Space Access 2019 Conference Schedule

at the Fremont Marriott Silicon Valley 4/18-4/20

Updated 4/14/19

Detailed start-times and durations now in place, with the vast majority of talks re-confirmed. SpaceIL's talk has moved from early to late Friday, and we've had a couple of late cancellations (ARC, Jim Muncy's Saturday talk) and consequently done some significant reshuffling to Thursday and Saturday schedules. Small changes to Friday also.

Presenters who see their talks occurring before they'll arrive, after they leave, or otherwise at seriously inconvenient times, or whose talk descriptions need correction or expansion, should contact us ASAP.

Thursday 4/18/19 - The Entrepreneurial Revolution In Smallsat Launch

Friday 4/19/19 - Reusable Rocket Transport Networks in Earth-Moon Space

Saturday 4/20/19 - Getting There Faster: Advanced High Energy Propulsion

Wednesday evening 4/17/19 - Preregistrants badge pickup from 6 pm - 9 pm, location TBD. (The location will be posted on noticeboards Wednesday afternoon as you enter the hotel.)

Exhibitor advance setup access Wednesday evening also still TBD. We may know Tuesday, should know Wednesday afternoon. Watch this space.

Wednesday night preconference place to meet and hang by default is the Marriott bar & lobby.

Thursday 4/18/19 - The Entrepreneurial Revolution In Smallsat Launch

7 am Exhibits (in Fremont Ballroom, across left-side hall from Main Ballroom) available for exhibitor setup

8 am Exhibits and Hospitality (in Fremont Ballroom) and Registration (in Main Ballroom front foyer) open

9 am - SA2019 Program underway in Main Ballroom

9:00 am - Henry Vanderbilt, SA2019 Program Chair with a few words on Why We're Here

9:10 am - NanoRacks/Rich Pournelle, Senior VP Business Development, on The Smallsat Launch Market

9:45 am - Firefly Aerospace/Eric Salwan on The Alpha Launch Vehicle, plus Highlights of Orbital Transfer Vehicle and Commercial Lunar Payload Services contract

10:15 am - Eva-Jane Lark with Some Preliminary Thoughts on Space Business Ecosystems and a Request For Feedback on Gaps, Challenges, etc.

10:30 am - Midmorning Break

11:00 am - Rocket Lab/Grant Bonin, Chief Engineer - Payload Systems on The Electron Launcher & Photon Multi-Burn Kick Stage

11:35 am - Flometrics/Steve Harrington on Progress Report: Pistonless Pumps For High-Performance Rocket Propulsion Systems

11:55 am - Relativity/Sam Tonneslan, Lead Materials Engineer on 3D Printing Rocket Vehicles

12:20 pm - 2 pm - Break for Lunch (on your own)

2:00 pm - EXOS Aerospace/John Quinn with Updates On the SARGE Vehicle, EU Expansion, and Jaguar

2:30 pm - CubeCab /Adrian Tymes, CEO CubeCab, on FAA As A Customer: Reducing & Eliminating Risk. CubeCab will present the approach they used when writing their launch license application: treating the FAA as a government-mandated customer to be designed for, rather than a regulator to be overcome.

3:00 pm - Vector/Gregory Orndorff on An Update on Vector’s Dedicated Low-Cost Launch Vehicles

3:25 pm - Bill Bruner, CEO New Frontier Aerospace, on Building a Sustainable Launch Business without a billion in the Bank - and without losing control of your company

3:45 pm - Midafternoon Break

4:15 pm - Launcher/Max Haot on LOX-Cooled 3D-Printed Engine for High-Performance Smallsat Launcher

4:40 pm - Jim Muncy/Polispace will discuss Prospective FAA Launch/Reentry Rules Changes via Skype

5:20 pm - NewSpace Meets Milspace - Both are evolving fast, with overlaps (both business and operational) likely growing with time. Some discussion of what the shared spaces - and business opportunities - may look like. Bill Bruner, Mitchell Burnside Clapp, Jess Sponable

6:00 pm - 8 pm - Break for Dinner (on your own)

8:00 pm - Unreasonable Rocket/Paul Breed on Development Of A Low-Cost Modular Launcher

8:25 pm - Grant Bonin, former CTO, Deep Space Industries on Asteroid Mining Lessons From the Private Sector: What Worked, What Didn’t, and What’s Next

8:40 pm - Space Startup Party Fouls - Common Startup Errors & How To Avoid Them, as seen by Rocket People. There are a thousand books and articles that will tell you what Venture Capital people look for. Rocket people, not so much. Paul Breed, Ben Brockert, Henry Spencer, Henry Vanderbilt, and likely also some on-point contributions from our distinguished audience.

9:25 pm - Xplicit Computing/Graham J Orr on XCOMPUTE: advanced CAE end-to-end high-performance computing for FEA, CFD, and Systems, with rocket propulsion, aerothermal propulsion, and space vehicle applications

9:45 pm - Base 11 Space Challenge/Rick Wills, on a $1M+ prize for the first student-led team to design, build and launch a liquid-fueled rocket to space.

9:55 pm - Kim Holder/Moonwards.Com on A Virtual Lunar Town as Educational & Communications Tool

10:05 pm - End of Thursday programming

Friday 4/19/19 - Coming Soon: Reusable Rocket Transport Networks in Earth-Moon (and Mars, and Nearby Asteroids) Space

8 am Hospitality, Exhibits, and Registration open

9 am - SA2019 Program resumes

9:00 am - Henry Spencer on Transitioning From Missiles to Reusable Rocket Ships. The hows and whys of reusing rockets for launch to LEO are becoming better known. For the next steps outward, to the Moon (and Mars, and nearby asteroids) things aren't quite so clear - neither the advantages nor how to achieve them. An intro to the issues for the intelligent rocket amateur.

9:30 am - NASA Ames Space Portal/Dan Rasky on Some Reentry Applications of Pica Heatshield and Related Topics

10:00 am - Princeton Orbital Initiative/Andrew Redd on TigerSat: A Student-Built 3U Cubesat With High-Impulse Plasma Thruster

10:15 am - Rand Simberg will discuss A Co-Orbital Transportation Infrastructure Concept

10:35 am - Midmorning Break

11:05 am - John Schilling will discuss Earth Orbit & Deep Space Payload Capabilities of Near-Term Launchers, Some Implications of Gateway And The Recent RFP For NASA's Cislunar Transport Parameters, and A Flexible Approach to Meeting Those Parameters

11:45 am - Cislunar Space Development Company/Dallas Bienhoff on Elements Of A Cislunar Transport Net: Space Tugs, Moon Shuttles and Propellant Depots

12:25 pm - 2 pm - Break for Lunch (on your own)

2:00 pm - Panel: Cislunar Transport Ecosystems: A Cislunar Transportation System of Landers, Transfer Vehicles, Propellant Depot/Transfer Points, and Propellant Sources can be considered as a transport ecosystem. Will such ecosystems be open and interoperable, or closed and mutually incompatible? - Dallas Bienhoff, Jon Goff, John Schilling

2:40 pm - Ball Aerospace/Melissa Sampson – Enabling Technologies for LEO and Beyond

3:00 pm - Tethers Unlimited/Rob Hoyt, CEO on HYDROS & KRAKEN: Bootstrapping an Off World Economy

3:25 pm - Agile Space Propulsion/Lars Osborne on Storable Propellant Hypergolic Rocket Engines leveraging commercially owned testing infrastructure and recent advances in metal 3D printing to leapfrog existing providers, for rocket engines that will deliver moonshot performance and reliability

3:45 pm - Midafternoon Break

4:15 pm - Chuck Lauer on The Michigan Space Initiative: A Multi-Site Spaceport Licensing Plan For Launching To Polar Orbit Over Lake Huron and Lake Superior

4:30 pm - Altius Space Machines/Jon Goff with Updates On Altius Satellite Servicing, Cooperative Servicing Interfaces, and Cryogenic Propellant Depots

5:00 pm - Orbit Beyond/Taylor Johnson - Lunar Spacecraft & Landers

5:25 pm - Jeff Greason on Electric Sky: A Long-Range Wireless Power Transmission System Enabling Orbital Launch Vehicles, With Terrestrial Commercial Applications

5:45 pm - Momentus Space/Joel Sercel, CTO on Water-Plasma Propelled In-Space Transportation Services

6:05 pm - 8 pm - Break for Dinner (on your own)

8:00 pm - Space Studies Institute Past, Present, and Future, with Dr. Lee Valentine/Chairman on SSI's History, Gary C Hudson/President on SSI's Future, and Robin Snelson/Executive Director on SSI's Conference in Seattle Next Summer. Our colleagues at SSI focus on How To Get Things Done in Space once there - the technology and business aspects of habitats, power generation, resource extraction, manufacturing etc.

8:40 pm - How To Save Civilization And Make A Little Money, or, This Is All Jerry's Fault. Recalling Jerry Pournelle's significant role in the forty-year evolution from "Commercial rockets? Security, get this loon out of my office" to "Commercial rockets? How much do you want?" Aspects of the story as seen by some who were there. Gary Hudson, Jim Ransom, Jess Sponable, Henry Vanderbilt

9:30 pm - SpaceIL on The Beresheet Commercial Lunar Lander Mission - A Look Back, And Forward via Skype

After 10 - End of Friday programming

Saturday 4/20/19 - After Rockets, Getting There Faster: High Energy Propulsion Possibilities

8 am Hospitality, Exhibits, and Registration open

9 am - SA2019 Program resumes

9:00 am - Henry Spencer on From Reusable Rocket Ships to Solar-System Express. Reusable rockets will support our next outward step to the inner Solar System, but they have limits. Once we go beyond the Moon, conventional rocket transit times are measured in months - often many months - years to the outer solar system, millenia to the stars. Traveling usefully faster requires handling radically higher amounts of energy. And doing that without your ship either melting from waste heat or massing so much it takes forever to get up to speed turns out to be non-trivial. Some of the obvious approaches turn out not to be all that promising, and some promising approaches are non-obvious. An intro to the issues for the intelligent rocket amateur.

9:35 am - Jess Sponable will discuss Project History & Management Lessons From DC-X, X-40, and XS-1

10:25 am - Midmorning Break

10:55 am - Jeff Greason will discuss A New Class Of Drive Using The Dynamic Pressure (Q) Of Passage Through The Interplanetary Or Interstellar Plasma To Expel Reaction Mass At High Velocity

11:20 am - Kevin Parkin, Parkin Research, on Beam-Heated Propulsion Progress & Prospects

11:50 am - Positron Dynamics/Ryan Weed on Positron Based Propulsion

12:20pm - 2 pm - Break for Lunch (on your own)

2:00 pm - John R Bucknell on Turbo Rockets - A Paradigm Shift for Space Access

2:25 pm - James Benford on Ultrahigh Acceleration Neutral Particle Beam-Driven Sails

2:55 pm - Gerald D Nordley on Mass Beam Propulsion, An Overview including Jordin Kare's Sailbeam Concept

3:25 pm - Breakthrough Starshot/Peter Klupar on Plans for a Near-Term Interstellar Probe

3:55 pm - Midafternoon Break

4:25 pm - Extremely High-Velocity Propulsion Concepts: A Survey. Jim Benford, Gerry Nordley, Henry Spencer, Ryan Weed. Mars in weeks, or the stars in our lifetime: Ways we might make these things real.

5:10 pm - Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS) reports on several Student Space Projects, including a brief discussion of their CubeSat mission and updates from their liquid propulsion team. Risto Rushford - Introduction to PSAS's two current projects OreSat: Oregon's first cubesat and participation in Base 11 Space Challenge. Jacob Tiller - Current status of Liquid Fuel Engine Test Stand project with focus on the design and testing of pintle injector for a 3d printed 2.2 kN rocket engine. Phillip Wahl - Electric Feed System: Design and analysis. Julio Garcia - Electric Feed System: Current status of testing and hardware.

5:45 pm - Pete Worden, Breakthrough Prize Foundation Chairman, on What We Might Do With A StarShot Capability

6:15 pm - Henry Vanderbilt, SA2019 Program Chair with A Few Closing Thoughts

6:20 pm - End of formal conference programming - Saturday Night Networking begins. Marriott Bar and possibly a privately-hosted party or two open till late.

6:30 pm - Hospitality moves out to the hallway/foyer. Exhibits closes.

9:00 pm - Hospitality/Exhibits will unfortunately need to be cleared out with teardown complete before 9 pm.

Sunday 4/21/19

6:00 am - 10:00 am at the Marriott Breakfast Buffet, get together on your way out the door for Sunday breakfast and coffee and one last chance to talk with your fellow conference-goers before you head home. We won't have our Hospitality space for Sunday, so the arrangement mentioned on your badge back isn't happening. So we're improvising! We got a limited number of discount breakfast coupons from the Marriott. The first 200 of you to check in will get a coupon with your Registration packages good for $5 off on the Marriott's continental (normally $14.95) or hot (normally $24.95) breakfast buffet.

We suggest those of you interested in a Sunday morning getaway get-together save your coupon and use it for a leisurely Sunday buffet breakfast with the rest of us as we fortify ourselves for the trip home. We also suggest those of you who won't use the coupons please pass them on to someone who will. Thanks! (The coupons are good for any day. On Sunday the Marriott breakfast buffet will stop serving at 10 am, and they'll want to clear the room by 10:30 so they can set up for a no-discounts $36 Easter brunch starting at 11.)

SA2019 over - see you next time...