KySat

Big hopes, big goals for Space-X and Falcon 1

Carrying the hopes for the future of low-cost access to orbit, Space-X's Falcon 1 is scheduled for lift off sometime after July 29, according to Smithsonian's Air&Space.

Unlike the previous tries, which were billed as demonstrations, this is not a test. Flight 003, as SpaceX calls it, carries cargo belonging to paying customers: an Air Force satellite called Jumpstart that’s meant to show that small satellites can be built and launched quickly; a test ring adapter for the Malaysian space agency ATSB (a future SpaceX client); and two breadbox-size NASA experiments, one of which aims to be the first solar sail deployed in space.

Fourteen such launches are scheduled through 2011 if all goes well. But Musk has much bigger goals in mind for Space-X and the nascent commercial space transportation sector - sending humans to Mars.

In a speech delivered earlier this month to the Royal Aeronautical Society in London, he said, 'For the first time in the four-billion-year history of Earth, there exists the possibility of extending life beyond Earth to other planets…. It is difficult to predict how long that window will remain open.

'Commercial space transport companies, including possibly SpaceX, are needed to make this happen, as the commercial sector is best suited to optimizing both the cost and reliability of access to space, just as the commercial air and ground transport companies did in their sectors. I believe we will need at least an order (perhaps two orders) of magnitude reduction in present-day space launch costs and flight failures to achieve the goal of becoming a multi-planetary species.'

Rob Coppinger has the ten minute speech here.

Wayne

Sizing up the subortibal competitors

Personal Spaceflight: Pulling no punches, Armadillo Aerospace's John Carmack sizes up the competitors in the suborbital space race.

Wayne

Academic "competitive launch program" envisioned

According to SpaceRef.com, The New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA) is working on a new venture that would "create a competitive educational launch program for students in public schools and universities."

The effort would unite NMSA, the Air Force Research Lab Space Vehicles Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base (AFRL), the X-Prize Foundation, the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium at New Mexico State University (NMSG), UP Aerospace and Microgravity Enterprises, Inc. (MEI).

The first "launch competition" is scheduled for the 2008 - 2009 academic year.

Wayne

Race rockets, go to space

Can participating in the new Rocket Racing League (Wired) lead to more durable motors for space access? Linking to an announcement that Armadillo Aerospace will participate in the new racing league, RLV and Space Transport makes just that suggestion:

You can't have low cost access to space without the economies of scale that come from a high flight rate. But you can't have a high flight rate without vehicles that can fly often (i.e. the vehicles must allow for a fast turnaround after each flight with only a small crew). Rocket racing certainly isn't spaceflight but it can contribute in an incremental way to lowering the cost of getting to space.

Wayne

Armadillo engine firings and flight video montage

A nicely edited recap of Armadillo Aerospace's activities in the past year has been uploaded to YouTube.

Armadillo presented the video at the just concluded Space Access Conference.

If not for a bit of bad luck the outfit probably would have won the 2007 Lunar Lander Challenge.

The organization, which is extremely open about its work, will progress to high altitude flights as the year goes on, according to RLV and Space Transport.

Wayne   

Coal town rocket

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a terrific article on a High School team of three girls and a boy from a coal town in Pennsylvania competing in the NASA Student Launch Initiative.

For the second year in a row, the Yough [High School] rocketry team will travel from Herminie to Huntsville, Ala., to participate in NASA's Student Launch Initiative. Only 18 schools this year and 10 schools last year from across the country were invited to compete in the SLI, to be held April 23-27....

Just to qualify for the SLI, teams must first place in the top 25 among about 700 entrants to the Team America Rocketry Challenge, an annual contest where teams aim to send a rocket carrying two eggs into the air for exactly 45 seconds to a height of 750 feet and have it land with the eggs still intact.

Those top 25 teams then had to craft a proposal for a scientific experiment that would be carried as payload by a rocket that they would design to fly a mile high....

Yough's rocket for this year, named Dorothy II, measures 10 feet tall and weighs about 30 pounds. The rocket is so powerful that a low explosive users permit is required to buy the fuel. Doing a test launch would require notifying the Federal Aviation Administration and all airports within 100 miles.

It's no wonder the team is considered a NASA subcontractor. And they have the paperwork to prove it.

Wayne

Hat tip: Space Prizes