Space Access Notes: Day Three, Part Two
Ok, hopefully this is the last installment.
Brant Sponberg:Centennial Challenges and Commercial Opportunities in the VSE
Brant started out by talking about the three main methods they have at their disposal for working with alt.space companies: service contracts, prizes, and funded or non-reimburseable Space Act Agreements. Due to the fact that they're in the process of picking who will get the COTS contracts, Brant couldn't say too much about that program, so he mostly focused on the Centennial Challenges part of their work.
The goal of the centennial challenges is to try and spur on innovation, and achieve some extra leverage when it comes to R&D investments by offering prizes for different technology demonstrations. He mentioned that they were trying to focus on prizes that were interesting to enough competitors that they could maximize the leverage. The really good news is that they no longer have any caps on the prize sizes, but for bigger prizes, they still do have some processes they have to go through to get approval. He also mentioned that they're always looking for good prizes, particularly ones where some well thought-out rules are also suggested. Making rules that prevent people from gaming them and giving you something useless is actually tough. He said that you could submit recommendations on-line. I think I'll probably try to put together some suggestions for a zero-g propellant transfer demonstration prize, once I get the time.
He then briefly discussed three prizes whose rules they were working on (above and beyond the Lunar Lander Analog Challenge), including one for pressure suits, one for microreentry vehicles, and one for a small subscale propellant depot demonstration. He talked a bit about their initial rules, the feedback they had received, and some of the adjustments to the rules that they were considering.
The really cool discussion was about two future challenges they'd like to offer. One was a Human Orbital Vehicle prize, basically it would be a $100-150M prize with a first and second place, for a 3-person, Gemini-equivalent manned personnel transport vehicle. Another was a Lunar Robotic Landing prize, possibly as a way of following on to the Lunar Lander Analog Challenge. Both sound very interesting, and I hope they're able to refine those to the point where they feel they can offer them.
Hopefully if the X-Prize Cup goes well this year, and if we and Armidillo, and whoever is the mystery team #3 all make a good showing, it will go a long way to validating what the Centennial Challenges program is trying to do, and hopefully make it easier for them to get approval for bigger future prizes.
George Herbert: Venturer Aerospace
The next talk was given by a good friend of mine, George Herbert. George's company is also based out of the Bay Area, so we end up seeing quite a bit of him from time to time. He was the one who gave me some of the ideas that I shamelessly adapted for my old Prometheus Downport Project.
A good part of his talk was dedicated toward talking about his COTS proposal, the S550 capsule. This would be a Falcon V or IX compatible capsule that could carry a mix of pressurized and unpressurized cargo (up to 4 tons total) and up to 3-6 passengers to the ISS, at a marginal price of $45M/flight. The vehicle would have an expendable exterior shell (with an ablative TPS, and crush structure to allow for ground landings), with reusable inards that are intermodal/C-130 compatible. It would be capable of pin-point ground landings, with a mostly passive, lifting reentry using an offset CG.
He discussed the orbital market a bit, estimating a total of 2-12 tourists per year at current prices, 6 ISS crew per year, and about 24 tons of logistics cargo. Additional speculative markets included Bigelow's America's Space Prize (but only if he got his funding privately instead of from COTS), logistics flights to Bigelow hotels, Industrial Space projects, such as research and manufacturing (which might become more realistic if low-cost, dependable and frequent access to space becomes a reality), "the rest" of ISS's logistics needs (the stuff that is currently being planned to be delivered by ATV/Progress/HTV), and lastly providing cargo/propellants for future NASA exploration missions.
He hopes that since he's not developing the whole booster, just the capsule that he can keep his development cost low and his development time short, and that he can beat potentialy lower-cost RLVs to market. If he can beat them to market, he hopes to be able to keep evolving his low-cost systems to keep as much of the market as possible.
Ambitious? Yes. It'll be interesting to see how things go. As it is, he has made some prototype hardware, but raising the money necessary privately is going to be tough. He at least has a pretty incremental development process figured out, but if he isn't selected for one of the COTS contracts, it'll be a lot harder to raise money to compete with them.
Berin Szoka: ITAR Delenda Est?
Berin is another one of those really bright younger people that I forgot to mention back in the last post. He's a lawyer from out in DC, who has put together the Institute for Space Law and Policy. One of his biggest current projects is trying to figure out how to deal with ITAR.
Berin chastized us a bit about the normal alt.space "ITAR delenda est" attitude being completely unhelpful to the cause of ITAR reform. He's right of course, and the good news is that I think Berin actually managed to convince most of the people there. Impressive....most impressive.
Berin talked a lot about what the actual problem was with ITAR. Berin's point was that ITAR itself wasn't so much the problem as the Space part of ITAR. As he put it, ITAR was designed to deal with defense contractors and other big companies. More importantly, there are many things on the munitions list that shouldn't be. The problem is that type I errors are always more visible than type II errors. Lastly, there is specific legislation that says that satellites have to be ITAR restricted.
Berin then went on to discussing various approaches that could be taken in arguing for ITAR reform. The problem is that most of the approaches usually taken (we aren't the only part of the industry that has suffered from how ITAR is handled--people have been trying to reform this for years) end up being trumped by national security concerns.
So Berin suggested that the strongest case to be made for ITAR reform was that ITAR as it is currently handled is actually harming US national security. Before I go on, I should mention that Berin specifically suggested not to try and write to our congressmen or senators using this argument yet. He said that once an argument has been going around a while, it tends to get tuned out. He wanted to make sure that when they start putting this in front of congressmen and senators, that they have as much ammunition in the form of hard data to back it up. So, don't go running with this quite yet.
Anyhow, Berin suggested that what we'd like to see out of ITAR reform is an ITAR that is faster, clearer, and easier to comply with. We would like an ITAR that makes better distinctions between friendly and hostile countries, and does a better job of distinguishing between the relative sensitivity of various technologies (ie information on low-performance reusable suborbital rocket engines probably should not be as sensitive as say design details for nuclear weapons). Additionally, we want an ITAR that doesn't control stuff that is already available abroad or that is public domain. If ITAR is preventing US companies from becoming more competent in critical technologies, then it is doing the exact opposite of what it was intended to do!
Anyhow, Berin is putting together a good team to do the research and to start preparing arguments for how to do this. The best thing to do if ITAR reform is important to you would be to first get in contact with Berin, and see what you can do to help. His email address is berin szoka gmail com (I spelled it that way so he doesn't get hit by spambots or anything lame like that).
Regulatory Issues Panel: Jim Muncy, Randall Clague, Berin Szoka
After hearing all the ITAR horror stories from Berin, this panel focused on the rest of the regulatory mess we all have to run through. Honestly it was really depressing, in spite of how hard Randall had us all laughing at his stories (Randall has a way with stories. Particularly about bureaucracy).
Instead of going into all of what they said, I'll just mention two good pieces of advice that came from the panel. First off, they suggested that it would be really helpful to share information on how to deal with regulatory problems with the other companies in the industry, and not to try and treat it as a barrier to entry. Basically, the all-to-true let's hang together so we don't hang separately appeal (XCOR has been extremely helpful on this front, BTW).
The other point was that if we run into any space law issues that need to be looked into and resolved, that we should forward them to Berin and his group will work on figuring out what's up and what needs to be done.
Brant Sponberg:Centennial Challenges and Commercial Opportunities in the VSE
Brant started out by talking about the three main methods they have at their disposal for working with alt.space companies: service contracts, prizes, and funded or non-reimburseable Space Act Agreements. Due to the fact that they're in the process of picking who will get the COTS contracts, Brant couldn't say too much about that program, so he mostly focused on the Centennial Challenges part of their work.
The goal of the centennial challenges is to try and spur on innovation, and achieve some extra leverage when it comes to R&D investments by offering prizes for different technology demonstrations. He mentioned that they were trying to focus on prizes that were interesting to enough competitors that they could maximize the leverage. The really good news is that they no longer have any caps on the prize sizes, but for bigger prizes, they still do have some processes they have to go through to get approval. He also mentioned that they're always looking for good prizes, particularly ones where some well thought-out rules are also suggested. Making rules that prevent people from gaming them and giving you something useless is actually tough. He said that you could submit recommendations on-line. I think I'll probably try to put together some suggestions for a zero-g propellant transfer demonstration prize, once I get the time.
He then briefly discussed three prizes whose rules they were working on (above and beyond the Lunar Lander Analog Challenge), including one for pressure suits, one for microreentry vehicles, and one for a small subscale propellant depot demonstration. He talked a bit about their initial rules, the feedback they had received, and some of the adjustments to the rules that they were considering.
The really cool discussion was about two future challenges they'd like to offer. One was a Human Orbital Vehicle prize, basically it would be a $100-150M prize with a first and second place, for a 3-person, Gemini-equivalent manned personnel transport vehicle. Another was a Lunar Robotic Landing prize, possibly as a way of following on to the Lunar Lander Analog Challenge. Both sound very interesting, and I hope they're able to refine those to the point where they feel they can offer them.
Hopefully if the X-Prize Cup goes well this year, and if we and Armidillo, and whoever is the mystery team #3 all make a good showing, it will go a long way to validating what the Centennial Challenges program is trying to do, and hopefully make it easier for them to get approval for bigger future prizes.
George Herbert: Venturer Aerospace
The next talk was given by a good friend of mine, George Herbert. George's company is also based out of the Bay Area, so we end up seeing quite a bit of him from time to time. He was the one who gave me some of the ideas that I shamelessly adapted for my old Prometheus Downport Project.
A good part of his talk was dedicated toward talking about his COTS proposal, the S550 capsule. This would be a Falcon V or IX compatible capsule that could carry a mix of pressurized and unpressurized cargo (up to 4 tons total) and up to 3-6 passengers to the ISS, at a marginal price of $45M/flight. The vehicle would have an expendable exterior shell (with an ablative TPS, and crush structure to allow for ground landings), with reusable inards that are intermodal/C-130 compatible. It would be capable of pin-point ground landings, with a mostly passive, lifting reentry using an offset CG.
He discussed the orbital market a bit, estimating a total of 2-12 tourists per year at current prices, 6 ISS crew per year, and about 24 tons of logistics cargo. Additional speculative markets included Bigelow's America's Space Prize (but only if he got his funding privately instead of from COTS), logistics flights to Bigelow hotels, Industrial Space projects, such as research and manufacturing (which might become more realistic if low-cost, dependable and frequent access to space becomes a reality), "the rest" of ISS's logistics needs (the stuff that is currently being planned to be delivered by ATV/Progress/HTV), and lastly providing cargo/propellants for future NASA exploration missions.
He hopes that since he's not developing the whole booster, just the capsule that he can keep his development cost low and his development time short, and that he can beat potentialy lower-cost RLVs to market. If he can beat them to market, he hopes to be able to keep evolving his low-cost systems to keep as much of the market as possible.
Ambitious? Yes. It'll be interesting to see how things go. As it is, he has made some prototype hardware, but raising the money necessary privately is going to be tough. He at least has a pretty incremental development process figured out, but if he isn't selected for one of the COTS contracts, it'll be a lot harder to raise money to compete with them.
Berin Szoka: ITAR Delenda Est?
Berin is another one of those really bright younger people that I forgot to mention back in the last post. He's a lawyer from out in DC, who has put together the Institute for Space Law and Policy. One of his biggest current projects is trying to figure out how to deal with ITAR.
Berin chastized us a bit about the normal alt.space "ITAR delenda est" attitude being completely unhelpful to the cause of ITAR reform. He's right of course, and the good news is that I think Berin actually managed to convince most of the people there. Impressive....most impressive.
Berin talked a lot about what the actual problem was with ITAR. Berin's point was that ITAR itself wasn't so much the problem as the Space part of ITAR. As he put it, ITAR was designed to deal with defense contractors and other big companies. More importantly, there are many things on the munitions list that shouldn't be. The problem is that type I errors are always more visible than type II errors. Lastly, there is specific legislation that says that satellites have to be ITAR restricted.
Berin then went on to discussing various approaches that could be taken in arguing for ITAR reform. The problem is that most of the approaches usually taken (we aren't the only part of the industry that has suffered from how ITAR is handled--people have been trying to reform this for years) end up being trumped by national security concerns.
So Berin suggested that the strongest case to be made for ITAR reform was that ITAR as it is currently handled is actually harming US national security. Before I go on, I should mention that Berin specifically suggested not to try and write to our congressmen or senators using this argument yet. He said that once an argument has been going around a while, it tends to get tuned out. He wanted to make sure that when they start putting this in front of congressmen and senators, that they have as much ammunition in the form of hard data to back it up. So, don't go running with this quite yet.
Anyhow, Berin suggested that what we'd like to see out of ITAR reform is an ITAR that is faster, clearer, and easier to comply with. We would like an ITAR that makes better distinctions between friendly and hostile countries, and does a better job of distinguishing between the relative sensitivity of various technologies (ie information on low-performance reusable suborbital rocket engines probably should not be as sensitive as say design details for nuclear weapons). Additionally, we want an ITAR that doesn't control stuff that is already available abroad or that is public domain. If ITAR is preventing US companies from becoming more competent in critical technologies, then it is doing the exact opposite of what it was intended to do!
Anyhow, Berin is putting together a good team to do the research and to start preparing arguments for how to do this. The best thing to do if ITAR reform is important to you would be to first get in contact with Berin, and see what you can do to help. His email address is berin
Regulatory Issues Panel: Jim Muncy, Randall Clague, Berin Szoka
After hearing all the ITAR horror stories from Berin, this panel focused on the rest of the regulatory mess we all have to run through. Honestly it was really depressing, in spite of how hard Randall had us all laughing at his stories (Randall has a way with stories. Particularly about bureaucracy).
Instead of going into all of what they said, I'll just mention two good pieces of advice that came from the panel. First off, they suggested that it would be really helpful to share information on how to deal with regulatory problems with the other companies in the industry, and not to try and treat it as a barrier to entry. Basically, the all-to-true let's hang together so we don't hang separately appeal (XCOR has been extremely helpful on this front, BTW).
The other point was that if we run into any space law issues that need to be looked into and resolved, that we should forward them to Berin and his group will work on figuring out what's up and what needs to be done.
posted by Jon Goff at 4:40 PM
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