Space Access 2007

Overview
Thu 22 Mar afternoon
Thu 22 Mar evening
Fri 23 Mar morning
Fri 23 Mar afternoon
Fri 23 Mar evening
Sat 24 Mar morning
Sat 24 Mar afternoon

These are notes I took from the presentations at the Space Access 2007 Conference in Phoenix, Arizona.

Thursday Afternoon, March 22, 2007

2 pm Barbara Thompson, Space Weather

Common misconceptions:

• there is no risk at the solar minimum
  • it never goes to zero

• there is no risk at low suborbital altitudes
  • even airliners need to pay attention to solar radiation, especially on polar routes

• radiation goes in a straight line so just stand behind a shield
  • different radiation reacts differently with different shielding materials
  • some may cause a cascade of new particles

• what we know about radiation effects on Earth can easily be translated into space
  • actually it comes in many forms across the spectrum
  • it's hard to reproduce on Earth
  • doses in space for different types of radiation are hard to measure

• Space Environment Center is NOAA space weather forecasting agency
• upcoming Space Weather Enterprise Forum in April

2:30 Gerry Nordley, Artificial Magnetospheres

• Presented idea inspired from SciFi about how to make an artificial magnetosphere for a spacecraft. Designed by aerospace engineers at a scifi conference where he presented it before. Requires superconduction.
• Runing a pipeline of liquid N2 for superconductor around the equator.
• Still not feasible but may become feasible as other launch efforts make progress.

3:00 Charles Miller, AFRL RLV X-Demonstrator Plans

• seeking opportunities to share technology with industry and be a customer for lower cost aerospace technologies
• "reaching out to entrepreneurial community"
• Fully-Reusable Access to Space Technologies (FAST) RLV X-demonstrator project
• looking for technologies for a highly reusable spaceplane

3:30 break

4 pm Steve Cook, NASA Ares Booster Development

• NASA made a new plan under Griffin
• ARES plan was brought to DoD as required by law. After months of discussion where they first suggested using existing ELVs, they came to agree with the proposal. GAO review also agreed with the conclusions.
• LOX/LH2 abandoned as too expensive. (That's revolutionary for NASA. But alt.space community/industry figured it out long ago.)
• acquired aerospike motor from X-33 to jumpstart that part of the project
• Some mfg will be at Michoud in New Orleans - where the current shuttle ET is made. But current mfg methods will be used - great improvement over 1970's methods used on shuttle ET.
• Plans include risk reductions for flight test, intended to shorten schedule from previous gov't programs.
• nationwide team (seems like a lesson *not* learned there!)
• no single prime contractor - NASA is following Saturn/Apollo model actually doing some of the work again. Trying to get out of "not invented here" culture back to "gotta get it done" culture.
• because it's a crewed vehicle, spending a lot of time on simulations of potential failure modes.
• back to making mock-ups sometimes when CAD will slow things down.
• total flow time planned for 15-17 days from start of stacking in VAB to flight. (This is seriously longer cycle times that industry is setting as its goals, who are looking to aviation for their inspiration.)
• using gas struts to get rid of all pyros. (revolutionary for NASA but in line with common alt.space industry goals)
• showed diagrams of the various Ares boosters through Ares V
• early test flights will allow corrections before first full-up flight
• difference from shuttle program - rather than throwing away all our old infrastructure and going in a different direction, they're including "the best of what we have".
• Why not use the EELV boosters? They weren't designed for crew safety. It doesn't have a growth path where Ares needs to go to bigger boosters.
• goal of 4 flights to the moon per year ongoing
• development and early flight program aiming for $7B
• planning horizon currently to 2020
• orbital fuel depots are probably further in the future, not in initial plan
• speaker objected to question about amortizing development costs into per-launch costs (like a business would - so this is still typical gov't)
• focusing on reducing the standing army that exists for the shuttle

4:50 Nicole Jordan, Will Pomerantz: X-Prize Cup Operations & LLC Rules

• summary of 2006 Wirefly XPrize Cup statistics
• "schedule for a show like this gets to be quite complicated at times"
• goal was to have something happen every 15-30 minutes, changes mixed things up
• showed diagrams of show layout options for 2006 which separated the various rocket flights and tests from each other and the crowd
• pad managers & safety officers - 1 each per XPC team, recruited in September
• summary of organizational roles
• emergency response planning
• logistical challenges - kept fuel and oxidizer in separate depots
• this year will ask all the teams how they want to lay out things
• recruited HPR crews at LDRS
  • said that the people are mostly rocketeers but not engineers and needed help setting wind limits, etc - sounded like a dis at the rocketeers
  • XPC had asked rocketeers to prep rockets the night before and they ended up getting wet

• $2M LLC prize money comes from NASA
• XPrize Foundation manages the contest at no cost to the taxpayers
• Level 1 prize for two 90 second flights
• Level 2 prize for two 180 second flights - same energy as from Lunar orbit to landing and back
• contestants need to get FAA experimental rocket flight permits to qualify
• 2007 XPC agreement is being finalized to be at Holloman AFB in Alamogordo NM
• LLC expected to be star of the show again, all prize money carried over
• change in rules: no limit to repairs teams can perform as long as they can carry their equipment with them - better representative of a lunar mission
• potential meeting at event venue in late April
• says it was a learning experience for XPrize Cup organization too
• possible window for test flights a month before the event - not finalized

5:20 Panel, X-Prize Cup Operations - Russell Blink, Randall Clague, Nicole Jordan, Dave Masten, Will Pomerantz

• panelists introduced themselves
• will the teams have hangars available to them? If at Holloman, yes
• teams who need special fuels should let XPC know ASAP. But LOX is easy since most of the teams are using it.
• question about whether the XPC will require everyone to get separate insurance. XPC doesn't have a lot of money even though they hand out a lot of it. So far no details but they'll do the "best they can"
• maximum 5 vehicles per level at the show - 1st five to get their FAA permits
• XPC is reducing their testing requirements since FAA has more stringent standards. They want to be invited to demo flights for the FAA.
• Question about two identical vehicles like Pixel & Texel, and swapping parts was left to the judges to decide.
• Randall says he was very impressed with the judges.