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Oh, and the model rocket record altitude stands at 72 miles so far. http://www.hobbyspace.com/Rock...

I don't post all of my conversations with windmill technicians on the internet, or I would cite it for you. Not knowing where you are, I'll post a link to picture of the windmills.

Here's is a picture of the farm. I couldn't find a close-up of the turbines, but each one has dark grease streaks down the support pylons. Each turbine has a complex gearbox and transmission that varies the blade angles, to keep the turbines turning at a constant speed. This is tough to seal, and in practice, there is no seal replacement. The turbines are operated to destruction, and replaced only if economically viable. The only thing staving off the destruction is constant refilling of the gearbox lubricant. These fields are just about as polluted as the the grounds of any oil refinery in the U.S.

-- Len

For now, since the warp drive has a serious side effect ( 0.0 ). I rather put my money on the VASIMR prototype for now until "further research is done". Nasa has over 100 guys working on this project with AAR right now. So this one is very promising

For $300 bucks YOU can go into near space.

A near space stack consists of a helium balloon, recovery parachute, and nearcraft, and can reach fifty feet (~17m) in length. Such a stack can fly to over 100,000ft (~33km) in altitude yet costs only a few hundred dollars. The balloon expands as the stack rises and will eventually burst. The payload then parachutes to earth and is tracked with GPS data sent via telemetry on amateur radio .

If you like that idea, check out what the pros think about launching satellites from balloons. :)

Depending on how you define amateur, rockets have been sent up over 50 miles. LEO is generally 100-1000 miles.

http://www.hobbyspace.com/ has collected blurbs and links to just about everything space related.
I also recommend you read "The High Frontier" by Gerald K O'Niel, and "The Rocket Company"
by Patrick J. G. Stiennon & David M. Hoerr

This has been discussed on the a-rocket list http://exrocketry.net/mailman/listinfo/arocket
There are active members who are employees of several space companies.
http://www.hobbyspace.com/ is probably the best collection of resources about space, get to know the companies and people.
read "The Rocket Company" http://www.hobbyspace.com/AAdmin/archive/SpecialTopics/RocketCom/titlePage.html

This has been discussed on the a-rocket list http://exrocketry.net/mailman/listinfo/arocket
There are active members who are employees of several space companies.
http://www.hobbyspace.com/ is probably the best collection of resources about space, get to know the companies and people.
read "The Rocket Company" http://www.hobbyspace.com/AAdmin/archive/SpecialTopics/RocketCom/titlePage.html

George Nield, head of Office of Commercial Space Transportation, gave an interesting talk at lunch in which he drew parallels between early aviation and the development of commercial spaceflight. He talked, for example, about the Army's first request for proposals for a heavier-than-air flight vehicle. The one group that qualified, the Wright Brothers, succeeded, thought not until after overcoming some severe difficulties. It was a fixed-price, milestone contract that worked.
Charles Miller, NASA Senior Advisor for Commercial Space, is talking along similar lines :Public-Private Partnerships: Back to the Future of Space Development

Many have pointed out that the idea is not new and they are right. Although, IMHO, it is still cool to see stories about near space activities by amateurs.

Here are some resources to explore:
  * Nuts and Volts magazine has run an excellent series of articles on constructing all sort of instruments and flight gear for near space projects. Including the basics of regulations, etc. (US centric). They still run the odd piece now and then on updated and additional tech solutions from readers.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/20356815/NearSpace-Balloon-Launch is a good read on the hobby.
http://www.hobbyspace.com/NearSpace/index.html has a one page summary of the hobby.

From there Google is your friend. There are plenty of school and private groups/clubs that work on near space projects and launches. I've seen a few science fair projects on the subject also.

First off, watch the post-mission SpaceX/NASA press conference. There's written notes here. A few relevant points made by Elon Musk:

* The heat shield on the Dragon capsule is massively overengineered to survive not only reentry velocities from low-Earth orbit, but also the much faster velocities from Lunar or Martian return trajectories.

* Instead of solely relying on parachutes, the next generation of the Dragon capsule will incorporate thrusters which will allow it to make a precise landing on the ground, on a target as small as a helipad. Musk didn't say this explicitly, but this is of course a key requirement for building a Lunar or Mars lander.

* During the press conference Musk fired some rather surprising shots at NASA's Orion capsule. Orion is the under-development capsule NASA intends to use for beyond-Earth exploration, and Elon Musk claimed that "anything Orion can do, Dragon can do better." This is quite arguably true, but it's unclear if this was the wisest thing for him to do politically.

* As Musk has stated a number of times before, the whole reason he started a company in the space industry, which historically has comparatively mediocre profit margins, is because of his dream of enabling Mars colonization.

It used to be that if you wanted to work on space technology (in North America), you had to work at NASA. Well it seems I could now apply at a few different companies to work on that kind of stuff. And that's exciting. More jobs in the field means more research, more activity, more growth. And Space exploration is one field that is exciting for Growth.

On that note, it's worth mentioning that SpaceX is actively hiring. It's not just aerospace/electrical/materials engineering jobs they're recruiting for, either, but also IT staff, technical writers, embedded systems programmers, and so forth.

Clark Lindsay's (really awesome) site has a list of several other private space companies which are hiring.

It also makes it considerably more difficult when a launch provider like SpaceX wants to sell launch services, which is a large part of why Russian and European launch providers are currently creaming US launch providers on the international market. For example, the following difficulty occurred when SpaceX's Falcon 1 was launching a Malaysian satellite:

http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=13078

Technicians discovered the satellite and the Falcon 1 upper stage rocket share a nearly identical vibrational mode, which could set up a damaging resonance. SpaceX is bound by ITAR restrictions from assisting with any technical problems on the foreign-owned payload, so the company delayed the launch to add some vibration isolation equipment between the rocket's upper stage and the payload adapter.

"The easiest thing would actually be to make some adjustment to the satellite . . . but that's not allowed," Musk says.

Just one of many examples, sadly. Unless Congress acts promptly to introduce some sanity into the ITAR provisions, I fear that ITAR is inevitably going to drive innovative and competitive launch providers like SpaceX out of business, and prove to be the final nail in the coffin of the US space industry.

It's unusual to hear someone praising ITAR. ITAR is the reason that non-US organisations generally don't use US launchers for their payloads -- they can't work closely with the launch provider, particularly with respect to the sort of detailed technical information that's often very important in ensuring payload-launcher compatibility. People I've spoken to in the space industry while at conferences in the US frequently bemoan the fact that ITAR heavily restricts their hiring practices, meaning that they often miss out on being able to employ top people. ITAR is what's holding the US space programme back.

Completely agreed. It's particularly silly when one notes that the US would have almost certainly lost the 1960s space race if it weren't for Von Braun and his team of rocket engineers from Germay, and the Canadian and British engineers from Avro.

It also makes it considerably more difficult when a launch provider like SpaceX wants to sell launch services, which is a large part of why Russian and European launch providers are currently creaming US launch providers on the international market. For example, the following difficulty occurred when SpaceX's Falcon 1 was launching a Malaysian satellite:

http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=13078

Technicians discovered the satellite and the Falcon 1 upper stage rocket share a nearly identical vibrational mode, which could set up a damaging resonance. SpaceX is bound by ITAR restrictions from assisting with any technical problems on the foreign-owned payload, so the company delayed the launch to add some vibration isolation equipment between the rocket's upper stage and the payload adapter.

"The easiest thing would actually be to make some adjustment to the satellite . . . but that's not allowed," Musk says.

First off, while the article is a good one, it was actually written before launch. After the launch, there have been some intriguing details, particularly the fact that NOBODY outside of the classified world has been able to actually locate it in the sky. Normally amateur skywatchers are pretty good at locating satellites after they've launched, but apparently not in this case. Here's two possible explanations for this:

* the X-37B is testing low-visibility features, possibly either a stealthy payload shroud, low-visibility solar panels, or some other sort of camouflage/stealth system
* One possibility posited by Jim Oberg (the article author) elsewhere is that this may be the first test ever of an atmospheric orbital plane change, a technique desired since the 90s or earlier, where a spaceplane uses its wings to dip into the atmosphere while travelling at hypersonic speeds to alter its trajectory. The X-37B apparently doesn't have a high enough L/D ratio to perform an extreme plane change (e.g. near-equatorial to polar), but it may be able to alter its trajectory enough to make it damn hard to track from the ground.

Now, some people have been asking why a reusable spaceplane would be useful to the US Air Force. Some possibilities:
* The atmospheric plane change capability mentioned above, which would allow the Air Force to deploy satellites into trajectories unknown by those observed. One major problem with satellites is that other countries typically know when they'll be overhead, so they just make sure that anything they're trying to hide doesn't occur during those hours.
* If you add a retrieval arm or some other docking interface, you can potentially use the craft to alter the trajectory of existing satellites
* Although the X-37B was launched on an expendable Atlas V rocket, the Air Force recently put out a solicitation for proposals for a first-stage Reusable Booster System utilizing a technique known as boost-back. With boost-back, after the booster boosts the payload and/or 2nd stage, it then does a 180 and boosts/glides back to a landing strip so that it can be easily reused. Lockheed Martin tested a secretive prototype of such a system (which they dubbed "Revolver") a couple years ago. If you combine such Reusable Boosters with a beefier successor to the X-37B, you have a rapid-launch reusable "surge" capability long desired by the Air Force. Such a surge capability could be useful when you need to quickly launch many satellites, such as when you need to deploy many satellites over a particular region in wartime or many of your satellites are knocked out by anti-satellite weapons or solar storms. Currently the Air Force has to wait for several weeks or months per satellite.

For anybody interested in watching video of the launch (a rather beautiful launch of the Atlas V rocket), you can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdCpuv9RCwE

Also, for those who are interested in finding out more, there's a lot of good discussion with plenty of current and former space professionals (including some posts by Jim Oberg, the author of the submission article) over at this NASASpaceFlight.com thread on the X-37B: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=21122.285

There are a few uses, but one that has had me seriously looking to start operating a Ham radio is that you can often use the equipment to track the broadcasts of various satellites which orbit overhead. I know some members of cubesat projects use them for confirmation of spacecraft survival after launch. There are a dozen other uses, but I always found the idea of linking actual satellite data to be extraordinarily exciting.

Good news - these guys are already working on an open source rocket. It's still a little buggy and unstable, mind you, but it's dirt cheap and already on version 5! I mean, how can you go wrong?

Over at the WSJ, Peter Diamandis makes a case for private space, while naysayer Taylor Dinerman says he's seen this movie before, and argues the private sector simply is not up for the job.

Clark Lindsay over at Space Transport News has a really good rebuttal of Taylor Dinerman's piece:

http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=18623

Some notes:
* At the start he includes "traditional aerospace companies" yet never mentions that the EELVs will be in the competition for the crew transport competition. Of course, mentioning such companies and the existence of such proven vehicles would refute his whole argument that private companies cannot build vehicles capable of launching crews.

* The DC-X program, which was initially a DOD program, epitomized extreme low cost, highly productive X project style development with a small team. Yet he somehow puts it and Constellation into the same category simply because they were both canceled.

* Gee, if we just keep spending billions and billions and billions on Constellation, in a couple of decades it will be a roaring success like the ISS.

* It was predicted by many people from the start that the Constellation program was not sustainable over multiple administrations and over the ups and downs in the economy. The lesson is not to start programs that are stupendously expensive and don't provide any path to lower costs.

Nice web site. Very first image I pulled up was of Perseus A, and the text said "Detail and structure from optical, radio and X-ray wavelengths have been combined for an aesthetically pleasing image which shows the violent events in the galaxy's heart." And you seem to be saying that all images produced for mass consumption are like that. So these images are even more different from the ones that scientists care about than I thought they were.

The fact that the European counterpart to NASA also uses these photos for PR is kind of beside the point. And I'm not condemning either agency for doing this. Eye candy may not be as important as science, but it does help justify the budget that gets the science done. I'm just debunking the idea that eye candy is what Hubble is for.

Nor do I want to trivialize what Shah does. His work not only gives us cool-looking pictures, it raises interest in backyard astronomy — a "hobby" which does a lot of serious science.

Clark Lindsay:

http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=17960

This is ridiculous from beginning to end. Even with optimum funding, the Ares I won't fly for at least 5 years and probably not for 7 or 8 years. So how has it demonstrated or substantiated any capability or superiority? Citing the Ares I-X flight is absurd. That vehicle had virtually nothing in common with Ares I. Griffin's quick and dirty 60 day ESAS hardly sets a standard for optimized design.

It is in fact the panel that is speculating as to the ultimate safety of the Ares I. It will be so expensive to operate, it will never fly enough times to accumulate sufficient flights to prove any statistical prediction of its safety.

And by the way, why is a safety panel making judgments about cost-effectiveness? Even if COTS-D were funded, Falcon 9/Dragon will involve about 100 times less NASA funding than Ares I/Orion. Yes, the latter is designed for deep space but that should not require 100 times more money. The F9/Dragon operating costs will also be a fraction of that for Ares I/Orion. Ignoring such cost differences would be considered not just "unwise" but ridiculous by most taxpayers.

The panel further speculates on the degree of safety of the COTS designs, which really refers to Falcon 9/Dragon since Orbital has made no move to develop a crew capability for Taurus II/Cygnus. There's no indication that the panel made any effort to investigate the statements from SpaceX that the F9/Dragon system has been designed from the beginning to meet NASA's human rating requirements (at least to the degree that the company could determine those requirements). With such enormous cost savings at stake, you might think the panel would want to know if it could be built with high margins.

Commercial Spaceflight Federation:

http://www.commercialspaceflight.org/?p=1058

The ASAP's repeated references to the two "COTS firms" ignores the fact that many companies, including both established firms and new entrants, will compete in the Commercial Crew Program envisioned by the Augustine Committee. While the Falcon 9 and Taurus II vehicles have already met numerous hardware milestones and will have a substantial track record by the time any astronauts are placed onboard, several other potential Commercial Crew providers envision use of launch vehicles such as the Atlas V, vehicles that are already entrusted by the government to launch multi-billion dollar national security payloads upon which the lives of our troops overseas depend.
Despite the ASAP Report's contention that commercial vehicles are "nothing more than unsubstantiated claims," the demonstrated track records of commercial vehicles and numerous upcoming manifested cargo flights ensure that no astronaut will fly on a commercial vehicle that lacks a long, proven track record. The Atlas V, for example, has a record of 19 consecutive successful launches and the Atlas family of rockets has had over 90 consecutive successes, and dozens of flights of the Atlas, Taurus, and Falcon vehicles are scheduled to occur before 2014 in addition to successful flights already completed.
Further, thirteen former NASA astronauts, who have accumulated a total of 42 space missions, stated in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed that commercial spaceflight can be conducted safely:
"We are fully confident that the commercial spaceflight sector can provide a level of safety equal to that offered by the venerable Russian Soyuz system, which has flown safely for the last 38 years, and exceeding that of the Space Shuttle. Commercial transportation systems using boosters such as the Atlas V, Taurus II, or Falcon 9 will have the advantage of multiple unmanned flights to build a track record of safe operations prior to carrying humans. These vehicles are already set

Apparently since doing their lunar lander run Armadillo Aerospace has been keeping itself busy with "boosted hops," where they fire the rocket up to a certain altitude, and then land back down under the rocket's own power. Here's a neat video of them boosting up to ~1000 feet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYk9uGrAqn8
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=16628

Starting with lower altitudes, each time they run they're going for an incrementally higher altitude. They've gone up to about 1932 feet (589m) so far, with the plan to go all the way up to 6000 feet, which is the highest their FAA permit allows them to currently launch. I believe both Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems have a number of customers in the scientific community who want to use these sorts of controlled boosted hops for running things like microgravity experiments.

And yet they didn't see fit to spend an extra few months on their guidance system to be sure they came in first. Why did they fly in September if they could have worked another month?

Basically, after qualifying for the prize he wanted to focus on other aspects of the rocket which would be more useful for the (rather more lucrative) commercial operations they have planned, and spending a load of money and time to buy and rerun with a differential RTK GPS system would mostly only be useful for getting a better contest score.

It's really worthwhile to read through the statement from John Carmack. He definitely doesn't hold anything against Masten (he says he would have done the same thing in their place and also said that it would be "probably also beneficial to the nascent New Space industry to get more money to Masten than Armadillo, since we have other resources to draw upon"), but does hold some bitterness towards the decision of the judges:

http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=16507

For the past couple weeks, as it became clear that Masten had a real shot at completing the level 2 Lunar Lander Challenge and bettering our landing accuracy, I have been kicking myself for not taking the competition more seriously and working on a better landing accuracy. If they pulled it off, I was prepared to congratulate them and give a bit of a sheepish mea culpa. Nobody to be upset at except myself. We could have probably made a second flight in the drizzle on our scheduled days, and once we had the roll thruster issue sorted out, our landing accuracy would have been in the 20cm range. I never thought it was worth investing in differential RTK GPS systems, because it has no bearing on our commercial operations.

The current situation, where Masten was allowed a third active day of competition, after trying and failing on both scheduled days, is different. I don't hold anything against Masten for using an additional time window that has been offered, since we wouldn't have passed it up if we were in their situation, but I do think this was a mistake on the judges part.

I recognize that it is in the best interests of both the NASA Centennial Challenges department and the X-Prize Foundation to award all the prize money this year, and that will likely have indirect benefits for us all in coming years. It is probably also beneficial to the nascent New Space industry to get more money to Masten than Armadillo, since we have other resources to draw upon. Permit me to be petty enough to be upset and bitter about a half million dollars being taken from me and given to my competitor.

The rules have given the judges the discretion to do just about anything up to and including awarding prize money for best effort if they felt it necessary, so there may not be any grounds to challenge this, but I do feel that we have been robbed. I was going to argue that if Masten was allowed to take a window on an unscheduled day with no notice, the judges should come back to Texas on Sunday and let us take our unused second window to try for a better accuracy, but our FAA waiver for the LLC vehicle was only valid for the weekend of our scheduled attempt.

Hmmm. I think that the 35 billion is for BOTH Ares I and V, NOT ares I.

I've been double-checking, and it doesn't seem to be. In fact, it looks like the estimates are higher now. From a recent GAO report (although this does include the Orion cost as well):

http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=15541
http://gao.gov/products/GAO-09-844

Nevertheless, NASA estimates that Ares I and Orion represent up to $49 billion of the over $97 billion estimated to be spent on the Constellation program through 2020. While the agency has already obligated more than $10 billion in contracts, at this point NASA does not know how much Ares I and Orion will ultimately cost, and will not know until technical and design challenges have been addressed.

I see that someone tagged this story "fried". Well, no.

The microwave beam from a solar power satellite is not strong enough to fry things. It's stronger than sunlight but not scary strong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power#Safety

The land used for a power-receiving rectenna can still be used for raising cattle, without the cattle becoming super-powered mutants or getting cooked. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power#Earth-based_infrastructure

It remains to be seen when this will prove to be economical. It's not economical today, but if they start working on it today, maybe we will have many profitable powersats orbiting Earth within, say, 30 years. (Just in time for nuclear fusion, right?)

The good thing about this is that it doesn't require any new technology. We can do this with just some engineering. The biggest problem with this is that launch costs are currently astronomical to send anything to orbit; but I think that we are going to see a renaissance in space launch systems. Surely one of the private space companies (Armadillo Aerospace, SpaceX, Scaled Composites, etc.) will get a practical reusable launch system to work; and that will completely change the game for launch costs.

steveha

Every year Clark Lindsay does an analysis of current trends in commercial spaceflight and projects what he thinks things will look like 5, 10, 15 years down the road. It's a cool read:

http://www.hobbyspace.com/AAdmin/archive/SpecialTopics/toSpaceTimeLine.html

For those interested, the third and final meeting will be broadcast Thursday, running from 8am - 4pm EDT:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/NASA-TV-HD
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=14237
http://twitter.com/search?q=%23nasahsf

I think the Thursday meeting will be the most interesting one, as it'll include the presentations from the "Exploration Beyond Low Earth Orbit" subgroup. Some options the subgroup is studying include not just the "Moon Base" plan, but also plans for going directly to Mars ASAP, as well as a "Flexible path" option which would involve manned trips to destinations in shallow gravity wells, like L1, asteroids and Phobos.

The videos from the Tuesday and Wednesday meetings aren't available yet, but you can find out much of what's been discussed already at the following links:

HSF Committee Public Meeting in Alabama - Reviews
HSF Committee Public Meeting in Houston - Reviews
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=17962.0

For those interested, the third and final meeting will be broadcast Thursday, running from 8am - 4pm EDT:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/NASA-TV-HD
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=14237
http://twitter.com/search?q=%23nasahsf

I think the Thursday meeting will be the most interesting one, as it'll include the presentations from the "Exploration Beyond Low Earth Orbit" subgroup. Some options the subgroup is studying include not just the "Moon Base" plan, but also plans for going directly to Mars ASAP, as well as a "Flexible path" option which would involve manned trips to destinations in shallow gravity wells, like L1, asteroids and Phobos.

The videos from the Tuesday and Wednesday meetings aren't available yet, but you can find out much of what's been discussed already at the following links:

HSF Committee Public Meeting in Alabama - Reviews
HSF Committee Public Meeting in Houston - Reviews
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=17962.0

For those interested, the third and final meeting will be broadcast Thursday, running from 8am - 4pm EDT:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/NASA-TV-HD
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=14237
http://twitter.com/search?q=%23nasahsf

I think the Thursday meeting will be the most interesting one, as it'll include the presentations from the "Exploration Beyond Low Earth Orbit" subgroup. Some options the subgroup is studying include not just the "Moon Base" plan, but also plans for going directly to Mars ASAP, as well as a "Flexible path" option which would involve manned trips to destinations in shallow gravity wells, like L1, asteroids and Phobos.

The videos from the Tuesday and Wednesday meetings aren't available yet, but you can find out much of what's been discussed already at the following links:

HSF Committee Public Meeting in Alabama - Reviews
HSF Committee Public Meeting in Houston - Reviews
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=17962.0

Meanwhile that 5.5 year number comes from the most experienced people in the business who are already launching rockets that can achieve the mission.

Quick nitpick: from the ULA's presentation to the Augustine commission about using EELVs for human spaceflight, they claim it would take 4.5 years to launch Orion, and 4 years to non-Orion manned capsule. The 5.5 years figure is from Aerospace Corp's analysis, which was solely based on how long "analogous projects" tend to take. Last I heard Ares I's schedule had slipped to 2016 (7 years from now).

Not to mention the launch scrub followed by a three-month delay [hobbyspace.com] due to the fact that they were worried about the vibration environment of the launch damaging the satellite and decided to do a new engineering analysis.

From the same site you cited, it's interesting to note that the delay was so long because SpaceX was prohibited by ITAR regulations from simply adjusting the satellite:

http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=13078

Technicians discovered the satellite and the Falcon 1 upper stage rocket share a nearly identical vibrational mode, which could set up a damaging resonance. SpaceX is bound by ITAR restrictions from assisting with any technical problems on the foreign-owned payload, so the company delayed the launch to add some vibration isolation equipment between the rocketâ(TM)s upper stage and the payload adapter.

âoeThe easiest thing would actually be to make some adjustment to the satellite . . . but thatâ(TM)s not allowed,â Musk says.

NO ONE launches satellites into known lightning storms, and if there had been a storm over Kwaj they would have scrubbed also. In fact, they did have to wait for rain showers to pass.

Not to mention the launch scrub followed by a three-month delay due to the fact that they were worried about the vibration environment of the launch damaging the satellite and decided to do a new engineering analysis.

Which was the right thing to do, of course. If you're not sure, don't launch.

Nevertheless, when NASA delays a launch to do a safety check, everybody complains how incompetent they are. When Space-X delays, everybody praises them for being cautious.

Still: Good job! Keep up the good work!

And just remember when you hear people arguing about government red tape, inspection and regulation is supposed to protect the public.

Could you elaborate on how burdensome over-regulation like this helps protect the public?

http://hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=13078

The other article - SpaceX Cuts Cost By Battling Bureaucracy (subscription required) - gives a lengthy report on SpaceX and its efforts to keep costs down. It begins with an example of a crane needed for their Cape Canaveral pad for which bids came back in the $2M range. Investigating why they were so high, they found the contractors were working according to "requirements for fail-safe redundancies and safety controls" from 30 years that were now made obsolete by smart systems instrumentation and other technologies. Working with the contractors and the range safety office eventually resulted in a $300k crane.

Pushing for these sorts of cost savings across the board add up. Also, Elon Musk cites design choices, such as using the same propellants for both stages (and not using expensive hydrogen) for making the vehicle competitive even with Indian and Chinese launchers.

At the end of the article, there is a brief report on the upcoming Falcon I launch of the Malaysian RazakSAT imaging satellite. Turns out that ITAR rules were a major factor in the recent delay.
Technicians discovered the satellite and the Falcon 1 upper stage rocket share a nearly identical vibrational mode, which could set up a damaging resonance. SpaceX is bound by ITAR restrictions from assisting with any technical problems on the foreign-owned payload, so the company delayed the launch to add some vibration isolation equipment between the rocketâ(TM)s upper stage and the payload adapter.

âoeThe easiest thing would actually be to make some adjustment to the satellite . . . but thatâ(TM)s not allowed,â Musk says.

http://rescommunis.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/interview-mike-gold-corporate-counsel-bigelow-aerospace/

Gold: Absolutely. For example, if you look specifically at the provisos that are written into technical assistance agreements, if the licensing officers were instructed by the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) to discern between sensitive, military technologies, and those that are widely available in the commercial marketplace, and not request monitoring and Technology Transfer Control Plans in those instances, that alone could go a long way toward resolving many of these problems. An example is the Genesis test stand. It was a round metal sheet that had several legs sticking out from the bottom. If it was flipped upside down, had a tablecloth and some cups placed on it, the stand would be indistinguishable from a coffee tableâ"it was literally a metal coffee table. Yet, this coffee table was subject to the ITAR. It had to be monitored. We were required to have not one, but two guards to keep an eye on this "vital" technology. I can only imagine the national security repercussions if this technology should leak to the Chinese or the Iranians. They could serve coffeeâ"or in a worst case scenarioâ"even tea on it. The inability to distinguish metal coffee tables from actual militarily sensitive space technology that does deserve protection, demonstrates the broken and counterproductive nature of our export control process. If the system and implementation of the United States Munitions List is so overly broad that it canâ(TM)t distinguish a table from sensitive technology, then I think it is obvious that there is a problem here.

The main problems are that NASA because of "security reasons" can't give out a lot of the taxpayer funded research that would help these companies get off the ground. So, what took NASA many years to do doesn't have to be reinvented by a private company.

The bigger problem with "security reasons" that commercial companies like SpaceX has is with things like ITAR export restrictions; these are the same regulations older slashdotter might remember from the late 90s, where strong encryption was regarded as a munition as people were tattooing encryption code to themselves along with the text "this man is a munition." A recent example is with SpaceX's delayed launch of Malaysia's RazakSat satellite:

Technicians discovered the satellite and the Falcon 1 upper stage rocket share a nearly identical vibrational mode, which could set up a damaging resonance. SpaceX is bound by ITAR restrictions from assisting with any technical problems on the foreign-owned payload, so the company delayed the launch to add some vibration isolation equipment between the rocketâ(TM)s upper stage and the payload adapter.

"The easiest thing would actually be to make some adjustment to the satellite . . . but that's not allowed," Musk says.

Also, if anything, reinventing from the ground up is a big part of why SpaceX has been able to get costs as low as they have. Instead of designing their rockets to satisfy the politicians' fetish for spreading assembly over key congressional districts across the country and the engineers' fetish for maximizing performance at the cost of all else, SpaceX has been able to design their system from the get-go to minimize production costs, minimize the size of their ground crew (SpaceX Falcon I just needs something like 20 personnel at the launch site, instead of the 100 or so needed for EELVs), and maximize potential reusability.

"The NASA budget for 2010 has been announced, up 5% on 2009. Human space flight plans to be reviewed."

I'm quite glad to hear that this review of NASA's spaceflight plans is occurring, and from what I've read seems to be quite good at minimizing outside/political/industry influence and making sure that the recommendations will truly be the best ones possible. The only problem is that NASA and/or the administration might end up ignoring those recommendations for political reasons (e.g. making sure jobs remain in particular congressional districts).

Evidence has recently been leaked that the NASA's ESAS study which settled on the homebuilt Ares I (based on then-Administrator Mike Griffin's pet design) over the already-existing commercial EELV rockets was deeply flawed. Basically, the flawed 60-day ESAS study (often relied on by certain NASA officials to defend their plans) had a number of major problems:

(from Selenian Boondocks, with parts of the leaked study available on Wikileaks )

• Exceptions given in the ground rules and assumptions on maximum dynamic pressures to In-line SRM based crew launch concepts that weren't given to any other vehicles (without the exception, all of the five-segment Stick concepts would've been ruled out from the start).
• Unrealistically assuming a fixed LAS mass regardless of first stage characteristics (like T/W, max-Q, and whether you can shut them down or not).
• Inaccurate dry mass numbers for existing EELV upper stages (just as some of the guys on NASASpaceflight.com had been saying for years now).

As things currently stand, the Ares I has been running into major problems, many believe it to have fundamental design flaws, and projected development costs are running into the $30-$50 billion range. Meanwhile, a couple weeks ago a NASA-commissioned independent study confirmed that the commercial EELVs would be able to fulfill NASA's needs of transporting NASA's orbital and lunar spacecraft, with estimated costs of a few billion dollars (about an order of magnitude less than the Ares program). That's to say nothing of SpaceX and COTS-D, which could do the job for around $1.5 billion dollars of development costs.

NASA administrator Mike Griffin blamed the White House, and the previous Bush administration, saying funding for Ares V and other projects fell from $4bn through 2015 to just $500m.

It doesn't mention it in the summary, but people need to keep in mind that figure's only for the Ares V, which is supposed to be building on the Ares I. The GAO (which is certainly historically better in its cost estimates than NASA) has estimated that the Ares I and Orion capsule will cost more along the lines of $40-50 billion.

For comparison, funding SpaceX to finish developing commercial crew transport to the space station would cost $500 million. SpaceX would need to have a 100x cost overrun to cost as much as the Ares program.

While I personally think space-based solar power is quite cool, unfortunately I'm not so sure the numbers quite work out for any time in the near future. My suspicion is that this announcement is primarily for PR reasons, and PG&E has no plans of actually following through. Some analysis from aerospace engineer (and space advocate) Rand Simberg:

http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=18069

I just canâ(TM)t see how. Unless there are going to be many satellites, the system has to be in GEO to provide baseload power to any given region on earth. They talk about putting up a 200 MW system with âoefour or fiveâ âoeheavy liftâ launches (where this is apparently defined as 25 tons).

Suppose the conversion efficiency of the cells is a generous 30%, the DC-MW conversion is 90%, the transmission efficiency is 90% and the MW-AC conversion efficiency is 90% (generous numbers all, I think). That gives an overall efficiency of 22% from sunlight to the grid. The solar constant in space is 1.4kW/m2, so that means you need 650,000 square meters of panels to deliver 200 MW to the grid. Suppose you can build the cells (including necessary structure to maintain stiffness) for half a kilo per square meter. That means that just for the solar panels alone, you have a payload of 325 metric tons. Generously assuming that their payload of 25 tons is to GEO (if itâ(TM)s to LEO, itâ(TM)s probably less than ten tons in GEO), that would require over a dozen launches for the solar panels alone.

That doesnâ(TM)t include the mass of the conversion electronics, basic satellite housekeeping systems (attitude control, etc.) and the transmitting antenna, which has to be huge to get that much power that distance at a safe power density.

So even ignoring the other issues (e.g. regulatory, safety studies, etc.) that Clark mentions, I think this is completely bogus until I see their numbers. And probably even then.

For anyone looking for more info, here's some handy links:

* RLV News's link round-up on the announcement

* Notes from the question-and-answer teleconference after the announcement

Some pasted notes from the teleconference which were missing from the article linked in the summary:

• This is a true, standard procurement contract. COTS deals with R&D.
• No relationship to decision on COTS-D manned option. [this is the commercial contract many are hoping for which would involve fixed-price payments to transport astronauts to the ISS]
• Dec. 2010 first SpaceX flight, Oct 2011 - first Orbital flight
• Extensive set of reviews will insure that vehicles are ready to deliver cargo
• Bid decision involved technical evaluation of vehicles, evaluation of readiness for 2010-2011, evaluation of the companies, etc. Our evaluation is that these systems will be ready in time.
• Commercial services will carry 40%-70% per year of US cargo to the ISS (larger percentage as time goes on)
• Schedule payment is based on milestones. Final payment upon delivery of cargo for a given mission.
• Shuttle extension would not affect this contract. Use any excess shuttle capability for other items, e.g. experiments.
• Truly committed this time to commercial cargo delivery.
• Both use common berthing mechanism as with Japanese HTV
• Orbital to launch from Wallops, SpaceX from the Cape

For anyone looking for more info, here's some handy links:

* RLV News's link round-up on the announcement

* Notes from the question-and-answer teleconference after the announcement

Some pasted notes from the teleconference which were missing from the article linked in the summary:

• This is a true, standard procurement contract. COTS deals with R&D.
• No relationship to decision on COTS-D manned option. [this is the commercial contract many are hoping for which would involve fixed-price payments to transport astronauts to the ISS]
• Dec. 2010 first SpaceX flight, Oct 2011 - first Orbital flight
• Extensive set of reviews will insure that vehicles are ready to deliver cargo
• Bid decision involved technical evaluation of vehicles, evaluation of readiness for 2010-2011, evaluation of the companies, etc. Our evaluation is that these systems will be ready in time.
• Commercial services will carry 40%-70% per year of US cargo to the ISS (larger percentage as time goes on)
• Schedule payment is based on milestones. Final payment upon delivery of cargo for a given mission.
• Shuttle extension would not affect this contract. Use any excess shuttle capability for other items, e.g. experiments.
• Truly committed this time to commercial cargo delivery.
• Both use common berthing mechanism as with Japanese HTV
• Orbital to launch from Wallops, SpaceX from the Cape

Some more specifics on the NOAA weather satellite downlinks were covered on Slashdot back in 2003 here For the lazy, the direct link to the plans/directions is here

• Transterrestrial liveblogging of press conference
  
• Transterrestrial liveblogging conference presentation
  
• RLV News liveblogging conference presentation

I will give XCOR credit for this. While I'm not the biggest fan of LOX/Methane (assuming that's what Lynx is going to use, since I know it's something XCOR has messed with; I prefer LOX/Propane because it has almost as much ISP, much higher density at 100K, and can share a common bulkhead), it does have enough ISP to reach orbit without a ridiculous scaling factor.

Actually, according to their FAQ, they'll be using LOX/Kerosene. If I understand correctly this is the same sort of fuel SpaceX uses, although of course operating on a rather different order of magnitude. It seems that the largest LOX/Kerosene engine XCOR has constructed so far was a 1,800 lbf engine back in 2003 -- anybody have back-of-the-envelope calculations on what sort of thrust XCOR needs for a suborbital spaceplane?

It's hard to beat the energy & power density of internal combustion engines. Since there is no air, your propellant is heavier, since you'd need to carry the oxidizer, but I suspect that you'd still have an advantage in range. In The Case for Mars Robert Zubrin has proposed internal combustion Mars rovers that could use CO2 as an oxidizer. (I forget what the fuel is, but it can be made from methane derived from local CO2 and hydrogen.) Also, in the book The Rocket Company an automaker funds a trip to the moon where they use a modified SUV carrying its own oxidizer.

NASA wants two separate companies to develop two separate vehicles capable of unmanned resupply of the ISS in a very short time frame. Now, this is an agency that has access to literally DOZENS of off the shelf rockets. None of them will do.

Actually, two of the four finalists are proposing to use those already-existing off-the-shelf rockets you mention. If I understand correctly, both Spacehab and PlanetSpace have partnered with Lockheed Martin in order to use their currently-existing rockets.

For future reference, since it wasn't mentioned in the original submission, here are the four finalists (info from rlvnews.com:

- Spacehab
- Andrews Space
- Orbital Sciences
- PlanetSpace

• Two Stage To Orbit - If done correctly, we can build one of these to operate like an airplane, instead of a munition. (See The Rocket Company for details. Single Stage To Orbit (SSTO) is right at the bleeding edge of our capabilities. But if we're willing to build big and build robustly, TSTO is doable with off-the shelf technology. (The fuel to get into space is not that much more expensive than the fuel to get a 747 over the Atlantic.)
• Modular Laser Launch - You can develop a laser module to launch a small unmanned test vehicle, then scale it up to launch useful payloads (5000 lbs) by building and combining multiple modules. When economies of scale kick in, you get launch costs that start to rival those hypothetical beanstalks.
• Rotovators that rendevous with a High Altitude Airplane - Again, it's hard to imagine a robust and reliable SSTO, but a Mach 12 high-altitude aircraft is much more reasonable. Also, a rotating tether that reaches only partly into the atmosphere and cancels only about half of orbital velocity can be built from materials that exist today! (Not unobtanium or carbon nanotubes.)
• A Lofstrom Loop - would also enable cheap access to space, and could be built with materials we have today. This is an arc that reaches above the atmosphere, suspended by the momentum of electromagnetically accelerated iron links. Vehicles would be launched into orbit by "stealing" a bit of the loop's momentum.

Anybody who hasn't seen it already should check out Clark Lindsay's private spaceflight timeline on RLVNews.com. Basically, every January he compiles a listing of recent happenings in private spaceflight, and compiles announcements and predictions of future activity, trying to walk the line between being overly pessimistic and overly optimistic to try to get a realistic forecast. Of course, since the current forecast is almost a year old there's some things which are a little out of date: for example SpaceX has ran into some launch hitches, while Bigelow Aerospace has accelerated their private space station plans.

Just to put some perspective on this, amateur rocketry groups have gone to heights of 50 miles.
http://www.hobbyspace.com/Rocketry/Advanced/record s.html

I am partial to US technology in most matters but South Korea successfully tested a 20,000lb thrust methane engine last year. I believe that Japanese have something similar.