The AIAA Space 2010 meeting continues. See posts at twitter.com/#search?q=%23space2010

Examples of Jeff Foust posts include:
/-- "At #space2010 luncheon, Lori Garver plays up key areas of agreement on NASA budget (ISS extension, Earth sci, overall funding level)."
/-- "Garver said she's encouraged by lessening of tensions in budget debate, but still pushing for full funding for key programs."
/-- "Garver is concerned there's nothing in any budget bills for Cx transition, worried those costs will come out of other programs. "
/-- "One interesting trend from COTS/CCDev panel: everyone seems to be going to pusher escape systems vs. tractors. "
/-- "Les Lyles, ex-Augustine Cmte member: somewhat pleased w/Senate version of NASA authorization bill, less so w/House bill "
/-- "Question of the day: "Lori Garver admitted administration didn't do good job rolling out 2011 budget. What the hell went wrong?" "
/-- "Jim Vedda: every year at conferences like this people say "we're at a crossroads." This time it's actually true. "
/-- "Vedda: we have to get away from our destination fetish in spaceflight. Destinations are not goals."
/-- "Robert Bigelow has no shortage of ambition: talks about having up to 20-30 stations in orbit with volumes of up to 20,000 m^3."

Lots of notes from the AIAA Space 2010 Conference, which started today in Anaheim, California, are being posted at Twitter / Search - #Space2010.

See the conference agenda here (pdf).
===
Lockheed-Martin is presenting its manned asteroid mission study at the AIAA meeting:
/-- 'Plymouth Rock' Deep Space Asteroid Mission Idea Gains Ground - Space.com
/--- Lockheed Proposing Early Asteroid Exploration - Aviation Week

The SpaceUP DC meeting started this morning at George Washington University and will last through Saturday.

I had prior commitments so couldn't make it thre but you can find updates at several places:
/-- Spacevidcast is streaming coverage of the event.
/-- Lots of twitter posts from the event: Twitter / Search - #SpaceUpDC
/-- SpaceUP DC Wiki

The SpaceUP DC unconference, to be held in Washington, DC on Aug. 27-28, 2010, gets the backing of the Space Frontier Foundation: Space Frontier Foundation Sponsors SpaceUp DC: SpaceUp unConference Embodies the Foundation's Frontier Enabling Spirit - SFF - ug.18.10.

Every third Saturday of the month, Mojave Air & Space Port hosts the free Plane Crazy Saturday event. For this month (Aug. 21st, 10:00 am - 2:00 pm), the theme is Rockets 'R' Us and will include exhibits from several local rocket companies.

See this flyer (pdf) for more info.

Lots of notes are being posted from the first day of the Space Elevator Conference at : twitter.com/#search?q=%23SE2010.

Alan Boyle mentions a presentation on the ElectroDynamic Debris Eliminator (EDD), which uses an electrodynamic tether system to catch up with orbital debris. (Joe Carroll is part of the group.) With 12 units,

All 2465 cataloged LEO objects >2 kg are removed in 6.7 years in this simulation

Alan also reports that there will be 3 competitors in the Strong Tether Challenge event today.

The 2010 Space Elevator Conference starts this Friday in Redmond, Washington. See the 3-day agenda here. It will also host a Strong Tether Centennial Challenge competition event: Strong Tether challenge just 3 days away... - The Space Elevator Blog.

NASA's Exploration of Near Earth Objects (NEO) Objectives Workshop is happening today and tomorrow and is being webcast, though I've not been able to connect up yet.

The conference agenda is here.

The SpaceUP DC "unconference" will be held on Friday and Saturday, Aug 27-28 (9am to 5pm) at George Washington University's Funger Hall Auditorium. You can register at SpaceUP DC - Eventbrite.

So what can you do at the event? They give the following answer:

Pretty much anything related to space, [here are] some ideas:

* share your plans for your pet project
* show off the latest in space suit fashion
* settle the debate on Trek vs Wars (Han shot first)
* recruit rocket scientists
* show off your artwork
* announce your plans to open a museum (we happen to know this is actually happening at SpaceUp DC)
* meet strange creatures like aliens and NASA employees
* collaborate on a book
* start a new site
* start a new business
* brainstorm a screenplay
* solicit ideas for your company project
* brainstorm an Android, Blackberry, iPhone, or iPad mobile app
* tackle an issue as a group
* prepare people for talking to their congressman about space
* start a podcast
* revamp your outreach program or create one
* find people to help with your software idea
* teach people about something you’re an expert in
* inspire people
* get kids interested in space and science
* show off your robot, cubesat, AI, or other awesome geeky thing
* develop an online space game or card game
* legitimize your Sci Fi novel by learning actual space facts and meeting real engineers
* eat some moonpies

Now get thinking, and sign up!

I've updated the NewSpace 2010 resources page. It now includes links to the numerous videos of the sessions produced by Spacevidcast. I also link to postings by Doug Messier and to some other conference related material.

Some conference related reports:
/-- Recasting the debate about commercial crew - The Space Review - July.26.10 - Jeff Foust

/-- What's new in New Space? - Cosmic Log - July.27.10 - Alan Boyle

/-- Commercial Spaceflight, We Have a Problem - Technology Review - July.27.10

Below is a Spacevidcast video of the panel discussion on Sunday afternoon titled Approaching Warp Speed: Advanced Space Propulsion with Bruce Pittman (moderator) - NASA Ames, Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz - Ad Astra Rocket Co., Steve Howe - Center for Space Nuclear Research (CSNR), Leik Myrabo - Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Vince Teofilo - Lockheed Martin.

Signing off till really late tonight or tomorrow morning. Have fun watching the rest of the conference at Spacevidcast.com.

Panel: Closing the Lunar Business Case

# Rick Tumlinson (moderator) - Space Frontier Foundation, Orbital Outfitters
# Wendell Mendell - NASA Planetary Scientist
# Bruce Pittman - NASA
# Dennis Wingo - Skycorp, Inc., Orbital Recovery

Tumlinson:
- "If God wanted us to go into space, he would have given us a Moon" (missed the name of the person quoted)
- Unfortunate language by the President in speech at KSC
- Lots of scientists and others had waited a long time for a call to return to the Moon and not happy to hear "Been there, done that"
- Hate to see Chinese land there [before US returns]

Pittman:
- Nostalgia rush
- Shows a poster from the first conf. he organized 31 years ago: "Remember the Future: The Apollo Legacy"
- Lots of enthusiasm at the time about the prospects for going back.
- Need patience.
- Things are looking up!
- Not just up to NASA
- Bigelow, Musk and others also want to go back
- Leveraging to different resources and capabilities.
- 600M tons of water ice at the lunar poles
- Many people "heard" the President say that the US wasn't going back to the Moon and NASA's budget was cut.
- We are going back to the Moon, but in a different way, and the budget was not cut.

Wingo:
- Notes a meeting once organized by Mendell called "Lunar Bases for the 21st Century".
- Remembers the 50s movie "When Worlds Collide" in which the govt ignores approaching doom and a private mogul funds the spaceship to escape.
- Commonly believed prior to 60s that space would be led by private efforts.
- Not NASA's job to exploit that 600M tons of water
- NASA's job is to enable commerce, not do commerce
- Develop technologies
- Need big investors to show up

Mendell:
- Lunakod 1 was located
- Lidar reflection found to be excellent
- Richard Garriott had bought it from Russians in the early 90s. Example of high performance of private enterprise!
- Started Lunar Underground in 1982
- NASA plan at time was : Space transportation system serving a station. Astronauts would be Fedex pilots.
- Orbital transfer spacecraft would take sats to GEO.
- Argued to NASA then that if they could go to GEO, same system to go to the Moon.
- A LOX filling station on the Moon would greatly decrease space transportation costs.
- NASA was a rocket agency, not a living off the land agency.
- Workshop where in-situ resource utilization was first discussed.
- Tried to think of ways to attract private interest
- Assumed huge profits would be needed to attract such interest.
- Surprised by the emergence of the Musk, Bezos, etc. generation who put their money into space without a guarantee of big return.
- Huge shift from the view that NASA was the only conceivable agent to make space development happen.
- New people with initiative and new ideas and resources. Very exciting.
- VSE was about creating economic wealth but NASA didn't grasp this.
- Looking forward to first sign of a space economy when a company sells a service in space to another company in space.
- Constellation people worked really hard but the program was based on wrong story.

Tumlinson: Walt Anderson was a pioneer in private financing of space projects.

Pittman:
- Mendell said at a conference in which NASA manager had mention settlement, "If settlement is your long term goal, Constellation is the wrong architecture"

Wingo:
- Moon has been bombarded by asteroids with platnium group metals
- Could use GLXP with radar to locate metal deposit.
- Lots of people doubted water at poles

Mendell:
- On the side that says there is not proof of 600M tons of water
- Not as negative about water as he was but still skeptical of large quantities
- LCROSS neutron scattering results not matching Lunar Prospector.

Pittman: No controversy that there is lots of oxygen available on the Moon.
- Can be crucial part of in-space propellant resources

Mendell:
- With orbital fuel depots and lunar resources, can put together a story that comes together.

Mendell:
- Must do systems analysis for the whole earth-moon interaction
- concerned with debris problem for LEO
- Rad a big problem outside of LEO

Wingo:
- The enabler question. For Constellation the decision was made that the technical readiness level was too low for in-situ utilization to be included in the architecture.
- NASA could raise that TRL over the next few years by supporting a number of low cost R&D efforts that could make big progress quickly.
- Key questions will be answered by putting rovers on the Moon to investigate them.

Mendell:
- Go to the big construction and mining companies to find out how to do building and in-situ activity on the Moon.
- Gets strong response in discussions with such people.

Pittman:
- A new idea is a combination lunar research park and university.

NASA guy in audience says there are extensive on-going interactions with mining people and work is proceeding to raise TRL for in-situ techniques to 6.

Will only catch the first couple of presentations at the NewSpace 2010 conference today before heading back home. There will be sessions through the afternoon (see agenda). You can watch the presentations at Spacevidcast.

Twitter postings from the meeting can be found at twitter.com/#search?q=%23newspace2010.

I'm collecting resources about the conference here.

Jeff Foust posts this today: A brief Virgin (and TSC) update - NewSpace Journal

A New Space Exploration Enterprise
John Olson - NASA

- New human spaceflight strategy
- affordability and sustainability as key drivers
- enabling human missions beyond LEO
- Reviews various destinations and types of missions to them
-- In-space infrastructure - Lagrange points, e.g. for propellant depots, observatories, etc.
-- Moon - long list of missions and challenges
-- Asteroids
-- Mars
- Common capabilities and tech building blocks for the HSF strategy
- New path for HSF includes flagship tech demos, enabling tech, robotic precursors, commercial crew, etc.
- in-situ resource utilization
- Human factors research
- Roadmap and timeline
- Launching a new era in human space exploration enterprise
- (Slides will be made available.)

Question about astronaut corps:
- Dynamic situation. New skills and capabilities will be needed.
- Potential to open up to broader range of people.

Lots of panels and talks today by people from NASA. Definitely the biggest NASA representation at any space advocacy meeting I've attended except for the National Space Society's ISDC meetings in DC a few years ago.

Perhaps not too surprising since, as mentioned at the meeting today, much of the President's budget for the agency this year looks like it follows a script from the Space Frontier Foundation. That is:
- Leave access to LEO up to commercial launch providers while NASA astronauts focus on the frontier beyond LEO.
- Use competitive fixed price contracting for launch services
- Let high launch rates bring down costs via economies of scale rather than building expensive and seldom used heavy lifters
- Develop technologies like fuel depots that will lower the cost of moving beyond LEO.
- Work with the space industry the way NACA worked with the aviation industry
- Use suborbital to nurture development of fully reusable space transports.

Congress has now thrown roadblocks into a lot of this. However, the Administration chose this direction not because of admiration for the Foundation's wisdom but because of economics. The Augustine panel showed in detail that NASA's in-house launch architecture was not affordable and recommended the use of commercial services for sending crews to LEO. The panel also advocated a renewal of the agency's R&D program. It may take another budget cycle or two, but eventually Congress will be forced to recognize economic reality as well. Congress has, after all, accepted that commercial cargo is essential to the operation of the ISS. After that service is underway, it will be very difficult for them to continue to support an extremely expensive NASA in-house program in an environment where there is tremendous pressure to reduce federal spending.
===
Jeff Foust reports on the talk Friday at the NewSpace conference by Tom Shelley of Space Adventures: Space Adventures suborbital and orbital update - NewSpace Journal

A couple of posts by Doug Messier from Saturday's sessions:
/-- NewSpace 2010: Mining Asteroids and Orbital Debris for Profit

/-- NewSpace 2010: Forget Mars, Let's Go to Deimos!

Suborbital Spaceflight and Beyond
Enrico Palermo - Virgin Galactic

- Challenges for the suborbital spaceflight industry
- Lots of them so categorized into four main areas:
- Safety
- Commercially viable
- It's not just about the vehicle- must build a space line, spaceport, suppliers, etc.
- Creating the experience

- Safety: Design, build, test
-- Burt Rutan design
-- Feather return
-- Wanted to solve reentry problem that led to death of a X-15 pilot
-- Shuttlecock concept
-- Shows photos of SS2 in feather configuration
-- SS1 heritage
-- 33 flights of WK2
-- SS2 roll out on Dec. 09
-- 3 captive carry flights completed, 1 manned, Functional tests
-- Shows video of first manned captive carry
-- Rocket motor testing continues
-- G Profile preparation for passengers
-- ZERO-G flights, NASTAR training - more passed than expected
-- Emergency response training

Commercial viability:
-- proof of market
-- wanted to see at least $10M of tickets sold before going with the project
-- $50M deposits seen so far.
-- Weathered financial crisis OK.
-- VG SS2 - bigger vehicle, designed for fast turnaround. At least one flight a day, maybe more.
-- Size Matters - surveys showed passengers wanted to get out of their seats and float around.
-- Virgin Group - branded venture capital

- Not just about the vehicles:
-- Infrastructure needed
-- $200M invested with NM in Spaceport America
-- Astronaut lounge
-- 10k ft runway
-- project management organization, etc.
-- The Spaceship Company (TSC) - job is to build the fleet of vehicles.
-- "Recruiting like mad"
-- Support for operations
-- regulatory issues - FAA, informed consent, export, etc

- Creating the experience
-- from prototype to product
-- The view
-- Feel like an astronaut - weightlessness
-- Black sky
-- The Ride...
-- Spaceship stability - avoid vibrations, spin, etc in SS1
-- Pilots
-- Bigger windows
-- More volume for interior space
-- 2-3 days preparation.

- Have to prove that suborbital commercial spaceflight is viable in order to unlock future investment in commercial spaceflight industry
- $280M investment from Abu Dhabi

The International Space Station: Open for Business

Bruce Pittman - NASA Ames
Jason Cursan - NASA
Kris Kimel - Kentucky Space
Jeff Smith - NASA

Pittman: Original plan for Station in 1984 had it in orbit in 4 years for $8B.
- Worked on a survey of potential users at the time and found lots of interest - but didn't asked them if they had any money
- Finally have facility in orbit.
- Welcoming users to take advantage of it.
- Offering lower cost use

Crusan: US National Lab Overview
- Utilization budget was decimated in recent years.
- Describes systems available for uses.
- National Lab partnerhsips - Zero Gravity, Microsoft, NanoRacks, etc.
- Opportunities for users - competitive award of space act agreement, public outreach, SBIR, etc.
- Innovative communication projects - Pixar agreement, Google Earth, etc.

Smith:
- Space biosciences division
- Difficult to get experiments to space in the proper conditions.
- Space protein crystallization
- >100k different proteins in the human body
--- Little be bigger and better when grown in space
--- Only about 10000 have been crystalized and about 4000 have yield structural info
- Space 3D tissue culture
--- Force of gravity tends to overwhelm tissue structures as the grow on the ground.
--- Still a research project to find whether space tissue growth provides benefits.
--- The 3D structure of, say, a tumor and its interactions with its surroundings can't be reproduced in a ground lab.
- Space Plant Products
--- Took a while to realize that plants were being asphyxiated by water films while in microgravity.
--- Needed several flights to get past that and start studying the direct micro-g effects
--- Plant structures products, e.g. lignin, develop differently in space.
-- NASA Ames space biosciences - capabilities and support

Kimel - Kentucky Space is consortium of Kentucky universities and companies
- Non-profit. To raise money, sold $35k shares to become partner.
- Near space - high altitude balloons, sounding rockets
- small space craft - Cubesats
- ISS micro-g
- On-orbit operations
- 21m dish space tracking antenna
- Every student gets a stipend
- Not a philanthropic operation. Money comes in and goes to contractors.
- Fly repeatable missions on reusable platforms.
- Formed a joint partnership with NanoRacks
- In just a year launched racks on shuttle and now one installed on ISS
- Uses Cubesat form factor - "CubeLab"
- Hold up to 16 Cubesat units.
- Can handle multi-cube modules as well.
- 32 kgs of research equipment on ISS
- Biomedical, energy, materials, education, game-based education, etc.
- Exomedicine - study of disease mitigation and health enhancement in space
- There are negative effects of micro-g, what about positive effects?
- STEM SpaceLab - for middle and high school students to do real science on space station

Q&A:
Protein science industry?
- Need to make experiments in space no harder and expensive as experiments on the ground.
- Crystalizing membrane proteins in space would be a big deal. Like crystallizing oatmeal.
- Richard Garriott carried out protein experiments on his flight and formed a company to pursue it.
- Had Laliberté also run some experiments.
- Much higher throughput to the ISS now than before

Growing food in space?
- JSC has a small group looking at food in space
- advanced life support also involves growing some plants

What is prospect for access for experiments:
- More crew available now but still need automation.
- About 4-8 flights per year using cargo transports to get payloads to the station
- Live hardware risks up to experimenters and NASA just looks at safety

Centrifuge for ISS in Congressional budget bill:
- NASA studying it carefully.
- Would be very interesting to study human size centrifuge.
- There are smaller centrifuge available.

Mitigating Biomedical Long Duration Constraints With Innovative Mission Architecture
Jim Logan

Speaking privately. Not representating NASA.

- 100 person years of experience in human spaceflight since 1961.
- more than 500 people
- short sorties not a problem.
- longer duration problems are radiation and hypogravity
- RP100: 1030 g/cm2 rad shield at sea level
- RP50: Rad shield at 18,000ft
- RP2: best shield on ISS
- RP0.005 Rad protect of a space suit.

- Metal habitats on surface is nonstarter
- Habitats with regolith piled on top will work.
- Underground habitats.

- Shouldn't be obsessive about gravity well surfaces for human settlements.

- "The perfect place": low delta-V, lots of resources, little gravity, etc. => asteroids
- NEO stepping stones to Mars
- Burrow into asteroid, use materials to build habitat.
- Can dig a deep hole for use as rad safe docking volume for spacecraft
- Rotate to generate spin gravity

- Virtues of Demos
- 12.5mph escape velocity
- only 20k km from Martian surface
- launch window every 2.14 years
- just above aerosysnchronous orbit
- light time round-trip time to Mars surface is 0.13sec
- Could be carbonaceous chondrite so it could have water
- low avg density (1.471 g/cm3)

- Discusses logistics for Demos mission
- 8 months transit.
- At least RP5 during transit.
- Spherical vehicle with habitat at center is needed
- Total IMLEO is ~600mT
- Current ISS mas is 370mT
- Wants a super heavy lift to do this in 5 launches
- Describes a Demos mission.

Physical Threats and Commercial Opportunities: Orbital Debris and NEOs

Berin Szoka (moderator)- Progress and Freedom Foundation
Joe Carroll - Tether Applications, Inc
A.C. Charania - SpaceWorks Commerical
Bob Werb - Space Frontier Foundation
Dennis Wingo - Skycorp, Inc., Orbital Recovery Corporation

Werb: Foundation has worked to change the conversation about orbital debris.
- Frontier philosophy impacts how this problem is addressed.
- Other parties come from different directions
- Military is worried about debris for practical reasons.
- Scientists are interested in NEOs for what they will tell about the formation of the solar system.

Carroll: Reviews growth of debris and characterized the problem.
- Every [spacefaring] country has done things that have worsened the problem.
- Think of satellites as "cars"
- Spacecraft and stage explosions and collisions result in hubcap sized objects
- Lots of bullet sized objects
- For every object that the ISS avoids, there are 50 untracked objects that could put a hole in a manned module.
- Mitigation - reducing the growth of debris.
- Car-Car collision are as probably as hubcap-car collisions but more debris
- Got get rid of the cars. Ground based lasers might remove some of the small stuff
- Majority of the debris is Russian. About 15% is US.
- Need to work out a deal with Russian so that its debris can be removed

Wingo: Orbital satellite stopped responding to ground commands but is still broadcasting.
- Is now wandering through GEO orbits.
- Every year or so a satellite fails to get to orbit.
- Becomes a big target.
- If there were a big collision, could make the entire geo-band unusual and wipe out a trillion dollars in economic activity.

Carroll: "Kessler effect" - cascade effect of collisions can grow as debris creates more debris.
- The worst problem is the car-car collision potential.
- E.g. 18 Zenat stages the size of busses. In same orbit as with the spacecraft they delivered. Collisions would generate lots of "bullets" in LEO.

Werb: While won't be trapped on earth by debris, LEO could become essentially unusable.

Carroll - 1000 tons just of Russian spent stages.
- Is there something useful that could be done with such material.

Wingo: In GEO, relative velocity is much lower than in LEO. Much easier to go from sat to sat.
- Could potential to reuse solar panels, electronics, materials, etc.
- GEO is basically halfway to the Moon in energy terms.
- Recycling.

Carroll: Avoiding the liability issues with reentry, recycling could become a popular option.
- Collection.

Charania: Huge number of objects in asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. A small percentage of these have migrated into orbits overlapping with earth's.
- Discusses size range.
- Metals are accessible vs deep underground on earth.
- Science interest.
- Mining interest.
- Tens to thousands of parts per billions vs a few parts per billion on earth.
- Thousands of dollars per kg.
- Go to an asteroid for science, mining, and defense (against collision) reasons

Werb: Silly to multiple current price times the amount of, say, platiuum total in an asteroid.
- However, for developing human space colonies these could become the raw material along with the Moon.

Charania: Need to do assessments of the objects to help understand how best to defect a future NEO threat.
- Reconnaissance mission,
- followed by extraction mission, probably robotic.
- Large scale mining probably 100s of million to billions of dollars required.
- "Last 100 mile problem" if want to bring the materials to earth.

Carroll: 2166 tons total for objects above 2kg
- 10000 fragments below 2 kg. that are tracked.

Wingo: Electrodynamic tethers are great for LEO object removal. Not usable for GEO.

Wingo: Court case between Intelsat and New Sky over the wandering sat that is now interfering with New Sky's com sats.
Precedent will be set if Intelsat held liable for a derelict satellite.

Werb: Precedents for rights of salvage and so forth with orbital debris could carry over to mining asteroids.

Szoka: Need to build up an infrastructure to extract these materials and bring them back. Legal issues add another hurdle to building up that infrastructure.
- Law of the Sea Treaty could be used as a possible space mining model. Licenses are given to obtain resources from the sea floor without allowing for claims to ownership of an area of the sea.

Wingo: Expect satellite owners and insurance industry will decide on how to handle salvage outside of courts.

Werb: In LEO most debris is Russian/Soviet military derived. Got to make a deal with Russia before anyone starts grabbing their material.

Werb: Confused legal issues regarding who is responsible for in-orbit collisions. E.g. Russia can say Iridium moved its satellite into the path of its derelict spacecraft and so Iridium is responsible.

Carroll: Lower cost access to space would not remove the need to do something about salvage and debris removal.

Carroll: Will be launching two electrodynamic tether missions in next couple years. Should remove last vestiges of giggle factor.

Wingo: Just need a check. Waiting for geo-sat industry and investors to see the need for tugs.

Charania: As new telescopes come on line will be finding more and more NEOs of smaller sizes. Will start seeing threat warnings more often.
- New NASA NEO mission and unmanned missions will bring more interest to NEO issues.

NASA Roundtable: In-Space Services and Commercial Opportunities

Gary Martin (moderator) - New Ventures & Communications NASA Ames
Dallas Bienhoff - In-Space and Surface Systems, Boeing
Ron Clark - Space Orbital Systems
Doug Comstock - NASA Innovative Partnership Program
Dr. Dan Rasky - NASA Ames Space Portal
Dennis Wingo - Skycorp, Inc., CTO, Orbital Recovery Corporation

Wingo: need to match tech with good investors.
- if come with good customer, NASA is a great partner
- Will find big fights over crumbs too.

Bienhoff: various barriers for BEO exploration and development
- radiation protection - multi-purpose mass
- how to sustain ops
- High ISP propulsion to get to destinations fast.
- aerobraking
- propellant depots
- If export fuel from Moon, who are the customers?
- Bigelow could drive launch rates to 100 per year. Could similarly drive a lunar base biz.
- Human factors
- Machine shops in space

Rasky: Friendly front door to NASA - figured the agency needed at least one
- Came from small company to NASA in late 80s
- Early study of use of Station by commercial firms
- See commercial space as a way to make NASA much more effective.
- June workshop on commercial space markets
- id and prioritized 8 commercial space markets: Low cost & reliable space access, in-space services, space tourism, commercial lunar, space lab serives, communications, human hab, power infrastructure.

Comstock: Overcome barriers by demonstrating early success

Martin : What is NASA's role in supporting commercial space?

Clark: Think in-space servicing will be one of the most appealing to investors.
- Once service is delivered and payment made, it becomes much more real.
- Otherwise, uncertainties very high.

Wingo: Long negotiations in 90s about doing spacecraft assembly on the ISS.
- Finally got a deal signed when offered to pay for use of the station rather than ask for money.
- Got to come in with your own money. Must have a business that relies on other customers.

Bienhoff: should buy services.
- May not need NASA if Bigelow model is a success.

Rasky: NACA model is approach to supporting commercial
- Crucial to development of aviation.
- Manhattan project style program became model for NASA. Not sustainable after 1967.

Beinhoff: Great benefit in just refueling existing upper stages.
- Can greatly increase deep space delivery.

Wingo: Told by Generals privately that they hope his European satellite refueling scheme works because they could never do it in the US.
- When a comsat went into the wrong orbit, could have made $150M within 6 months if had found an investor with $4M to fund the tug project.

Is there a need for in-space solar power delivery:
Rasky: Yes, e.g. a lunar base at night.
- A power beaming capability would be very useful for a number of NASA missions.
- If it was available, would reduce tech risks for several proposed missions.

Trent Waddington: Problem of orbital launch windows for propellant depots:
Beinhoff: Windows come back around. Just an operational issue. Not a fundamental barrier.

A New Day for NASA and NewSpace
Charles Miller - Senior advisor for commercial space, NASA OCT

"Good Morning! Welcome to the revolution."
- We're from the government and were here to ask for your help.
- Change is difficult.
- Paradigm shift.
- Some make the shift earlier than others.
- He made the shift in the early 90s.
- The old model of the President calling forth the country to do some great task doesn't work.
- E.g. Reagan's call for a $8B space station by early 90s.
- VSE and Obama's proposal are similar to basic outline of SFF goals of the early 90s
- Try to foster commercial space capabilities.
- Benefits to economic growth, security, education, etc.
- Big meeting in June of NASA reps from centers to discuss what commercial capabilities to foster
- Near unanimous decision to support development of commercial low cost reliable access to space
- 2nd priority was in-space servicing.
- Discussing what are the major barriers to standing up these commercial capabilities.
- Will present these findings to administration.
- Need input from industry and the advocacy community on these barriers and what to do about overcoming these barriers.

NASA Roundtable: Low Cost, Reliable Access to Space

James A. Muncy (moderator) Space Frontier Foundation, President, PoliSpace
Michael Beavin - Senior Program Analyst, Office of Space Commercialization, Dept. of Commerce
Doug Comstock - NASA Innovative Partnership Program
Gary Hudson - HMX Inc.
Michael Mealling - Masten Space Systems
Charles Miller - NASA Commercial Space
Michelle Murray - FAA, Office of Commercial Space Transportation
Tim Pickens - Dynetics, Inc.

Muncy: Lots of people from NASA at this meeting.
- Here because they want to be here. Want to work with us.
- Panel to discuss what is blocking low cost access to space.
- What can govt do? What can commercial firms do better
- What is the number one barrier to low cost barrier?
Mealling - Still a common perception that commercial can't do the job.
- Falcon 9 shows that flying trumps perception. Do more flights.
- Divorce funding allocation from political process and allow for long term planning
- Get other actors involve, e.g. non-profits.
Comstock: demonstrate incremental success. Lower risks
- Find ways to continue to show new markets exist
Muncy: Other than passengers, no big new market that instantly will appear with cheaper flight.
- Price competition.
Pickens: sweet spots
- SpaceX has built a low cost rocket in one of the most expensive states in the country and has to transport it across the country for launch. Leaves room for competition.
- Buying rides from SpaceX is disruptive to industry and scary to the primes and good.
- Not business as usual
- How to get the range costs down?
Miller: what about range costs barrier?
Pickens: Flight termination roadblock for SpaceX was a hurdle.
- Need to get so many people out of the loop.
- Wallops is looking like a good place to launch.
Murray: safety problems could be potential barrier. Major accident could cause major problems.
Beavin: Perception is definitely a barrier.
- Looking at other ways to launch NOAA satellites.
- Need economies of scale with bigger market
- Still in old mindset of big bus and hang lots of instruments on it.
- Negative attitude towards commercial.
- Try to disprove those myths to them.
- Hosting instruments on commercial platforms.
- Commerce was deeply involved in writing commercial sections of new space policy
- Commercial may not always be the right option but should be examined with open mind.
Hudson: problem is the money
- Money solves tech problems, regulatory problems, etc.
- As Nelson said, talking political science not rocket science.
- However, bill does specify hardware
- Going to produce another Shuttle.
- Another 30-40 year failure.
- Will commercial be able to pull us out of that?
- While money raising for projects, potential investors would go to a proverbial brother in law who worked at NASA who would trash all commercial projects.
- Brother-in-law effect reduced but still there
- NASA is basically a public works agency, not a space agency.
- In early 2000s, recommend NASA support a commercial transport of people
- NASA has in the past been an unreliable customer but has improved considerably.
Miller: NASA not being a dependable customer is a barrier
- House committee flipped 180 degrees in 2 years from mandating commercial crew to opposing it.
- NASA could sign a long term CRuSR contract and in two years decide to change that.
- Need to find ways to mitigate this problem.
Hudson: Can't in good conscience take on a NASA project and promise an investor that this project is a good risk.
Muncy: Any investor should know that there is a risk.
Hudson: Want to believe it but can't anymore.
Mealling: Having NASA as a customer is OK if have other customers.
- Business plan takes it into account that any one customer can disappear.
- Have other govt customers, e.g. state education
Hudson: OK for suborbital but for orbital harder to find alt customers
Pickens: Been on the crumb level.
- Apprehensive about running long term on govt contracts, SBIR
- Turned a NASA product into a Bigelow product.
- Don't know answer to problem of long term dependence on NASA
Muncy: Is there a way that NASA approaches launch that acts as a barrier?
- Is there something the way NASA and NOAA buys commercial space that could be improved?
Comstock: Working on ways to change the way services are purchased.
- try to demonstrate innovations on the margins and then move them into core areas.
- COTS was protected from cuts when NASA needed to find money. So in that case NASA acted as a reliable partner.
- CRS is fully funded.
- Can use those as examples of NASA acts in a reliable manner when talking with investors.
Murray: Be open to ideas from industry.
Wendell Mendell: Brother-in-law effect is very real.
- Similar situation is when a good idea is brought in from outside and then NASA decides to do it internally rather than buy it from commercial provider.
- Should add this to ethics training - don't still intellectual property.
Feng Hsu: Can't depend on NASA as single customer
- Need dept of space with focus only on development of space economy
Muncy: Space section in Dept. of Commerce can do that.
Miller: NASA hates being the only customer. Love being part of a growing space industry.
- NASA wants to find ways to grow and develop more customers for commercial

Beavin in response to question : regulatory costs are a barrier. E.g even "free" licenses require lawyers to apply for.

Muncy in resp. to a question: Other govt organizations also change but more apparent at NASA due to its inherent role as a R&D organization.
- Did a poor job of informing Congress about the reasons for the need for change at NASA.
- Thought the Augustine findings were enough but lots of people didn't want to listen to it.

Krukin: State, local and non-profit sources for funding.

Miller: Get back to core question of barriers to lower cost access to space.
- Order of magnitude lower cost and order of magnitude increase in reliability.

Audience member: Number one barrier is low launch rate.
- Tourism and space solar currently best promise for higher launch rate.

Audience: ITAR and other barriers reduce US commercial launch rates. Have lost most commercial launches to others.

Lepore: Number one thing the govt should do is get out of the role as competitor.
- EELV is already a commercial provider.
- Instead of funding new vehicles, fund new payloads.

Comstock: That was what the President's proposal was all about.
Mealling: House committee said no, we want govt to compete and put commercial out of business.

Tumlinson: Talks about resistance to commercial suborbital by the sounding rocket group at Wallops.
- Find payload people and try to align their interests with the commercial.