In The Space Review last month I noted an emerging market for commercial suborbital vehicles: research and education. There’s growing interest among scientists in a variety of disciplines to take advantage of vehicles under development to serve the space tourism market to fly experiments at a fraction of the cost of sounding rockets and other options. The Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an industry group, created an advisory team, the Suborbital Applications Researchers Group (SARG), to help promote the potential uses of suborbital vehicles to the research community.

A key part of this outreach effort is the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC), which will take place February 18-20 in Boulder, Colorado. The early registration deadline for the conference is in just a week, January 15, as the conference organizers state in the announcement below:

NSRC Pre-Registration Deadline: 15 January

Pre-Register for NSRC Before Jan 15 to Guarantee Your Seat: The early registration deadline for the Next-Gen Suborbital Researchers Conference (Boulder, Colorado; 18-20 February) is right around the corner next week—on January 15th.

We are encouraging those interested in attending to register early because attendance will be limited by the meeting facility size; early registration is also less expensive than full registration.

For more information on the meeting program, list of speakers, linked speaker abstracts, and how to register, go to: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/nsrc2010/

About NSRC: The Next-Gen Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC) will bring together researchers from government, industry, and academia, NASA and FAA officials, and firms building next-gen suborbital vehicles. NSRC will provide a forum to learn about the experiment and EPO capabilities of these new suborbital systems and their revolutionary capabilities. NSRC will also provide an opportunity for attendees to make inputs on vehicle design requirements for science and education.

In this week’s issue of The Space Review I reviewed By Any Means Necessary!, a book by Greg Olsen in large part about his trip to the ISS as a private citizen in 2005. The book is broadly an autobiography, from his childhood to his post-flight activities, but it is largely centered around his efforts to get into space.

One interesting thing about the book is that it is published not by a conventional publisher but by Olsen’s own company, GHO Ventures, which he set up several years ago to manage his investments. That may make it a little difficult to find in brick-and-mortar bookstores; it’s also not available on the web sites of Barnes and Noble and Borders, but is available on Amazon.com. Interestingly, the copy I ordered from Amazon stated at the back that it was printed in Charleston, South Carolina, on December 19th—three days after I ordered it. The quality of the book, though, is quite good, indistinguishable from books released by large publishers.

An issue that came up in the comments of the review was Olsen’s hopes that his flight would, in effect, pay for itself through research he would perform on the mission. He doesn’t go into great detail about this in the book, but does discuss his (ultimately unsuccessful) efforts to get an export license for an infrared camera his company, Sensors Unlimited, had developed that he wanted to take to the station. (He needed the license since he was training in Russia and launching from Kazakhstan.) He also wanted to perform some gallium arsenide crystal growth experiments using the “glovebox” on the station, but the glovebox “became unavailable”, he writes in the book. (Chris Faranetta, in the review’s comments, states that the glovebox furnace was broken and would not be repaired “due to concerns over the crew handling materials that contained arsenic”; there were also concerns about getting export approvals for the materials that Olsen wanted to fly.)

As I note in the review, Olsen is the first space tourist to write a book about his flight to space, but he won’t be the only one for long. Anousheh Ansari is working on My Dream of Stars with co-author Homer Hickham, of Rocket Boys fame. That book is being published by Palgrave Macmillan with a release date of March 2.

Commercial spaceflight is featured in this week’s cover story of Aviation Week and Space Technology, which has selected “The Space Entrepreneur” as its 2009 Person of the Year.

“Space entrepreneurs had a big influence on aerospace in 2009,” write Aviation Week editors Frank Morring and Guy Norris, “although it does not begin to compare with the impact they are likely to have in years to come.”

“After receiving more than $1 billion in private capital, NASA has recently awarded space entrepreneurs with multi-billion dollar contracts for transporting cargo to the International Space Station, and may rely on them to transport astronauts once the space shuttle fleet is retired,” Aviation Week noted in a press release accompanying the cover story.

“We’re at the beginning of a new era in access to space… an era of commercial human spaceflight,” added former astronaut Tom Henricks, president of Aviation Week, in the press release. “It’s exciting that entrepreneurs are pursuing opportunities in space. Only about five hundred people have been to space in the past half century. AVIATION WEEK is proud to recognize these innovative individuals for their enormous contributions to making space accessible to many more in the near future.”

The Aviation Week cover image features Masten Space Systems’ CEO, Dave Masten, whose company recently won $1.15 million in the NASA Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X PRIZE Challenge for successful flights of its vertical-takeoff vertical-landing vehicles.

(The cover story and accompanying press release are available online from Aviation Week.)

Image credit: Aviation Week and Space Technology

The efforts of the emerging NewSpace field to reshape the space industry have attracted the attention of a leading trade publication, Aviation Week & Space Technology, which named “The Space Entrepreneur” as its 2009 PErson of the Year in this week’s issue. “Collectively, they are in the vanguard of a new industry, poised to transform how humans venture into space in ways that most observers can scarcely imagine today,” the Aviation Week article states. “Space entrepreneurs had a big influence on aerospace in 2009, although it does not begin to compare with the impact they are likely to have in years to come.”

The article devotes a fair amount to Masten Space Systems, who won $1.15 million from NASA’s Centennial Challenges program in 2009 in the Lunar Lander Challenge. (Dave Masten is featured on the cover of the issue as well.) Also mentioned in the article is XCOR Aerospace, whose CEO, Jeff Greason, served on the Augustine committee that made the case for commercial crew transportation to low Earth orbit.

A contrarian view, though, is expressed by John Marshall, an aerospace consultant who serves on NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel. He tell’s Aviation Week that he’s skeptical that there’s a big market for commercial human spaceflight, particularly to orbit. “There is a very small, unique industry that is potentially there,” he said of suborbital spaceflight, and acknowledged that there is a government market for cargo and crew transportation to orbit. “After that, I don’t see any market. I don’t see Hilton Hotels putting a vehicle in there to be able to accommodate space tourism anytime soon.” Commercial space companies, he added, “are a long way away from endorsing the same kind of safety culture that a mature airline has.”

Popular Science is featuring the commercial spaceflight industry as its January 2010 cover story, in an article titled “The New Space Rush.”  “By the measure of private investment,” says Popular Science, “there is clearly more market optimism than ever before about private industry’s ability to do the job [of Low Earth Orbit transportation], for both passengers and payloads.”  Click here to read the full Popular Science article online.

Article author Sam Verhovek emphasizes the partnership between NASA and the private sector.  He writes that commercial spaceflight providers can “handle comparatively short-range tasks while NASA focuses on the farther reaches of space.”  The commercial spaceflight sector strongly supports NASA’s mission of exploration, and believes that NASA and commercial activities are complementary, not competitive.  Commercial spaceflight in Low Earth Orbit will help enable NASA to focus its resources on the worthwhile endeavor of exploration beyond Earth orbit.  Reducing the U.S. reliance on Russia to launch American astronauts, supporting full utilization of the Space Station, opening the space frontier to more individuals, and helping to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers are among the other key aspects of this growing industry.

Image credit: Popular Science

Astronauts, researchers, educators, senior government officials including the director of NASA’s Ames Research Center, Dr. Pete Worden, and the head of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, Dr. George Nield, and representatives from commercial space companies and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, will be among the speakers at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference on February 18-20, 2010. The agenda and speaker list for the conference, which will take place in Boulder, Colorado, was publicly released today and is available for download by clicking here [pdf].

The Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference, which is being convened by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), is intended to allow scientists, engineers, and educators to learn about the research and education capabilities of commercial suborbital spacecraft, and to hear from this broad research community on potential research and education applications and user requirements.

The list of sessions for the conference is as follows:

Wednesday, February 17, 2010
5:00 pm: Welcome Reception

Thursday, February 18, 2010
8:30 am: Opening Session – Welcome and Keynotes
10:30 am: Research and Education Capabilities of Next-Generation Suborbital Vehicles Session I
12:15 pm: Press conference
1:30 pm: Research and Education Capabilities of Next-Generation Suborbital Vehicles Session II
3:30 pm: Payload Specialist and Researchers/Educator Roles in Next-Gen Suborbital Missions
4:30 pm: Student Suborbital Experiment Proposals
4:30 pm: Commercial Aspects/Other
7:30 pm: Public Lectures at the University of Colorado – Fiske Planetarium

Friday, February 19, 2010
8:00 am: Astronomy, Solar Physics, and Planetary Science Session I
8:00 am: Microgravity Physics Session I
8:00 am: Technology Payloads and Symposium on Deployable Vehicles Session I
10:30 am: Astronomy, Solar Physics, and Planetary Science Session II
10:30 am: Education and Public Outreach Session I (Outreach)
10:30 am: Atmospheric, Ionospheric, and Auroral Science Session I
2:00 pm: Life Sciences Session I
2:00 pm: Education and Public Outreach Session II (Education)
2:00 pm: Technology Payloads and Symposium on Deployable Vehicles Session II
7:00 pm: NASA Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) Panel Discussion

Saturday, February 20, 2010
8:30 am: Life Sciences Session II
8:30 am: Microgravity Physics Session II
8:30 am: Atmospheric, Ionospheric, and Auroral Science Session II
10:30 am: Desired Next-Generation Vehicle Attributes for Research and Education Missions
11:30 am: Closing Session

Yesterday industry publication Web Host Industry Review reported that UK-based hosting company DediPower had been selected to host the Virgin Galactic web site. The announcement made it sound like Virgin was expecting a wave of traffic to come to the site in the future: it mentions that DediPower would provide a hosting solution “capable of handling the large volume of traffic expected for the site” and it was providing custom solutions “to accommodate the traffic volume”.

Other data, though, hasn’t indicated overwhelming demand for the site in the past. The ranking service Alexa gives virgingalactic.com a traffic rank of 79,1000 as of Thursday morning; the rank is based on a combination of average daily visitors and pageviews. The site did see a spoke in activity on December 7 for the SpaceShipTwo rollout, when it got into the top 5,000 or so of sites, but that traffic ebbed in the following days. Looking at two years’ worth of data, there have been a few similar, predictable spikes in traffic: the unveiling of the design of WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo in January 2008, the rollout of WhiteKnightTwo that July, and the groundbreaking of Spaceport America in June of this year. However, there hasn’t been any sustained, heavy demand that would keep the site regularly in the top 100,000 sites on the web.

However, the Virgin Galactic site has undergone a redesign in recent weeks, shortly before the SpaceShipTwo rollout, with a greater emphasis on interactivity, such as the ability for visitors to post comments on press releases. That, couple with increased visibility as SpaceShipTwo goes through its flight test program and heads towards commercial service, might indeed leave result in increased traffic on the site in the future.

KRQE-TV of Albuquerque published this week a three-minute video tour of Spaceport America from a recent tour of the spaceport, part of a new bus tour program being offered to allow the public to see the spaceport under construction. The video includes a number of aerial shots that shows the current progress on the spaceport’s long runway as construction crews lay down layers of concrete and asphalt.

NASA’s Centennial Challenges prize program, FAA’s Spaceports Infrastructure Grants initiative, and the new NASA Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research program (CRuSR) gained momentum after receiving funding in the NASA and FAA appropriations bills for Fiscal Year 2010, passed by Congress and signed by the President last week. The Commercial Spaceflight Federation conducted advocacy efforts for these NASA and FAA programs as part of the CSF’s legislative agenda for this year.

NASA Centennial Challenges: $4 million in funding is being appropriated for new NASA prizes to promote technology innovation, the first time in 5 years that Centennial Challenges has received new funding. This new funding, at the full level requested by NASA in Fiscal Year 2010, builds on the success of Centennial Challenges throughout this year, in which NASA awarded a total of $3.65 million for innovation successes, including $1.65 million for the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X PRIZE Challenge which was won by Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace. Prizes are an innovative mechanism for technology advancement that is supported by the commercial spaceflight sector, and the funds will allow NASA to develop and announce more new prizes in the coming year.

FAA Space Transportation Infrastructure Matching Grants (STIM-Grants): An initial amount of $500,000 in Fiscal Year 2010 will be competitively awarded to spaceports nationwide through FAA’s spaceport grant program, the first time the grant program has been funded since being created in 1993. The grants will be awarded by the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) under Dr. George Nield to allow spaceports to support operations and protect public safety. Existing and proposed spaceports in California, Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Virginia / Maryland, Alaska, Wisconsin, Indiana, and other states, will be eligible for these competitively-awarded grants. In addition to promoting safety, the STIM-Grants program is expected to increase the competitiveness of U.S. launch facilities and create new jobs.

NASA Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research Program (CRuSR): The CRuSR program will fly science, technology, and education payloads aboard next-generation commercial suborbital spacecraft. In addition to funds for the CRuSR program that are expected to come from NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) and the Space Operations Mission Directorate (SOMD), NASA received $1 million of new funding in Fiscal Year 2010 for the Innovative Partnership Program’s “Innovation Incubator” account, which includes the FAST program for flights on zero-g parabolic aircraft and funding for the Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) program. Funding for FAST, formally known as the Facilitated Access to the Space Environment for Technology Development and Training Program, had been zeroed out in the previous year.

XCOR Aerospace announced this afternoon a major business development for the suborbital vehicle developer: a contract to provide suborbital space launch services for a South Korean organization. XOCR will provide and operate a Lynx Mark 2 vehicle to the Yecheon Astro Space Center under a “wet lease” model, pending export control approvals. The center will use the Lynx for “space tourism, educational, scientific and environmental monitoring missions”, according to the announcement.

The center, formerly known as the Yecheon Astronomy Foundation, is not well-known, at least outside of Korea: the center’s web site is in Korean, and a Google search primarily turns up references to this announcement. The press release states that the center has put together “a broad coalition of regional and national entities” to fund the project.

That funding, estimated to be $30 million, could be critical to XCOR. At the Space Investment Summit 7 conference in Boston in late September, XCOR COO Andrew Nelson said that the company was looking for abut $10 million in investment or sales to fund development of the Mark 2 vehicle, which will be able to fly to higher altitudes than the single Mark 1 prototype under development.

Will Spaceport America get a second paved access road? Right now the primary access is from the north, via the town of Truth or Consequences, on a road paved earlier this year to permit spaceport construction to again. That results in a fairly roundabout trip for visitors coming from Las Cruces and points south: about 90 minutes from Las Cruces. Earlier this week the New Mexico Spaceport Authority said it seek $7.5 million from the state to pave a second road that runs from I-25 at Upham, NM north to the spaceport. If paved, the 26-mile (42-kilometer) route could cut travel time from Las Cruces to the spaceport in half. Funds for the paving were authorized by the state legislature in 2006 as part of the overall spaceport project, but not funded.

Later this week, though, state officials backtracked: Fred Mondragón, head of the state’s Economic Development Department and chairman of the spaceport authority, said they would not seek state funds for the road because of a projected budget shortfall that’s expected to sharply limit capital expenditures in the state. Instead, he said that they will look for federal money for the road, or try to find savings from other parts of the overall project to get the road paved.

Mondragón also said the spaceport authority will seek legislation next year that would provide a liability indemnification for space tourism operators in the state, similar to existing legislation in Virginia, Florida, and most recently, Texas. The bill would not protect operators from gross negligence but would provide some protection in the event of accidents, and thus reduce insurance premiums for operators like Virgin Galactic. A similar bill was proposed in 2009 but not approved by legislators, concerned that it provided too much protection to operators; the 2010 version will be scaled back, although the report wasn’t specific as to how.

A survey released yesterday by World Travel Market, a UK-based travel industry event organization, offers a somewhat pessimistic take on the space tourism market. The study, based on a poll of 1,030 Britons who took a summer vacation in 2009, found that only 27% said they would be interested in traveling into space; 50% said they were not and 23% said they might be interested. In addition, 74% said “they feared space travel would remain too expensive and exclusively for the super rich”, and only 4% thought it would became an “affordable mass-market travel product” within 30 years.

The numbers at first glance don’t sound promising: the press release leads off by claiming that “price concerns are turning holidaymakers off from becoming space tourists”. However, the numbers aren’t that surprising. First of all, the poll doesn’t appear to have limited their polling to people with the means to pay for a spaceflight at currently-planned prices. Second, the numbers aren’t that different from previous polls that did put such limits on respondents: for example, the 2002 Futron/Zogby poll found that 19% of people with the means to pay for a space tourism flight were either “definitely” or “very” likely to take a suborbital spaceflight (a number that rose to 28% when given a more rosy description of such a flight). Even that more pessimistic number resulted in a forecast of thousands of potential tourists a year after just a few years of operation.

“It’s disappointing holidaymakers fear they will be priced out of becoming space tourists,” Fiona Jeffery, chairman of World Travel Market, said in the release. “However, I’m confident the price will drop dramatically the more space tourism takes off.” Even if there isn’t a dramatic drop in prices, though, there’s still a potentially lucrative market to be tapped.

Any entrepreneurial venture, space or otherwise, needs an exit strategy: how those who invested into the company get their money back (plus, hopefully, a healthy return on that investment). These days that means, primarily, an acquisition by a larger company, given the difficulties of going public. The emerging NewSpace field has only seen a few such deals: Northtop Grumman’s purchase of Scaled Composites in 2007, Space Adventures acquisition of Zero-G Corporation in 2008, and Sierra Nevada Corporation’s purchase of SpaceDev, which took place one year ago today.

Yesterday saw another such deal: Huntsville-based Dynetics annoucned it was acquiring Orion Propulsion, a small developer of rocket propulsion systems, for an undisclosed sum. Tim Pickens, who founded Orion in 2004, will now become “chief propulsion engineer” for Dynetics, a company that does space as part of a broader portfolio that includes information techology, automotive, and other fields. It’s also become a home for some former NASA officials: former NASA Marshall Space Flight Center director David King joined Dynetics in May as executive vice president, while Steve Cook, who managed the Ares program at Marshall, became director of space technologies at Dynetics in September.

Orion Propulsion, founded by Pickens after he returned to Alabama after working at Scaled to design the hybrid propulsion system for SpaceShipOne, has worked on a variety of government and commercial projects. This includes roll and reaction control systems for the Ares 1 to the forward propulsion system for Bigelow Aerospace’s Sundancer module. The latter system is designed to be a “green” system, using hydrogen and oxygen generated from water water: “burning urine”, as Pickens put it during a presentation at the 2009 ISDC in Orlando in May.

More than a week after the truncated SpaceShipTwo rollout event at Mojave Air and Space Port, it’s increasingly clear that the decision to evacuate the event averted a disaster. Airport general manager Stu Witt described the evacuation to the Bakersfield Californian, saying he made the decision when he saw the wind lift up a corner of the giant main tent twice. “When I made the call it was calm,” he said. “People probably thought I was from outer space.” It did, though, turn out to be a wise decision, since it was only a little over a half-hour after the announcement that winds collapsed the giant tent. “I believe there are people living today because of the decisions made that night,” Kern County supervisor Jon McQuiston said.

Getting some people to evacuate was a challenge, since by that point the party was in full swing. Some people tried to get their coats and other items they had checked, only to be turned away by police and firefighters, the Tehachapi News reported Friday. Witt told the Bakersfield paper that one firefighter had to resort to his experience as a football lineman to “convince one gentleman to annul his marriage to the vodka bar.” But most were cooperative: “When the gentlemen with guns say you need to get out, people get the picture,” Kern County Deputy Fire Chief Mike Cody said.

Meanwhile, event organizers are responding to criticism that they had not properly prepared for this contingency. “We’ve heard, ‘You don’t know how to set up tents,’ since this happened,” Richard LoGuercio, owner of the company that supplied the tent, told BizBash, “but I’ve got guys in the back with 20 to 30 years experience. Am I embarrassed that this thing went down? Absolutely not.” The tent, valued at $200,000, was insured, he said.

The caterers of the event were thankful that they were able to salvage the food. “It was a proud moment to be able to shortly afterward tell Richard Branson that even though there was a lot of damage, we saved the food,” Janine Micucci of Along Came Mary, the event’s caterers, said. That food, she said, was then donated to the needy.

At last week’s unveiling of SpaceShipTwo in Mojave, Virgin Galactic commercial director Stephen Attenborough said that it was the company’s relative strong performance during the current recession—a “substantial net increase” in customers—that attracted the attention of Aabar Investments, the Abu Dhabi fund that purchased a 32-percent stake in the company for $280 million.

But a comment by the head of Aabar suggests that it’s interested in Virgin for a different reason: point-to-point transportation. Khadem Abdulla Al Qubaisi tells Arabian Business, “The point here is to use Abu Dhabi and LA as a hub, or somewhere in the US, and to fly from Abu Dhabi and land in the other place in two or three hours.”

If so, that’s a long-term vision. SpaceShipTwo is not capable of point-to-point transportation (not over any meaningful distances, at least) and it would presumably require at least another generation of technology development to build the systems capable of the faster speeds (and assorted other technical issues) needed to do intercontinental flight: all that would take years to develop, particularly at the current pace of work and investment. Also, there are no plans for SpaceShipTwo, or other suborbital vehicles, to fly out of LAX or other Los Angeles-area airports (unless one considered Mojave, 150 kilometers away, as in the LA area.)

Aabar, though, has some near-term issues to deal with, such as getting its investment in Virgin approved. The Times of London reported Monday that Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS) has started a review of the Aabar investment, giving it a level of scrutiny than only a small fraction of such foreign investments get. The Times claims that the CFIUS review had created “a growing concern” in the UAE that the deal might need to be altered, or could even be blocked. Why CFIUS, which usually limits its investigations to deals with national security concerns, was looking into the Aabar-Virgin deal wasn’t clear; it could be because of Scaled Composites’ other work with the US military, or, perhaps, because of other applications of the hybrid rocket motor or other technology being developed for the system. (Also recall that Aabar is providing Virgin an additional $100 million to develop an air-launch smallsat launcher system using WhiteKnightTwo.)

Al Qubaisi told Arabian Business that he was “unconcerned” about the CFIUS investigation. “I think everything is smooth and there is no problem at all,” he said, adding that he expected the review to be completed in a few weeks.

SpaceShipTwo, intended to carry passengers and scientific payloads into suborbital space, is being unveiled today by Virgin Galactic in Mojave, California. SpaceShipTwo was developed for Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic by the engineering firm Scaled Composites, a team that includes aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan.

This reusable spacecraft will take two pilots and six passengers to space after first being carried aloft by the WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft, which has already been undergoing test flights for a year. SpaceShipTwo will conduct flights of passengers and science payloads to space from Spaceport America near Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, stated, “This is truly a momentous day. The team has created not only a world first but also a work of art. The unveil of SS2 takes the Virgin Galactic vision to the next level and continues to provide tangible evidence that this ambitious project is not only moving rapidly, but also making tremendous progress towards our goal of safe commercial operation.”

Bretton Alexander, President of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, commented, “Just a few years ago, SpaceShipOne became the first new U.S. human spacecraft to be unveiled since the Space Shuttle over twenty years ago. Today’s rollout of SpaceShipTwo, the first human spacecraft built for routine commercial operations, is an even more exciting milestone for the commercial spaceflight sector.”

Alexander added, “SpaceShipTwo marks the start of a new wave of commercial spacecraft that will provide frequent and low-cost access to space for people and science payloads.”

According to Virgin Galactic, “The emergence of new commercial space companies like Virgin Galactic will be an engine for employment, growth and the creation of a new technology and science base in the United States… the Virgin Galactic project alone is creating significant opportunities for employment in both the company itself and with suppliers in both California and New Mexico. Approximately 600 people are now working on activities relating to the project and it is estimated that this figure will rise to over 1,100 jobs during the peak of the construction phase at the space port and through the introduction of the commercial space vehicles into regular astronaut service.”

The precursor vehicle to SpaceShipTwo, the SpaceShipOne vehicle unveiled in 2003, became the first private human spacecraft to reach space in 2004 and won the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for commercial spaceflight.

Image credit (showing WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo): Virgin Galactic

Washington, D.C. – The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is pleased to announce the creation and initial membership of the Spaceports Council, composed of spaceports worldwide who seek to cooperate on issues of common interest such as airspace access, legal and regulatory frameworks, infrastructure, international policy migration, liability, and voluntary common operating standards.

The Spaceports Council, which will operate under the aegis of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), was officially created following the conclusion of the second CSF Spaceports Executive Summit held on October 20, 2009 in Las Cruces, New Mexico to coincide with the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight. This summit built on the success of an earlier CSF spaceports summit held on May 27, 2009, hosted by Space Florida as part of the International Space Development Conference in Orlando, Florida.

Initial member spaceports and spaceport principals of the CSF Spaceports Council include:
• Spaceport America, represented by Executive Director Steve Landeene (Chairman)
• Aeroports de Catalunya, represented by Executive Director Jordi Candela
• Cecil Field Spaceport, represented by Administrator of Planning and Development Todd Lindner
• Mojave Air and Space Port, represented by General Manager Stuart Witt
• Oklahoma Spaceport, represented by Executive Director Bill Khourie
• Space Florida, represented by President Frank DiBello
• Spaceport Indiana, represented by President Brian Tanner
• Spaceport Scotland, represented by Chairman Howie Firth
• Spaceport Sweden, represented by Vice President Bengt Jaegtnes
• Wisconsin Aerospace Authority, represented by Chairman Tom Crabb

Steve Landeene, Executive Director of Spaceport America, has been selected as the first chair of the CSF Spaceports Council. Landeene stated, “I am deeply honored and humbled to take up the first chairmanship of the Spaceports Council. Collecting and sharing the knowledge and experience base of spaceports worldwide will be beneficial to us all as commercial space vehicles begin to push the envelope toward more and more flights. And when working with policymakers, spaceports will benefit by formulating and presenting common positions.”

The Spaceports Council will convene regular meetings of spaceports principals, as well as coordinate additional cooperation between spaceports on the staff level, in order to address common problems affecting spaceports, work toward voluntary uniform standards for development of common use equipment and operational procedures, and advise vehicle operators, developers, and other members of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, on issues of concern to the spaceport community.

Bretton Alexander, President of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, stated, “The formation of the Spaceports Council marks another milestone in the growth of the commercial spaceflight industry. By deepening the cooperation among both domestic and international spaceports in this new industry, we can help ensure that the industry continues to grow and flourish. Congratulations to Steve Landeene on his selection as the first chairman of this group, as well as all the spaceports that have chosen to form the initial membership of the Council.”

Stuart O. Witt, General Manager of Mojave Air and Space Port and an Officer of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, added, “We are excited to welcome this great group of spaceports, both domestic and international, as we join together to share our lessons learned. As we look toward a new generation of suborbital and orbital launch vehicles, I know that a strong spaceport network, armed with the latest in operational ‘lessons learned,’ will be critical.”

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. CSF member organizations include commercial spaceflight developers, operators, and spaceports. The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is governed by a board of directors, composed of the member companies’ CEO-level officers and entrepreneurs. For more information please visit http://www.commercialspaceflight.org or contact Executive Director
John Gedmark at john@commercialspaceflight.org or at 202.349.1121.

About the CSF Spaceports Council
The Spaceports Council, which operates under the aegis of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), is composed of spaceports worldwide who discuss and collaborate on issues of common interest, such as access, legal and regulatory frameworks, infrastructure, international policy migration, liability, voluntary common operating standards, and engagement with other spaceport stakeholders including vehicle developers and operators, other spaceport users, and government agencies. For more information please contact CSF Executive Director John Gedmark at john@commercialspaceflight.org or at 202.349.1121.

Washington, D.C. – Bretton Alexander, President of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, testified this morning before the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee of the House Science Committee on the topic of commercial spaceflight safety. Alexander, who also chairs the Commercial Space Committee of the NASA Advisory Council, said in his opening statement that, “Safety is paramount to everyone in this industry. … We firmly believe that NASA and commercial industry can and must work together to develop safer human spaceflight capabilities.”

Alexander added, “Commercial crew systems will only begin crewed flights once reliability has been demonstrated through multiple successful test flights without crew. Demonstrated launch reliability is essential for overall safety. The Atlas family, for example, has had over 90 consecutive successes. The Atlas V has a perfect record of 19 successful launches. And the Falcon 9 will have been launched more than a dozen times for cargo and satellite missions before crew missions begin.”

Alexander thanked the Subcommittee and the full Committee for their support of commercial spaceflight, and noted that letting the commercial sector handle the less difficult task of Space Station servicing will enable NASA to focus its resources and expertise on exploration beyond Low Earth Orbit.

Discussing government oversight, Alexander explained, “While the FAA would retain overall licensing authority, NASA would maintain oversight as the customer. In particular, NASA would establish astronaut safety requirements in consultation with industry; establish mission-unique requirements, such as crew capacity and requirements for Space Station docking; and most importantly, have final approval authority over the launch of NASA astronauts.”

Alexander testified along with five other witnesses: Bryan O’Connor, Chief of Safety and Mission Assurance at NASA; Jeff Hanley, Constellation Program Manager at NASA; John Marshall, Council Member of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel; Joseph Fragola, Vice President at Valador Inc; and Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Thomas Stafford.

The panelists took questions from members of Congress including Subcommittee Chair Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), Committee Ranking Member Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX), and Subcommittee Ranking Member Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX).

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. CSF member organizations include commercial spaceflight developers, operators, and spaceports. The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is governed by a board of directors, composed of the member companies’ CEO-level officers and entrepreneurs. For more information please visit http://www.commercialspaceflight.org or contact Executive Director John Gedmark at john@commercialspaceflight.org or at 202.349.1121.

Jeff Greason, Vice-Chairman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation and CEO of XCOR Aerospace, testified before the Aviation Subcommittee of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on Wednesday, December 2.

In his opening statement, Greason said the current regulatory regime for commercial spaceflight, as framed by the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, “has boosted the confidence of investors, entrepreneurs, and customers,” and “has encouraged development of several suborbital vehicles to address scientific research and education markets as well as spaceflight participants, and investments in commercial spacecraft for carriage of cargo and humans to and from Earth orbit.”

Addressing safety, Greason stated, “The need to find a better, safer way to operate is what motivates the industry.”

Greason’s testimony before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee took place on the same day as CSF President Bretton Alexander’s testimony in a separate hearing before the House Science Committee, both on the topic of commercial spaceflight.

Greason praised the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST), stating that “AST has done a good job of implementing the statute” of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, “both in new regulations and through developing the skill to work with these new kinds of vehicles. I want to praise the office’s placement of technical staff out in the field, where they can closely observe development and test activities of industry.”

Greason testified along with four other witnesses: Dr. George Nield, FAA Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation; Dr. Gerald Dillingham, Director of Physical Infrastructure Issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office; J.P. Stevens, Vice President for Space Systems at the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA); and James Testwuide, Chairman of the Great Lakes Aerospace Science and Education Center at Spaceport Sheboygan.

The panelists took questions from members of Congress including Subcommittee Chair Rep. Jerry Costello (D-IL) and Subcommittee Ranking Member Rep. Thomas Petri (R-WI).

Total investment in the commercial human spaceflight sector has risen by 20% since January 2008, reaching a cumulative total of $1.46 billion, according to a new extensive study performed by the Tauri Group and commissioned by the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. Revenues and deposits for commercial human spaceflight services, hardware, and support services has also grown, reaching a total of $261 million for the year 2008.

The analytic study, performed by the Tauri Group of Alexandria, Virginia, was based on aggregated data from a comprehensive survey of 22 companies engaged in commercial human spaceflight activities, including most Commercial Spaceflight Federation members. The new Tauri Group study results, which updates a study conducted a year earlier, can be downloaded here [pdf]. Key findings include:

* Deposits and revenue for direct commercial human spaceflight services, such as flights of private citizens to the International Space Station and deposits on suborbital commercial human spaceflights, rose to $50.0M in 2008, compared to $38.8M in 2007 and $28.8M in 2006.

* Investment of $1.46 billion has been committed to the industry since January 2008, of which approximately $624 million has been spent to date and about $838 million is available. Sources of investment include individuals and angel investors (about 52%), private equity (about 30%), government (about 15%), and corporate reinvestment (about 4%).

* Revenue for commercial spaceflight hardware sales, development, and support services, increased to $211M in 2008, compared to $206M in 2007 and $123M in 2006. (This category includes sales of hardware and services directly intended for commercial human spaceflight; sales of commercial human spaceflight-related products and services to customers in other industry sectors; and sales and services that develop technologies and corporate capabilities that can be leveraged for commercial human spaceflight applications.)

* Total facility space expanded to 1,180,000 square feet (over 20 football fields) in 2008, compared to 762,100 square feet in 2007.

* The commercial human spaceflight industry reached an employment level of 1,186 workers in 2008, not including employees at these 22 companies who are engaged in activities unrelated to commercial human spaceflight.

Commercial Spaceflight Federation President Bretton Alexander commented, “This survey reveals modest, but increasing, revenues from commercial spaceflight activities, including growing deposits and contracts for government development activities. But the real highlight is the sizable investment that is not government related. Growing investment from private equity funds and other investors has turned longtime skeptics into people who are taking notice.”

Since the survey was primarily a rearward look at activities in the year 2008, several companies such as Orbital Sciences, United Launch Alliance (a Boeing-Lockheed joint venture), and other firms, which have made recent public expressions of interest in commercial human spaceflight, were not part of the tabulations above.

The full Tauri Group study results can be downloaded here [pdf].

Image credit (showing the investment deal recently concluded between Aabar Investments and Virgin Galactic): Virgin Galactic / Mark Greenberg