SpaceX Founder Elon Musk

In the wake of Elon Musk’s blog post defending SpaceX’s pricing, Lexington Institute COO Loren B. Thompson (who?) has written a reply accusing the South African-born entrepreneur of being a “glib salesman” who has taken “NASA for a ride.”

Musk looks to be a big beneficiary of the Obama Administration’s move to commercialize space travel, mainly because he is willing to make promises nobody else will. His working assumption appears to be that if he reduces prices far below what current launch providers are charging, that will unleash pent-up demand that will permit huge economies of scale in building and launching rockets. No doubt about it, we could definitely build launch vehicles more cheaply if customers were demanding a launch every other week. But the laws of physics aren’t going to change no matter how much demand spikes, and Musk’s track record to date is not encouraging….

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Richard Garriott

An estimated 140 private individuals will travel into orbit on a commercial basis through 2020, according to a new market forecast done by Space Adventures.

Officials from the Virginia-based space tourism company held a press conference on Thursday to explain their results and to provide an update on the company’s planned circum-lunar flyby. Space Adventures Chairman Eric Anderson and board member Richard Garriott discussed the results of their survey, which was done at the request of NASA, Boeing and other companies.

Over the past decade, seven private space tourists — including Garriott — flew to the International Space Sstation on eight missions (one man flew twice). Space Adventures expect orbital space tourism to increase substantially over the next decade as new private vehicles come online to challenge Russia’s monopoly on space tourism.

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The Space Adventures circum-lunar vehicle includes a beefed up Soyuz vehicle (in green, right) as well as DM upper stage and a habitat module (in white, left). (Credit: Space Adventures)

Space Adventures Chairman Eric Anderson and board member Richard Garriott are holding a teleconference to discuss the company’s circumlunar tourism flight and projections for the future of space tourism. Here are my notes:

Eric Anderson – Space Adventures Lunar Flyby

• We have sold the first of the two seats on the circumlunar flight program
• Soyuz docks with ISS and crew visits station for 8-10 days to get acclimated to space, await booster stage
• Separate Proton rocket launches a block DM upper stage engine and an additional habitation module…substantial addition to the volume available for translunar flight
• [Editor’s Note: the hab module appears to be based on the Soyuz orbital module but with key modifications, including what appears to be at least one large window]
• Soyuz docks with the upper stage and hab module….3 ½ day voyage to the moon – 3 ½ day voyage home with a direct entry…
• One seats is now sold – “very exciting” – begun negotiations with second client – hopes to announce the final deal by the end of the year….
• “Another watershed event” for private spaceflight…”very exciting thing”
• No new technology required – reprogramming of systems, improvements to heat shield and other systems

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Video Caption: Another tethered test of the Morpheus vertical test bed. This flight was on Innovation Day at Johnson Space Center. We had around 300 onlookers during this test. This test looked better than yesterday. We now have lots of good test data. The next test will be even better. Test… Iterate… Test Again..

Fifty years ago, Alan Shepard flew the first American spaceflight in Freedom 7. Alan is no longer with us, but the legacy of his achievement lives on. Ad astra!

The static test of a Falcon 9 rocket on Dec. 4, 2010. (Credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX Founder Elon Musk has published a blog post (reproduced below) in which he defends the company’s low priced launch services against skeptics who believe they are being priced below costs. Chinese officials recently publicly questioned whether SpaceX can make money at those prices. It should be noted that they’re not the only ones with doubts.

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WSGI PR — World Surveillance Group Inc. , a developer of lighter-than-air unmanned aerial vehicles (“UAVs”) and related technologies today was awarded a $200,000 contract from Space Florida, an independent special district, a body politic and corporate, and a subdivision of the State of Florida.

The contract is to create a Performance Data Package in connection with the flight testing of WSGI’s Argus One UAV at the U.S. Army’s proving ground facility in Yuma, Arizona in May/June 2011. This contract follows a financing commitment of up to $1.5 million from Space Florida, which WSGI intends to use to expand its Florida-based operations and to finance the previously announced potential acquisition of Global Telesat Corp., a provider of satellite tracking services to the Department of Defense and other customers.

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OSC's Cygnus freighter approaches the International Space Station. (Credit: OSC)

As part of Parabolic Arc’s ongoing Fun With Numbers Mega Tour 5000, we’re taking a look at cost overruns and schedule delays in NASA’s COTS and Orion programs and Virgin Galactic’s suborbital space tourism project. We’ll draw some conclusions about how progress in these programs bodes for the much larger commercial crew efforts.

The results may surprise you. Or not. But, they won’t be boring.

Ready to have some fun? OK. Allons-y!

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VG PR — Early on Wednesday 4th May 2011, in the skies above Mojave Air and Spaceport CA, SpaceShipTwo, the world’s first commercial spaceship, demonstrated its unique reentry ‘feather’ configuration for the first time.

This test flight, the third in less than two weeks, marks another major milestone on the path to powered test flights and commercial operations.

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A former Florida state official has bee cleared of charges that he improperly used his influence to award a controversial grant for a space tourism training center that he subsequently headed up. PNJ.com reports:

An administrative law judge dismissed charges alleging Brice Harris used his position at the Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development to secure $500,000 grant for Andrews [Institute], and then took a $150,000-a-year job at the sports medicine clinic.

Judge Diane Cleavinger said there was not enough evidence to prove that Harris’ employment with Andrews violated ethics laws because his employment with OTTED did not substantially or significantly contribute to the funding or creation of Project Odyssey.

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I was at a very interesting event earlier this evening at NASA Ames during which SETI’s Pascal Lee and Mary Roach, the author of “Packing for Mars,” discussed human missions to the Red Planet. When the topic turned during the Q&A to Elon Musk’s plans to colonize Mars, moderator Chris McKay of NASA made a bit of news. McKay said that Musk had told him that at every point where […]

Update: X Prize Foundation spokesman Michael Timmons said, “We have no comment at this time.”

Google Lunar X Prize’s Team Selene said it will withdraw from the global competition to land a rover on the moon over what it calls unacceptable and unilateral changes in the Master Team Agreement (MTA) and bullying tactics by the X PRIZE Foundation (XPF). A second team, Mystical Moon, has invoked a dispute resolution clause in its agreement, while other competitors are also reported to be upset over the changes and what critics view as efforts by the foundation and Google to exercise excessive control over the competitors.

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