Interview with Dr. Steven Tsitas - Cubesat Earth Imaging Constellations

This week I interviewed Dr Steven Tsitas of the Satellite Navigation and Positioning Lab and lead author of the paper, “6U CubeSat design for Earth observation with 6.5m GSD, five spectral bands and 14Mbps downlink.”  This paper has been peer reviewed, and appears in the November 2010 issue of The Aeronautical Journal which is published by the Royal Aeronautical Society. I analyzed the business potential of such a cubesat constellation in a previous post here.

Dr. Steven Tsitas received his BSc(Hons) in Physics from the University of Melbourne, MS in Physics (with Distinction) from California State University Fresno and MS and PhD in Planetary Science with a minor in Astronomy from the California Institute of Technology. His two part PhD thesis title is The effect of volcanic aerosols on ultraviolet radiation in Antarctica and A novel method for enhancing subsurface radar imaging using radar interferometry. After completing his PhD Steven worked as a Management Consultant at Bain & Co. in San Francisco. He recently completed a MSc in Astronautics and Space Engineering at Cranfield University, receiving the Vega Space Systems Engineering Prize for Excellent Performance in Dynamics Related Subjects 2008/2009. His most recent papers detail the system design and commercial applications for an 8 kg, 6U CubeSat that can perform Earth observation missions equivalent to those of current 50-150kg microsatellites, with a corresponding reduction in cost.

And now my conversation with Dr. Tsitas:

Q: Your paper posits the potential of a constellation of cubesat earth imaging satellites capable of performing their job on par with current industry leaders like the European company Rapideye. To fit so much capability into a 6U Cubesat is incredibility daunting. What innovations are you proposing to accomplish this?

Steven Tsitas: I employ several innovations to make such a solution possible:

• Time Delay Integration (TDI) to allow a small imager to collect as much light as a larger aperture; 
• Determining attitude during imaging by rate integration using a Fiber Optic Gyroscope to meet the requirements for pointing stability following from the use of TDI; and 
• DVB-S2 encoding and a three speed transmitter to allow fast downlink from such a small spacecraft.

One of the things that I like about space engineering is you can twist and turn around obstacles to find solutions - it is quite a creative process. However the design process isn't arbitrary, the culture of space engineering is to design to requirements, and if done well every component in the spacecraft can be traced to a top level requirement through a process of step by step logical decisions. Just as a limited palette doesn't limit an artist, this logical discipline doesn't have to limit creativity in the design of spacecraft.

Q. RapidEye produces images in five spectral bands including infrared – does your proposed 6U system do the same?

Steven Tsitas: Yes, it images in the same 5 spectral bands as RapidEye.

Q. RapidEye produces a 6.5-meter resolution image – what resolution image does your proposed 6U system produce?

Steven Tsitas: 6.5 m Ground Sample Distance (GSD), the same as RapidEye.

Q. RapidEye admits their 6.5-meter resolution is not adequate for some commodity customers like those tracking crops like grapes, strawberries, and peanuts. What is the highest resolution (better than 5-meter?) that you believe possible today in a 6U?

Steven Tsitas: Good images aren't just about resolution, but also having good contrast at medium spatial frequencies. This is quantified by the Modulation Transfer Function. I've seen a high resolution image with poor contrast at medium spatial frequencies, and it looked much worse than an image of the same scene with lower resolution but higher MTF at mid spatial frequencies. I could improve the GSD of the 6U CubeSat design at the expense of contrast, but this wouldn't necessarily give better or more useful images. Fundamentally resolution is limited by aperture size, and the 6U CubeSat design has an 89 mm aperture imager. Given the 6U CubeSat is just 100 mm thick this is obviously close to the limit. Short of some kind of foldable optics or deployable membrane mirror technology I don't think you are going to do much better than that with 6U.

Q. RapidEye’s satellites are designed to last seven years – your research indicates a 12 year satellite life per 6U. How would the orbital life of each satellite change by offering the RapidEye service of a photo anywhere on earth within 24 hours?

Steven Tsitas: To be clear, the paper indicates that the orbital lifetime could be 12 years, and in fact could exceed 25 years requiring a deorbit device, for which provision is made in the design. The orbital lifetime is not necessarily the same as the operational lifetime. Regarding the effect of imaging operations on operational lifetime, the 6U CubeSat design does not include propulsion or any consumables, so there is no direct link between a particular imaging campaign and the operational lifetime of the spacecraft.

Q. In a recent post, I speculate on the economics of a such a 6U cubesat constellation. What further are you planning in this area?

Steven Tsitas: I discuss the commercial implications of the 6U CubeSat design in an upcoming paper. Standby.  Perhaps we can continue this conversation after the release of the new paper.


Thank you Steven. Yes, let’s talk again with the release of your paper on the economics of such a cubesat system.

Interview: Alan Wasser & Space Property Rights Textbook

The National Space Society posted last week about a new Law School text book that includes a chapter on space property rights written by Alan Wasser and the Space Settlement Institute.

I first interviewed Alan Wasser a year ago and later built a business case on a lunar facility operating under Alan’s proposed land claims legislation.

With the release of the new textbook, I wanted to catch up with Alan so he could give you an update:



Q. For those that don’t know, what is "Land Claims Recognition" and how does it relate to space property rights?

Alan Wasser: There is one very high value, zero volume product that already exists in space, just lying around waiting for us to exploit it: Real Estate.

Land Claims Recognition would allow private Lunar settlements to claim some Lunar real estate and sell portions to people back on Earth, serving as a revenue source to fund private enterprise space settlement. No need to set up a factory in space, No need to mine it. No need to haul it back. Just land, set up a permanent settlement, claim it, and start selling the surrounding land to investors and speculators back on Earth to pay back the cost of developing affordable transport.

The US government has now officially decided not to go back to the moon, philanthropists cannot afford it, and there is nothing else on the moon or Mars that could be profitable enough to justify the cost of private enterprise developing safe, reliable and affordable human transport.

Therefore, Land Claims Recognition is now clearly the only way we are ever going to see a significant return to the moon, but this time to stay.


Q. You provide a legal defense of these land claims. Talk to me about your efforts.

Alan Wasser: Land Claims Recognition would allow individuals or companies to appropriate and sell lunar land, - but ONLY after they have already established a true permanent human settlement on the land they are claiming.

It is the settlement, itself, (and only the settlement) that can make a claim under the Outer Space Treaty. No Earth government can claim the land or give it to them. The only thing governments can do (or not do) is pass laws about how their courts should treat sales of Lunar (or Martian) property to their citizens - "recognizing" the legitimacy of the settlement's claim and therefore, the validity of the sale.

When I started this debate, some argued that I was wrong about the legality of land claims recognition under the Outer Space Treaty, etc. So Doug Jobes and I took the time to establish an airtight legal case for it. In its winter 2008 edition, SMU Law School's "Journal of Air Law and Commerce" published our article describing land claims recognition in detail and establishing the legal basis for it, complete with 182 footnotes. The Journal is the oldest scholarly periodical in the English language devoted to the legal and economic problems of aviation and space, and is the most prestigious law journal in its field.

You can read the article here. For a less legalistic version of how Land Claims Recognition work (and the answers to 25 frequently asked questions) see here.


Q. And now Land Claims Recognition has been included in a new law text book?

Alan Wasser: Yes! The fact that lunar land claims will now be taught in law schools is an even more convincing demonstration that, though there may always be some dissent, the general legal community seems to have accepted Land Claims Recognition as being fully in accord with existing international law.

The textbook is from Westview Press: "International Law", Silverburg, ed., (ISBN 978-0-8133-4471-3). "Space Settlements, Property Rights and International Law: Could a Lunar Settlement Claim the Lunar Real Estate It Needs To Survive?" is Chapter 13, pages 275 to 299.


Q. When we last spoke, you were marshalling an effort to approach Congress with legislation consistent with your articles. What is the status of your legislation?

Alan Wasser: The AIAA Space Colonization Technical Committee (SCTC) recently sent two teams to Congress to lobby for a Land Claims recognition law. They got a good reception but no comittments. It will need much more support from the Space community to actually get introduced and passed, setting off the next space race.



Space Business Blog Footnote and full disclosure: Over the last year I have become more and more convinced by the mission of the Space Settlement Institute, so earlier this month I joined their volunteer staff as a policy analyst.

Interview with Michael Heartsong: Asteroid Miner

In a previous post I explored how difficult it was to close the asteroid mining business case.  I mentioned the following platinum mining options in the comments section: 

OPTION 1: only bring back the useful ore by mining the asteroid "onsight" for the valuable elements. But that is silly, the critic says, why deal with all of the complexity of a remote compact mining device, instead…

OPTION 2: bring back all asteroidal material. Mine the ore for useful metals on earth’s surface. But that is silly, the critic says, now you have to deorbit massive amounts of asteroidal material (remember baseline platinum levels are 0.3%) just to get a little platinum.  How is this cost effective? Instead…

OPTION 3: keep the asteroid in orbit, mine the asteroid there and sell its contents for space purposes, like metal trusses for space stations & spacecraft, solar panel components, mass for shielding, etc. This way you avoid ever having to reenter all of that asteroidal material. But that is silly, the critic says, there is no market for the on-orbit products this solution hopes to produce. You have made the solution so complex, it will be prohibitively hard to raise the investment money for such an endeavor, plus the complexity will delay liquidity events to allow for a time-consuming development cycle (space manufacturing center, etc.). Why not develop a compact mining device that can be sent to surface of an asteroid, dig through a bunch of asteroidal material, find REMs, and just return that few hundred/thousand kilograms of valuable material to earth? And now we are back to Option 1.

Did I mention asteroid mining is hard (and the life of a critic is substantially easier).

Well, I wanted to talk to an entrepreneur who was working on closing this challenging business case of Asteroid Mining. Which of the three options would he pick (or would he pick a fourth option unmentioned)?

Michael Heartsong is cofounder of Promethean Enterprises, Inc. Michael is a finance and management consultant by day. This serial entrepreneur has been involved in six startups, two of which, have now been in operation for over twenty years. Last year, Michael was on the Space Show to talk about his new space mining company, Promethean Enterprises, Inc.

Promethean’s angle for closing the asteroid mining business case is the realization that large US aerospace companies are willing to mine asteroids today...but only if their risk was somehow mitigated.  Through contracting instead of partnership, Promethean intends to leverage the skillsets of the nations brightest engineers without having to pilfer them from Boeing.

With the right plan, the engineering skills can be bought. It’s an intriguing strategy (if perhaps unproven), a space firm whose competitive advantage is NOT engineering. You will hear in his answers below, Promethean is leaning towards Option 3 (see above for "Option 3" definition).




Q: For those not familiar with your asteroid mining white paper, can you give us a brief overview of your Asteroid Mining business concept?

Michael Heartsong: We intend to build and send robotic mining devices to asteroids; process the ore in space and turn it into propellant (water broken down into hydrogen and oxygen) and structural material. The structural material could be used to repair the International Space Station (or build a new one; or build other structures in space). And we intend to use the structural material to build a vast, many square kilometer solar-energy gathering array; turn the electricity generated thereby into microwaves; beam the microwaves down to earth, where they will be captured by a receiving antenna ("rectenna"), reconverted into electricity, and fed into the grid. In this way, we hope to be a major part of solving Earth's looming energy crisis (the Earth uses about 14 terawatts of electricity each year.

It is predicted that by 2050, we will need 40 terawatts. 75% or more of all electricity today is generated by burning fossil fuels. It is simply impossible to generate 40 terawatts (or even 25) with current technology: the stores of fossil fuels will be depleted. More importantly, we would destroy ourselves with the resulting pollution. (Remember the film, CHILDREN OF MEN in which almost all adults had become infertile). That is the Big Picture. AT the moment, it is just an idea, a vision. The next step is to turn the vision into an executable plan.

Q: That is a BIG effort – how are you proceeding?

Michael Heartsong: Our plans call for proceeding in essentially two Phases.

1. Phase One is a Research Phase, that will last at least 1 1/2 years, probably 2. During this Phase, every aspect of the vision will be researched, contemplated, examined. We intend to prove and validate that what we are proposing can be accomplished with exiting technology (as as technology advances, what we are proposing becomes ever more achievable. We will identify providers--companies and people who can participate in the venture. This Phase will drill down to specifics: how best to move forward, at what cost; who can undertake it; how long will it take to design, build and launch one or more robots; which asteroids are the most promising and why, etc. etc . One of the products from this Phase will be a document that will demonstrate conclusively that what we are proposing is an economically viable business venture. 
2. We would then leverage this analysis to raise the hundreds of millions (possibly billions of $$) that will be required to succeed in the venture. And execute the venture.

Q: So Phase I is “Build a Plan” and Phase II is “Execute the Plan”. How much capital do you need for this first exploratory Phase I?

Michael Heartsong: We are seeking $12.5 million of seed capital with which to finance Phase One.

Q: What industry partners are you working with on this venture?

Michael Heartsong: We have already had conversations with several people at Boeing, who are excited by our plans. We have a written invitation from Boeing to submit to them an RFP, so they can tell us how much of Phase One they would like to participate in, and at what cost. We have also had conversations with L'Garde, the premier deployer of inflatable space structures. Additional partners would be added throughout the phase as needed.

Q: Will you be incorporating a NEO surveying mission (NEAP 2.0) prior to your mining efforts?

Michael Heartsong: There is actually a great deal of information already collected about Near Earth Objects (NEO), and more being collected every day. One aspect of Phase One will be to identify the criteria on the basis of which an asteroid would be selected as a target for our mission. Phase One will also include actual spectrographic analyses of potential asteroids. We hope by the end of Phase One we will know precisely which asteroids are the best potential targets.

Q: To accomplish your plans, how much of your plans utilize existing technologies and how much requires you develop new technologies?

Michael Heartsong: What we are proposing can be accomplished with existing technology. That said, it will still require a great deal of ingenuity, imagination, and intelligence. What we are proposing is simpler than other complex projects. We have already sent vehicles to comets and asteroids, and even landed on asteroids twice. And we are NOT talking about sending a human being to an asteroid, just a faith robot. Although what we are proposing has never been done, all of the various components are achievable with existing technology. We just have to figure out how best.

We think once we are at the end of Phase One, having proven the economic viability of what we are proposing, people will be eager to invest. The challenge is raising that first $12.5 million in order to complete Phase One. Normally, when one is raising seed capital, investors are naturally concerned about the safety of their capital, and the likelihood of seeing a return. The major risk, normally, is loss of capital. We think our situation is very different – the risk is in not investing.

Q: Recent topics on this blog have included discussions about the late Jim Benson’s plan to own an asteroid. What are your thoughts on such an acquisition?

Michael Heartsong: The entire area of Space Law is something that is simply not yet developed. I know of two or three attorneys who have begun thinking and writing about it, Presumably, the development of the Western United States will provide a model. Also, the settling of the New World (the Western hemisphere) will probably provide a model. The moon is complicated. I personally don’t see anyone owning the moon. Regarding asteroids, I suspect whoever lands first can certainly lay claim to all of the mineral rights, if not the asteroid itself. (Remember that guy who tried to claim ownership of the Human Genome? Ridiculous!)

Q: What should I have asked that I didn’t?

Michael Heartsong: I will just leave you with this encouragement. I believe we are on the very cusp of an explosion in private space exploration. By analogy, where we are today with regard to space, is where society was 20 years before oil was discovered; or 10 years before Carnegie figured out how to mass produce steel; or 5 years before the computer revolution really got underway. Fifteen years from now (or 2 years from now) people will look back and wonder why everyone couldn't see what was "right before their eyes". And we think there will be a LOT of people who will kick themselves for not getting involved when they had the chance (just like a lot of people missed Google, eBay, Microsoft, etc.)

Q: If my readers want to reach you, would you leave an email address?

Michael Heartsong: Thank you again for this opportunity. I welcome any and all comments from your readers, who are welcome to contact me at michaelheartsong8 [at] gmail.com.



Colin Doughan: Thank you, Michael. 2011 is the year of raising $12.5M. When you are successful, I would like to do a follow-up interview. I feel this was a “strategy” interview. I can’t wait for the “tactics” interview where I can ask all of the questions that are “plan specific”. Thank you for your willingness to share your vision so early in your entrepreneurial process. I hope your openness is rewarded. And I wish you nothing but the best.

Interview with Brad Blair (Part 2) - Economics of Lunar Ice Mining

This is Part 2 of a two-part interview with Brad Blair, ISRU and lunar mining researcher. We are discussing Blair’s 2002 paper entitled “Space Resource Economic Analysis Toolkit: The Case for Commercial Lunar Ice Mining.”  Get your copy here.

In Part 1 of this interview, Brad discussed two architectures his team considered for lunar mining. In Part 2 we discuss lunar ice, nuclear vs. solar, Blair’s economic model used in paper, changes since 2002, how SpaceX has affected the business case for lunar mining and more. The images used in this blog post are from the Paper referenced above and used with permission from Brad Blair.

Q. Your baseline business case assumes 1% ice in the lunar regolith (page 34). How has recent scientific discoveries about the moon affected this assumption?

Brad Blair: The business case closed at 2% ice (note that this was one of four primary feasible conditions that caused the case to close). We ran sensitivity analysis and there is a knee in the curve starting at 0.5% and ending around 4% - see Figure 4.8 in the report. The explanation for this is that more mining and hauling equipment is needed for lower concentrations of ore, necessitating higher capital investment in the mining plant mass in order to meet productivity requirements. Above a certain concentration however other constraints tend to dominate, reducing the beneficial influence of higher ore grade or percent ice. The primary constraint above 4% ice for example is the power system mass needed to run the electrolysis system (which is needed to convert the water into hydrogen and oxygen for enough propellant to boost the payload off the lunar surface and toward the first propellant depot).

Recent scientific discoveries are of course very helpful to the business case. Turns out the ice is likely much greater than 4%, and may even approach 100% in localized high-grade zones. That does simplify the production model a bit, and will clearly have a positive effect when it is time for the engineers to design the details of the lunar surface facilities. One other aspect is the recent discovery of evidence that nitrogen and carbon ices may also exist. For human habitation Nitrogen becomes an important element due to its buffering effect for the air we breathe. It simplifies a lot of life support issues because it is well understood here at home. For long term habitation, a pure oxygen environment is problematic and other buffering gases can cause problems. Carbon opens up a lot of possible secondary products such as liquid storable hydrocarbon fuels like kerosene. It also could be used for manufacturing plastics or other organic chemicals needed for industrial uses.

However we desperately need to verify the remote sensing geophysics with ground truth. Geophysicists will admit to you that there is a given amount of uncertainty in their conclusions due to measurement taken from orbit. While we know a lot about specific equatorial lunar conditions due to the Apollo missions, the "ground truth" available to calibrate spacecraft sensors at those locations is not applicable to polar sites due to extreme environmental differences.

A RTG-powered surface rover mission in a lunar polar crater is a critical next step in proving technical and economic feasibility. Note that the first surface rover could provide sufficient ground truth to begin the harvesting of much more detailed understandings from the existing polar spacecraft data sets. LCROSS is a prime example of this.

Q. To power your lunar mining facility you baselined nuclear power but were considering a new generation of solar power as well. What is your current preferred lunar power source and why?

Brad Blair: Nuclear power is the key to steady-state mining and mineral processing operations. The reason for this is that other that wear & abrasion, most of the problems with mining equipment happen when the equipment is turned off and then back on. For equipment operating in locations that are only 25 Kelvin this will likely be exacerbated, especially since engineers currently like to design spacecraft components to operate at laboratory temperatures. Electronic systems are particularly hard hit when they are cooled to that level and then re-heated (thermal stresses in a complex array of materials tend to cause components to pop out of circuit boards for example).

The simplest solution is to keep things warm of course. That requires a steady source of power. For rover missions that means using an RTG. The Mars Science Lander mission will be able to operate day and night because it has an excellent power source.

In order to make solar power work at the same level of robustness and availability, batteries are required that are sized to survive the night. Even the best locations on the Moon have significant periods of shadow, thus the mass of the batteries quickly becomes the dominant constraint. Add to that the requirement to somehow get the power into permanent shadow and technical risk goes exponential due to systems complexity. In order to make solar power work for a mining plant inside a permanently shadowed crater it will require extending the current technology envelope with a number of serial breakthroughs. Nuclear power plants for space have a long heritage (especially considering the Russian experience) and actually work better in cold conditions.

Having said all of that, solar power does have an upside potential due to the potential for geometric growth under the conditions of in-situ production. Alex Ignatiev of the University of Houston has figured out a way to make low-grade solar cells using 99.9% lunar materials.

I would consider nuclear power the best baseload supply option and use in-situ solar for peak power while the sun is shining.

Q. Describe the excel tool used in much of your analysis. Is this a tool you developed? If starting over would you use Excel again or would you recommend an alternate tool? What were the pros and cons of using this Excel?

Brad Blair: The benefits of developing a spreadsheet-based modeling tool is that it is simple, transparent and the software to run it is accessible to most people. Given the overall simplicity of the math, spreadsheets are the most common tool used for financial analysis. Plug-ins can be purchased for decision analysis, Monte-Carlo simulation, econometric statistical analysis or other higher mathematical functions. It is also relatively straightforward to set up linear or integer programming optimization models using the tools within a typical spreadsheet. The cost modeling was done using NAFCOM under a license granted through the NASA contract.

From the perspective of the parametric engineering model, interconnected spreadsheets offer a simple and transparent way to model linear or geometric behavior for estimating mass and power requirements based on unit mass and power assumptions made by selecting appropriate analogies. Detailed design would of course take advantage of the great strides made in the last 20 years in modeling and simulation of the physical, chemical, thermal and electrical behavior of materials and integrated systems. Many tools are available for this today including a growing library of open-source code. I spent some time in the real-time simulation world and the tools there are amazing, considering the fact that they can leverage dedicated parallel real-time graphics or physics processing units (GPUs or PPUs) paid for by the gaming industry.

Q. Have any entrepreneurs shown interest in turning your analysis into a lunar venture?

Brad Blair: Yes. However I have signed a confidentiality agreement, and am not at liberty to disclose the details.

Q. What has changed since this 2002 analysis to make your lunar mining business case more attractive to investors?

Brad Blair: There are much higher lunar resource grades than previously expected, a wider variety of ores and a greater confidence in the geologic models due to recent lunar missions than at any time in the past. In addition, the steady migration of silicon valley capital and entrepreneurs into the space world provides a much broader base for the emergence of new space markets – the key to a sustainable set of interlocked enterprises that will steadily develop the space frontier for human settlement and commerce. Finally, steady progress in new technologies has been made by NASA, the aerospace industry and international partners, demonstrably lowering costs as evidenced by SpaceX among many others. Indeed, I sense a tipping point may be drawing close.

Q. What has changed since this 2002 analysis to make your lunar mining business case less attractive to investors?

Brad Blair: Lower product price, thus lower revenue as you pointed out in question above about SpaceX’s reduced launch price. Also, the manifold risk elements are becoming more transparent. This second item is good in my opinion because I prefer rationality to ebullience and don’t really like surprises.

Q. For the return trip from GEO to LEO you assume you will be aerobraking. You use 500m/s for this return trip with the aerobraking assumption. But to leave GEO and return to LEO you would first have to do the circularizing burn in reverse (1300-1700m/s) and then you could aerobrake into Earth's atmosphere. If my understanding were correct your analysis would need to add an extra 800-1200m/s for each OTV GEO to LEO trip. Which value do you think is correct?

Brad Blair: Your numbers sound right, but remember I am a mining engineer and an economist by training. Some of our delta-V numbers were guesses. The team lacked an orbital mechanic, so we did the best we could. To the team the most important challenge was to make an end-to-end engineering and economic model that was interconnected – that was our real innovation. By making our assumptions transparent, we knew the model could be updated in the future. The impact of higher delta-Vs is an increase in propellant requirements to deliver the same level of service. This will increase the throughput of the ISRU plant and bump the transport vehicle flight rates somewhat upward as well. In short, it will increase the ops and capital costs somewhat.

Q. What should I have asked you that I did not?

Brad Blair: Lunar dust will be a major issue to overcome. Fortunately it may be susceptible to electrodynamic forces and could therefore be “steered” away from critical systems such as sensors, thermal management surfaces, solar panels and bearing seals. The same challenges will plague surface robotic missions by the way. Early demonstration of mitigation techniques will play a critical role in reducing risk.

Emerging markets (beyond orbital debris as mentioned above) will be another very important consideration for business planning. But that is a separate conversation.

Finally, one of the most important elements of the 2002 study in my opinion was the feasibility conditions that would attract private investment. We changed four primary variables to achieve feasibility. The first variable was ice concentration as discussed above. The second variable was development costs. We dialed those down to zero, assuming that a NASA program would develop ISRU for a human lunar mission and hand the technology to a private operator. This has already started under Constellation. The third assumption was that production costs would be 40% of what NAFCOM said the government would normally pay. An argument can be made that if paperwork and overhead costs can be reduced this may be possible, particularly for a private company. The final assumption was that the market size doubled. This could be achieved by engaging customers in “emerging markets”.

Q: How has your background prepared for this lunar analysis?

Brad Blair: In mid-2003 I was working with a small team of grad students under the leadership of Mike Duke, the director of the CSM Center for Commercial Applications of Combustion in Space or CCACS. Were working for NASA-RASC developing a human ISRU architecture with engineers at JSC, KSC and Glenn. In January of 2004 EV was announced and we were stunned, being the largest academic group actively studying in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) under NASA contract. Most of the team converted to join Lockheed-Martin's team for the CE&R. I left the group to join Raytheon's Senior Advisory Board for their CE&R architecture. We also gave copies of our models to t-Space. Four of the 11 CE&R contractors used ISRU as an element of their lunar architectures (see links below).

http://exploration.nasa.gov/documents/reports/cer_midterm/Andrews.pdf

http://exploration.nasa.gov/documents/reports/cer_final/Lockheed_Martin.pdf

http://exploration.nasa.gov/documents/reports/cer_final/Raytheon.pdf

http://exploration.nasa.gov/documents/reports/cer_final/tSpace.pdf

Since that time CCACS has changed names to become the CSM Center for Space Resources (CSR) and is now run by Angel Abbud-Madrid. Mike Duke has retired. CSR remains actively involved in NASA and international space agency ISRU programs and enjoys an excellent reputation as an active CSM research arm. While I remain affiliated with the Center, I have gone primarily into consulting since that time.

As a member of the CE&R advisory board to Raytheon I helped bring the ISRU element to their lunar architecture. I also participated in the analysis of related space commercialization opportunities, helping to call a meeting with other CE&R participants to investigate commercial spinoffs enabled by what would become the Constellation program. This meeting directly lead to the formation of the first space investment summit, a project that continues to this day. Finally, in 2005 I helped the Raytheon team pitch the Texas Governor's Economic Development Office on the merits of a Texas-lead commercial LEO propellant depot with the help of the NASA Innovative Partnership Program.

In 2006-2007 I worked for DigitalSpace corporation on SBIRs related to simulating lunar mining and robotic systems using real-time open-source software, and for Bechtel Nevada as a consultant on lunar base simulation and design for NASA-SOMD. I then went underground for about 1 1/2 years, found a private investor, and began developing proprietary technology for the Centennial Challenges program for the power beaming, MoonRox and excavation contests.

The first contest attempt was short lived when my partner Dr. Bernard Eastlund (who holds the patents on the HAARP array in Alaska) passed away. The second shot (MoonROx) ended up developing a lot of IP, but was put on hold for the third contest with the assumption that it would be renewed - so far this has not happened. For the third contest I partnered with a Canadian R&D outfit who raised $250k and built a very sophisticated system for the Lunar Excavation Centennial Challenge. We placed in the contest but did not win. In 2009 I spent a year working with Penguin Automated Systems of Sudbury, Canada writing a report on ISRU for the CSA. My most recent work has been working with a handful of entrepreneurial startup companies and with a law firm that is creating workable solutions for space commerce, governance and property rights.

Interview with Brad Blair (Part 1) - Economics of Lunar Ice Mining

Mining on the Moon is an exciting topic.

1. Advances in remote mining technologies,
2. recent announcements about the volume of ice on the moon, and
3. progress from GLXP teams

has encouraged me to consider the near-term economics of lunar mining.  Brad Blair has been a very helpful resource to me as I learn more about this potentially lucrative future space market.

This is Part 1 of a two-part interview with Brad Blair as we discuss his 2002 paper entitled “Space Resource Economic Analysis Toolkit: The Case for Commercial Lunar Ice Mining.” Get your copy here.

In the interview below, Brad provides an overview of several lunar ice-mining architectures his team considered with a goal to make commercial lunar mining possible and profitable. I ask Blair how the recent success of SpaceX and the increased quantities of lunar data and water have effected this analysis.

In preparing this paper, Brad was very deliberate to provide not only his conclusions but also his assumptions. Readers of his paper will find the added detail quite helpful in developing their own models. Brad welcomes the feedback. The images used in this blog post are from the paper referenced above and used with permission from Brad Blair.

Who is Brad Blair? Dedicated to opening the space frontier for human settlement and commerce, Brad has spent twenty years developing technical and economic systems to enable planetary surface in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). As a professional space consultant to NASA, Bechtel Nevada, Raytheon and the Canadian Space Agency, he has authored or co-authored a number of technical reports and over 50 conference papers on topics related to accessing the wealth of space for the benefit of mankind. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Engineering Geology, and Master's degrees in Mining Engineering and Mineral Economics from the Colorado School of Mines.

And now Part 1 with Brad...

Q. You describe your analysis as a combined engineering and financial model. You say in your paper, “an architecture optimized from an engineering point of view is not necessarily the most interesting for private investors.” What do you mean by this?

Brad Blair: Investors typically care a lot more about return on invested capital than about optimized hardware or new technology. An example can be found in the story of the development for NASA of a brand name space pen. A typical ballpoint pen is gravity fed, with the ink reservoir replenished due to storing it in the proper orientation. A special space pen was developed for NASA using a small pressurized bladder to ensure fluid flow in the proper direction under microgravity conditions. While engineers were able to successfully implement an elegant technical solution, the process required substantial amount of R&D with its associated cost. Production models are also costly due to the complexity of the system, and indeed can be found in many NASA Center gift stores. The Russian solution was to use a pencil. Commercial space enterprises will use pencils or other commercial off the shelf (COTS) hardware wherever possible. Cost optimization is very different than technical or engineering optimization.

Q. Your analysis described two main architectures. Describe these for us and how you came to favor these two options for profitably mining lunar ice.

Brad Blair: First I must point out that under the baseline starting conditions neither of the architectures showed profitability. Our process was to start with realistic assumptions and "worst case" costs (i.e., what a government space program would pay to develop all new hardware) and then relax the assumptions until an ROI was achieved that would attract private capital. The second architecture was slightly better than the first when these more relaxed or liberal conditions were modeled. Figures 4.1 and 4.2 of the report show pictures of the architectural elements and configurations.

For both architectures we assumed:

1. a robotic lunar ISRU plant operating in the polar ice. Vehicles included
2. a cargo lander,
3. a lunar tanker and
4. an OTV for carrying propellant and cargo.

The primary difference between architectures:

1. Architecture 1 had two propellant depots (one at L1 and one in LEO) and
2. Architecture 2 had only one (at L1).

According to our estimated delta-Vs, there was a slight advantage to operating a single propellant depot at L1 due to its ability to fall into various inclinations without a major penalty, thus increasing the number of customers that could be reached by a small set of vehicles and systems elements.

  

Q. The goal of your architectures is to be able to offer satellite transport from LEO to GEO via space tug for $25K/kg (with a preferred target price of $20K/kg). You also mention the counter intuitive fact that reduced launch costs actually hurt your business case. With Falcon 9’s price already at about $22K/kg to GEO (4540kg to GTO, $50M price, assume half GTO mass is kick-stage), how does such low launch prices affect your business case for lunar-based propellant?

Brad Blair: There would of course be a direct downward impact on revenue (it would be cut roughly in half according to your numbers above) given that the technical, cost and market assumptions of the 2002 study remain steady. However, a premium could be assessed for transferring payloads beyond the reach of the current fleet of expendable rockets.

For example, until someone builds another heavy lift vehicle there is only one way to move a 10 ton payload to GEO with today’s technology, and that would be by refueling an upper stage in LEO or by docking with an OTV that had a full tank (perhaps launched separately without a payload attached). In that case, the price backstop would be how much it costs to conduct the ops from Earth with all expendable systems – very costly if an HLLV is chosen and the development costs are amortized over the first few flights. The gist is that the revenue model for the 2002 study is fairly simplistic, and that updating it could involve both upward and downward adjustments in revenue streams. In either case the point is that the revenue model was based on estimating the cost of a terrestrial competitor for a specific mission profile and discounting that value a bit. Thus price can be modeled in a straightforward fashion using the same approach for future models.

Q. You argue in the Annual Market Demand section of your paper, “a thorough study should estimate the potential for new markets emerging from the availability of the space resource.” Talk about emerging markets for lunar resources and how influential emerging markets would play if you were to consider an update to your analysis.

Brad Blair: Emerging markets will make or break the business case. They are where the real action is at. It is an unreasonable expectation that current launch providers will simply give up their existing market share for LEO to GEO transfer and join the bandwagon. It will be an uphill battle and not be easy to win. Having said that, if sufficient additional customer demand can be stimulated in order to actually increase throughput of space vehicles in existing factories and benefit not only the propellant provider but launch vehicle manufacturers as well, a win-win scenario could emerge that will benefit all involved.

For example, a radical shift in on-orbit operations cost would enable orbital debris cleanup. I personally consider debris management the killer app or airmail of the 21st Century. As evidenced by the recent collision of Cosmos 2251 with Iridium 33, there is a growing danger of an exponentiating number of objects larger than 10cm. We are closer than many want to acknowledge to a chain reaction that could wipe out needed orbits for centuries or even millennia. With current technology it would become impossible for humans to penetrate the debris clouds that would result from a runaway reaction. Something needs to be done now, yet the excuse "it is just too costly" frequently emerges.

Reusability and propellants could change that dynamic. In my opinion, an international escrow account should be created and funded by some combination of the polluters and beneficiaries of cleanup. This would then be used to create a bounty on certain types of orbital debris. Then the marketplace itself would determine the best solutions to cleanup. If no takers emerge the first year, increase the bounty. If too many show up, decrease it. Once the coffers are empty wait until next year and they fill up again. It would be a self-regulating system that would begin to put a dent into one of the biggest "elephants in the room." Forget about the dangers of radiation - getting hit with a piece of gravel or a baseball going 10km/s is instant "game over" for an astronaut or spacecraft.

Q. You mention public/private partnerships in your paper. How dependent will lunar pioneers be on such financing that blends Government and investor money?

Brad Blair: Public private partnerships can be used to reduce various types of risk, thereby accelerating a commercial development timeline. For example, government investment in technology development could reduce operations risk and increase mission safety. Donation of time at costly lab facilities (e.g. large thermal vacuum chambers) could help space qualify commercial systems, reducing technical risk. Government-backed debt (e.g. bonds) could help reduce financing risk. Government anchor tenancy for products or services could reduce market risk. It is not as much an issue of dependency so much as the government having an ability to prime the pump and accelerate the schedule.

The trade off here is that by investing in certain ways the government can steer the outcome toward a beneficial public purpose. So there is a payoff to the taxpayer as well. For example, a private lunar mining outpost might make an excellent base camp for NASA human lunar exploration missions. Another example would be to incentivize data collection for potentially hazardous asteroids in partnership with a mineral exploration venture. In the end it doesn't matter whether the asteroid is mined into a new orbit or abruptly blasted out of the path of a dangerous keyhole. By combining effort, costs could be reduced on both the public and private side of the equation. A recommended criteria for entering a partnership is that both sides should benefit.

Q. Your analysis assumes no human miners involved on the lunar surface – all robotic. Describe how you came to this conclusion and if you still hold to this “human-free” approach to lunar mining.

Brad Blair: It was a simplifying assumption at first. It would certainly have a downward pressure on cost if it works. The reason I still believe it is possible is that I spent much of 2008 working with Dr. Greg Baiden of Sudbury, Canada writing an ISRU report for the Canadian Space Agency. While the report is still embargoed, it does conclude that robotic preparation of an underground human habitat does appear feasible.

This is based on Greg's experience as VP of research and development for INCO in the early 1990's, where he demonstrated that several pieces of underground mining equipment in two different mines could be run simultaneously from one operator cabin on the surface. The latency in the signal to and from the underground equipment approached 1.7 seconds. Estimates for lunar operations are in the 2.5 second ballpark. Based on that experience communication lag time may not be a major issue. You can listen here to a 2 hour interview with Greg at the Space Show.

The second hurdle will be maintenance and repair (which can and should be implemented for satellites as soon as possible by the way). It turns out that one of the reasons that terrestrial mining equipment breaks down so often is because the cost of repair is minimal. It should be possible to design lunar mining equipment to operate in a much more robust fashion and demonstrate the ruggedness in thermal vacuum with simulated lunar soils. Another important step would be to instrument a lunar surface exploration rover with wear and abrasion sensors in order to implement and get feedback on solutions before the mining equipment arrives. Estimates for the 2002 study were that 10% of equipment mass would need to be replaced per year. We even included in the model a 1 ton repair robot with the sole task of maintenance.

Interview with the Founder of Astronauts 4Hire



Space Stations by Bigelow & Orbital Technologies. Dragon Lab Missions by SpaceX. And more to come. The hardware is being built. Should Bigelow, and SpaceX pay to maintain an internal astronaut corp to operate their hardware or should they outsource their astronauts?

Would an internal team of astronauts be a cost center or profit center for these hardware manufacturers. 

Enter Astronauts4Hire – a commercial astronaut corp. Buy their services "by the drink". I first talked about A4H here.  Below is my interview with Astronauts4Hire's President/CEO and co-founder, Brian Shiro.


Q: Can you give us a company overview of Astronauts4Hire? The services you intend to offer? The market you are targeting?

Brian Shiro: Astronauts4Hire (A4H) targets both inward and outward-facing markets. We can illustrate this by dissecting our name into two parts: “Astronauts” and “for Hire.” “Astronauts” refers to our internally-focused activities related to building the skills of prospective commercial astronauts with the goal of creating a professional commercial astronaut workforce. The “for Hire” refers to our externally-focused activities to match commercial astronaut candidates with specific missions to be carried out on suborbital or orbital flights. Our target markets include prospective astronauts, researchers, and companies.

Services we offer internally to members focus on the professional development of members as astronaut candidates. This involves fostering communication among astronaut candidates, negotiating special pricing for training courses, and offering scholarships to flight members on a competitive basis to help pay for their astronaut training. Plus, members can gain entrepreneurial skills by getting involved on the ground floor with building the organization during this early phase of our development.

A4H offers a number of services to the external community too. A4H will work with researchers and companies to provide the manpower required to achieve mission objectives on parabolic, suborbital, and orbital flights. Primarily, the services pertain to planning and executing experiments or operating payloads on flights. It could also involve product testing or promotion, particularly for commercial clients, as is the case with the upcoming space beer flight.


Q: Describe Astronauts4Hire’s latest contract to test beer in microgravity?

Brian Shiro: A new space engineering company, Saber Astronautics Australia, teamed up with the 4-Pines Brewery in a joint venture called Vostok Pty. Ltd. to create beer brewed specifically for consumption in space. This stout-derived beer has low carbonation and high flavor, meeting known challenges the human body faces with taste and carbonation in microgravity. Initial batch recipes were taste-tested by 4-Pines and were proven safe for wholesale consumption through terrestrial sales, which will help fund the microgravity beer testing experiment. Drop tower tests conducted at the Queensland University of Technology characterized the liquid under brief, but high quality, microgravity conditions.

After considering many internal and external service providers, the Vostok partners chose Astronauts4Hire (A4H) to carry out the flight experiment. A4H selected its top four members with past microgravity research experience, and Vostok then interviewed them before settling on a primary and backup A4H research participant to carry out the experiment.

A4H is contracted to provide general support to the first human research experiment on alcohol absorption in microgravity. A4H’s primary purpose is to provide the human test subject (research participant), who has a myriad of tasks to handle before and during the flight. This includes experiment setup, pre-flight testing, data collection, and serving as a critical liaison with the ZERO G Corporation, the company that will provide the parabolic flight service. In this sense, A4H has been the team “on the ground” in the USA to support the experiment.

Vostok and A4H also collaborate on press releases and other publicity matters. We worked together with the ZERO G Corporation to negotiate many logistics details for the research flight. For example, when the original November flight was cancelled by ZERO G, Vostok and A4H worked with ZERO G to establish a new flight date in December.

The experiment itself will consist of a baseline sampling of the beer two days prior to the flight in which measurements of body temperature, heart rate, and blood alcohol content will be taken. Qualitative information such as the beer’s taste and overall drinkability will also be recorded. These same parameters will be recorded during the flight sampling. During the ZERO G flight, the A4H flight researcher will consume the beer during alternating 0-g parabolic portions of the flight.

Vostok’s ultimate goal is to be the prime supplier of beer to space tourism operators and hopes that the tests carried out by A4H will lead to the establishment of standards for the responsible, casual consumption of alcohol in space.


Q: Why did you choose to start Astronauts4Hire as a non-profit?

Brian Shiro: We arrived at the decision to become a non-profit through careful consideration of business modality alternatives. Being a non-profit fits best with our near- and intermediate-term goals of establishing A4H as the main aggregator of commercial astronaut sector stakeholders: crews, trainers, vehicles, mission elements, etc.

Like a professional organization, A4H aids its members in their professional development as astronauts through structuring of a training program, negotiation of special training prices, and awarding scholarships to members to help pay for their astronaut training. A4H is also helping establish the industry standards by which commercial astronauts will be measured. A4H will fund these activities primarily through a combination of donations, sponsorships, and grants.

Another important source of revenue for A4H includes its contracts with researchers to perform experiments on microgravity flights. This is important because it allows A4H to build experience and a customer base without having to wait until suborbital space vehicles are operational. Not only does it help us get our feet wet with providing payload operation services, it also gives our members further experience to make them more competitive astronaut candidates by the time suborbital space vehicles are ready.

If A4H were a for-profit venture, possibly having to pay back investors, we would have to charge higher prices for our services. This would not only potentially limit our clientele; it could restrict the growth of the emerging commercial astronaut market. Keeping costs low in the beginning is therefore very important, and that’s why the low overhead of a non-profit is the right track for A4H during this phase of its development.


Q: What is your long-term strategy for growing Astronauts4Hire?

Brian Shiro: The near-term plan is to finalize our business plan and federal 501(c)(3) status as a non-profit by early 2011. We will more aggressively pursue fundraising at that time and plan to start raising enough money by mid-2011 to allow us to award our initial A4H astronaut training scholarships. The pattern of raising money primarily by writing grant proposals, soliciting donors, and establishing sponsorships will continue for the next 2-4 years. We have a stepwise strategy to use money raised on a 6-month basis to pay for training activities during each subsequent half year.

In the first few years, A4H will mostly contract out its training to third parties, but by 2014 or so (after we have a few spaceflights under our belts), we plan to ramp up our internal capabilities to train ourselves too. What form this will take remains an open question, but it could include establishing a commercial astronaut training center. We plan to fund this in part by collecting registration fees at workshops, clinics, and symposia hosted by A4H on various topics related to commercial human spaceflight and suborbital research. The scope of these workshops will likely range from an introduction to commercial spaceflight for the general public in a Space Camp style to detailed technical forums for researchers to further the field.

Beyond five years, when the industry is on its feet, we can forsee possible spin-off ventures focusing on different aspects of the commercial astronaut workforce. What we know as A4H today could become more like an educational foundation, and other related businesses could handle the operational aspects of training and flight services.

Our ultimate goal is to be the main organization that provides astronaut skills training and ratings to help individuals find flight opportunities on suborbital and orbital platforms and to serve the crew needs of the commercial human spaceflight industry.


Q: What capital requirements does Astronauts4Hire have to execute your growth plan?

Brian Shiro: Our biggest assets now are our members’ time and skills, as well as the publicity we are enjoying. Capital investment so far has been light, but we have forecasted our growth requirements for the next five years. For example, we are targeting a total operating budget of approximately $81,000 in 2011 that will grow to $300,000 in 2013.

A4H needs about $150,000 in 2011 to meet its training targets, $250,000 in 2012, increasing up to just over $600,000 by 2015. On the cost side, this assumes a growth rate of 10 new flight members per year, which influences the cost of training required. On the revenue side, our forecast assumes we add at least 1-2 new “Martian” and “Lunar” donors at the $10,000 and higher level per year and earn at least one additional grant at the $50,000 level or higher per year. We also assume to add future zero gravity flight contracts like the beer flight at a rate of 3 in 2011, 5 in 2012, and so forth.


Q: What are ways the new space industry can take advantage of Astronauts4Hire’s services that they may not be thinking about or be aware of?

Brian Shiro: The space community talks a lot about “commercial crews” these days, but when most people say that, they are referring to the vehicles and engineering systems that will get people to space, not the crews themselves. Astronauts4Hire aims to fill that void by providing a professional astronaut crew service with qualified astronauts who can assume a myriad of duties on space missions.

Individuals interested in going through a structured astronaut training program can apply with Astronauts4Hire to take advantage of our relationships with training providers and connections to potential employers who may hire them later.

In the near term, we can work with researchers or companies who want to fly experiments aboard microgravity parabolic flights. Once suborbital and later orbital space vehicles are flying, we can do the same on those platforms. A4H members can serve a “guinea pigs” for flight hardware and medical testing to help establish the qualification of commercial spacecraft for human flight too. Eventually, A4H could become a prime supplier of crews to operate and maintain commercial space stations in orbit.


Q: What recommendations do you have for space entrepreneurs considering starting their own business?

Brian Shiro: Just like in real estate, what matters most is “location, location, location.” Try to be in the right place at the right time and foster a network of contacts that can help springboard your venture to success. Never underestimate the amount of time it will take to do something. If you think it’ll take a month, multiply it by 10, and you might be closer to the mark. However, that doesn’t mean the pace of progress is slow, as sometimes it can feel like you’re barely keeping your head above water just to stay afloat. Keep your eyes on the prize to maintain motivation and try to remind those working with you of the broader goals from time to time to keep up group morale. Surround yourself with a mix of “true believers” and skeptics to ensure you get a healthy mix of inspiration and grounding. For virtual organizations with members spread out geographically, as we are in A4H, leveraging modern communications technology is a key advantage, but one must be careful to ensure the tools foster efficiency rather than implementing too formal a process that could burden the pace of growth. Above all else, have fun, work hard, and you are sure to succeed!

Interview with the Founder of The NewSpace Business Group

Are you a NewSpace organization? Could you use a group of MBA’s at your disposal to complete company projects without the cost of keeping them on your payroll? Meet the NewSpace Business Group. Think of the NewSpace Business Group as a network for nearly minted passionate, space-minded MBA’s that gain valuable business experience by solving real world problems for the NewSpace industry.

So listen up Altius, Armadillo, Bigelow, Masten, XCOR, SFF, and NLV Challenge competitors. The NewSpace Business Group is available to assist with your:

• Market Research
• Competitive Analysis
• Pricing Strategies
• Business Development Strategies
• Business Plan Development
• Internships
• and more.

Here is an interview with the group's founder, Jonathan Card (another interview in the series from Space Studies Institute’s Space Manufacturing Conference 14).


Q: Describe the NewSpace Business Group.

Jonathan Card: The NewSpace Business Group is a student group for business students, historically at the MBA level, interested in space businesses. We are focused on bridging the gap between the space technical community and other specialties in business that are necessary to run a successful company. One of the most destructive things that our current space policy has done is that NASA has frequently had to act as the intermediary between the space companies and the public. NASA's goal has been to foment experimentation and technical advances that were necessary in the 1960s to get humans to space.

Unfortunately, it's not enough for the technology to exist, but it has to exist in a network of social institutions that manufacture it, improve it, and operate it and there has been limited success in forming these kinds of institutions. This is very difficult for the government to do in a democracy, but NASA has recently begun to rectify this. COTS, SBIR, and, I think, Obama's recent NASA budget have started to bridge this gap.

The NewSpace Business Group is a setting for people in the space community to apply what they are learning in school to the industry that needs to learn it and so that business people that specialize in Marketing, in Finance, or in other aspects of private companies can learn from the NewSpace Business Group members on their campus that space is a viable place to do business and make a profit. It's less and less true that there's only one customer (NASA), that you need to get money (from NASA) before you can build anything, that you need to structure your company around government contracting and procedures.

Q: There are many other campus organizations. Why do you think you will be able to attract top business talent?

Jonathan Card: Because space is awesome, of course! It's space! Seriously, though, space is the New World of our time. It's a place that is unsettled and full of riches, from solutions to the energy crisis to new IP that can only be discovered in space. It is what will keep our civilization alive when an asteroid comes to finish us off like the dinosaurs before us, when nuclear weapons finally get out of hand, and when some unknowable tragedy strikes our ecosphere. In the end, money is the way for the people to show what's important to them; since space is important, there must be money to be made and the one to figure it out, gets to keep it. Fortunes were made, lost, and made over and over in the transatlantic trade and in the mines and forests of the New World. It will happen again in space.

Q: How do you see the NewSpace Business Group benefiting the NewSpace industry?

Jonathan Card: I would like to see NewSpace alumni forming the next cadre of managers and entrepreneurs of space-oriented companies. There are a lot of exciting companies coming of age right now and there are still holes to be filled in. Companies are just learning to talk to each other, how to do business with each other, and what institutions other industries created for themselves that space companies don't have because the unrelenting NASA-focus of the past has prevented a mature industry from emerging organically.

There are opportunities here that we haven't yet dreamt, and they are problems that MBAs and other business school students study full-time. We are the leaders that will make this industry make money and will make money elsewhere and bring it to NewSpace and so into the future.

Q: What you like the NewSpace Business Group to grow into over the next few years?

Jonathan Card: I'd like to make it into a national campus organization whose members know each other, work together, and can learn to rely on each other. I'd also like to make it into a group whose name becomes a credential; that, with the NewSpace Business Group on their resume, business school students can be assured of at least an interview with investors, companies, and other firms in the space industry.

Q: How can the New Space Industry benefit from your group’s efforts today? Internships? Projects? Other?

Jonathan Card: We have done projects for NewSpace groups already; we helped organize some of the events at the NewSpace 2009 conference (it was this experience that led to me becoming Treasurer of the Foundation) and we did an industry analysis of the future of the CubeSat industry for a Google Lunar X Prize competitor applying modern industry theories of innovation to see if we can establish some insight into the future growth of that technology. Portions of that paper are being prepared for public distribution; stay tuned to http://www.newspacebusiness.org/ or our LinkedIn group for more information on that, probably in December. We are always looking for projects and internships for our participants. The benefits are subtle and more widespread than you may think.

Last spring, we arranged a campus talk by Dannie Stamp, the former COO of Iridium (you can watch this on our YouTube channel); bringing such a luminary to campus was important to the school and it was my understanding at the end of the year that the school was interested in building stronger ties with him. This kind of relationship can be an important way for NewSpace to be highlighted in publications and to be used as examples in classrooms. That kind of publicity, in the context of other topics, is an important way to mainstream what we're doing.

Q: How can the New Space Industry help you become successful? Where do you need help to take the New Space Business Group to the next level?

Jonathan Card: I don't really want to focus on "how can the NewSpace industry help me". It's important to me that this remains a group that comes together to help the industry. Even when we are looking for projects, it's important that those projects are not just make-work for the sake of a good idea. If we can't help NewSpace, there's no point is being a group. If NewSpace can't help humanity, there's no point in it existing. I firmly believe that for-profit businesses, and those of us that believe in the power of the private sector, exist solely to serve others and be others-centered; usually our customers. I guess the most the NewSpace industry can do for us is to remember that we are there for them, and our members are a group of people that will know something about their industry, and if they need something done or they need good people, we are here to help.

Q: If anyone reading this wants to get involved how can they get a hold of you?


Jonathan Card: jcard@email.arizona.edu will still reach me, even though I've graduated, as will any message through the LinkedIn group. This has been dormant for the last few months, but we're revisiting it and will be re-opening it for new members soon. We welcome industry members, students, prospective students, or anyone else that wants to keep up on our activities.

Q: What should I have asked that I didn’t?

Jonathan Card: What are you doing now?

The NewSpace Business Group has alumni at Sargent Controls, which manufactures parts for military and civil space and airplane parts, and we have several members that have started their own businesses after business school.

I'm working at a cloud software company, B50 Data, making software for tracking maintenance for commercial shipping fleets. We're finishing our first round of sales calls without any venture or angel capital, and we're very optimistic. In addition to polishing the paper on CubeSats for publication, I'm finishing a paper overviewing international property law and various means of resolving complex IP legal situations, like those in cloud computing, other than expanding the power of the UN.

I've also started inquiring about re-establishing the Serviceable Spacecraft Committee on Standards at the AIAA so that we can start work on docking, berthing, and refueling standards that we need in order to have things like orbital fuel depots. I've heard so many people talk about how NASA needs to start establishing industry standards, but that's not NASA's job. It's our job, and it's time we did something about it. I've gotten some interest in it from some good people, but it's still an infant idea. I'm also heading up several committees for the Space Frontier Foundation, and I'm investigating some interesting possibilities that may lead to a NewSpace company. Nothing definite yet, but I'll keep you informed.

Interview with Al Globus: Infrared Space-Based Solar Power

SBSP Concept Graphic

I attended The Space Studies Institute’s Space Manufacturing Conference 14 at the end of October 2010. Over the coming months, I will post interviews from people at that conference.

This being a space business blog, I gravitated to interview those presenting ideas which were intriguing from a business perspective. You be the judge.


The first interview is with Al Globus. Al presented this paper at SM14 on a way to significantly reduce the size of a profitable (or nearly profitable) first-generation solar power satellite that could be launched on a single EELV for under $100M.

Q: Typical powersat plans require massive satellites in GEO. Talk about why this is and how your plan for space-based solar power is different.

Al Globus: The size of traditional PowerSats is driven by the choice of microwaves for power beaming. This requires km scale antennas on orbit. My plan uses infrared which reduces the size of the power beam by a factor of 30,000-120,000 (depending on assumptions). This means the on-orbit power beam can be just a few meters across, radically reducing the size of PowerSats.

Q: Your paper recommends powersats beam energy back to earth using infra-red instead of microwave wavelengths. What are tradeoffs between infer-red and microwave for powersat transmission and how you came to prefer infrared?

Al Globus: The big advantage is size. This is because the size of the beam is directly proportional to the wavelength and infrared is a much smaller wavelength than microwaves.

Disadvantages include: high energy density on the ground which is a safety concern, the state of the art is not good enough yet, and higher atmospheric absorption. In practice this may mean that powersats using infrared power beaming are limited to desert-like locations due to absorption by rain. Fortunately, there are large electricity markets in very dry regions such as Southern California, North Africa, and much of Australia. This is more than large enough to get SSP into the energy mix and pave the way for larger satellites that can serve more of the market.

Q: Talk about advances in thin film helio-gyros. What are they (for us non-engineers) and how can they help solution the space based solar power problem?

Al Globus: The advantage of thin-film heliogyros is mass (weight). First, the material is very thin and therefore very light. The power producing bits of the Ikaros satellite are only 32.5 microns thick and probably weigh about 45 g/m^2. A heliogyro does not use masts and rigging to hold the material facing to the sun. Instead, it spins. As a anyone who has played on a merry-go-round knows, spinning produces a force outward from the center. This is used to stiffen the solar-power absorbing materials. On Earth this could never work due to gravity, wind, etc. In space these are not an issue. The Ikaros only spins at 1-2 rpm which is sufficient to keep the material facing the sun.

Q: Talk about how you get a commercial power satellite up in only one EELV launch.

Al Globus:

• First, you need to convert the Ikaros to a powersat by covering the entire sail area with thin-film solar cells.
• Second, you need to scale it up to 200+ m on a side (from 14m).
• Third, you need to develop the power beaming equipment with a 2.6 ton mass budget and mechanical constraints.
• Fourth, you need to keep the power beaming equipment cool.
• Fifth, you need 20% efficient solar cells.
• Sixth, you need to be able to get a bulk discount from SpaceX (promising to launch more PowerSats).
• Seventh, you need to do all this development for perhaps a hundred million of dollars or so.
• Eighth, you need to sell the power in remote places where the price is very high.

In practice, the first satellite probably won't be profitable. However, if it doesn't lose too much money we're good. The second satellite will cost a lot less than the first.

Q: Your paper describes the potential profitability of a 5MW power satellite by selling to niche markets. What niche markets are you considering?

Al Globus: US military forward bases. There is also evidence that certain Italian markets were willing to pay $0.29/kwh at at least one point in the past.

Q: You say in your paper, the easiest and most profitable powersat research area is system design. Why do you think that is and what are some beneficial research topics?

Al Globus: There is no really well thought out design for infrared power beaming from orbit to earth. While the paper is pretty specific on how to generate the power (based on the Ikaros, which is in orbit and works) the power beaming bits of the paper are more of an existence proof: finding bits and pieces of data here and there than indicate that there should be some design with the desired properties. However, knowing that there is a solution doesn't mean you know what the solution is. That's the purpose of this research: come up with actual point designs that could be tested.

Q: What should I have asked that I didn’t?

Al Globus: Are there others who have proposed similar ideas? Yes. Lots of people have looked into infrared power beaming for space solar power. However, as far as I know, this is the first time using heliogyros for power production has been proposed.

Why isn't the government funding R&D in this area? Good question. DOE spends about $400 million per year on fusion research and, while SSP is a difficult problem, it is a lot further along than fusion. After all, satellites in orbit regularly generate useful quantities of solar power, something fusion has never done. SSP's current budget: $0.

Interview with bloon's founder José Mariano Lopez Urdiales

There are two main customer categories for suborbital space flights:

1. Those that want “the experience” and
2. Those that want “the view”

Those seeking “the experience” could be adventure seekers valuing the high-g’s, motion sickness, and perceived danger; they could be floaters valuing the micro-gravity free-floating opportunities; or they could be scientists valuing some aspect of the flight profile.

Those seeking “the view” want to see the curvature of the earth, view earth landmarks, see the blackness of space, or take pictures of the stars. These people want an eye-witness account of what space looks like more than an account of what space feels like.

Although most potential customers in category one (“the experience” seekers) are also in category two (“the view” seekers). I doubt the reverse is true. In fact for Virgin Galactic and XCOR, which will be offering suborbital rides that include both both categories of experiences, these companies will sell tickets to "the view" seekers only if there is not a viable alternative for low-intensity, “view only” trips.

Enter an alternative: bloon.

bloon is the first product of Spanish startup, zero2infinity, offering customers “the view” of space while enduring a less intense balloon-based ascent instead of a rocket one. The images above are illustrations from the bloon website.

Here is a quick comparison between the two suborbital offerings - excuse the gross generalizations in the rocktet column:



Below is a video where zero2infinity flies the Spanish Soccer team’s red jersey to 33km highlighting the team's recent success at this year’s World Cup. After the video is my interview with zero2infinity’s founder, José Mariano Lopez Urdiales about his plan for the company.



And now my interview with zero2infinity’s founder, José Mariano Lopez Urdiales.

Project-related Questions:

Q: What is bloon? Can you give a summary of your company’s suborbital balloon experience?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: Seeing the curvature of the horizon, a black starry sky under a white hot sun and the Earth atmosphere as a blue thin layer protecting our planet from the harshness of the cosmos. It’s a visual experience that many people would like to enjoy. Well, bloon is my company’s solution to the problem of offering that view in a safe, sustainable and enjoyable manner.

Four flight participants lift off vertically in a pressurized piloted pod. The pod soars to near space with the aid of a helium sail. It spends two hours at a cruising altitude of about 36km. The choice of altitude is optimal in terms of experience and safety because it is high enough so that the human eye can appreciate all the visual cues of suborbital flight and not too high to complicate the return with a high-speed re-entry. Flight participants will be able to gaze at our planet through panoramic windows; this is possible because our speeds are always relatively low. Different customers will want to do different things while they are up there, listen to the explanations from the pilots, eat, pray, write a poem, it’s left to their imagination. Every bloon flight is a bespoke experience and privacy can be provided on board. The descent procedure starts and the pod lands on a predefined spot using a guided parafoil and vented airbags. We’ve selected textile-based decelerators because they’ve proven to be the most reliable and safe way of coming back into the atmosphere and landing. The Russian, Chinese, early American and most new American real spacecraft designers seem to agree.

Q: What are the remaining milestones between today and commercial operations?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: We are halfway through our fundraising and expect to be done by the end of 2010. The next major milestone is to fly a first human. That will be an experimental flight and could happen as early as late 2011. In 2012 will be mostly busy testing. Then we’ll go through the certification period, first with EASA and later on with the FAA. Certification is a complex issue, many steps have to be certified, the company, the vehicle, the operators, etc. We expect the first commercial operations to take place somewhere between 2013 and 2015.

Q: You mentioned on your website the potential for participants to experience one-third, one-sixth, or microgravity during a portion of the experience. Describe how this is achieved and how long that portion of the experience might last.

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: Once the pod separates from the balloon, it free-falls and a stabilizer parachute is deployed. The parachute can regulate how much it opens using a cord at its rim. A control system operates that cord using as data input the acceleration felt by the pod. This technique can reproduce different acceleration profiles. Typically lower acceleration levels can be sustained for shorter times. Thus microgravity can be felt for about 20s and lunar gravity could be about a minute and so on.

Q: What training would I need as a participant?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: Strictly speaking, with a half a day briefing on security procedures it should be enough. However many participants will likely enjoy other preparatory activities to make the most of their flight. These may include, space photography, basic astronomy, discussions with scientists providing scientific piggyback payloads, etc.

Q: And now a personal question from looking at the graphics on your website, does the bloon cabin include a drink bar and bathroom? With such a long experience(!), as a participant, I would probably appreciate both?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: bloon does include both as we want our clients to be as comfortable as possible and to really enjoy the experience. Food to the taste of the clients can also be provided.

Business-related Questions:

Q: What is your source of company funding (Grants, Friends/Family, Angels, VC’s, Bank Loans, etc.)?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: After a year funding it myself, I’ve been blessed with angels that have been able to propel the project beyond what I could achieve with my own resources.

Q: How much funding do you need to raise (and how much have you raised to date)?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: The whole project requires about €16M in capital. I cannot disclose the amount committed to date as we are in the middle of a funding round.

Q: Your price point of $100K per ticket is half of Virgin Galactic’s. Talk about your pricing strategy (why not $10K, why not $200K?).

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: You are correct about the ticket price. From our experience, there is another metric that is as important as the ticket, that is the price per minute of experience. Since the view from near space is the core of the experience (who would pay to fly on a windowless spacecraft?), our price is over an order of magnitude below rocket-based alternatives.

We have to cover our costs and make a profit and that sets a minimum, we could not do $10K with our current technology. We are also very keen to provide highly customized solutions such as taking off and landing from a part of the world, or flying into a solar eclipse, to customers willing and able to afford such extras.

Q: Do you see a market in scientific applications?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: Definitely. Just as suborbital reusable crewed rockets are an improvement over conventional sounding rockets, and specific programs like NASA’s CRuSR will support them, bloon signifies an improvement over conventional high altitude balloons. Regardless of the overall density of the means to reach near-space (heavier or lighter than air), having a human physically in the loop is an outstanding advantage for research. If it is valuable at labs at ground level and on orbit as well, I do not see why it would not be valuable for intermediate altitudes.

Q: What has been your greatest success to date with bloon?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: With so much to do I tend to move on and think of the next steps and challenges rather than reflect on any particulars events of success. If pressured I’d say: we’ve flown and successfully recovered a pressurized scaled prototype to near space altitudes.

Q: What has been your greatest disappointment (or challenge) with bloon, to date?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: I had this romantic idea of the venture capital firms as risk takers and out-of-the-box thinkers that, like free spirits, partner with entrepreneurs to change the world at a profit. Well, I have utterly failed to find any of that, and that was a disappointment. Fortunately, other ways of getting funded exist. And if there are any VCs reading that want to prove me wrong, I’d love to hear from you.

Q: What is your next big challenge to overcome?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: We are very much concentrated in our first piloted flight to near space.

Q: Your company is founded in Spain, talk about the experience of starting a space-related company in Spain, with its business and regulatory environment.

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: For some reason many of the brightest students in Spain tend to pick aerospace engineering as a career choice. From my experience in the USA, France and the Netherlands that is not the case there. Law, Computer Science or Biotech are much better magnets for talent there. Full labor costs (wages + insurances) in Spain are significantly lower than in most other advanced economies. Another huge advantage is the absence of ITAR restrictions. We will be able to fly passengers from any nationality, regardless of the embargo status of their home nation. This is an incredible advantage over firms developing in the USA. And the weather here is amazing, which is equally good for quality of life and test flying.

Q: You have attended the International Space University’s Summer Session. Talk about that experience and how it affected this project. Would you recommend ISU’s Summer Session to other budding Space Entrepreneurs?

José Mariano Lopez Urdiales: I would highly recommend the ISU experience; it really helps to get things to happen. I went to ISU in the Chilean winter of 2000 for their two months program. There I worked on two projects, one the creation of a Chilean Space Agency and the other one was titled Space Tourism: from dream to reality. I find remarkable that in 2001 the Agency was setup along the lines of the white paper we prepared at ISU and that very year the first so-called space tourist, Dennis Tito flew to the ISS. That report was the first time I wrote, and as far as I know anybody else, how balloons can offer the benefits that private space explorers desire.