Forwarded message:
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 18:29:37 -0800
>
> Space Access Update #100 2/8/03
> Copyright 2003 by Space Access Society
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
> Contents this issue:
>
> - Suborbital Institute's First DC Lobbying Project This Week
>
> - Space Access '03 Conference Info & Rates (Unchanged!)
>
> - Columbia Lost With All Hands - Where To Now? A First Look
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
>
> Suborbital Institute's First DC Lobbying Project This Week
>
> This is last second notice, but if you're interested in doing citizen
> lobbying support for the budding commercial suborbital spacelaunch
> industry, and you can spend some time in Washington DC over the next
> few days, the newly formed Suborbital Institute will be doing its
> first ever volunteer lobbying project starting with a training session
> Sunday evening February 9th then a Monday morning Congressional
> staffer breakfast.
>
> We understand that this is being organized by Pat Bahn, Trent Telenko,
> and Ed Wright, and that the issues to be pushed include regulatory,
> insurance & liability, and new commercial spaceports. (We expect that
> the chief benefit of this initial effort will be consciousness-
> raising, since we suspect that most of official Washington still has
> no idea that a commercial suborbital launch industry is even
> possible.) If you're interested but can't make this session on such
> short notice, we're told it will likely be happening again in the
> coming months.
>
> Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] for more information.
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
>
> Space Access '03 Conference Info & Rates (Unchanged!)
>
> We forgot to mention in our last Update that registration rates for
> this year's Space Access'03 conference (April 24-26 in Scottsdale
> Arizona) will be unchanged from last year - $100 in advance, $120 at
> the door, student and day rates available at the door only. A hasty
> partial list of confirmed presentations includes Armadillo Aerospace,
> Experimental Rocket Propulsion Society, Pioneer Rocketplane, TGV
> Rockets, X-Rocket LLC, and XCOR - we expect once again to host over
> twenty presentations giving a snapshot of where the nascent low-cost
> launch industry is this spring of 2003, once again a balance between
> our favorite "usual suspects" with another year or two's progress to
> talk about and fresh faces with new and different approaches.
>
> SA'03 happens Thursday evening April 24th through Saturday night April
> 26th, 2003, at the Old Town Hotel and Conference Center, in downtown
> Scottsdale Arizona. This is the same hotel we were at two years ago,
> the former Holiday Inn Old Town, with new owners and name but
> otherwise largely unchanged, in the heart of Scottsdale's restaurant
> and shopping district, a fifteen minute cab ride from the Phoenix
> airport. For SA'03 room reservations, call 800 695-6995 or 480 994-
> 9203 and ask for our "space access" rate of $74 a night. (Our rate is
> available for three days before and after the conference dates.) To
> advance register for the conference, mail a check for $100 to:
>
> SA'03, 4855 E Warner Rd #24-150, Phoenix AZ 85044
>
> Include your name and affiliation (if any) as you want them to appear
> on your badge. $10 off registration for SAS members (SAS membership
> is $30 a year), include a current email address for Updates if you're
> joining or renewing.
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
>
> Columbia Lost With All Hands - Where To Now?
>
> The words "tragedy" and "disaster" have been massively overused by the
> modern media, but they still have their moments of sharp accuracy.
> The loss of Columbia with all hands was a tragedy for the family and
> friends of the crew. Our utmost sympathy goes out to them all. For
> NASA, the spectacular destruction of the ship was a disaster. (Quite
> possibly, alas, another self-inflicted one.)
>
> But for this nation, the abrupt loss of the first Shuttle we ever flew
> to space is an opportunity, albeit a sad and dearly paid for one. It
> is a chance to realize that we have been stalled in a bureaucratic
> dead end in space for coming on thirty years now, a chance to take a
> serious look at what we've been doing wrong and begin taking the
> painful steps needed to once again get rolling toward the future.
>
> The loss of Columbia and the investigation getting underway won't tell
> us anything new about NASA. Possibly we will learn something new
> about reentry aerodynamics and tiled heat-shield systems, but NASA
> will emerge as what anyone paying attention already knows: A long-
> established and massively inflexible bureaucracy that does one thing
> more or less adequately: Put a half-dozen people into space a half-
> dozen times a year at a billion dollars a mission, in a manner known
> to all who paid attention ahead of time to be risky.
>
> We want to emphasize that: Risky. The precise degree of risk
> depended on who you asked - NASA thought it about one chance in two
> hundred and fifty of vehicle loss per mission, while outsiders looked
> at the historical loss rate for expendable launchers and expected
> something more like one in a hundred to one in fifty. (Keep in mind
> that while Shuttle is partly reusable, the way each flight is put
> together makes it essentially equivalent to a particularly large and
> complex expendable launcher - each Shuttle stack is a mostly
> new/rebuilt machine being flight-tested for the first time.) But all
> involved understood that chances were we'd lose another Shuttle before
> we finished the Station project.
>
> The first lesson we draw from this is: Resume flying soon. Take all
> practical precautions against recurrence of this latest problem - at
> minimum add basic on-orbit TPS (thermal protection system) inspection
> and emergency repair capability - but do not go into a years-long
> standdown. We have international obligations, we have national pride,
> we knew it was a risky business when we got into it. Shutting it down
> now would be admitting we're whupped - and we are no such thing.
> Don't take stupid risks, but some risk is unavoidable. Fly.
>
> The deeper lesson we see here is something we've been thinking about
> for a long, long time, and that we're working on writing about in
> depth. For now, the short version:
>
> Every time NASA has tried to develop new manned space transportation
> since Shuttle, they have failed. (Arguably, every time since Apollo.)
> Producing at least a backup (if not a replacement) for Shuttle
> obviously just jumped a bunch of places forward in the national
> priority queue. NASA's latest attempt at this is the Orbital Space
> Plane project, OSP.
>
> >From what we've seen so far, the same NASA tendencies that sank all
> previous such efforts are manifesting themselves again. Absent a
> serious independent investigation of why NASA has failed so often and
> so abysmally in the past, followed by the necessary radical reforms,
> we have no choice but to predict that OSP too will fail - at best just
> about as expensive and fragile to fly as Shuttle, and more likely
> never flying at all, either way at great expense in money and further
> lost time.
>
> We'll have a great deal more to say on this in the coming weeks.
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
> Space Access Society's sole purpose is to promote radical reductions
> in the cost of reaching space. You may redistribute this Update in
> any medium you choose, as long as you do it unedited in its entirety.
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
> Space Access Society
> http://www.space-access.org
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> "Reach low orbit and you're halfway to anywhere in the Solar System"
> - Robert A. Heinlein
>
Michael
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Wallis KF6SPF (408) 396-9037 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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