Space Access Update #138 12/19/14
Copyright 2014 by Space Access Society
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In this Issue:
Year-End
Wrapup:
Commercial
Crew FY'15 Funding
Defense
Engine Development
Falcon
9 Recovery Attempt
Space Access
'15 Conference Set For April 30 - May 2, 2015
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Year-End Wrapup
2014 is winding down and
Congress is done for the year. We're
going to take a quick look here at where some of our major issues have gotten
to, before we join much of the rest of the country in getting very little
business done during these last two weeks of the year. Warm and happy (and safe, for those of us
traveling) holidays to us all! And our special best wishes to all those who,
holidays regardless, will keep right on working hard to make the future fly.
Commercial
Crew FY'15 Funding
NASA got $805 million for
Commercial Crew this year in the final "Cromnibus"
catchall Federal funding bill. That's a
bit short of the $848 million NASA requested, but a significant increase over
last year's $696 million. We still worry
whether funding shortfalls over the next few years will cause further delays
from the current 2017 first-flight goal - see this Spaceflight
Now piece for background on how past funding shortfalls have already caused
that date to slip from the original 2015 - but it's impossible to do more than
speculate until more details on the two CCtCap contracts emerge. That's supposed to begin happening after
Sierra Nevada's protest is decided early next month. We'll see.
The unalloyed good news is
that there is no poison-pill language for Commercial Crew in this bill. This was not for lack of opportunity - all
sorts of special-interest provisions popped up elsewhere in the bill (see our
next item.) We might cautiously hope
this is a sign of something resembling an informal truce in this battle of old
ways versus new at NASA, but we won't count on it just yet.
For more on this year's NASA
budget in general, see this Space
News piece. Of particular note, a
significant (and we think pointless) plus-up of both SLS and Orion, accompanied
by a shameful cutback in the Space Technology account that actually pays for
things that might be useful in affordable future exploration.
Defense Engine
Development
Speaking of peculiar
special-interest provisions in the Cromnibus, the Air
Force is directed to spend $220 million this year on starting development of an
RD-180 engine replacement. This despite
our pointing out in SAU#137
"Booster & Engine Developments" that between SpaceX and the new
ULA-Blue Origin partnership, US Defense dual-redundant launch-assurance requirements
now look like being taken care of by purely commercial US investments.
We're not at all surprised
that a faction within Congress ignored us in this, but we are mildly surprised
they also ignored the Defense Department saying essentially the same
thing: That this spending isn't needed
because they "..can meet the assured access to space requirement with
existing privately funded vehicle families." See this Space
News piece for more on what looks to us very much like an attempted Aerojet earmark.
Falcon 9 Recovery
Attempt
And wrapping all this up on a
hopeful note, SpaceX will be attempting an historic first on their next
Station cargo launch, currently scheduled for January 6th. They will build on previous successes in
slowing down F9's first stage from a significant fraction of orbital velocity
to a low-altitude hover, this time attempting to land their F9R first stage
intact on a position-stabilized barge floating downrange of the launch site.
We have been talking for
decades about the possibility of recovering orbital-launcher rocket stages
intact enough to quickly and cheaply reuse them, thus radically changing the
launch cost equation. Now SpaceX will be
making
their first attempt at this in just a few weeks. It is an attempt, mind - an engineering test,
intended to quickly discover what the simulations and analysis may have missed.
There's no guarantee it'll
work the first time, but if it doesn't, the lessons learned will be quickly
applied to the next test, and the next.
Once SpaceX does recover a stage intact, there's then no guarantee it
will be in good enough shape to fly again right away. But if not, it will provide data needed to
redesign the next try to return in better shape. We would not bet against SpaceX attempting
the first actual reflight of their Falcon 9 first stage within the next year or
two.
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Space Access '15 Conference Set For
April 30 - May 2, 2015
We'd like to thank everyone
who responded to our requests for feedback on conference dates. The overwhelming consensus has been that Thursday April 30th through Saturday May
2nd 2015 for our next Space Access Conference (in, as usual, Phoenix
Arizona) is what works best for almost all of us, so we're now setting those as
the official dates of Space Access '15.
For those of you who make your
travel arrangements early, we'll be starting programming at 2 pm Thursday, running (with breaks)
till ~10 pm, Friday 9 am till ~10 pm, then Saturday 9 am till ~6 pm with
hanging out, talking and partying to follow till late. Our overall schedule will include roughly
twenty-one hours on the latest and most interesting developments in this
fast-moving field.
This date change did somewhat
disrupt our hotel negotiations, but after a bit of scrambling we again have
multiple good venues to choose from. The
earliest we expect to have a hotel contract now will be sometime in January, as
it's been our experience over the years that nothing much ever gets
accomplished businesswise over Christmas and New
Year's weeks.
As for conference funding,
we're now up to fifty-three hundred of the ten thousand we need to make this
conference fly. Thanks! And keep those checks coming. If you believe that Space Access conferences
are useful to this community, and that keeping conference prices as low as
possible for all of us who are still students, hungry amateurs, or tight-budget
startup pros is still the way to go, help, please. Send a donation of whatever size - ten, a
hundred, a thousand, it all helps - via check still for now (credit cards
online are nearing the top of the to-do list, but aren't quite there yet) to:
Space Access Society, PO Box 16034, Phoenix AZ 85011.
Note that this is NOT
tax-deductible, as we are not a 501c-anything.
It is however entirely confidential, as we have never and will never
share or disclose in any way our supporters' names. (Unless you want to be listed as a conference
sponsor - we'll be glad to give credit where it's desired. And of course, our ongoing gratitude goes out
to all who've supported us over the years and who continue to help.)
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Space Access Society's sole
purpose is to promote radical reductions in the cost of reaching space.
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Space Access Society
space.access@mindspring.com
"Reach low orbit and you're halfway to anywhere in the Solar System"
- Robert A. Heinlein