So the blogosphere is getting all worked up about an article run by Space News and authored by two former senior European Space Agency launcher officials that attacks sub-orbital tourism and hopes for commercial orbital transport

Hyperbola stresses the word former as it is clear that ESA's leadership does not share these views. The organisation has a policy on space tourism that could see ESA provide training, the agency has managed European Union studies about sub-orbital transport and the agency has even gone as far as helping prospective companies with their business plans and declaring that sub-orbit travel has a low (relatively speaking) carbon footprint. Former European astronauts like space tourism too

Videos from what used to be called the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight and is now the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight have been posted online care of Spaceport Sweden. Above is a video with Commercial Spaceflight Federation chairman and New Mexico Spaceport Authority executive director Steve Landeene and the other videos can be found here. The ISPCS took place this year from 21-22 October

Watch this video of the Internatonal Astronautical Congress in Daejeon, Korea where Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn, Sierra Nevada vice president Mark Sirangelo, the FAA's head of commercial space transportation George Nield and New Mexico space grant consortium director Pat Hynes spoke about private access to space

Go here for more IAC2009 videos

credit: IAF/KARI

So Hyperbola has finally touched down in Daejeon in south Korea, after a scorching reentry from the Oort cloud, or was that just the effect of the Korean spicy Kimchi pickle and the even more spicy red pepper paste, Kochu Chang, they put on most of their food?

Either way it is a countdown now to the start of the 60th International Astronautical Congress and the space agencies' plenary session, so expect pictures and pithy comment from this blog as the week unfolds with everything from grand human exploration visions to suborbital tourism

But it won't end with Hyperbola's Asiana flight out of Seoul next weekend, oh no, the international space theme continues with the AIAA/DLR International hypersonics and spaceplanes conference in Bremen, Germany next week

Hyperbola is launching to the Oort cloud for a week's R&R from today and will be returning via Daejeon, Korea from the 12 October. In Daejeon Hyperbola will be blogging from the International Astronautical Congress, where the world's space community meets. And yes there may even be Virgin Galactic news there...

Congressional support for NASA's return to the Moon Constellation programme can now be seen to have made a material impact on efforts to get commercial ventures underway, in this story on flightglobal.com

Back in April Hyperbola reported how the $150 million for commercial would likely be spent and in an answer to this journalist's question during a 7 May 2009 Space Operations Mission Directorate budget telecon SOMD head William Gestenmaire explained what accelerating out-year cargo flights meant for the human rating work for possible commercial crew

And with the announcement of the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) programme in the thrid quarter, along with the earlier publication of the $150 million figure, the future looked bright for private transportation

But looking back at open sources on what went on from May to September, while everyone was focused on the Review of US human space flight plans committee, it can be seen that commercial crew and cargo has had a rough time

If starting and then stopping, within a week, a procurement process for human rating commercial crew transport vehicles  seems strange then the sum of money that came attached might seem even stranger

NASA has told Hyperbola: "We received a total of $1 million in recovery act funds for human rating commercial crew vehicles."

And "Yes, that is just one million."

According to the space agency "In spite of that statement in the [human rating study procurement synopsis saying only Orbital and SpaceX could apply] there was so much interest from other companies that NASA decided it needed to move to a position where those other companies could comment, thus an [Request For Information]."

But why only $1 million in the first place? Hyperbola will answer that question and more tomorrow

On 8 September NASA began a procurment process for a human rating study for its commercial crew and cargo programme and then abruptly cancelled it on 15 September

NASA told Hyperbola: "We received inputs from a large number of aerospace companies that they would also like to participate in the Human Rating studies. We did not have enough Recovery Act money to pay for everyone that wanted to participate so we decided to cancel the synopsis and do the work in-house with civil servants and their existing support contractors. When the Human Rating products are completed in approximately March 2010, NASA plans to release the products for industry-wide review and comment through a NASA Request For Information (RFI)."

Not enough to pay for everyone? Don't they have $49 million for this? Existing support contractors on work like this probably includes Aerospace Corporation

Of course March 2010 nicely pushes this RFI out beyond the February publication of president Barack Obama's fiscal year 2011 budget request and whatever human spaceflight announcement the Obama administration has to make before that publication

What does this say about commercial crew's future?

UPDATE: I have just noticed that the original synopsis said (text changed to lower case and edited for clarity): "Competition for this opportunity is available only to contractors under fixed-price competitively awarded indefinite delivery indefinite quantity NASA Commercial Resupply Services [contractors Orbital sciences corporation and Space Exploration Technologies]."

So if only two companies could bid for this why are they talking about having too many interested parties? Either NASA wants to widen human rating work to include transport systems proposed by Commercial Crew Development programme funded space act agreement winners (being selected in November) or commercial crew is dead in the water

In a surprise move that may see Lockheed frozen out of a Bigelow, Commercial Crew Development progamme collaboration the Boeing company has announced its teaming with Bigelow

 

Boeing Submits Proposal for NASA Commercial Crew Transport System

ST. LOUIS, Sept. 23, 2009 -- The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] submitted a proposal to NASA on Sept. 22 to accelerate the development of commercial human space transportation as defined by NASA in its Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) announcement. Boeing's submission, which draws on the company's experience with proven human-rated spacecraft, proposes development of technologies that will mature its Commercial Crew Transportation System concept.

NASA's CCDev initiative is intended to stimulate private-sector development of a commercially managed system that could be used to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station, Bigelow Aerospace's Orbital Space Complex, and other potential destinations in low Earth orbit.

On Friday 4 September I spoke to former NASA astronaut and Excalibur Almaz (EA) executive vice president for technical operations Leroy Chiao about the commercial orbital tourism venture that is using Soviet developed space vehicles. In the extended portion of this blog post are my notes from that telecon, facts that did not necessarily find their way into either this analysis article about the vehicles in development today or this article about Excalibur Almaz's plans and some comment