62 Mile Club

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• NZ rocket blasts off – and so will profits, maker says
• Rocket launch brings back memories
• Booster of New Zealand rocket found, payload still missing

From the Wall Street Journal

Last week, NASA scientists discovered that the moon contains water, a “significant amount,” said Anthony Colaprete, who oversaw the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission. He said NASA found enough water to fill a dozen two-gallon buckets. Click here for the WSJ story.

As far as stories go, this falls both in the “neat-o!” and “potentially important” categories, writes the Journal’s Jonathan Rockoff. The discovery means lunar scientists can move on to questions about the source of the water and its distribution on the moon, which could shed light on the history of the solar system. The discovery could also make further human exploration of the moon possible.

To others, the discovery heightens the possibility that we might be able to collect valuable resources from the moon. And it’s that possibility that gets the lawyers thinking, naturally, about rights and ownership.

Click here for the full story and interview with Timothy G. Nelson, an attorney.

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/11/18/theres-water-on-the-moon-but-who-owns-it/

Source Global Post

Franklin Chang Diaz has great aspirations for his rocket: a mail-carrier for outer space, a garbage truck for orbital debris and, the ultimate goal, a shuttle to Mars.

The Costa Rica-born physicist speaks nonchalantly about the day humankind will have moved entirely to outer space, while our precious Earth becomes “a protected park.”

“Our great grandchildren will always be able to come back [to Earth] from wherever they happen to live and see where their ancestors and culture came from,” said the former NASA astronaut who is now president and CEO of the Ad Astra Rocket Company.

Full article here.

Note that Dr. Franklin Cheng Diaz was a featured participant at Space Investment Summit 7 in Boston.

Source: Influence Communications

Cost-effective on all fronts

Montreal, November 3, 2009 – Having received special permission from its client Cirque du Soleil, Influence Communication has been authorized to release the results of its financial assessment of the media coverage generated by Guy Laliberté’s spaceflight. The total advertising value of the news item’s worldwide media coverage (radio, television, Internet and newspaper) between June 4 and October 14, 2009, stands at CAN$592,425,679.34. It has also been evaluated that 92% of this value was realized between the peak period of September 30 and October 14, during which the One Drop Foundation show was broadcast. This is a conservative estimate, because despite the fact that a media article or report carries much more credibility than an advertisement, the analysts at Influence did not assign added weight to the news value, applying instead a 1 to 1 ratio.

In general, all major media outlets reported the news, giving it a moderate amount of attention. Based on the readership and audience monitoring of the various media, it is estimated that approximately 878.8 million people may have been exposed to the news in 71 countries. Of these, 23% were Americans. The news item carried by the electronic media represented more than 28,300 minutes of airtime, the equivalent of 19.6 days of continuous broadcasting.

With 92.5% of the coverage value, television was the primary witness to the event, broadcasting reports averaging 1 minute 57 seconds in length. It was calculated that 73.5% of the televised coverage value originated abroad.

The average length of newspaper and Internet articles was 270 words. However, in all of the large markets, certain major dailies published articles of a half-page or longer.

Full article here

The Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC)

The Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC) will be held February 18–20, 2010, at The Millennium Harvest House Boulder, 1345 28th Street, Boulder, Colorado, 80302.

	PURPOSE AND SCOPE
		A new generation of space vehicles capable of economically delivering payloads and researchers is coming on line beginning in 2010. These vehicles will revolutionize space access by providing frequent, low-cost access to space and the capability to carry research and education crew members.  They will also carry experiments for technology demonstrations, for scientist in-the-loop research, and for educational/public outreach demonstrations. Fields including atmospheric science, solar physics, microgravity science, planetary science, space life science, space physics, and education and public outreach (EPO) stand to benefit from these vehicles. NSRC2010 will provide a forum to learn about the research and EPO capabilities of these new systems, their experiments, and EPO integration processes.  NSRC2010 will also provide input on vehicle design requirements for science and education. The conference aims to bring together researchers from government, industry, and academia.  The objectives of the NSRC2010, therefore, are to educate a broad array of research communities to the opportunities that the new wave of human suborbital vehicles offer for research and education missions (REM); to hear from this broad array of researchers what their questions, feedback, and ideas are for REM applications and REM user requirements; to demonstrate strong interest by working researchers and education/public outreach representatives to NASA, the National Institute of Health (NIH), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the National Science Foundation (NSF), industry, and other potential funding entities for REM applications.

The link below  to the U.S. Office of Space Commercialization is also posted on our resources section of 62Mileclub.com

From their website.

Department of Commerce’s role in promoting U.S. leadership in space commerce through the Office of Space Commercialization and other Commerce organizations. Its mission is to foster the conditions for the economic growth and technological advancement of the U.S. commercial space industry.

The Office focuses on several sectors of the space commerce industry, including satellite navigation, commercial remote sensing, space transportation, entrepreneurial “New Space” activities, and space-based solar power. The Office also participates in broad governmental discussions of national space policy and other space-related issues

http://www.space.commerce.gov/

S0urce BBC

He is the man of the moment – Elon Musk, the chief designer and CEO of SpaceX.

The guy can be forgiven for feeling a little stressed right now.

He admitted as much to the BBC when we went to see him at his Hawthorne, California facility last week. SpaceX is getting very close to the maiden flight of the Falcon 9 rocket, and Musk knows that the eyes of the world will be watching:

Full article here.

Source Pilotonline.com

A new aviation business park and long, isolated runways in eastern North Carolina could be keys to attracting commercial space-travel companies here, according to experts who attended a forum Thursday at Elizabeth City State University.

Leaders in the industry spoke during the daylong NewSpace Commerce Forum, including Jeff Greason, CEO of XCor Aerospace in California; Robert Richards, CEO of Odyssey Moon Lt d.; and Jeff Krukin, a consultant in the field who helped organize the forum.

It was the first forum of its kind in North Carolina, Krukin said Friday.

“The opportunities now are better than they have ever been in North Carolina,” he said in an interview.

Full article here.

Source Cosmic Log by Alan Boyle

Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute who is helping suborbital science get off the ground. During today’s sesson of the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in Las Cruces, N.M., Stern figured that private-sector spaceships could accommodate 1,000 small-scale research missions annually at $100,000 each.

The resulting total – $100 million a year – is roughly equivalent to the fares that would be paid out by 500 high-rolling passengers on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane. Those potential profits have led Stern to assert that research could be more of a “killer app” for suborbital space ventures than tourism.

Full article here.