Masten's Xombie vehicle

The SEDS Space Vision 2011 Conference is being held this weekend in Boulder, Colorado. Below is a compiliation of Tweets concerning the suborbital panel held on Saturday.

Suborbital Panel

• Colin Ake: Masten Space Systems
• Ben Brockert: Armadillo Aerospace
• Will Pomerantz: Virgin Galactic
• Cindy Conrad (Moderator): Southwest Research Institute

Tweets from Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) and Alan Ladwig (@SpaceArtAl). Hash tag for the event is #sv11. Events are being webcast live on Spacevidcast.

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Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver

Lori Garver, NASA Deputy Administrator
International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight
“Business at the Speed of Innovation” Keynote Address
Las Cruces, New Mexico
October 20, 2011

Thank you Ellen [Ochoa] for that gracious introduction. I also want to thank my long-time friend and colleague, Debra Facktor Lepore [President of DFL Space LLC] for moderating this session, and of course, Pat Hynes, the “force” behind this incredibly successful and important conference – thank you for continuing to invite me back!

Perhaps we can take it as a “hopeful sign” for the future that today’s opening includes 4 accomplished women – historically aerospace events have not been known for “having a line in the ladies room”… A theme of my talk this morning is actually how difficult it often is to usher in positive change. How those in establishment, typically do not give up their power and control readily, or easily, or without a fight… But I’m getting ahead of myself – we’ll get to that in a moment.

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Longueuil, Quebec, October 27, 2011 — The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has awarded six contracts to four organizations to develop concept studies in areas related to future space exploration ventures. The studies are part of the CSA’s strategy to invest in emerging ideas that could become Canada’s next revolutionary technologies, like a high resolution Canadian-led space telescope; robots to remove space debris and tune-up ailing satellites; an instrument to measure the composition of the atmosphere of planets; and a device that measures radiation exposure more accurately.

“The space business is about turning science fiction into reality,” says Canadian Space Agency President Steve MacLean. “By funding concept studies, the CSA helps nurture ingenious Canadian ideas so that our space industry can work on designing tomorrow’s space missions.”

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2011 Radical Benefit for Humanity Co-Hosts Suzy & James Cameron and Wendy Schmidt join Dr. Peter Diamandis, Chairman & CEO of X PRIZE Foundation, for the annual fundraiser to support the Foundation’s ongoing mission to solve the world’s Grand Challenges. (Credit: X Prize Foundation)

XPF PR — San Francisco, CA (October 24, 2011) — The X PRIZE Foundation honored the benefactor and winners of the $1.4 million Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE, during its 2011 Radical Benefit for Humanity at the Regency Center in San Francisco on October 20. More than 400 “who’s who” from San Francisco, the Silicon Valley and around the globe attended the event that raised more the $2.7 million. The event, to benefit the nonprofit X PRIZE Foundation, was co-hosted by luminaries Wendy Schmidt and James & Suzy Cameron. CNN’s Chief Business Correspondent Ali Velshi served as Master of Ceremonies.

NEW YORK, NY, Oct 28, 2011 — Elon Musk, CEO and Co-founder of Tesla and CEO and CTO of SpaceX, last night was recognized for Innovator of the Year in Technology by WSJ. Magazine. WSJ. Magazine’s first annual Innovator of the Year Awards honors the most creative, disruptive, and influential individuals in the world today. Musk was recognized for revolutionizing three of the biggest industries in the world — automobiles, […]

NASA PR — CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Journalists are invited to attend a major announcement of a new partnership between NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and an outside organization that open NASA’s facilities to U.S. commercial space launch service providers, create jobs and help American companies regain leadership in the global space economy. The announcement will take place on Monday, Oct. 31, at 10 a.m. EDT at NASA Kennedy’s Orbiter Processing Facility-3 and will be carried live on NASA television.
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Writing in the right-wing The Washington Times, Mars Society President Bob Zubrin sounds the alarm about the impending termination of NASA’s planetary and astronomy programs:

Word has leaked out that in its new budget, the Obama administration intends to terminate NASA’s planetary exploration program. The Mars Science Lab Curiosity, being readied on the pad, will be launched, as will the nearly completed small MAVEN orbiter scheduled for 2013, but that will be it. No further missions to anywhere are planned.

Zubrin’s column resulted in a strong denial from NASA’s top planetary science official. “It is not true the planetary program is being killed,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science division, during testimony before the NASA Advisory Council’s Planetary Science subcommittee on Thursday.

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NASA PR — NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is entering into an unfunded Space Act Agreement with Excalibur Almaz, Incorporated (EAI) as part of the Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2) activities.

The unfunded Space Act Agreement with EAI establishes a framework to enable NASA to collaborate with EAI in furthering the development EAI’s spacecraft concept for low Earth orbit crew transportation. EAI’s concept for commercial crew to the International Space Station is to use the company’s planned tourist space vehicle in concert with an intermediate stage and fly the integrated vehicle on a commercially available launch vehicle to be determined in the near future.

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Albuquerque, NM – The Schafer Corporation, a scientific and engineering company, has teamed with UP Aerospace of Denver, CO to provide comprehensive launch and payload integration services for up to eight NASA launches during 2012 and 2013. UP and Schafer have teamed on previous launches out of Spaceport America and this is a continuation of that excellent working relationship.

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NEWTOWN, Conn. [October 21, 2011] — Forecast International projects that the worldwide expendable launch vehicle market will be worth $53 billion from 2011-2020, based on production of 693 launch vehicles. A total of 29 launch vehicle programs are covered in the company’s “The Market for Expendable Launch Vehicles analysis, which notes that in a market that faces challenges over the next 10 years, there are bright spots. ”

Several trends have emerged in recent years that have placed launch providers on more solid footing,” said the reports William Ostrove, aerospace systems analyst and author of the report. “However, challenges will remain during the study’s forecast period.”

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