Space Access Update #67 7/11/96 Copyright 1996 by Space Access Society _______________________________________________________________________ It's been an interesting week since the X-33 winner announcement. All sorts of alarums and excursions from people who'd forgotten this was a competition and expected their favorite to win; more seriously, huge amounts of new data to absorb and make sense of while we and our colleagues thrashed out answers to the twin questions: What does this mean, and What next? Read on... _______________________________________________________________________ Stories this issue: - Lockheed-Martin "Venture Star" Wins X-33 Downselect - NASA OSAT Due For Radical Change In HQ Restructuring - DC-XA Flight 4 Due Friday July 12th - A Low-Cost X-33 Backup? (!) - DOD SSTO Funding Alert - Maximum effort needed! -----------------------(SAS Policy Boilerplate)------------------------ Space Access Update is Space Access Society's when-there's-news publication. Space Access Society's goal is to promote affordable access to space for all, period. We believe in concentrating our resources at whatever point looks like yielding maximum progress toward this goal. Right now, we think this means working our tails off trying to get the government to build and fly a high-speed reusable rocket demonstrator, one or more "X-rockets", in the next three years, in order to quickly build up both experience with and confidence in reusable Single-Stage To Orbit (SSTO) technology. The idea is to reduce SSTO technical uncertainty (and thus development risk and cost) while at the same time increasing investor confidence, to the point where SSTO will make sense as a private commercial investment. We have reason to believe we're not far from that point now. Our major current focus is on supporting the government's fully reusable single-stage rocket technology programs, the low-speed DC-XA, and its high-speed followon, the X-33 NASA/DOD/industry cooperative project. With luck and hard work, we should see fully-reusable rocket testbeds flying into space well before the end of this decade, with practical orbital transport projects getting underway. Join us, and help us make it happen. Henry Vanderbilt, Executive Director, Space Access Society To join Space Access Society or buy the SSTO/DC-X V 3.0 video we have for sale (Two hours, includes all eight DC-X flights, X-33 animations, X-33, DC-X and SSTO backgrounders, aerospike engine test-stand footage, plus White Sands Missile Range DC-X ops site post flight footage) mail a check to: SAS, 4855 E Warner Rd #24-150, Phoenix AZ 85044. SAS membership with direct email of Space Access Updates is $30 US per year; the SSTO V 3.0 video is $25, $5 off for SAS members, $8 extra for shipping outside the US and Canada, VHS NTSC only. __________________________________________________________________________ Lockheed-Martin "Venture Star" Wins X-33 Downselect On July 2nd, 1996, at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena California, Vice President Al Gore and NASA Administrator Dan Goldin together lifted the concealing cover from a scale model of the winner of the X-33 experimental reusable rocket demonstrator competition, revealing Lockheed-Martin's "Venture Star" triangular lifting body as NASA's choice for the billion-dollar three-year cooperative project. - What Are The Specs? Lockheed-Martin's X-33 design will lift off vertically, at a fully- fuelled weight of 273,000 lbs, powered by two sets of Rocketdyne J-2S turbomachinery (the J-2S was an upgraded version of the Saturn 5's J-2 upper-stage engine) feeding liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen to two banks of small thrust chambers in a "linear aerospike" arrangement on either side of the ship's blunt wedge-shaped trailing edge, producing a total of just over 400,000 lbs of thrust at takeoff. Steering while under rocket power will be totally by differential throttling of the four banks of thrust chambers, side-to-side, and top-row-to-bottom-row. Steering during gliding flight before runway landing will be by a variety of aerodynamic control surfaces. The triangular experimental flight vehicle will be 67 feet from nose to tail, 68 feet wide including the upward-slanted fins on the aft corners, and will weigh 63,000 lbs with empty propellant tanks. Thermal protection will be by new advanced metallic TPS plates backed by insulation over the composite plastic vehicle outer shell. The vehicle's broad curved underside (it reenters pretty much belly-first) spreads reentry heat loads out over a wide area, reducing maximum temperatures and allowing the use of metallic rather than tile TPS. The tradeoff for this is low hypersonic Lift-to-Drag ratio (L:D) which means low reentry maneuverability, low "crossrange". A reasonable tradeoff for a precursor to a routine cargo-hauler... Maximum X-33 speed is described as mach 15+, roughly 60% of orbital velocity. The vehicle will be returned to base after flights on the back of a NASA Shuttle Carrier 747. - What's The Plan? Gene Austin, NASA's X-33 project manager, is currently in Palmdale California setting up an on-site office for himself and his staff. NASA has most of its $43m in FY'96 X-33 funds for use in getting the project off to a flying start this summer. At some point after October 1st, NASA should have something over $250m in FY'97 X-33 funding available, out of a total $324.7m for FY'97 RLV/Advanced Space Technology in the likely FY'97 NASA budget. NASA is reported to be asking Lockheed-Martin to commit their contribution to the cooperative project early, to avoid a repeat of the X-34 Mk I "cooperative" fiasco, where the contractors apparently spent $10m of NASA's money but little of their own before bailing out. X-33 is scheduled for first flight less than three years from now, in March 1999. Lockheed-Martin is starting to recruit the hundreds of additional people who'll be needed to build the new ship. They will build the ship in Palmdale, California and fly it out of nearby Edwards Air Force Base. Current plans call for approximately a dozen flights, with high-and-fast tests from flight #3 on going out of the Edwards test range over the sparsely populated regions to the northeast, on a flight corridor to Malmstrom AFB, Montana. Flight #1 is planned to go thirty miles to a strip at Bicycle Lake CA, #2 to Michaels AAF in Utah. The ship is to be unmanned, operated by constant telecomm link via ground stations along the flight path. There is no current provision for either a second copy of the ship or for long-lead spares to build a second ship in the event of loss of the first. These will presumably depend on additional funding being scrounged. - How'd They Win? NASA has announced that Lockheed-Martin's winning X-33 bid included a $220 million bidder contribution. We understand that this $220m is a mix of cash, in-kind use of existing company resources, and IR&D funds ("Internal R&D" money, essentially general-purpose Federal corporate technology-base subsidies) from both Lockheed-Martin and various of their subcontractors. We're still collecting data on the other aspects of the competition, technical merit, "RLV" operational followon business plans, and so forth. But at first glance, it appears Lockheed-Martin won at least in part because they were willing to commit significantly more of their own resources than either McDonnell-Douglas or Rockwell. NASA has been saying that one reason Lockheed-Martin won is that their X-33 pushes more new technologies farther than the other bids. We find this mildly puzzling, as it seems to us to increase program risk over the simpler solutions, but then NASA does have a certain institutional tendency to favor maximum new tech in a project. Since we have our own risk-reduction plan in mind (more on this later in the Update) we can live with this. In fact, many of the new technologies in Lockheed- Martin's X-33 (metallic TPS, multilobed composite cryo tanks, aerospike engines) do look generically useful if they work out. NASA has also been saying that this X-33 is more representative of its hypothetical "RLV" operational followon than the other two bids. We'll confine ourselves to observing that three years is a long time and things are likely to change, a lot, as experience is gained and the market defines itself better. This brings us to Lockheed-Martin's "RLV business plan" submitted as part of the X-33 bid. As best we can tell, the gist of this plan is to spend about $2 billion of company money (Lockheed-Martin is projected to be seriously cash-rich by the end of the decade) plus a bit more than that in short-term loans to develop a fleet of three shuttle-class-cargo ships (15-30 tons payload depending on the target orbit). The loans will then be paid off by selling NASA eight Shuttle-replacement flights a year at a price of $250m-$300m a flight (around two-thirds of current Shuttle operating costs) for two to three years. Lockheed-Martin then plans to fly 20-30 flights a year at a price of $10m-$15m a flight; their fully amortized cost per flight (projected from their target of $100/lb) looks to be $4m-$6m. Our main comment on this plan is that it is likely to change a lot over the next four years. We note, for instance, that the National Reconaissance Office (NRO), a major current customer for 20-ton class satellite launches on L-M's Titan 4 (and occasionally on Shuttle, soon to be 50% L-M's under the USA Shuttle operating partnership with Rockwell) is suddenly talking very seriously of switching over to larger numbers of cheaper 5-ton satellites. Optimal RLV sizing could change radically between now and the year 2000. We note too that Lockheed-Martin's "RLV Business Plan" calls for capture of over 90% of the existing space launch market, an effective monopoly. We believe our cause, affordable reliable access to space for all, will be far better served by ongoing technical, corporate, and institutional competition in low-cost launch, and we intend to actively support such competition. Even if we didn't feel this way, chances are that between the other two X-33 bidders (neither McDonnell-Douglas nor Rockwell have any plans to immediately disband their design teams), the host of other established and wannabe aerospace outfits, and the host of other space access customers outside NASA, there will be competition in this market. We'll close with this: We expect any of the X-33 bidders could have produced a ship adequate to our goal of developing and demonstrating reusable SSTO technology to the point of commercial viability. We intend to vigorously support the NASA/Lockheed-Martin X-33 while it looks like serving this goal. We congratulate the Lockheed-Martin team on their win, and we look forward to their producing an X-33 that flies soon, (semi)savably, high, fast, and often. It's going to be an interesting fin de siecle - a rocket powered one! __________________________________________________________________________ NASA OSAT Due For Radical Change In HQ Restructuring According to documents we've seen posted on the "NASA RIF watch" web site (http://www.reston.com/rif/watch.html) NASA's Office of Space Access & Technology (OSAT), "Code X", is slated for perhaps the most radical change seen in the current NASA HQ restructuring and cutbacks. OSAT's advanced technology functions are to be split off and divided up among various NASA centers, while the space access function, essentially the current Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) program under Gary Payton, is to be upgraded to a full HQ Office with its own Associate Administrator - presumably Payton - reporting directly to Administrator Goldin. Tough times for the majority of the current OSAT staff, who have our sympathy for their quest to find new niches within NASA or without. But we think this change is a good thing for our main objective; it shortens the lines of communications and gives more weight to access within NASA. __________________________________________________________________________ DC-XA Flight 4 Due Friday The rebuilt DC-XA reusable rocket ops testbed has had its fourth flight rescheduled for early afternoon of this Friday, July 12th. The flight had been delayed by turbine problems with a new Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) being integrated into the DC-XA. The APU won't be used this flight; it is now scheduled for first test on flight 5 in late July. We strongly support extension of the DC-XA test program beyond the currently scheduled five flights; we've talked with the engineers involved from both NASA and McDonnell-Douglas and they agree that there is much to be learned from additional flights. The cost of continuing this summer's flight test program beyond flight 5 is relatively small, a few million dollars - pocket change in the rocket test business. __________________________________________________________________________ A Low-Cost X-33 Backup? Here we get to the nub of our question - What next? Lockheed-Martin X-33 addresses a number of potential high-payoff RLV technologies, but bypasses a number of others equally promising. And no such project is a sure thing; there is alway risk - institutional, organizational, and technological. This month's X-33 go-ahead is no guarantee we'll have a useful ship flying three years from now. We intend no insult to anyone involved when we say that if we can afford to pursue one or more alternative approaches to cheap space transportation in parallel with NASA/Lockheed-Martin X-33, we should do so, in order to greatly improve the overall chances of the nation benefitting from its investment in reusable rocket technologies. We're not exactly being radical here - the benefits of competing multiple technical approaches are well-established historically. This improves the odds of success both by not putting the whole bet on one approach, and by the added incentive to do well the competition gives all the participants. You tend to run faster when you hear footsteps close behind... NASA is in fact on record as wanting more than one ship if the money can be found. (Some of our more cynical colleagues have pointed out that even though pride/professional integrity would likely cause the new X-33 engineering team to do their best regardless, Lockheed-Martin's overall corporate interests might be just as well-served by delays (or even never-fly bogdown) of X-33 as by success, absent active competition, given L-M's extensive interests in current launch systems. Appallingly cynical, some of our colleagues... Admittedly this would require a short-sighted approach on the part of L-M top management, given that what's at stake is a chance to be the Boeing of the 21st century spaceliner business.) If the money can be found, there's the rub. NASA has had to strain hard to make room for X-33 within its steadily shrinking budget. There is no realistic chance of digging up another $900 million plus within NASA that we can see. Or anywhere else for that matter. An additional technical approach is going to have to be a lot cheaper than $900 million over the next three years - $50m-$75m a year over FY'97-99 is, maybe, doable. But even that would have to be for a ship with considerable standalone technical merit. And even that would be hard within NASA's narrowing budget wedge. We haven't been loafing this past week; we think we see a second RLV X- project that can be usefully done within those funding limits, that is highly technologically complementary to the X-33, and that can be done without significant additional pressure on NASA's budget. We're talking about a proposal we've seen to build on the current DC-XA program with a series of stretches, upgrades, and rebuilds, via a USAF/NASA partnership, with USAF taking the managerial and funding lead. The broad outline of the proposed program, with estimated funding levels: - DC-XA extended ops tests, 1996, $3m USAF, $3m NASA. - DC-XB - new tanks, stretched aeroshell, thermal protection, fifth center engine, mach 3+, flies summer '98, $70m USAF, $10m NASA. - DC-XC - new conformal LH2 tank, improved TPS, lighter structures, upgraded engines, Mach 10+, flies fall '99, USAF $130m, NASA TBD depending on desired NASA advanced technology tests. *** We think something like this program would be a good thing for USAF, for NASA, and for the country - good enough that we intend to shift as much of our focus as can be spared from keeping X-33 on track over to trying to make DC-XB/C happen. Here's why. DC-XB/C complements X-33 very well, technologically and in terms of institutional approach, exploring many known promising RLV technical alternatives that are outside the scope of X-33. DC-XB/C is also a good affordable hedge to the high-stakes X-33 bet. - X-33 does horizontal runway landing, DC-XB/C would pursue vertical wingless small-pad powered landing. - X-33 uses medium-temperature metallic thermal protection, DC-XB/C would use new high-durability high-temperature tile TPS. - X-33 tests new 'aerospike' rocket engines; DC-XB/C would demonstrate use of multiple traditional bell-nozzle engines for engine-out redundancy. - X-33 will pioneer use of complex multilobe composite propellant tanks, DC-XB/C will provide insurance against manufacturing/durability problems with much simpler geometry tankage. - X-33 will test out low L:D low heat-load reentry profiles, DC-XB/C will explore high-maneuverability high hypersonic L:D flight. - X-33 will be oriented toward fixed operating bases with specialized ground-handling equipment for ship and payload processing, DC-XB/C will be aimed at more mobile operations out of small austere sites. - X-33 is in our view a relatively high-risk high-payoff approach, bundling a number of new technologies into a relatively complex and sophisticated package. If it all works, it's a great ship - but there's a lot of potential for delay; a lot of new things all have to come together at once at the end of a very tight schedule. DC-XB/C takes a much more incremental approach - "build a little, test a little." It looks like a USAF Phillips Labs/MDA/NASA DC-XB/C (we do not know for a fact that's where this proposal came from, but it seems a safe bet) would be both affordable and a very useful complement to NASA/L-M X-33. We also think this approach is politically doable, or we wouldn't be pursuing it like this. First, NASA's top leadership endorses competing X-vehicles but has a bad budget pinch to deal with. Spending USAF money for a second bird that NASA still gets data from and flight-test use of is we think a good deal for NASA. As for USAF, there's growing interest there in the eventual next-century defense applications of affordable space sortie vehicles. DC-XB/C lays a lot of the groundwork for such at a bargain-basement price - the DC-XB/C configuration's austere ops site potential and high hypersonic maneuverability both fit well with eventual USAF needs, as well as providing useful operational flexibility for future commercial missions. The Congress can never be taken for granted, but there's likely a coalition to be built for a ship this long-term useful and this cheap. As for this Administration, well, that's always an interesting question. There's a strong tendency to oppose any new military space operational capabilities, but DC-XB/C, technologically useful though it may be, is not in anyone's wildest imagination stretchable to an operational ship. At maximum stretch it will have a couple hundred miles range at less than half of orbital velocity. And it's relatively cheap, and it's very much dual-use technology, with huge potential civilian aerospace payoffs. Given Congressional, USAF, and NASA support, this White House may well be persuadable to go along. __________________________________________________________________________ DOD SSTO Funding Alert (Maximum effort needed! Get EVERYBODY you can talk into it to help on this one. We have a brand new program here and we need to sell the living bejabers out of it - we need to get funds for this into the FY'97 budget NOW.) Congressional support for USAF reusable rocket work, meanwhile, very much cannot be taken for granted. Left alone, we would likely see between $25 million and nothing at all for Fiscal Year '97 (FY'97 starts October 1st) out of the Congressional Defense funding bills. We need at least $50 million, which in addition to the still-unreleased $25 million in FY'96 funds would be enough to get DC-XB (the summer '98 Mach 3+ upgrade) well underway, along with advance work on the Mach 10 DC-XC. There are two House-Senate DOD funding conferences we need to work, Authorization, already underway, and Appropriations, starting sometime next week. Of the two, Authorizations is important, but Appropriations is CRITICAL. The FY'97 DOD Authorizations bill (think of it as the authorized shopping list) is already in House-Senate conference. This conference is likely to go on at least through next week; there's still time to affect the process. The House version has $50 million, the Senate $25 million - we mainly need to work for support in the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) for acceding to the House number. The FY'97 DOD Appropriations conference (think of it as actually writing the checks) will get underway as soon as the Senate passes their version of the DOD FY'97 Appropriations bill, likely early next week. The House version calls for $25 million for USAF reusable rocket work. The Senate version almost certainly will call for nothing at all. We need to work both sides of this conference HARD to raise the amount appropriated to $50 million. These guys know they're writing real checks from a limited account; this one will be tough - but we have to talk them into supporting this. If a Senator from your state is on the SASC or Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee lists attached, or if a Representative whose district you live in or near is on the attached House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee list, call write or fax them by early this coming week of July 15th, and ask them to support: $50 million in FY'97 reusable rocket funding for USAF Phillips Labs, and also $50 million for the Clementine II asteroid flyby probe in FY'97 (we made a mutual support deal, and Clementine II seems a fairly good thing anyway.) Both the Phillips Labs reusable rocket work and Clementine 2 strike us as prime examples of "dual-use" technologies - both have potential long-term military applications (Clementine 1 and the proposed Clementine 2 both use(d) SDIO-developed miniaturized sensors and components to do their science missions small, fast, and cheap) and both have considerable economic/scientific civilian benefit. See the previous article for details on why DC-XB/C is a good thing for USAF to be doing - the Senate in particular will want convincing that spending this DOD money is actually relevant to national defense. How you approach your Senator or Representative on these recommendations is up to you, of course. Always tell the truth! But sometimes emphasize the aspects they're more likely to respond to... As usual, if you call or fax, be brief and be polite; the overworked staffers will appreciate it. If you call, tell them who you are ("Hi, I'm Joe Smith from") and what you want ("I'm calling about a couple things I'd like to see supported in the Defense Appropriations/Authorizations markup"). They may switch you to another staffer (more likely to that staffer's voicemail) or they may ask you what those things you want are. If they ask, tell them you support $50 million in funding for reusable rocket work at USAF Phillips Labs, and also for the Clementine 2 asteroid probe. If they have any questions, answer them as best you can; if not, thank them for their time and ring off. If you end up with another staffer's voicemail, repeat the whole message of who you are, where you want something done, and what it is you want, then thank 'em for their time and ring off. If you fax or write, keep it to one page, lead off with what you want (as above), and then follow up with a paragraph or two of why you think these things are worth funding if you're so inclined. Senate Armed Services Committee List ("Senator XYZ, US Senate, Washington DC 20510" will get mail to them.) voice fax Sen. Thurmond, Strom (R SC) 1-202-224-5972 1-202-224-1300 Sen. Nunn, Sam (D GA) 1-202-224-3521 1-202-224-0072 Sen. Lott, Trent (R MS) 1-202-224-6253 1-202-224-2262 Sen. Hutchison, Kay Bailey (R TX) 1-202-224-5922 1-202-224-0776 Sen. Bryan, Richard H. (D NV) 1-202-224-6244 1-202-224-1867 Sen. McCain, John (R AZ) 1-202-224-2235 1-202-228-2862 Sen. Byrd, Robert C. (D WV) 1-202-224-3954 1-202-224-4025 Sen. Cohen, William S. (R ME) 1-202-224-2523 1-202-224-2693 Sen. Coats, Daniel R. (R IN) 1-202-224-5623 1-202-224-8964 Sen. Smith, Robert (R NH) 1-202-224-2841 1-202-224-1353 Sen. Kempthorne, Dirk (R ID) 1-202-224-6142 1-202-224-5893 Sen. Warner, John W. (R VA) 1-202-224-2023 1-202-224-6295 Sen. Inhofe, James (R OK) 1-202-224-4721 1-202-224-???? Sen. Santorum, Rick (R PA) 1-202-224-6324 1-202-224-4161 Sen. Bingaman, Jeff (D NM) 1-202-224-5521 1-202-224-2852 Sen. Levin, Carl (D MI) 1-202-224-6221 1-202-224-1388 Sen. Kennedy, Edward M. (D MA) 1-202-224-4543 1-202-224-2417 Sen. Lieberman, Joseph I. (D CT) 1-202-224-4041 1-202-224-9750 Sen. Robb, Charles S. (D VA) 1-202-224-4024 1-202-224-8689 Sen. Glenn, John (D OH) 1-202-224-3353 1-202-224-7983 Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, National Security Subcommittee voice fax Sen. Hatfield, Mark (R OR) 1-202-224-3753 1-202-224-0276 (chair, full SAC) Sen. Byrd, Robert (D WV) 1-202-224-3954 1-202-224-4025 (Ranking Minority Member, full SAC) Sen. Stevens, Ted (R AK) 1-202-224-3004 1-202-224-1044 (chair, SAC NatSec Sub) Sen. Inouye, Daniel (D HI) 1-202-224-3934 1-202-224-6747 (Ranking Minority Member, SAC NatSec Sub) Sen. Cochran, Thad (R MS) 1-202-224-5054 1-202-224-3576 Sen. Gramm, Phil (R TX) 1-202-224-2934 1-202-228-2856 Sen. Domenici, Pete V. (R NM) 1-202-224-6621 1-202-224-7371 Sen. McConnell, Mitch (R KY) 1-202-224-2541 1-202-224-2499 Sen. Specter, Arlen (R PA) 1-202-224-4254 1-202-224-1893 Sen. Bond, Christopher (R MO) 1-202-224-5721 1-202-224-8149 Sen. Mack, Connie (R FL) 1-202-224-5274 1-202-224-8022 Sen. Shelby, Richard C. (R AL) 1-202-224-5744 1-202-224-3416 Sen. Hollings, Ernest (D SC) 1-202-224-6121 1-202-224-4293 Sen. Johnston, J. Bennett (D LA) 1-202-224-5824 1-202-224-2952 Sen. Leahy, Patrick (D VT) 1-202-224-4242 1-202-224-3595 Sen. Harkin, Thomas (D IA) 1-202-224-3254 1-202-224-7431 Sen. Lautenberg, Frank (D NJ) 1-202-224-4744 1-202-224-9707 House Appropriations Committee, National Security Subcommittee List ("Representative XYZ, US House, Washington DC 20515" will get mail to them.) (Appropriations Chair) voice fax Livingston, Robert (R-01 LA) 1-202-225-3015 1-202-225-0739 (Appropriations Ranking Minority Member) Obey, David R. (D-07) 1-202-225-3365 1-202-225-0561 (NatSec Subcommittee Chair) Young, C. W. Bill (R-10 FL) 1-202-225-5961 1-202-225-9764 (NatSecSubcommittee RMM) Murtha, John P. (D-12 PA) 1-202-225-2065 1-202-225-5709 Lewis, Jerry (R-40 CA) 1-202-225-5861 1-202-225-6498 Livingston, Robert (R-01 LA) 1-202-225-3015 1-202-225-0739 Sabo, Martin Olav (D-05 MN) 1-202-225-4755 1-202-225-4886 Hefner, Bill (D-08 NC) 1-202-225-3715 1-202-225-4036 Skeen, Joseph (R-02 NM) 1-202-225-2365 1-202-225-9599 Hobson, David L. (R-07 OH) 1-202-225-4324 1-202-225-1984 McDade, Joseph M. (R-10 PA) 1-202-225-3731 1-202-225-9594 Bonilla, Henry (R-23 TX) 1-202-225-4511 1-202-225-2237 Wilson, Charles (D-02 TX) 1-202-225-2401 1-202-225-1764 Nethercutt, George (R-05 WA) 1-202-225-2006 1-202-225-7181 Dicks, Norman D. (D-06 WA) 1-202-225-5916 1-202-226-1176 Neumann, Mark (R-01 WI) 1-202-225-3031 1-202-225-3393 __________________________________________________________________________ Space Access Society "Reach low orbit and you're halfway to anywhere 4855 E Warner Rd #24-150 in the Solar System." Phoenix AZ 85044 - Robert A. Heinlein 602 431-9283 voice/fax www.space-access.org "You can't get there from here." space.access@space-access.org - Anonymous - Permission granted to redistribute the full and unaltered text of this - - piece, including the copyright and this notice. All other rights - - reserved. In other words, crossposting, emailing, or printing this - - whole and passing it on to interested parties is strongly encouraged. -