As expected, Space Adventures announced Thursday at the International Space Development Conference, (ISDC) in Chicago its partnership with Armadillo Aerospace to provide suborbital space tourism flights. Armadillo will develop a vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) suborbital vehicle carrying people to [...]]]>

Eric Anderson (left) and John Carmack talk about their suborbital partnership at ISDC on Thursday.

As expected, Space Adventures announced Thursday at the International Space Development Conference, (ISDC) in Chicago its partnership with Armadillo Aerospace to provide suborbital space tourism flights. Armadillo will develop a vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) suborbital vehicle carrying people to at least 100 kilometers altitude, with Space Adventures selling the seats, starting with its existing customer list of about 200 people, including several former astronauts.

The presentation, featuring Space Adventures president and CEO Eric Anderson and Armadillo Aerospace founder John Carmack, offered few technical or schedule details about their plans. There is no finalized vehicle design yet: a video shown in the presentation showed a number of differenent Armadillo concepts, from a cone sitting atop four propellant tanks with a central engine to the “fishbowl” concept Armadillo showed off in 2008 for the short-lived suborbital joint venture between Armadillo and the Rocket Racing League. Carmack also offered no timetable for the beginning of tourist flights, although he did note the company hoped to be flying unmanned scientific payloads to altitudes of approximately 100,000 feet (30 kilometers) in the next year, and to 100 kilometers altitude in the following year.

Instead, the presentation was examining in more general terms the companies’ plans, including why Space Adventures, who has made a name for itself for nearly a decade by arranging flights to the International Space Station, would get into the suborbital spaceflight business. Anderson noted that when Space Adventures was founded in the late 1990s, its focus was on suborbital spaceflight at a time when many vehicle developers were saying “we’re only two years away,” he recalled. “We didn’t have any idea at the time that we would be fortunate enough to be able to launch private citizens to orbit before suborbital flights,” he continued. Later, Space Adventures considered working with a Russian company to develop a suborbital vehicle called Explorer, which he said they abandoned because “frankly, it got too expensive.” As Armadillo made progress with their vehicles, “I was just so impressed” with their efforts he was convinced they were the company that could really reduce the cost of space access.

While neither Armadillo nor Carmack discussed the cost of the project, they did confirm that Space Adventures was providing Armadillo with funding to support it, at least in part. Alluding to past partnership announcements that failed to pan out, Carmack said, “One of my new rules on this is that I’m not going to get up and talk about something unless a check has cleared.” And since Carmack was getting up and talking about this, he confirmed, “Space Adventures has actually paid Armadillo Aerospace to begin developing a new suborbital vehicle.” Carmack said later that under their agreement, Space Adventures will pay Armadillo unspecified amounts upon achiveing certain milestones in the vehicle development effort. “The amount of money that has changed hands here is not trivial, but it’s not enough to fund the vehicles,” he said. “It isn’t enough money to pay for these vehicles, it’s enough money to make me think about not pursuing other contracts.” He added that he expected to kick in more of his own money into the venture, but also looked to getting funding from NASA’s Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) program for flying scientific payloads.

The timelines that they did reveal suggest that Space Adventures and Armadillo will not be the first to market for commercial suborbital space tourism, given the progress being made by companies like Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace. Carmack addressed this as well, in the process perhaps raising the hackles of some of his competitors in the audience at the ISDC. “It’s a fool who doesn’t think he has any competition,” Carmack said. On Virgin, he said, “I think they have explicitly not chosen the most cost effective solution on this. I don’t think they will be able to compete on price, eventually, but some people will prefer their experience.”

Carmack was critical of XCOR from a funding standpoint. “I believe that, if fully funded, they could build a vehicle that could fly, that could service passengers,” he said. “I do not believe they are fully funded.” He then issued something of a warning to other companies, after earlier noting that Armadillo planned to accelerate its development plans and hire more people. “I think one of the best things about having the other companies in the industry is that it’s developed some very skilled and talened people, and we’re probably going to steal some of them.”

Carmack also said he felt Armadillo’s VTVL vehicle was a superior approach to a winged vehicled like SpaceShipTwo or Lynx. A ballistic reentry, he said, is better than a winged reentry, noting one fatality from the X-15 program. Launching a winged vehicle, he added, is “a lot harder than making a ballistic vehicle fly right up.” Thus, for greatly reducing the cost of suborbital spaceflight, “the powered [vertical] landing has significant benefits.” After the presentation I talked briefly with XCOR COO Andrew Nelson, who said, “People will want a lot of different experiences. We believe that most people will want something involving wings.”

“In some ways, the most dangerous thing that can happen to true believers is to give them everything that they’re asking for and watch them fail.” So said Jeff Greason, president of XCOR Aerospace, in his talk Friday at the Space Access ’10 conference in Phoenix. [...]]]>

Jeff Greason speaking at Space Access '10 on Friday

“In some ways, the most dangerous thing that can happen to true believers is to give them everything that they’re asking for and watch them fail.” So said Jeff Greason, president of XCOR Aerospace, in his talk Friday at the Space Access ’10 conference in Phoenix. While supporters of NewSpace might argue that they haven’t gotten everything they’ve wanted yet, clearly there is more interest in, and scrutiny of, the commercial space industry in general and entrepreneurial space ventures in particular. “I am both thrilled and terrified at the magnitude of the opportunity that is now facing our industry,” he said.

Greason, in a panel on key technologies the previous night at the conference, had expressed concerns about the decline of the American space industrial base, which he reiterated in his longer speech. “The dinosaurs are dying off faster than we can evolve to fill their niches,” he said, referencing an old analogy that likens the old space industry to dinosaurs and NewSpace to mammals.

That is putting pressure on the industry to step up, something that he worries it might not be ready to handle. “I’m not sure we’re ready to do all the things the United States government is depending on this industry to be able to do,” he said. “That’s just too bad, because we’re going to have to do it anyway.”

That means, he said, that it’s time for the commercial space industry to mature. “It is time to grow up,” he said, saying that it needs to adopt the characteristics of more mature industries: “They are much more interested in growing the pie than they are in fighting over the scraps. They sell pieces to each other. They do not tear each others’ efforts down.” That extends to not just NewSpace companies but also established companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. “Like it or not, we are all now on the same team.”

Greason cited one example—without naming names—that demonstrated that NewSpace in particular wasn’t yet mature. “In a rational universe, what would happen is, if you have a program that has a vehicle and no engine, and you have other companies that are building vehicles and have engines, you would go and buy engines, because you would then have a vehicle and could make money,” he said. “For whatever reason that’s not happening. I would be glad to sell people engines, but they don’t want to buy them.”

Greason said one could argue that if a vehicle developer bought an engine from another vehicle developer, each would be enabling a competitor, but both would be making money as a result, “so who cares?” Greason said there will come a time when the industry will reach a tipping point and shift from vertical integration to horizontal integration. “That’s part of how we’ll know we’ve crossed an irrevocable threshold as an industry,” he said. “We’re not there yet.”

“So it’s a hard road, it’s a long road, but we’re getting there, and the size of the opportunity that we’re faced with is terrifying and wonderful,” he said. However, he also said that might be the last chance for the commercial space industry in the US to demonstrate its capabilities. “If we blow it this time, I don’t know that we’re going to get another chance, because I’m not sure there’s going to be a United States space industry for us to work for.”

Virgin Galactic: Stephen Attenborough provided considerable details about their plans to flight test SpaceShipTwo (SS2). Ground testing will continue until the end of this [...]]]> In yesterday’s sessions at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in Boulder, Colorado, four major developers of suborbital vehicles presented updates on their efforts. Here’s a summary of what they revealed:

Virgin Galactic: Stephen Attenborough provided considerable details about their plans to flight test SpaceShipTwo (SS2). Ground testing will continue until the end of this quarter, he said. The first captive-carry flight, with WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) carrying SS2 aloft but not releasing it, should take place by the end of this quarter. The second quarter of 2010 will be for captive-carry tests flights. The first drop test will be some time in the third quarter. That initial drop test, he said, “will be a pretty interesting moment for all of us on the ground, and a pretty interesting moment for the pilot as well.”

Attenborough said he hoped first powered test flight of SS2 would take place by the end of this year. There would be “a lot” of powered test flights in 2011, he said. His “best case” scenario for beginning commercial operations would be the end of 2011 or the beginning of 2012, adding it would be entirely depending on the progress made during the test flights. “We can’t cut corners” on the test program, he noted.

XCOR Aerospace: Jeff Greason noted that development of the prototype Lynx Mark 1 was underway, which will be followed “as quickly as possible” (9-18 months, according to his slides) by the more capable Mark 2. Engine development, normally a limiting factor in the development of a launch system, isn’t a concern. “The engines are ahead of the airframe,” he said. The first test flights of the Mk 1 prototype are planned for the first half of next year.

Masten Space Systems: Fresh off its wins in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge last fall, Masten is pressing ahead with plans for a couple of different vehicles in the coming year, said Michael Mealling. First up, in the next couple of months, will be “Xoie v2.0″, an updated version of the XA-0.1E that won first place in Level Two of the LLC, now equipped with an aeroshell and the ability to do an engine relight; it will be able to fly up to about 36 kilometers. XA-0.1G, or “Xogdor”, will be built by October or November, will pick up where Xoie left off, flying eventually up to 100 kilometers using a new 3000-lbf engine under development. By 2011 Masten plans to fly commercial missions, and is even looking at the possibility of getting into the nanosat launch market through the use of an expendable second stage.

Blue Origin: Gary Lai didn’t make any great new revelations about the secretive company’s plans in a presentation, which he said was the first time a Blue Origin employee had presented any details at a conference. “If we’re famous for anything it’s famous for keeping quiet,” he said. The reason for that, he said, “is that we have a culture within the company to talk publicly only about results, and not about plans,” an approach similar to Burt Rutan.

While he didn’t provide much in the way of specifics, and no hints about schedule, he did reveal a few things. He briefly discussed Goddard, the gumdrop-shaped prototype of the New Shepard propulsion module that the company first flew in November 2006. “One of the main reasons for flying Goddard was to learn how to take a vertical-landing vehicle that uses the same propellants that our operational vehicle uses and learn how to fly that and turn it around in a very rapid manner,” he said. “Most of our lessons learned were in the operational area.”

However, he cautioned about reading too much into Goddard. “That is not necessarily what the operational New Shepard vehicle looks like,” he said.