The first thing I wanted to mention was that this was the first Space Access in three years that I actually came away from feeling recharged and excited. 2010 was a very difficult conference, with the strains that led to the second Masten reboot coming to a head, and some personal and petty disappointments on my part that at Masten we hadn’t even tried to give XCOR any real competition when it came to selling ULA on a partner for their RL-10 replacement engine project.

By 2011, I was running full-speed ahead with Altius, which was exciting, but the feeling I came away from Space Access with that year was frustration. Masten was making headway on its reboot, but hadn’t really caught its stride yet, Armadillo had had a depressing year, and XCOR was still struggling to raise the rest of the money it needed to really get into its Lynx work.  The industry had fought and lost the NASA 2010 Authorization battle, with its main win being that the much suckier House version hadn’t been passed. While that would’ve been disastrous, it was still pretty clear that the antibodies had won that round. I won’t belabor the point any further, but the last two Space Access conferences before this one hadn’t recharged me or excited me the way that previous conference had.

Fortunately, at least to me, the feeling I took away from this year was a lot more invigorating and optimistic, mostly due to progress at the three main sRLV companies that have been regulars at the conference: XCOR, Armadillo, and Masten. I’ll touch on each of them briefly:

XCOR
By far, XCOR impressed me as the company at the conference the closest to seeing its vehicle become a reality. With the funding round finally closed on Lynx, and the aerodynamics work winding down, they’re hot and heavy in the processes of parts detailing, manufacturing drawing development, quoting, working with suppliers to get parts made, and then integrating the pieces as they came in.  The design work they showed at the conference gave me a lot of confidence–I personally think that that HTHL vehicles like Lynx are actually more complex in many ways than VTVL vehicles–and XCOR’s presentation showed a design reaching the level of maturity, detail, and sophistication you would expect in a vehicle that is being built and readied for flight test.  While they’ve got a lot of integration to go, with all its opportunities for delays, rework, and development snags, if you’ve been at this point in a prototype vehicle development effort, it almost makes you giddy with excitement. I’m going to stick my neck out and say that I think there’s a high probability that XCOR is going to be there in force at next year’s conference, showing pictures and videos from Lynx’s first few flight tests. There’s still a long way from there to a commercially operating Lynx Mk2, but I think that so long as they can keep a decent war-chest of extra cash available to work through the inevitable slides, it’ll be exciting to see the race between them and VG over the coming year or two. To be honest, I wish I had some XCOR stock about now.

Armadillo
Armadillo also gave reason to be excited. Simply put, they already flew a vehicle to 95km that actually probably could’ve been coaxed over the von Karman line with a little more patience in the engine characterization and such. While they are stepping up to a larger vehicle, and going back to a cold-gas RCS system (which worries me–I think you’re really going to want hot-gas RCS for a full 100km flight), I think they’ve got a good shot at being the first of the Space Access regulars to make it over the von Karman line. Now admittedly, this is with a vehicle that’s basically a liquid sounding rocket, but it’s a good first step. It’ll be interesting to see where AA goes as they try to transition the info learned from Stig-B back into their VTVL vehicle development.

Masten
The things that gave me the most hope about Masten were actually from a side conversation from Dave outside the conference itself. A lot of the technical issues that I had been sweating while still working there look like they’ve found a good rigorous approach to solving. While they still have a lot of execution between them and success, and while they’re by far the most undercapitalized of the three, it looks like they’re taking the steps and getting the outside help they’ll need to make a reliable VTVL rocket system. The Xeus work and the other contracting stuff is also cool, but to me I was able to walk away with the warm fuzzy that Masten’s on a good track for getting Xaero and eventually Xogdor flying.

My hope with all of this is that next year, each of the teams will have enough solid accomplishments under their belt that we’ll have many of them back in larger numbers to collect some hard-earned bragging rights. We’re still growing up as an industry, but I feel pretty excited about the near-term prospects of at least this corner of the industry.

It takes slightly crazy people to make big changes. These same people generally have tough lives. It’s a lifestyle choice.

–Iain McClatchie (who runs the  Ambivalent Engineer blog)

Like most engineers, I don’t let the lack of much economic training get in the way of good economic philosophizing/debating, but I’ve learned a lot from their takes on economics and policy. I particularly like Arnold’s recent discussion of Patterns of Sustainable Specialization and Trade as part of the explanation for the current economic downturn. I don’t think it tells the full story–I think there’s still room for some of the “Austrian” business cycle thinking, and some of the insights that “Mish” Shedlock has given about credit’s often-misunderstood role in economics.

If you aren’t reading these blogs on a regular basis, I’d suggest doing so. These guys don’t agree on everything, and you probably won’t agree with them on everything, but you’ll probably agree that most of the conversation there is enlightening.

Figured I’d share.

Short version: probably won’t be blogging at least through mid-February. Sorry guys.

[Of course the real reason I do stuff like that on Twitter is because my adult supervision at Altius doesn't do Twitter, which allows me to speak my mind sometimes about space policy issues without getting the "Dutch Uncle's talk" every day...]

• Updated our business plan based on feedback from the Newspace Business Plan Competition, and created a company profile on Gust.com/Angelsoft (sorry guys, for accredited investors only).
• We were able to close a deal with Lockheed Martin to use a really nice thermal-vac test chamber for testing our Sticky Boom™ gripper system as part of the SBIR Phase I effort.
• In about a month from closing that deal we designed, fabricated, installed, and ran tests with a thermal-vac test rig in the chamber that simulated capturing the Mars Sample Return Orbiting Sample canister over a wide range of temperatures.  Net result was that over 63 tests, all tests delivered sufficient pull-off force to have captured and retained the MSR “OS”.  Forces near ambient temperatures were on average over 10lb, using the same gripper we used for the Zero-G flight tests in May.
• Also improved the pad to gripper attachment method so the pads don’t pull-off accidentally.  Makes it so our demo unit can actually pick up the hollow stainless steel sphere we used in 1g, horizontally, without any problems.  Which is pretty darned cool when you realize this is using the same static cling forces you get from rubbing a balloon on your head.
• We also wrote about 160 pages worth of SBIR, BAA, and commercial proposal, final reports, and other related documents.  Basically did about a Master’s Thesis worth of writing in about a month…which brings back bad memories of my actual Master’s Thesis…
• In the process discovered a design concept that might enable us to do Sticky Booms™ with reaches in excess of 100-200m, and even started finding some potential terrestrial applications for some of the technologies that go into making Sticky Boom™ work.
• Did our first pitch at an actual Angel Investor meeting down in Houston on September 22nd, put on by the Space Angels Network and the Phillips & Company.  While there we also got to meet with several companies in the area, and got to visit Space Center Houston.  Really enjoyed the Skylab and Saturn V exhibits.
• And managed to get a few really good interviews that resulted in some pretty cool press for Altius this month (AvWeek, Tech Review, PopSci, and others).
• Discovered Pandora.com…
• Started weightlifting on a regular basis with a friend, who you might know from the Space Business Blog who recently moved out to the area.  I’m still definitely in the transition from wuss to wimp, but I’ve turned the corner (in a good way) on an exercise routine for the first time in my life.

We’ve still got a long way to go, but here were some of the highlights that have happened since after I made the plunge:

• We’ve found, signed, and fulfilled over $200k worth of contract engineering work
• I invented Sticky Boom™ which has the potential of changing the way rendezvous, docking, and space servicing are done (and which got us mentioned in New Scientist today).
• We took that idea, won a NASA contract to mature it, and also raised about $50k to accelerate its development
• We built two generations of prototypes, got invited by NASA to show one of them off in Washington DC at the US Capitol Visitors Center, and took the other one and flight demonstrated it on a Zero-Gravity aircraft.
• And just today we got invited to present our business plan as one of the finalists at the 2011 New Space Business Plan Competition later this month.

It’s been a pretty spectacular year, and we’ve gotten a lot accomplished in a short time, especially considering that I’m still learning the ropes. That said, I don’t at all miss the 13,000 miles worth of driving I did in the second half of last year, or spending six months crashing on friends couches bouncing back and forth between California, Colorado, Utah, and Oregon.

Hopefully I’ll soon be able to start getting more active in the space technology and policy blogging scene again here on Selenian Boondocks. Thanks for the patience and support.

I like the angle he’s taking. While this reactor is nominally a power-generator, he’s looking at the medical isotope and RTG plutonium production markets as additional niches that LFTRs can fill much better than the competitors. I think that’s pretty clever (in some ways like what we lucked into at Altius with Sticky Boom): focus first on markets that your competitors are at a distinct relative disadvantage, use that to get a toehold, and then jump back in to the real fray.

And I thought I had my work cut out for me starting an aerospace company! Good luck Kirk! Here’s to hoping that 20 years from now people look back on Boiling Water Reactors in the same way the look at using leaches for curing diseases in the Middle Ages.