A decade ago the Texas spaceport scene was relatively active. No fewer than three spaceports had been proposed by various local entities to attract RLVs and other commercial launch vehicles. One was the Gulf Coast Regional Spaceport, located in Brazoria County, south of Houston; the second was the West Texas Spaceport, near Fort Stockton; and the third was the Willacy County Spaceport, located on the Gulf coast north of Brownsville. (A summary of the status of those spaceports at the time can be found in the 2002 edition of the FAA’s “Commercial Space Transportation Developments and Concepts” report.) However, as the RLV boom went bust, these spaceport plans either went dormant or, in the case of the Gulf Coast Regional Spaceport, were cancelled.

Now, through, one of those proposed spaceports may have found new life. A recent article in the McAllen (Tx.) Monitor (which is actually a reprint of one last week in the Valley Morning Star in the Rio Grande Valley) reports that Willacy County officials have found a new tenant for their proposed spaceport. According to the county judge John F. Gonzales Jr., an unnamed aerospace company is planning to lease 50 acres spread across two sites; it would invest up to $50 million for its facilities and hire 100 to 200 people. At least one site would be on the coast, apparently to be used for launches over the Gulf into orbit.

Judge Gonzales, though, declined to disclose the name of the interested company, saying that he was bound by a confidentiality agreement. He did say that the company did test its rockets in December and it “recovered a reusable container similar to 1960s-type space capsules”, according to the article. “They’re the first private company to have successfully launched a low-altitude space flight and successfully recovered it,” Gonzales said. All those comments make the company in question sound like SpaceX: it launched a Falcon 9 in December from Cape Canaveral, placing the Dragon capsule in orbit. That capsule returned to Earth later the same day, making SpaceX the first non-government entity to recover a spacecraft from orbit. However, it’s not clear why SpaceX would have any interest in the Texas site, given its investment in developing its Cape Canaveral site.

Some have suggested that the company in question could be Blue Origin, which already has a test site in west Texas, north of the town of Van Horn. As RLV and Space Transport News pointed out earlier this year, Blue Origin has a patent for a “Sea Landing of Space Launch Vehicles and Associated Systems and Methods”, which covered the powered landing of a booster stage on a barge or other ship in the ocean after launch from a coastal launch site. However, what we know of Blue Origin’s activities don’t seem to match what Gonzales said in the article, but then, there’s a lot about Blue Origin we don’t know about.

Elon Musk gives a speech accepting the Heinlein Prize on June 29, 2011, in Washington, DC.

At a luncheon on Wednesday in Washington, the Heinlein Prize Trust awarded its second Heinlein Prize for accomplishments in commercial space activities to Elon Musk, the founder, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX. At the luncheon, which attracted an audience from the public and private sectors, including NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver and FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation George Nield, Musk received the $250,000 prize and its accoutrements, a “Laureate’ Diploma” and a sword. Yes, a full-sized sword, the “Lady Vivamus Sword”, from the Heinlein novel Glory Road. “I love the sword in particular, it’s pretty awesome,” Musk said. (Musk, who attended the luncheon with his wife, Tallulah Riley, and two of his young sons, had to remind the boys that the sword, with a sharpened blade, was not a plaything.)

In his acceptance speech, Musk provided an overview of what SpaceX is doing (accompanied by a video, as is the case with nearly every company presentation, regardless of the venue). He did note in the Q&A session after his speech that the company has been “slightly’ profitable the last four years and anticipates being profitable again this year, so the company doesn’t have an immediate need for capital. However, he said he is considering an initial public offering (IPO) of stock, perhaps late next year. “The public markets are a very efficient way to raise capital,” he said, “and it’s probably a good move to have a capital reserve.” SpaceX has talked from time to time over the last several years about doing an IPO; one drawback he acknowledged Wednesday is that by going public it opens up the company’s plans to scrutiny from investors who may have shorter time horizons than Musk and other current investors. “How will the public markets respond to super-long-term thinking?”

That “super-long-term thinking” was a reference to comments he made in his speech about his goal of making humanity a multi-planet species, something that requires a major reduction in launch costs. “This is the first time in four billion years that it’s possible for life to become multiplanetary,” he said. “That window may be open for a long time, and I’m reasonably optimistic about life on Earth, but it may be open for only a short time. And if it is only open for a short time, we must take advantage of it and take action now to make like multiplanetary.” To do that, he said, requires “orders of magnitude” changes in cost and reliability, something that SpaceX hopes to achieve over time.

Doing so, he said, requires being on a “path of continuous improvement” in launch capabilities, something that doesn’t exist today. “Space has not been on a path of continuous improvement. It has arguably been on a path of decline,” he said, noting that we could go to the Moon in 1969 but we’re retiring this month the only US vehicle that can carry people to orbit. “That trend line is going in the wrong direction. It needs to be dramatically reversed, and I’m hopeful SpaceX will make a significant contribution in that direction.”

While Musk might be interested in fostering a multiplanet species, not everyone in his family is necessarily onboard. In his opening remarks, prize trustree Art Dula, referring to Musk’s two sons in attendance, said that “these are the fellas that are going to ride these rockets when they go beyond Earth orbit,” at which point one of the boys cried a note of protest: “No I’m not!” (or something to that effect.) “Oh, my goodness,” Dula said to laughter from the audience. “Well, we hope anyways.”

Elon Musk (center) holds the sword and diploma he received from members of the Heinlein Prize Trust, including Art Dula (second from right).

SpaceShipTwo during the feathered portion of a glide flight last week. (Clay Center Observatory/Virgin Galactic)

For some time, a long pause in glide tests of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo raised questions about the progress the company was making, in partnership with Scaled Composites, on development of suborbital spacecraft. After a January 13th glide test, the fourth overall for the vehicle, more than three months elapsed without another (although attempts to conduct a glide test in mid-February were aborted due to poor weather conditions, according to Scaled’s flight logs.)

That’s changed, though, in a big way. In less than three weeks, Virgin and Scaled have doubled the number of glide flights of SpaceShipTwo, with four flights between April 22 and May 10. Those flights included glide flights of longer duration on April 22 and 27, followed by the first flight of SpaceShipTwo that tested the vehicle’s ability to “feather” its wings, on May 4. That feathering, like that used on SpaceShipOne, rotates the tail section to a 65-degree angle, and is intended to provide for a stable reentry of the vehicle on suborbital spaceflights. On last week’s test, SpaceShipTwo flew in the feathered configuration for about 75 seconds before rotating the wings back to their normal configuration for landing.

Scaled and Virgin followed up that test with another glide test, this time without feathering, on Tuesday. That test was designed to perform testing on “flutter susceptibility” and also pilot proficiency, according to the flight logs. Why this sudden surge in testing isn’t clear, nor is there any indication from the company when they’ll be ready to start powered flight tests of SpaceShipTwo.

Illustration of a Soyuz spacecraft and habitation module en route to the Moon for a circumlunar flight Space Adventures has proposed.

A decade after the flight of Dennis Tito, widely if not universally acknowledged as the first space tourist, the company than brokered his flight sees a bright future ahead for commercial human spaceflight. In a teleconference with reporters on Thursday, Space Adventures chairman Eric Anderson said his company projects approximately 140 people to fly in space commercially in the coming decade. By comparison, during the last ten years seven people flew to space commercially on eight flights (one, Charles Simonyi, flew twice.)

Anderson said Space Adventures was asked by NASA and by Boeing (who Space Adventures has partnered with on development of a commercial crew vehicle, the CST-100) to provide an estimate on the demand for commercial human orbital spaceflight. That figure, he said, includes direct sales to individuals (the traditional “space tourist”) as well as lotteries and other competitions, corporate research, and educational missions. Anderson said the total specifically excludes what are often called “sovereign clients”, representatives of national space agencies flying for their governments. Those 140 people, he said, would fly to the ISS as well as Bigelow Aerospace facilities and one proposed by a Russian company, Orbital Technologies. “Realistically, having 140 individuals fly by the time 2020 rolls around is a pretty darn big accomplishment,” he said.

That estimate uses some relatively conservative assumptions on factors such as price and training time, Anderson said later. “For the majority of the next ten years, we would see prices roughly where they are now,” between $20 million and $50 million, he said. Price, he said, is probably the most important factor in demand, and there would not be dramatic changes in prices unless there was the development of a fully-reusable vehicle. Training time, he said would likely be no less than two months even for missions not going to the ISS. “I just don’t see a way to get that training time down any less than, say, six weeks,” he said. “There’s just too much stuff people need to know, they need to learn, in order to be prepared for the weightless environment.”

The other major aspect of the Space Adventures call Thursday was to provide an update on their circumlunar plans. Earlier this year Anderson announced that the company had signed up one customer for its proposed mission at a cost of $150 million. Anderson confirmed that on Thursday, and added that the company had started negotiations for the second seat available on the flight. “We are hopeful that the contract for the second client, and therefore the total locked-in mission, will be signed and announceable by the end of the year,” he said. Once the mission is “locked-in”, Anderson said they believe they will be able to fly it in about four years, or as soon as the end of 2015.

Anderson didn’t disclose the identities of either the signed customer or the potential customer they’re currently in negotiations with. However, Anderson did note, intriguingly, that the signed customer is planning some kind of research during the flight. The mission of that customer, he said, “is actually really, really meaningful. It is something that is going to address an issue and a concept that is of great importance to the world.” That work, which Anderson did not elaborate upon, will be “an amplifier to the attention” that circumlunar mission would receive and would “captivate a lot of people”.

Space Adventures also released some new images of the lunar mission concept, which features a habitation module launched separately on a Proton that would dock with the Soyuz spacecraft after the Soyuz completes a mission at the ISS. The hab module, along with the Soyuz modules, would provide 18 cubic meters of habitable volume for the three-person crew and would allow for “an extraordinarily comfortable trip to the Moon and back,” in the words of Richard Garriott, Space Adventures vice-chairman who flew to space as a customer of the company in 2008.

“We’re at an extraordinarily unusual moment in history,” Garriott said. “I good argument can be made that there’s every real possibility that the first human return to the Moon since the original Apollo flights may not be sponsored by any government of the Earth, but will be sponsored by private citizens.”

Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder who funded the development of the X Prize-winning SpaceShipOne, is considering new projects in commercial spaceflight, he said in an interview this week. Interviewed Monday night by Charlie Rose on his eponymous show, Allen tackles a wide range of questions, including, about 26 minutes into the interview, commercial spaceflight. “A lot of people talk about the privatization of space. What’s the future?” asks Rose.

Allen then describes the general concept of suborbital space tourism, “and then after that, at some point, you’re going to have orbital space tourism,” he said. Rose asked if Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos was involved in this field, which Allen confirmed: “Right, right, he’s very secretive about some of those things.” Then he added, almost offhandedly, “and I think it’s an area where I’m considering doing further initiatives.” Asked by Rose what he would like to do, Allen wasn’t specific, talking in general about the difficulties of orbital spaceflight versus suborbital.

Allen also praised the work done by Elon Musk and his company, SpaceX. “Elon Musk has done some amazing, amazing things with the boosters he’s developed to take people and cargo to space,” Allen said. At that point, Rose turned his attention to another Musk company, electric car maker Tesla, and that was it for the space segment of Rose’s show.

Paul Allen’s appearance on “Charlie Rose” this week wasn’t out of the blue: it was prompted by the release of his new memoir, Idea Man. The book covers the various interests in his life, and while much of the publicity about the book has centered on the passages about co-founding and working at Microsoft with Bill Gates, there is a whole chapter devoted to his interest in space. The bulk of the chapter, after talking about how the early Space Race captured his imagination about the topic, offers some interesting details about the development of SpaceShipOne, the suborbital vehicle he funded that won the $10-million Ansari X PRIZE in 2004.

Allen first met with Burt Rutan in September 1996 in Mojave, Allen recounts in the book. “Burt had already begun thinking about a supersonic plane that could fly above the atmosphere,” Allen writes. Two years later, in Seattle, this idea took the form of a crewed suborbital rocket. At the time, Allen said he had a relatively narrow goal: “I wanted to do something in rocketry that no one had done before.” He was attracted to Rutan because of his perfect safety record, noting that for space tourism to be viable, it would have to have safety “comparable to the airline industry.”

At that time the project didn’t go forward since Rutan hadn’t come up with the “right design”, Allen writes. When Rutan did—the air-launched system with the feathered wings that provide the vehicle a “carefree” reentry—they reached an agreement in 2000, and by 2002 signed a contract creating Mojave Aerospace Ventures (MAV). They were initially not interested in the X PRIZE because it wasn’t funded, but when it became clear shortly after establishing MAV that it would, they changed the design of the vehicle to increase its crew capacity from one to three in order to meet the prize rules. That, Allen said, increased the system’s cost from a projected $9 million to $19 million. “Based on what I’d heard about bleeding-edge aircraft, I expected SpaceShipOne to come in overweight, underpowered, over budget, and behind schedule,” he writes.

While competing for the Ansari X PRIZE, Allen writes that Rutan in particular didn’t think that they had any competition from other teams, calling The da Vinci Project, the Canadian team that eventually made a last-ditch, but futile, effort to beat out SpaceShipOne, “especially far-fetched.” Curiously, Allen writes that they were concerned about “rumored covert efforts in Eastern Europe”, without offering more details.

Much of the rest of the chapter then discusses the development and test flights of SpaceShipOne. Allen was present for the first powered test flight on December 17, 2003, where test pilot Brian Binnie landed SS1 too hard on the runway, causing it to tumble off the runway but without significant damage. That incident, he said, set back their testing schedule by about two months, as they’d hoped prior to that to make the prize-winning flights in the summer of 2004; they instead took place in late September and early October.

After SpaceShipOne’s initial flight into space in June 2004, where the vehicle just barely made it above the von Kármán line (100 kilometers), Allen recalls there were concerns about whether SS1 could do the X PRIZE flights with a heavier load (it had to carry the mass equivalent of three people, although all the flights had only a single person, the pilot, on board). “In fact, SpaceShipOne hadn’t been pushed as close to its limit in June as it had seemed,” he writes. The vehicle was remarkably sturdy, with aerodynamic safety margins of 2.1 to 3 for various components (compared to 1.6 for a typical airliner), and engineers were able to reduce the vehicle’s weight to improve its performance. They also found they could put more nitrous oxide in the vehicle’s oxidizer tank by reducing the ullage, or empty space, that wasn’t needed since the oxidizer didn’t heat up and expand as much as first thought, in part because they took off in the early morning and quickly climbed to higher, colder altitudes.

Allen writes that a month before the June SpaceShipOne flight, Richard Branson approached him about licensing the SpaceShipOne technology. That led to a contract signed in September 2004 “that could net me $25 million over the next fifteen years.” Branson was at the prize-winning flight on October 4, and, as SpaceShipOne was ascending towards space, said to Allen, “Paul, isn’t this better than the best sex you ever had?” Allen didn’t respond, but according to his book he did think, If I was this anxious during any kind of interpersonal activity, I couldn’t enjoy it very much.

Allen could enjoy it, though, when SS1 safely returned and captured the prize. When he heard the roar of the crowd that had assembled in Mojave for the flight, “it struck me that SpaceShipOne was more than some momentary spectacle. It offered hope to everyone who aspired to journeys beyond the Earth.”

In the end, he writes, SpaceShipOne did come in over budget: he said the program’s total cost was $28 million, in the ballpark of previous estimates of its cost. He added that he achieved a “net positive return” on that investment by 2006, thanks to the prize money (he split the $10-million prize with Rutan), the Virgin licensing fees, and also the tax writeoff from donating SpaceShipOne to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. “For a time I was tempted to stay involved in the effort to commercialize space tourism,” he writes, but made a decision to step back several months before SS1 won the prize, letting Virgin Galactic take the lead. As he told Charlie Rose earlier this week, he is now considering getting back in.

While Allen has a financial involvement with space tourism ventures, he’s not interested in flying himself. “But seeing up close what’s involved in spaceflight gave me pause. I’m not an edge walker.” What the SpaceShipOne experience did do, though, was restore his “boyhood sense of wonder” he had when he looked at the night sky. “It was good to get it back.”

Orbital Sciences was one of the companies that submitted CCDev-2 proposals but did not get funded, raising the question of whether they will stay involved in the larger commercial crew effort. On Thursday, company officials indicated they would likely not pursue further work in this area.

“It was disappointing that we weren’t selected” for a CCDev-2 award, Orbital CEO Dave Thompson said in a conference call with financial analysts to discuss the company’s first quarter financial results. “I don’t, at this time, anticipate that we’ll continue to pursue our own project in that race. We’ll watch it and if an opportunity develops we may reconsider. But at this point, I would not anticipate a lot of activity on our part in the commercial crew market.”

Thompson, though, was supportive in general of the commercial crew effort. “NASA is on a good track to turn over astronaut transportation to commercial operators, and I think ultimately the agency will be successful at doing that,” he said.

So why did Orbital not get a CCDev-2 award? From the source selection statement about the awards, it appears that Orbital did not stack up as well as Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), another company that proposed a lifting body concept. “SNC scored higher in business considerations and demonstrated a strong commitment to the public-private partnership associated with the Commercial Crew Program,” the statement reads. Also, SNC’s Dream Chaser could carry more people than Orbital’s Prometheus (seven versus four) and also required a “more modest Atlas V variant”, giving it more margin should the spacecraft’s mass increase. SNC’s proposal did have a flaw in terms of its launch abort capabilities, something NASA believes that the company hadn’t adequately understood, but given the proposal’s other strengths it got a higher rating than Orbital’s, enough for SNC to win a CCDev-2 award and Orbital to be shut out—perhaps for good.

Illustration of Boeing's proposed CST-100 commercial crew capsule.

NASA announced Monday morning that, later today, it will announce the awardees of its second round of Commercial Crew Development funding, aka CCDev-2. One of the leading contenders to get an award is Boeing: the company received a first-round CCDev award last year and has made progress on its spacecraft design, a capsule called CST-100. Boeing also has commercial partnerships with Bigelow Aerospace and Space Adventures, the latter involving selling seats on CST-100 flights to commercial customers, such as space tourists.

Speaking at a press conference during the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs last week, John Elbon, vice president and program manager at Boeing Space Commercial Crew Programs, said Boeing would continue development of the CST-100 concept under a CCDev-2 award. The goal would be to have a preliminary design review (PDR) this fall, and a critical design review (CDR), the last major step before actual construction of the vehicle, about a year later. That would put Boeing on a path to conduct a pad abort test of the CST-100′s escape system in 2013, followed by two uncrewed test flights in 2014 and finally a flight with two test pilots around 2015.

Exactly what Boeing would be able to accomplish under CCDev-2 will depend on how much funding is available; reports indicate as much as $300 million will be available, going to multiple awardees. Boeing got $18 million under CCDev-1 and contributed a “like amount” of company funds to the effort, Elbon said. He added that he hoped to be able to perform tests on airbags and parachute designs, as well as a lighter-weight version of the abort engine tested under CCDev-1.

While Boeing has emphasized that the CST-100 is compatible with a wide range of launch vehicles, including Atlas, Delta, Falcon, and ATK’s proposed Liberty rocket, Elbon said they plan to focus going forward on a single vehicle. “We’re currently in the process of going through a procurement for that launch vehicle,” he said, without specifying which one. He later said that while they would focus on that vehicle for integration work, they would still be open to working with over vehicles, including non-US vehicles like the Ariane 5 and Japan’s H-2.

But what if Boeing is, for some reason, shut out of the CCDev-2 program? The company would still be eligible to compete for the later full-fledged commercial crew development effort, but would clearly be at a disadvantage compared to companies that do receive CCDev-2 awards. “We’d have to assess the market and the likelihood that NASA would want to pursue this further, at a later time,” Elbon said. “We’re dependent on NASA as an investor in this process, and we’re also dependent on NASA as a foundational customer to close our business case.”

Monday afternoon NASA announced the award of nearly $270 million to four companies for the second round of the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev-2) program. The four winners, and their awards, are:

• Blue Origin: $22 million
• Boeing: $92.3 million
• Sierra Nevada Corporation: $80 million
• SpaceX: $75 million

Those companies will work on their vehicle concepts under Space Act Agreements, maturing elements of their designs in anticipation of a full-fledged commercial crew development program. But what about the companies that didn’t win? NASA officials noted at Monday’s press conference that it received 22 proposals, selecting eight companies for additional due diligence. So what about some of the companies that didn’t make the cut?

United Launch Alliance: Perhaps the biggest surprise of the CCDev-2 announcement was that ULA didn’t receive any funding. The company was one of five first-round CCDev awardees and its launch vehicles factor significantly into the plans of other commercial crew development companies. ULA is likely to be back for future activities here, although perhaps as part of multiple teams proposing for commercial crew funding rather than a standalone competitor.

Excalibur Almaz: This company, which has plans to use Russian Almaz spacecraft for commercial space flights, was a surprise finalist for CCDev-2. Few details about what EA was proposing for CCDev-2 have been released by the company, but it’s likely the company will continue its commercial activities, although at what externally appears to be a slow pace.

Orbital Sciences: Orbital made a big splash last year with its commercial crew development plans, using a lifting body concept called Prometheus launched on an EELV, building upon interest in commercial crew that dates back to the 1990s. Failure to secure a CCDev-2 award will put the company into a tough spot: should they continue to work on this, albeit at a lower level, to stay in contention for future commercial crew awards, or instead focus on their separate commercial cargo program, the Cygnus spacecraft and Taurus 2 launcher?

ATK: Another surprise entry into CCDev-2 was ATK, which announced in February the Liberty launch vehicle comprised of a five-segment SRB developed for the Ares 1 and a modified Ariane 5 core stage for the upper stage. Without CCDev-2 funding, will ATK continue work on this project? Moreover, would it be cost-competitive for other applications against alternatives like the Falcon Heavy, announced by SpaceX earlier this month?

United Space Alliance: The Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture that operates the space shuttle had put forward a proposal to continue flying two of the orbiters, Atlantis and Endeavour, commercially. However, USA was not among the eight companies shortlisted for CCDev-2, and even company officials admitted last week that the proposal was “an extremely long shot”. That may be an understatement now.

On Monday, Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin signed into law a bill establishing tax credits on salaries of engineers hired by aerospace companies in the state. The legislation is designed to encourage aerospace companies in the state to hire employees (especially those educated in the state) by creating or moving jobs there.

Buried near the end of the article, though, is some news about the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority, the state agency that runs the Oklahoma Spaceport, a former Air Force base in Burns Flat. Fallin is seeking to effectively eliminate OSIDA as an independent agency by cutting its roughly half-million-dollar budget and folding it into another state agency, such as the Department of Commerce or the Oklahoma Aeronautics Commission. “I’m actually working with our legislators and Department of Commerce on further continuing to market that facility,” she told the AP, “but yet also trying to figure out how we can have shared resources as it relates to the aerospace industry and especially (the Space Industry Development Authority).”

The spaceport was to be the home base for Rocketplane and its XP suborbital vehicle, but the company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation last year, effectively leaving the spaceport without a customer. (Armadillo Aerospace has used the site for some low-altitude test flights in the past, but is flying their higher altitude space missions from Spaceport America in New Mexico.) Ironically, the tax credits Rocketplane received for moving to Oklahoma several years ago (what the company often called “winning the O Prize”) became one of the reasons legislators cited when they created a moratorium on tax credits last year that was partially lifted by the new law.

It looks like Armadillo Aerospace is preparing to flying their “Tube” rocket as soon as this weekend. John Carmack announced on the aRocket mailing list that they’re planning a flight of the rocket to about 30 kilometers (100,000 feet) this weekend from Spaceport America in New Mexico. The rocket, a long, narrow vehicle powered by a single LOX/alcohol engine, is designed as a “risk reduction step” towards eventual plans for a vertical takeoff/vertical landing human-rated vehicle. Armadillo has been performing some static and hover tests of the vehicle recently, as shown in this photo by Armadillo’s Ben Brockert about a week and a half ago.

In the brief message, Carmack said that if the launch goes as expected and they recover the rocket (which will descend under parachute), they plan to perform some upgrades and launch it again within a couple months, this time to over 100 kilometers. And if the launch doesn’t go well? “I imagine the mood in the shop will be pretty grim while building up a new version of this vehicle if all we got out of the previous one was a couple hover tests and a crash,” he writes.

Screenshot of a video report by the BBC's Richard Scott showing the interior of SpaceShipTwo.

BBC reporter Richard Scott has a bit of an exclusive: a look behind the scenes of the development of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo as well as Spaceport America in New Mexico. The real exclusive is the first look inside SpaceShipTwo, briefly seen in the two-minute video. (Other videos in the article include an interview with test pilot Pete Siebold and a tour of Spaceport America.)

The video makes it clear that SS2 is still very much a work in progress: the interior is barebones, lacking even seats (although the fittings where the rotating passenger seats will be installed can be seen). The video also helps illustrate the relatively modest size of the cabin. While Scott is able to stand up normally in the cabin, it seems likely it will look a bit more cramped when fully outfitted and containing six passengers; he notes in the article that the cabin’s size “will probably mean them bumping into each other” during the weightless portion of the flight. The date of the video isn’t specified, but it shows SpaceShipTwo undergoing a fair amount of interior and exterior work at the time: the vehicle’s nose, for example, was removed.

One interesting note is something made in passing by Scott about SpaceShipTwo: “It’s going to be taking paying passengers into space from hopefully 2013.” That’s later than previous reports, which have suggested that Virgin would put SpaceShipTwo into commercial service next year. SpaceShipTwo, meanwhile, hasn’t made a glide flight since mid-January, according to Scaled Composites’ flight logs, although two attempts for glide flights in mid-February was aborted because of weather conditions.

Washington, D.C. – The Commercial Spaceflight Federation welcomes the support of more than 50 former NASA astronauts, scientists, educators, and industry CEOs and leaders who sent a letter to Congress yesterday urging full funding of the Commercial Crew Program as critical to America’s leadership in space.

The letter states, “We are writing to urge you to fully fund NASA’s plan to use commercial companies to carry crew to the Space Station because it is critical to the health of the Nation’s human spaceflight efforts,” adding, “We include 14 former NASA astronauts, 5 former NASA senior executives, 13 educators and nonprofit leaders, and 24 space industry leaders from a wide variety of firms and institutions, both large and small.”

The letter adds, “By hiring American businesses, NASA’s Commercial Crew to Space Station program also generates thousands of high tech American jobs across states ranging from Florida, to Alabama, to Texas, to California, to Virginia, to Colorado, to Nevada, and to Maryland, rather than sending these jobs overseas to Russia to build Soyuz capsules and rockets.”

“It has been very gratifying to see the support for Commercial Crew from a broad cross-section of the community, ranging from former Apollo and Shuttle astronauts to scientists and former NASA Center Directors,” stated John Gedmark, Executive Director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.

Notable signatories include former Apollo-era NASA astronauts such as Owen Garriott (Skylab 3, STS-9) and Rusty Schweickart (Apollo 9); former NASA Johnson Space Center Director Gerry Griffin, who also served as Deputy Director of NASA Kennedy Space Center and NASA Dryden Flight Research Center; former NASA Ames Center Director Scott Hubbard, who also served as a Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) member; former NASA Associate Administrator for Science Alan Stern; former FAA Associate Administrator Patti Grace Smith; and former Columbia Accident Investigation Board member John Logsdon.

To view the full letter, please visit http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1509

About the Commercial Spaceflight Federation
The mission of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF) is to promote the development of commercial human spaceflight, pursue ever-higher levels of safety, and share best practices and expertise throughout the industry. The Commercial Spaceflight Federation’s member companies, which include commercial spaceflight developers, operators, spaceports, suppliers, and service providers, are creating thousands of high-tech jobs nationwide, working to preserve American leadership in aerospace through technology innovation, and inspiring young people to pursue careers in science and engineering. For more information please visit http://www.commercialspaceflight.org or contact Executive Director John Gedmark at john@commercialspaceflight.org or at 202.349.1121.

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Washington, D.C. – The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is pleased to announce that the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC) held in Orlando, Florida, this week set records for the number of presentations, sponsors and attendees. The annual conference brings the research and education communities together with suborbital vehicle providers and government funding agencies to explore the exciting new era of suborbital spaceflight.  CSF is a proud co-sponsor of the event, which was attended by about 350 people.

NSRC organizing chairman Dr. Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute stated, “When we first conceived the idea for NSRC, many people were skeptical that such a meeting would generate much interest. Some even thought the research and education communities were simply not interested in suborbital science.  But just as in 2010, people have voted with their feet and come to NSRC by the hundreds. And once again we heard an amazing variety of proposals to exploit the capabilities of next-gen suborbital spaceflight — in fact, the number of presentations by researchers and educators increased 40 percent over last year.”

Stern added, “Clearly, many people are very interested in the capabilities that next-gen suborbital can provide to the research and education communities.”

Bretton Alexander, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, stated, “The interest from researchers in these new commercial suborbital spacecraft was immediately apparent at this week’s Florida conference.  The excitement in the air was contagious. It’s becoming increasingly clear that scientists and educators can’t wait to put payloads and experiments onboard these vehicles.”

In addition to featuring more than 120 presentations spread among 20 technical sessions, this year’s NSRC also featured four discussion panels, a press conference, presentations or booths by 25 sponsors, and a public evening presentation by Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides.

“This year’s NSRC, like 2010’s, has been a galvanizing event for both the suborbital industry and the space research and education communities, demonstrating that the level of researcher and educator interest in next-gen suborbital is dramatically growing,” added Stern. “In response to the high turnout at NSRC in Orlando, we are today announcing that NSRC-2012 will take place in the San Francisco area next February 27-29, and will be hosted by NASA Ames Research Center. I’m looking forward to that already!”

About the Commercial Spaceflight Federation
The mission of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF) is to promote the development of commercial human spaceflight, pursue ever-higher levels of safety, and share best practices and expertise throughout the industry. The Commercial Spaceflight Federation’s member companies, which include commercial spaceflight developers, operators, spaceports, suppliers, and service providers, are creating thousands of high-tech jobs nationwide, working to preserve American leadership in aerospace through technology innovation, and inspiring young people to pursue careers in science and engineering. For more information please visit http://www.commercialspaceflight.org or contact Executive Director John Gedmark at john@commercialspaceflight.org or at 202.349.1121.

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The 2011 Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference begins today in Orlando, Florida. The conference promises to be a watershed gathering for researchers, educators, and industry/government, as a forum to discuss utilizing new commercial suborbital vehicles for research and education.

Registration is available at the door, and the conference will last from February 28 to March 2. Please visit http://nsrc.swri.org/ for more information.

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is a co-sponsor of the conference. Commercial Spaceflight Federation Executive Director John Gedmark will be delivering a keynote address to the conference attendees at 11 am on February 28, and the Federation will also be moderating a panel on “Payload Integration” at 10:30 am on March 1.

For the entire conference, over 120 presenters—a 40% increase over 2010—will discuss everything from flight test progress to planned experiments in 7 different research fields to training and roles for research and educator payload specialists. In total, the meeting will feature 20 sessions, 4 discussion panels, a press conference, presentations or booths by 20 sponsors, and a public night presentation by Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides. The meeting will also include invited talks by experts in diverse fields that include microgravity sciences, atmospheric science, space life sciences, planetary science, education, and crew training.

Funded agreements announced for 8 to 17 flights on suborbital vehicles

Washington, D.C., Monday, February 28, 2011 – Three scientists, including a former NASA executive, will become some of the first scientists to fly on a commercial spacecraft — and they will fly multiple times — under the terms of two funded agreements announced between the nonprofit Southwest Research Institute and two commercial spacecraft providers, Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace.

The Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), a nonprofit research institute with annual revenue exceeding $500 million, will purchase a total of 8 to 17 scientific research flights on two vehicles – Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and XCOR Aerospace’s Lynx Mark I – to fly both scientists and scientific payloads to the upper atmosphere and space. The scientists selected for the flights are Dr. Alan Stern, Dr. Dan Durda, and Dr. Cathy Olkin, and the science payloads will include biomedical, microgravity science, and astronomical imaging projects. All three scientists selected have trained for suborbital spaceflight aboard zero-G aircraft, in NASTAR centrifuges and aboard Starfighter F-104 jet fighters in the last year.

Dr. Stern, the former head of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, stated, “We at SwRI are very strong believers in the transformational power of commercial, next-generation suborbital vehicles to advance many kinds of research. We also believe that by putting scientists in space with their experiments, researchers can achieve better results at lower costs and a higher probability of success than with many old-style automated experiments.”

George Whitesides, President and CEO of Virgin Galactic said, “This agreement signals the enormous scientific potential of the Virgin spaceflight system. Virgin Galactic will be able to offer researchers flights to space that are unprecedented in frequency and cost. Science flights will be an important growth area for the company in the years to come, building on the strong commercial success already demonstrated by deposits received from over 400 individuals for Virgin’s space experience.”

XCOR Aerospace’s COO, Andrew Nelson, stated, “When someone issues a commercial contract with their own money, this means something,” and XCOR’s chief executive officer, Jeff Greason, added, “I look forward to the pioneering work this partnership will achieve.”

Commercial Spaceflight Federation Executive Director John Gedmark added, “This is a historic moment for spaceflight — a scientific research institution is spending its own money to send its scientists to space. I expect that these scientists will be the first of many to fly to space commercially. As the scientific community realizes that they can put payloads and people into space at unprecedented low costs, the floodgates will open even wider.”

Dr. Dan Durda, one of the Southwest Research Institute scientists selected to fly, said, “We’re another step closer to the era of routine ‘field work’ in space research. More and more researchers will soon fly with their own experiments in space, and do it regularly enough to allow the important advances that come with iterative investigations. I’m looking forward to that future and helping it become a reality.”

The announcements come as more than 300 scientists, educators, engineers, and students are registered to attend the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference which began today in Orlando, Florida at the University of Central Florida, to discuss the topic of scientific applications of commercial suborbital spacecraft. The conference runs through March 2nd.

About the Commercial Spaceflight Federation

The mission of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF) is to promote the development of commercial human spaceflight, pursue ever-higher levels of safety, and share best practices and expertise throughout the industry. The Commercial Spaceflight Federation’s member companies, which include commercial spaceflight developers, operators, spaceports, suppliers, and service providers, are creating thousands of high-tech jobs nationwide, working to preserve American leadership in aerospace through technology innovation, and inspiring young people to pursue careers in science and engineering. For more information please visit http://www.commercialspaceflight.org or contact Executive Director John Gedmark at john@commercialspaceflight.org or at 202.349.1121.

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Monday was the first day of the the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC) at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. This conference, the second of its kind, is designed to bring together suborbital vehicle developers and the research community, an emerging market for commercial suborbital reusable vehicles. The conference has attracted more than 300 people, compared to the 268 who attended the inaugural NSRC last February in Boulder, Colorado. The three-day conference features presentation on both vehicle capabilities and potential research applications, as well as education, policy, and other issues.

The big announcement Monday was the news that the Southwest Research Institution (SwRI) has purchased seats on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and XCOR Aerospace’s Lynx vehicles for research missions. SwRI bought a total of eight seats—six on Lynx and two on SS2—with an option for nine more. (XCOR actually announced its part of the deal last Thursday, while Virgin waited until Monday.) Three SwRI researchers will fly on this missions, conducing several experiments. SwRI associate vice president Alan Stern, one of three who will fly, said at a press conference Monday that the experiments include a biomedical monitoring harness, a microgravity physics experiment to study asteroid regolith, and an astronomical imaging sensor. (For some additional background on this, see my article in Monday’s issue of The Space Review, incorporating some of these developments.)

On the vehicle side, five suborbital vehicle developers—Armadillo Aerospace, Blue Origin, Masten Space Systems, Virgin, and XCOR—presented in a panel session at the conference. All but Blue Origin presented at the FAA Commercial Space Transportation conference earlier in February, and are summarized in my TSR article linked to above, so there were not much in the way of new developments (Blue Origin, not at the FAA conference, didn’t offer much in the way of vehicle development updates.) Armadillo’s Neil Milburn did say that Armadillo is currently performing cryo load tests on its “Tube” (aka “STIG”) rocket this week; if those go well they plan a first flight test as soon as March 9 from Spaceport America in New Mexico.

One other development of interest: in his plenary talk Monday morning, FAA associate administrator of commercial space transportation George Nield revealed that the FAA’s 2012 budget proposal includes a $5-million “Low Cost Access to Space” prize. Few other details about the proposed prize are available, although Nield said the FAA would work with other agencies, including NASA and the Defense Department, on implementing the prize.

The second day of the the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in Orlando focused more closely on the types of scientific research (biomedical, microgravity science, astronomy, etc.) that can be performed on commercial suborbital reusable vehicles and the issues associated with carrying out this research. One key topic is integrating payloads into vehicles. With a wide range of vehicle concepts under development, there are no standards for payload size, power, and other interfaces, and NASA has indicated that they will let the market set those standards rather than impose them themselves, even for the flights it funds.

This means that researchers are working closely with vehicle providers to work through issues of integrating their experiments on spacecraft. Blue Origin, for example, has several “pathfinder” research customers who are getting their payloads flown for free while working through these issues. Blue Origin has also come up with a “Cabin Payload Bay”, a standard payload box designed to more easily accommodate experiments with various power, data, and other services. Annamarie Askren, the Research and Education Market (REM) payload integration lead for Blue Origin, said the company would be publishing a payload users guide on its web site later this week with more technical details.

While many experiments will be automated, others will require a human presence (indeed, in some biomedical cases the human will be the experiment). These payload specialists will require training, but just how much is necessary is another area without clear standards. Dan Durda of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) recommended prospective payload specialists experience as many different training environments as possible, from piloting aircraft to scuba diving. Zero-g parabolic aircraft flights are almost a given, he said, to understand what weightlessness is like. Erik Seedhouse, the training director for Astronauts4Hire (A4H), a startup that proposes to develop a cadre of professional commercial astronauts for research and other applications, described a far more rigorous set of qualification standards that A4H has developed, including centrifuge and zero-g training, aerobatic flights, and more.

The training requirements for payload specialists—far more rigorous than what’s expected for tourists—and the specialized requirements for research experiments raise the question of whether research and tourism missions can be mixed on the same flight. Askren said Blue Origin is cautious about the ability to mix the two, given the “chaos” in the cabin during 0-g portions of parabolic flights. That’s not an issue, of course, for uncrewed vehicles, or for XCOR’s Lynx, which is small enough that almost every flight is a dedicated one for either tourism for research. “It’s your ride,” as XCOR’s Jeff Greason put it.

The final day of the the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in Orlando wound down with a grab bag of sessions on research, markets, and other issues. One interesting presentation was by Paul Guthrie of the Tauri Group, who discussed a study they had done in cooperation with Space Florida to identify markets for suborbital vehicles. That work has identified seven potential markets: commercial human spaceflight, aerospace technology test and demonstration, basic and applied science, education, remote sensing, media and public relations, and point-to-point travel. This study is not intended to determine the sizes of those markets (that being left to a future study) or their timing, as some, like point-to-point travel, would presumably emerge much later than tourism and research.

The conference’s concluding panel examined training and roles for payload specialists who might fly with their experiments on suborbital flights. This panel covered again some of the ground of a session the previous day on crew training, with some of the same participants. Although some, like Astronaut4Hire’s Erik Seedhouse, have proposed rather rigorous training regimens for suborbital crews, others, like Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, believe that only a modest amount of training will be needed for suborbital payload specialists: on the order of one to three weeks, spread out over a larger period of time. “If we turn this into training where it looks like you’re going on an International Space Station mission, we’re really going to be in trouble. We’re defeating the purpose of low-cost spaceflight,” Stern said.

That discussion helped identify one of the themes of the 2011 NSRC. While the first NSRC last year in Colorado was primarily designed to helped put this market—research and education—on the map, the second one transitioned from the “why” of suborbital research to the “how”: how to fly payloads on suborbital vehicles, how to train payload specialists for the flights, and related topics. The next NSRC is scheduled for the February 2012 in the San Francisco Bay Area, hosted by NASA Ames. By then, perhaps, we’ll start hearing about results from payloads that have actually flown on suborbital vehicles.

Space Technology Office to Support High-Payoff Programs Including Centennial Challenge Prizes, Commercial Suborbital Science, and Parabolic Flights

Washington, D.C., Tuesday, February 15, 2011 – The Commercial Spaceflight Federation today welcomed the strong support for space technology investments in the new NASA FY2012 proposed budget, including such high-profile programs as Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research, Centennial Challenges, and NASA’s commercial parabolic flight program.

CSF President Bretton Alexander stated, “Consistent with the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, these investments in space technology R&D represent a renewed focus by NASA on innovation, which is the seed corn of American economic competitiveness. Between 2005 and 2009, NASA’s technology programs were cut more than 50%, and we applaud NASA’s plan to reverse this decline.  Robust funding for technology R&D will help ensure that the United States remains a global leader in space.”

Specific technology programs that are part of the new NASA budget include:

-   NASA’s Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) program, funded at $15 million per year, which will give scientists and students access to conduct research using low-cost commercial suborbital vehicles.

-   NASA’s Centennial Challenges Program, funded at $10 million per year, which offers incentive prizes in the mold of the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE to spur innovation in diverse areas of space technology.

-   NASA’s Facilitated Access to the Space Environment for Technology Development and Training (FAST), funded at $2 million per year, a commercial parabolic flight program to conduct research and technology development on “zero gravity” aircraft.

-   Other exciting NASA technology programs, including:  Cryogenic Propellant Transfer and Storage, In-Space Propulsion, Space Power Generation and Storage, Nuclear Systems, Lightweight Materials and Structures, Human-Robotic Systems, Autonomous Systems, Next-Generation Life Support, Adaptive Entry Systems, and In-Situ Resource Utilization.

CSF Executive Director John Gedmark stated, “These will be some of NASA’s most high-profile, exciting programs.  They are what the nation needs to generate new technology breakthroughs and precisely the kind of programs that will inspire the next generation to go into fields of science and engineering.”

NASA’s decision to increase technology funding follows a letter released last September by a group of 14 Nobel Laureates to Congress that emphasized the importance of technology investment, stating: “Innovative technology development must once again become a high priority at NASA….  We urge that NASA’s total technology investment be increased.”

CSF Executive Director John Gedmark concluded, “Yesterday’s technologies are not sufficient to keep America in first place in the global race for economic competitiveness.  Technology innovation is what got America to the moon in the 1960s, and we need a renewed focus on technology to drive NASA forward in the 21^st century. NASA and private industry can work together to find innovative technological solutions to today’s spaceflight challenges.”

About the Commercial Spaceflight Federation

The mission of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF) is to promote the development of commercial human spaceflight, pursue ever-higher levels of safety, and share best practices and expertise throughout the industry.  The Commercial Spaceflight Federation’s member companies, which include commercial spaceflight developers, operators, spaceports, suppliers, and service providers, are creating thousands of high-tech jobs nationwide, working to preserve American leadership in aerospace through technology innovation, and inspiring young people to pursue careers in science and engineering. For more information please visit http://www.commercialspaceflight.org or contact Executive Director John Gedmark at john@commercialspaceflight.org or at 202.349.1121.

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