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Private Spacecraft Prospects
mwallis writes "Space.com has an article on the recent Space Access conference in Scottsdale a few weeks ago. The article talks about the (slowly) emerging commercial space transportation industry with interviews and quotes from Space Access Society's Henry Vanderbilt, XCOR's Aleta Jackson, Armadillo's John Carmack and many others."
Paul
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
Good point about the satellites! If you want a good idea of just how crowded it's getting up there, check this out:k /3d/JT rack3D.html
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/RealTime/JTrac
Square Pigs were in Space Truckers. I ain't just making this shit up.
For those interested check out the UKs main contender for the x-prize here
the general opinion seems to be that steve bennett actually tries to shoot himself up into space on the top of one of his rockets it'll be the last we hear from him...
I'm not so sure about the wing, though; chutes are cheap, dumb, and reliable, and known to work. My ex-NASA buddy tells me the wing wasn't accurate enough to land on a specified bit of real estate, so they just did chutes with water landings.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Having attended the conference, I'd like to add a couple points.
Few people who presented at the conference have any doubt that they will be able to obtain their objectives. Many pointed out that financing is a hassle, but the single obstacle that everyone had collectively in mind was that of FAA licensing. No license, no launch. Period.
It does not matter if you launch from Florida, the ocean, or Australia. If you are a U.S. citizen, you must obtain a launch license from the FAA. Failure do so will land you fines and probably even jail time.
Now the good news. Obtaining a license is less complicated than many of us previously believed. As of yet, no licenses have been granted for civialian, manned, suborbital flights. XCOR is in the queue and pushing heavily; I believe that they will likely be the first to receive one, and more power to them. Meanwhile, groups like Armadillo Aerospace have recently begun the process, and I expect that they will be able to draft behind XCOR through the obvious portions of the licensing procedure.
The FAA itself has over 80 people dedicated to making civilian space access work. The delay is in determining how to properly balance the needs of the budding civilian space industry with the very serious safety needs of the people living down-range. This is very uncharted territory, and the FAA (AST) is no hurry to reach any conclusions. The policy is literally being formed as the applicants complete the process since the laws as specified are not sufficiently complete. Anyone wishing to be part of this process is encouraged to attend the COMSTAC meeting on May 21st. This is effectively a town-meeting for civilian space access.
The real bottleneck is the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). All the groups who are seeking launch licenses are being held up on environmental impact issues. Plus, where you launch from will ultimately determine when you launch since the environmental impact studies for some sites are not complete. Launching from White Sands would be preferable to the Oklahoma "spaceport" as the White Sands studies were completed years ago.
If anyone has any questions about the conference, I'd be happy to reply them. Overall, I think many of the people at the conference will either die in the process or entirely fail to get off the ground. Someone will succeeded however and in a couple years, probably even me.
-HopeOS
The US Commerce Department released an interesting report on private suborbital development. It's a little out of date now (doesn't mention Rutan's SS1, which is now an X-Prize front-runner), but is still an interesting read.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.