"We would like to do more integrated system testing including another in-depth round of hardware in the loop mission simulations to see if we can uncover any corner case problems," the statement said. "So far, it looks good, but we want to triple check."

to complete between one and three orbits of Earth, or last roughly two to five hours.

his company's engines emit far less unburned carbon than previous rockets, like those used to launch the Apollo moon missions. "We burn the fuel with very high efficiency in the chamber," he says.

Entrepreneurial America, not government, will return humans to the moon as commercial astronauts almost simultaneously with any other nation, perhaps sooner than China or India. Private sector plans are under way to ferry lunar rovers, humanoid robots and private citizens to the moon in this decade.

These hybrid engines emit more black carbon than a kerosene and oxygen engine, [Martin Ross of Aerospace Corp] adds.

"The goal here is to support the commercial space industry so that it can develop normally," says Ross.

To make sure its customers will enjoy the experience, Virgin Galactic is running its clients through microgravity simulations and training and getting feedback on their experiences.

“We take the understanding of our customers as seriously as understanding our technology,” Tizard said. “Proving the market really goes a long way to paying our bills.”

Talking to George Whitesides briefly last night, he said that they’ve done full-thrust tests of the engine, but not yet full duration. I may have a piece on this next week.

According to its flight plan, WK2/SS2 scheduled to leave Mojave at 9:15 am MDT for Spaceport America, arrival at 11:26

WK2/SS2 on the ramp getting ready to go flying.

WK2/SS2 in the air. Headed east.

The seventh and final test period will involve extensive safety-of-flight and system robustness demonstrations for FAA Commercial Space Transportation operational approval. Comments by Rutan suggest the latter phases could cover 50-100 flights before certification. George Whitesides, Virgin Galactic chief executive officer, says, “now our challenge going forward will be to complete our experimental program, obtain our FAA license and safely bring the systpem into service at Spaceport America, New Mexico.”

the premier resource for space adventurers seeking an insider's perspective. Real Space experiences, reviews, videos, and photos from real people like you. The website consists of three primary features; Sharing Space Experiences [...] Contests [...] Information Resource

"Seeing mostly pure water ice grains in the plume means water ice was somehow delivered to the moon in the past, or chemical processes have been causing ice to accumulate in large quantities," said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "Also, the diversity and abundance of certain materials called volatiles in the plume, suggest a variety of sources, like comets and asteroids, and an active water cycle within the lunar shadows."

Volatiles are compounds that freeze and are trapped in the cold lunar craters and vaporize when warmed by the sun. The suite of LCROSS and LRO instruments determined as much as 20 percent of the material kicked up by the LCROSS impact was volatiles, including methane, ammonia, hydrogen gas, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.

The instruments also discovered relatively large amounts of light metals such as sodium, mercury and possibly even silver.
Scientists believe the water and mix of volatiles that LCROSS and LRO detected could be the remnants of a comet impact. According to scientists, these volatile chemical by-products are also evidence of a cycle through which water ice reacts with lunar soil grains.

NASA has selected Astrobotic Technology and Carnegie Mellon University to develop a prototype robot for mining water and methane ices at the Moon’s poles. These volatiles can refuel astronauts’ spacecraft for their return trip to Earth, halving the cost of human Moon expeditions.

A private space company offering room on inflatable space habitats for research has found a robust international market, with eager clients signing up from space agencies, government departments and research groups.
...
The deals, in the form of memorandums of understanding, involve Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, Australia and the United Kingdom.

will have new and exciting pricing opportunities that are very dramatic," Bigelow said."We want to open up the window and doors for a lot of participation for folks that need to spend less."

Not only is there a commercial market, but it's [...] one that's robust and global

Bigelow said what they have found is a hunger by clients to do activities in space far beyond just microgravity experimentation.

"That is what this new leasing guide is going to expose," Bigelow said. "It's encouraging to see the enthusiasm. They all have different reasons, different ways in which they see using our facilities — what I call 'dynamic assets' in the new leasing guide — to benefit them. It can change the face of a nation."

"We have much more confidence in regards to the crew transportation solution since there is, arguably, no system safer, more reliable and more cost-effective than leveraging the tried and true Atlas 5 with a capsule built by Boeing on top of it," he said. "It has a track record. It exists. That's a message that has resonated quite well with the international clients."

Friday's dedication ceremony also will feature a fly-over by Virgin Galactic's carrier plane and spaceship at Spaceport America, officials have said. WhiteKnightTwo passed over the Las Cruces International Airport in the summer of 2009, but Friday will mark the first visit of both vehicles to the spaceport.

Worden said NASA is also funding a new program to develop microwave thermal propulsion for getting to orbit. “The idea is if you can beam power to the spaceship, so you don’t have to carry all the fuel; and then you use that energy from a laser or microwave power to heat a propellant; it gets you a pretty big factor of improvement. I think that’s one way of getting off the world.”

The principal investigator of this program is Dr. Kevin L.G. Parkin, who invented the technology and described it in his PhD thesis. He is assisted by Creon Levit and David Murakami. Caltech grad student Dmitriy Tseliakhovich has also formed a company called Escape Dynamics LLC to commercialize the microwave thermal propulsion project. (Tseliakhovich’s team project at Singularity University this past summer grew out of Parkin’s work.)

“The microwave thermal thruster using beamed propulsion is an excellent idea,” said Dr. Narayanan M. Komerath, a professor at Georgia Tech College of Engineering and a NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts Fellow. “[Kevin Parker] picks the 140 GHz window, which apparently offers strong advantages in absorption by the materials that he uses in the propulsion system.”

Moon Express, Inc. (MoonEx) is a privately funded lunar transportation and data services company. We have the experienced people, partners and financial resources to blaze a trail to the Moon and establish new avenues for commercial space activities beyond Earth orbit.

Immediately after the event, William Pomerantz, Senior Director for Space Prizes at the X PRIZE Foundation, noted that “The presentations we’ve seen here on the Isle of Man have made one thing clear: there is a tremendous amount of activity in this competition. With teams ranging from student-led groups to open source organizations to established companies with billions of dollars in revenue, we’ve certainly got the right mix of innovators taking on this challenge. Winning this prize is obviously going to be extremely difficult—if it weren’t, it wouldn’t be worthy of an X PRIZE—but after this session, I’m very confident that we will indeed award this prize.”

More firing on the 4k alcohol engine, boy is that thing loud.

Representing Blue Origin today at the National Council of Space Grant Directors--lots of enthusiasm for next-gen suborbital here!

technical data resulting from industry efforts to develop vehicle capabilities and demonstrate end-to-end robotic lunar landing missions. The data from these contracts will inform the development of future human and robotic lander vehicles and exploration systems.

The ILDD Broad Agency Announcement resulted in multiple award firm-fixed price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts with a total value of up to $30.1 million over a period of up to five years. For each selected contractor, the minimum government purchase is $10,000, and the maximum government purchase is $10.01 million.
[...]
The ILDD contracts provide for issuance of delivery orders that will specify data associated with system testing and integration, launch, in-space maneuvers, braking burns, lunar landing and other enhanced capabilities. Knowledge acquired from this data will be applied to the development of lander systems necessary to execute human and robotic missions to the moon, near-Earth asteroids or other solar system destinations. They will contribute to NASA's efforts to enable affordable and sustainable space exploration.

We are on an amazing journey to race to the moon against other international teams to take a rover to the surface of the moon, and drive it around! We will send back video and images, and hopefully allow students and other folks to pan the camera! How cool is that?

We have been so busy! The phones have been ringing off the hook from companies, learning institutions, and individuals that want to know how they can join, sponsor, help, and get involved. I have really been amazed at the response. We were not prepared to respond to various requests. The formal mechanisms to process their inquiries were not in place yet. That, coupled with the annual Google X PRIZE Team Summit, has made for an interesting last few weeks.

In summary, here is where we are: We have a great team made up of small and large companies and institutions that have a proven history that supported the Apollo moon landing as well as recent space exploration. In addition, we are not a huge corporate giant; we are a mid-tier size team that represents innovation and lean thinking. We are a group of doers. We are not a thought experiment. We are not a social experiment or club, but we do know how to have fun and accomplish serious technical endeavors. We do have a combined corporate strength of over $1.2 billion of combined sales per year, which means we are established and have the resources to put into innovation and product development. In fact, just Dynetics alone has put over $8M of their profits into developing commercial satellites instead of giving that money to shareholders as is often done. That is what I like to see. We do our homework, we take calculated risks, we conquer, we reap the rewards.

SPACE PLANE FOUND: The US Air Force's X-37B space plane, which disappeared last week, has been found again. Satellite watcher Greg Roberts sighted the secret mini-shuttle flying over Cape Town, South Africa, on Oct 12th. An analysis of the sighting by satellite expert Ted Molczan suggests that the X-37B has maneuvered into an orbit 54 km lower than before.

[...] “We’re very strongly in favour of the new commercial space industry being given powerful support, and a budget does need to be allocated to new R&D; work within the agency – both of those are highly supportable objectives.

“However, to do so at the cost of pulling all your resources out of the programs that make the foundation of the political support for NASA as a whole was not a smart plan.

“If FY2011 had gone forward unchanged it would have been devastating, because Congress would have had no reason to keep NASA’s budget in place any longer – and without political backing, there would be no money for any programs at all, commercial and R&D; inclusive. That plan was, to me, nothing short of a recipe for political suicide for the agency.”

[...]
“The President has also indicated approval for this compromise, because it buys everyone a very healthy portion of what they wanted. Commercial and R&D; both get healthy funding. Congress gets to save jobs in a bad economy and produce a new capability to help NASA reach beyond Low Earth Orbit for the first time in nearly 40 years. This is a win-win situation.

“This is definitely a ‘win’, but not just for us: NASA wins by keeping it’s strong political support and sustaining its budgets while all other agencies are suffering cuts. The contractors win by keeping many of the existing contracts. The workforce wins by saving more than 60 percent of the jobs that were otherwise to be lost. Commercial New. Space wins by getting more than $3 billion allocated over the next 6 years. R&D; wins by getting its larger budgets.

While much has been reported about the Senate supposedly micro-managing the design of the Space Launch System, Section 302 (which covers SLS) is replete with caveats that give the NASA Administrator discretion on technical elements. This suggests to me that Congress may be amenable if NASA runs the numbers and stands its ground if they’re asked to do something that doesn’t make sense.

The concern is that Congress wants the Space Launch System to be at initial operating capability by the end of 2016. Under the existing funding profile, the Constellation Program’s Ares I rocket was not expected to be ready by that time and it was an arguably less capable booster than what Congress is asking for.

The only way NASA can accomplish this feat is if they have the technical and programmatic flexibility to develop a booster configuration that meets the schedule and budget constraints. If this turns out to just not be possible, NASA needs to be able to speak out without fear of political repurcussion.

When I asked him a question about the possibility of returning to the Moon, he broke my question down into parts and had much to say on the issue, essentially saying that our return to the Moon never was and will not be off the table and that planning already exists for a return to the lunar surface. Don't miss this important discussion and analysis.

Because of a recent landing gear issue with Eve that is still being resolved, the Scaled team elected to fly the mother ship with the gear down and locked throughout the entire flight. This limited the release height to 45,000 feet, the approximate ceiling of the aircraft in the gear down configuration at the weight flown on Sunday.

"I offer my congratulations to all those on our commercial manned sub-orbital spaceship program for yesterday’s milestone first flight of SpaceShipTwo.

Configuration/aerodynamic designer, Jim Tighe got it right the first time; our spaceship demonstrated impressive flying qualities right out of the box. Its flight test-measured stability and gliding performance exceeded the pre-flight predictions.

Systems that usually require post-first flight tweaking, like the unique Michael Fuchs-designed landing gear and the SS1-based flight-director/avionics system, developed by the Pete Kalogiannis-led team, performed to perfection. The flight control, electrical, pneumatic, ECS and launch systems were also flawless on the first flight, giving us confidence that we can move forward with the testing without major modifications. Scot Story’s team also deserves kudos for their work to develop a light, robust all-composite airframe structure.

Flown by both pilot Pete Siebold and co-pilot Mike Alsbury on the first flight, the test crew opened up two thirds of SS2’s required subsonic speed envelope, maneuvered it above 2-g, checked its dynamic and sideslip handling, exercised its flight-path control system and made a perfect landing; spot-on the runway target.

I congratulate Project Lead Matt Stinemetze, Mission Control Lead Brian Binnie and their team of talented engineers as well as Crew Chief Steve Losey and his team of fabricators who built and maintain the first commercial manned space system. There is not a better group of research and flight test talent in the world.

We at Scaled look forward to an aggressive flight test schedule. The fun started on 10/10/10 and will continue as we reach our goal of passing onto our customer a spaceship capable to provide the space experience to thousands of adventurers."

Burt Rutan

The new bill pares the $4.9 billion the White House originally wanted to spend on new space technology over five years, but still leaves $1.3 billion through Fiscal 2013. Some of that money will go for work on orbiting fuel depots and lightweight tankage for launchers, Garver said.

In a functioning Frontier oriented space program, the government's explorers are not only aware of their role as surveyors and harbingers of an expanding civilization, they operate from it as a core driver and manifest its implementation in all they plan and do - as It is One of the Core Reasons for What They Do.

In other words, the Lewis and Clarks of space at NASA and the other government space agencies of the world should know they are the leading edge of a human wave and do their work in a way that enhances and enables those who will follow. They don't begrudge the settlers and companies who come behind them, they don't compete with them, and they certainly don't fight or attack them or their motives. Quite the opposite, they are doing their job partially because it is in the interest of the people funding them to gain an understanding of what is out there beyond the edge.

If we grow the orbital industrial infrastructure needed here in the Near Frontier by nurturing large-scale commercial and industrial activities and combining them with new exploration missions out into the Far Frontier and intelligent investments at the government level in deep space transportation and resource utilization technologies that can be used to push out the edge of that frontier, the entire Solar System will be opened to humanity, including the Moon, Mars and all the spaces and places between and beyond.

There's a growing realization on the Space Coast that the future of the area's economy and the future of space exploration are going to rely heavily on commercial space companies.

That realization is forming into a political consensus across both parties in the region that Florida must offer the right incentives to lure companies to Florida. Why? Because the Sunshine State is competing against a growing number of states and countries looking to get in on the space game.

One factor driving the modifications, Quaglino says, is a possible reduction in the reboost capability of the ATV to enable NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services spacecraft to dock at a lower altitude, lowering the ATV’s fuel-storage requirement.

"What is in this bill is eleven-and-a-half billion dollars over the next six years, anticipated, even though it's a three-year authorization, for development and testing of a heavy lift rocket," he said. "Now if we can't develop a new rocket for eleven-and-a-half billion dollars, building on a lot of the technologies that were already developed in spending nine billion (on the Constellation program's Ares rockets), if we can't do it for that, then we ought to question whether or not we can build a rocket."

Sir Richard added: 'The next big step will be the rocket tests actually on the spacecraft itself.

'We've obviously have done thousands of rocket tests on the ground, the next big test is in the air. We'll be doing gentle rocket tests in the air, ultimately culminating into taking the spaceship into space.'

SPACE PLANE GOES MISSING: The US Air Force's X-37B space plane has gone missing. Amateur satellite watchers who routinely monitor the secret mini-shuttle failed to sight it at expected times on Oct. 7th and 9th. It's possible that the X-37B has landed. More likely, the space plane has maneuvered into a new orbit and will be recovered again in the nights ahead. Stay tuned for updates.

Using the station as the spaceport, or base-camp, from where the astronauts set off on their journey is part of the new philosophy being considered.

"We need the courage of starting a new era," Europe's director of human spaceflight, Simonetta Di Pippo, told BBC News.

"The idea is to ascend to the space station the various elements of the mission, and then try to assemble the spacecraft at the ISS, and go from the orbit of the space station to the Moon.

"What we are thinking about right now - but again we need more technical work to address this - [is] it should be a small spacecraft that goes around the Moon."

This vehicle would then likely return straight to Earth, rather than returning to the ISS.

is a game and a crowdsourcing experiment run by the Advanced Concepts Team of the European Space Agency aimed to improve the methods for designing interplanetary trajectories. We do not claim that computers are not able or are particularly bad at solving such problems. Rather, we think that 'watching' humans design complex interplanetary trajectories can be of help to improve the intelligence of computer algorithms.

This is a nice javascript webpage where a probe is shot from Earth to Jupiter with gravity assists at Venus (twice), Earth and Mars. You try to achieve the lowest propulsive delta vee. You decide when the spacecraft arrives at each encounter and the program basically calculates the rest. It’s quite a nifty little piece of Javascript, the future of web applications is like this.

Nuclear concepts are centered on two main fission-based methods: nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) and nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP). Both are suitable for unrestricted deep-space missions because of high thrust per unit mass of propellant consumed (specific impulse or ISP). For outer solar system exploration, where sunlight intensity is weaker, nuclear-based options are also capable of producing more power than SEP systems.

Nuclear electric propulsion takes heat from a reactor and converts it to electrical power, which then drives an ion or plasma thruster. In contrast, NTP uses reactor heat to drive propellant out of the engine in place of a chemical reaction. The electric option has higher ISP but produces tiny amounts of thrust, so must operate continuously for months or years; nuclear rockets have relatively lower ISP but much higher thrust.

Both nuclear electric and thermal concepts form part of NASA’s Enabling Technology Development and Demonstration (ETDD) study, which is identifying “game-changing” exploration technologies for eventual ground and flight-test experiments. The study has already identified high-power electric propulsion and fission-power systems as candidates for proposed initial demonstrations. In addition, nuclear thermal is identified as one of 10 “foundational technology domains” that should be developed to feed future demonstration projects.

The proposed mission, which is slated for Q4 2013 or Q1 2014, will deploy three ESPA payloads into a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit and two additional payloads in a Low Lunar Orbit. The mission is also open to smaller spacecraft looking for a low cost ride to either of these destinations.

Mission pricing for small payloads to GTO begins at $795,000 for a 3U CubeSat and up to $13,950,000 for a full ESPA spacecraft. Mission pricing for transport to Low Lunar Orbit begins at $995,000 for a 3U CubeSat and up to $24,500,000 for a full ESPA.

The emphasis of the Advanced Space Propulsion Workshop (ASPW) is on low Technology Readiness Level (TRL), e.g., TRL=1-3, relatively far-term space propulsion and power concepts and technologies that hold the promise of enabling ambitious robotic and human exploration missions of the 21st century.

micro-rocket systems focus on cm-size, liquid bipropellant motors in the 100-1000lbf thrust class to realize high T/W engines that can be manufactured in a low-cost, batch fabrication manner.

Bigelow said he’s spent more than $200 million of his money to date, and it will take another $300 million to push the program through the first space station. All of that money is private investment, and he added that in a few weeks, he will announce six countries that will be Bigelow’s first customers.

Robert Bigelow, whose aerospace company has launched two space vehicles into orbit, said today his company will need rockets for 24 flights a year beginning in 2017 to sustain two more space stations he plans to launch.

United Launch Alliance, which builds Atlas and Delta rockets, is capable of building 40 rockets a year at its plant here, said Dr. George Sowers, the company's vice president of business development and advanced programs.

"We'd love to be able to do that," Sowers said about the possibility of selling Bigelow 24 rockets annually.

The search for Dyson Spheres has been propelled not only by the hope of discovering intelligent alien life, but by humanity's ever-increasing need for energy. However, the Dyson Sphere is not a practical design, requiring too much matter to build and too much energy to stabilize. Here we discuss the various designs of a Dyson Sphere and propose the Solar Wind Power (SWP) Satellite, a simplistic, self-sustaining system that draws power from the solar wind and uses a laser to fire energy to collectors (on space stations, bases, etc.) positioned anywhere in the Solar System. While a small SWP Satellite can provide an estimated 2 MW of power, larger (or networks of) satellites could provide terawatts of power or more. The cost of the SWP Satellite would be relatively cheap – it primarily consists of shaped copper, with only a few complex systems onboard. Detection of such a satellite would be difficult using current technology, because at this time we can only detect solar wind deviations of up to 10−13 MS yr−1, while a 2 MW satellite would only divert 10−34 MS yr−1. Thus, only very large SWP Satellites could possibly be detected.

Deimos is an ideal base of operations from which to initiate human telepresence on the martian surface.

New additions to the agenda:

Saturday October 30, 5:00 – 6:30 at NASA Ames Conference Center, a new special event in conjunction with Synthetic Biology Workshop is Synthetic Genomics, a talk with Q & A by Dr. Craig Venter, J. Craig Venter Institute.

Saturday October 30 at the Sheraton Sunnyvale, 9:30, an after dinner networking reception sponsored by Space Frontier Foundation.

Information on registration, Saturday dinner tickets and hotel reservations.

Robert Zubrin presented a new concept on national radio tonight called the "Transorbital Railroad". It is not new technology. It is a new way of doing business. He would have the government buy 6 heavy lift expendable launchers a year capable of lofting a 100 metric tons per flight, and six medium lift launchers capable of lofting 20 metric tons. Basically these things would launch once a month. The price would be $50 a pound!

Zubrin says Space News will have an article on it by him this week.

VMS Eve back at hanger

The preliminary results of the event are indicative that the majority of the attendees consider SKYLON to be a viable concept. Responses to questions on the project provided a clear and honest overview of the programme. Dr Constantinos Stavrinidis, Head of Mechanical Engineering at ESA, gave the closing address and commended the competence of REL and its SKYLON concept.

The latest such effort, slated to be announced Tuesday, is a nearly $25-million agreement between start-up space-plane maker XCOR of Mojave, Ca., a group of Dutch investors and the government of Curacao.

The goal is to turn the Caribbean resort island's commercial airport into another Western hemisphere spaceport, and for the closely-held U.S. company to begin launching tourists from there to the outer limits of the atmosphere as early as 2014.

Space historian Robert Zimmerman will discuss NASA, space wars and climate research. In the latter half of the show, aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin will talk about our progress toward colonizing space.

The Isle of Man Government (www.spaceisle.com) and the X PRIZE Foundation (www.xprize.org) are pleased to announce the fourth Google Lunar X PRIZE Team Summit will be hosted on the Isle of Man on October 4-5, 2010 during the United Nations declared World Space Week. Senior executives from many of the twenty-two teams competing for the Google Lunar X PRIZE will come together to interact directly with representatives from Google and the X PRIZE Foundation, industry experts and Space Isle representatives from the Isle of Man. Each of these teams is striving to claim a share of the US $30 million prize purse money by becoming the first privately funded team to send a robot to the Moon that can travel 500 meters and transmit video, images and data back to the Earth.

That one's for us. The 4000lb engine test last week was for Nasa, and was methane (as they like).

Testing an aluminum 15-inch diameter tank to its bursting point, shot at 300fps. This one gives way at 460 PSI. The point of a test like this is to see if the test tank would meet our needs in terms of how much it weighs vs. how much pressure it can hold, and what margins we'd have to stay within to safely use it on an actual rocket.

Helen 2 successfully launched
October 03, 2010 - Constanta

ARCA has successfully launched the first Romanian space rocket and completed the first flight in the Google Lunar X Prize Competition. More details about this event after the press conference, which will take place, on October 4 at 11 o`clock.

As a continuation of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) initiatives begun in 2009 to stimulate efforts within the private sector to develop and demonstrate human spaceflight capabilities, NASA intends to extend efforts to foster activity leading to the development of commercial crew transportation systems. Through this activity, NASA may be able to spur economic growth as capabilities for new space markets are created and reduce the gap in U.S. human spaceflight capability.

NASA intends to solicit proposals from all interested U.S. industry participants to further advance commercial crew space transportation system concepts and mature the design and development of elements of the system such as launch vehicles and spacecraft. NASA plans to use its ”other transactions” authority within the National Aeronautics and Space Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2451 et seq, to invest in multiple, competitively awarded, funded agreements. The funding available for awards will depend on the fiscal year 2011 appropriations; however, an anticipated funding level is expected to be provided in the Announcement. The agreements are expected to result in significant maturation of commercial crew systems with consideration given to NASA’s draft human certification requirements and standards or industry equivalent to those requirements and standards. This activity is referred to as Commercial Crew Development Round 2, or CCDev 2.

An Announcement soliciting proposals for Space Act Agreements (SAAs) is currently planned to be released on or about October 25, 2010, with proposals due approximately 45 days later. The award of multiple SAAs is planned for March 2011 with terms of 12-14 months.

This report identifies the incumbent and new entrant companies of the suborbital payload market, their industry roles, and how the Christensen Disruption Theory characterizes their possible future interactions.The existing suborbital payload market consists of service providers giving access to either (a) time in a microgravity environment, or (b) access to various launch and/or space environments (e.g., time at altitude, radiation levels, launch conditions, etc.).

The suborbital market is currently served primarily by sounding rocket launch vehicles or substitute capabilities in the form of drop towers and parabolic-trajectory aircraft. Traditional customers for this market include universities and government organizations in the following areas of research: physical and biological processes in microgravity, observation and data collection of Earth and its atmosphere, and astronomical observation. The types of facilities and vehicles that characterize the suborbital cargo market and which are included in this report consist of drop towers, parabolic-trajectory aircraft, sounding rockets, and reusable launch vehicles.

The types of payloads that make use of these facilities and vehicles can be classified by volume/form factor and intended purpose. Two types of suborbital research vehicles that focus primarily on atmospheric science, the airborne and balloon-based research sectors, are not covered in this report. This report identifies the current suborbital payload market sectors using the classifications mentioned above. A listing of market competitors and customers are given. Using this information, possible new entrant strategies to the suborbital market are discussed using the terminology and constructs of Clayton Christensen's Disruption Theory.

Team Phoenicia and TechShop are proud to announce that on November 6th, 2010 at TechShop - Menlo Park at 1 PM will host the Nanosatellite Launcher Challenge Seminar.

The agenda is firming up, but organizations that will be presenting are NASA Centennial Challenge Program, the To Be Announced allied organization running the challenge, FAA, California Space Authority, New Mexico Spaceport Authority, Team Phoenicia and some of the SF Bay Area teams.

The draft rules for the Challenge are planned to be presented and feedback is expected.

The scope of this seminar is to be promotion of the challenge in the the SF Bay Area, how the different organizations including Team Phoenicia can help teams, and a working session

The seminar is open to the public.