SpaceShipTwo glides downward. (Photo: Mark Greenberg)
ISPCS Session
Closing the Credibility Gap: The Role of Suborbital Testing as a Pathfinder to Orbital Markets or as an End Market in Itself
Debra Facktor Lepore — President, DFL Space LLC
Jeff Greason — CEO, XCOR
Julia Tizard — Operations Manager, Virgin Galactic
Neil Milburn — VP of Program Management, Armadillo Aerospace
ISPCS SESSION “Past is Prologue: The Future of the Space Industry from the Perspective of the Those Who Helped Get it Started” Jeff Greason — XCOR CEO Bill Campbell — Aerojet Chief Engineer (retired) Guruswami Ravichandran –– Director, Graduate Aeronautics Lab at California Institute of Technology Rick Sturdevant — Deputy Director of History, USAF Space Command Frederick Bachtel — Director of Strategic Planning & Initiatives, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne Bill […]
Robert Bigelow (right) stands before a model of his private space station. (Photo: Douglas Messier)
Hi everyone.
I’m in Las Cruces, New Mexico for the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight. (Try to say that tongue twister 10 times. Or twice even.)
Go ahead. I dare you! C’mon. You can do it!
OK, never mind.
Despite the complexity of its name, this should be a very cool conference that will run on Wednesday and Thursday. Lots of interesting speakers and discussions. Rumors are that there will be several announcements this week. And on Friday, I’ll be covering the dedication of the runway at Spaceport America and the planned flyover of WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo.
So, how is my adventure going so far? I’m glad you asked.
Former Odyssey Moon Founder and CEO Bob Richards has formed a new team called Moon Express to compete in the Google Lunar X Prize. Not many details thus far on the San Francisco based company, only the following description from the website: Moon Express, Inc. (MoonEx) is a privately funded lunar transportation and data services company. We have the experienced people, partners and financial resources to blaze a trail to […]
An interesting — if sketchy — report from the website of futurist Ray Kurweil about a joint DARPA-NASA project on interstellar travel:
NASA Ames Director Simon “Pete†Worden revealed Saturday that NASA Ames has “just started a project with DARPA called the Hundred Year Starship,†with $1 million funding from DARPA and $100K from NASA.
Houston Space Economy Faces Slow Rebound
Aviation Week
Regional aerospace leaders counseled patience at an Oct. 15 Space Economy Career Summit attended by about 400 displaced mid-career NASA contractor professionals.
Former Indian President A P J Kalam was in Dehra Dun visiting a school, where he said the nation hopes to launch a Mars mission in 20 years and swore in a group of junior crime fighters to battle corruption.
When you’re locked up inside a simulated Mars habitat for 520 days, food becomes quite important.
Via Roscosmos PAO: This evening, on Oct. 18, Rosstat experts will come to the Mission Control Center to make poll of the Russian cosmonauts working in the International Space Station. ISS-25 crew members Alexander Kaleri, Oleg Skripochka and Fiodor Urchikhin will answer the questions of the form sheets to take part in the national Population Census which is run in Russia on Oct. 14-25. This will be the second time […]
NASA Partners Await Policy Shakeout
Aviation Week
European and Japanese space agencies are awaiting further developments as the U.S. puts the finishing touches on its new policy for exploration, adopting a wait-and-see attitude until Congress funds a compromise space plan and NASA fills in the details.
NASA PRESS RELEASE
NASA selected 215 proposals for negotiation of Phase II contract awards in the Small Business Innovation Research program, or SBIR. The selected projects have a total value of approximately $129 million. NASA will award the contracts to 162 small high technology firms in 35 states.
The SBIR program works with NASA’s mission directorates to competitively select ventures that address research and technology needs for agency programs and projects.
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