal spaceflight industry.

: Teams of three students will be required to submit graphical
: representations, technical documents and business plans of concepts
: that can accelerate the personal spaceflight industry. Examples of
: concepts could include new space suit designs and accessories,
: advanced food items, zero-gravity games, or vehicle cabin design
: for a better passenger experience. The first place team will
: receive a $5,000 grant, followed by $2,500 for second place and
: $1,500 for third.

: The Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award is both the world's
: premier student prize for innovative aerospace concepts and the
: premier educational tool for exciting and involving students in the
: rapidly growing personal spaceflight industry. The award creates a
: new level of excitement and dynamic participation in all fields of
: science and technology. It also provides an unparalleled
: opportunity to connect the most innovative students with the
: companies and entrepreneurs who are leading the way in opening the
: space frontier to the world.

: The award itself is a large, bronze rocket ship trophy, created
: especially for this competition by Erik Lindbergh, artist, aviator
: and grandson of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh. Students will also
: receive smaller individual rocket trophies.

: Eligibility Rules

: 1)  Entrant teams must be composed of three students and one adult
: Advisor over the age of 18. Teams can be formed from schools or
: social organizations (Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, etc.)
: 2)  Student team members must be between the ages of 13 and 18 by
: Sept 15th, 2007.
: 3)  Teams must be registered by the final registration date of
: Sept 7th, 2007.
: 4)  All team members, including the team advisor, must be United
: States citizens.

: Deadlines/Milestones

: --  September 7th - Final Registration Deadline
: --  September 15th - Deadline for entry submissions
: --  October 2nd - Notification of finalists
: --  October 26th-28th - Finalist public voting & Award ceremony

: For more detailed information and to register, please visit
: http://space.xprize.org/x-prize-cup/conrad_award .

Mark Reiff

FYI,

"Scaled Composites Family Support Fund"
National Space Society Press Release via SpaceRef.com
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.rss.spacewire.html?pid=23123

: To All NSS Members and Friends:

: As many of you have heard, there was a serious accident last week
: at Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's pioneering company. Three lives
: were lost, including Charles 'Glen' May, an NSS member who was a
: leader within NSS's Huntsville HAL5 Chapter. In addition, three
: employees suffered serious injuries. Scaled has announced
: information on a fund for those wishing to support the families of
: the deceased as well as the injured and their families. The
: National Space Society urges all of its members to give generously
: to support these heroes.

: Please send contributions to

: Scaled Family Support Fund
: c/o Scaled Composites
: 1624 Flight Line
: Mojave, CA. 93501

: Acct # 04157-66832
: Wire transfer ABA Routing #1220-0066-1

: Please make checks payable to the account number or to the name of
: the fund.

: NSS Statement on Accident at Scaled Composites: America was built
: on the courage of those who dared to explore new frontiers. From
: Lewis and Clark to the Apollo astronauts, great men and women have
: tested themselves against the frontiers of their age.

: In the course of their efforts, these heroes may pay the ultimate
: cost, as they did yesterday in Mojave. When that happens, it is the
: highest duty of all of us to care for the injured, to mourn the
: departed, and to care for the families. An honest investigation
: must be conducted to learn what went wrong, and to fix the cause so
: that it does not happen again.

: But when the investigation finished, our duty is to carry on the
: work of those heroes, to redouble our efforts to scale the peaks
: that they were climbing. That is what we learned from Apollo 1.
: That is what they would want.

: The frontier of space is far from tamed. The men and women of
: Scaled Composites are engaged in one of the great efforts of our
: time: opening space for all humanity. That is a noble pursuit,
: perhaps the most noble of all, and we must all be thankful for
: their work, and for their sacrifice.

: Let us not shirk from what happened yesterday. Professionals will
: find the cause. The program will continue. The effort to open space
: cannot be stopped. Now is the time to honor those men by honoring
: the cause that they were engaged in. Those of us who are part of
: this great endeavor, whether as participants or as supporters, let
: us carry forward this message of perseverance to our own
: communities, to our elected leaders and to the media. Now more than
: ever, the nation needs to hear your voices.

: National Space Society
: Katherine Brick
: Email: members@...
: Phone: (202) 429-1600

Mark Reiff

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118557412528280763.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

or

http://tinyurl.com/285gta

Hello,

I am an independent game developer looking at the idea of a semi-"serious game",
community driven massively multiplayer game about commercial space travel 15-25
years
out that would be developed by a few panels of people - a commercial space
industry panel
to help with the realism, a fun/game industry panel to make sure the game is
fun, and a
writers panel to help craft an interesting sci-fi-ish story, plus a community
forum open to
anyone to suggest and help design the game. I'm posting here to see if there are
any
suggestions on what commercial space companies or people I should talk to.

Thanks
Michael Lubker
Indie Game Developer

FYI,

"Bigelow's Second Orbital Module Launches Into Space"
Space.com
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/070628_genesis2_update.html

: A privately-built space station prototype successfully launched
: into orbit Thursday from a Russian missile base, kicking off the
: second test flight for the U.S. firm Bigelow Aerospace.

: Genesis 2, an inflatable module laden with cameras, personal items
: and a Space Bingo game, rocketed spaceward atop a Dnepr booster
: from a silo at Yasny Launch Base, an active Russian strategic
: missile base in the country's Orenburg region. Liftoff occurred at
: 11:02 a.m. EDT (1502 GMT) though it was near evening at the Russian
: launch site.

: Genesis 2 is a near-twin of Bigelow Aerospace's Genesis 1 module,
: which launched in July 2006 and remains operational today, but
: carries a series of enhancements and additional cargo, the Las
: Vegas, Nevada-based spaceflight firm has said. Both spacecraft are
: prototypes for future commercial orbital complexes that Bigelow
: Aerospace, and its founder and president Robert Bigelow, hope to
: offer for use by private firms and national space agencies.

: Familiar look, new spacecraft

: The Genesis 2 module sports a similar look as its Genesis 1
: predecessor, but carries a suite of new sensors and avionics to
: monitor and control the spacecraft in orbit. The sensors will watch
: over internal pressure, temperature, vehicle attitude control and
: radiation levels, Bigelow Aerospace officials said.

: Once in space, the 15-foot (4.4-meter) module is designed to deploy
: eight solar arrays and expand from its launch width of 6.2 feet
: (1.9 meters) to a flight diameter of eight feet (2.54 meters).
: Genesis 2 carries 22 cameras - more than the 13 imagers aboard
: Genesis 1 - to record scenes within the spacecraft's 406-cubic foot
: (11.5-cubic meter) volume.

: Unlike its predecessor, Genesis 2 also sports a multi-tank system
: to inflate the module with compressed air. That improvement, the
: firm has said, adds vital redundancy in the inflation process and
: allows better control of the craft's gas supplies.

: If all goes well, Genesis 2 is expected to have a long orbital life
: akin to that of Genesis 1, which continues to operate nearly a full
: year after its July 12, 2006 launch. Bigelow Aerospace officials
: said the older module may even continue to function through the
: next eight to 13 years.

All aboard Genesis 2

: Genesis 2 is the first Bigelow Aerospace module to carry a clutch
: of personal items under the firm's "Fly Your Stuff" campaign, which
: allowed paying customers to load photographs and other possessions
: to ride into orbit and be captured by onboard cameras.

: Also tucked aboard Genesis 2 are a Space Bingo game and Biobox
: filled with ant farms, scorpions and Madagascar hissing
: cockroaches.

: The Space Bingo game is chiefly aimed at entertainment, with no
: actual wagering involved, and is slated to begin operations a few
: months after launch. Bigelow Aerospace officials said the so-called
: Bingo Box will use fans and levers to autonomously mix and select
: bingo balls during games presented on the firm's website:
: www.bigelowaerospace.com .

: Genesis 2's Biobox, meanwhile, is a three-chamber pressurized
: vessel with compartments for biological specimens to be observed by
: onboard cameras.

: In addition to the hissing cockroaches, the same type that flew
: aboard Genesis 1, the Biobox's chambers contain a group of South
: African flat rock scorpions, one of which was named Antares by a
: fifth grade class in Pennsylvania. A farm of California red
: harvester ants rounds out Genesis 2's biological payload, the
: camera views of which are expected to be available on the Bigelow
: Aerospace website during the mission.

: Step towards larger modules

: The Genesis 2 and 1 modules are one-third scale versions of Bigelow
: Aerospace's planned manned orbital vehicles that are expected to
: begin flying as early as 2010.

: Next year, the firm plans to launch Galaxy - another pathfinder
: module that builds on the Genesis vehicles - before flying its
: first crew-rated spacecraft Sundancer in 2010. Galaxy is slated to
: have 45 percent more habitable space than the Genesis craft, with a
: pressurized volume of about 589 cubic feet (16.7 cubic meters).

: The three-person, 6,356-cubic foot (180-cubic meter) volume
: Sundancer is expected to be bolstered by the addition of a
: connecting node and propulsion bus in 2011 to lay the foundation to
: support Bigelow Aerospace's planned BA 330 module. The larger
: BA 330 is expected to include an 11,653-cubic foot
: (330-cubic meter) habitable volume, when fully inflated, and is
: slated to dock with Sundancer and its node-propulsion bus by 2012.

: In pre-liftoff action Thursday, due to the rain at the launch area,
: a baseball game that included Robert Bigelow was played inside the
: large satellite integration and test building on the base. "Just
: another example of Bigelow Aerospace innovation...we don't let
: anything stop us," Gold said.

: "With Genesis 1 we put one foot ahead of us. With Genesis 2 we put
: another foot ahead of us which means that we're walking," said
: Gold. "I look forward to running and what that's going to be like
: at Bigelow Aerospace."

Mark Reiff