First, thank you for your support of the Space Studies Institute. SSI was founded on the principle that the technology we develop to industrialize and settle space is our best hope for the future. SSI’s mission is to help complete the missing technical steps to open the High Frontier. SSI does this by supporting research and holding conferences to:
1. Determine the critical path to space settlement
2. Identify missing technology
3. Fund the development of that technology
Over the past three decades, your contributions have laid the groundwork for Burt Rutan’s X Prize winning SpaceShipOne, XCOR’s suborbital spacecraft Lynx, and the first production of engineering materials from lunar resources. You have also helped propel discovery of hydrogen at the lunar poles, a workable design for a closed all biological life-support system, three generations of mass driver engines, and the discovery of the Near Earth Object population.
It seemed to Professor Dyson and me that the key technology to make SSI’s research worthwhile was a mature space transportation system. Without affordable space access, any additional time, money and talent SSI would spend developing technologies for use in space would be premature and not cost-effective.
Accordingly, SSI’s most recent hardware project was an investment in XCOR Aerospace to support rocket engine pump development. DARPA matched SSI’s investment four to one. The cryogenic and propellant pump systems made possible by that SSI investment are an integral part of the propulsion system developed by the company for its fully reusable suborbital launch vehicle, the Lynx. The pumps not only boost the performance of its long-lasting 5K18 liquid oxygen-kerosene engines, they also permit XCOR to improve performance through use of lighter tanks that conform to the spacecraft’s aerodynamic shape.
These kinds of technical advances move us closer to affordable space access and are proof that SSI can make a difference through targeted investment in research and technological development.
Continue reading SSI Update December 2009 →