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"  Every spring, for over two decades, the Space Access Society has been sponsoring an annual conference in Phoenix, Ariz., providing a venue for those trying to reduce the cost of getting into space to meet, discuss, and plan prospects for achieving that to-date-unattainable goal. It&amp;#039;s one of the most interesting space conferences of the year, and perhaps unique in its mix of mainstream industry professionals, representatives from the newer industry upstarts, amateur rocket builders, and interested lay people, in a casual atmosphere designed to promote interaction among all these communities. In the early years, it primarily featured view graphs of all the wonderful things that people could do if only given sufficient funding, either by the government, investors, or both. In more recent years, the presentations have transitioned from promises of what people might do with money, to demonstrations and videos of what they&amp;#039;ve actually been doing. At the most recent one, which wrapped up on Saturday, April 10, this encouraging trend was more in evidence than ever, with videos from Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space Systems, Unreasonable Rocket and XCOR, showing rocket-powered vehicles in flight. Ironically, the view graphs of &amp;quot;what we might do, if we had money&amp;quot; came from the big players with ostensibly deeper pockets\u2014Boeing and United Launch Alliance\u2014with presentations on their concepts for orbital propellant depots. The era is being ushered in by a radical (at least to many) change in space policy by the Obama administration. It is not, as many in the media, and even in Congress have mistakenly and even hysterically characterized it, an &amp;quot;abandonment&amp;quot; of human spaceflight, or a &amp;quot;surrender&amp;quot; to the Chinese or Russians (pick your paranoia). Indeed, that is a bizarre interpretation of a plan that includes the extension of the International Space Station to 2020, and likely beyond; the acceleration and encouragement, with billions of dollars, of near-term commercial human spaceflight; and the development of the myriad technologies required to get humans to the moon, the asteroids and ultimately to Mars and its moons. Rather, it is a recognition that, half a century after the beginning of the space efforts, it has become a technologically mature (in performance and reliability, if not in cost) endeavor, and that NASA should shift its focus from the mundane task of getting people a couple hundred miles up into low Earth orbit, to the much more challenging issues of how to get them beyond, letting private industry pick up the slack, as they&amp;#039;ve done for the delivery of multi-hundred-million-dollar satellites for a couple of decades now. A lot of the confusion about the policy was probably due to the fact that it wasn&amp;#039;t formally or flashily announced (as, for instance, George W. Bush&amp;#039;s Vision for Space Exploration was in January of 2004 at NASA headquarters), but as a simple release of the proposed new NASA budget at the beginning of February. The attendees and presenters at the conference clearly not only recognize this sea change in policy, but are vastly encouraged by it. It was typical in the past to hear much bashing of the space agency as a barrier to affordable space access at this meeting, but there was very little of it this year. In fact, several speakers from the agency were on the panel, all to great applause (unlike the reception that Steve Cook, former head of the recently cancelled Ares program, received a few years ago). But if they were encouraged, they were also sobered by the words of XCOR&amp;#039;s chief executive, Jeff Greason, who not only described his company&amp;#039;s encouraging progress, but what he did on his &amp;quot;summer vacation&amp;quot; last year as a member of the Augustine panel. He had two warnings for the commercial human spaceflight community.  First, he noted that the industrial base for space in general, and human spaceflight in particular, has eroded to a dangerous point, as a result of consolidation in the industry over the past two decades, and that the situation was even worse than he had feared before taking on his assignment. The ending of the shuttle program particularly has resulted in the disappearance of many lower-tier suppliers, and their skills, tools and knowledge are being scattered to the winds. But it&amp;#039;s a problem with the military space suppliers as well, he says. Second, Greason says that, as a member of the commercial spaceflight community, the future prospects are both &amp;quot;terrifying and wonderful.&amp;quot; While it&amp;#039;s not the end of human spaceflight, NASA is abandoning the field of getting humans to orbit, and handing the ball to the new players. Stephen Fleming, head of the Enterprise Innovation Institute at Georgia Tech warned, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t drop it.&amp;quot; Greason noted, &amp;quot;If we blow it this time, I don&amp;#039;t know that we&amp;#039;re going to get another chance, because I&amp;#039;m not sure there&amp;#039;s going to be a United States space industry for us to work for.&amp;quot; And technology aside, there are other hurdles ahead. Fleming and others on an investor&amp;#039;s panel warned that the new financial regulation bill, being sponsored by Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), if passed in its current form, would have the effect of wiping out most &amp;quot;angel&amp;quot; investors by unreasonably raising the financial criteria (in both income and net worth) to make them eligible to invest. Since such investors have traditionally been the source for much of the investment in this community to date, it would dry up funds not only for space startups, but for business startups in general. Finally, as noted in the wrap-up session, the policy change still has to survive Congress intact. Politics panel moderator and space journalist Jeff Foust quoted that ancient space-policy analyst, Niccol\u00F2 Machiavelli, as a warning: &amp;quot;\u2026One should bear in mind that there is nothing more difficult to execute, nor more dubious of success, nor more dangerous to administer than to introduce a new order to things; for he who introduces it has all those who profit from the old order as his enemies; and he has only lukewarm allies in all those who might profit from the new.&amp;quot; Fortunately, it looks like most of the enemies of the policy, at least in industry, are throwing in the towel and repositioning themselves for the new era, and as Jim Muncy, former congressional space staffer and policy analyst, noted, they&amp;#039;ve already thrown all the ammunition they have at it, and there is no sign of change in the administration&amp;#039;s policy, particularly with the announcement last Thursday of the roles of the NASA centers in executing it. Perhaps we&amp;#039;ll find out on Thursday, with the president&amp;#039;s Florida speech, if the second half-century of human spaceflight will be even more exciting than the first. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a5521/space-access-spaceflight-challenges/>