Space Access '10 Prize Notes: Ben Brockert and Dave Masten on Masten Space Systems

Ben Brockert and Dave Masten represented Masten Space Systems. As with the other Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge presentations, they injected a lot of humor into their talk. Ben started with what I call the "Triumph" picture where he raises his arms in triumph as the vehicle flies. He says "That's unnatural". He gives a timeline and history of the 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge events. He showed that they used a tripropellant: liquid oxygen, isopropanol, and the accidental secret magic ingredient: molten copper.

Ben talked about all of the help they got during the Lunar Lander Challenge when they were ready to give up. Some of the helpers were at the conference.

Dave talked about Masten plans. They want to fly small payloads. They are planning a 3rd generation engine. He showed some movies of flight testing from the previous year. This covered all of their flight history since the last Space Access.

They had some wise construction advise: "You can actually weld concrete to concrete with a rocket engine". That's a handy tip.

They showed a flight with high speed winds. The vehicle is steady in the winds, compensating for them.

Their flights are pre-programmed and autonomous. They use a text file in their own markup language to control it.

They showed post-LLC flights for altitude - 1047 feet. They went 60 mph up and down. Their flight log shows 51 Xombie and 12 Xoie flights. Their plans include putting an aeroshell around Xoie, reaching 100,000 feet (36 km), injector design improvements, and engine work. They have tentative plans for Xogdor flights to 328,000 feet (100+ km). They are trying to grow the company, and have an operations division.

Their plans include CRuSR, university research and education payloads. They are looking into an operations location, and are investigating various locations. They are also in the R&D business, selling engines, building engines for customers, and wireless networking.

Here's some more information on Masten Space Systems:

RESPONSE FROM MASTEN SPACE SYSTEMS, INC. TO NASA AMES RESEARCH CENTER ON COMMERCIAL REUSABLE SUBORBITAL SPACEFLIGHT SERVICES (PDF) - Masten Space Systems (on NASA CRuSR site; you can also see CRuSR information from Blue Origin, DreamSpace, Virgin Galactic, and XCOR here).

@wikkit: The Xoie flight test compilation video made for Space Access is up at http://YouTube.com/bbrockert .

http://twitpic.com/1ecsw5 - Lunch group, MSS, Unreasonable, and Armadillo. #ngllc #sa10

http://twitpic.com/1en601 - This is the E2: Brutus cross section we showed in our presentation.

Space Access '10 Prize Notes: Paul Breed on Unreasonable Rocket

Paul reviewed the lessons he learned during his quest to win the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. One lesson is "don't overreach". He talked about the advantages and disadvantages of contests. He got a lot of publicity during the Lunar Lander Challenge, but now that the competition is done he can set his own direction. During the competition, he built 4 VTVL vehicles, and flew 3 of them. He build and test fired 9 types of motors, built test stands, flew autonomous helicopters, and fired a variety of motors for customers.

At this point Paul showed a video of Unreasonable Rocket activity up to the previous Space Access conference. One incident involved 85% peroxide splashed on one of his cameras (the expensive one of course). He showed this from the camera view. It reminded me of HAL in 2001 being shut down.

Here's another lesson from the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge: even with just 2 people, configuration control is important.

While trying for the Lunar Lander Challenge level 1's 90 seconds, he got to 85 seconds.

Paul discussed the advantages of the FAR site, and then discussed the Silver Ball. He showed Blue and Silver Balls on their way to "Old Town Recycling". (Personally, I think they should go to SDAM).

Paul will still build rockets, but he will work smaller. 2010 is slow, since he's making up for Lunar Lander Challenge spending. He would like to sell flight services and complete vehicles. 2006-2008 were good for money, 2009 was bad. 2010 is better, and is filling in the 2009 hole. Paul wants to work on composite talks, small motors, and a vehicle that can return to base able to get air samples to 100k feet.

Here's a post about the conference and Paul's path forward from Unreasonable Rocket: Space Access 10

Space Access '10 Prize Notes: John Carmack on Armadillo Aerospace

John Carmack started his talk by showing a video on Armadillo's progress. They tested a LOX/methane engine at White Sands, and adapted a vehicle to use LOX/methane. Pixel has been used for tests. They also have been working on Rocket Racing League propulsion. John showed some Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Level 2 flight videos. There were also hover tests with forces applied to see how the vehicle reacts. They did tests with students in an effort called SPEAR. They are preparing for higher altitudes.

John presented a new video of a flight to 4000 feet. The engine veers to the side, and then the vehicle tumbles and crashes. John talked about this. They got to a 110 mph descent, but the 120 mph descent failed. They would have hit it eventually, at 5000 feet for example.

They have 2 more full time members, and Neil will soon be full time. The have an operating profit. They are "distracted by these customers" (this caused a laugh from the way he said it). John sold Id Software. He still hasn't made up his $4M investment, but now he will probably be pushing expenditures to reach goals.

The government can help. For example, Armadillo did an SBIR as well as the Lunar Lander Challenge. He considers Centennial Challenges the best money NASA has ever spent. He compared it to X33, X34, and so on. He's still a unhappy with the judging of the Lunar Lander Challenge.

John likes the new NASA direction, like the changes Dan Rasky talked about in an earlier presentation. For example, he likes technology demonstrations.

Armadillo handed over a system to the Rocket Racing League. They did their 50th flight the day of John's talk. You get much better when you launch again and again. You learn on the 35th flight.

John had a 2nd son 6 months ago, and he's spending lots of time at Id Software. He wants to be moving faster.

He expects to fly to 6000 feet at Caddo Mills, then 20,000 feet at Oklahoma. Then they go to Spaceport America. They may go with a drogue parachute for stability. They expect 100,000 feet with the current modifications. For 100km, they need to build the next generation. They are building a bigger quad for NASA.

"What you want is 3 times the control authority you think you need so you can laugh as you blast through the atmosphere".

NASA has Pixel now. John is excited at NASA's new suborbital program. The audience is clearly excited at Armadillo's progress.

Space Access '10 Prize Notes: Jordin Kare on LaserMotive

Jordin started by showing a Spaceward Foundation video on the Space Elevator Games. He noted that LaserMotive was formed to commercialize power beaming. He gave a chart of the power beaming competition from 2005 to 2009 showing the height, speed, prize money, power source, minimum energy per mass, and minimum power per mass.

In 2007 when they started, they had a 10kw laser system. He showed a picture of that system. They didn't have time in 2007. He then showed the 2009 lasers and optics. They were going to use automated tracking for 2009, but decided not to. Instead, they went with a manual joystick method because they were going to have to go 10 times as high, and a cable rather than a ribbon was being used. They didn't expect the cable to shift as much as a ribbon.

He showed a fun picture of them cooking hot dogs with the laser. He then showed $80,000 of photovoltaics and Otis the climber.

At the games the teams had to improvise stands to allow the climbers to be pulled up. He showed evidence of the "aging NASA infrastructure" - the NASA trailer alongside the teams' trailers. The NASA generator went down and they needed help from the teams. Then they ran out of a common product used often for personal hygiene, and again needed assistance. (Have they heard of the famous government TP regulations from the novel Snow Crash?) Jordin showed the Kansas City Space Pirates and USST, their competitors on the field. KCSP used a weighted tire for their improvised workaround.

Jordin talked about potential customers: UAVs, lunar rovers, sensors, laser launch, etc.

He ended with a separate discussion of the HX Laser Launch (PDF). The idea is to have small vehicles, where the hard part stays on the ground. These lasers on the ground can be divided into arrays of small units. This lets yo develop a nice system cheaply. You can build many small "beam modules", not 1 big laser. You can use a lot of 41kw laser diode arrays. These are improving technology. They can be useful in the propulsion range from 10-100km. You can have a 2-phase launch system. One array gives thrust for lift above the atmosphere, and the other continues from there.

Space Access '10 Prize Notes: Andrew Petro on Centennial Challenges

Shortly before Space Access '10, I took a couple walks in Phoenix's nearby South Mountain Park, and took a few pictures. The conference was not held outside in the desert mountains, in case you were wondering.

As is always the case when I present notes from a conference, consider this my best attempt rather than a perfect review of the presentation. If you have any doubts, contact the presenter. I'm fairly bad at hearing clearly and taking notes during a presentation. With that caveat, let's start the Space Access '10 prize notes with the NASA Centennial Challenges presentation by Andrew Petro.

Andrew discussed other programs within NASA IPP that he's involved with besides Centennial Challenges (e.g.: FAST). He noted that IPP is being transferred to NASA's new and bigger space technology program.

With Centennial Challenges, NASA only provides the prize money itself. Other organizations run the prize competitions. This allows NASA to get more prize "bang for the buck". Up to now Centennial Challenges has used $12M that was appropriated in 2005-2006. They recently got $4M more, and the current budget request includes $10M each year for Centennial Challenges.

Andrew went over the big prize year in 2009. In addition to the various competitions and wins, he noted that they announced the new Green Flight Challenge in July, and the regolith testbed at Ames was started. Eight teams have already registered for the Green Flight Challenge.

Ted Southern and Peter Homer, the winners from the Astronaut Glove Challenge in 2009, will go to JSC to demonstrate their glove technologies to engineers there.

The Tether Challenge will have incremental prizes this year.

Centennial Challenges plans to announce a new prize or prizes soon. He expects that within weeks the topic area(s) will be announced.

For future prizes, they are interested in a number of areas. Examples include energy storage, participatory science, minisats, low cost space access, and robotics. They will also seek to enhance participation impact with the new prizes in areas like education. They may have university level or earlier school level prizes. They want to ensure that the technology is relevant to national needs.

Andrew had a dialog with the audience on how the next space access prize should be, should there be one. He listed numerous space access categories to start off the discussion. There wasn't much time for this, though. Paul Breed of Unreasonable Rocket discussed the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge payload requirements. He would like to have had a mass fraction rather than an absolute mass. John Carmack from Armadillo Aerospace had a different perspective. One audience member asked if any thought had been given to doing a prize-brainstorming workshop.

Conferences, Talks, and other Gatherings

@NLSI: Two important dates: July 18th- 1st LunarGradCon, July 19th- NextGen Lunar Scientists & Engineers Workshop, both at Ames. More info coming.

Since I have more than the 140 twitter characters NLSI had to work with, I'll note that the 3rd annual NASA Lunar Science Forum is scheduled for July 20-22, also at Ames. There will be a student poster competition with cash prizes at the conference.

Here's the LunGradCon link.

NewSpace 2010 is scheduled for July 23-25 at NASA Ames. It sounds like a convenient 2-conferences-for-1-trip package for anyone interested in both the Moon and commercial space.

Space conference at UCF set for 2011 - Central Florida Times covers the Second Annual Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference.

Here's a recent Space Show interview featuring the Space Access '10 conference: Henry Vanderbilt - March 15, 2010

Also see: Space Access '10 Conference - latest update - RLV News

@tedprize: Follow @missionblue as they set out on the Mission Blue Voyage for Sylvia's TEDPrize wish, http://www.tedprize.org/mission-blue-voyage/ #FF

@Bob_Richards: Joining Naveen Jain & @PeterDiamandis for @ChurchillClub Commercial Space panel Apr21 in Palo Alto http://bit.ly/9HVELU

Weekend Roundup: Baen/NSS Story Contest, Spirit of Innovation Summit, Lindbergh Prize, Space Access '10 Update, Much More

As in past years, Jim Baen's Universe and the National Space Society are teaming up to offer the Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest for science fiction stories about near-future manned spaceflight. The grand prize winner will be published in the online magazine and honored at the 2010 International Space Development Conference in Chicago.

More Armadillo picts - RLV News

Google Lunar X PRIZE Roundup #11 - Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration

NASA Systems Engineering Student Competition - Space for All

Conrad Foundation - 2010 Spirit of Innovation Summit - Space for All

Erik Lindbergh to unveil Lindbergh Prize & education program - Space for All

More details have been filled in on the Space Access '10 conference site. Here are some of the presentations from current or former prize teams and sponsors (no doubt I'm overlooking some):

Armadillo Aerospace/John Carmack
Centennial Challenges/Andrew Petro, NASA HQ
Masten Space/Dave Masten
Lasermotive/Jordin Kare
SpeedUp/Bob Steinke
Unreasonable Rocket/Paul Breed

Engineering Design Challenges Brochure - Freebie - Teaching with Contests

Here's the brochure itself: Engineeeering Design CHALLENGES - Hands-on Activities for the Classroom (PDF) - NASA - Several NASA competitions - SLI, TARC, and the Great Moonbuggy Race - are featured in the brochure.

New Suborbital Spaceships Spark Scientific Frenzy - Space.com - Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge teams Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems are mentioned in this article.

Space available on lunar expeditions - Astrobotic

@paulsrobotics: Dean Kamen is speaking about changing society and the future at the #WPI FIRST Regional. http://twitpic.com/18e9cs #omgrobots

@InnoCentiveCEO: RT @TheWisdomCrowds: InnoCentive is moving to larger offices http://bit.ly/cMjEi4 And we need it!

@whitelabelspace: Lander Thermal Design and Analysis: The White Label Space engineering team has started the design and analysis of ... http://bit.ly/bjP72a

Panoramio and Hubble Photo Contests, Prize Winners Speak Out, Ames Software Award, More

Every now and then I like to include winning and runner-up images from the monthly Panoramio photo contests that strike me as having an "other-wordly" appearance or mood, but I haven't done that in a while. This one is from the December 2009 contest. All of the winners are geotagged, so if you follow that link you can see where they were taken using satellite imagery through Google Maps and Google Earth. The collection the photo above is from includes another geotagged photo, called Spectacular Tree, where a tree seems to be reaching out to grasp the Moon.

Here's a tweet from one Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenger about another one:

@mojaverocketguy: John Carmack says it better than I can (about the proposed NASA budget/direction): http://venturebeat.com/2010/02/25/obama-nasa/

NASA Ames wins a space prize for the NASA World Wind digital globe software used for Earth and other planets:

@NASA_Ames: [News] Ames Wins 2009 NASA Software of the Year Award http://bit.ly/9C7IZ9

Here are 3 separate and interesting Innocentive tweets:

@InnoCentiveCEO: Couple days left to exercise your creativity for NASA: $20K prize for Compact Aerobic and Resistive Exercise Device http://bit.ly/8F388H

Software meets biology. $30K competition for designing software to create plant-based molecular ontology. http://bit.ly/ahbOrx

"Cool" new InnoCentive competition: 50K for Flexible Light Weight High Temperature Fire Partition http://bit.ly/91lQsD

The American Google Lunar X PRIZE Teams - Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration

Check the NSS link on this one for the winning Hubble images:

@nss: So many wonderful Hubble images submitted..Its hard to choice but we have decided to award 5 lucky winners. #Hubble3D

To the Moon? I think not, Alice…. - True/Slant - Miles O'Brien -Part of his Congressional testimony mentions a well-known space prize:

And when it comes to human beings in space, there is insatiable interest in the effort to open space up to the rest of us. I will never forget the thrill I had covering SpaceShipOne as it captured the X-Prize in Mojave in October of 2004. The excitement in the air was palpable – for a flight that went about as high as Alan Shepard went on May of 1961.

But this time it was one of us.

Space Access'10 update - RLV News has the latest Space Access '10 update, with more presenters with prize connections. Lots of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge teams will be represented.

Apollo 13 - 40th Anniversary Essay Contest - Space for All

LaserMotive To Be Honored at NASA Ceremony - BusinessWire

Numerous Google Lunar X PRIZE Updates, More

@paulsrobotics Saturday night, perfect time to machine robot parts! http://twitpic.com/11tfkw

@glxp Fun visit with @Bob_Richards of @Odyssey_Moon this morning at the #xprize office: http://bit.ly/d7hN88

@PTScientists http://twitpic.com/11cpsr - yesterday we were in geek heaven. no pictures from the inside tho.

Harvard-Based Crowdsource Project Seeks New Diabetes Answers — & Questions - Wired

Moon Exploration is Not Dead - Space Travel - Exploration and Tourism

@ikluft: Space Access Conference Apr 8-10 in Phoenix, info update posted at http://space-access.org/ #newspace

@JUXTOPIA_JURBAN NSBE Space partners with JURBAN Team for the Goolge Lunar X PRIZE.

@LunaCI This week's Google Lunar X PRIZE Roundup is a juicy one! Ton of interesting news. http://is.gd/7OExO #GLXP

@synergymoon Team SYNERGY MOON will be at the San Diego Science Festival Expo Day, March 27th, 2010! http://bit.ly/bWkduK

@Odyssey_Moon Historic NASA funding announcement coincided with a Google Lunar X PRIZE Team Summit @NASAJPL http://bit.ly/cgAsIi #GLXP

Space Access '010 - Initial Conference Information

Initial 2010 Space Access '010 Conference Info, 12/03/09. - Space Access Society:

The conference will be held from Thursday, April 8 (afternoon) to Saturday April 10 (evening) in Phoenix. See the link for more details. In the past this has been a good conference for updates on the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, N-Prize, and Beam Power competition, among others. The focus is on low-cost suborbital and orbital access to space, with an emphasis on commercial space, entrepreneurs, and small dedicated groups. Government agencies that deal with space are also represented, but most frequently through their interactions with commercial space access efforts. See the link for more details.

Here's a summary of Space Access '09 (with links to summaries for many earlier years).