Commercial Space Dominates IAC2014 Day Two

Day 2 of the 2014 International Astronautical Congress (IAC2014) kicked off with a plenary session on commercial space followed by a technical session on the same topic.  Both played to packed houses, a change from the past where commercial space sessions were often among the most lightly attended.   Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) was particularly in the limelight, with technical papers and press events highlighting Dream Chaser’s versatility and a range of partnerships including a new “Global Project” to globalize Dream Chaser’s business base.

SNC is protesting its loss of NASA’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCAP) contracts and NASA and SNC officials are fervently avoiding answering any questions about CCtCAP.  (NASA officials would not even answer a generic question about whether the 2-6 operational flights in the contracts assume that International Space Station operations will be extended to 2024.)

However, SNC is also participating in the current Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCAP) phase.  Following SNC’s Global Project press conference, John Olson, SNC Vice President of Space Systems, said that the company is “marching forward” to meet its two remaining CCiCAP milestones and Dream Chaser’s first launch (without a crew) aboard an Atlas V remains on schedule for November 2016.   However, the company is awaiting “further dialogue and discourse” with NASA to see if the agency has additional guidance it wants to provide on CCiCAP.

Global Project is an “opportunity to change the world,” enthused SNC’s Cassie Lee by offering Dream Chaser as a “turnkey” system to countries around the world for crewed or uncrewed customized flights.   Dream Chaser is “launch vehicle agnostic” she stressed and while the company has been working with Atlas V for many years, it can be launched from other rockets and land in other places in the world.   She provided no details on cost – it is “not a price per seat or price per pound” she said – or what other launch vehicles are capable of launching it, but Olson explained later that it could be launched by Delta IV, Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy in the United States, or by SNC’s European or Japanese partners using Ariane V (ES or ME), possibly Ariane 6, or H-IIB.   Dream Chaser can also land in other countries, Lee said, and is easy to return to a launch site via flatbed truck or cargo aircraft since Dream Chaser is only 30 feet long and the wings and rudder are removable.

Later in the day SNC announced another new initiative with Stratolaunch that involves a “scaled version” of Dream Chaser integrated with a Stratolaunch air launch system.  More details will be announced here at IAC2014 tomorrow.

Meanwhile, although visa problems prevented China and Russia from participating in yesterday’s Heads of Agencies panels, there is some representation from both countries here.   China’s space agency has a substantial presence in the exhibit hall (by contrast, NASA does not have an exhibit there at all) and at least one Russian, Alexander Derechin, presented his paper on Russia’s space tourism activities. He noted that Sarah Brightman will begin training for her mission next year.  When asked if any wealthy Russians are on the list of future space tourists, he said he had approached four individuals, but there were no takers yet.

The IAC is a dizzying array of parallel sessions throughout each day on technical, policy and legal space issues.  Many papers with Russian and Chinese authors are listed in the program and it is not possible to be in every session to keep score of who actually came to Toronto, but it can be said that Russia and China were not completely excluded from the conference.

Among today’s other tidbits are the following:

• Frank Culbertson of Orbital Sciences Corporation talked about the ability of Orbital’s Cygnus spacecraft, now used for cargo flights to the ISS, to accommodate four people for 60 days when berthed to Lockheed Martin’s Orion spacecraft, and the possibility of Cygnus serving as a “destination” for Orion in cis-lunar space.  He also said, in response to a question, that the financial investment in Cygnus was two-thirds Orbital and one-third government.
• SNC and Lockheed Martin gave a joint presentation about how exploration and commercial crew are “natural partners” and how the two companies are teaming together.
• The session on Humans to Mars (the only other Standing Room Only event we encountered) included a paper from MIT on its simulation of a one-way Mars trip based on the Mars One concept that concluded “crew fatality” after 68 days due to suffocation from low levels of oxygen.
• SpaceX said that the 20 “moustronauts” delivered to ISS on SpaceX CRS-4 are alive and well.