Blue Origin posts test flight pics, videos

This just went up today, on the freshly-revamped site of spaceship startup Blue Origin.

Blue Origin is run and financed by Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, and it's been maintaining media silence since its inception.

These pictures and videos from a test flight conducted on November 13 in West Texas leave no doubt about the seriousness of the company's plans to send commercial astronauts into space in a vertical takeoff/vertical landing rocket ship.

From the looks of the videos, the test vehicle could have easily won last year's Lunar Lander Challenge, for which Armadillo Aerospace competed and failed to win.

A Blue Origin media rep confirmed for me by email that the new material was posted today, but that no one at the company is doing interviews. Poor guy. Hope he has other clients to attend to.

--update on 1/4/07--
Robin Snelson points out on Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log that the test vehicle's probable hydrogen peroxide fuel would make it ineligible for competition in the Lunar Lander Challenge.

Rocketeers complete

Today I handed in the first draft of Rocketeers, my forthcoming book on commercial spaceflight. All 117,007 words of it, including endnotes. That's 389 manuscript pages, for those of you who don't get paid by the word. Or, probably about 320 pages in the published book.

Getting the manuscript in to my editor at Smithsonian Books today puts me right on schedule for the planned July 31, 2007 publication date. Just in time to take a little breather for the holidays, too.

Once I get my editor's feedback, I'll have to get cracking on rewrites and fact checking. And gathering photos for the photo spread, which will be in full color, I'm happy to report. And putting together an index.

Still a lot of work to be done, but the biggest chunk of it is behind me--three years of research and a year of writing. Whew!

Here's an updated chapter list:

Foreword (by a celebrity)
Prologue: Full Circle (origins of the book)
Chapter 1: Space or Bust (the X Prize)
Chapter 2: Go! (X Prize competitors)
Chapter 3: The Homebuilt Spaceship (SpaceShipOne)
Chapter 4: SpaceShipOne, Government Zero (winning the X Prize)
Chapter 5: NASA Hitches a Ride (X Prize aftermath)
Chapter 6: The 200G Roller Coaster (first commercial spacelines)
Chapter 7: Orbit on a Shoestring (SpaceX)
Chapter 8: Budget Suites of Outer Space (Bigelow Aerospace)
Chapter 9: Spaceport! (spaceports)
Chapter 10: The Sky's No Limit (the future)
End notes
Index

t/Space still flying

Just got off the phone with David Gump, president of Transformational Space Corporation (t/Space), a finalist for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. Gump confirms that t/Space is still in operation despite losing out to SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler for NASA money to develop commercial spaceships for supplying the International Space Station.

It was t/Space that got the COTS ball rolling by suggesting to NASA that it pay t/Space for meeting milestones on the way toward developing a new spaceship that NASA would hire rather than owning and operating itself.

If t/Space didn't meet a milestone, NASA could walk away from the deal without losing any more money. If the company succeeded, NASA would end up with a lower-cost spaceship than one built under the traditional cost plus contracts that have resulted in tremendous cost overruns in the past. Which would leave NASA free to spend most of its efforts on its return-to-the-moon mission while continuing to meet its obligations for Space Station.

In exchange for a mere $6 million in NASA study money for coming up with ideas for paper spaceships, t/Space went balls-out and built actual, flying hardware instead to prove the viability its proposal. See my Popular Science article on t/Space for more details.

The same month (June, 2005) that t/Space successfully demonstrated a novel method for air launching spaceships, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin announced that he would seek proposals for building commercial spaceships using the exactly the money-for-milestones scheme proposed by t/Space. No coincidence, I think.

Gump says he and his company have a tougher road ahead of them without development money from NASA but that he intends to compete for contracts to service Space Station after the Space Shuttle retires in 2010. "There are customers in the national security sector who were disappointed that we weren't one of NASA's selections and are continuing to want to utilize us," Gump told me, "and there are commercial customers that we've met with and would use us as well." No deals have been cut yet for development money, though, so stay tuned for specifics.

Meanwhile, t/Space's booster provider, Air Launch LLC, is making steady progress toward building satellite launchers under Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Air Force contracts. Scaled up versions of these launchers will comprise t/Space's boosters, so t/Space isn't just stuck in a holding pattern waiting for money to come through--development is continuing.

Dr. Space

I'll be on Dr. David ("Dr. Space") Livingston's "The Space Show" to talk about my forthcoming commercial spaceflight book tomorrow night!

If you're in the Seattle area, you can tune in to KKNW at 1150 AM at 7 p.m. Pacific time, Tuesday November 14. Otherwise, hit the Web/Podcast at www.thespaceshow.com (where you'll get a bonus half hour).

If you don't know about The Space Show, you're in for a treat. Dr. Livingston routinely interviews most of the major players in the emerging commercial space industry and a whole lot of other folks who have had a major influence as well. Last night he had on Ed Mitchell, an Apollo moonwalker who has fascinating things to say about the spiritual benefits of space travel.

Another great thing about The Space Show is that in-depth interviews is all it does, so you get extended discussion with space entrepreneurs you can't get anywhere else. Short of calling these folks up yourself, you just can't get any closer.

Speaking of calling, you can ask me questions on the air during the show at (866) 687-7223. You can also send questions to be relayed to me on the air by Dr. Livingston to drspace@thespaceshow.com, or by instant chat via AOL IM,ICQ, or CompuServe to user name "spaceshowchat."

Book cover finalized

I think it's a clean, elegant design that tells the story. How do you show some exciting rocket hardware on a book jacket without favoring any one project or builder? That's how. The designers had a tough assignment and I think they pretty much aced it. Also, all that big print should show up well on Bigelow's space module. What do you think?

SpaceShipTwo interior mockup unveiled

I'm at the Javits Center in New York City for Wired magazine's NextFest 2006, where the Virgin Group's chief Richard Branson (center), Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn (left), and V.P. of astronaut relations Steve Attenborough this morning unveiled an interior mockup of Virgin's planned tourist spaceship, SpaceShipTwo.

The Virgin crew stressed that the interior was a concept only, but that it was very close to the design being built by Scaled Composites in Mojave California. The outside of the ship will be kept secret until its expected unveiling by Scaled late next year. A model of SpaceShipOne hung above the mockup to give a sense of scale.

SpaceShipTwo's passenger cabin will enclose 1,000 cubic feet, which felt spacious when I stepped inside it (shoes off first, please, entreated Virgin employees).

There's Branson, sans shoes, along with Alan Watts, the very first Virgin Atlantic frequent flier with enough miles (two million of them) for a trip to space.

After dropping from a jet-powered mother ship and firing its single rocket motor to reach space, the six passengers on board will be able to unbuckle their restraints to float free in the cabin.

Virgin initially planned a tether system to reel passengers back into their seats in time for the spaceship's reentry after four or five minutes of weightlessness. It's a simpler design without tethers, said Whitehorn. Preflight training will help passengers return to their seats, and even if they don't make it in time they will still be able to lie down on the floor for an equally comfortable reentry, said Whitehorn.

A bulkhead separating the passenger cabin from the two pilots in the cockpit will keep flying passengers safely away from control panels.


Though not part of the mockup, four big round analog dials will show passengers their speed, in multiples of the speed of sound (Mach), their g loads, altitude, and probably mission elapsed time, though Whitehorn wasn't completely sure about that last one when I asked him.

A display will show exterior camera views of the spaceship throughout the flight, while windows all around the fuselage will give passengers the best possible views as the ship slowly rolls at the top of its suborbital arc.

New book title, release date

The sales and marketing folks at Smithsonian Books had a good point: the original title for my forthcoming book on commercial spaceflight was going to be a mouthful for anyone trying to order it.

I like the sound of "The Entreprenauts," but people reading it don't know how to pronounce it, and people hearing it don't know how to spell it. So we decided together on "Rocketeers."

Some people might think that name applies exclusively to the 1991 Disney movie called The Rocketeer, but that movie was actually based on a Dark Horse comic of the same name by Dave Stevens. And neither work has a monopoly on the name. Merriam-Webster says:

Main Entry: rock·e·teer
Pronunciation: "rä-k&-'tir
Function: noun
1 : one who fires, pilots, or rides in a rocket
2 : a scientist who specializes in rocketry

Sure seems like a good fit to me.

Not that I mind the comic book reference; I've been reading comics since I could read, and if you want to know just how much of a geek I really am, consider that I've privately assigned the space entrepreneurs I've been covering to DC and Marvel comic book heroes. (Actually its pretty easy to pair these guys up. What millionaire space entrepreneur and DC superhero both drive awesome cars and have taken winged creatures as their symbol? Which rocketeer and Marvel hero are both gruff loners with massive sideburns? Ahem. Anyway....)

The good people at Smithsonian Books also wanted a more descriptive subtitle, so here's the full title we came up with:

Rocketeers: How a visionary band of business leaders, engineers and pilots is boldly privatizing space

We have a release date too: July 31, 2007.

The cover is in the final stages of design and I should get a look at it any day now.