Space & Technology Copywriter

Today I launched some upgrades on my website to reflect a new focus for my work: high-tech copywriting.

I've been engaged in marketing and public relations writing in one form or another since 1995, when I became a freelance technical writer for companies like Northwest Airlines and Target. I moved next into public relations writing, still with an emphasis on technology.

When SpaceShipOne left the planet in 2004 with the first commercial astronaut on board, I jumped at the opportunity to cover the story and others like it as a freelance journalist for media outlets like Reuters, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, New Scientist, Financial Times, and many others. Along the way, I've written two books on advanced technology development for HarperCollins.

At the same time, I kept my hand in PR writing through the partnership I run with my wife, fellow writer Wendy Kagan.

Now I'm combining the two threads of my work as a writer by offering copywriting services to organizations engaged in advanced technology development.

This is an exciting direction for me. It means I get to get to spend more time with some of the most exciting business ventures on (and off!) the planet. At the same time I won't always be tied to the dictates of magazine and news publishing.

Visit the new Copywriting Services page on my website, or read the free white paper I've just posted about Selling Breakthrough Technology to learn more.

License to Thrill

The article I wrote on what it takes to be a commercial spaceship pilot for the March issue of Air & Space is now available online.

The piece was a ball to write--I got to try out the centrifuge at the National Aerospace Training and Research Training, or NASTAR, Center, an experience I highly recommend--especially if you can get someone else to foot the bill!

You can read the whole text of my article at the Air & Space site, but unless you pick up the printed magazine, you'll miss out on one of the best features--gorgeous portraits of spaceship pilots Brian Binnie, Mike Melvill, Pete Siebold, Rick Searfoss, and a few of the new Virgin Galactic pilots by Chad Slattery. The one shot of Searfoss that's on the site doesn't do the spread justice.

Oh, and there are a couple of shots by yours truly in there too.

Now on Twitter

At the instigation of my friend Ben Zackheim, I've started a Twitter feed that will keep you up-to-date on my progress as I finish my DARPA book as well as other projects I'm working on.

See the widget that appears to the right of this post to for the latest.

In case you're not familiar with Twitter...it's a blog-like service for publishing snippets of information--no more than 140 characters at a time. Which makes it ideal for updates about ongoing projects. "Tweets" are easy to write, easy to read, and easy to publish.

Tony Tether Staying on as DARPA Chief

I learned this week from DARPA public relations officer Jan Walker that Tony Tether, the agency's director, will remain in charge when Obama takes office as President. "Dr. Tether will be here after Jan. 20, and there's no formal date on which he plans to leave," Walker told me in an email.

In my past conversations with Tether, he's made it clear that he didn't expect his directorship to survive the changing of the presidential administration, no matter what party the new president belonged to (Tether's a G. W. Bush appointee and a Republican).

A new president generally boots everyone from the old administration, but Obama's doing things his own way, also keeping Bush's Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, on the job, along with a lot of other top Pentagon officials.

Tether is DARPA's longest-serving director, in office since 2001. Most DARPA directors have stayed in only two or three years, and the agency's program managers typically serve terms of three to six years, a trend Tether cites as one of the agency's strengths. The people running the agency's programs get in to get their pet projects done, and then get kicked out before they have a chance to get entrenched in the bureaucracy and start worrying more about their jobs than the groundbreaking research and development they manage.

“You know,” Tether told me, “I used to always say that the greatest thing about DARPA is that no one's been there long enough to screw up up. Unfortunately, I've been here so long there are people who have said to me, 'Hey, you remember when you said that, Tether? Well, you know, aren't you getting close to that time?'”

It also might be a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Top 100 Space & Astronomy Blogs

Check out this nicely annotated list of space blogs (including this one) on the find-schools-online.com website.

To this list I would add at least three more important links:

Space Transport News
Clark S. Lindsey provides one-stop shopping for breaking commercial spaceflight news and commentary, updated several times a day.

Space Today
Futron analyst Jeff Foust pulls together links to space news stories each day from around the Web.

Personal Spaceflight
Another site by Foust, this one devoted to his insights on commercial manned spaceflight news.

What else are we missing?

Inside: America's Secret Weapon Lab

I was a consultant on a National Geographic Channel special on DARPA called America's Secret Weapon Lab that premiers tonight. Show time is at 9:00 p.m. If you miss it, it's also on this Saturday, December 6 at 11:00 a.m., and Thursday, December 11 at 2:00 p.m.

I got the production team in the door at DARPA, and me at the same time, by pitching myself to DARPA director Tony Tether as one-stop shopping for good publicity for the agency. Tether gave me acccess to interviews and programs at the agency, and he got not just a book about DARPA, but a TV show as well.

Until the production team, Terra Nova Television, established its own relationships at DARPA, I acted as go-between. I also advised on good projects to shoot, suggested directions the show should go in and the tone it should take, provided some research help, and advised on the script.

It's a good show, and I think it represents the agency well. The focus, naturally for a television production, is on DARPA projects that are photogenic, including hypsersonic aircraft, exoskeletons, a novel swim flipper called Power Swim, and a rocket powered grenade stopper called Iron Curtain, among others.

In addition to some great footage of all that, the show includes interviews with DARPA director Tony Tether and many of the agency's program managers.

One piece of Tether's interview that did not make it into the final cut, though I pushed for it, was a wonderful moment when Tether asked anyone who had an idea for a DARPA project to email him directly at tony.tether@darpa.mil. He promised he would make sure any ideas sent to him would be considered. Great stuff, and a perfect summation of what the agency is all about.

XCOR Suborbital Tickets on Sale Now

I've just telecommuted in to a press conference in Los Angeles at which principals from XCOR Aerospace and Rocketship Tours announced that tickets for XCOR's rocketship-in-development are on sale now. Danish investment banker Per Wimmer also ceremoniously signed his consent form and was presented a giant first ticket, making him officially Passenger Number One.

Veteran travel entreprenour Jules Klar, credited with popularizing European travel for Americans in the 1960s, was introduced as the head of Rocketship Tours. "I did an enormous amount of due diligeance," said Klar of his decision to select XCOR as his rocketship provider of choice. He cited XCOR's 3,500 successful rocket firings since 2000 and the company's unmarred safety record as factors in his decision.

For their $95,000 ticket price, says Klar, passengers will get a "complete and total experience," not just the 1/2-hour run to space and back in XCOR's planned Lynx vehicle. After some basic physical and mental screening, said Klar, spaceflight participants will enjoy a 5-night stay at the Sanctuary Camelback Mountain Resort in Arizona, where they will start training that will at some point include acrobatic airplane flights.

Former Space Shuttle commander and XCOR chief test pilot Rick Searfoss will fly the two-seat Lynx to suborbital space with one passenger at a time. The passenger will sit right beside Searfoss in the cockpit to get the best possible view. That view from space, said Searfoss at the conference, is "virtually a spiritual experience." He called the view the best part of the experience, in fact, easily beating out the experience of going weightless.

Lynx passengers won't get much of a sensation of weightlessness anyway, since they'll be strapped into their seats the whole time, in contrast to the planned Virgin Galactic experience, which will include floating about the cabin of an 8-place spaceship. At $200,000 a ticket, the Virgin experience also costs twice as much.

XCOR chief Jeff Greason gave an update on his company's progress in building the Lynx. With design work completed earlier this year, the engineers and technicians at XCOR have started building the ship in their shop in Mojave, California, with first prototype engine "very shortly" to be put on the test stand. The company aims to fly the first test flight in 2010, with Wimmer to get his ride in 2011, if all goes well.

Want to ride? You can make a deposit and get on the passenger list for $20,000. Pay the full $95,000 up front to get priority seating. Call 888-778-6877 or visit the Rocketship Tours website for more info.