Author Archives: J Simmons

ISPCS Day 1

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Good evening.  I am in Las Cruces, NM at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight, and I wanted to summarize some of what I have heard at the various panels on the first day, and end with some amazing words of encouragement.

During the first two sessions of the day, covering issues related to success in sub-orbital and orbital commercial space flight several common themes came up.  First and foremost was the need to ensure a much higher degree of safety in space flight (one speaker went as far as to say we should be aiming for accident rates of 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000 flights).  Another theme that was interesting to hear was the importance of working with today’s technology to develop solutions we can fly today. Arianespace and XCor appeared to be particularly strong proponents of this approach.  The speaker from XCor had one more point that is of interest to Mach 30, namely that moving into manned orbital flight was too big a step for private enterprise and that the government is too focused on “hail mary” programs to make sustainable progress in routine access to space. (more…)

Reflections on our Mission

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The current version of our Mission Statement is “Promote the progression of humanity into a Space Faring Civilization by developing an open spaceflight infrastructure that promotes entry by private enterprise.”  I would like to take some time to reflect on what this means, particularly in light of our desire to see space access be “routine, reliable, and safe.”

It is often best to start with your goal in mind, so let us address what it means to be a “Space Faring Society”.  In truth, it means that we routinely visit space, in reliable and safe vehicles just as a Seafaring society routinely sails the seas in reliable and safe ships.  This connection between “routine, reliable, and safe” access to space and what it means to be a Space Faring Society explains our appreciation for describing our goals in terms of “routine, reliable, and safe.”  But, as I think about it, there are some things we have left out of the list.  First, access to space needs to be sustainable.  If we only have routine, reliable and safe access to space for 25 years at a time, punctuated by 5 year gaps, then we are still falling short of what it means to be a Space Faring Society.  In time, there must also come an economic incentive for going to space routinely, or we will not have a reason to continue to go to space as a society (no matter how badly some of us want to go). (more…)