"This site isn't dead, it just spends a lot of time hibernating lately..."
But It May Be Waking Up Again. The new White House NASA space exploration policy looks as promising as anything we've seen come from those quarters for a long time. Passing responsibility for basic space access to the US commercial sector while refocusing NASA on developing the technology for future deep-space exploration has potential to radically reduce the costs of both basic access and deep exploration, vastly expanding our future exploration and development possibilities.
But it's a long way from a promising new policy to a successful program. First, the Congress gets to decide what will and will not actually get funded on a year-by-year basis. Then, NASA has to execute whatever program emerges from Congress, one year at a time. A lot can go wrong at every step of the way. We will be watching this process closely. Stay tuned for new Space Access Updates in the coming months.
We will also be discussing this new policy intensively at our next annual conference, Space Access '010, April 8-10, Phoenix Arizona
SA'10 Preliminary Conference Info, 02/06/10.
Space
Access '10, our upcoming annual conference on the technology,
politics, and business of radically cheaper access to space,
featuring a cross-section of leading players in the field, will once
again be the place to hear the latest on the fast-moving
entrepreneurial new-space industry. Space Access conferences
are set up to maximize opportunities for trading information and
making deals. No rubber-chicken banquets, just an intensive
single-track presentations schedule in a setting with plenty of
comfortable places to go off during the breaks and talk.
SA'10
is just over two months away. Book your flights and rooms soon
- early April is still winter sunshine tourist season in Phoenix, so
affordable rooms and good airfares can be hard to come by at the last
second.
We are as usual just getting rolling on organizing
the conference presentations at this point - stay tuned for additions
to the program in coming days. One way we get the
up-to-the-minute latest on this new industry is to stay flexible
right up to the last minute. Look for a detailed program
schedule about two weeks before the conference starts.
Confirmed
SA'10 speakers so far:
Armadillo Aerospace/John Carmack
Copenhagen Suborbitals/Frank Smith
Flometrics/Steve
Harrington
Frontier Astronautics/Tim Bendel
Jon Goff
Clark Lindsey
Masten Space/Dave Masten
Jim
Muncy of PoliSpace
Rand Simberg
Space Frontier
Foundation
Space Studies Institute
SpeedUp/Bob
Steinke
Unreasonable Rocket/Paul Breed
XCOR
Aerospace/Jeff Greason
Overall Conference Schedule:
-
Thursday April 8th, sessions 2 pm - ~10 pm
- Friday April 9th,
sessions 9 am - ~10 pm
- Saturday April 10th, sessions 9 am - ~ 6
pm
- Space Access Hospitality Suite open till late all three
nights.
SA'10 takes place at the Best Western Grace Inn at
10831 South 51st St in Phoenix Arizona, ten miles from the Phoenix
Airport via free hotel shuttle, in a pleasant suburban neighborhood
with a variety of shopping and dining a short walk away, with free
parking.
Our rates are the same as last year, both for SA'10
conference registration ($100 by check mailed in advance, $120 check
cash or credit card at the door, student rate $30 either way) and
hotel rooms ($99 a night for 1 or 2 - this rate includes all room
taxes and full American hot buffet breakfast).
For hotel room
reservations, phone the Grace Inn at 800 843-6010. Ask for the "space
access conference rate" for our $99-inclusive discount room
rate. (If you're attending, this rate is good for three days
before and after the conference too, if you want to catch some extra
Arizona springtime sun.)
For advance SA'10 conference
registration, mail checks (we're working on it, but for the moment
credit cards can be accepted only at the door) to
Space
Access '10
5555 N 7th St #134-348
Phoenix AZ 85014.
If
you mail in your registration, print, fill out, and send along this
form so we'll have all the info we need to have your badge ready when
you arrive.
-------------------Space Access '10 Advance
Registration----------------
Name
_________________________________________________________________
Organization
_________________________________________________________
(optional,
will appear on badge, 20 characters max)
email
________________________________________________________________
(for conference updates and newsletter)
amount enclosed
______________ for ___________________________________
**
Send all inquiries to space.access@space-access.org.
**
Keep an eye on this page in the coming weeks
for updates on the SA'10 conference program.
..........................................................
Space Access Society: Who are we?
There are countless useful, interesting, and profitable things we could do if we had routine affordable access to space. But, as the old down-Maine joke goes, "you can't get there from here." Half a century into the Space Age, it still takes years of paperwork and planning and costs tens to hundreds of millions per mission to reach Earth orbit, drastically constraining the otherwise huge opportunities. It isn't the laws of physics or engineering that are stopping us - there's nothing in either that prevents reusable rockets based on available technology from operating at costs and reliabilities a lot closer to modern airliners than to current rockets. Yet somehow, after all the early promise, we ended up in a blind alley. We've spent a generation there. Enough is enough.
Space Access Society thinks the problem has a lot more to do with political and bureaucratic inertia than with any fundamental engineering obstacles. SAS's sole purpose is to promote routine, reliable, radically cheaper access to space, ASAP. We think it's possible within the decade, with a little luck and a lot of hard work. Welcome to our minimalist retro text-intensive web page, where we'll try to give you a handle on how we think we can get out of the long-time NASA-industrial complex expensive-space dead end. Here's the longer version: Space Access Society Policy Summary (due for an update soon, but still relevant.)
And here's our Updates backlist, so you can see how our understanding of the problem has evolved over the years:
Space Access Update back issues
One of the higher-profile things we do is our annual Space Access conference on the technology, politics, and business of radically cheaper space transportation, featuring leading players in the field. Coming up next, Space Access '010, now set for April 8-10 at the Best Western Grace Inn in Phoenix Arizona. Our eighteenth (we've been at this that long?) annual conference will again be an interesting mix of the usual suspects and some unusual new additions, again providing an intensive informal snapshot of where the growing cheap space access industry is this spring 2010.
Questions? Email us at: space.access@space-access.org (We may take a while to get back to you, but your mail does go through.)
Space Access Update Back Issues
SAU #114 -20 Feb 06 Update
SAU #113 - 4 Jan 06 Update
SAU #112 - 9 Sep 05 Update
SAU #111 - 5 Apr 05 Update
SAU #110 -31 Mar 05 Update
SAU #109 -15 Feb 05 Update
SAU #108 -31 Jan 05 Update
SAU #107 - 2 Dec 04 Update
SAU #106 -19 Nov 04 Update
SAU #105 -19 Oct 04 Update
SAU #104 -29 Sep 04 Update
SAU #103 -15 Apr 04 Update
SAU #102 - 9 Feb 04 Update
SAU #101 -13 Dec 03 Update
SAU #100 - 8 Feb 03 Update
SAU #99 - 13 Dec 02 Update
bulletin - 12 Feb 02 bulletin
SAU #98 - 8 Mar 01 Update
SAU #97 - 26 Jan 01 Update
SAU #96 - 26 Sep 00 Update
SAU #95 - 27 Aug 00 Update
SAU #94 - 9 Jul 00 Update
SAU #93 - 13 Apr 00 Update
SAU #92 - 5 Apr 00 Update
SAU #91 - 7 Feb 00 Update
SAU #90 - 10 Oct 99 Update
SAU #89 - 25 Sep 99 Update
SAU #88 - 24 Jul 99 Update
SAU #87 - 19 Jul 99 Update
SAU #86 - 25 Jun 99 Update
SAU #85 - 18 Jun 99 Update
SAU #84 - 17 Jun 99 Update
SAU #83 - 3 Jun 99 Update
SAU #82 - 12 May 99 Update
SAU #81 - 5 Mar 99 Update
SAU #80 - 28 Feb 99 Update
SAU #79 - 8 Oct 98 Update
SAU #78 - 6 Nov 97 Update
SAU #77 - 16 Oct 97 Update
SAU #76 - 3 Oct 97 Update
SAU #75 - 23 Sep 97 Update
SAU #74 - 31 Aug 97 Update
SAU #73 - 14 Jul 97 Update
SAU #72 - 23 May 97 Update
SAU #71 - 6 May 97 Update
SAU #70 - 18 Oct 96 Update
SAU #69 - 31 Jul 96 Update
SAU #68 - 21 Jul 96 Update
SAU #67 - 11 Jul 96 Update
Full list of back issues available here eventually,
when we finally dig them off various retired computers...
*end*