Space federation lifts off
Posted: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 9:08 PM by Alan Boyle
There's a new federation in the space business - and although it's not a United Federation of Planets, the membership is as diverse as a "Star Trek" crew, with high-profile rivals in the commercial space race sitting down at the same table.
"These people are the ultimate competitors - but that's not why they get around the table," Stuart Witt, general manager of the Mojave Spaceport and the treasurer of the Personal Spaceflight Federation, told me today. "They get around the table to talk about, 'How are we going to handle our first accident? What are we going to do first? How are we going to underwrite these operations?' ... That's a big deal to me."
The Personal Spaceflight Federation has actually been around since early 2005, but it's just now settling on a slate of officers as well as a dues structure that allows it to hire staff members and step up its activities.
The membership roster reads like a who's who list for the entrepreneurial space frontier:
Bigelow Aerospace, the X Prize Foundation and Air Launch round out the roster.
"There are going to be areas where we have different agendas," admitted Virgin Galactic's Alex Tai, who was elected as the federation's chairman during a meeting in May, "but I think those hopefully will be few and far between."
In addition to Tai and Witt, the federation's officers include XCOR Aerospace's Jeff Greason as vice chairman, Rocketplane Kistler's George French as secretary and Michael Kelly as president. As of this May, John Gedmark was hired as the group's executive director.
The entrepreneurs behind the federation - including Scaled Composites' Burt Rutan, SpaceX's Elon Musk and Bigelow Aerospace's Robert Bigelow - aren't exactly shrinking violets. But so far, they're not letting their ambitions get in the way of their common goals.
"At the end of the day, every single person who sat down in that room made it clear that we're here to build an industry, and not just create an environment for one or two companies to succeed," Gedmark told me.
The federation already has passed along a set of recommendations for revisions in the Federal Aviation Administration's rules for commercial human spaceflight. Most of those recommendations would streamline and sharpen safety regulations so that everyone is clear on the rules of the suborbital road.
"A solid regulatory background, based in common sense, is something that we should all fight for," Tai told me.
It sounds as if the FAA is on board with the industry effort as well. "The federation has made it clear that safety is their first concern," Patricia Grace Smith, the FAA's associate administrator for commercial space transportation, said in a statement. "That is, and must always be, the vital link among all partners in the industry, because it is the key to public confidence."
Tai said safety regulations are just one of the agenda items for the federation. Another priority is to ease the burden of U.S. export regulations for spaceflight technology - which has been a sticking point for Virgin Galactic as well as Space Adventures and Bigelow Aerospace, all of which are involved in international ventures. Insurance arrangements, the legal framework for space tourism and the "interoperability" of spaceport facilities are among other priorities, Tai told me.
Both Tai and Witt said such issues require cooperation among competitors - just as they did in the early days of civil aviation.
"I would put it more akin to 1929, where you had fledgling airlines competing with each other, but they sat down and said, 'We need to set some standards,'" Witt said. "History is rather on our side at this point, because the industrial players that we have around the table all see the benefit of sitting down once or twice a year and talking about common interests with the regulators and with Congress."
Witt said such "coopetition" is exactly what he hoped would happen when SpaceShipOne's X Prize flights opened up the era of private-sector spaceflight two years ago.
"It doesn't have anything really to do with competition," he said. "That will take care of itself."
While they were on the phone today, Tai and Witt also provided updates on their own efforts in the personal spaceflight revolution:
- Tai said Scaled Composites was "making great progress" on the development of SpaceShipTwo, the prototype for Virgin Galactic's suborbital spaceship fleet. The prototype will undergo an "awful lot more testing" than SpaceShipOne did, and the design may be fine-tuned for the rocket planes that actually enter commercial service, he said.
- In the past, Virgin Galactic has said commercial service might start in the 2008-2009 time frame - and although Tai said the precise timetable was up to Scaled Composites, he thought the ships would be ready to go "within six months of that time period."
- The first pilots for the SpaceShipTwo flights have been named, including test pilot Dave MacKay and chief astronaut pilot Steve Johnson. These pilots - and future fliers - will be coming from the ranks of the Virgin Group's airlines. For the details, Tai pointed to a report from Flight International.
- Witt said a legislative bid for $11 million in loans for new facilities at the Mojave Spaceport was currently stuck in limbo in the California Legislature. However, he wasn't disheartened by the situation, because the debate raised the spaceport's visibility and may open the way to alternate funding sources. "I do believe we're going to see some relief," he told me. "It was a win, even though we didn’t get our money. We have access to avenues of money now that were not there before."
