Book update

As regular readers of this blog know, I'm writing a book for Smithsonian Books/Harper Collins on commercial spaceflight. It's called The Entreprenauts: Visionaries and Daredevils of the New Space Age, and it's due on shelves next summer. That means I have through this year to write it. Since we're more than halfway through the year, it's a good time to take stock and see how well I'm holding to schedule.

As it turns out, I need to step up the pace. Actually, I need to hit the afterburners. I'll make it, but I have to cut back on non-essential activities. Like, unfortunately, blogging.

Much as I hate to do it, I'll need to tune into current events in the commercial space arena quite a bit less, and focus mainly on each chapter of the book as I write it. Means I'll be more of a spectator and a cheerleader for companies and people I happen not to be writing about in the book at the moment, and less of a reporter.

I'm still holding out for one last big spectacular trip I might possibly take before I have to turn in the book, but from here out I'll be traveling a lot less and writing the book a lot more until that sucker's done.

The field is moving way too fast now to keep track of all of it for the book, and I have to face it, there's no way this book can be up-to-the-minute. Best I can do is give a good treatment of the launch of the new space age, show some of what's been happening up to a certain, largely arbitrary cut-off, and use that to extrapolate where I think it's all heading. The result, I believe, will be an enduring, and entertaining, record of a truly important historical movement.

Meanwhile, tune into this blog every other week or so for my occasional posts on what's happening with the book and for glimpses of the people and machines I'm writing about--not necessarily breaking news, but stuff I think you'll find interesting.

August PopSci out now

...at least in digital form. Hit www.popsci.com, then click the "Digital Edition" link on the left side of the page to subscribe. For 10 bucks a year; it's hard to go wrong.

My Rocketplane feature isn't the cover story, as I (mistakenly) reported earlier, but it does get mention on the cover. Comments welcome, especially from Rocketplane folks; I haven't heard from them yet.

I'm just back from Mojave, where I got a chance to meet the Masten Space Systems folks and sit in on a test of the 500-pound-thrust, lox/alcohol fueled engine that will power their Lunar Lander Challenge vehicle this October at the X Prize Cup. Dave Masten and his people are still setting up their shop and test area, and like all the other engineers and other new hires flooding into the area, searching for housing.

I also dropped in on XCOR to check on the progress of the X-Racer (still on track for a debut at the X Prize Cup). XCOR is working on two other major projects besides the X-Racer: the Xerus suborbital spaceship, and a methane powered rocket engine for NASA, suitable for use on the space agency's planned Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV).

Build a lot, test a lot

That's the philosophy of John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace in Dallas, Texas, where last night I was treated to a test firing of the group's newest ethanol-and-liquid-oxygen powered rocket engine.

The photo above is from a test a couple of months ago, from Carmack's blog, taken by team archivist Matt Ross. It gives you a good sense of the setup for static tests.

After they finish filling the lox tank at right, the team retreats into the building and lowers a pair of steel garage doors. Call them blast doors. Carmack sits at a folding table just inside, where he fires the engine with a video gamer's joystick and monitors it on a laptop computer.

The beast roaring outside for a few seconds made the trip worthwhile for me all on its own. The lower panel of the blast door just above the engine shook and rattled and on a TV monitor a gorgeous jet of bright blue flame shot through with shock diamonds stabbed the air.

Here's some video of a test from the Armadillo website.

Carmack and his crew are at the point now where they're milling new ignition plates and building other components almost as fast as they can burn them up in static fire tests.

They're hard at work prepping for the Lunar Lander Challenge set for this October in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Their 600 pound Quad Vehicle, pictured below in another grab from the Armadillo website, will balance on the flame of the 5,000 pound thrust engine I saw being tested.


Carmack's getting serious about turning Armadillo from a band of dedicated amateurs into a profit-making company, and he's already lining up some business deals that could mark a real turning point for the company, even apart from a win at the Lunar Lander Challenge.

And as his team gains proficiency at building engines and flying unmanned craft, his ambitions are soaring; 64 of those 5,000 pound thrust engines, he told me, could send a payload into orbit.

Off to L.A. today for a visit to Mojave Spaceport tomorrow. Stay tuned.

SpaceShipOne, model airplane

Jeff Foust has some excellent commentary on yesterday's second anniversary of SpaceShipOne's first commercial spaceflight.

Meanwhile, I've been learning about the world's first homebuilt spaceship's roots in model airplanes. Burt Rutan, the ship's designer, has spoken of finding his best workers for SpaceShipTwo from among the ranks of model airplane builders rather from the traditional aerospace industry, and no wonder.

SpaceShipOne can trace a direct line of ancestry from the model airplanes Rutan built as a grade-schooler in the 1950s. In fact the very name of Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, comes from the concept of building scale models of bigger airplanes out of composites made of fiberglass and other high-strength cloth and glue--materials dedicated amateurs used to build Rutan's first airplane designs in their garages.

No, as Jeff sadly points out in his commentary, you still can't fly an X Prize class ship into space. But you can fly its tiny cousins, and a hell of a lot more cheaply.

Check out Dan Kreigh's WildRC.com for some eye-popping videos of these little machines whirling around in the Scaled hangar in Mojave California, and then if you're inspired, pick one up for just a couple hundred bucks.

Kreigh is a structural analyst at Scaled. Along with other work on SpaceShipOne, he designed and applied the spray-of-stars pattern on the spaceship's nose. And he builds and sells radio controlled model airplanes of the same carbon fiber construction as the spaceship itself. Kreigh reports, however, that the one-of-a-kind model of SpaceShipOne pictured above is not for sale.

Bigelow on COTS

Receiving money from NASA's new Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program will disqualify a company from winning Robert Bigelow's America's Space Prize, Bigelow confirmed for me yesterday.

Under COTS, NASA has allocated $500 million to be spent over five years to help entrepreneurial space companies develop spaceships that can send crew and/or cargo to the International Space Station. The space agency is expected to select companies to receive the first installment of this money by summer's end.

Robert Bigelow also has a vested interest in helping private enterprise reach orbit; he expects to launch the first commercial space station, now under development in North Las Vegas, by 2012.

But he doesn't have a way to get people and supplies there, which is why he launched his $50 million America's Space Prize in 2004 for the first private spaceship capable of docking with an orbital outpost.

America's Space Prize is not compatible with COTS, however. "One of the conditions of that was that federal money would not be allowed into that program," Bigelow told me of his prize. And that includes COTS money. "I still think that rule helps to level the playing field."

Bigelow to launch space fans to orbit, this year

"Your picture here!" That's the word from Robert Bigelow, who's just filled me in on the launch of his program to involve the public in his commercial space station program.

On June 16, he'll use a Russian Dnepr rocket to launch a 1/3-scale Genesis model of his planned commercial orbital space station. That much has been public for a while. What I didn't learn until just now is what will be on that module.

Freefloating inside will be 1,000 photocards and small personal objects contributed by Bigelow employees. If all goes well, those items will be continuously blown throughout the pressurized module in a kind of space collage. Six onboard cameras will stream video to Bigelow's new website, which will launch tomorrow or Friday. Seven external cameras will provide views of the Earth from space and the outside of the module.

If that doesn't get even the most disinterested member of the public at least intrigued about the possibilities of space travel, I don't know what will.

But it gets better. Subject to a successful launch of the first module, Bigelow will launch a second Genesis module in September, and that one will contain photos and other small items contributed by anyone who cares to pony up $295.

Think of it. For the next five years, while Genesis hurtles through its 550-kilometer-high orbit, you could fire up your Web browser, click the appropriate link, and watch the ultimate psychedelic space show--hundreds of photos, golf balls, belt buckles, rings, medals, you name it, twirling and spinning in zero gravity, and every once in a while, your smiling mug, or your daughter's, or your husband's, will peek out of the milieu for all the world to see. Hell, make it your screensaver. Or project it on a wall for a party. All for the price of an iPod, which if you bought now would just be an expensive paperweight in five years anyhow.

Phase one of the new website, outlining this program, launches by week's end. Keep an eye on it for details on how to make reservations. Also look for photos of Bigelow's just-completed mission control center in Las Vegas.

"We've been busy," said Bigelow with his characteristic flair for dramatic understatement when I expressed my astonishment at his recent activity. And how.

Bigelow wants me to give him feedback on his new Web site after it launches. Let me know what you think of it, either here or via the email address on my website, and I'll pass it on.

Diamandis wins $500,000 Heinlein Prize

Just got a press release from the X PRIZE Foundation's Ian Murphy about the inaugural Heinlein Prize--$500,000 to individuals helping to commercialize space. X PRIZE founder Peter Diamandis will get the award at a dinner in Houston on July 7.

The Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust administers the award, which honors the memory of science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein. Heinlein's work inspired legions of people to go to work in the field of space travel, including yours truly.

In the press release, Diamandis cites Heinlein's story "The Man Who Sold the Moon" as one of his prime influences. "In fact," he says, "I flew it as personal cargo aboard SpaceShipOne during the winning Ansari X PRIZE flight on October 4th, 2004."

Heinlein's young adult novel Rocket Ship Galileo was the first novel I ever read (because it had pictures), and it had a tremendous impact on me. I was then six years old, and from then on I wanted to write about space travel. I've sometimes wondered what would have happened if that first novel had been a romance....

Heinlein's work is characterized by ordinary people cobbling together ordinary resources to do extra ordinary things--like go to the moon. In Rocket Ship Galileo, three high school students and a nuclear physicist build a moon ship just because they can. It must have seemed possible in 1947, when that book came out. Then in the 1960s, NASA convinced everyone that only massive government programs could send people into space, and stories about people building spaceships in their back yards went by the wayside.

Now, finally, in the 21st century, science fact has caught up with the science fiction of the 1940s and 1950s. Private citizens are now building space ships for real, in large part because the winning of the Ansari X PRIZE proved it was possible. I can think of no person more deserving of an award called the Heinlein Prize than Diamandis.