(2)

I just read the details on the SpaceX Dragon capsule drop test which occurred earlier this month.

(11)

Rand Simberg pointed out this article. The level of incompetence shown by 'professional journalist' Peter Fenn is simply breathtaking to those who know the subject matter.

When I read something like this, it lowers my already sub-basement level of trust in professional media. If they are this bad on things where I know what is going on, what might they be feeding me in areas where I lack such inside knowledge?

It is really quite scary.

(0)

Business partner Rand Simberg has this to say about the attempts of Congress to design pork propelled rockets. The only practical idea in the lot is the BFR from SpaceX, and that (in my opinion) only if a market of 500 Metric Tons or so a year materializes.

(11)

I have expected this to come along as it seemed an obvious market step for SpaceX. They have announced their plans to enter the Heavy Lift arena.

If you are familiar with the politics in DC right now, this really puts the cat amongst the pigeons.

(2)

Rand Simberg attended the Boeing press conference and has supplied some notes on their CST-100 plans.

I am glad to see there will be competition in the LEO cargo and business passenger field. As much as I like Elon and what he has accomplished, there is nothing like real competition to grow the market.

(23)

The Porkers are out to kill the US space program..

There really is not a lot of difference between Republicans and Democrats (with a few nasty exceptions) when you scratch the surface. Almost to a man and woman they are just Socialists with different priorities over what part of the economy and your life should come under State control first. Perhaps the bi-partisanship in the attack on New Space has more to do with the threat that an area once part of the Statist 'Ummah' might escape.

If you are an American and not a Socialist, call your congressman and senator and tell them off. Then join your local tea party and work to excise the Republican-Socialists from what once was a slightly (but only slightly) more freedom oriented party.

As the Commies used to say, you have nothing to lose but your chains...

(35)

I was driving past Duxford, the airbase near Cambridge, at the weekend and unfortunately, I was so busy with other things that yours truly did not have time to go to the airshow there. They were marking the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. Then, as now, the skies were a deadly clear blue - ideal for any bombers looking to find their targets at the time. We curse heavy clouds in Britain, but we should be grateful for them occasionally.

It is perhaps not surprising why this epic battle over the south and southeast of England continues to capture imaginations, even among those usually and rightly wary about military power: there is the fact that the battle was a largely defensive one, pitting a relatively under-strength air force up against a larger, and more battle-hardened, German airforce, although the UK had the great benefit of an integrated radar/fighter dispersal system put in place in the late 1930s and run with magnificent calm by Dowding. If there ever was a case of a relatively clear Good versus Evil sort of conflict, this surely was it. (That should get the peaceniks going, Ed). For us aviation nuts, there is, obviously, the aesthetic as well as emotional appeal of one of the most beautiful aircraft ever built. And whatever some revisionists might claim, there is little doubt in my mind that Britain's decision to resist invasion in that year rather than agree some sort of grubby and easily-broken deal with Hitler was the right one.

Many of those who fought in the skies are no longer with us; soon, this conflict will be captured not in first-hand memories, but in books, films and TV documentaries. Here is a review of three books of that conflict.

The headline on this blog entry was taken from one of my favourite war films, The Battle of Britain. It was uttered by the great Ralph Richardson. The film does have some great one-liners. I must run that DVD again some time.

(2)

Boeing has no intentions of being left behind in the commercial race for space. I have been hearing for some time about their CST100 capsule. They are doing this on their own dime. I always knew the Boeing guys would eventually get on the commercial bandwagon and the contract to launch and support the Bigelow Aerospace space station seems a key turning point.

Once Elon Musk gets his divorce all worked out so that ownership is clear, I am pretty sure we will be hearing about an IPO at SpaceX.

Take the success of SpaceX, Boeing entering the commercial manned space market and the pending IPO and the expectation I have of a flood of investment money following a big run up in the value of the placement and you have the recipe for a commercial explosion into LEO.

First LEO, then the Moon, Mars... and beyond. Privately.

(2)

Now that the Falcon 9 has flown, the Falcon 9 Heavy is looking a lot closer.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the success of SpaceX is that they have designed and orbited multiple clean-sheet design engines; the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 launch vehicles; and a test article for a cargo/manned space capsule for about $500M. That's comparable to the fully burdened (Not the incremental) cost of one shuttle flight. I believe it is less than the escape system development cost on the dead-on-arrival Ares I project.

(19)

Bob Bigelow, the operator of two inflatable test habitats in orbit, fired one back at the idiots who claim to be all for free-markets, capitalism and liberty... until their own socialist-space ox gets gored:

"... I don’t understand the critics who say ‘commercial’ entities can’t safely build a capsule. Why is it that Boeing, the company that constructed the ISS itself, can’t safely build a capsule that would go to their own space station? These are the sorts of questions and issues that we will be posing in Washington as a member of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation."

(7)

SpaceX has signed a $500M deal to launch the next generation Iridium satellite system.

The mammals are now getting big enough to go for the dinosaurian jugular vein.

(13)

Webcast starts in a few minutes. Launch windows runs from 11:00 US East coast until about 15:00 today and the same tomorrow.

You can watch here

1150 EDT: Hold is due to low signal on a Flight Termination System (FTS) antenna because of the hardback being in the way. If that is the problem, it will go away at launch. I expect they are studying the issue and will see if the USAF RSO (Range Safety Officer)will waiver them.

1200 EDT: I have heard a rumor that the issue might be with a transmitter belonging to the ETR (Eastern Test Range).

1226 EDT: A fishing boat with engine trouble is crossing the exclusion zone; They have tested the FTS problem by raising and lowering the hardback. No solid word on when they will continue from the hold or scrub.

1243 EDT: They tested the signal propagation by raising and lowering the hardback; the Reel Insanity fishing boat has been convinced to stay out of the exclusion zone. Waiting to hear if the clock is going to start running again.

1312 EDT: Coast guard is apparently chasing a sail boat away. Word is that it is a lovely Friday and lots of rank amateur boaters are out and not even listening or turning on their marine radios. This is about the 3rd one in a couple hours. I think a few Exocet's would do, 'pour encourager les autres'...

1318 EDT: They will be launching soon, going back into terminal count.

1325 EDT: 6 minutes to liftoff. Godspeed SPACEX!

1331 EDT: Terminal count abort. Waitting for word on whether there will be a recycle today. They have done this often on Falcon 1's, even to the point of detanking and refueling on the pad.

1354 EDT: Still no word on a recycle. There is still time in the current launch window and they have the clock reset and frozen at t-15 minutes.

1357 EDT: They are going to recycle. Waiting for notification of when the count will restart. It was an out of limits event at the terminal count down checks that can be worked with. No word yet on precisely what it was, but I will guess it had to do with engine ignition timing being too tight. All engines are supposed to fire at the same time. Just my guess. There did not appear to be an ignition so it would be something to do with pre-ignition events obviously. Pressures, valve timings, etc.

1427 EDT: count is to resume at 1430 and launch at 1445 if all goes well.

1432 EDT: terminal count has resumed.

1456 EDT: Falcon 9 has had a flawless launch to orbit on the very first test flight. It has carried with it the aerodynamic test article for the first commercial crew capsule. I did not in my wildest dreams expect the first try to go this smoothly. I was here with the Executive Director of NSS and we were both screaming like mad men as each major risk area got ticked off. I'm just limp.

We are in a new age folks.

1540 EDT: An initial congrats is out from NSS

1546 EDT: And SFF

(34)

Incoming from Michael Jennings, alerting me to this:

UK survey calls iPhone 'more important than space travel'

The headline could equally well have said: UK survey calls Sky+ 'more important than Post-it Notes', but the iPhone and space travel were what they zeroed in on. Fair enough.

I agree about the relative triviality of space travel, except insofar as it makes things like iPhones work better. I mean, you couldn't have those maps on your iPhone telling you where you are and where you're going were it not for GPS, as in S for Satellite, now could you? So, space rockets of some sort are needed for iPhones. But space travel? How significant is that? The bigger point, made by all those surveyees but then contested by the headline writer, is that space travel is now rather oversold, compared to how things are - insofar as they are - hurtling forwards here on Earth. Which, I think, it is.

The people who are for space travel keep going on about how Man Needs to Explore the Universe, and no doubt Man does. But is Man anywhere near ready to make a serious go of that yet? The trouble is that there is so little out there, in the immediate vicinity, accessible to actual men, easily and cheaply, now.

I suspect that the problem is that people, especially political people when composing political speeches, automatically assume an equivalance between the expansion of Europe circa 1500, and the expansion of Earth circa now. But the rest of the world in 1500 was full of stuff, much of it really very near to Europe, and much of it right next to Europe. There was continuous positive reinforcement available to any explorer brave enough to give it a go and lucky enough to hit some kind of paydirt. Now? Communications satellites? Weapons? Tourism? Astronomy? All we can yet really do in space is make various very Earthly enterprises work that little bit better. Which is not a trivial thing, and I'm certainly not saying we should give up even on that. All hail Virgin Galactic! Go SpaceX. But for many decades, most of the important space action will be in geo-stationary orbit rather than anywhere beyond.

And as for that constant libertarian refrain you hear about how Earth is becoming a tyranny and we must all migrate to space, to rediscover freedom, etc. ... Please. People found freedom in America because there was this great big place to feed themselves with. America. Settlements in America were, pretty soon, potentially if not actually, self-supporting. Our technology has a long way to go before a colony on some god-forsaken wasteland like the Moon or Mars, without even breathable air, could ever be self supporting, in the event of Mission Control back on Earth getting shut down by something like an Earth war of some kind. Profitable, maybe, eventually. But able to stay alive without continuous contact with Earthly back-up of various kinds? That will take far longer. The reality is that for the foreseeable future, any humans who set up camp on the Moon or Mars or wherever will be far more dependent upon the continuing and sustained goodwill of powerful people back on Earth than the average Earthling is. There is no America out there, or China, or Australia or Africa. Those early European pioneers found a world full of land and resources, to say nothing of semi-friendly aliens whom we Europeans could trade with. But now? Just a few little rocks and gas blobs bobbing about in a vast sea of utter emptiness, emptiness that is an order of magnitude emptier than our actual sea, which is a cornucopia by comparison. And apart from that, for decades, nothing seriously big that isn't literally light years away. It's an entirely different state of affairs to Europe in 1500.

I wrote all of the above with my own personal blog in mind, but now realise that Samizdata is the place for it, if only because of all the enlightening and perhaps contradictory comments that may become attached. And since this is liable to be picked to pieces by people most of whom are far more technologically savvy than I am, it behoves me to rephrase it all as a question. Which can basically be summarised as: Is that right? Am I missing something here?

Am I, for instance, getting too hung up on mere distance? Yes the Solar System is almost entirely empty. Yes, the Asteroid Belt is a hell of a way away. But, if you are willing to be patient, is it actually quite cheap to send rockets there? Does all that emptiness cancel itself out as a barrier to travel, because of it being so easy (and so much easier than our Earthly sea) to get across?

I actually would quite like to be told that I am wrong about this. In particular, I really really wish that there was somewhere else nearby where the Fight For Liberty blah blah could be restaged, but on better terms to how the same fight seems now to be going here on Earth. But I just , as of now, don't see that happening any time soon.

(31)

Hardly a day seems to go by nowadays without somebody with approximately the same kind of political attitude as me scratching his head, publicly, in writing, about President Obama's bafflingly sensible space policy, which sticks out like a healthy thumb in an otherwise horribly mutilated hand of policies.

Critics are disturbed by the large and unprecedented role Mr. Obama sees for the private sector in space exploration. For a president who is often accused of being a socialist, he has more faith in the ingenuity of the private sector than his detractors do.

Maybe so. But how could someone so opposed to free market notions here on earth be so keen on them in space? I would like to offer a version of President Obama which maybe makes sense of this puzzle. What follows is sort of a joke. I certainly hope that readers of it will be entertained. But I also think it might be true.

I start by asserting that President Obama wants socialism, collectivism, statism, whatever you want to call the opposite of free markets and the free society, to triumph, everywhere, in the USA and everywhere else. I'll just call it statism from now on. President Obama wants statism, everywhere in the world. Accordingly, he imposes as much statism as he can on the USA, and he defers to and seeks to strengthen it in all other countries.

Suppose further that President Obama thinks that it will be all part of the triumph of statism that the USA should be become a relatively weaker power in the world than it has been for the last century or so. Logical enough. He won't be President for ever. Not even he can suppose that. Inevitably, people whom he views as rabid free marketeers and rabid anti-statists will be back in the saddle in Washington, again not for ever, but periodically, and more often than in most other countries. Accordingly, President Obama believes that the weaker the USA is compared to the rest of the world, the better for the world, and - same thing - for the cause of statism in the world.

Now, a further assumption, which is that President Obama sincerely believes that free market policies are utterly misguided, and that statism is genuinely a much better way to run things. It's not just that he is part of the statist team, and that he wants his team to damn well win and himself to get massively more rich and powerful from being one of the key leaders of his team, although I'm sure that's part of his motivation. What if, in addition to feeling strong team loyalty and seeking personal career advancement, he is also genuinely convinced of the truth of the opinions proclaimed by himself and by his team? What if he sincerely believes that statism is good, and that free market capitalism is disastrous?

Now, what does President Obama want the USA to do in space? Suppose that, in a word, President Obama wants the USA in space to do: badly. What if, to President Obama, current USA space policy is a massive and decidedly successful exercise in USA power projection, of just the kind that he wants reined in, hobbled, even humiliated? What if he wants the USA to fail in space?

What would he do to accomplish such failure? He would impose the very policy that he sincerely believes will contrive such failure, namely free market capitalism, by, as Dale Amon notes in the piece linked to above, appointing enthusiasts for such policies and saying that he favours such policies. On earth, President Obama wants his domestic policies to be successful, and popular and good for everyone, so that US citizens will continue to vote for such arrangements, more often and with greater extremity than they have tended to in the past. And if paying for all this goodness means that the USA has less money to spend on being a great power, so much the better. But in space, there are fewer voters to worry about, and the overall amounts of money being talked about are relatively trivial. So a chaotic and disastrous space policy, that serves to undermine and weaken the USA as a great power, carries little risk of the voters of the USA getting angry and voting foolishly, as President Obama sees it, in the future, in serious numbers. An anti-statist space policy, which he believes will be a failure, will be, for him, pure gain.

The key to all of this is my understanding of what President Obama thinks he is accomplishing with his domestic policies. The claim I hear in my part of the internet/blogosphere is that President Obama wants to steal wealth for himself and his political supporters – for his team, and damn the interests of the USA as a whole, and of all its people aside from a few political apparatchiks such as himself. He wants to weaken the USA by imposing bad – statist – domestic policies. He is, in other words, a plunderer, a cynic and a traitor. But what if President Obama sincerely wants his domestic policies to be successful, and sincerely believes that they will be, in much the same way that sincere free marketeers like me are similarly optimistic about the impact of their (our) policies, if not immediately then in the longer run, and despite all the immediate political opposition that radical change in any direction inevitably stirs up from special interests who will thrive best if the rules are left as they now are?

The usual story I hear, to boil it down to its essentials, is that President Obama, mysteriously, wants domestic policy in the USA to fail, but, even more mysteriously, wants the USA's space policy to be a success. Why else would he be so predictably and stubbornly stupid and destructive about domestic policy, but yet simultaneously so bizarrely sensible about space? My story says he wants to do well and believes that he is doing well with the USA's domestic policies, so that the votes keep rolling in for statism in the USA. But he wants to badly with the USA's space policy, so that more statist states can supplant the USA in space, thereby weakening the USA and strengthening statism the world over.

It's just that President Obama's understanding of how the world outside of politics works - he understands how the world of politics works very well - is the opposite of the truth. What he thinks will work, will fail. And what he thinks will fail, will work.

Will President Obama's much criticised foreign policies, in addition to his seemingly much improved space policy, also serve to make the USA a more powerful nation, I wonder, an even greater great power? By – I don't know – not getting the USA involved in so many foreign wars? By other nations realising that it is up to them to defend themselves against nearby statist bastards of the kind that President Obama now encourages, and which some future President might encourage yet again, and by other nations then doing a better job of that than the USA could ever do, by trusting themselves instead of the USA? That could also be, I think. I'm thinking: defender of last resort, moral hazard. That kind of thinking has unleashed havoc on the banking system. Cannot the same be said of foreign policy?

To put all of the above another way, and to use a phrase I am fond of in this connection, the best that politicians can often to do for this or that particular activity is to impose upon it a policy of malign neglect. The neglect means that those who choose to be directly involved can get on with it. Malign means that the politician really doesn't care if everything goes tits up, which means that those directly involved are on their own and are going to be truly responsible for whatever happens. If they fail, they fail. If they make a mess of what they are doing, they'll have to clean it up themselves, and they all know it, which concentrates their minds wonderfully. Politicians often do their best when trying to do their worst.

I am rather proud of a short story (there is also an html version, but I see that it contains at least one bad mis-copying error of omission and perhaps there are more), which I wrote some while ago. This story told of a man with similar opinions to those I have attributed here to President Obama about how the world does and does not work. But – hilarious twist, ho ho – my guy was also a psychotic would-be mass murderer, on a would-be global scale. Unlike my version of President Obama, he meant really badly. He wanted to kill everyone in the world and have everything for himself. So, he unleashed rampant free market capitalism on the entire world, imagining that this would cause global havoc and global slaughter. But alas for his murderous ambitions. He died a universally acclaimed hero and a miserably disappointed man, having killed absolutely nobody, in fact quite the opposite.

(14)

I have been rather scarce lately and those who know me well enough probably know some of what I have been up to. Much has been either of little interest to our readership or has had me too busy to even talk about it. However, I have been up to a bit of aeronautical fun the last couple Saturdays which some of you might enjoy hearing about.

For some years I have known about the F4F Wildcat which the Ulster Aviation Society pulled out of the lough where it had rusted in pieces for a half a century. I had no way to get out to the hanger where the restoration work has been going on until last weekend when I finally convinced someone to give me a lift. Once there, others decided they really could use my set of reasonably skilled hands... and the rest is history as they say. Actually all of it is history: this is a genuine British WWII veteran that ditched one winter's day while out on a patrol from this very airfield.

It has taken them over ten years to get here, but she is beginning to shape up quite nicely.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

My first job was to install a small fitting between the outside and inside of the cockpit, so I had to contort myself into odd positions to ratchet in bolts to re-install a 65 year old part to the restored fuselage skin. I also learned that a 6mm metric wrench does quite nicely on a 1/4 inch bolt...

It is a good thing I got skinny again... I spent a good chunk of the day squeezed in here.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

After accomplishing that small task, the foreman, a retired ATC from Aldergrove (BFS), gave me a slightly bigger job. I was told to pull an aluminum fitting from the cockpit port side where the combination of new and old parts had been pressed in for a fit check, and then to do all the filing, cleaning and priming to ready the part for use.

This will eventually contain some controls near the pilot's left elbow
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The hanger is itself history. During WWII Shorts built Stirling Bombers here. The Stirling was a big airplane and stood high on its long undercarriage. If you have ever seen a picture of one you will never forget it.

The Wildcat is not the only airframe in this ancient hanger. There is also a Blackburn Buccaneer, a Shorts Tucano, a number of classic helicopters, a Shorts 330, and a few other airframes that are only to be found here. There is even a recently retired RAF Canberra photo recon plane due to arrive any month now.

My second favorite after the Wildcat however is the Suez War veteran Sea Hawk. Even just sitting there it seems to be telling me "I want to fly!!!" The office is quite comfortable but I could not convince them to move all those other aeroplanes out of the way and let me take it for a spin. Well, there is one other problem: someone built a large building in the middle of where the WWII runway used to be. Oh well...

Did you say catapult one or two?
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

(14)

So is the closure of Europe and Britain's airspace really needed to ensure safety?

'We simply checked every single aircraft very carefully after the landing in Frankfurt to see whether there was any damage that could have been caused by volcanic ash,'' Weber said. ''Not the slightest scratch was found on any of the 10 planes.''

German air traffic control said Air Berlin and Condor had carried out similar flights.

[...]

Air Berlin Chief Executive Joachim Hunold declared himself ''amazed'' that the results of the German airlines' flights ''did not have any influence whatsoever on the decisions taken by the aviation safety authorities.''

Quelle surprise!

(20)

When I was a wee kid growing up on my folks' farm in East Anglia, it was a common sight, in the 1970s and 80s, to see RAF Jaguar and Tornado jet aircraft practicing very low flying over the flat (ish) fields of that part of the UK. Typically, a Jag could fly no more than 100 ft off the deck, so low in fact that you could see all the markings on the side of the aircraft, what sort of stuff it was carrying, etc. The idea was to get under the opposition's radar. These aircraft were practicing the sort of flying that would be needed against the-then Warsaw Pact ground forces of the time. (The Jaguar was a very effective strike aircraft).

But nothing, absolutely nothing, compares with flying as low as this. Ye gods!

Here's another.

(2)

SpaceX carried out a 3.5 second test firing of the Falcon 9 engines on the pad at the Cape. This successful test opens the way to the first test launch of the vehicle. I will be keeping my eyes open for news on potential first flight dates.

(1)

I have surmised much about the Blue Origin program and on occasion heard things I was perhaps not supposed to, but this is the first time they have had a speaker at a major conference.

It is my belief they will do something major and public this year and this slight parting of the veil of secrecy fits that perception.

(15)

It is only a matter of time before ballistic missiles are rendered impotent and obsolete.

(4)

I am very happy to see key Republicans Newt Gingrich and Robert Walker have publicly backed the new NASA budget.

(10)

An old friend of mine who is now second in command at NASA gave an FAA AST Keynote speech on Friday which should warm the cockles of any free marketers heart. The new budget is a drastic directional change for NASA from the old Socialist Bureaucracy model to one using entrepreneurship and free market capitalism.

I am sure this is not enough for some of you, but it is a massive change towards the right direction which we should applaud and support.

All I can say is, "Go Lori!!!!"

PS: I will endeavour to write up my take on the new direction as soon as I can. As you can see from the previous article, I have been a bit occupied. If you take from the above that I am a tad... positive... about the new policy, you would be British in your level of understatement.

(13)

Sometimes it takes awhile to get around to a story. I was in Huntsville, Alabama in November 2008 and talked my friend and fellow NSS board member Greg Allison into playing hookey from the meetings for part of an afternoon so I could take some of my own photos of the remains of the DCX rocket. When he told me about his classic Kentucky long rifle, I realized this was a photo op extraordinaire for.... REDNECKS in Spaaaace!!

Three things you do not do in the South. You don't mess with a southerners dawg, his pickup truck or his spaceship.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Don't even think it. He'll shoot off your left at further than you can even see a squirrel.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

(6)

By the time the 'evacuation' bus delivered Rand Simberg and I to the parking lot of the Mariah Hotel, the wind was far worse. 'They call the Hotel, Mariah', Rand quipped on the bus. The wind, however, was more like raging beast. The car was just around back and we had to lean into the sandblast.

Rand thought there might be a party over at the XCOR hanger, but it was rather dark when we arrived. I was unconvinced anyone was still there and stayed in the car. Rand got out to knock on the office door and somehow managed to do so without being carried aloft like some Wizard of Oz character.

So. No joy on Plan A. Plan B perhaps? The spaceport bar at the Mariah? So, back we went. It turned out this was where the action was tonight. We did a quick turn of the downstairs and found Alan Boyle at work near the Christmas tree in the Mariah lobby. He worked so much today he must still have been sober.

Alan was transported from tent to hotel without missing a keystroke.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

While Rand went off to see who else was around, I took a few lobby photos and examined the rather interesting hotel trophy case.

Yep, this is the spaceport hotel...
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

When Rand did not turn up again after a few minutes I went looking and naturally found him with another journalist in the bar. Where else do you find journalists? (Except Alan of course.) They type, they drink and therefore they are.

I must admit my photos went rapidly down hill in quality. By the end of the night the results were about as blurred as what I was actually seeing. Remember, we had free Absolut and wine all day... this was just the after the party party!

It was around this time I heard the evacuation was not just precautionary: the tents had been demolished by the winds.

Len David and Rand Simberg at the Spaceport Bar.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Pretty much everyone was there, including Burt Rutan and Richard Branson.

Sir Richard hung out in the Spaceport Bar with a few hundred close friends.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Since Mojave is the first official commercial spaceport, I am guessing that makes the Mariah Hotel bar the very first official spaceport bar!

The first spaceport bar.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Mostly we stayed in our quiet corner: not too crowded there and the bar staff kept full bottles in our hands. Misuzu Onuki, designer of fashion for space travelers, joined us for awhile. It was impossible to get a candid shot of her as she is just too camera aware! This is not to mention that, by this time, it was surprising I could even find the shutter button...

Barb Sprungman, Len David and Misuzu Onuki.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Although the party showed little sign of slowing down, we had a long trip ahead of us. Rand pointed me down the hallway towards the front door, but I stopped in the front room to thank Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn for a marvelous time. I also noticed Sir Richard was still hanging out and seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly. He was in a small knot of folk talking in the back of the room.

Yep, this is just as I remember seeing it....
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

When we arrived back in LA, I posted my Samizdata teaser story and got into an online chat with one of my friends from the Mojave community. She asked if I felt like helping with the hunt for designer jackets tomorrow morning at the spaceport East fence...

This is the last of a series of 7 articles on the SpaceShipTwo roll out at the Mojave Spaceport. The previous article is here

(6)

As I headed back for the very relative warmth of the main tent I was drawn to the life size replica of SpaceShipOne, the vehicle I watched blasting into space above Mojave in the first half of this decade. It now seemed so small, so primitive, a Mercury to SpaceShipTwo's Apollo. I could not but help imagine what private space will be flying six years from now. Creative destruction has broken free of its chains. The game has changed.

SpaceShipOne: so tiny, so quaint, so... turn of the century.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The first familiar face I spotted upon my return to the main tent was the hard to miss Gary Barnhard of the National Space Society. He and others were chatting in the middle of the floor. Despite being half frozen, I gladly accepted chilled white wine from a lovely lass who was wandering about with a tray of them. I must admit I would have preferred some of the hot 'Glue Wine' concoction I used to imbibe when skiing Seven Springs in Pennsylvania, but... it was antifreeze, it was free... so who was I to complain?

It was not surprising to find Gary in close proximity to wine.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

With wine in hand I started my first photographic round of the party. When I crossed from the main tent to the front balloon tent and glanced out the gap I was taken again by the surreal reality: there is a friggin real space ship out there!

I just saw a spaceship... someone pinch me!
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

As an old hand in the performance arts one of the things which impressed me was the use of light. I have seen no one else mention it so let me be the first to give kudos to the lighting designer!

Red and blue lights painted the interiors and gave the facilities a very unearthly feel.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

It had sparkle, glitter and plenty of blue. (That is an inside joke for anyone else who has ties into the CMU Drama Department of a few decades ago.)
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

It did however give one that 'I'm inside an icecube' feel.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

This is the infamous coat room.

I thankfully did not check my coat or laptop as others did. Does that make me a more experienced pioneer?
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

There was spacey music all night long.

A disk jockey was a very good idea. I cringed at the idea of putting fingers on guitar strings at this temperature. The very thought causes a male physiological reaction.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

There was plentiful hot food and the cold Absolut and wine flowed freely. Forget virgins: this was Paradise for my friends of the journalistic persuasion.

We had an Arctic feast complete with dancing aurorae over head.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Some even chose to sit.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

While almost everyone else was trying to keep warm, I slipped outside again and watched them hook up the tractor and tow the ship back into the darkness. The wind was picking up and I presume they got it out of there just in time.

It may be large but it does not take much to move it.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

It was somewhat sad to see it go.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

To those who think this was all a big party... for some it may have been, but for many it was a long hard day of work.

I do not think I ever saw Alan Boyle when he was not interviewing or typing.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

While I was circulating I was also trying to find Rand Simberg since I had no idea when he wanted to head back and had not seen him in several hours. As he was here with his journalist hat on (as opposed to his really quite serious aerospace engineer hat), he was running back and forth between interviews and the unmarked door to the Press room.

Rand Simberg chatting with Gary Barnhard and Mark Hopkins of the National Space Society.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Once I had arrangements worked out with Rand, I went off on further photo rounds. The main bar was in the rear of the big tent. It was quite a striking place... it was also wide open to the frigid outside although slightly sheltered by the runway jetwash deflector.

There was a sort of arctic beer garden in the back... or perhaps vodka garden would be more accurate.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The now fully carved and colorfully lit spaceman was in Absolut-ely no danger of melting.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

I have played in venues that had less seating and a shorter bar than this.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

There were many nooks (dare I call them nanooks?) to sit in.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The bar was long and well staffed. There was Absolut-ely no worry of passing over the threshold to sobriety.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

"It's Earth Jim, but not as we know it."
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The crowd was dwindling but the press and space crowds were still hard at work when I returned to the front of the main tent.

The NSS leadership were plotting the rise of the Space Ambassadors program.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Cameras and talking heads were still working on the main stage.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Journalists filed stories from wherever they could find a cranny to work.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

I threw this one in just because I liked the composition.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

And then the we were told to tune to our local Conelrad station... well not really, but we were told to get out. NOW! Gale force winds were due within minutes and we were to drop everything and go to the buses. NOW! So naturally the journalists ran to their computers to file the story!

Rand, and therefor myself, were among the last ones out. Someone has to file the story, right?
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Barb Sprungman and her significant other, Len David were also among the last ones out of Saigon... er I mean the main tent.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

We then searched for a bus to the hotel. It was hard to see and hear as the winds were now vicious. It was like walking into a sandblaster. Someone spotted us, came out and yelled which direction to head. Another person pointed us to the correct bus.

Line of buses getting a paint strip job.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

In the next episode our heroes retire to the local bar after barely escaping disaster in the desert.

This is the sixth part of a photo series. The previous one may be found here

(7)

Rand Simberg posted the news that XCOR has closed a deal with Yecheon Astro Space Center to provide Lynx II flights. The Lynx I they have been working on will now only be used as a test article to work out design issues before moving on to the fully suborbital Lynx II. Previously their plans were to fly passengers in the Lynx I at a price and altitude somewhat comparable to adventure flights in advanced Russian fighter planes. The income was to have been ploughed into the development of the Lynx II, the true suborbital spaceship. Thus there will be at least two companies flying passengers into space in the near term, Virgin Galactic and XCOR.

If you are reading my posts in expectation that I am a neutral observer of this industry rather than a deep insider passing on tidbits of info then you must be a new reader. Lessee... Rand Simberg and I are in business together in Wyoming Aerospace. I know a bunch of the Virgin Galactic High Command and work with them through the National Space Societies 'Space Ambassadors' program. As to XCOR... well, not counting that I have known some of them for up to 30 years... I wrote software under contract to them which was used by their aerodynamics guy for the initial rough planform design of the Lynx.

So yeah, I have dogs in this race. All of them. And I am damned proud of whatever tiny contribution I have made to the industry over my lifetime and ecstatic that I am actually around to see it all come to fruition.

Ad Astra and Merry Christmas to all of my aerospace family. May you reverse the adage about aerospace and fortunes and break the surly bonds of gravity and self-induced poverty. And while we are at it... may a now minuscule Wyoming aerospace company also make a bloody fortune for its owners!

(9)

After the speeches finished I headed up to the stage to take a photo or two. We were supposed to wait for the speakers and the press to go outside first so I intended to put my wait to good use. To my surprise, I was nearly run down by the group of very very important persons and had to squish back against the edge of the stage as Arnold hurried past inches away. Once they were all outside I joined the rest of the merely VIP filing out onto the tarmac at the side door .

It was cold outside, at least down into the twenties. That would not have been so bad except for the rather brisk wind coming down the runway into our faces.

There were a lot of media folk freezing their tuckus off in the Press Stand.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

There was music and a deep percussive bang as each of the huge images on the left of the runway flashed to on, starting from the direction in which we could hear the sound of distant engines. Then a white line became visible in the distance, the wing of WhiteKnightTwo. It lengthened as the singing jets grew louder... and then I could see it: the underslung SpaceShipTwo.

It came from out of the dark of a Western night... the first commercial Space Ship. Am I really here? Is it really here?
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Is it just love in the eyes of the beholder or is she just plain gorgeous?
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Ship and mothership came to a stop in front of us.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

A group of four persons went up to the ship for the Christening and the Governors simultaneously smashed bottles of champagne. I had expected the woman with Richard, his daughter, to do this as it seems more in line with centuries of British and American naval tradition.

Left to Right: Holly Branson; Sir Richard Branson on the mike; Governor Richardson; Governor Schwartznegger.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

To my great surprise, we were allowed to move forward right up to the dual vessel. I might say I was almost shocked that in this day of lawyer-induced destruction of our quality of life something as cool and wonderful as this would be allowed. Of course, now that it has been done I am sure they will realize people got to directly experience something amazing and you can not have things like that, now can you?

You would almost imagine this was still a free country: we were allowed to walk right up to her.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

A crowd formed around the nose of SpaceShipTwo.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

It even had sexy nose art like American warbirds of WWII.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

There were too many people at the starboard side of the nose so I started working my way counterclockwise around WhiteKnightTwo. My fingers were numb well before this and when I was taking these photos I could quite literally not feel my finger depressing the shutter button. I could only tell it had happened by watching for the still image to show on the preview screen.

It seems that not very many folk did what I did, so there are not a lot of other photos floating around showing the business end of SpaceShipTwo.

Portside of SS2 nose.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Like any old spacehand, I went around the other side to look at the most important part of any spaceship.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Two ships and four vertical stabilizers.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

As I had hoped, the crowd had mostly headed for the relative warmth of the tents and Absolut vodka by the time I got back to the nose.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

I framed one last shot of the huge ship as I left the tarmac.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

In part six our crowd of future space travelers party on until dire storm warnings force an emergency evacuation.

The previous section of this tale may be found here

(15)

If you intentionally invented a mechanism to damage the future of the american Aerospace industry you could not do better than this.

The State is NOT your friend.

(0)

The period of speeches and such is an unavoidable but necessary part of the game and the team present for this event was quite high powered. First in the batters box was Will Whitehorn, the President of Virgin Galactic. I first met Will when he joined in a small circle of New Space entrepreneurs late at night after a Gala at the Udvar-Hazy Center. The group of us were trading hanger tales of the space age and doing our best to empty the hospitality suite bathtub. All I can say is, how could you not like a beer drinking kilted-Scot who flies commercial jets and can hold his own in such circles?

Will Whitehorn, President of Virgin Galactic, did the introductions. Besides being a quite nice bloke to share a drink with, he has been known to show up in formal kilt.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

There were many speakers but I think Burt Rutan was the one most of us were ready to really cheer for. Burt is the one who created SpaceShipOne and now SpaceShipOne. Few would disagree that he is the most creative aircraft designer alive today. On top of that his views on many topics would fit right in here at Samizdata. He misses no opportunity to point out how he has created a manned space program totally in the private sector and done it for a small fraction of what the government programs cost.

Burt Rutan, Hero of the Revolution..
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The most important people on the stage this day was the team that actually designed and built the world's first commercial spaceship. They are the ones who took up tools and laid out the design.

The ones who made it so.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Sir Richard was another member of the cast of on stage characters who helped make it all real. He is the one with money, guts and vision and I suspect shares 'the dream' with as much intensity as any of us. He is also a fairly approachable person in the right circumstances, but that is another story.

Richard Branson: the man who sold the suborbit .
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Oh, I almost forgot... there were a couple politicians there also, and I discovered that the California politicians are somewhat jealous that New Mexico is building Spaceport America near Las Cruces. It will be the initial home port for Virgin Galactic's fleet of WhiteKnightTwo's and SpaceShipTwo's.

Arnold Schwartznegger, Governor of California.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

In the next episode our adventurers stand in freezing high winds to watch the new spaceship taxi out of the gloom and stop close by.

The previous episode is here.

(1)

I had planned on visiting the Masten Aerospace hanger as well, but as we ran into Dave at XCOR I got business out of the way and did not really have an excuse to sandwich that much desired visit into our schedule. Time had slipped by far too rapidly and Rand was due at the Mariah Hotel to get his Press credentials.

Since I was also doing articles and had not yet had any guarantee of getting into the event as I was still just wait listed, I chanced showing up at the press desk, egged on by some Press friends. It did not work and in fact a woman named Jackie looked like she was about to turf me out of the building on my ear and thereafter seemed to glare at me every time she saw me.

My main chance at getting in was more official and as it turned out, it was successful. After Rand left on the press bus I tried the VIP desk. They were much more helpful and after showing a key email and talking with a few people in Virgin Galactic I was presented with one of the last of the stainless steel VIP badges and told to hurry on board the last bus.

The VIP registration desk.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The busses were the only way onto the field and even they were held up waiting for obeisance to red tape. All the buses, whether from LA or the hotel, were held in a queue and all were released to the taxiway at once.

The party site was at the end of the runway, hard up against the exhaust deflector and far from the hanger area. There were large signs which I correctly took to be part of the night time light show and a grouping of tents, one very large clear plastic covered structure and

The main tent.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

two smaller inflated balloon structures. It was all very 21st Century.

Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Inside of the tents was the sort of environment you would expect from a party held by Richard Branson for a few hundred friends. The first tent held the coat and bag check and was the point at which we were given our very nice Puma 'VirginGalactic' jackets and ski caps.

OCST Director George Nield deep in a conversation inside the first balloon tent.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The interiors of the two balloon tents were quite nice looking

Interior of second balloon tent.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The second balloon tent exits at the jet exhaust deflector.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Outside the second tent I found a sculptress still at work carving a space-suited figure out of a block of ice. As it turned out one of the sponsors was Absolut and carved ice played a big part in the night's festivities. I do suspect at the planning stage they did not think it would be so cold that there would be no melting to worry about.

It was in no danger of melting.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

There was another bar inside the main tent and then the main auditorium area. People were collecting there as the speeches were due to start soon. There were little knots of conversation as people made contacts of opportunity or met with old friends.

Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The fellow in orange is Dick Rutan, the man who along with Jeanna Yeager flew the first non-stop flight around the world.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The global media were out in force. Note Peter Diamandis, founder of the X-Prize Foundation in the lower right. He is the man responsible for this explosion in commercial manned space flight.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Brett Silcox from NSS was busy chatting with targets of opportunity..
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

I walked around the tent to get a feel for the territory.

This is the tarmac area where I expected we would see SpaceShipTwo after dark.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The media were everywhere and interviewing everyone.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

There was a full scale replica of SpaceShipOne, the craft whose first flight I live blogged from here some five years ago.

The X-Prize Foundation arranged for the creation of replicas of SpaceShipOne.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The main stage was ready for occupation and speechifying.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Tomorrow I will cover the speeches.

This is the third in a series of articles. The previous one is here

A few of my photos also appear in Rand Simberg's Popular Mechanics article.

(6)

After hanging out in the SSI office for awhile, Rand and I headed over to the XCOR hanger, the next after the Scaled Composites one shown here. I am sure caffeine was flowing like water inside as Scaled staff got everything ready to roll.

You could almost feel the coming buzz from the Scaled Composites hanger.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

We were let into XCOR through the front reception and found yet another crowd of which we knew practically everyone. It is not a big industry so practically everyone knows everyone else. Rand and I were there for business as well as saying hello. You know, just making sure people remember us when they suddenly have money and need someone to help spend it!

California does not yet require listing Rocket Scientists and Hanger Cats as potentially Hazardous Materials.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

XCOR was the host of the local get together. The crowd there traded thoughts on rocket engine design, control systems, who currently has money and who does not... all of the important things in life. Well, some of them at least. See how many people you can name from this crowd.

XCOR and Masten folk talking about rockets
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

XCOR and Masten folk talking about rockets
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

I had a long chat and traded stories with Aleta Jackson who besides being one of the leading lights of XCOR is also someone I have known for.... well perhaps I should not say how long, but the light had definitely been separated from the dark by then.

Aleta has lots of good stories.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

There are bits and bobs of rocket planes, rocket engines and test gear all about the hanger the XCOR folk have called home for much of this decade, but the real eye-catchers are these beauties:

The Rocket Racer looks fast just sitting there.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

And they have two of them sitting there!
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Aleta saw me drooling and smitten at the cockpit door and demanded I sit in it. On the serious side, the controls of this baby are pretty much what you would find in any General Aviation aircraft, although I suspect the glass cockpit part of it has a few other twists. At Alamogordo two years ago I heard they are to have a Heads Up Display to superimpose an image of the racing 'gates' on the external view.

In any case, I got a brief ground stint in the left hand seat and held its throttle in my hand.

I will remember to ask Aleta for the keys next time.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Part 1 of this series is here. The next article will show our intrepid rocket renegades making their tortuous way to the most historic party of the decade.

(4)

Rand Simberg and I left his house in LA at a time he predicted would be optimal from a traffic standpoint, and as he used to commute to work at Rotary Rocket several times a week in the Nineties, he ought to know. We were in rain and overcast until one set of hills before Mojave when the Native American gods blessed the undertaking with a full rainbow bridge. Since photo ops of this sort are not easily scheduled with higher authorities, Rand pulled over.

Rand Simberg peers intently into the distance in hopes of spotting the pot of gold we need for our Wyoming Aerospace venture
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

I have not been up to Mojave for a few years and some things have changed. The gate guardian Phantom is now at the airport entry, and it has been joined by a rather rare 1960's vintage Convair airliner. Most striking to me was Roton standing proud not far from the main building. The first time I saw it was inside the Rotary Rocket High Bay back in 1999 and at that time I was only allowed to record it in my memory.

Roton is the first commercial space Gate Guardian that I am aware of
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Those who have been around the space scene for awhile will remember the Space Studies Institute. It was once a major player but seemed to fade out over the last 15 years and some thought it had died completely. Not so! Lee Valentine and Robin Snelson have moved it from Princeton to an office inside the terminal just behind Rand.

Obligatory tourist style photo of Rand. As if he has not been here a few thousand times before...
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

First stop was the Voyager restaurant, an amenity that is fairly recent. Lunch used to require a trip into town. The first thing I noticed coming in the door was that I knew a large fraction of the people there; the second thing I noticed was the private jet parked just outside with a G-number and a Virgin logo. I wonder who that might belong to?

Familiar faces in the lunch crowd at the Voyager.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Care to hazard a guess at the owner?
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

After chatting awhile in the lounge we found that someone was over in the SSI office and we could connect to the net or work from there if we wished. As it turned out, we mostly just talked and looked over the large collection of commercial and space industrialization books lining the walls.

Just hangin at the SSI office.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

In the next installment I will cover the visit with our old friends and colleagues at XCOR.

You can find an intro article here.

(8)

The world's first commercial spaceship was unveiled and christened today at Mojave. I will post more when I have slept and caught my flight home, but here is just one photo of the very full day of activities. I did not have as much time as Rand Simberg to get articles out due the large number of hats I was wearing today. I was also not official press although I could have slipped in as most of the annointed press knew me and would have said nothing

In any case, I will have more to say and I have hundreds of photos. Here is just one.

Christening of the VSS Enterprise.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

(13)

I attended Alan Boyle's book release signing tonight amongst a group of familiar faces. As such things go, this one was a great deal of fun as attendees were actually rather familiar with the material and the debate to which Alan has taken the 'Pluto is a Planet' side. If you are interested in the history of the whole debate over what is a planet according to astronomers, this is a worthwhile addition to your shelf.

Alan Boyle reading from his newly released book, "The Case For Pluto" at Barnes and Nobles in The Grove in LA.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Alan's book release also presents me with the excuse I have been waiting for to throw in my tuppence in this 'debate'.

For astronomical purposes, the reclassification of Pluto to officially be a scare quoted 'Dwarf Planet' is useful. I can also admit their classification of every element other than Hydrogen and Helium as a metal might also be useful... to them. On the other hand, neither classification is of much use to anyone else. Oxygen might be an astronomer's metal, but to one like myself whose undergraduate degree was in Electrical Engineering, this method of sorting elements is rather silly. astronomer's definition of planet is likewise rather worthless outside their discipline.

For those of us who look upon space as a place for settlement, commerce, and a source of resources to feed a solar system wide industrial economy, knowing whether a body clears its orbit of other matter is a "So what?" issue. Settlement and industry have different concerns and will most likely require a more complex system of classification. A planet with a thousand kilometer deep atmosphere that gradually turns to a liquid and then a solid phase is not useful for the same things as a body with a rocky surface. There may be temperate bodies out there covered with hundred mile deep oceans of water; there may be ones with molten rock surfaces. Each presents unique characteristics to the future explorer or industrialist.

From my point of view a planet has sufficient gravity to make it round-ish. Ceres and many of the new bodies outside of Pluto's orbit are therefore planets in my book. I propose that just as Electrical Engineers ignore the astronomer's definition of metal, the rest of us should ignore their definition of planet as well.

(3)

I am sitting a few feet away from Rand Simberg of Transterrestrial Musings in his home office in LA as I write. I flew in last night partly for some work and meetings having to do with our company (Wyoming Aerospace), and partly for an historic event. Well, more than partly for the historic event... and no, it is not Alan Boyle's book signing, although I will be seeing him tonight! I cannot actually say anything yet as the press release is still under embargo as far as I know.

I will report on some interesting matters in a few days, hopefully with a lot of photos.

Ah, the embargo must be over!

I will be up at the XCOR and Masten hangers and hope to have access to Scaled as well. I am waiting to hear on that still.

(42)

It is not everyday you find an email in your email box telling you someone you know is a real, honest to goodness spy, but that is what happened to me this morning. According to The Huffington Post:

Nozette allegedly informed the agent that he had, in the past, held top security clearances and had access to U.S. satellite information, the affidavit said.

The scientist also allegedly said that he would be willing to answer questions about this information in exchange for money. The agent explained that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, would arrange for a communication system so Nozette could pass on information in a post office box.

Nozette agreed to provide regular, continuing information and asked for an Israeli passport, the affidavit alleged.

Personally I find it difficult to become exercised over someone passing information to an ally who may well use that information to do horrible things to people who really, really deserve it. It would be rather different had he sold information to China, North Korea, Iran or one of the other current or potential future enemies.

Oh, and the personal connection? I have crossed paths with Stu off and on over the last thirty years as he was once active with the L5 Society and was a leading figure in the Clementine lunar mapping project for which we (the National Space Society) awarded him one of our highest honours.

Stewartt Nozette receives the National Space Society's Space Pioneer Award at the 1994 International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Toronto for his work on Clementine.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

I still hold Stewart in the highest esteem and if I have anything to do with it, we will still reserve that space for his name on the Luna City wall of "Heroes of the Frontier" .

(14)

Here is another article which puts some more meat on the rumourous bones.

Bangalore: Water on the moon could be just the proverbial "tip of the iceberg" that India's very own Chandrayaan-1 has discovered. According to scientists involved closely with the project, instruments on the spacecraft have for the first time found strong indications of "indigenous" ice formations on the moon surface and sub-surface.

I can hardly wait to sit back at the Lunar Bigelow and sip my Lunar Margarita.

(7)

The following was sent to us by our occasional Samizdata correspondent and secret agent within the heart of the MSM, Taylor Dinerman.

Writing in the Washington Post Adam Nagorski the former Moscow corespondent (Reagan's Missile Defense Triumph) wants us to believe that Obama's September 17th decision to cancel the deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic of a missile defense system based on the one now deployed in Alaska and California, is somehow a triumph for Reagan's SDI (Star Wars) concept.  Like they said to the tomcat when they brought out the snippers, "Its for your own good". 

He writes, "The debate is no longer focused on whether to build such a system, but on what kind of system will do the job better against what sorts of threats. " That debate was over long ago. The Democrats, in the 1990s under Clinton, came to the decision that publicly at least, they could no long promote the idea that the US population should  be totally defenseless against nuclear attack. 

Either Nagoski is ignorant or he is being disingenuous. In 1993 after canceling the first Bush administration's space based Brilliant Pebbles with the words "I'm taking the stars out of Star Wars"., the Clinton administration could not simply abandon missile defense completely, instead, like the Obama administration they sought to proceed with the smallest and least offensive possible program. They ordered the Defense Department to concentrate its efforts on defending against tactical and medium ranged missiles.  

After the GOP gained control of Congress in 1994 Clinton's team faced unrelenting political pressure from Congress to build up America's anti ballistic  missile defenses. They chose to support a few programs including the Navy one that Obama is now touting as if it were something new, and the Airborne Laser (ABL)  program that the administration has eviscerated.   

Most significantly Clinton and his team promoted something called National Missile Defense, a mid course interceptor system designed to handle ICBMs. It was this program that Bush, on taking office decided to proceed with especially after he withdrew from the much violated ABM treaty. This has long been the most controversial part of the US Missile Defense program since provides a direct, though weak protection to the US civilian population. For the Democrats and their allies who still believe in Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) this is intolerable. 

Bush and the GOP pushed ahead and now there are about 30 Ground Based Interceptors (GBIs) deployed in Alaska and California, along with a network of sensors. The Obama administration is choosing to cut the number of deployed GBIs to from the 44 ones planned by their predecessors to the ones now in the ground. The Bush plan was in itself inadequate, so this cut means that the US population is almost as completely vulnerable as it was under Clinton. 

Like Clinton, Obama knows little about missile defense or about nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. At least Bush had flown air defense missions in a nuclear capable aircraft, the F-102. To imagine the plan to deploy sea based SM-3 missiles as a substitute for the GBIs that were to be based in Poland is laughable, as is the idea that sometime around 2020 there will be a version of the SM-3 that can do the job the GBIs are now doing. 

The SM-3 is an excellent missile and Vice Admiral J.D.Williams (ret.), the father of sea based missile defense, is to be congratulated. It is however,  not a system that can defend the US population against an ICBM attack. That is the main question that Nagorski tries to avoid. The Democrats are still doing everything they can to prevent a real space based missile defense. The other question as to why Bush failed to revive his father's Brilliant Pebbles program is a tough one for him and for the GOP. The little they did is now being cut to ribbons by President Pantywaist (as he was referred to in the London Telegraph.) Trying to put a Reaganesque happy face on this fact is typical of the way the MSM is willing to make a fool of itself for its man.

Taylor Dinerman

(10)

I have just got back from an air show, and one of the stars of the show was this beauty, the F-16. My ears are still ringing with the sound of its engine. Awesome. This video conveys some sense of what these aircraft can do. I suppose these kind of things bring out my inner schoolkid.

The F-16 I saw was in the Dutch airforce and painted a bright orange. I'd love one of these fellas to fly the thing fast and low, repeatedly, over Polly Toynbee's Tuscan villa while the witch is in residence with her broomstick.

(26)

There is a rumour floating about that a lot of water has been found on the moon:

Reliable sources report that there will be a press conference at NASA HQ at 2:00 pm this Thursday featuring lunar scientist Carle Pieters from Brown University.

The topic of the press briefing will be a paper that will appear in this week's issue of Science magazine wherein results from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) aboard Chandrayaan-1 will be revealed.

There is both good and bad to this discovery from our viewpoint. Much will depend on whether the deposits are limited to polar cold traps as has long been suspected or are to be find over a broader polar area. The presence of ice cuts down the required consumables budget for any lunar settlement. The fewer bulk imports required, the nearer the time at which settlement is feasible. The downside is an International Regime led by the United Nations no doubt will be created to ration this valuable resource.

My presumption is they have finally found large deposits of real ice inside some of the polar region craters. The theory for the last thirty years has been that when comets strike the moon, most of the volatiles escape into space, but some linger long enough to find their way into the shadowed polar craters where the temperature is so low that water cannot remain a gas even in vacuum. About 25 years ago I helped a friend of mine, Dr. Francis Graham, to gain funding from the Space Studies Institute to do some telescope work on this problem. His results were negative but I believe Francis may have been one of the first to attempt the search.

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Because of my interests and network of friends in the business, things of interest often cross my virtual (and real) desk. Sometimes they are surprising. This time my jaw is still laying under the desk and I am applying a healthy dose of skepticism until I really, really am sure these are real and not exceedingly good fakes. I do not think they are and I have examined them closely. The first is the F/A-37, reportedly capable of Mach 3.5 supercruise and top speed in excess of Mach 4. It is shown on board the USN George Washington for catapult fit tests according to the source.

The only thing I can say about this one is it has some familiar resemblance to some test articles I am aware of, and it looks a bit like some things which have been described coming out of Groom Lake. Other than that, it has me absolutely flat-footed... if it is real.

F/A-37 prototype on USN George Washington.
Photo: original source unknown (Now pinned down to the making of the movie "Stealth")

The second aircraft caught me only a little less flat footed. I am well aware of the base design of the aircraft but to my knowledge it was just a concept design, something that might or might not be built 20 years from now. Given the efficiency and strength and capacity (larger than the Airbus 280) this has got to have Airbus executives reaching for the Maalox... if it is real.

Boeing 797 Blended Wing/Body aircraft.
Photo: original source unknown. (Now pinned down as photoshopped.)

Given that these images are now slithering their way around the mailboxes of the cognoscenti, I am certain we will be hearing more about them one way or the other. I think this is on the up and up, but I am just not yet sure of it.

So, any comments on what has this Samizdata Editor in a state of flabbergasted shock?

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They have finally fired the 'big gun' in the air. A Janes newsletter reports:

Boeing reports ABL COIL's first in-flight firing. The Boeing Airborne Laser (ABL) team has fired the system's primary chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL) in flight for the first time, the company announced on 20 August. The firing, which took place at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) on 18 August, was carried out with industry team mates Northrop Grumman (which makes the COIL), Lockheed Martin (which is responsible for the beam-control/fire-control system) and the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA)

I will have to go searching for a picture. This is seriously Buck Rogers!

I found more news here in the Boeing Press Release. The beam was fired into a calorimeter to measure it and was not sent outside the aircraft. They may attempt a missile intercept before the end of the year.

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I picked up the following two items from a Janes newsletter and thought they might be of interest:

US military airborne laser passes first in-flight engagement The US military's airborne laser (ABL) successfully completed its first in-flight test against an instrumented target missile on 10 August, the prime contractor Boeing said in a statement on 13 August. The US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is testing the viability of using the high-powered laser to destroy enemy missiles in the boost phase.

Standard Missile 3 Block IB cleared to begin flight tests The Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) Block IB programme to develop an improved missile for the US Missile Defense Agency's sea-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System has completed its critical design review, Raytheon announced on 13 July. The new missile is expected to begin flight tests in 2010. SM-3 Block IB offers significant improvements over the SM-3 Block IA version currently deployed on US Navy Aegis cruisers and destroyers and Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyers to defend against short- to intermediate-range ballistic missile threats in the ascent and midcourse phases of flight.

So things are still plodding along on all fronts and all becomes simpler as technology improves. I still believe the key number for missile interception is the figure of merit I wrote of a long time ago: instructions per meter. That is the number of machine code instructions that a CPU can process in the time it takes for the relative positions of the target and the interceptor (or laser station) changes by one meter. When this number gets large, the targeting system has more time to ponder what is going on and more time to analyze fused sensor data. Another way of looking at it is that time effectively runs more slowly for the targeting software as the number gets larger.

This is yet another side effect of Moore's Law. Our processing capabilities are growing to the point where either very sophisticated predictive programs may be used... or very unsophisticated and unoptimized programs will become 'good enough'.

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A few months ago I noted the importance of having good people selected for the top jobs at NASA under the Obama administration. I believed then, as now, that NASA and the current way of doing business is a fact of life for those in space business and the best we can hope for is folks in the power seats who are positive towards wholly private space ventures.

There has been much too-ing and fro-ing in Washington during the ensuing months over the role of private sector and the old socialist space model. Surprisingly (to some), the most anti-free market action came from a Republican, Senator Shelby from Alabama. He succeeded in reprogramming funds for the COTS-D program, aimed at enabling the purchase of Astronaut tickets to space in a commercial way, back to funding of the old NASA and Aerospace Design Bureaus model borrowed from the Soviets during the Moon Race. Republicans are no different from Democrats when it comes to the basics. They like the Space Kommisars when they represent jobs and campaign contributions in their district or State.

But change is overdue. There is simply no choice for NASA and everyone knows it. Most importantly, the people now in charge understand it and with the supporting Augustine Commission findings (one of whose members, by the way, is a long standing occasional Samizdata reader) that change is about to be implemented.

As I indicated in the title, the end results of all this appear to be even better than I had dared hope.

Next year in L5 anyone?

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Excalibur-Almaz has announced its orbital tourism plans. They have built up a great team of astronauts, cosmonauts and contractors and are in the process of resurrecting a flight tested Russian military capsule and space station. They have a long way to go to get the thing flying again, but that is the point, it is 'flying again', not 'flying the first time'.

I unfortunately must step lightly here as I was one of the persons in my company involved in some early consulting for them. NDA's you know!

I can say that it is a very interesting project!

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I have been sitting on this story for several years, ever since Gary Gaudet contacted me through the Samizdata comments section after a story I published about a Swordfish from the HMS Ark Royal being spotted on the ocean bottom near the sunken carrier. Since that time I have spoken with him several times as well as trading emails.

His Swordfish is in a somewhat drier and slightly more reachable location in the wilds of Nova Scotia. It will soon be brought in from the cold after resting where it ended its flying career after a walk-away crash in 1944. I spoke with him again this afternoon and with his permission I am bringing this story to a wider audience. It has been known locally for some time, but there has been an understandable desire not to attract undue attention until the aircraft recovery was at least imminent.

It may not look like much to the untrained eye, but to those of us who are Warbird afficionados, it is incredibly complete. There have been rebuilds to fly from wrecks recently dragged out of the Russian wilderness which were found in worse condition that this.

Fairy Swordfish Mk IV in Digby County, Nova Scotia.
Photo: Gary Gaudet

Although the Swordfish is a biplane, it used very modern construction methods and was an incredibly rugged aircraft. The 'stringbag' was still in use at the end of WWII and is much loved by those who flew her and all the youngsters like myself who built the Airfix model of this beautiful bit of British Naval Aviation history.

PS: There is ever so much more to this story than I have time to write this afternoon. I have hopes Gary Gaudet will drop by the comment section and regale you with more of the story: he has been in contact with the family of the fellow who happened to have flown this very particular airframe!

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Bill Whittle has a video report of his visit to XCOR on Pajamas TV. If you enjoyed my future history of yesterday, you will enjoy this vision of the current and the near future of New Space.

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The New Space conference has been in progress all weekend and runs through tonight. Some idea of how the world has changed is that a bunch of free-market entrepreneurs are welcome at NASA Ames. This is partly because so many of the high positions in NASA are now taken by people who (mostly) agree with us, or at the very least see no other way NASA can continue to function. They need cheap access to space too and the 'big boys' are not delivering it.

My associate in space ventures, Rand Simberg, is there live blogging the event so please go take a look at what he has to say.

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I am going to go very far out on a slender limb and tell you my thoughts on how things might play out over the next few decades.

First, NASA is in deep trouble. The Ares 1 is well behind schedule and the gap in their ability to take cargo and passengers to the space station has widened into a chasm. Ares 1 was pushed ahead by former NASA director Mike Griffin for two reasons. It was an effort to train younger engineers on a smaller manned vehicle design before all of the old folk retired and as a means to get to the space station when shuttle retired. Building Ares 5 as a first effort was correctly thought to be a bad idea. The problem is, Ares 1 seems to have become less an interim vehicle and more of a goal in itself. This is something one less enamoured of government would have predicted. I do not think Ares 1 will fly before 2015 and 2017 would not much surprise me.

So where does that leave us?

SpaceX has flown two very small expendable rockets of a new design with new engines. By itself that would be fun but not of much use for the long term. What is important is the commercial sense of this vehicle. It is cheap to build and cheap to fly as such things go, and more importantly for our topic today, it was the first step towards a bigger and more interesting expendable, the Falcon 9. This rocket uses a first stage cluster of 9 of the same engines as the Falcon 1 main engine and is big enough to deliver cargo to the space station. Given the clean performance of the most recent Falcon 1 flight, a second success in a row, I am going to predict they have this vehicle working by no later than the 2nd flight. That means a true commercial orbital cargo capacity by 2011, and possibly as soon as 2010.

But wait, there's more. The cargo carrier is not just an expendable container. It has windows... for a reason. The Dragon capsule was designed and built as a manned craft from the start. After a few cargo flights SpaceX will have the operational data needed to risk placing people in it. That should happen within only a few years of the first successful flight of the Falcon 9. There is also a next generation rocket on the drawing board, the Falcon 9 Heavy, but let us leave SpaceX for now.

Although I know less about their efforts, Orbital Sciences Corporation should not be counted out in this market niche and time frame. It is entirely possible there will be two commercial package and personnel delivery companies operating in the space station environment by 2012.

Let's look at Bigelow Aerospace. They currently have two inflatable habs in orbit. They have a 100% success rate on their orbital operations and have years of real flight data backing them now. Somewhere in the period of 2010-2012 they will be putting up the full scale unit. That one will contain a goodly amount of rentable pressurized and fully habitable volume in space. Their habitats have shown themselves to be rugged enough to survive years in space... but there is nothing special about them being in orbit. They can provide habitable volume in any low or no pressure environment.

Next. Orbital Outfitters. They are making space suits for the passengers and crew of pretty much everyone working in the suborbital tourist market. Spacesuits are very expensive items and even with all of that cost are not very good. American astronauts painfully lose fingernails inside their suits. All the time. No one quite knows the cause but I understand the Russian Orlon suits do not have the problem. Perhaps an energetic small company that is building more suits and trying different things at a faster pace can solve the problem. It is always easier to try new things when the test article is relatively cheap.

Next we have a whole crop of suborbital rocketeers. The first of these, SpaceShipTwo, should have its official roll out sometime this year. Its first stage carrier, WhiteKnightTwo has already flown. Unless something drastic happens during the test campaign, real suborbital tourist flights will begin by 2011. There will be multiple airframes and the flight rates will be accelerating towards a goal of airline operational rates per tail number. This means more civilians will have flown into space by 2013/2014 than the total number of government employees who have flown to date, and that is assuming no one else succeeds.

Next in line is XCOR and its Lynx 1 project. I have a soft spot in my heart for this ship because I played ever so small a part (paid!) in its early design stages. The Lynx 1 carries only one passenger who gets to sit in the co-pilot position. The rocket plane will rotate at the end of the runway and basically go straight up to an altitude higher than that reachable by tourist flights on Russian fighter planes. Lynx 2 will follow a couple years later, paid for by the Lynx 1 flights, and will be a true suborbital vehicle.

Another interesting project is Space Diver. Armadillo Aerospace won the first phase of the lunar lander competition and now has a fairly reliable vertical take off and landing vehicle (VTVL). They are also intending to use it for tourist flights to suborbital altitudes. However, if you have a small rocket like that at high altitude, it is also possible to simply... unstrap and step out at apogee. Colonol Joseph Kittinger set the skydiving altitude record of 102,800 feet on August 16, 1960. To my knowledge, no one has even attempted to better it since then, largely because it is difficult to get a balloon gondola to a significantly higher altitude. That is why our current day record seekers are looking at Armadillo's VTVL as a path to ever increasing record altitudes. Eventually someone will skydive from space. At some later time, some will do so and live to tell about it.

There are numerous other players, but this is enough to give you the flavor. Each one of these companies has orbital plans as well, mostly in the 2017 and after range.

There is more to spaceflight than this, and there a certainly a number of small companies like Orion Propulsion and Spacedev who are doing well and building components for other commercial space entrepreneurs.

I should also note there are now seven FAA licensed spaceports in the US, and those locations will become centers at which the commercial and entrepreneurial energy will reach fever pitch.

Now that I have laid out where we are, I can go out on that limb and project the future.

It is 2020. Several billionaires with interest in space have banded together in a Lunar Project. SpaceX has heavy cargo lift for hire; Bigelow has a large orbital business park of inflatable habs. SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, XCOR and several others have the capacity to deliver people to orbit. SpaceX has a much upgraded Dragon capsule that can be used to get to the moon; Orbital Sciences has worked with Orion Propulsion and others on the Lunar Transfer stage; Armadillo Aerospace has the lunar lander and return vehicle technology well in hand; Bigelow has built a lunar version of his successful orbital habs; and orbital outfitters has provided a new generation of lunar EVA suits.

All the staging work happens in orbit and those directly involved work and sleep at the Bigelow facility. A set of large Bigelow habs are sent from there to the lunar surface first. The pilots and workers who are going to follow remain at the Orbital Bigelow until the cargo is confirmed to be down and safe.

There are one or more super-Dragon capsules on open frame Orbital Science transfer vehicles, along with Armadillo built landers. The engineers check out all the parts in orbit; once satisfied the crew transfer over to the capsules and fire their Orion built thrusters to gently move away from the hotel before firing the main engine.

Several days later they arrive on lunar orbit and the construction crew shift to the descent module. They land near the habs and other cargo and proceed to move them to the robot prepared foundation area. Once inflated they enter and bring the habs up to full operational standards. And then they stay until the next crew arrives to relieve them. Meanwhile, more cargo ships land and they continue to expand the facility.

After a few months they declare Luna City (more like a tiny village) open for business. Among the first customers to arrive are researchers from various space agencies around the world. One or more of the habs has a big NASA logo on it and is handed over to them in a televised ceremony. Next come the tourists. By 2021 there are more than enough super rich on Earth to afford the multi-million dollar trip. Technology has moved on since the $20M tourist flights to the space station on Russian rockets.

Since Luna City is a commercial venture as well as being the dream fulfilment of those with the money to do so, it is intended to grow. Large numbers of very smart people in an unusual environment sparks creativity and very lucrative patents. The filming of documentaries and movies, moonrock jewellery, patents, tourists and paid for researchers and labs pay the bills.

And thus begins the vast outward explosion of free people.

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Niklas Järvstråt has invested in a simulation of a lunar settlement using an old Swedish mine which he bought some years ago.

Just a short note to mention that the moon-mine inauguration and moon landing 40-year anniversary will take place tomorrow at Storgruvan, Nora, in the middle of Sweden. We will start the pumps and make footprints in lunar regolith simulant FJS-1, donated by Shimizu cormoration. Maria Aldrin, Buzz Aldrins great great great grandfathers great great great great great great granddaughter, will make the first footprint for the mine. We are looking forward to an interesting program of local and national interest, and a recorded well wishing message from the Romanian Space agency. Happy anniversary, all "lunatics" and space buffs!

Niklas is part of a world wide conspiracy to settle the moon and planets. Shhhh. Forget I told you that...

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The Moon Society is looking Beyond NASA. While I would prefer a pure free market opening of the moon, the practicalities are that libertarian ideas are not globally influential enough to let us have our way. Peter Kokh discusses ideas that might at least let us get an opportunity to plant and grow the tree of liberty off world.

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Today has been declared a space settlement blogging day and Samizdata is one of the participants. We hope you will also check out some of these sites for other stories on this topic.

Ad Astra... and may the high frontier be settled by free men and women, from whence ever they come.

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Today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, and it seems only fitting to show what 'Tranquility Base' and the other sites look like today. NASA recently photographed the landing sites at high resolution.

Apollo landing sites 40 years later.
Photo: NASA

If you look closely at the Apollo 14 landing area, you can see the very off-road tracks made by the Lunar Rover.

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A good article over at Reason by Ronald Bailey, the magazine's science correspondent. He talks about the factors that explain why humans haven't been back to the Moon since the early 1970s. It is, he says, because of a lack of profit.

Every time I write something about the incredible feat of putting someone on the Moon, as happened almost exactly 40 years ago, there is an inevitable chorus of criticism - much of it justified - about how the huge sums of taxpayers' money involved rendered the project beyond the pale, even if the critics grudgingly accept what a great adventure the whole thing was. It has to be accepted that by "crowding out" private space initiatives in the way they did, government agencies both in the US, former USSR and elsewhere have arguably retarded more promising, long-term space ventures that might have got off the ground. The existence of large, politically directed agencies like Nasa do not help innovation, either. Consider how quickly the aircraft design process occured from the Wright Brothers and through to the jet age, and then compare the rate of progress of space flight over the past 40 years. It is not a flattering comparison. So this is precisely why Dale Amon is so right to comment on stuff like this.

The best way to honour the likes the astronauts, both the living, such as Buzz Aldrin, and the dead, such as Gus Grissom, is not to continue down the statist path of space flight. This is too important an issue to leave with bureaucrats.

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SpaceX is scheduled for a launch today or tomorrow from their pad at Omelek Island in Kwajalein. The payload is RazakSat for the Malaysian government.

Most everyone in the commercial space business is wishing them good luck and hope the Falcon 1 flies well on its first 'operational' flight. I use quotes because it is still a new system and it takes time to really understand the foibles of that which you have wrought. Personally I would say their chances of a successful flight are excellent but not one hundred percent yet.

The big one for SpaceX will come with their first flight attempt for the Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral. The rocket is on the pad and has been there for some months as they slowly work through all the issues preceding a launch of a big new rocket, probably later this year. This is the one which will eventually carry people in the SpaceX Dragon Capsule.

For now though, stay tuned. I will pass on information on tonight or tomorrow's launch window as I hear it.

18:40 EDT: Launch appears to be currently schedule for 02:00 UTC/Zulu/GMT. Live feed for the Kwaj launch is available but is still showing dead air.

2230 EDT: Live coverage has begun. Watch here

2250 EDT: We are into a 15 minute weather hold at T-30 min.

2300 EDT: The woman doing some of the interviews is someone I know pretty well, Cassie Kloberdanz. She is a young member of the commercial space family and a lot of fun.

2316 EDT: As you can see if you are watching, the weather is starting to clear. I understand there was also some issue on the Helium pressurization which the hold gave them time to deal with.

2323 EDT: The clock is rolling again. We're getting down to t-13.

2346 EDT: SpaceX has delivered its first international paying customer's satellite to orbit! The flight was almost flowless as far as I could see from the video's. Most notable to me was how 'cool' the expansion nozzle of the Kestrel second stage engine ran relative to previous flights. With two successes of Falcon 1 under their belts, SpaceX is now a competitor to be reckoned with.

So, what does this all mean? First, this was a key time for them. A launch failure would not have put their company at risk, but it would have had some serious repercussions on their future. The Augustine Commission is meeting right now and there is a political fight brewing in DC. There are some powerful congressman and constituencies that much prefer the status quo. The government backed Ares 1 project is, as one would expect, years behind schedule. The innovation of that particular camel is in the way they have taken bits and pieces of existing expensive hardware, manufactured for several decades in a number of key constituencies and managed to make a crewed vehicle out of it.

There is a small budget, relative to that of the big aero companies, that was set aside for new players. Those companies will be paid for a result: cargo on orbit at the Space Station. There are two currently: Orbital Sciences Corporation (run by David Thompson and friends) and by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

This new way of doing business is something of a threat to the old one. The vehicles do not require huge numbers of people to process them. They are not as complex. They are designed with the idea that they will be commercially viable, and that means they cannot afford the baggage that every NASA designed ship has carried with it. Just as an example, the SpaceX rockets use the same fuel and oxidizer in both stages: Liquid Oxygen (LOX) and rocket grade Kerosene. Both are easily dealt with and familiar to industry. Notably they do not use Liquid Hydrogen (LH) for a higher energy, more 'efficient engine' because that efficiency comes at a high commercial cost. LH is squirrelly stuff. It will find ways to leak out if just about anything is not perfect. It is a 'supercryogen' and thus requires special materials and special handling. It is of very low density so it requires huge tankage to hold enough. By the time you are through, the margin gained in ISP (a measure of the efficiency of a rocket engine) is mostly eaten up by the extra structural mass. On top of that, the special requirements of dealing with LH are much more costly in terms of manpower, materials, care and testing.

But wait, there is more: The Ares I rocket uses the absolute worst feature of the Space Shuttle it replaces: a stack of solid rocket engine segments. You know, the ones with the famous O-rings? Once you light them you cannot shut them down or change the flight profile. However at least Ares I is a vertical stack so they could put an escape tower on the top to pull the astronauts away to safety if they find the thing is going to blow up or come apart or the RSO (Range Safety Officer) decides it really should be blown up before it hits Miami.

As bad as it is, Ares 1 had some major political clout behind it. Senator Richard Shelby from Alabama recently pulled funding that was to be used to do cargo delivery for hire and moved it to his district to feed the dinosaurs. A failure of this launch would have allowed these political types to say "See? We told you so! These commercial upstarts are not able to do the job. Rockets really are that expensive for a reason. That is why we need the money for our government designed rocket done by proper government contractors and with proper government design oversight... and built with parts made in our districts."

Elon could probably get by without the space station delivery contracts, but they would certainly help. The problem for the American Rocket Design Bureau's is that if he succeeds, he will change the game to one which is open ended and done with a wider commercial model in mind.

With this flawless launch under their belt, the case for commercial cargo delivery to orbit followed by commercial delivery of people becomes very hard to ignore.

0228 EDT: I heard a little while ago that the second burn of the upper stage was nominal as was the payload sep and the Malaysian customer satellite is in the correct orbit and is communicating with the ground.

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I ran across this item in a Jane's publication:

Boeing prepares X-51A for hypersonic test flight. The US Air Force ( USAF) plans to fly the Boeing Phantom Works X-51A Waverider hypersonic engine research vehicle at up to Mach 6 later this year. Joseph Vogel, Boeing X-51A programme manager, Advanced Network and Space Systems, and Charles Brink, X-51A programme manager, USAF Research Laboratory, spoke to reporters at Boeing's Huntington Beach facility in southern California on 14 May.

For those who do not know of the Waverider idea, it is a technique for 'surfing' on the re-entry plasma. It could be an easier way forwards for getting back from orbit if it can be proven out.. The first I heard about it was roughly in 1985 when I met a Scotsman named Duncan Lunan at a the International Space Development Conference in Washington, DC. He showed up in his clan kilt at the celebration party of the Pittsburgh L5 team which I had led to victory in the competition to run the 1987 conference. Duncan paid his way over and back through the sale of a commemorative brew called "Halley's Whiskey", done by a Scottish whiskey maker for the 1986 return of Halley's Comet. Duncan is without a doubt one of the more memorable characters I have met.

Duncan and his merry band of Glaswegians (ASTRA) ran a long campaign of low budget testing on the Waverider concept and managed to pool resources and get access to a wind tunnel as well as more eclectic test methods. I heard many of the results in the early 1990's when he gave a talk at Queens University in Belfast for the local astronomy society lecture series. His talk was punctuated by the 6th floor windows rattling from a 1000 pound or so bomb going off at the police forensics lab a few kilometers distant. It was quite an introduction for someone who had never been to Belfast before... we in the audience were then of course discussing probable distances, type of explosive, size, and so forth. As you did when you lived in Belfast in those years.

I again ran into the ASTRA crowd at the WorldCon in Glasgow in 1996 I believe it was. I was there as a sponsor as I had provided the event with a free internet connection via my company in Belfast, Genesis Project Ltd. I believe we talked about Waverider then, but as I went bar hopping in Glasgow with one of the other team members and walked out of his high rise to greet the morning sun, I cannot say I remember much other than that Scotsmen drink like Irishmen.

In any case, I am glad to see this concept is finally getting some serious attention. It has, after all, only been around for three decades that I am aware of, and I would not be surprised if someone told me the idea was old even then. Although it could carry out the same sort of mission, it is not the same as the German Skip-Bomber concept which simply did the skipping stone thing off the upper atmosphere.

If anyone knows more about the X-51, feel free to drop by and comment.

You can learn more about waverider here

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Well, it is finally official. Astronaut Charles Bolden is the new NASA Administrator. If that were the only news then I would not be writing about it. What does interest me is that a woman who has worked towards this nearly her entire life has snatched the Deputy Director slot and I wish to publicly congratulate Lori Garver, a very old and dear friend on her success.

Ad Astra Lori!

PS: Now I have to find out what jobs George Whitesides and Alan Ladwig are getting. I have worked with George for the last 5 years and know Alan from back to the early eighties. I should be seeing them at the ISDC in Orlando in a couple days.

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A US stealth aircraft, photographed while breaking the sound barrier. I don't know why, given that Man has achieved the feat of breaking Mach 1 for more than half a century since the great Chuck Yeager officially did it first, but stuff like this still gives me a buzz.

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Long time readers know I am part of the senior leadership team of the National Space Society and specifically the person charged with oversight of the conference which happens around this time each year.

We are going south to Orlando, Florida this year; the hotel is marvelous and the program likewise. Our Orlando conference management team and our HQ have brought together an excellent group of speakers. Most of the powers that be within the new commercial space industry and from NASA will be there. (Notice one dour visage within the photo gallery belongs to our own occasional writer, Taylor Dinerman. )

If you happen to be in that part of the country, or can arrange to do so, I highly recommend dropping in. You can register here.

I do not have time to be a speaker myself and will be racing from task to task, but if you spend some time in the hallways and corridors you are likely to see me transacting society and commercial space business in between board and committee meetings.

Be there, or be a groundlubber!

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I would never have considered that the energy output of a TypeI Civilization could fit into my flat:

It is difficult, even for someone who has been working with these ideas and numbers for the past couple of decades, to get one’s head around the utter raw power potential of real nanotechnology. What Drexler is saying in this dry passage is that the amount of nanomotors needed to power a Kardasheff type I civilization, using all the sunlight that hits the Earth, would fit in a 500 square foot apartment (with 8-foot ceiling).

I might need a bit of air conditioning though...

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I just picked this up form a Jane's newsletter:

US announces successful tests of Airborne Laser The US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) successfully fired multiple long-duration blasts of the Northrop Grumman high-energy Airborne Laser (ABL) during ground tests, the company announced on 19 February. The tests for the Boeing 747-400F-based ballistic missile defence system lasted up to three seconds each and were concluded on 12 February

This is good progress, but I am still waiting for the real test: shooting down an ICBM in flight.

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Way back in 1994 or thereabouts I wrote in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society about future applications of nanotechnology on spacecraft to get sensing in depth across all wavelengths in all directions at once. Well, it looks like we are getting there:

THE NEXT GENERATION. Beyond the realm of CMOS and CCD image sensors, SiOnyx Inc. is developing a new material called “black silicon.” The company believes the material will lead to a new class of image sensors that are 100 times more sensitive than conventional silicon, detect energy from the ultraviolet to the short-wave infrared bands, operate at very low voltage levels, and can be made in extremely thin 0.5-µm forms (Fig. 5). Most importantly, the material is compatible with existing CMOS processing methods.

“This is a brand new material that is compatible with the largest manufacturing infrastructure of the world,” says Stephen Saylor, SiOnyx’s president and CEO.

I am guessing that 'black silicon' might be carbon nanotube technology or it might simply be an array that is so good at sucking up light that it appears black due to lack of wasted reflected photons. Whatever the case, I believe this is just the start of the sort of sensors I would like to see on spacecraft.

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Taylor Dinerman attended a funeral of a respected soldier and space advocate and sent us this small remembrance of the man. I expect a couple of you in the commercial space business knew Mil Roberts from his days in High Frontier.

Taylor is a freelance professional journalist who from time to time graces our pages both on 'page one' and as a respected member of the commentariat.

"The flag that he honored with his life, now honors him." These words spoken by the Army  chaplain at the graveside ceremony for General Mil Roberts at Arlington on March 12th, explained why it is so symbolically  important that the flag cover the coffins of our fallen heroes. The idea of reciprocal shared honor is one that binds any good  military organization together, the past, the present and the future are all embodied in that symbol and with the deep meaning that we Americans give it. 

The ceremony, with the honor guard, the riderless horse,  a fifteen gun salute, the US Army Band playing Ruffles and Flourishes and America The Beautiful, the firing of the traditional three volleys, all done with precision and strict discipline but without the boot stomping and barked orders that one associates with some military ceremonies. The whole event was simple, elegant and dignified.  

Mil was sent off to what he, as a Christian, believed was a better place by his friends, comrades and family in a style and manner that he had earned in combat and in years of service to America. He landed on Omaha Beach on June 6th 1944 and fought his way across Europe ending up in Czechoslovakia. Later he served in the Army reserves while pursuing a normal civilian life. In 1970 he was called up for active duty as head of the Army Reserve in the Pentagon. 

As President of the High Frontier Missile Defense advocacy group,  he helped get the DC-X program off the ground. That Rocket proved many things, including the fact that worthwhile space launch development programs could be done for far less than the billions of dollars that the government normally requires. This helped jump start the suborbital space tourism industry and may someday lead to a revolutionary low cost way to get into orbit. 

Mil always had a great sense of humor and both he and his wife Priscilla had a wonderful gift for friendship.     

He lived his life according to the old Jewish rule "Be a Mensch!"

- Taylor Dinerman

(5)

While doing some research for other purposes I ran across this excellent video of a B-2 stalling and crashing on takeoff. If you have the vaguest interest in aviation I am sure you will find this as fascinating as I did.

All escaped unscathed except the USAF budget.

(37)

I am beginning to wonder whether the enemy outside or the enemy within is the more dangerous to our liberty. The al Qaeda can kill me... but DHS can enslave me. Here is the latest loathsome attack on private property and our rights as free citizens, courtesy of Downsize DC:

The same one-size-fits-all regulations will apply to both passenger airliners and non-commercial, business-owned jets that are used to move cargo and personnel. For instance, the "no-fly" list and Air Marshall provisions will apply to business planes even though the pilots usually know everyone on board personally. The definition of "large aircraft" is arbitrary, applying both to planes as small as 12,500 pounds and to 747's ten times that weight. Items that are prohibited in passenger jets will also be banned to employees in these smaller business planes, even if they are needed for their work. (Just think of what that will do to business efficiency in this time of recession.) Airplane owners will be forced to pay, at their own expense, for audits of their safety compliance. The audits won't even be done by government inspectors, but by private consultants. These rules can potentially expand to all aircraft and all airports.

There is more here.

Crazed Islamic fundamentalists cannot destroy our country. No one in the world, nor any alliance of enemies or 'friends' can destroy the United States.

Only we can do that... and 'we' are racing to see how quickly we can snuff the light of Liberty.

(1)

Virginia Postrel has a nice item about WW2 aviator style and the Tuskegee airmen who broke racial barriers of their time in WW2. I must say that there is something deliciously satisfying at the thought that these guys helped shoot down the airforce of a racist German empire. And that they flew such glorious birds like the P-51 Mustang as they did so.

(35)

I am sure many of you have by now heard the coverage about the airplane crash into waters off of La Guardia airport in New York.

What I have not heard yet are comments on the fine piloting it took to grease a rather good size metal bird into the water. The pilot could not have had many minutes to think about his options, and yet as far as I can see, he did everything flawlessly.

I just want you all to ponder what it takes to bring a commercial transport of that size down on the water, in one piece, floating and with all your passengers alive.

The pilot and co-pilot of this flight deserve all of the applause we can give them and a heart felt thank you from all the passengers and their families.

(1)

The carrier aircraft for SpaceShipTwo took off for its first test flight. This is the first step of what will probably be a year long test program culminating in drop tests and flights of the world's first tourist spaceship.

It is late over here. I am sure there will be a lot of information up about it. If not, talk to me tomorrow!

(10)

I have been informed that Majel Barrett Roddenberry has died. She is best known to many as Nurse Chapel aboard the original Starship Enterprise. Despite being a major celebrity, she was perfectly at ease joining the rest of us in the hospitality suites until all hours of the night.

Somewhere I have a photo of her behind the suite's 'bar' counter chatting with Buzz Aldrin, Lori Garver and another close friend of mine, Beverly Freed at once of our International Space Development Conferences.

She and her husband Gene Roddenberry, who died in the early 1990's, were strong supporters of the National Space Society's goal of a solar system wide human civilization.

Here are a few links to photos of Majel I took at the 1993 ISDC in Huntsville, Alabama.

Majel accepting posthumous award on behalf of Gene Roddenberry.

Majel accepting posthumous award on behalf of Gene Roddenberry

Majel with Lori Garver (currently member of the Obama transition team for space policy)

Majel with Buzz Aldrin

Meanwhile, the band played on... Home on Lagrange anyone?

Note: the dates on the files are the dates on which the rolls were developed, not the dates they were taken. Photos were scanned from prints and thus the quality is not wonderful.

(10)

Not much information yet but a Marine fighter is down in a residential area on the approach to Miramar. No fatalities reported so far: the pilot ejected and there are no reports of deaths on the ground.

That might well change but I hope the worst result is only a destroyed home.

Unless things have changed since 1978 when I was doing a building automation system for them, the County of San Diego has its main building complex just off the end of one of the runways at Miramar, so one would presume services were quite rapidly on the scene.

It's definite. No casualties.

Later reports indicate the early good news was wrong, sadly. There may have been three casualties on the ground.

(5)

Jane's reports the following:

Thales aims directed-energy weapon at ground, naval applications. Thales Air Systems Division is working on a joint development project with the Ecole Polytechnique engineering school in Orsay, France, to develop a directed-energy weapon (DEW) for ground and naval applications. Project Director Philippe Antier of Weapon Systems, Thales Air Systems Division, told Jane's that the aim of the project is to provide a capability against missiles, aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to a range of up to 10 km as a complement to very-short-range air-defence (VSHORAD) systems, with the goal of having the system operational by 2015

When it is steam boat time, you steam...

(14)

It is a strange old world. About 2 weeks ago I was on a flight from Huntsville, Alabama, where I took part in the National Space Society board meeting, back to Washington, DC where I had some consulting work lined up. As I and two other board members walked to the luggage retrieval area, I commented that if someone had told me twenty years ago I would find three people from my address book on a Presidential Transition Team I would have thought them crazy.

One compatriot said, "You know what that means don't you?"

"No", was my puzzled answer.

"You're now a genuine Washington Insider", he replied.

I did know one of the Bush 2000 space transition team really well and a second shared many contacts with me. This time around is different. I find it very strange to find people I have known for decades and in two cases worked with for years, in actual position to define space policy for the next four to eight years.

The good news is, they are all good people who are both aware of New Space and who wish it to succeed. At least two of them have tried to work angles to get their own private sector trips into space. What I do not know is how much real influence they will have on globally important issues. I know for a fact all of them are aware of the disaster that is 'ITAR', a regime whose purported purpose was to prevent transfer of weapons related knowledge and hardware and whose actual, unintended consequence, has been the creation of competitive non-US space industries. Niches, whether biological or market, will be filled and all the State's horses and all the State's men working together can do nought but delay that inevitability.

With Hillary Clinton in State, there is a personal channel of communication available for this issue from within the transition team membership. I very much hope they use it.

(6)

SpaceX tested the Falcon 9 a few days ago, November 22nd, on their giant test stand in McGregor Texas. I have reported previously as SpaceX increased the numbers of engines by a few at a time each test and am happy to report they have now succeeded in firing the nine Merlin engines in a sequence and for a period of time identical to that of a real mission.

Nine engines fired for 160 seconds; two were then shutdown and the remaining seven burned until the 178 second mark. The two engine shutdowns are done in the later stages of flight when much of the fuel mass has been burned off and the 'G forces' climb. This spare 'oomph' means a Falcon 9 can lose two engines and still reach the required orbit.

The stage developed 855,000 pounds of thrust at sea level. This will increase to about 1 million in vacuum. The Falcon 9 is not a little rocket.

A first flight attempt is expected from their Cape Canaveral pad during the first half of the coming year. I am not betting on a successful first flight, although it is a possibility. While the Merlin is now a fairly well understood engine, there are complex dynamic interactions between engines when you fly with more than one. I am sure Elon's team has modeled and tested to the best of their ability, but simulations and ground tests are still 'theory' relative to real live flight.

I have no doubts whatever that the SpaceX team will have Falcon 9 flying for hire within the next two years.

You can watch the test here

(11)

I am sure most of our readers are not amongst those who can write checks for $200,000 to fly Virgin Galactic a few years from now. The first will be 'high flyers' of the sort who always subsidize new market frontiers. They will pay the high price to be early adopters and by doing so they will generate the capital required to lower costs as companies begin to fight for market share. That is capitalism at work and it is just the way we like it.

Markets have a certain ponderous inevitability. They take time. If you have neither the money nor the desire to wait twenty years, there is another option.

At this point I must stop a moment and note that I am on the Board of Directors of the National Space Society (NSS) and have been part of the space activist cadre since Adam first looked up and dreamed of giant space colonies at Lagrange 5. So I really want lots of folk to look at this competition and join in.

This is not a lottery of any kind. The NSS and Virgin Galactic have worked together to make it possible for one person to earn their way onto a SpaceShipTwo flight near the end of the decade. All you have to do is join NSS and work your butt off in the community promoting the future of humans in space. The person who is judged to have done this most successfully will be selected as our Space Ambassador. They will be expected to work even harder at this task upon their return to terra firma.

I will not be signing up myself as I am hoping I will find other ways to earn my way off planet. The point of this initiative is to let folk like you believe you can turn your dreams into reality.

Ad Astra... and next year in L5!

(5)

The people at ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organization, have scheduled their first lunar probe for October 22nd.

You can read the Times of India and The Hindu for more information.

I sometimes wonder if we will see a second 'Race To The Moon', this time betwixt India and China for pretty much the same reasons as the first. If so, I hope to be sitting in the lounge watching the news with a Guinness in hand after flying Virgin Galactic to the Bigelow Luna.

Speaking of tourism... Richard Garriot flies to the space station today. There is no bar there, but hopefully the Russians keep a little stash of vodka for 'medicinal purposes'.

Richard's aunch occurred successfully at 3am EDT. Docking will happen Tuesday and there will be live coverage on NASA Select starting at 0530 EDT.

(1)

Richard Garriot, son of Skylab astronaut Owen Garriot, will leave Kazakhstan for the International Space Station on Sunday, October 12. He is also going to be a bit creative with his sojourn:

Inspired by his artist mother, Richard will be hosting an art show in space. The show will incorporate art created by his mother, by sculptors, art submitted by artists through a competition and also art that Richard will create during his time in space. After Richard's mission, the art will be put up for auction to benefit the Challenger Center.

You can find out more here.

(45)

Over the last week I kept running across articles and video about a heavy weight couple who lost weight after the embarrassment of being asked to move to a different seat so the airplane could take off safely. On one Fox News show the talking heads went on about the times they were asked to move. None of them were particularly large so they talked overly long about how a jumbo jet could be unsafe to fly because a mere wisp of a talking headess was in the wrong seat.

This riled me a bit and has been roiling about in the back of my mind for some days. The people who write or talk about these things are supposedly educated, but the level of ignorance shown makes me very worried about what schools are actually requiring students to learn, even at the university level.

In hopes some of these ignorant but otherwise intelligent folk happen to drop by Samizdata, I will provide a bit of a remedial lesson in basic physics and a bit on aeroplanes as well.

I am hoping everyone is at least familiar with what a lever is, or at the very least a childhood teeter-totter. If two children sit on a board on opposite ends, they can find a balance point regardless of how fat or skinny the two are. One can move closer to the fulcrum, the thing upon which the board rests, or farther away. A child of a given weight at a given distance from the fulcrum creates what is known as a torque. The two children can balance these torques: Mass of child 1 times distance from fulcrum = Mass of child 2 times distance from fulcrum. In more typical notation: m1 * d1 = m2 * d2.

If you understand a teeter-totter, you can understand everything else I have to say.

An aeroplane has a number of points that are of interest. The most important to this discussion are the 'center of lift' and the 'center of gravity'. If you had a very hefty jack and the underside of your 747 could handle it without a requirement for body work afterwards, a single point at which the aircraft could balance like a toy on a pencil is the center of gravity. This is just like the balance point of the children, but with the entire class and their teddy bears instead.

The fulcrum is the center of lift. This is a balance point created by the airflow over the surfaces of the plane in flight. Ideally, and in the simple case, the center of lift should be near the center of mass and both should be on the center line of the aeroplane. If one wing were longer than the other, the center of lift would shift away from the center line. This would not be a good thing unless you are Burt Rutan and know how to do tricky things which no normal mortal would think of doing.

In practice it is impossible to get the two exactly together. If the center of lift is forward of the cg the airplane will want to pitch up. If it is aft of the cg it will try to pitch down. Similarly if it is to the right or left of the cg. the airplane will want to roll right or left.

You can control the attitude of the aeroplane by neutralizing these forces. If you have a pitch up tendency, you dial in a bit of pitch down on the elevator trim tabs. Likewise for the other directions. In worst case you can use the control column and use deflection of the elevator or ailerons themselves to counteract the problem. It is not wise to fly like this under normal circumstances. If you run out of trim you have either not done your weight and balance papers properly or you are flying a Lancaster to Europe in WWII with a max bomb and fuel load and expect you are going to die anyway.

Airplanes have a bunch of numbers which pilots have to know. Among them are the 'aft cg limit' and the 'forward cg limit'. Basically these mean you are too tail heavy or nose heavy to fly with enough of a safety margin to deal with the unexpected. They are not absolute limits. You are not going to reach the 'my god we are all going to die!' limit unless everyone piles into the tail and the pilot can not keep the nose down even with full downward elevator deflection.

Inside the cabin the pilot has readings off the landing gear that tell him what the weight and balance looks like after all the luggage, consumables and passengers are on board. If those indicators show the aeroplane is approaching the aft limit he or she will have a flight attendant pick someone from far aft and move them as far forward as possible.

That is all this whole storm in a teacup story was about. It is standard aviation practice that goes back to the first time Wilbur took Orville along with him.

(2)

I just received this note in private email from a fellow board member of the National Space Society:

For those who haven't been on a news site or station in the last few hours, a small asteroid that was discovered *this morning* is going to enter the atmosphere over the Sudan at 10:46 PM EDT. Estimated size is in the 10 ft range. It is not expected to reach the surface, but it *is* expected to create a 1 kiloton fireball. Should be visible from northern Africa and possibly southern Europe, so there might be a chance of live video on one of the major outlets. Interestingly, I am having trouble getting into spaceweather.com and space.com, so it looks like people are paying some attention. - JP

So if you are one of our readers who happens to be well to the south in Europe, please do report back if you see anything a couple hours from now. I will be watching for videos to show up in blogs and the big outlets.

We can all be very, very happy it is only a couple meters in diameter.... this time.

Note: The email seemed to indicate today; the only article I have found elsewhere so far seems to indicate last night. I am still looking...

(5)

Rand Simberg is live blogging the conference in Lake Buena Vista and from his initial description it sounds like all the players are there.

It is really not too difficult to understand why the military would find the idea of beaming power from space to a front line post a more appealing solution to energy requirements than driving trucks loaded with petrol hundreds of miles through ambush country.

Power from space starts to sound cheap when compared to a cost of as high as $200 per gallon for gasoline pumped into your Hummvee on the battlefield.

(10)

The launch live webcast link is here..

2322. This could be an interesting evening. As you know, the third launch failed at staging. It was quickly determined that the cause of this was a 'burp' from the Merlin engine after shutdown. There is some fuel and oxidizer left in the system when the engine shuts down, and in a regen engine there will be a bit more because the oxidizer is warmed and the nozzle cooled by running it through tubes around the outside of the bell. When they checked test data they found this had actually occurred in a ground test but the transient was 'down in the weeds' at sea level pressure and had not been noticed as it was perhaps only a tenth of an atmosphere of pressure and thus hidden in the 1.0 sea level pressure. At high altitude the ambient was near zero so the burp was significant. What happened then, was that after a perfect first stage burn and a flawless staging... the engine burped perhaps 2 seconds after sep and was enough to cause the first stage to ram the second stage just as it was ready to fire.
For flight four they have raised the delay from first stage cutoff to stage separation from 3 second to 5 seconds to account for this. There were no other flight anomalies of any significance on flight 3; flight 2 with the earlier Merlin regen engine has successfully staged and fired the Kestrel engine almost to second stage cut off so I am hopeful we will see a successful orbital insertion today.

2349. Fueling is in progress and near completion, or at least as near as they will go this early. The final top off will not occur until later in the launch. I am wondering if this might be partly to prevent the RP1 (kerosene) from chilling down as much as it did on a previous flight. Ah, the webcast has just now gone live.

0011. They are into the terminal count but they have been giving us loads of talking head chatter instead of the interesting stuff. I'd much rather listen to the real internal loop than people assigned to interpret to us. There is in any case only about 5 minutes to go.

0013. As you can see if you are watching the video, the tower is retracted, and we are now hearing the real control loop. 2:30 to go! Launch director gave a green, range is green, about 1 minute to go!

0018. She's going up and looking great so far! Max Q... first stage going great. Getting close to time for pitch over and MECO.

0021. Second stage is burning beautifully!!!!!! There is no roll problem this time. Now we wait 4 minutes as she goes down range.

0022. No sign of roll anomalies like on flight 2. The slosh baffles are doing their job. 315 km high now...

0024. Almost there... the bell glows red hot but it is built for that. We now have lost signal, probably due to range.
We are waiting now for whether we got the orbital insertion.... and.... THEY HAVE DONE IT!!!!!!

0043. They are in orbit with their dummy satellite. The only things we need to hear now is whether they get a successful recovery of the 1st stage from the Pacific. It should have come down on parachutes but I don't expect I will hear about that until 'tomorrow'. I feel a bit like Elon... I hardly know what to say. I must admit that I was here screaming like the SpaceX employees and I now feel just limp, tired and very, very happy. So... another Falcon 1 launch latter this year and then on to the much larger Falcon 9 next year!

(1)

The SpaceX test flight 4 of the Falcon 1 launch vehicle is scheduled for Sunday. That means around midnight in my part of the world and earlier in the USA.

I will be here as usual, giving a blow by blow live-blogging of the event. My gut feel says they make it this time. But that and a shiny new pound coin will get you a small cup of coffee at the local coffee shop.

Here is a very nice Q&A with Elon Musk done by the Washington Post.

2300. The launch webcast link is now up.. Coverage should start in about a half hour.

(8)

It is now officially official as the awaited press release has been officially released:

As mentioned in my update last month, we do expect to conduct a launch countdown in late September as scheduled.

Having said that, it is still possible that we encounter an issue that needs to be investigated, which would delay launch until the next available window in late October. If preparations go smoothly, we will conduct a static fire on Saturday and launch sometime between Tuesday and Thursday (California time).

The SpaceX team worked hard to make this launch window, but we also took the time to review data from Flight 3 in detail. In addition to us reviewing the data, we had several outside experts check the data and conclusions. No flight critical problems were found apart from the thrust transient issue.

Flight 5 production is well underway with an expected January completion date, Flight 6 parts are on order and Flight 7 production will begin early next year. We are now in steady state production of Falcon 1 at a rate of one vehicle every four months, which we will probably step up to one vehicle every two to three months in 2010.

- Elon Musk

I will keep you informed as news comes in and if at all possible will live blog the launch from here on the other side of the planet from Kwaj as I have on each of the previous Falcon test flights.

Monday, Sep 22: The engine test was accomplished successfully over the weekend so we are on track to see a flight 4 launch attempt later this week

Tuesday, Sep 23: The flight is scheduled for today if you are in the US, or 'tomorrow' if you are where I sit. Window opens around 2300 UTC and runs until 0400 UTC. That will be afternoon or evening for US readers.

Tuesday, Sep 23: They are swapping out a component in the second stage and the launch is now note expected until Sunday, Sep 28 at the earliest. Current range usage window lasts until next Wed, October 1.

(4)

Officially unofficial (as yet) information has it that SpaceX will try another test launch from Kwaj before the end of this month.

I will keep you informed.

(2)

If you are a lover of aviation history, you may want to help them out.

(10)

Bruce Dickinson, front man for the heavy metal rock group, Iron Maiden, is a qualified civil aviation pilot and was involved in flying home tourists left stranded by the collapse of a UK tourist agency. A nice story.

Of course, if I am on a flight that Bruce is piloting, I'll insist he plays something really, really loud during takeoff. Go Bruce!

(11)

The National Space Society held a press event at the National Press Club today in conjunction with the Discovery Channel to announce the results of power beaming tests carried out in the Hawaiian Islands earlier this year, between January and April. The testing was funded and filmed by the Discovery Channel as an episode of an eight part 'Discovery Project Earth' series and should be airing tonight in the US.

The briefing was given by John C. Mankins, COO of Managed Energy Technologies LLC who actually built and carried out the tests and shared the podium with Mark Hopkins, Senior Vice President of the National Space Society. The house was packed, standing room only with more people in the hallway,.according to an attendee whom I interviewed.

John Mankins and his crew built a portable and modular energy transmission system for under a million dollars. This was not just a technological feasiblity study. We have known for decades that it is possible to transmit power via microwaves over long distances. What the Mankins test showed was how it can be done in a real world situation. They had to work around bureaucratic approvals which limited the total power; they had to deal with tribal religious requirements that nothing be left on the sacred volcano over night and they had to build equipment that could be carried to a site, plugged together, aimed and turned on.

They succeeded. 1 watt of power was beamed from a portable antenna on Maui to a small receiving antenna on Hawaii, 147 kilometers away.

The equipment was not engineered for efficiency nor high power, both of which are possible. Mankins and the Discovery Channel team have succeeded in what they set out to do: they have an iconic real world demonstration that shows the key technology behind Geosynchronous Solar Power Satellites works.

(15)

I thought I would let all of you be the first to know I have won my election bid to the National Space Society Board of Directors.

The last time I served on the board it was still called the L5 Society :-)

(8)

As a fairly regular user of Heathrow Airport and other UK airports such as Gatwick - the former has suffered all manner of problems due to loss of baggage, massive queues - this, on the face of it, looks a good development, but I have my reservations, as I will explain later:

Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) -- BAA Ltd., the owner of London's Heathrow airport, should be broken up and its Gatwick and Stansted terminals sold off to foster competition in the U.K. capital, antitrust regulators said.

The unit of Spanish builder Grupo Ferrovial SA provides a poor service to airlines and passengers and has shown a lack of initiative in planning for additional capacity, the Competition Commission said today, recommending that the company should also be stripped of either Glasgow or Edinburgh airport in Scotland. BAA said the analysis was ``flawed.''

Hmm. The problem partly stems from the fact that when BAA was originally privatised by the former Tory government, it was sold as a monopoly. That is not, in and of itself, a terrible thing so long as there are other competing transportation businesses. But there were not other big airports owned by non-BAA businesses to compete, especially against the crucial hub of Heathrow. In a previous Samizdata posting on the Snafu of the opening of Heathrow's Terminal Five, one commenter pointed out that one issue that is sometimes overlooked in issues like this is restrictions on new airport builds by the planning authorities. Well indeed. I think there is a good case for building an airport to the eastern side of London, on the flat lands that sit to the north of the Thames (it is not as if this is an area of outstanding natural beauty). It would relieve some of the air traffic now coming over the capital, which would be good for abating noise as well as removing a potential safety and security issue of thousands of aircraft flying into land over the middle of London.

Getting planning permission for a new airport is, under the current system, very difficult. Yes, there are, in the UK, a lot of old, disused military bases left by the RAF and the USAF, such as in Oxfordshire, Lincolnshire, and East Anglia and bits of Kent. However, the trouble is that such bases were deliberately built miles away from major urban centres, to prevent the danger that an attack on such a base would hit a large city. So you have th situation of huge runways turning into rubble in the middle of Suffolk but of no real use to commuters in London. So we would need something a bit closer. Another matter to bear in mind is that southern England is not very large: airspace is at a premium and already crowded, if not quite so bad as during the Cold War, when the UK was covered in airbases.

I am not, as a free market purist, at all happy to see a private business broken up at the behest of a state regulator, but then we should recall that BAA was originally put together as a state business and sold as a monopoly as a matter of state policy. When its current owners, the Spanish firm Ferrovial, bought BAA, they must have known that failure to sort out the problems might have incurred the wrath of the regulator. It would be nice in a total free market not to have to bother about such things, but it would have been failure of basic due diligence for Ferrovial's lawyers not to have warned their managers that competition issue might arise. Well, it jolly well has arisen at last. We would not, as the old joke about the Irishman giving street directions to a tourist, want to start from here. But here is where we are. If there is a chance of putting a large, competitive fire up the backsides of BAA's management, there is a chance, however slender, that the experience of coming to and from the UK by air might be a tad more pleasant in future.

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The C-130 based laser you have read about here seems to be doing quite well in testing, and although I have not yet read a document on the topic, there are at least some who would like it deployed to Iraq. The weapon is even better than I had thought it would be. No, let us be truthful. I am stunned at the capabilities they are demonstrating. According to a Wired article (hat tip to Glenn Reynolds):

According to the developers, the accuracy of this weapon is little short of supernatural. They claim that the pinpoint precision can make it lethal or non-lethal at will. For example, they say it can either destroy a vehicle completely, or just damage the tires to immobilize it. The illustration shows a theoretical 26-second engagement in which the beam deftly destroys "32 tires, 11 Antennae, 3 Missile Launchers, 11 EO devices, 4 Mortars, 5 Machine Guns" -- while avoiding harming a truckload of refugees and the soldiers guarding them.

The author goes on at length about claims the weapon could be used for plausibly deniable standoff attacks. It is my belief he is being insufficiently creative when he imagines what such attacks would entail. One might take out a communications facility by targeting a turnbuckle on an antenna guy wire; or a power plant by blowing away a standoff and dropping a high voltage line onto others; or perhaps blowing a hole in an oil filled transformer. I can easily think of ways of disabling infrastructure with this device in ways that would leave enemy repair crews terribly puzzled.

You just have to think outside the box: new weapons imply new definitions of the possible.

(1)

Spacex has released the full high definition video of the flight from liftoff through the first stage impact on the second stage, complete with audio signal. It is really worth watching!

(72)

Earlier this afternoon Perry and I had a lengthy editorial telephone discussion on the subject of Georgia. While we agreed broadly there was one area in which we had intense debate until I finally figured out how we were talking past each other.

The question is, how the hell did US intelligence assets miss the Russian Black Sea fleet movements? How did they miss the massive transport job of the troops and their logistical tail? They did not just materialize in position. It takes time and planning to make such moves. I will leave the detail of that to Perry as he seems to have been thinking about it in great detail.

My take is there is a limited amount of time available on the black satellites. The manpower and resources have been re-targeted on the Middle East. Orbits have been shifted to give maximal coverage in those areas of interest and experienced personnel have moved to 'where the action is'.

This is not to say Russia is being ignored. It is however a very big place and I am going to guess that the time between scanning particular areas has greatly lengthened. Russian troop movements are mainly rail based and with enough eyeballs and Cold War era periodic coverage one might hope to pick up changes in traffic patterns and notice "something is going on". But... this requires a certain periodicity in coverage. Changes in static positions like silos and strategic air bases are much easier to pick up even with occasional coverage. Dynamic changes, such as train and road movements are a different story. You have to have a satellite taking pictures at just the right time or often enough to pick up a signal just by chance.

This is what took Perry and I awhile to meet minds on: I have been thinking of this issue as a communications/information theory problem. How often do you have to sample an area to notice a change in the density of train traffic? I would posit it would have to be several times a week at the very least if the spike in traffic was huge and extended; if the spike were smaller and flatter you would need to sample daily or multiple times daily. You would have to do it at night and through clouds as well if you were to get a statistical value high enough to ring alarm bells. It is an issue of sampling rate versus the highest detectable signal frequency, pure and simple.

I doubt they have even been scanning large areas of Russia more than a few times a week (I suspect much less often) except in areas of nuclear strategic interest. They could easily miss large troop movements in a part of Russia which is not of great national interest to the United States.

Let the discussion begin. There is a lot of meat on this bone!

(3)

Here is the official word from SpaceX on the cause of the failure last weekend:

On August 2 nd, Falcon 1 executed a picture perfect first stage flight, ultimately reaching an altitude of 217 km, but encountered a problem just after stage separation that prevented the second stage from reaching orbit. At this point, we are certain as to the origin of the problem. Four methods of analysis – vehicle inertial measurement, chamber pressure, onboard video and a simple physics free body calculation – all give the same answer.

The problem arose due to the longer thrust decay transient of our new Merlin 1C regeneratively cooled engine, as compared to the prior flight that used our old Merlin 1A ablatively cooled engine. Unlike the ablative engine, the regen engine had unburned fuel in the cooling channels and manifold that combined with a small amount of residual oxygen to produce a small thrust that was just enough to overcome the stage separation pusher impulse.

We were aware of and had allowed for a thrust transient, but did not expect it to last that long. As it turned out, a very small increase in the time between commanding main engine shutdown and stage separation would have been enough to save the mission.

The question then is why didn't we catch this issue? Unfortunately, the engine chamber pressure is so low for this transient thrust -- only about 10 psi -- that it barely registered on our ground test stand in Texas where ambient pressure is 14.5 psi. However, in vacuum that 10 psi chamber pressure produced enough thrust to cause the first stage to recontact the second stage.

It looks like we may have flight four on the launch pad as soon as next month. The long gap between flight two and three was mainly due to the Merlin 1C regen engine development, but there are no technology upgrades between flight three and four.

Good Things About This Flight

* Merlin 1C and overall first stage performance was excellent
* The stage separation system worked properly, in that all bolts fired and the pneumatic pushers delivered the correct impulse
* Second stage ignited and achieved nominal chamber pressure
* Fairing separated correctly
* We discovered this transient problem on Falcon 1 rather than Falcon 9
* Rocket stages were integrated, rolled out and launched in seven days
* Neither the near miss potential failures of flight two nor any new ones were present
* The only untested portion of flight is whether or not we have solved the main problem of flight two, where the control system coupled with the slosh modes of the liquid oxygen tank. Given the addition of slosh baffles and significant improvements to the control logic, I feel confident that this will not be an issue for the upcoming flight four."

So it looks like I may have to stay up all night for you again in September!

(4)

Elon Musk, CEO and owner of SpaceX, has released a statement (or whatever you call it when done in a Q&A!) in which he says:

We're not quite ready to release details on the initial investigation yet, but we should do it very soon. We think we have a very good idea but I don't want to get ahead of ourselves and then be wrong. We definitely know where the problem occurred, but 'why?' is the question. We think we know, but have to be sure. We think it's very small and will require a tiny change, so tiny that if we had another rocket on the pad we could launch tomorrow.

I will let you know when I see a more final report.

(16)

0023. LOX tanking is in progress; there has been some audio coming across now on the live feed.

0025: Note that they are in an 'unplanned hold' at the moment. Second tank LOX fill is happening and I believe I heard them discussing Helium pressurization.

0027: On the video you can see the LOX venting on the second stage.

0031: If you think the video quality s... is less than optimal, you are not alone!

0045: http://www.spacex.com/webcast.php in case you don't know where to go. There is an Aussie presenter at SpaceX you will notice.

0058: I am having diffs due to the bandwidth the video is sucking up, so my posting may be more erratic than I would have liked. When you see the public affairs team again, the thing behind them marked Dragon is the mockup of the manned capsule they will be flying to ISS in the 2012 time frame.

0129: You may have noticed they lost video for awhile until someone rebooted their Mac streaming application. We are down into the t-30 range and all is looking good so far. Other than my Virgin Media cable connection which keeps seems to go off line entirely every now and again...

0133: This rock is so highly automated that there are a lot fewer people acting as controllers than in old fashioned 20th century artillery rockets. Things will not get really interesting until we get into the last few minutes. Also, remember that they have on board cameras so we will get live feeds from the rocket during ascent. Last time we had a really good view of the 2nd stage engine bell glowing red hot as it fired.

0246: My link was down for about 45 minutes... I am hoping it will stay up long enough for me to watch the launch! Looks like they are still in a hold so I have not missed anything big.

0251: The detanking is something they did last time as well. If things take too long, the fuel starts getting cold and this caused a shutdown on flight 2 because the thrust is below nominal if the temps are wrong.

0310: Since I have to sit and wait like everyone else, perhaps I can give a bit more explanation. They have a Helium tank there for pressurization I presume, at least from the size of it. Helium is a super cryogen. It makes LOX look like burning petrol by comparison. If they sit too long, the Helium starts chilling the fuel, which is Kerosene. You want your fuel and oxidizer to be warm and volatile when you
inject them; otherwise some of the energy is taken from thrust to heat them up. That lowers the efficiency of the engine, something usually measured as ISP. The computer controls know the expected profile from initial injection to when the igniter fires and as the burn starts and stabilizes. If it is outside of the expected band, the engine is shutdown.

0319: The have restarted the count and launch is now scheduled for about 0300 UTC, which would be about 0400 here since we are on BDT. Weather at Kwajalein is crystal clear by the way, at least from the weather map!

0325:They are back on the air doing the recycle. Incidentally, you may have noticed that the webcast appears to be done by a video camera focused on a computer screen at the Hawthorne facility. My guess is they have a single circuit from Kwaj and for security reasons wanted to totally isolate the public net from the operations net. I would do the same, but perhaps a little differently. It may simply come down to them having too little time to do anything more than this work around. This is all pure speculation on my part, but it is based on doing a paper system level design for an LCC for someone else.

0338: It looks like along with the rewind of the count we are also getting a replay of the video clips we saw earlier... I'd rather listen to the control loop myself!

0344: Their Mac video application just fell over again... and a few minutes later the talking heads are repeating the same description of the Falcon 1 that they did a couple hours ago. Meanwhile, while they jabber on, from other sources on Kwaj I read that everything is in the green. We should be about 15 minutes or less from launch now.

0352: While they are showing silly repeats, terminal count is about to start, or probably has. Everything is go for launch at the moment.

0403: A terminal abort, But there could still be a launch tonight. Er this morning. I think this is a good time for me to put the kettle on...

0415: If you have been reading the announcements, they think they may recycle the count to t-10, which means they have had a minor issue. The automatic check out that happens at ignition is extraordinary fascist and they want it that way: you can't bring it back to the pad once you've launched!

0426: Wow. They have recycled to t-10 terminal count start in almost no time!

0440: They called it an anomaly. I wish they had not killed the video so quickly... the plume from the first stage was looking rather strange just before that, with streaks and instabilities that didn't look right to me, also I was seeing a greyish color that did not seem quite right. But I could be totally wrong. We will just have to wait for more information. Not what I was hoping for tonight, but this is rocket science... The most likely response to an 'anomaly' is flight termination.

0530: Well, I am calling it quits as there is unlikely to be any real news for quite some time. The vehicle either blew itself up or was commanded to do so; I have the impression it performed its own self disassembly but have nothing to back that up. My own eyeballs are on the new regen engine bell but I will with hold judgement until I have had a chance to watch the video again and more importantly have some expert feedback. But tonight, with my bed calling, I will place my bets on the new engine, perhaps the regen cooling channels. It is a wild stab in the dark and I will probably disagree with myself by the time I have some sleep. But there you go.

Good night all.

0552: Elon issued a statement, and here is an excerpt on the problem:

It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit on this flight. On the plus side, the flight of our first stage, with the new Merlin 1C engine that will be used in Falcon 9, was picture perfect. Unfortunately, a problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to be held together. This is under investigation and I will send out a note as soon as we understand exactly what happened.

(5)

Spacex will attempt the third launch of the Falcon 1 tonight at 1600 PDT / 1900 EDT / 2300 UTC. You can go here and test your video set up with the available webtest.php link.

Video will go live around 30 minutes before the scheduled launch time. I will attempt to add comments here as it happens if I have any thoughts that might be useful to our readers.

(11)

SpaceX has just test fired nine engines at full thrust in the full Falcon 9 configuration, a test I was not expecting to see until this fall at the earliest. According to their press release:

Major milestone achieved towards demonstrating U.S. transport to the International Space Station following retirement of the Space Shuttle McGregor TX - August 1, 2008 - Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) conducted the first nine engine firing of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle at its Texas Test Facility outside McGregor on July 31st. A second firing on August 1st completed a major NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) milestone almost two months early. At full power, the nine engines consumed 3,200 lbs of fuel and liquid oxygen per second, and generated almost 850,000 pounds of force - four times the maximum thrust of a 747 aircraft. This marks the first firing of a Falcon 9 first stage with its full complement of nine Merlin 1C engines.Once a near term Merlin 1C fuel pump upgrade is complete, the sea level thrust will increase to 950,000 lbf, making Falcon 9 the most powerful single core vehicle in the United States. "This was the most difficult milestone in development of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and it also constitutes a significant achievement in US space vehicle development. Not since the final flight of the Saturn 1B rocket in 1975, has a rocket had the ability to lose any engine or motor and still successfully complete its mission," said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX. "Much like a commercial airliner, our multi-engine design has the potential to provide significantly higher reliability than single engine "We made a major advancement from the previous five engine test by adding four new Merlin engines at once," said Tom Mueller, Vice President of Propulsion for SpaceX. "All phases of integration went smoothly and we were elated to see all nine engines working perfectly in concert."

I will admit to being caught totally flat footed by this announcement. Given that the Falcon 1 launch at Kwajalein is due any time now I felt certain the company's full attention would be focused there.

I guess Elon and his crew are better multi-taskers than I gave them credit for.

Falcon 9 first stage on test stand: nine Merlin 1C engines at full thrust.
Photo: courtesy SpaceX

(1)

I have just received some photos from one of our XCOR readers who has had the good fortune to actually fly in one these beauties.

Getting ready for takeoff.
Photo: With thanks to Mike Massee/XCOR/Rocket Racing League

Rolling down the runway with a tail of fire.
Photo: With thanks to Mike Massee/XCOR/Rocket Racing League

It must have been really loud where the photographer was standing!
Photo: With thanks to Mike Massee/XCOR/Rocket Racing League

You can also see some flight video and an interview with the test pilot here .

(17)

and they is US!

US Marine MV-22 Osprey's landing in Jordan.
Photo: courtesy of US DOD

(1)

This is not the first time I have seen images of this bird in flight, but it is the first public venue at which a Rocket Racer has flown and the second rocket powered aircraft ever to fly at the Oshkosh AirVenture. The first was a few years back (four? five?) and was also an XCOR powered craft, the EZ-Rocket, trailered from Mojave to Oshkosh by that company.

The XCOR engined Rocket Racer is a larger Lox/Kerosene rocket plane with at about 10 minutes airborne endurance if the burn times are well utilized. The pilot, Astronaut Richard Searfoss, certainly knows his burns and knows the engine inside out as he was test pilot for XCOR during engine development.

A second Rocket Racer is also on display at AirVenture, with an Armadillo Aerospace alcohol/LOX engine. It has not yet received FAA certification but they hope that will occur before the Reno Races when the Rocket Racing League hopes to have both craft in the air together.

For now though, a hearty congratulations to our readers at XCOR who made it possible.

XCOR engined Rocket Racer in flight at Oshkosh. This was the only reasonable photo I could find: the email address of the press contact for RRL given on their site bounces!
Photo: Rocket Racing League

(0)

The first WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft was rolled out of its hanger in the Mojave desert on Monday. The second stage vehicle, SpaceShipTwo, has been held back due to the ongoing investigations into the test stand accident of one year ago. Although that accident was little more than a plumbing and pressure test, there is as yet no full understanding of exactly what happened. Because of this uncertainty, Burt has delayed much development of SpaceShipTwo so as to avoid building things he might later have to rip out. This is the reason why the target date for passenger service has slipped into the 2010 time frame.

Still, the roll out of WK2 is a major milestone. As you can see in the photo, it is not a small aircraft! You gain an even better impression of that size from the raw press release video clip. (if you do not have a quick time plug-in, you may need to download first)

Monday July 28, 2008. Roll out of WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft 'VMS Eve' at Mojave Spaceport.
Photo: courtesy of Virgin Galactic

(7)

You may remember I reported earlier this month that the launch window for the 3rd flight of the Falcon 1 opened around July 30 or thereabouts. We are now into that period and it looks like we might get a launch before the five day window closes: Falcon 1 is on the pad at Kwajalein.

There has been very little information floating around on the launch schedule this time so I will have to keep watching closely to make sure I do not miss a last minute announcement.

I will keep you informed.

(12)

At the beginning of the week I reported that in the EU you can no longer purchase a ticket to fly in a DC-3. However, if the need for the classic warbird experience strikes you, there are some truly amazing opportunities available in the US.

I was just perusing my August issue of The Aeroplane and found a special offer in it. With the reader code from that issue you can fly in not one, but two incredible aircraft, a B-17 and a B-25, for about four hundred quid. Check out the Yankee Air Museum if you want to see these gorgeous babes in flight.

They are scheduling flights from several locations in the US over the next several months so if you are traveling in the US, see if you can align your stars for an experience that I would just about die for.

(15)

If you are interested in a much longer exposition of what you have been reading in my aerospace postings over the years, listen to Burt Rutan as he describes how the socialistic model of State space flight has done exactly what socialism always does. It delivers the equivalent of rough brown toilet paper that is subsidized, overpriced anyway, and rationed because there is not enough of it. He does not say it in those words, but it is a view with which he would clearly agree.

He also shows why the Capitalist Space Race (the race to make money!) is going to take the lead in a surprisingly short time and that it will effectively be putting an equivalent of 5 times the NASA budget into human spaceflight within a very few years.

And by the way... I do not know the names of the other investors and developers he hints at, although I am aware (under NDA) of a few who are low profile and not seen on the Discovery Channel.

(4)

Here is a fascinating teaser for a Janes subscription only article:

US military pinpoints date for HELLADS ground test. The United States military told Jane's it is on schedule for a 2010 ground test of a lightweight high-energy laser that could be installed on a tactical aircraft to destroy missiles, rockets and mortars. The laser, known as the High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS), is being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and General Atomics, along with several other contractors.

It is all coming together about as I expected, although perhaps a little faster than I really believed.

(3)

Flicking through the television sports channels yesterday morning, I came across the Red Bull air race series, with the latest heat run out of Detroit. Fantastic. In terms of sheer skill and eye-popping adrenalin entertainment, this race takes a lot of beating. It makes Formula 1 motor racing, for example, look positively tame, even though I have no doubt that the actual skills involved have a fair amount in common. For a start, the pilots will sometimes pull a G-force of up to 8 or 9 times, which is the sort of thing you associate with astronauts or jet fighter pilots, for which there is a need to wear a pressue suit to stop blacking out.

The race series is continuing in London soon. I am going to find out if I can get my hands on any tickets. It could be difficult.

Apologies if there is no link here - I am having a problem with this function today. A quick Google will bring it up: check out the great photos.

(7)

If you want to be a part of the most secretive of the New Space launch companies, here is your opportunity!

(5)

SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket has been test fired at Kwajalein as the last step in preparation for a July launch. This will be the first flight of the new regen engine which does not require an ablative coating on the nozzle. It is also the same technology as the engines for the larger Falcon-9 slated for launch at Cape Canaveral next year.

Protestations to the contrary, I would consider this to still be a developmental flight, even though it is carrying a customer payload. I wish them the best but it is still early days for their family of boosters. They are going to revolutionize the launch industry but revolutions require hard work and determination in the face of adversity.

That is why they call it rocket science.

(18)

I have been following the slow transition of laser weaponry from infancy to toddler over the last 25 years so I keep my eyes open for interesting developments in that area. This small item from Jane's (subscription only) is quite interesting:

Lasers for area defence. Raytheon is forging ahead with a demonstration programme to show that a laser can equal or better the performance of traditional gun-based systems, with greater development potential and at reduced cost. The company's Laser Area Defense System (LA DS) utilises the Phalanx platform, combined with current solid-state laser capability to tackle the very real threat of mortars and Katyusha rockets.

I saw video of a laser taking down two Katyusha's in flight quite some time ago and am pleased to see things developing apace. I can think of one small Middle Eastern democracy which might find a system of this type highly efficacious.

(9)

This is very cool.. I reckon 007 should get Q to make him one with all those lovely "additional features".

(9)

On May 29th, SpaceX tested the Falcon 9 first stage in its Macgregor Texas test stand with
five engines.

Rather impressive, n'est-ce pas?

(3)

'The Caballeros' of the National Space Security Office were awarded the National Space Society's prestigious 'Space Pioneer Award' this evening for their work in bringing the possibilities of Space Based Solar power to the attention of the powers that be and pretty much every one else.

Although these ideas have been known 'forever' amongst my circles, they have been out of the limelight for decades due to a Carter-era hatchet job.

So, congrats to our friends in DOD, and new found drinking buddy Coyote Smith!

The Caballeros receive their just rewards for saving the planet. Coyote is second from right. I'll add other names later.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Speaking of drinking... there is a party in the suite down the hall, so that is me away!

(11)

If you are interested in watching the Phoenix Mars Lander land, click here.

Phoenix is down! Congrats to the Phoenix team!

(16)

Under the title 'Physicists raise questions on EMR capabilities' Janes, (a subscription only publisher) reports:

Two US physicists have claimed that the European Mid-course Radar (EMR), due to be installed in the Czech Republic in a planned expansion of the US ballistic missile defence system, is substantially underpowered, and will form part of "a defence system that is unable to provide any discrimination services against missiles launched from Iran to the eastern half of the continental United States". George Lewis, associate director of the Peace Studies Program at Cornell University, and Theodore Postol, professor of science, technology, and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are both opponents of US missile defence plans.

Anyone who has followed military space systems should be quite familiar with the consistently negative and consistently incorrect claims of Dr. Postel. If one were to believe his writings in Scientific American and other publications in the 1980's we should never have tried to build anti-missile systems because they are impossible.

One must wonder if Dr Postel is sullying the good name of Physics in defense of his political preference for a global OK Corral gunfight, a world seemingly frozen in a timeless instant before the first gunfighter makes a false move. With only two gunfighters that standoff might well last a very long time and thankfully did. With more players the chance of a miscalculation ending in a free for all grows exponentially.

Thankfully, the good doctor was wrong in his eighties predictions about what would be possible now, so we are rapidly moving away from his MAD dream world.

The first decades of the age of nuclear weapons were an historical anomaly, Our newly operational systems will mature rapidly over the next two decades and in so doing will re-instate the natural balance between offense and defense.

(13)

The Royal Air Force marks its 90th birthday today. There will be a flypast over central London at 1pm, so if readers have a digital camera, keep it nearby.

(15)

Heathrow's Terminal Five, the one which is fingerprinting passengers even if they take domestic flights, has got off to a glorious start.

The British Airports Authority, now owned by Spain's Ferrovial, is a joke. In an ideal universe, it would be broken up - as it should never have been privatised as a monopoly in the first place. If the wannabe Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, wants a campaign issue, this is it.

Update: I should of course stress that BA, which operates out of the terminal, bears a heavy lump of the responsibility for this. Its share price is down today by more than 3%. At least BA feels the economic chill of this sort of mess, BAA does not. One commenter points out that hitches often happen at the start of a new venture, but that does really wash since one assumes - right? - that the baggage and check-in facilities at a new airport were beta-tested to make sure they work properly. One would like to think that this is standard procedure in any new operation.

(19)

XCOR's press conference will start in LA in a couple hours and I have just found that the embargo on the Lynx Spaceplane press release has been lifted. For those few lucky ones who happened to catch my earlier article and then wondered why it vanished, it was due to a communications SNAFU. The person who sent me the info forgot to state it was embargoed so I blogged it. An hour later I received a frantic phone call whilst I was watching a DVD and pulled it as soon as he explained the mistake.

In any case, there is now a lot more information about the Lynx showing up. Rand Simberg, one of my business partners, will be there and no doubt live blogging it.

Disclosures: I might add that I spent several months doing software support for the aerodynamics guy. :-)

The Lynx will fly within two years with Astronaut Searfoss at the controls.

Image: With thanks to XCOR.

(0)

XCOR will be holding a press conference this Wednesday about the spaceship they are building. It will be their third manned rocket powered vehicle so this is no idle threat.

This press event will be held Wednesday, March 26, at 10 a.m. in the Canon Room of the Beverly Hilton at 9876 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, CA 90210. Lunch will be served afterwards. The speaker will be XCOR test pilot Rick Searfoss. Rick has also flown the Space Shuttle three times as pilot and commander. If you are a media person who would like to attend, I presume you should call XCOR as soon as possible, although the information passed to me did not give any details on this.

According to a source associated with XCOR:

The prototype propulsion system for the Lynx now has more than two hundred flight equivalents on it and is in flight test now.

Fourteen engine runs yesterday, probably as many today.

The key to economic space transport is safe, reusable, and operable propulsion.No one else has anything like XCOR engines in that regard. Because engines are the most difficult and expensive part of the vehicle to develop, XCOR has a big advantage over its competitors. That includes giant firms like EADS Astrium.

In fact, no one anywhere has ever built anything even close to the economic efficiency of the XCOR engines.

I must of course note that I have worked as a consultant to XCOR, which basically means I know from the inside how good they are at this!

I would tell you more but I would have to shred you afterwards.

(16)

So there I was, your typical history buff aviation enthusiast, when I overhear a discussion in a cafe that there is a movie out called Horton hears a who.

"Oh fab!" thinks I, fully expecting said movie to feature the coolest Nazi jet fighter ever conceived (and if you know anything about conceptual late war German aviation, that is saying something). Maybe some contra-factual Luftwaffe 1946 scenario? Woo hoo!

Horten 229B

...Sadly it is about an elephant.

(14)

A nice article in the Daily Telegraph on how to make flying a bit more fun, which admittedly is a tough proposition as the enthusiasm for "security theatre", as some call it, makes for longer queues at airports. The term means security measures designed to give the impression of making us safer rather than actually doing so. I rather liked the article's almost heartbreakingly simple suggestion: pack a set of ear mufflers. They don't have to be big, but they can cut out the racket, such as the noise of a fractious baby child. I am going to get some. For years, I always dreaded the prospect of having to share part of the cabin with a set of screaming kids or for that matter, a chatty adult who did not get the hint that I'd rather read one of Lee Child's Jack Reacher thrillers than hear my neighbour's personal problems.

Problem solved!

(20)

I heard the very sad news earlier this evening. Arthur is a member of the Trinity: Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein, the greatest of the great Science Fiction writers. The first SF novel I ever read was "Red Sands Of Mars" when I was nine and by age fourteen I had read my way through every SF book in the Coraopolis Public Library and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

Arthur may have passed, but he is an immortal, a name which will be honored on far stars long after even after those of the greatest world leaders of our era are lost and forgotten.

(5)

Earlier today business partner Jim Bennett passed this SR-71 story along to me.

Mach 3.5 at 80,000 MSL... It just makes me go all quivery inside.

Not a single SR-71 was scrapped: every last one has been given an honoured and well-cared for retirement.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

(3)

A Boeing 40C which crashed in 1928 has been restored and flown.

Ain't she just gorgeous?

(0)

I do not normally like receiving emails selling me products, but I thought I would have to make an exception for this:

Dear Antoine,

Virgin Galactic is delighted to announce a new destination... space. Climb to 360,000ft. at a cruising speed of almost three times the speed of sound, in unprecedented levels of safety and comfort. See our beautiful planet from 63 miles up and experience the magic of weightlessness.

Redeem 200,000 miles to receive 10% off the cost of a spaceflight, that's an incredible $20,000 saving!* Join our future astronauts and book your place in history.

I look forward to the Nigerian version:

"My name is Mr.Moses Odiaka. I work in the credit and accounts department of Union Bank of NigeriaPlc,Lagos, Nigeria. I write you in respect of a foreign customer with a Virgin Galactica ticket. His name is Engineer Manfred Becker. He was among those who died in a plane crash here in Nigeria during the reign of late General Sani Abacha.

Since the demise of this our customer, Engineer Manfred Becker, who was an oil merchant/contractor, I have kept a close watch of the deposit records and accounts and since then nobody has come to claim the airmiles in this a/c as next of kin to the late Engineer. He had only 18.5mllion air miles in his a/c and the a/c is coded. It is only an insider that could produce the code or password of the deposit particulars. As it stands now,there is nobody in that position to produce the needed information other than my very self considering my position in the bank."

(9)

Somewhat over a week ago I did a posting here about maths. What use, I asked, is it? I always knew there were plenty of good answers, but the quantity and quality of what the Samizdata commentariat came up with amazed and delighted me, as it did a number of those same commenters. Someone even suggested we have other postings here about what use other educationally controversial things are, like poetry, Latin, and so on (I am thinking: media studies, which I definitely do not assume would have to be useless).

At the end of that piece I mentioned that Michael Jennings and I were about to record a conversation on this subject. Its been up and listenable to at my Education Blog for a while now, so apologies for the delay in mentioning it here, but far better a week late than never. This is not the kind of thing that will be going out of date any time soon. Here is the link to it.

I did most of the asking, and Michael did most of the answering, and it must be admitted that Michael is not what you would call a hundred per cent fluent speaker. It sounds like he suffers from the mild remnants of a childhood stutter, which means that he would not be the ideal choice to perform on Just A Minute, a BBC 4 radio show where your mission is to talk uninterrupted nonsense and where you get penalised for the slightest suggestion of hesitation or repetition. For, on the plus side, Michael does not do nonsense either, which is part of the reason why he still often hesitates. He wants to get things right. Basically, the man just knows so much, about so many things, which means that when he answers a question he is as likely as not choosing between four or five equally relevant facts that he might then serve up. You can see why the people in the City of London get so rich, if they have people like Michael keeping them informed about the world and its business. I strongly urge anyone who resents even the hint of a lack of verbal fluency to, as the Americans say and pardon my split infinitive, deal with it. I found my talk with Michael about maths and its uses absolutely fascinating. Word of mouth already tells me that others have liked listening to it also, and I know that many more will if they click on the above link.

The delay in telling Samizdata readers about this recorded conversation enables me also to mention here another such conversation involving Michael Jennings that has been more recently immortalised by another of London's libertarian recording angels (so to speak), Patrick Crozier. This time, the subject is aviation, landing slots at Heathrow, international aviation treaties, and the like. If you have any doubts about Michael's credentials as an expert on this industry (which of course could never have got off the ground without the relentless application of mathematics), then do what Patrick Crozier suggests and have a(nother?) read of this Samizdata posting from way back, on this same subject. Sadly, there was a mix up with the first attempt to record all this (might Patrick perhaps benefit from a media studies course?). The first conversation got stopped in mid flight through a wrong button getting pressed, and a separate concluding recording was done. But here they both are, and they are both well worth listening to. Patrick's brief bloggery about them is to be found at Transport Blog, here and here.

By the way, Patrick Crozier and I seem to have very divergent ideas about what is the correct volume at which to record these things, so be ready to do some nob twiddling if you go from one to the other. Technical comments about which of us got it wrong (both I dare say) and by how much would be very welcome. More media studies.

Getting back to what was said, there are many delightful moments in these discussions, especially in the maths one, which I would say, wouldn't I? Nevertheless, my absolute favourite bit of all happens towards the end of the first of the two aviation conversations, a soundbite which Patrick also featured on the short trailer that he did for that. The dialogue goes like this:

Patrick: "Can you trade your slots?"

Michael: "Er ... kind of. Not legally. Well, sort of."

There are times when hesitation is the most eloquent thing there is. Listen, and all is explained.

(22)

The EU has determined that passenger flights by DC-3's flown by Air Atlantique Classic Flight or any one else must cease when new regulations come into effect on July 16th of this year. These rules are imposed upon and override UK regulations, so even though the UK CAA is on the side of Air Atlantique, it will make little difference. Brussells, not London, is the capital of the United Kingdom.

The new rules require any aircraft with more than 19 passengers must have an armoured door to the crew cabin among numerous other modifications. They even demand an inflatable slide be added to the passenger door. There are no exceptions for classic aircraft and thus after July 16th the soulless gray men will make the European world that much more like themselves.

The EU Federal State is a special case of the general truth whose promulgation is a primary raison d'etre of Samizdata: The State is Not Your Friend.

Note: If you want to fly on a DC-3 before your betters prevent you for your own good, you had better hurry. You can reach AACF at 08703-304747 for reservations.

(23)

Well known aviation adventurer Steve Fossett has been declared dead after months of searching for his Nevada crash site using every tool available in the modern search and rescue arsenal.

Steve has joined that small, select group of aviation icons who flew off into the sunset, never to be seen again.

Not a bad way for an aviator to go, actually.

(56)

A successful interception of the falling NRO satellite by a US Navy SM-3 missile fired from the USS Lake Erie (CG-70) occurred at approximately 10:26 p.m. EST last night. It was hit over the Pacific and much of it will have re-entered and burned up by the time you read this. Remaining shrapnel is in a low orbit and will be down within a few weeks at most.

Great shooting guys!

(18)

The US has decided to shoot down a failed satellite. I am sure you have heard over hyped stories about the expected March re-entry already. Personally I had pretty much written it off as a non-story until now. Satellites re-enter all the time. A few bits reach the ground now and again. T'ain't no big deal.

The DOD Press release is rather professional obfuscation of what is going on. It is indeed true that hydrazine is really nasty stuff. You do not want to play with it unless you are in a bunny suit. However... the chance the fuel tank containing it will survive re-entry is rather low. Fuel tanks on space hardware are sturdy enough to hold the fuel and not much more. You couldn't play basketball with them, let alone ram them into a wall of stellar hot plasma at Mach 25.

The real reason they are shooting it down is to keep top secret hardware from showing up on the market in clear plastic pyramids... which is what the enterprising Aussie's did to the remnants of Skylab.

But whatever the reason, this is going to be interesting and I hope they release the videos they are going to take of the kill.

(9)

It is a fast moving world we live in and much has happened in the week or so since I last posted on this topic.

John Carmack, head of Armadillo Aerospace, believes they have an understanding of and cure for the 'hard starting' problem their Pixel and Texel rocket test articles exhibited in their attempts at the Moon Lander prize at Alamogordo this last October. The hard starts damaged several of their motors and even cracked the bell in one of them. They have a new igniter they are testing which may solve the problems.

There is much news at SpaceX after a long period of silence. They have tested their Falcon 9 first stage on a test stand with two engines. They will soon test three engines and work their way up to the full complement of nine. This is a big rocket and requires a BFTS for testing. Elon Musk claims this stands for Big Falcon Test Stand: that is his story and he is sticking to it.

Development of the Merlin 1C regeneratively cooled engine has been completed. The third Falcon 1 test flight will use this engine instead of the ablatively cooled engine used on the first two test flights. An exact date for the Kwajalein launch has not been announced but it is now scheduled for somewhere in the April-June time frame.

Ground breaking has occurred at SpaceX's Cape Canaveral site, the former SLC-40 pad , once used for Titan-IV launches.

SpaceX has passed the Critical Design Review (CDR) with NASA on their COTS (Cheap Orbital Transport Systems or Commercial Off The Shelf) contract to perform resupply to Space Station Alpha. By 2010 SpaceX is to demonstrate cargo deliveries using the combination of a Falcon 9 rocket and a Dragon capsule. The Dragon capsule will carry passengers after it has flown a few times.

I could go on. but there is just so much happening at SpaceX I can only recommend you read their update and if you have any questions about the technology, come back here and ask.

But wait! There's more!

Bigelow Aerospace, which already has two inflatable space station test articles in orbit, is making its move:

Industry sources said Bigelow Aerospace is ready to place an order that includes six launches starting in 2011 to begin assembly and early operation of the new station.

"Those [first] six launches will be comprised of two missions to deploy hardware such as Sundancer itself and our node/bus combination and four missions to dedicated to transporting crew and cargo," Robert Bigelow, president and founder of Bigelow Aerospace said in a written statement.

"Subsequently our launch rate will double, and we will require a dozen launches, all for crew and cargo transportation missions over the next 12-month period. Our third year of active operations will again require another dozen crew and cargo mission launches and, in our fourth year of operations, we anticipate needing 18 such launches."

Things are moving so quickly it is just astounding to an old spacer like myself.

(53)

The US Navy has tested its rail gun at 10 MegaJoules. Railguns will one day become the main armaments on US Navy vessels:

The technology uses high power electromagnetic energy instead of explosive chemical propellants (energetics) to propel a projectile farther and faster than any preceding gun. At full capability, the rail gun will be able to fire a projectile more than 200 nautical miles at a muzzle velocity of mach seven and impacting its target at mach five. In contrast, the current Navy gun, MK 45 five-inch gun, has a range of nearly 20 miles. The high velocity projectile will destroy its targets due to its kinetic energy rather than with conventional explosives.

A very big advantage of kinetic energy weapons is the reduction in size of a warships Achilles heel: the explosives magazine. With a railgun you would not need propellant charges.

The safety aspect of the rail gun is one of its greatest potential advantages, according to Dr. Elizabeth D'Andrea, ONR's Electromagnetic Railgun Program Manager. Safety on board ship is increased because no explosives are required to fire the projectile and no explosive rounds are stored in the ship's magazine.

I am not sure I believe you would get rid of all explosives as you might still want to lob an HE shell over the horizon and downwards on a target. If you are firing on a target 200 miles away, you cannot use direct fire unless you intend to blast a tunnel through a whole lot of water. That means the impact velocity on another ship using indirect fire would only be the normal terminal velocity of the falling shell. Nonetheless, the chance of a repeat of the HMS Hood disaster is much decreased.

What I would like to know is: has anyone done the calculations about direct fire at high elevation? Aircraft are naturally one of the targets. One wonders if it could reach out and touch something at a rather higher altitude.

For those unfamiliar with naval battles of WWII, the HMS Hood was sunk by one lucky salvo from the Bismarck that came straight down into the aft magazine. The ship was on the way to the bottom almost before the smoke cleared. There were (I believe) only 4 survivors.

Correction: It was 3 survivors.

(10)

Last year I traveled continuously from mid-May to early November, not to mention a couple other months on the road earlier that year. One of the trips was to Wyoming in July and while there Jim Bennett and I visited Frontier Astronautics rather unique home office.

Jim and I drove for a long time.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

We found their sign miles down a back road off a County road.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

After a 'short' drive up their private road we arrived at the main gate where Jim rang the door bell.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Two engineers came out and led us on the trek to the bunker doors. They are large enough to pass an Atlas missile on a truck.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Back in perhaps 1962 the bunker center section held a liquid fueled Atlas ICBM. This is the flame trench that would be underneath the ICBM. The sections of the bunker to the left and right contained the fuel and oxidizer tanks used to fuel it. The center section is now (probably) the world's only indoor engine test stand. Interior walls are 30 inch thick reinforced concrete: this allows the engineers and their monitoring gear to sit mere feet away from a firing engine.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The office also has a sun roof... These many, many ton reinforced concrete doors were built to slide to either side so the Atlas could be raised into firing position.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Speaking of the engineers, here are the two who gave us the grand tour.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

This is the tunnel to what was once a control room. The consoles are long gone and it now contains a modern flat where the owner, a former Titan IV engineer, and his wife live.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

It is without a doubt the only family home with an indoor rocket engine test stand.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

(25)

With all the attention being on new private initiatives in space travel hogging the headlines, it is worth noting that there is the real prospect of a new space race taking place between China and the United States, with China planning an eventual lunar landing as a prelude to a mission to Mars.

There would be plenty of people who would welcome such a development, but I am not one of them. As I see it, there is a legitimate role for government funded space programs, but there must be a sensible trade-off between costs and benefits. The Voyager Space probes were sensible investments that produced wonderful results; the Apollo Program, for all the hype, was not something that was worth the immense cost.

I say this because the way that technology is developing, private ventures are expanding in their capabilities quite quickly, and they are much more suitable enterprises to carry the torch of humanity into space. The original space race between the USA and the USSR carried awfully nationalistic and ideological connotations, and a future race between China and the USA is certainly going to have a stench of nationalism about it. Private enterprise ventures have a much greater capacity to bring in international participation.

It cannot be denied, of course, that government ventures are capable of achieving far more, and far quicker, then private ones; having the power of the state to extract wealth from its citizenry, and a powerful will, can cause amazing things to happen. The Apollo Program is a case in point, and so was the Manhattan Project. That does not mean that they are justifiable.

China's space program is still at a relatively modest stage; they only succeeded in putting an astronaut into orbit in 2003. But if they invested enough money in it, they could progress quite quickly. It is simply a matter of how high that they consider it in their list of priorities. If they give it a high priority they could certainly reach their goals, especially given that Chinese taxpayers are not in a position to object.

How long is it going to take private explorers to get to do serious space travel? That point is no longer moot. From 2004 the progress of private ventures has been impressive, and if this momentum can be continued, it might well be that the first private entrepreneur on the moon might not be that far behind the Chinese and American astronauts. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the first explorer on Mars represented a private consortium?

(25)

A number of persons placed comments about my recent article on SpaceShipTwo which showed they did not have a great deal of knowledge about the revolution in space affairs now taking place. Rather than write a long survey article I have decided to simply give you a reading list. The following is not complete by any means. These are just the names which came easily and immediately to mind on a Sunday afternoon and all are building serious hardware or providing services:

SpaceX
Blue Origin
Virgin Galactic
XCOR Aerospace
Armadillo Aerospace
Bigelow Aerospace
Masten Space
TGV Rockets
Rocketplane and Rocketplane-Kistler
Scaled Composites
Space Adventures
Orbital Outfitters
tSpace
Zero G
Starchaser Industries
Orion Propulsion
Spacedev
HMX
X-Prize
Videos about settling the Moon
National Space Society
Frontier Aerospace
Wyoming Space and Information Systems

Enjoy!

Ed: I may add more over the course of the day if the urge strikes. I know I have left out entire categories like spaceports and should probably fill in that gap if I have the time.

(27)

As I mentioned in an earlier article, Virgin Galactic unveiled the design of SpaceShipTwo in New York on Tuesday. This is the first ever commercial tourist spaceship.

There are two 'stages' to this vehicle. A very large mothership, White Knight Two, and a not exactly tiny underslung SpaceShipTwo. The design is similar to that of SpaceShipOne and the White Knight One mothership but much larger. Notice Burt has gone to a dual hull 'catamaran' like structure so the space going craft is slung between them instead of underneath a center hull.

Another thing which jumps out at me is the use of four Pratt and Whitney PW308A turbofan engines. These are the sort of engines you would find on a large business jet and they need this sort of power to get SS2 up to the 50,000 foot MSL drop altitude.

White Knight Two test flights are expected to start this summer. If they are indeed going to meet that schedule, I would expect a roll out by late May.

Artists rendering of SpaceShipTwo and the Mothership in flight
Photo: Courtesy of Virgin Galactic.

This is no paper spaceship. Both WK2 and SS2 are under construction. In the photo you can see both hulls and the main plane of WK2 are well advanced.

White Knight Two hulls and main plane on the Scaled Composites shop floor.
Photo: Courtesy of Virgin Galactic.

SpaceShipTwo is also well along, as you can see.

SpaceShipTwo under construction
Photo: Courtesy of Virgin Galactic.

SpaceShipTwo is not a tiny cramped little thing either as you can see in this photo with Burt Rutan providing scale. It is definitely more business jet than Mercury capsule.

Burt Rutan sitting on the flight control panel in the nose of the SS2.
Photo: Courtesy of Virgin Galactic.

This is not a one off deal. There will be many of these produced and each will be flown as often as possible. That means they will need an ongoing training capability for pilots. So... they have a very nice looking flight simulator for training.

Test pilot Brian Binnie sitting in the SS2 simulator.
Photo: Courtesy of Virgin Galactic.

For the technically inclined, here is a cutaway drawing. The real cognoscenti will note SS2 is indeed using the original hybrid propulsion system. Hybrids have been around awhile now: Starstruck and AMROC (Jim Bennett's old companies) pioneered them in the eighties and others have since developed them further.

Cutaway technical details of SS2.
Photo: Courtesy of Virgin Galactic.

(13)

Some of you may have heard of the Google X-Prize for the first private lunar mission. There seem to be quite a number of teams lining up for the prize, including one based on the Isle of Wight.

Sir Richard Branson's US company had a 'do' in New York yesterday at which they were to unveil the design of SpaceShipTwo. This is slated to be the first commercial suborbital tourist spaceship. I asked a friend who works for them to get some photos to me but nothing has shown up so I presume I will have to look for the official photos like everyone else. As they are making this public, one would presume they have finalized the propulsion system and will be using the hybrid engine as originally planned.

Mojave Spaceport's license may still be up in the air due to the fatal industrial accident at Scaled Composites test rig last summer. I have been hearing flip flops on this for the last several months but despite assurances from Patty Grace Smith at the FAA it appears there is something behind the rumor. Last summer we all thought the accident, in which a pressurized tank blew up and killed three engineers, would be a matter for OSHA and Cal-OSHA only. If FAA enforcement on such accidents is indeed forthcoming, I predict the unintended consequence will be all non-flight related spacecraft development operations move off FAA controlled spaceports.

Elon Musk's company, SpaceX, is due for their third launch attempt some time soon. Not much information is floating around about an exact date. Somewhere between January and April is about the best I can guess. Given the switchover to the much more sophisticated and re-usable regeneratively cooled engine I think they will be moving very deliberately towards the next flight. Pretty much everyone expects them to make orbit this time.

For the last year a venture I am in has been slowly spooling up. I am now under so many Non-Disclosures that I hardly know what I can and cannot talk about in commercial Space so I have been erring on the side of silence as I have been too busy to check.

I have some nice photos from an old Atlas missile complex turned rocket test stand out in the Wyoming outback which I took last summer during a business visit. Someday I will get around to publishing some of them.

The International Space Development Conference is in Washington DC this year and we (at the National Space Society) have another good one lined up. Pretty much anyone who is anyone in the commercial Space industry will be there.

I imagine everyone knows that Messenger did the first flyby of Mercury in 33 years just a few days ago and the photos are still being downloaded to Earth. While not commercial in itself, the imagery will certainly be useful to future mining interests. It's a great place to get the materials to build the close-in solar power satellites we'll use to beam energy around the solar system and manufacture anti-matter fuel in the 22nd Century.

Oh, and I believe June this year is the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska asteroid explosion in Siberia. For a while many of us thought we would see Mars get pasted this February as part of the anniversary 'celebration' but the orbit of that rock is now known well enough to say it is a definite miss.

(14)

It was a bit of a shock to read, in my old local newspaper, that F-15 fighter/bomber aircraft used by the US Airforce are suffering quite so much from wear and tear. They are currently based at RAF Lakenheath, west Suffolk.

At one stage, East Anglia, the flat bit of the UK, was rather like a gigantic airfield with more than 100 airfields for British and American fighters, bombers, recon aircraft and transportation. Even after WW2, when the Liberators, Flying Fortresses, Mustangs and Thunderbolts no longer buzzed around, the area played host to the jets of the Cold War era. It was a common experience on my parent's farm to be walking around and suddenly, at about 100ft above the ground, a pair of Jaguar jets or an American A-10 "tankbuster" would come over (the latter was eerily quiet, and had an enormous 30mm cannon mounted in the nose). Now it is almost all gone. In a silly sort of way I rather miss the din of jet aircraft. But then, we won the Cold War. It is never a mistake to remind ourselves of that fact.

(31)

With a little help from her friends, Japan has sent a loud and clear message to North Korea.

The interceptor fired by the JS Kongo knocked out the target warhead about 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean, said the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, which carried out the test together with the Japanese and U.S. navies.

Tokyo has invested heavily in missile defense since North Korea test-fired a long-range missile over northern Japan in 1998. It has installed missile tracking technology on several navy ships and has plans to equip them with interceptors.

The SM-3 is certainly a good enough interceptor to handle the appropriately named North Korean 'Nodong' ICBM. I say that because they seem to be as likely to fail as to get where they are going.

(57)

Most of us grew up expecting the flying car would eventually come to pass. One of the more successful attempts occurred in the 1950's but although some were produced, it never made it into the mass market. Although I cannot substantiate it, I understand the FAA of the time was rather horrified at the thought of such large numbers of people flying. Whether true or not, there are very real problems associated with aircraft which one does not face with a car: you cannot pull an airplane over to the side of a cloud when something goes BONK in the night.

Another issue is flying requires a pilot. Even with the new US FAA sport flying category, getting your ticket is no mean feat. Being a flyer does not just mean you know how to point the thing. It implies you are conversant with the rules of a three-dimensional sea, one whose buoys are marked with radio waves and whose small craft must stay out of the way of large aircraft not just for their own safety but for the safety of the heavy iron as well.

This is not to mention knowledge of meteorology, the jargon required to talk to towers and other pilots in order to communicate critical information quickly through sometimes noisy radio systems and all the rules and regulations which encode the hard won wisdom of a century of flight and the loss of thousands of lives. I could go on for a very long time but I will just say that being a pilot right now requires a skipload of skills and knowledge.

However, as we move deeper into the 21st century, some of these problems are abating. With smart systems and eventually self-repairing systems we will get flying machines which either won't take off when there is a problem or get you down before it gets serious. With autonomous AI systems development moving along the way it is (think UCAV's!) the knowledge base of the pilot will more and more be embedded in the avionics and the 'driver' will simply point the thing.

For all this to happen there has to be a Transition that opens up the market. And that machine may finally be here:

An aeronautical startup called Terrafugia has developed a small airplane called the Transition that it says can take to the sky as easily as the road. It is about the size of a large SUV and features innovative folding wings that collapse with the press of a button. Terrafugia calls it a "personal air vehicle."

The team behind the Transition still has to design a drivetrain to propel the craft and a mechanism to transfer power from the propeller to the wheels, but it expects to begin flight tests late next year.

Production could begin as early as 2009, and Terrafugia says it's already received more than 30 orders.

You will still need to be a real pilot, but at least you can save on the hangar or tie down fees.

(5)

Diamond Aviation, a UK General Aircraft company, has test flown its single engine private jet.

Oh, if I were a rich man...

(13)

The following is a short story I penned for a theme issue of Ad Astra magazine. It did not make the cut on that particular issue so I have decided to share it with our Samizdata readership instead. It was, by the way, written before the accident at Mojave Spaceport... Dale Amon, Samizdata Editor... and Chair of the National Space Society Conference Coordinating Committee

Another load of tourists arrived last night (we run UTC here) so I am just getting up and having my morning coffee, or what passes for coffee here in Heinleintown, the main residential tube of Luna City. You see, I work at the Bigelow, and new arrivals are so biologically confused and excited to be here after the two day cruise on the big Virgin cycler that we just keep the bar open until they finally fade off to their rooms. Depending on the age group, that sometimes takes awhile, but they tip well so I can not complain.

Actually I have very little to complain about. I am here, and I am alive, and neither of those would have seemed very probable to someone 50 years ago. I sometimes remember a friend of mine, Gary Barnhard, writing an article for Ad Astra about what it might be like now. No idea where he is off to these days. Last I heard he was off in the asteroid belt on a project to convert an asteroid into a commercial simputer, a gadget to model pretty much anything you could ever want to model. An entire asteroid as a computer. The mind boggles... but then the nanotechnology which allows that is the reason I am here at all. One hundred and seven. Imagine that. I sometimes repeat it and shake my head in disbelief that we actually have managed to create most of Dr Leary's "SMI^2LE" [Space Migration, Intelligence Increase and Life Extension]. Perhaps even more amazing was that we actually survived the nanotechnology transition. I guess it helped that the superpower competition between the USA, India and China was 'mostly peaceful', to paraphrase a long forgotten humorist.

It did help being in the center of it back in the 'oughties' and early 'teens' when things really started cracking open. I was there watching it happen. Hell, I was there helping to make it happen. I can still remember the sight of those early contraptions lifting off from our spaceport in the Western US. Rocketplane Kistler, Virgin Galactic, Masten, Armadillo, SpaceX, BlueOrigin, XCOR and the
rest. Household names now. Some of them anyway. Some failed, some merged... and one fell apart after the big accident. I had known the guy for 30 years. We all had because in those days the whole business was a small family. We had all quite literally grown up together. I wish I could say that was the only close friend I lost to satiate Murphy, but it was not. There were and will be more. Perhaps me some day. I am in great health still thanks to the nanocritters that cleaned me up from the inside out. It has been a long life and I am sorta catching my breath and smelling the daisies here in Luna City, just working the hotel bar and playing the old favourite songs of space flight. They figure I am part of the atmosphere because I lived those songs. They are not dusty history to me like to the party-hearty youngsters of last night.

Yep, I just might be getting ready to move out again. The moon is still empty but it is too close to Earth and I always did say "Happiness is the Earth in your Rear View Mirror". A couple days ago I was talking to some of the guys from the Interstellar Consortium. Yeah, a bit early by a few centuries, but I like their style. A bunch of the guys from the early days, John, Elon, Jeff, Jim, Dave... people who know how to make things happen. Hell, they even got George Whitesides to front for them and help raise the capital. Got a big chunk from the National Space Society Exploration Fund, so we would be carrying their flag to the edge of the solar system.

The idea is to prove that Kuiper Belt Objects could provide the fuel and structures for a 'slow boat' to the nearest stars. As I said, I think they are a bit premature, but hell, how could I pass up a trip to the edge of the solar system? Even if we just stick the NSS flag on a few iceballs, it is a pretty cool thing to do.

And why bother living a few centuries if you do not have a dangerous adventure or two? I never was the stay at home type so at a hundred and seven this old space dog is not about to learn to stay in the doghouse. Besides which, I always did tell friends I intended to go downhill skiing on Europa at a hundred and twenty.

I just might manage to do that thing.

(6)

A fund has been set up to help the families of those killed and injured at Mojave. If any of you are interested, you can find out more at the July 29th entry here.

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

Acct # 04157-66832 / Wire xfer ABA Routing # 0260-0959-3 (Bank of America) /
Please make your check payable to "Scaled Family Support Fund".

This is not a tax deductible donation.

Many will fall on the road to the stars. We must remember them as best we can.

(7)

Yesterday was a terrible day in the Mojave Desert, as many of you may have seen on the news by now there has been an explosion at space technology company Scaled Composites during testing of a propellant system. Three are dead and three more are in the hospital with injuries of varying severity.

This is a dangerous business we are in and we all know it. I feel somewhat relieved that none of them were people whom I knew well, but at the same time share some of the sense of loss which must be nearly overpowering to their co-workers.

If any of you at Scaled drop by here during this time of sadness, know that you are part of something greater. Your friends will be remembered.

As to the facts of the accident, I have little to add beyond what my coworker Rand Simberg has said.

(3)

Things were 'mostly quieter' for me on May 28th, the Sunday of the conference. I had my one and only chance to run about the exhibitor areas to pick up flyers, buy shirts... and acquire a few DVD's of sessions I really wanted to see but could not due to being in demand elsewhere.

I briefly met Dr. Kistler of Rocketplane Kistler earlier but did not get a picture of him until he came by their exhibit for a photo op. I happened to be chatting with a friend who was manning their company table next to it so I joined the others. The hotel lighting in the public areas was rather problematic for my camera and few of the photos I took there were satisfactory. But hey, this is a really serious old school rocket scientist with a German accent.

Dr. Kistler, on the left, founded Kistler Aerospace. This merged with Chuck Laur's company, Rocketplane, to become Rocketplane-Kistler. They have a contract from NASA for space station cargo delivery.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Late Sunday afternoon there was a demonstration which friends had told me about: Faster Than Light signal propagation. I am rather skeptical of such things but the demonstrator was a serious research physicist from Germany, I believe, so I had to go and see for myself.

All I can say is, I think I saw FTL comms. Nothing practical in real life as the difficulty increases with distance. This rather negates the reason you would want it in the first place. But over a distance of about 3 meters the return signal with the 'barriers' in returned faster than it did with the barriers out (normal light speed) as shown on an OScope synced to the outgoing pulse. He could even modulate it.

I will not go into detail here. You can look for yourself at the photos I took of his presentation. Look for photo numbers around dsc00616. I am still skeptical... but not quite as skeptical as before the demo.

Was it or wasn't it? Demonstration of faster than light signal propagation.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Sunday night we had our closing banquet with Harrison Schmidt, the geologist who flew on Apollo 17 and one of the three Apollo guys at the conference. Actually this is not unusual as Harrison, Buzz and Rusty Schweikart are regulars and Buzz served as the Chairman of the Board through part of the nineties. Harrison has long been a promoter of human settlement and was given our O'Neill award in recognition of his efforts. Excuse the defect in the photo: I think the professional photographers flash went off just as I took this shot. She was standing right next to me.

Mark Hopkins bows in unworthiness before one of the last men to set foot on the moon.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

At the end of the banquet George Whitesides, NSS Executive Director, presented Carol Johnson and Ken Murphy with tokens of appreciation from the Society for their hard work. As the Chairman of the NSS Conferences Coordinating Committee I was sort of their 'boss' so I can publicly state they were a pleasure to work with over the last two and a half years, besides the fact that they ran a magnificent conference.

Yes, Ken really did wear a black hat. Carol got the roses since they would not have matched Ken's je ne sais quoi...
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

And then we partied long into the night...
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

We crawled out of bed for the Society Town Hall Meeting...
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

And then, for the 26th time, it was over...
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

After the conference I spent a week in Dallas with an old friend. That will take us up to the beginning of June. So tomorrow: Aviation museums!

Or I hope so. I take a train to NYC tomorrow, repack, fly out to Denver and on to Laramie on space business Monday.

(3)

There was much of interest in the program of the ISDC, but I missed seeing most of it and much of what I did see was covered at the time by Glenn Reynolds and Rand Simberg among others. As I have noted before, I am part of the National Space Society management so I see a very different face of the conference than most attendees. Much of my time there would be terribly unexciting to write about. I very much doubt a detailed discussion of the 2009 conference site selection meetings, presentations, politics and such would be of a great deal of interest.

Today i will look at the May 26th evening of the conference via candid shots of the people and proceedings.

There is more to the space movement than rocket science. Art and music also have a place. We have had Space Art shows at every ISDC I have attended, which is all but four.

We had a fine Space Art show, thanks to Teresa Patterson and Kaz.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

We have had everything from John Denver (speaking only) to a Space Improv Theater group. At the one I ran years ago, we even had a ballet dance interpretation of Zero G done to a live electronic music performance. As one would expect, there are often filkers lurking about ready to spice up a party with "Home, Home on Lagrange" or "Ron, Ron, Ron, Deuteron, Ron, Ron Ron".

I caught Rand Simberg, Glenn Reynolds and Alan Boyle chatting before the awards banquet on Saturday evening. Oh, and there was a former head of NASA Ames with us as well, just outside of the picture. I discovered he is a professional musician on the side so we hit it off quite well.

Why is it bloggers always seem to congregate in the bar?
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The NSS annual award banquet is a big event for our community. We have several major awards: the Heinlein Award, a working model brass cannon on a hardwood base; the O'Neill award, a space colony replica; The Space Pioneer Awards, pewter lunar globes; and finally the Von Braun Award. The Heinlein and Von Braun alternate years. Both men were intimately involved with the founding branches of our society so this is a fitting way for NSS to honour extraordinary members of the space community.

Our Chairman of the Board of Directors (an Aussie), Kirby Ikin, bestows one of our highest honours upon Dr. Steve Squires of JPL.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Weeks before the event Mark Hopkins, one of our senior officers, asked if I could snap photos at the awards banquet. Even though there was a professional photographer, with equipment to die for also talking pictures in front of the podium, I did not realize I was being set up until my name was called...

Mark Hopkins bestows the NSS Exceptional Service Award upon a very surprised me.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

After the banquet came the receptions and a mobile party which finally settled in, with the tolerance of the hotel, in a 15th floor meeting area. This one lasted until dawn I believe, but I had to be up for the morning sessions so I only stayed until 3am. Or so.

Some of our people are very dedicated to getting off the planet.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Excuse the darkness but I preferred that to the loss of mood my flash causes. I loath flash shots and do them as little as I can. Perhaps someday I will own a camera that is fast enough to match my photgraphic tastes. Stabilization during long exposures would be nice...

The party was brought to us by the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) with a bit of assistance from our expert speaker to hotel staff.

Serious partiers... check.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Food... check..
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Alcohol... check.
6ft 4in Dallas conference chair in a white cowboy hat???... check.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

(2)

After arriving in Manhattan on the Boston train, I had just enough time to repack and get perhaps three hours of sleep before heading for the airport. My May 24th NY-Houston-Dallas flight was early enough that I was able to attend the latter half of the Space Venture Forum morning track.

I had loads of time to schmooze with potential customers, as well as listen to 'the suits' discuss venture funding, deal making, IPO's and pitfalls. I am sure many here would have appreciated the slide which noted:

"Addiction" to Government Business Alone: Problems have emerged for companies that aimed solely at government markets and had substantial timing delays. Companies should avoid developing an "addiction" to government business since these companies will need cash for commercial development"

Glenn Reynolds also had a few things to say about how much real business has taken hold at the ISDC's. It is definitely true. I went partially (and successfully) for business contacts for many years but this is the first year in which I represented a space venture. I may have been one of the persons quoted by Glenn and others and I spent one entire morning 'under the lights' as a talking head for someone's documentary.

I particularly enjoyed the lunch, partially because I finally met Esther Dyson whom I have known 'virtually' for over a decade. She introduced the speaker, Tom Pickens, son of the capitalist hero T. Boone Pickens. Tom is a man who learned business from childhood. He has a protein crystal product which can only be produced in quantities on orbit and which is highly valuable for medicine. His demand projections are such that told everyone in the room he can fill whatever they can launch or return.

Tom Pickens says "You've got 24 months to get a seat at the table".
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Now I could go on about all of the marvelous speakers and news events of the conference, or talk about all of the meetings I ran or attended... but instead I will show some of the fun side of the first few days of the conference.

While I was chatting with some old friends, someone commented that our Executive Committee Chairman, Gary Barnhard, bears a striking resemblance to Dr. Gerard O'Neill, the inventor of the L5 Space Colony concept, who died around 15 years ago.

Gary Barnhard attempts to channel Dr. O'Neill.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Armadillo Aerospace brought 'Pixel', one of the Moon Lander Prize contenders, to the exhibit room. It was quite a center piece of a reception for rocket scientists and activists. It reminds you why you are here, even after quite a few bottles.

It is amazing how difficult it is to talk, hold your bottle and enjoy the nacho dip at the same time.

No we did not tap the fuel tanks when the cash bar closed.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Glenn Reynolds. Rand Simberg and I have known each other for over 20 years so of course we had to get together to discuss blogging and how to fix everything. We were also joined for awhile by Alan Boyle of MSNBC.

What do you mean, "we drank it all?"
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

I was surprised to see a native Texas gal I'd not seen in a few years. Turned out Kaz had been in London while with the USAF.

The world of rocket scientists has been improving steadily,
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

I caught Glenn Reynolds in mid post just before the Space Blogger summit at the conference.

The blogfather at work plotting world domination,
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

This brings me up to May 26th. I will try to post on the rest of ISDC 2007 tomorrow. If you can not wait, you will find hundreds of photos of the event in the archives.

(1)

Just a brief note... You can probably find stories from Rand and Glenn who are also here in Dallas at the 26th International Space Development Conference. Alan Boyle from MSNBC is with us and Jeff Foust is acting as the cat-herder.

(1)

It is that time of year again, when a young (or perhaps not so young) spacers thoughts turn to thoughts of the International Space Development Conference (ISDC). This year it is in Dallas - Fort Worth at the Intercontinental Hotel, over the Memorial Day weekend. In total it will run from Thursday May 24th to Monday May 28th although the core events are Friday through Sunday.

You can find out much more at the web site. This is going to be a great event. Many of the principals of the new commercial space revolution will be there so it is a great place to network if for you "Happiness is the Earth in my rear view mirror".

I will be heading there immediately after I finish my webcast edit job on a big JP Morgan Technology business conference in Boston.

(16)

Sometimes I write because something needs to be said or brought to the attention of our readers. Other times I write because something is just simply so interesting I must tell someone about it. On rare occasions I write because I have to.

This is one of them.

This evening Channel 4 showed a documentary "Challenger: Countdown to Disaster". I tend to avoid such programs but this time I decided to watch. I was actually quite surprised by the instant and gut-wrenching emotional impact it had on me. Christa and the rest of The Seven marching out with smiles on their faces. The family and teachers and friends in the viewing stands. The black puff of smoke. The demon mask in the sky. The long fall.

To this day it just rips me apart inside.

I doubt many of you watched and doubt even more that those who did felt anything other than interest in the story. For me it is very different and that difference is why I am writing.

Anyone who reads Samizdata knows I have a fair knowledge and perhaps a few contacts in the field of aerospace. Well, it is a lot more than that. Space flight, whether NASA or private or defense contractor is populated by people for whom space is not a job. It is a dream that is in their bones. That is why 'Space' is a family. Like any family it can be fractious but when a family member dies or is in trouble everyone pulls together. Pains and emotions are shared only within the family and not with 'outsiders'. I am a part of that family and have been for a very long time.

I heard about the Challenger explosion when I arrived at my office in the 3rd floor of Wein Hall at CMU. There was a cryptic note sitting on my desk chair, a message taken by my office mate. I immediately returned the call. The message did not give the full gravity of what happened. I did not get that until the friend blurted it out on the phone. I am certain I went pale. Another friend of mine had been talking to Dick Scobee a couple days before; one of the members of Pittsburgh L5, the chapter I had founded in 1980 and built up to where it was about to run an International Space Development Conference, was one of the 104 Teacher In Space candidates and was in the viewing stands with all the others. Judy Resnick was a CMU electrical engineering grad who was one year ahead of me when I was an undergraduate and shared an advisor with me. I remembered her well because in 1971 there were not very many women in EE. There were, in fact, two. Judy and a friend of hers.

By this time nearly everyone in our chapter knew about it. There was no way I was going to get any research work done the rest of that day so I started making phone calls. First I rang Johnson Spaceflight Center to see if they needed a manual I had in my office. You see, I had the controls manual for the Challenger, one of a limited number of sets. It was part of the research I was doing on 'virtual control panels' on a NASA research contract. The fellow at Johnson told me they did not need that copy returned right away... and then the two of us commiserated. It was a death in 'our family' although neither of us voiced it that way. It was just automatic. Astronauts live in Houston. He knew them and had seen them not long before they left JSC for KSC.

Then I got a call from the woman and close friend who handled PR and media relations for the chapter. Channel 4 WTAE-TV wanted us to supply a local Pittsburgh angle on the tragedy. The good side of this was it gave us something to do. The bad side was that we spent hour after hour going over the satellite backhaul footage she had videotaped of the launch. We fastforwarded; slow motioned; stopped on frames. Over and over and over and over. By the time I left in the wee hours of the morning the devil cloud in the sky was burned into my brain. But I had as good an idea then as just about anyone of what had happened.

With minimal sleep I showed up at the agreed location, a conference room at a Mellon Bank management office where she worked. I brought along a model of the Shuttle Challenger I had built some years before for use in our displays at the Space Days we organized with Buhl Planeterium. I still have it and it is in near perfect shape to this day, despite being shipped across the ocean and traveling with me through my rather severe personal trials in Belfast. There was over a hundred hours of labour in it. It was gap puttied, sanded, primered and air brushed in multiple coats to the point at which it was more than good enough to be a star of the WTAE TV News. I used it to show how a burn through at the aft field joint had taken out a strut and the tank had then come apart, the Hydrogen slamming into the LOX tank up front. I missed a lot of fine detail but I was pretty spot on. I must also admit I was talking with many others about it. In fact, if you are really interested, you can still read the discussions and relive the disbelief, the attempts to deal with it by talking about the engineering, the attempts to understand. I have it all because I was the last of the Keepers of the Archives of the ARPA Internet side of the sci.space news groups. If you open up that tar.gz file and start reading from January 29, 1986 you will feel like a time traveler.

A few days later our resident Teacher in Space returned. We dedicated a meeting to Challenger and she described what it was like being in the stands. She was next to Christa's family and I believe I spotted her in the film on tonight's documentary. She told us how the teachers were chanting and stamping their feet to keep warm; how when the launch went off everyone was cheering. Then there came the uncertainty. The strange cloud in the sky... but due to the distance and the speed of sound they were still hearing the roar of the distant engines for almost a minute. They all grew silent. Then the engines stopped. People began to sob.

She had a tape recording and she played it all for us. We heard the whole thing. I heard Christa's family crying. That tape will probably never be played again within any of our lifetimes, nor will I assist anyone with more information. It is only for 'the family' and outsiders need not apply.

My own feelings came out in a song:

ONE OF OUR OWN
song and lyrics by
Dale Amon
Pittsburgh, 3/24/86
(all rights reserved)

The seven stepped out,
On that cold, frosty morning.
Crista was smiling,
And marching in time.
The teachers were chanting,
From the viewing stand.
And they cheered,
And they cheered,
And they cheered,
For one of their own.

Challenger awoke,
And she rose with a roar.
Just like she'd done,
So many times before.
But something was different,
A dark puff of smoke.
And they cheered,
And we cheered,
And I cheered,
For one of our own.

A smokey white arrow,
Through the burning blue.
Scobee read his flickering screens,
"Go at throttle up".
Fire spurt and fire ball,
Demon mask in the sky.
And they cried,
And we cried,
And I cried,
For one of our own.

BRIDGE
Ride the wild rockets,
Up to the sky.
For death or for glory,
For dreams or for hopes.
The bold own the future,
Put your lives on the line.
The meek get the Earth,
And the rest...
Inherit the stars.

Out there on the shores of space,
A thousand years from now.
Our petty wars and our politics,
Will be forgot.
But Challenger will still live on,
In the pioneers.
And they'll dream
As we dream,
And I dream,
For more of our own.

I do not remember if it was that night or another, but Pittsburgh is a very Irish town so a group of us went out to the local, The Squirrel Hill Cafe, and held a sort of wake. Seven classic Pittsburgh drinks: 7 Boiler Makers. We went around the table and toasted each of The Seven in turn. By the time we were done a friend from CMU Robotics had joined us and we ended up over in his house where we killed another bottle of whiskey.

Our chapter was in the run up to our own conference the next year so a bunch of us were at the ISDC in Seattle that year. The word about my song had gotten around so I was invited to play it at a ceremony down by the harbour. I sat there looking out over the water and as I played the song they set off seven sky rockets, one after another. The seventh one blew up a few feet off the ground, right at my eye level. How I managed to keep singing and not go to pieces I do not know.

I think it was during that summer that CMU unveiled a small memorial to Judy Resnick in front of Hammerschlag Hall. In any case I was invited and surprised to run into Judy's friend and classmate. She and I talked and were together through much of the ceremony.

Another incident I remember was dropping in on a friend from my undergraduate days at her house. She and her three sisters were all close friends of many years and the youngest was working with the Navy and was home for a visit. She had been in a blockhouse at the Cape and gone outside to take her own photographs of the shuttle spearing into the blue and of the cloud of water from the burn off of all those many thousands of gallons of Hydrogen and Oxygen. They were taken from a different angle than any others I had seen.

My conference was long enough in the future that we were able to do quite a bit more than Seattle. We gave an award to the guys at Morton Thiokol who tried to stop the flight. MT paid for Arnie Thompson to come and receive it at our awards banquet. Despite being exceedingly busy with the behind the scenes running of this complex event, I did manage to talk to him for a little while. He thanked me for the award and I thanked him for what he tried to do. By the way, I would almost swear they used that very same plaque in the scene where Beaujolais was packing! It was there and gone too quickly for me to be sure.

We had about 400 Pittsburgh area students in for a session with an Astronaut friend of ours and three of the Teacher In Space candidates, including Dick Methias whom you saw on the documentary.

We had the Civil Air Patrol dealing with our security and such and they also helped out in other ways. On early Sunday morning we had a ceremony near the fountain in Point State Park with the CAP kids as the Color Guard. They flew in Judy Resnick's Rabbi from her home town in Ohio in a light plane especially for the ceremony. We also had a Priest and a Minister.

The loss of those seven members of the Space community was a blow, but it was one we all knew we would one day face. Space is a frontier. People die on frontiers. Contrary to what the documentary said, no one seriously believed we would not lose a Shuttle or two before they were retired. The only question was when and the shock was of the, "Why this time? Why these seven?", sort.

Christa and all of the Teachers knew what they were doing. Our own local friend knew those dangers and knew that Christa knew. All astronauts are aware of their mortality and the fragility of our primitive systems. Even if the danger were far greater, they would still step forward and say "I want to go." A new age is dawning now and space is becoming a place for anyone who wishes to test their mettle and their courage. Ronald Reagan said it best:

The future does not belong to the faint hearted. It belongs to the brave.

I only hope that I and my close knit family can live up to those words. It is up to us to make those Seven proud to have led us.

(3)

After the flight termination a week or two ago, I promised our commentariat I would post information on the problems which caused the second test flight to not reach orbit. A few days ago Elon Musk released this statement:

Post flight review of telemetry has verified that oscillation of the second stage late in the mission is the only thing that stopped Falcon 1 from reaching full orbital velocity. The second stage was otherwise functioning well and even deployed the satellite mass simulator ring at the end of flight! Actual final velocity was 5.1 km/s or 11,000 mph, whereas 7.5 km/s or 17,000 mph is needed for orbit. Altitude was confirmed to be 289 km or 180 miles, which is certainly enough for orbit and is about where the Space Shuttle enters its initial parking orbit.

It turns out that as many of us suspected, there was a feedback between fuel slosh and the control equations:

In a nutshell, the data shows that the increasing oscillation of the second stage was likely due to the slosh frequency in the liquid oxygen (LOX) tank coupling with the thrust vector control (engine steering) system. This started out as a pitch-yaw movement and then transitioned into a corkscrewing motion. For those that aren't engineers, imagine holding a bowl of soup and moving it from side to side with small movements, until the entire soup mass is shifting dramatically. Our simulations prior to flight had led us to believe that the control system would be able to damp out slosh, however we had not accounted for the perturbations of a contact on the stage during separation, followed by a hard slew to get back on track.

There was indeed a contact of the first stage with the bell of the stage two motor at stage separation and it was indeed not a big thing:

The nozzle impact during stage separation occurred due to a much higher than expected vehicle rotation rate of about 2.5 deg/sec vs. max expected of 0.5 deg/sec. As the 2nd stage nozzle exited the interstage, the first stage was rotating so fast that it contacted the niobium nozzle. There was no apparent damage to the nozzle, which is not a big surprise given that niobium is tough stuff.

The unexpectedly high rotation rate was due to not knowing the shutdown transient of the 1st stage engine (Merlin) under flight conditions. The actual shutdown transient had a very high pitch over force, causing five times the max expected rotation rate.

The vehicle will be launching a satellite on its next flight:

The reason that flight two can legitimately be called a near complete success as a test flight is that we have excellent data throughout the whole orbit insertion profile, including well past second stage shutdown, and met all of the primary objectives established beforehand by our customer (DARPA/AF). This allows us to wrap up the test phase of the Falcon 1 program and transition to the operational phase, beginning with the TacSat mission at the end of summer. Let me be clear here and now that anything less than orbit for that flight or any Falcon 1 mission with an operational satellite will unequivocally be considered a failure.

This is all very good news to the new space industry. There is also supposed to be some more good news this month: Bob Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace, maker of fine inflatable space stations, is supposed to make an important announcement. I suspect it has to do with a next launch date and he may announce he is skipping more intermediate tests or perhaps even an early anchor tenant for an operational station... if we were to speculate even more wildly.

All of us in 'the biz' will be watching closing.

(19)

"Warren Buffett said that the one thing that really changes your life is the private jet."

- Bob Hersov, entrepreneur and the man behind NetJets. Actually, using a private jet need not be just for the mega rich.

(0)

The next International Space Development Conference (ISDC) will be held in Dallas over the Memorial Day weekend this year. Of particular interest to all of our Space Venturers is the symposium to be held on the front of it.

Here is the press release:

__________

National Space Society to Host Second Annual Space Venture Finance Symposium at 2007 International Space Development Conference

Commercial space investment symposium scheduled for May 24, 2007 at the Hotel InterContinental in Dallas, Texas

WASHINGTON, March 23, 2007 - The National Space Society today announced the second annual Symposium on Space Venture Finance, to be held on Thursday, May 24, in conjunction with the 2007 International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Dallas, Texas. Bringing together leaders in the investment and space communities, the symposium will focus on recent innovations and deals in early- and mid-stage finance within the commercial space, spaceport, satellite and space-related information technology industries.

The day-long symposium program will focus on the following current topics of interest:

• Pre-operational finance methods in aerospace, including debt-equity financing deals
• Private venture capital financing of entrepreneurial commercial space firms
• State venture equity fund investment in space companies and space-related infrastructure such as spaceports
• Angel financing of commercial space ventures
• Private equity in satellite, telecommunications and space-related information technology industries
• Current investment opportunities in entrepreneurial space companies in the US, Canada and elsewhere

Members of the investment banking, venture capital, private equity, angel financing and state venture equity investment communities will give presentations concerning new entrants, best practices and emerging trends in the space finance sector.

Confirmed speakers include:

• Lon Levin, Chief Strategic Officer, Transformational Space Corporation; Co-Founder, XM Satellite Radio
• Mark Ellison, Director, Texas Emerging Technology Fund, Office of the Governor
• Greg Kulka, Director-Alternative Investments Portfolio, New Mexico State Investment Council
• Stephen Fleming, Angel Investor and Board of Directors; XCOR Aerospace; Chief Commercialization Officer, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Peter Banks, General Partner, Red Planet Capital
• John Higginbotham, Chairman (retired), SpaceVest
• Burton H. Lee, Managing Partner, Innovarium Ventures
• Mohanjit Jolly, Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures
• J. Armand Musey, President and Partner, Near Earth LLC

"A key element of the National Space Society's mission is to enable the development of a sound and sustainable global commercial space industry that solves problems here on Earth while making significant contributions to the peaceful exploration of the solar system," said Dr. Burton Lee, symposium Co-Chairman. "In that spirit, the Space Venture Finance Symposium will showcase an emerging high-tech sector that is now reaching maturity, and represents a reliable and diverse pipeline of funding opportunities and exit strategies for both startup firms and investors."

Participants include leading finance and space professionals from the United States, Europe and Asia, representing a broad cross-section of industries and disciplines, including:

• Investment banks;
• Venture capital and private equity firms;
• State economic development departments, venture equity funds and spaceport authorities;
• Commercial space company CEOs and entrepreneurs;
• Satellite telecommunications and other space-related information technology firms;
• Major aerospace and defense corporations;
• NASA and other space agencies;
• Advisors and analysts with institutional investors; and
• Space and finance media.

Program details are subject to revision. Current program information and registration details are available here.

Registered attendees for the International Space Development Conference (ISDC), which officially begins on Friday, May 25, will need to complete a secondary registration to attend the Space Venture Finance Symposium. Conversely, registrants for the Space Venture Finance Symposium are NOT automatically registered for the Friday-Monday sessions of ISDC. ISDC registration must be purchased separately.

Members of the media who wish to cover the Space Venture Finance Symposium may request media credentials on the ISDC Web site by completing the secure online credential request form at here.

_____

About the National Space Society
The National Space Society (NSS) is an independent, grassroots organization dedicated to the creation of a spacefaring civilization. Founded in 1974, NSS is widely acknowledged as the preeminent citizen's voice on space. NSS counts thousands of members and more than 50 chapters in the United States and around the world. The society also publishes Ad Astra magazine, an award-winning periodical chronicling the most important developments in space. For more information about NSS, how to join or donate, or the annual International Space Development Conference (ISDC), visit: www.nss.org

For media inquiries:
Jeremy Pyle
Vice President of Public Affairs
National Space Society
(415) 713-6272
jeremy@nss.org

For Symposium-related inquiries:
Dr. Burton H. Lee,
Symposium Chairman
(703) 282-4513
Burton.Lee@gmail.com

(45)

The webcast has not yet started but will be here when it does.

2218 GMT: T minus 0 seems to have been pushed back to 2330 GMT. I will report as I get news.

2225 GMT: T minus 0 is now set for 0005 GMT; webcast is to begin at approximately 2305 GMT.

2300 GMT: There will be two burns of the second stage, separated by about an hour. The second burn is strictly a test. In operation it would be a correction or plane change or circularization burn. Most importantly, this will prove they have an engine that is restartable in microgravity. This is not as easy to do as you might think...

2307 GMT: Web cast is now live.

2317 GMT: Fuel and oxidizer loads of the first and second stage are in progress. The video signal is having some problems however, as I am sure any watchers will have noticed!

2328 GMT: First stage LOX fill completed.

2331 GMT: First stage fuel load completed.

2336 GMT: This just in: "Media call note that the webcam problems are unknown and this is what you all may be stuck with."

2339 GMT: Both stages fully loaded with Kerosene (RP1), LOX and Helium tank pressurization .

2348 GMT: T-218 now, Helium top off. The are having some telemetry probs with the stage 1 recovery ship... which has just now been solved.

2350 GMT: All operator stations report ready status for terminal countdown. Cleared for launch!

2356 GMT: Entering terminal count! T-10.

0006 GMT: Terminal count abort after engine ignition. Impressive that they could stop it here, sad that they had to. Will report as I here more.

0016 GMT: This is amazing. They are recyling to T-10!!! I have *never* in my life seen such a thing! Ignition has always been the point of no return or at least a full scrub. I stand in awe.

0021 GMT: Shutdown was due to chamber pressure being 1% low. There was apparently a fair amount of swearing going on... they may still try for a launch. Range is okay with a recycle.

0044 GMT: They are well into the recycle for a second try. Count is still in a hold at T-16 while they recycle.

0056 GMT: The clock is running again. T-14:30!

0057 GMT: Cleared for launch again.

0101 GMT: Into terminal count again at T-10.

0112 GMT: Launch successful! Passing through Max Q. Now the big one coming up is Stage sep...

0114 GMT: THEY DID IT!!!! SECOND STAGE SEP AND FIRE: FARING SEP CONFIRMED!!!!! 117km altitude!!!!

0126 GMT: There is some discussion as to whether the first stage sep bumped the second stage engine bell. There were some signs of oscillation of the engine before it got out of range and the webcast terminated. So they made it into space but we will have to wait to find out if this test flight made orbit.

(0)

The Kwajalein launch abort of the SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket yesterday was caused by a minor timing problem that would not have affected the launch. According to Elon Musk:

The abort that occurred a few minutes before T-0 was triggered by our ground control software. It commanded a switchover of range telemetry from landline to radio, which took place correctly, however, because of the hardware involved, this transition takes a few hundred milliseconds. Before it had time to complete, our system verification software examined state and aborted.

I remember the first Space Shuttle launch attempt (STS-1) being scrubbed on first try due to... a software timing glitch between the redundant onboard computers. Certain classes of problems (like LOX valve freeze ups) are just in the nature of the beast, part of the learning curve of a new vehicle and launch control system.

The software fix has been uploaded and a launch attempt is scheduled for 1600 Pacific time today. As I type it is 17:37:32 UTC (GMT) and 10:37:32 AM PDT putting the launch about 5 hours from now. I will return about an hour before launch and give commentary as I did last night.

See you all later!

(10)

The SpaceX flight readiness review has cleared Falcon 1 for launch from Kwajalein at 1600 Pacific Time (US West Coast). As I post it is 19:40:40 UTC here and 12:40:40 PM PDT there. Those who are interested can watch the launch here in about three hours.

They have stated they will scrub today's launch if there is the tiniest doubt or problem.

2220GMT: Launch is about 40 minutes away and the bird is sitting on the pad with some boil off showing around the interstage. Wish I were there instead of the freezing cold here in Belfast tonight!

2225GMT: I have just read a report that there are some telemetry problems between Kwaj and El Segundo.

2227GMT. They are in a planned hold. Wind is 13 knots at 050.

2239GMT. Still telemetry problems. Most of the engineering eyeballs are at the office in El Segundo rather than onsite, so it could cause a scrub if not solved soon.

2256GMT. Telemetry problem sorted. At the moment we are go for launch today.

2300GMT. T-0 is now set for 2345 GMT.

2305GMT: They have recommenced fueling and you can see the boil off at the interstage and up on the second stage.

2317GMT: Audio on webcast has begun, fueling is reported complete. I see quite heavy venting at the interstage.

2320GMT. Venting at engines visible now. This bird is raring to go!

2330GMT: 15 minutes to go, Everything is green!

2332GMT: Cleared for launch, no more holds in count.

2342GMT: T-4. There are 5600 people watching the live stream.

2345GMT: Terminal count abort. I will let you know when I get some info on why.

2358GMT: Abort due to a range issue. There will be a decision on recycling and continuing within the next 10 minutes or so.

0011GMT: It's a scrub for today. I will let you know when. It will be at least 24-48 hrs.

0033GMT: Recycle is for 24 hours. See you all tomorrow, same time GMT. Goodnight all!

(2)

Elon Musk's SpaceX has announced its pre-flight engine test was successful. A Kwajalein launch attempt is now planned for this week and may happen as early as tomorrow.

The first flight, last year, was terminated by flight control systems on board when a problem was detected. The majority of the rocket's systems had performed flawlessly but as it turns out a corroded nut caused a small leak and an engine fire. SpaceX engineers have spent the last year making their systems more robust.

Good luck and hot jets, Elon!