Wednesday, March 26, 2008
My XCOR story on PopSci.com
Yep, it's a suborbital spaceship. Check out my story on the unveiling of XCOR's new Lynx spacecraft, along with embedded video, on popsci.com.
Friday, March 21, 2008
"Big announcement" coming from XCOR Aerospace
The folks at XCOR Aerospace tell me that the company is planning a press event on March 26 in Los Angeles. These guys are not prone to frivolous or gratuitous PR, so I'm most definitely intrigued.
Come to think of it, I don't think XCOR has ever held a press conference in the time I've been following them, since 2004. The engineers, technicians, and managers at XCOR prefer to keep their heads down, do their work, and let their deeds speak for themselves.
They've already built and flown a rocket powered airplane, a 7,500-pound-thrust methane rocket engine for NASA (through prime contractor ATK), novel piston fuel pumps designed to replace million-dollar turbo pumps in high-powered rocket engines at a tiny fraction of the cost, and built countless rocket engines to show again and again that liquid fueled rocket engines can be safe, reliable, and affordable enough to become part of our everyday lives.
But the company was founded to get people into space, and the founders have never lost sight of that prize, wrangling contracts from the Department of Defense, NASA, and private companies to build components of their planned suborbital spaceship as well as fund components of the ship for which they don't have customers.
A mysterious project has been underway on the XCOR shop floor behind a black curtain for some time now, and the company has been incredibly successful lately, with contracts and money rolling in faster than ever before. In fact, XCOR made Inc. magazine's list of 500 fastest growing companies in America last year.
Are we about to witness a new private spaceship unveiled?
I'm going to blog the XCOR press event for the Popular Science website at www.popsci.com. Look for a link from here on March 26.
Come to think of it, I don't think XCOR has ever held a press conference in the time I've been following them, since 2004. The engineers, technicians, and managers at XCOR prefer to keep their heads down, do their work, and let their deeds speak for themselves.
They've already built and flown a rocket powered airplane, a 7,500-pound-thrust methane rocket engine for NASA (through prime contractor ATK), novel piston fuel pumps designed to replace million-dollar turbo pumps in high-powered rocket engines at a tiny fraction of the cost, and built countless rocket engines to show again and again that liquid fueled rocket engines can be safe, reliable, and affordable enough to become part of our everyday lives.
But the company was founded to get people into space, and the founders have never lost sight of that prize, wrangling contracts from the Department of Defense, NASA, and private companies to build components of their planned suborbital spaceship as well as fund components of the ship for which they don't have customers.
A mysterious project has been underway on the XCOR shop floor behind a black curtain for some time now, and the company has been incredibly successful lately, with contracts and money rolling in faster than ever before. In fact, XCOR made Inc. magazine's list of 500 fastest growing companies in America last year.
Are we about to witness a new private spaceship unveiled?
I'm going to blog the XCOR press event for the Popular Science website at www.popsci.com. Look for a link from here on March 26.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Orion Propulsion wins space habitat contract
I've just had a note from Tim Pickens, CEO of Orion Propulsion, pointing me to the latest news posed on his company's website announcing a contract from Bigelow Aerospace. Orion will build thrusters for Bigelow's planned first commercial space station.Bigelow's booming along on an excellerated schedule to launch its Sundancer space station by 2010. Orion's focus is on "selling shovels to the miners," as Pickens puts it, i.e., providing the means for other companies to reach space quickly and affordably to find whatever profits they may find there--or not to profit at all; Orion is also building thrusters for NASA's next planned crew launcher, the Ares 1, through a contract with prime contractor Boeing.
To get the Bigelow contract, Orion built and tested a prototype thruster and sent it to Bigelow along with a written proposal. Given Robert Bigelow's impatience with paper designs created at the expense of actual working hardware, that seemed a prudent move on Orion's part, but it also reflects the way Orion prefers to do business too.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Next generation space journalists weigh in
I got a call this morning from a group of high school students led by my colleague Graeme Stemp-Morlock at the University of Waterloo's Waterloo Unlimited program.
The students interviewed me and wrote a pair of articles, one of which I've posted here. Check out the other piece on Graeme's blog at http://www.graemestempmorlock.wordpress.com/.
The Family Vacation of the Future
You’ve been to Disneyland, and you’ve visited France, but where to next? For some, the answer is space. Currently, there are several private companies around the globe that are working towards making space travel available to anyone with the money.
It’s not just NASA anymore.
Before you rule out the trip based on the current cost of a suborbital trip, $200,000, Michael Belfiore, author of “Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots is Boldly Privatizing Space,” predicts that the price will plunge to the more affordable price of $10,000 within a few decades.
During orbital holidays in space, passengers would inhabit space hotels, proposed by Robert Bigelow, former millionaire real estate agent turned space entrepreneur. Encompassing the common characteristics of resorts on earth, these hotels will provide all your necessities and more. The view from your room will be out of this world.
Passengers would complete minimal training and basic medical examinations before departing on their space voyage. In contrast to the years of training NASA astronauts undergo, suborbital space tourists only need two days of training. This raises questions regarding how to handle an emergency when there is limited staff aboard the spacecraft.
According to Belfiore, space travel in moderation would not be excessively stressful on the passengers’ anatomy. Trips lasting longer than a few weeks, however, would increase the risk of bone loss, heart troubles and weakened muscles. However, researchers, not families, would be looking at these extended voyages and associated hazards.
Plus, who has that kind of vacation time?
By Paula Makela, Cathy Chen, Alexandra Dozzi, and Colleen Gilhuly
The students interviewed me and wrote a pair of articles, one of which I've posted here. Check out the other piece on Graeme's blog at http://www.graemestempmorlock.wordpress.com/.
The Family Vacation of the Future
You’ve been to Disneyland, and you’ve visited France, but where to next? For some, the answer is space. Currently, there are several private companies around the globe that are working towards making space travel available to anyone with the money.
It’s not just NASA anymore.
Before you rule out the trip based on the current cost of a suborbital trip, $200,000, Michael Belfiore, author of “Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots is Boldly Privatizing Space,” predicts that the price will plunge to the more affordable price of $10,000 within a few decades.
During orbital holidays in space, passengers would inhabit space hotels, proposed by Robert Bigelow, former millionaire real estate agent turned space entrepreneur. Encompassing the common characteristics of resorts on earth, these hotels will provide all your necessities and more. The view from your room will be out of this world.
Passengers would complete minimal training and basic medical examinations before departing on their space voyage. In contrast to the years of training NASA astronauts undergo, suborbital space tourists only need two days of training. This raises questions regarding how to handle an emergency when there is limited staff aboard the spacecraft.
According to Belfiore, space travel in moderation would not be excessively stressful on the passengers’ anatomy. Trips lasting longer than a few weeks, however, would increase the risk of bone loss, heart troubles and weakened muscles. However, researchers, not families, would be looking at these extended voyages and associated hazards.
Plus, who has that kind of vacation time?
By Paula Makela, Cathy Chen, Alexandra Dozzi, and Colleen Gilhuly
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
On Woodstock TV
I'll be on Woodstock's own TV station tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time as a guest on Bill Pfleging's Tech Attack. Tune in live at www.woodstocktv.org, and call in to join the conversation at 845-679-7777.
This is as close to home as it gets for me. The studio is just down the road from my house, right next to the playground where I walked my daughter during yesterday's break in the cold weather, and it's practically in the ball field where the Dalai Lama spoke last summer.
Bill's a good friend of mine, Woodstock's resident computer tech guru, and a fellow writer. He and his wife Minda Zetlin recently published a highly entertaining book about technologists' and managers' failure to communicate called The Geek Gap.
This will be a fun show, very informal, and we'll have a full hour to engage in some lively dialogue about cheap access to space, why geeks and suits have trouble understanding each other, and whatever else our callers want to talk about.
This is as close to home as it gets for me. The studio is just down the road from my house, right next to the playground where I walked my daughter during yesterday's break in the cold weather, and it's practically in the ball field where the Dalai Lama spoke last summer.
Bill's a good friend of mine, Woodstock's resident computer tech guru, and a fellow writer. He and his wife Minda Zetlin recently published a highly entertaining book about technologists' and managers' failure to communicate called The Geek Gap.
This will be a fun show, very informal, and we'll have a full hour to engage in some lively dialogue about cheap access to space, why geeks and suits have trouble understanding each other, and whatever else our callers want to talk about.
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