Aerospace & Astronautics

Key Republicans come out for the new NASA budget

Dale Amon (Belfast, Northern Ireland/Laramie, Wy) · Aerospace & Astronautics

I am very happy to see key Republicans Newt Gingrich and Robert Walker have publicly backed the new NASA budget.

Lori Garver spoke on new NASA budget

Dale Amon (Belfast, Northern Ireland/Laramie, Wy) · Aerospace & Astronautics

An old friend of mine who is now second in command at NASA gave an FAA AST Keynote speech on Friday which should warm the cockles of any free marketers heart. The new budget is a drastic directional change for NASA from the old Socialist Bureaucracy model to one using entrepreneurship and free market capitalism.

I am sure this is not enough for some of you, but it is a massive change towards the right direction which we should applaud and support.

All I can say is, “Go Lori!!!!”

PS: I will endeavour to write up my take on the new direction as soon as I can. As you can see from the previous article, I have been a bit occupied. If you take from the above that I am a tad… positive… about the new policy, you would be British in your level of understatement.

Guns’n’Rockets

Dale Amon (Belfast, Northern Ireland/Laramie, Wy) · Aerospace & Astronautics

Sometimes it takes awhile to get around to a story. I was in Huntsville, Alabama in November 2008 and talked my friend and fellow NSS board member Greg Allison into playing hookey from the meetings for part of an afternoon so I could take some of my own photos of the remains of the DCX rocket. When he told me about his classic Kentucky long rifle, I realized this was a photo op extraordinaire for…. REDNECKS in Spaaaace!!

Greg Allison, Kentucky Longrifle and DCX

Three things you do not do in the South. You don’t mess with a southerners dawg, his pickup truck or his spaceship.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Don’t even think it. He’ll shoot off your left at further than you can even see a squirrel.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Mojave Journey: Part 7

Dale Amon (Belfast, Northern Ireland/Laramie, Wy) · Aerospace & Astronautics

By the time the ‘evacuation’ bus delivered Rand Simberg and I to the parking lot of the Mariah Hotel, the wind was far worse. ‘They call the Hotel, Mariah’, Rand quipped on the bus. The wind, however, was more like raging beast. The car was just around back and we had to lean into the sandblast.

Rand thought there might be a party over at the XCOR hanger, but it was rather dark when we arrived. I was unconvinced anyone was still there and stayed in the car. Rand got out to knock on the office door and somehow managed to do so without being carried aloft like some Wizard of Oz character.

So. No joy on Plan A. Plan B perhaps? The spaceport bar at the Mariah? So, back we went. It turned out this was where the action was tonight. We did a quick turn of the downstairs and found Alan Boyle at work near the Christmas tree in the Mariah lobby. He worked so much today he must still have been sober.

Alan was transported from tent to hotel without missing a keystroke.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

While Rand went off to see who else was around, I took a few lobby photos and examined the rather interesting hotel trophy case.

Yep, this is the spaceport hotel…
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

When Rand did not turn up again after a few minutes I went looking and naturally found him with another journalist in the bar. Where else do you find journalists? (Except Alan of course.) They type, they drink and therefore they are.

I must admit my photos went rapidly down hill in quality. By the end of the night the results were about as blurred as what I was actually seeing. Remember, we had free Absolut and wine all day… this was just the after the party party!

It was around this time I heard the evacuation was not just precautionary: the tents had been demolished by the winds.

Len David and Rand Simberg at the Spaceport Bar.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Pretty much everyone was there, including Burt Rutan and Richard Branson.

Sir Richard hung out in the Spaceport Bar with a few hundred close friends.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Since Mojave is the first official commercial spaceport, I am guessing that makes the Mariah Hotel bar the very first official spaceport bar!

The first spaceport bar.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Mostly we stayed in our quiet corner: not too crowded there and the bar staff kept full bottles in our hands. Misuzu Onuki, designer of fashion for space travelers, joined us for awhile. It was impossible to get a candid shot of her as she is just too camera aware! This is not to mention that, by this time, it was surprising I could even find the shutter button…

Barb Sprungman, Len David and Misuzu Onuki.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Although the party showed little sign of slowing down, we had a long trip ahead of us. Rand pointed me down the hallway towards the front door, but I stopped in the front room to thank Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn for a marvelous time. I also noticed Sir Richard was still hanging out and seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly. He was in a small knot of folk talking in the back of the room.

Yep, this is just as I remember seeing it….
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

When we arrived back in LA, I posted my Samizdata teaser story and got into an online chat with one of my friends from the Mojave community. She asked if I felt like helping with the hunt for designer jackets tomorrow morning at the spaceport East fence…

This is the last of a series of 7 articles on the SpaceShipTwo roll out at the Mojave Spaceport. The previous article is here

Mojave Journey: Part 6

Dale Amon (Belfast, Northern Ireland/Laramie, Wy) · Aerospace & Astronautics

As I headed back for the very relative warmth of the main tent I was drawn to the life size replica of SpaceShipOne, the vehicle I watched blasting into space above Mojave in the first half of this decade. It now seemed so small, so primitive, a Mercury to SpaceShipTwo’s Apollo. I could not but help imagine what private space will be flying six years from now. Creative destruction has broken free of its chains. The game has changed.

SpaceShipOne: so tiny, so quaint, so… turn of the century.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The first familiar face I spotted upon my return to the main tent was the hard to miss Gary Barnhard of the National Space Society. He and others were chatting in the middle of the floor. Despite being half frozen, I gladly accepted chilled white wine from a lovely lass who was wandering about with a tray of them. I must admit I would have preferred some of the hot ‘Glue Wine’ concoction I used to imbibe when skiing Seven Springs in Pennsylvania, but… it was antifreeze, it was free… so who was I to complain?

It was not surprising to find Gary in close proximity to wine.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

With wine in hand I started my first photographic round of the party. When I crossed from the main tent to the front balloon tent and glanced out the gap I was taken again by the surreal reality: there is a friggin real space ship out there!

I just saw a spaceship… someone pinch me!
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

As an old hand in the performance arts one of the things which impressed me was the use of light. I have seen no one else mention it so let me be the first to give kudos to the lighting designer! → Continue reading: Mojave Journey: Part 6

XCOR has funding for Lynx II

Dale Amon (Belfast, Northern Ireland/Laramie, Wy) · Aerospace & Astronautics

Rand Simberg posted the news that XCOR has closed a deal with Yecheon Astro Space Center to provide Lynx II flights. The Lynx I they have been working on will now only be used as a test article to work out design issues before moving on to the fully suborbital Lynx II. Previously their plans were to fly passengers in the Lynx I at a price and altitude somewhat comparable to adventure flights in advanced Russian fighter planes. The income was to have been ploughed into the development of the Lynx II, the true suborbital spaceship. Thus there will be at least two companies flying passengers into space in the near term, Virgin Galactic and XCOR.

If you are reading my posts in expectation that I am a neutral observer of this industry rather than a deep insider passing on tidbits of info then you must be a new reader. Lessee… Rand Simberg and I are in business together in Wyoming Aerospace. I know a bunch of the Virgin Galactic High Command and work with them through the National Space Societies ‘Space Ambassadors’ program. As to XCOR… well, not counting that I have known some of them for up to 30 years… I wrote software under contract to them which was used by their aerodynamics guy for the initial rough planform design of the Lynx.

So yeah, I have dogs in this race. All of them. And I am damned proud of whatever tiny contribution I have made to the industry over my lifetime and ecstatic that I am actually around to see it all come to fruition.

Ad Astra and Merry Christmas to all of my aerospace family. May you reverse the adage about aerospace and fortunes and break the surly bonds of gravity and self-induced poverty. And while we are at it… may a now minuscule Wyoming aerospace company also make a bloody fortune for its owners!

Mojave journey: Part 5

Dale Amon (Belfast, Northern Ireland/Laramie, Wy) · Aerospace & Astronautics

After the speeches finished I headed up to the stage to take a photo or two. We were supposed to wait for the speakers and the press to go outside first so I intended to put my wait to good use. To my surprise, I was nearly run down by the group of very very important persons and had to squish back against the edge of the stage as Arnold hurried past inches away. Once they were all outside I joined the rest of the merely VIP filing out onto the tarmac at the side door .

It was cold outside, at least down into the twenties. That would not have been so bad except for the rather brisk wind coming down the runway into our faces.

There were a lot of media folk freezing their tuckus off in the Press Stand.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

There was music and a deep percussive bang as each of the huge images on the left of the runway flashed to on, starting from the direction in which we could hear the sound of distant engines. Then a white line became visible in the distance, the wing of WhiteKnightTwo. It lengthened as the singing jets grew louder… and then I could see it: the underslung SpaceShipTwo.

It came from out of the dark of a Western night… the first commercial Space Ship. Am I really here? Is it really here?
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Is it just love in the eyes of the beholder or is she just plain gorgeous?
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Ship and mothership came to a stop in front of us.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

A group of four persons went up to the ship for the Christening and the Governors simultaneously smashed bottles of champagne. I had expected the woman with Richard, his daughter, to do this as it seems more in line with centuries of British and American naval tradition.

Left to Right: Holly Branson; Sir Richard Branson on the mike; Governor Richardson; Governor Schwartznegger.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

To my great surprise, we were allowed to move forward right up to the dual vessel. I might say I was almost shocked that in this day of lawyer-induced destruction of our quality of life something as cool and wonderful as this would be allowed. Of course, now that it has been done I am sure they will realize people got to directly experience something amazing and you can not have things like that, now can you?

You would almost imagine this was still a free country: we were allowed to walk right up to her.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

A crowd formed around the nose of SpaceShipTwo.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

It even had sexy nose art like American warbirds of WWII.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

There were too many people at the starboard side of the nose so I started working my way counterclockwise around WhiteKnightTwo. My fingers were numb well before this and when I was taking these photos I could quite literally not feel my finger depressing the shutter button. I could only tell it had happened by watching for the still image to show on the preview screen.

It seems that not very many folk did what I did, so there are not a lot of other photos floating around showing the business end of SpaceShipTwo.

Portside of SS2 nose.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Like any old spacehand, I went around the other side to look at the most important part of any spaceship.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Two ships and four vertical stabilizers.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

As I had hoped, the crowd had mostly headed for the relative warmth of the tents and Absolut vodka by the time I got back to the nose.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

I framed one last shot of the huge ship as I left the tarmac.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

In part six our crowd of future space travelers party on until dire storm warnings force an emergency evacuation.

The previous section of this tale may be found here

The USless government attacks the private sector again

Dale Amon (Belfast, Northern Ireland/Laramie, Wy) · Aerospace & Astronautics

If you intentionally invented a mechanism to damage the future of the american Aerospace industry you could not do better than this.

The State is NOT your friend.

Mojave Journey: Part 4

Dale Amon (Belfast, Northern Ireland/Laramie, Wy) · Aerospace & Astronautics

The period of speeches and such is an unavoidable but necessary part of the game and the team present for this event was quite high powered. First in the batters box was Will Whitehorn, the President of Virgin Galactic. I first met Will when he joined in a small circle of New Space entrepreneurs late at night after a Gala at the Udvar-Hazy Center. The group of us were trading hanger tales of the space age and doing our best to empty the hospitality suite bathtub. All I can say is, how could you not like a beer drinking kilted-Scot who flies commercial jets and can hold his own in such circles?

Will Whitehorn, President of Virgin Galactic, did the introductions. Besides being a quite nice bloke to share a drink with, he has been known to show up in formal kilt.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

There were many speakers but I think Burt Rutan was the one most of us were ready to really cheer for. Burt is the one who created SpaceShipOne and now SpaceShipOne. Few would disagree that he is the most creative aircraft designer alive today. On top of that his views on many topics would fit right in here at Samizdata. He misses no opportunity to point out how he has created a manned space program totally in the private sector and done it for a small fraction of what the government programs cost.

Burt Rutan, Hero of the Revolution..
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The most important people on the stage this day was the team that actually designed and built the world’s first commercial spaceship. They are the ones who took up tools and laid out the design.

The ones who made it so.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Sir Richard was another member of the cast of on stage characters who helped make it all real. He is the one with money, guts and vision and I suspect shares ‘the dream’ with as much intensity as any of us. He is also a fairly approachable person in the right circumstances, but that is another story.

Richard Branson: the man who sold the suborbit .
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Oh, I almost forgot… there were a couple politicians there also, and I discovered that the California politicians are somewhat jealous that New Mexico is building Spaceport America near Las Cruces. It will be the initial home port for Virgin Galactic’s fleet of WhiteKnightTwo’s and SpaceShipTwo’s.

Arnold Schwartznegger, Governor of California.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

In the next episode our adventurers stand in freezing high winds to watch the new spaceship taxi out of the gloom and stop close by.

The previous episode is here.

Mojave Journey: Part 3

Dale Amon (Belfast, Northern Ireland/Laramie, Wy) · Aerospace & Astronautics

I had planned on visiting the Masten Aerospace hanger as well, but as we ran into Dave at XCOR I got business out of the way and did not really have an excuse to sandwich that much desired visit into our schedule. Time had slipped by far too rapidly and Rand was due at the Mariah Hotel to get his Press credentials.

Since I was also doing articles and had not yet had any guarantee of getting into the event as I was still just wait listed, I chanced showing up at the press desk, egged on by some Press friends. It did not work and in fact a woman named Jackie looked like she was about to turf me out of the building on my ear and thereafter seemed to glare at me every time she saw me.

My main chance at getting in was more official and as it turned out, it was successful. After Rand left on the press bus I tried the VIP desk. They were much more helpful and after showing a key email and talking with a few people in Virgin Galactic I was presented with one of the last of the stainless steel VIP badges and told to hurry on board the last bus.

The VIP registration desk.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The busses were the only way onto the field and even they were held up waiting for obeisance to red tape. All the buses, whether from LA or the hotel, were held in a queue and all were released to the taxiway at once.

The party site was at the end of the runway, hard up against the exhaust deflector and far from the hanger area. There were large signs which I correctly took to be part of the night time light show and a grouping of tents, one very large clear plastic covered structure and

The main tent.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

two smaller inflated balloon structures. It was all very 21st Century.

Inside of the tents was the sort of environment you would expect from a party held by Richard Branson for a few hundred friends. The first tent held the coat and bag check and was the point at which we were given our very nice Puma ‘VirginGalactic’ jackets and ski caps.

OCST Director George Nield deep in a conversation inside the first balloon tent.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The interiors of the two balloon tents were quite nice looking

Interior of second balloon tent.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The second balloon tent exits at the jet exhaust deflector.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Outside the second tent I found a sculptress still at work carving a space-suited figure out of a block of ice. As it turned out one of the sponsors was Absolut and carved ice played a big part in the night’s festivities. I do suspect at the planning stage they did not think it would be so cold that there would be no melting to worry about.

It was in no danger of melting.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

There was another bar inside the main tent and then the main auditorium area. People were collecting there as the speeches were due to start soon. There were little knots of conversation as people made contacts of opportunity or met with old friends.

Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

The global media were out in force. Note Peter Diamandis, founder of the X-Prize Foundation in the lower right. He is the man responsible for this explosion in commercial manned space flight.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

I walked around the tent to get a feel for the territory.

There was a full scale replica of SpaceShipOne, the craft whose first flight I live blogged from here some five years ago.

Tomorrow I will cover the speeches.

This is the third in a series of articles. The previous one is here

A few of my photos also appear in Rand Simberg’s Popular Mechanics article.

Mojave Journey: Part 2

Dale Amon (Belfast, Northern Ireland/Laramie, Wy) · Aerospace & Astronautics

After hanging out in the SSI office for awhile, Rand and I headed over to the XCOR hanger, the next after the Scaled Composites one shown here. I am sure caffeine was flowing like water inside as Scaled staff got everything ready to roll.

We were let into XCOR through the front reception and found yet another crowd of which we knew practically everyone. It is not a big industry so practically everyone knows everyone else. Rand and I were there for business as well as saying hello. You know, just making sure people remember us when they suddenly have money and need someone to help spend it!

XCOR was the host of the local get together. The crowd there traded thoughts on rocket engine design, control systems, who currently has money and who does not… all of the important things in life. Well, some of them at least. See how many people you can name from this crowd.

I had a long chat and traded stories with Aleta Jackson who besides being one of the leading lights of XCOR is also someone I have known for…. well perhaps I should not say how long, but the light had definitely been separated from the dark by then.

There are bits and bobs of rocket planes, rocket engines and test gear all about the hanger the XCOR folk have called home for much of this decade, but the real eye-catchers are these beauties:

Aleta saw me drooling and smitten at the cockpit door and demanded I sit in it. On the serious side, the controls of this baby are pretty much what you would find in any General Aviation aircraft, although I suspect the glass cockpit part of it has a few other twists. At Alamogordo two years ago I heard they are to have a Heads Up Display to superimpose an image of the racing ‘gates’ on the external view.

In any case, I got a brief ground stint in the left hand seat and held its throttle in my hand.

Part 1 of this series is here. The next article will show our intrepid rocket renegades making their tortuous way to the most historic party of the decade.

Mojave Journey: Part 1

Dale Amon (Belfast, Northern Ireland/Laramie, Wy) · Aerospace & Astronautics

Rand Simberg and I left his house in LA at a time he predicted would be optimal from a traffic standpoint, and as he used to commute to work at Rotary Rocket several times a week in the Nineties, he ought to know. We were in rain and overcast until one set of hills before Mojave when the Native American gods blessed the undertaking with a full rainbow bridge. Since photo ops of this sort are not easily scheduled with higher authorities, Rand pulled over.

I have not been up to Mojave for a few years and some things have changed. The gate guardian Phantom is now at the airport entry, and it has been joined by a rather rare 1960’s vintage Convair airliner. Most striking to me was Roton standing proud not far from the main building. The first time I saw it was inside the Rotary Rocket High Bay back in 1999 and at that time I was only allowed to record it in my memory.

Those who have been around the space scene for awhile will remember the Space Studies Institute. It was once a major player but seemed to fade out over the last 15 years and some thought it had died completely. Not so! Lee Valentine and Robin Snelson have moved it from Princeton to an office inside the terminal just behind Rand.

First stop was the Voyager restaurant, an amenity that is fairly recent. Lunch used to require a trip into town. The first thing I noticed coming in the door was that I knew a large fraction of the people there; the second thing I noticed was the private jet parked just outside with a G-number and a Virgin logo. I wonder who that might belong to?

After chatting awhile in the lounge we found that someone was over in the SSI office and we could connect to the net or work from there if we wished. As it turned out, we mostly just talked and looked over the large collection of commercial and space industrialization books lining the walls.

In the next installment I will cover the visit with our old friends and colleagues at XCOR.

You can find an intro article here.

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Key Republicans come out for the new NASA budget

Lori Garver spoke on new NASA budget

Guns’n’Rockets

Mojave Journey: Part 7

Mojave Journey: Part 6

XCOR has funding for Lynx II

Mojave journey: Part 5

The USless government attacks the private sector again

Mojave Journey: Part 4

Mojave Journey: Part 3

Mojave Journey: Part 2

Mojave Journey: Part 1

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