The announcement of the Masten/XCOR partnership on Tuesday to pursue lander testbed opportunities with NASA might leave some to conclude that Masten was turning to XCOR entirely for all of its engine needs. That is not the case: Masten is continuing to develop and test its own engines, using LOX and isopropyl alcohol propellants, for its other suborbital vehicles. And one of those engines got an interesting test yesterday:
This was a free flight of Masten’s XA-0.1B “Xombie” vehicle in Mojave. What made this test unique was that they turned off the engine in flight, and a few seconds later restarted it, the first in-flight restart of an engine during their test program. “The ability to turn off our engine, re-ignite it in flight, successfully regain control and land was the next big milestone as we expand our flight envelope to include high altitude flights,” company CEO Dave Masten said in a statement. “Each milestone we hit makes the path to space much clearer.” Masten now plans to turn to efforts needed for faster and higher altitude flights, including supersonic aerodynamics.
I’m at the airport waiting to catch a flight to Chicago for this year’s International Space Development Conference, the annual conference of the National Space Society. (I was already supposed to be there, but Untied, er, United, canceled my flight last night.) This year’s conference has a particular emphasis on NewSpace, more so than conventional space companies. Some highlights:
On Thursday morning Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures, will announce the company’s “New Venture”, according to the title of his talk. This is likely to be the exclusive marketing agreement with Armadillo Aerospace the company announced last month; at the time the company said they would announce additional details at ISDC. We’ll hopefully learn more about the deal and why Space Adventures, which had de-emphasized suborbital space tourism in recent years in favor of orbital spaceflight, is jumping back into this market.
Virgin Galactic will be represented by its new CEO, George Whitesides, who returned to the company earlier this month after roughly 18 months at NASA in several roles, including chief of staff to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. With Virgin and Scaled continuing their captive carry flights of WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo, hopefully we’ll get some updated details about their plans for upcoming tests and introduction of commercial service. Whitesides is scheduled to speak late Saturday afternoon.
On Friday morning there will be updates about the progress of XCOR Aerospace and Bigelow Aerospace by XCOR CEO Jeff Greason and Bigelow DC Operations Director Mike Gold, respectively. XCOR is working on its Lynx suborbital vehicle, so we may learn more details about the progress they’re making on their prototype. Bigelow, as Aviation Week reported earlier this month, is ramping up its marketing efforts for its inflatable orbital habitats. Bigelow will also benefit from the new interest in commercial crew transportation as part of the NASA fiscal year 2011 budget proposal. On Friday afternoon Masten Space Systems president and CEO Dave Masten will talk about winning $1.15 million in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge last year, and presumably their ongoing efforts as well.
There are also several other talks from representatives of the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation, Spaceport America, and several other NewSpace companies, including a panel Saturday morning on “The ‘NewSpace’ Paradigm”. So the next few days should offer a good opportunity to see where much of the NewSpace industry stands as of 2010 and what companies think their prospects are.
This morning Masten Space Systems and XCOR Aerospace announced a partnership to pursue anticipated NASA business for unmanned lander technology development efforts. Masten will develop the vehicles and XCOR will provide LOX/methane engines and composite propellant tanks. Full details are in the press release below, and the companies plan a joint telecon later today to provide additional details.
XCOR and Masten Announce Strategic Relationship for NASA Landers Business
May 25th, 2010, Mojave, CA, USA: XCOR Aerospace and Masten Space Systems, two of the leaders in the New Space sector, have announced a strategic business and technology relationship to pursue jointly the anticipated NASA sponsored unmanned lander projects. These automated lander programs are expected to serve as robotic test beds on Earth, on the lunar surface, Mars, near Earth objects and other interplanetary locales, helping NASA push the boundaries of technology and opening the solar system for future human exploration.
Masten’s award winning automated vertical take off, vertical landing (VTVL) flight vehicles combined with XCOR’s strong experience in liquid oxygen (LOX) / methane powered propulsion systems and nonflammable cryogenically compatible composite tanks, brings to NASA a powerful and competitive combination of innovative talent with a proven record of producing exceptional results quickly and affordably.
Last October, Masten won the $1 million first prize for Level II of NASA’s Lunar Lander Challenge, beating out a host of New Space rivals, and demonstrating they are the leading VTVL development group in the country. In 2007 XCOR Aerospace’s LOX/methane engine, developed for NASA, was named by Time Magazine as one of the “Inventions of the Yearâ€, recognizing XCOR’s successive advancement in the state of the art of both pump and pressure fed reusable, throttle-able rocket propulsion systems. XCOR and Masten have also demonstrated the ability to rapidly take from concept to live fire, new propulsion and control system designs using innovative rapid prototyping techniques that surpass client requirements in much shorter periods of time than traditional aerospace methods.
Dave Masten, founder and President of Masten Space Systems commented “Masten Space and XCOR are next door neighbors here in Mojave. We’ve worked together on many tactical problems over the years and our corporate cultures mesh well. Working together on something like this simply made too much sense. We can’t wait to start working with Jeff, Dan, and the XCOR team to help NASA build affordable and responsive landing platforms.â€
“Our company work ethic and styles are very compatible, and with XCOR propulsion and Masten VTVL technology, we can solve problems of national interest, and I am excited about the possibilities,†said Jeff Greason, CEO and Founder of XCOR.
Andrew Nelson, Chief Operating Officer of XCOR added, “It’s a no brainer, Dave’s team is the absolute best New Space company when it comes to VTVL and autopilot unmanned operations – they demonstrated that in October by winning NASA’s lander challenge. And we feel our LOX/methane engines are unsurpassed in the trade space today by anyone. We should bring this tandem set of best in class capabilities to NASA, it just makes sense for them and for us.â€
XCOR and Masten will be jointly marketing their skill sets and services to the NASA community as prime contractors, and as joint teaming partners for larger systems integrators and prime contractors servicing the NASA community.
Yesterday was the QuikTrip Air and Rocket Racing Show in Tulsa, featuring the first public flights of two X-Racer vehicles at the same time. (There had been previous test flights not open to the public, although anyone around the Tulsa airport late Friday looking up at the right time could have seen the two on a test flight.) Here’s a video of one of the vehicles during the first of two flights Saturday afternoon: the voices are of Miles O’Brien, who emceed the event; RRL co-founder Peter Diamandis; and Jim Bridenstine, executive director of the host institution, the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, and an owner of an RRL team.
The event allowed the Rocket Racing League to showcase their vehicles and talk about other developments, including a iPhone game that will be available next month (with an iPad version to follow in June.) The league was a little hazy about their future plans, beyond doing a series of increasingly-ambitious demonstration flights through the end of next year, although they did not announce when the next demo flight would be. By early 2012, Diamandis said, the league would be ready to begin actual competitive races. Skeptics will note that the league has pushed back the date of actual races multiple times over the last several years.
Yesterday demonstrated that the racers, while impressive, still aren’t quite ready for full-scale competitive racing. While the first set of flights went well, the second set, about two hours later, ended early: neither racer appeared to relight their engines after the initial takeoff burn. Both landed safely, and there was no sign of problems with either vehicle when they were towed over the league’s tent for the public to view closeup. RRL hasn’t yet disclosed what caused the second set of flights to be cut short. (Update: RRL spokesperson Diane Murphy said Sunday the truncated flight was caused a computer glitch that caused an alarm that shut off the engine in one of the aircraft. Both landed as a precaution, but a later check showed that it was a false alert and not an issue with the engine or other part of the vehicle.)
Chuck Lauer of Rocketplane Global at Space Access '10
In a presentation at the Space Access ’10 conference in Phoenix on Saturday, Chuck Lauer of Rocketplane Global provided a bit of news about the company’s efforts to develop a suborbital vehicle. That work has been on hold for the last couple of years because of a lack of funding, and most of Rocketplane’s employees have since been laid off.
Lauer announced that Rocketplane Global had signed a letter of intent with the Jacksonville Aviation Authority (JAA) to fly out of Cecil Field, a former naval air station that received a spaceport license from the FAA earlier this year. Rocketplane, he said, was the first company to reach an agreement with the JAA to operate out of Cecil Field. The flights would be coupled to the development of a tourist attraction at the spaceport that would offer a more mass-market experience, including virtual reality spaceflights, at a cost similar to typical theme park admissions.
Lauer said it would be something like the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex, which features a “Shuttle Launch Experience” ride, but with one key difference. “The KSC Visitors Complex is backward looking. It’s a museum dressed up with some hands-on exhibits,” he said. “This is the opposite. This is forward looking. This is the future of American spaceflight.” Cecil Field was well-positioned for something like this, since it’s the first spaceport located near a major city. Jacksonville, Lauer said, attracts about 10 million visitors a year, more than Hawaii. (While Lauer said 10 million, which is indeed higher than the 6.5 million who visited Hawaii in 2009, an economic study commissioned by the local tourism bureau estimated only 2.8 million overnight visitors in Jacksonville in 2008.) Lauer sees obvious synergies between suborbital spaceflight and terrestrial activities: “Coupling space tourism with conventional tourism is just a fundamentally sound idea.”
All this costs money, something that has been in short supply for Rocketplane. That may be changing, Lauer claimed. “We’re really close at this point” to lining up funding, he said. The challenge for the company is that it’s focus on an “all-up” development rather than the more incremental path taken by other companies—and now added to it development of terrestrial attractions—means that they need hundreds of millions of dollars. However, he said the finance community understands things like tourist attractions, and that has opened some doors for them in raising money. Lauer said they’ve been working with an investment bank on this and expect to close some funding “within a few weeks”.
Once that happens, Rocketplane plans to resume work on its XP spaceplane. He anticipates needing two to two-and-a-half years to complete development of the XP, which would be done in Oklahoma with test flights from the spaceport there; he anticipated commercial tourist flights beginning in 2013s. However, some of the spaceflight simulator rides could be ready much sooner: some could be running by the end of this year at the Future of Flight museum outside Seattle.
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.”
John Carmack speaking at Space Access '10 in Phoenix.
Speaking at the Space Access ’10 conference in Phoenix yesterday, John Carmack noted that the evolution of Armadillo Aerospace from a group of hobbyists to a full-fledged business is nearly complete. “We’ve pretty much become the company we set out to be a number of years ago,” he said, with most of the core team now full-time employees and the company making an operating profit. But the business they’re doing with organizations ranging from the Rocket Racing League to NASA can be “distracting” to their core efforts. “It is kind of getting in the way of building the things we want to build for the vehicles we want to build,” he said. He said he didn’t want to become yet another small aerospace company, “always chasing around their friends and contacts” looking for work.
Carmack, though, has something going for him that many other companies in NewSpace or elsewhere don’t have: some personal wealth. He said his financial situation changed for the better when he sold id Software last year. “Armadillo really was operating at the limit of what I could personally provide,” he said. “It was the limit of what my wife would let me put into it.” He said he’s now able, and willing, to invest more into the company, even though he said he’s proud that it it’s operationally profitable now. “So I probably am going to step up” spending this year on internal projects, he said, even if that means not being profitable.
One area of focus for Armadillo will be resuming a series of “boosted hop” test flights of their vehicle. They started this after the Lunar Lander Challenge was complete, reaching altitudes of 4,000 feet (1,200 meters). “However, while the boost to 4,000 feet was successful, the landing wasn’t,” Carmack said, showing a video of the flight test. With the engine throttled down and the vehicle descending at a speed of about 120 mph (200 km/h), they lost attitude control and the vehicle fell, landing on its side with quite a thud, but no fireball. They now understand that problem and plan resuming boosted hops first at their home site, Caddo Mills airport in Texas, where they can go to 6,000 feet (1,800 meters). From there they’ll go to Spaceport Oklahoma for flights of up to at least 20,000 feet (6,000 meters); higher flights will require going to Spaceport America in New Mexico.
Carmack expressed optimism that Armadillo was close to having all the key technologies needed for a complete suborbital vehicle. “What we’ve got, what we’ve been flying, is pretty damn close to what we need for a reusable suborbital vehicle,” he said.
Carmack also briefly addressed one controversial event from last year: finishing second in Level Two of the Lunar Lander Challenge after a judging decision gave Masten Space Systems one more flight attempt, which they used to make a flight that won first place and $1 million. Despite the experience, he heaped praise on the overarching Centennial Challenges program. “I have to say, Centennial Challenges has to be some of the best money that NASA has ever spent,” he said. But, he added, “I still am bitter about how things finally went down at the end there… No Christmas cards for them.”
[The first in a series of posts from the Space Access ’10 conference this week in Phoenix.]
Dan Rasky of NASA Ames presented on the status of their Commercial RLV Technology Roadmap Study, seeking to identify what technologies needed for such vehicles (both suborbital and orbital) are of most interest to industry. The full details of the effort are in his slide presentation, posted here by popular request. The goal, he said, is to have an interim roadmap ready to present at the NewSpace 2010 conference in July at NASA Ames; the final version will be out in September.
One interesting note from the presentation: Rasky said that NASA Dryden recently acquired the two airframes from the canceled X-34 program. They had been in storage since the program’s cancellation when a Dryden employee bought them for $1 each from Orbital Sciences, but when he retired the airframes were dragged out to the bombing range at Edwards AFB. Fortunately the airframes were recovered intact, although several crates of other X-34 parts were lost. Rasky said his office is trying to get some funding to study the airframes and determine their potential viability for future integrated flight tests, something the roadmapping study has found considerable interest for so far.
Well, at least flyby overhead. The organizers of the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) announced today that the two vehicles will put in an appearance in the skies over Spaceport America in New Mexico on October 22, the day after the two-day ISPCS. “This will be the first long distance test flight of the VG spaceship and mothership system as part of the celebrations inaugurating the completion of the runway at Virgin Galactic’s future home – Spaceport America,” the announcement states. The two vehicles made their first captive-carry flight last week.
To get a feel for what it (hopefully) will be like, here’s video I shot last June in Las Cruces as WhiteKnightTwo made a low pass over the runway at the local airport, after a planned flyby of Spaceport America the previous day was scrubbed because of a technical problem with the aircraft:
Virgin Galactic has posted a video of yesterday’s first captive carry flight of SpaceShipTwo, including a brief interview at the end with test pilot Mark Stuckey, who says that “I don’t think we could have planned, realistically planned, for any better success” on the flight.
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