Responder

Back from Huntsville and a visit with Orion Propulsion, led by Tim Pickens. Some highlights:

--Barbeque at the Pickens residence. The Pickens clan gathered for burgers and hot dogs (I brought the veggie burgers), Volkswagen-tinkering, rocket truck tours, and hybrid suitcase rocket demos.

--Orion's a profitable, $2-million company owned by its main engineers, with no investors. It's poised to expand significantly. If NASA selects Boeing to build the Ares 1 upper stage, Orion will build maneuvering and roll control thrusters for the system. NASA expects to choose between the Boeing team and one led by Alliant Techsystems next month.

--Last month, Orion was awarded a contract from the Army to build a rocket called Responder: 22 pounds to low Earth orbit that can be launched for under $1 million on a moment's notice from a portable pad. Pickens envisions hundreds of pop-up satellites transforming the satellite launch industry.

--Speaking of vision, Pickens moved me and filmmaker Mark Greene to tears as we taped an interview with him at Orion. He spoke of his and his 15-year-old daughter's dream to fly to space, and he told us how he started Orion by selling rocket parts on eBay. If I can do this, you can too, he said. Pickens is at once disarmingly down-home in his presentation and powerfully eloquent, a winning combination.

Mark and I hope to have video to post in the next couple of weeks.

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Correction on 7/16/07 at 2:14 PM ET

Tim Pickens phoned me just now to clarify that his contract for Responder is just for a study by way of Colsa Corporation, not direct from the Army, and not for actually building the system.