Space Access 2010

Space Access '10
Space Access Society info

Overview
Thu April 8 afternoon
Thu April 8 evening
Fri April 9 morning
Fri April 9 afternoon
Fri April 9 evening
Sat April 10 morning
Sat April 10 afternoon

Other coverage
RLV News

by Ian Kluft

These are notes I took from the presentations at the Space Access 2010 Conference in Phoenix, Arizona.

Friday afternoon, April 9, 2010

Douglas Maclise, NASA Ames

Douglas Maclise, "CRuSR (Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research)", NASA Ames Rsearch Center

* how can NASA foster a commercial RLV (reusable launch vehicle) industry?

create a tipping point after which the industry will take off and growth becomes self-sustaining
take a NACA-like approach
- be a customer by buying flight services
  - pathfinder contracts - establish relationship, help business build up
    - early high-risk test flights, limited duration, fly "expendable" payloads
  - blanket purchase agreements with indefinite delivery and indefinite quantity
  - ability to fly payloads often changes how often NASA research and testing can be done - it changes the research too
- help resolve common industry problems
  - refine procedures for payload processing and safety assurance
  - develop/procure standard equipment for payloads
    - batteries, data loggers, canisters/racks, pointing platforms, permanently mounted sensors for atmospheric research
  - work with FAA and industry to resolve issues
    - Air Traffic Control - ADS-B, NextGen ATC, coordination of vertical traffic w/ horizontal traffic
    - safety - how to make sure payloads don't interfere with vehicle or pilot
- educate and enable the user community
  - promote the benefits
    - prolonged high-quality microgravity (4-6 minutes)
    - frequent low-cost flights - build a little, test alittle
    - new territory to explore - Mesosphere and lower Thermosphere sometimes called the "Ignorosphere" due to inaccessibility to current research
  - promote awareness
    - conferences, community web presence, social networks
    - provide flights/equipment for academic experiments
  - provide a catalog of CRuSR services
  - encourage industry standards

* facilitating research

NASA buys launches for researchers/students, but doesn't pay for the experiment
provide NASA facilities (like Ames wind tunnels)
NASA wants to "be the middleman without overstepping our regulations"

* establish strategic partnerships - FAA, other gov't, spaceports, industry, research grant sources
* thinks "industry is best served if NASA is not their primary customer" - healthy businesses have a variety of customers

Propellant Depots panel: Bernard Kutter, Rand Simberg, Jon Goff, Dallas Bienhoff

Panel: Propellant Depots: "Impedance Matching" Between LEO Launch And Deep-Space Missions - Dallas Bienhoff, Jon Goff, Bernard Kutter, Rand Simberg

* Rand Simberg:

LEO as a harbor - look at Earth orbit (not the surface) as a harbor and it changes a lot of mission planning
analogy to ships anchoring in deeper water (like orbit) away from dock (surface)
"ISS was extruded through a 5 meter hole" (shuttle cargo bay diameter)
heavy-lift launchers still have limits on diameter - need multiple launches to exceed those limits
how accessible is LEO from BEO (beyond Earth Orbit)?
- limits by orbital mechanics
- i.e. LEO return via aerobraking (dip into atmosphere to slow down and back up to circularize orbit at LEO

* Jon Goff:

hilarious opening slide: "We don't need to steenkin propellant depots", photo of car w/ barrel tied down on roof and another sticking out the hatchback
depots as an early RLV market - building the infrastructure for bigger missions
old ideas of huge stations as depots may not be only possibility
smaller depots may be in multiple locations allos smaller transfer vehicles
resonant orbits allow flights over multiple launch sites, maybe twice a day
if you're going to dispense fuel in 500-1000lb quantities, you could have more rendezvous and docking events in 6 months than all of previous human spaceflight history
- need a better way than effectively ramming the station to dock
- would never do that with mid-air refueling of aircraft

* Bernard Kutter:

propellant depots are a potentially very large market
one mission to the moon requires as much propellant as ULA launches in a year right now
orbital depot system required technology exists now
- extracting fuel from tank
- mass determination
depot must be ready to receive and dispense propellant upon arrival in orbit
shows a slide for reuse of a Centaur upper stage hardware to make a small fuel depot
repeats question from Jon Goff: why stop at LEO? Kutter agrees - Lagrange points and beyond become possible and facilitate deeper space missions with each step

* Dallas Bienhoff:

thanked Jeff Greason and Augustine Commission for bringing propellant depots from obscurity to public view
video animation of "too big" cislunar propellant depot concept originally intended for Constellation
increases payload to moon landing by 30 tons
compared direct-launched fuel, fuel depots, and future lunar-derived fuel
Constellation had planned to throw away hardware with each mission - this plan doesn't

Jordin Kare, LaserMotive

* LaserMotive was the winner of Level 1 of the Power Beaming Challenge in 2009 (a $900K prize), one of NASA's Centennial Challenges
* after one competitor put their equipment on a trailer instead of doing all the setup at a test site, the next year everyone had similar trailers
* used video and telescope for tracking - "highest prize winning video game"
* competition was at dry lakebed at NASA Dryden Research Center (Edwards AFB)
* competition: U of Saskatchawan (student group), Kansas City Space Pirates (amateur group)
* teams were offered an 8kW welding laser - LaserMotive declined because it would reduce their ability to test and practice
* showed video produced by the Spaceward Foundation (the judging organization)
* KC Space Pirates almost made it but lost power 2/3 of the way up - optics problems
* LaserMotive reached the top (and bumped it twice on the video)
* Level 2 prize remains unawarded
* looking forward to use lasers as a launch power device

better to build a lot of little lasers and receivers than single bog ones for each
high power fiber lasers are preferred
10 years ago this was not feasible
5 years ago it was coming out of the labs
now it's available from multiple vendors

* 2 phase launch system would beam power from launch site and a downrange second laser site
* estimated performance

about 100 megawatts to launch a 1kg payload to low Earth orbit
20 payloads to orbit per hour

* adaptive optics needed for the laser system now available commercially, except that it's low power usage - but no longer a big leap from what he needs
* scaling down: 100MW w/ 116kg payload can be scaled down to 25MW w/ 12kg payload with optics improvements
* expects $2B for 100MW orbital launcher, $800K for 25MW
* From Q+A:

Q: so you wouldn't do this from California, right? A: No you would do this somewhere you can afford to buy electricity
Q: what weather issues are there? A: lasers go through rain but not clouds or heavy snow

Michelle Murray, FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation

Michelle Murray, Federal Aviation Administration, Office of Commercial Space Transportation

* history of FAA "AST" (old acronym still in use)
* regulates US commercial space launches, including protection of the uninvolved public
* Murray recently opened California office of FAA AST located at Edwards AFB
* details of rules for launch licensing
* experimental launch permits have lower requirements for suborbital non-revenue flights (may be used for test flights of unmanned commercial vehicles under development)
* licensed launch sites ("spaceports") may be for either for vertical or horizontal launch or both
* "Centers of Excellence" program, infrastructure grant programs
* starting "lessons learned program" to collect safety information from AST and anonymous voluntary submissions from industry
* From Q+A:

Q: what can waivers be requested for? A: only for FAA regulations but not laws passed by Congress
AST's authorization from Congress does not give them authority over orbital activities
- (my addition: AST can only regulate launch and entry to/from the US or operated by US citizens)

A.C. Charania, SpaceWorks Commercial

* located in Atlanta
* posted an org chart slide (seriously?! why?)
* provides engineering and economic analysis for commercial space flight
* graphic of models and graphic renderings of civilian and military spaceplanes and spacecraft
* number of government studies mentioned
* illustrators and artists on staff to make their own artwork
* "Fast Forward" study

analysis of point-to-point suborbital commercial cargo or passenger service
often cited as next step for suborbital launch companies and projects
could be first step toward orbital system
studying routes (city pairs), integration into commercial aviation system, etc

Gerald Nordley, Tethers Unlimited

* tether projects including one up on the International Space Station
* developing a "structureless antenna" - thin film makes a large antenna for a small satellite
* "Terminator Tether" - deployed from a small satellite as a de-orbit device

can be used for compliance with rules from recent years requiring a de-orbit device for the satellite's end of life to avoid leaving it up there as space junk

* would like to talk with launch providers about access to space to test technologies under experimentation