Space Transportation Technical Committee
Meeting Minutes – 23-24 February 2010
The committee met on 23 February 2010 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
Attendees:
 Peter Montgomery
 Carl Ehrlich
 Randy Kendall
 Chuck Larsen
 Tony Taylor
 Pete Covell
 Pat Goulding II
 Allison Zuniga
 Robert Conger
 Tony Ginn
 Sol Culbertson
 Frank Stirling
 Pat Fresh
 Donald D. Smith
 Eileen Wyckoff
 Bob Wyckoff
 Bob Tarn
 John Cochran
 Pete Green
 James Stossel
 Jason Hundley
 Karl Obermeyer
 Daniel Silva
 Eric Rice
 Fred Blomshield
 Dennis Poulos
 Clinton Plaisted
 Gary Moir
 William H. Guoan
 Josh Hopkins (by phone)
 Robert Bruce (by phone)

Welcome and Introductions (Tony and All) -

Wake Up Story (Carl Ehrlich) – Talking dog story

Approval of Previous Meeting Minutes (Randy) – Minutes of previous meeting were read back by Randy Kendall and approved by the committee.

Review of Open Action Items (Randy) o Action: Tony Taylor to define vision for what the SE subcommittee should be doing besides monitoring the inactive SE PC. Bernard and others to have a discussion over a beer tonight.
 Status: Open: Tony has notes from discussion and will publish notes o Action: Membership actions to Knauf and Kendall to talk to Col. Gary Henry about joining.
Janet will work on Col. Tom Steele. Someone from AFRL? Invite someone from RLV PC?
Bernard Kutter knows someone from Japan that wants to join. Doug Stanley also will pursue
Asian contact as well as student advisors to design competition. Note to all the applications need to be input through the AIAA system.
 Status: Gary Henry has joined. Gentlemen from Japan will be added o Action: All members need to be thinking of appropriate nominations for George M. Low
Space Transportation Award to be submitted to AIAA.
 Status: Nominations are now closed. o Action: Tony Williams will chase down whoever is doing the awards luncheon and have them announce that nominations are open for next awards
 Status: Closed during meeting

o Action: Susan Elrod will look into getting a banner put on AIAA website to ask for nominations
 Status: Closed. o Action: All members should submit their ideas for the abstract for student design competition to Brian Bjelde for 2010-2011.
 Status: Closed via email. o Action: Tim Bulk will look into organizing a short course that TC could give.
 Status: OPEN. Need to talk to Tim o Action: Peter Montgomery to email today presentation by Josh Hopkins to the TC.
 Status: Closed. o Action: If interested in being on oversight committee for Aerospace America contact Betty
Guillie, (703)264-7573, bettyg@aiaa.org
 Status: Closed.

Additions and Modifications to Agenda (All) o Paper on parachute testing and requirements creep added o Expecting visitor to talk about California Space authority o During launch Carl will talk about trip to Kourou

Membership Subcommittee Report (Suzy, Janet, All) o Did file updated roster for TC for coming year on Feb. 2 nd . Rolled off 4 members that were inactive, added 5 new members (Koji Shimura-Mitsubishi Heavy Industries,
Bob Tarn, Col. Henry- LRSW Wing Commander, Miroslav Sir-Aerospace Corp., Robert
Richards – Orbital Sciences , Clinton Plaisted – A.I. Solutions-KSC)
 Conferences Subcommittee Report (Leo Daniel) o Allison for Leo: o Space 2010 call for papers is closed, Track Chair Chuck Larsen, Tim Bulk co-chair,
Peter is Technical Chairman, we requested 8 paper sessions requested - anticipate 7,
10 panel sessions, requested – looking for volunteers for paper session chairs –
15/16 session chairs – email Chuck at chuck.larsen@msn.com
. Very good response overall for abstracts, 411 overall o Action: Email to Chuck Larsen ideas for a greybeard (lessons learned) session in space transportation for the Space 2010 conference o Responsive Space 8, March 8-11, 2010, Westin hotel in LA – Track Chair is Bob
Conger o JPC 2010 – 25-28 July, Nashville, Leo Daniel track chair , Mark Benton co-chair, paper session chairs are covered, NASA will probably withdraw participation in sessions involving Constellation or Ares, may also affect Space 2010 o JPC 2011 – Mark Benton has to drop out and therefore – Need new Track chair as well as Co-track chair – email Leo if interested o Space 2011 – Need track Chair and co-chair – email Leo if interested

Education & Awards Subcommittee Report (Chuck Larsen) o Awards – Allison trying to contact – for George M. Low - Received one nomination, one re-cycled from last year, needed a minimum of 3 to make an award,

o Brian on his honeymoon. Abstract for next year’s contest has been approved by
AIAA: Design and analysis of economic benefit of Fuel Depots. Need to write the
RFP and get it issued by 1 May 2010. Current topic for this semester is Human
Asteroid exploration systems. Proposals will be due in June to review in June and
July and Brian will be looking for people to review them. They are ~100 pages (limit) in length. Award will be made at Space 2010.
 o Short course – open action for Tim Bulk
Mid Morning Break
 Public Policy Subcommittee Report (Leon McKinney) o Leon was not available to give report, Upcoming Congressional Visits Day is 16-17
March, Leon McKinney, Tony Taylor and Eric Rice will be attending. o US Hypersonic industry team will also meet the day before or after CVD – contact
Leon McKinney to get more information o Suggestion from Bruce that we hold a speakers day to get input for CVD o Action: Tony Taylor to bring some resolution to re-invigorating a speaker’s day. Due date: for the next meeting. Peter will look into inviting other TCs as well to ensure robust attendance

Space Exploration Subcommittee Report (Tony Taylor) o Originally stood up to interact with the SE PC. The PC has literally done nothing in the last year, so we have not done much. Peter: the space exploration PC declined an invitation to chair a track at Space 2010. Suggestion that we should coordinate with them and maybe take a leadership role in encouraging them. Discussion on where we might take the SE subcommittee took place at Space 2009, and Tony needs to publish minutes. Tony looking for somebody to take over subcommittee. o Carl: Whole suborbital commercial industry is really starting to ramp up in interest, should we add this to our agenda? o There is an RLV PC – what is the coordinating function with the STTC. Tony – we are sharing some sessions with the RLV PC at Space 2010. We should invite each other to our meetings? o Action: Dennis Poulos to communicate desire to RLV PC, coordinate with Peter and
Tony on some joint activities for Space 2010 o Action: Randy Kendall to find out what the latest publicly releasable version of the
Spacelift Development Plan is that can be shared with the STTC at the next meeting

Publications Subcommittee Report (Carl Ehrlich) o Year in review article – published in Aerospace America in December 2009, we were limited to 1 page instead of 2, which made it really challenging to cut from 3000-
4000 words of input, to ~600. Thanks to all who contributed. o Web site – Susan Elrod – we are in the process of transitioning to the new
Sharepoint site. Previous content has been transferred but needs to be updated.
Need help to update the various content pages. o Action: If you can help with transfer of information from old web site to new
Sharepoint site please contact Susan Elrod

o Launch Guide – Josh Hopkins – got permission and funding at the end of last year, but the new President’s space exploration budget has throw everything into chaos,
The goal is still to work on it this year and get it issued next year. o Wind Tunnel – The project has been completed by the GTTC Wind Tunnel Database
Working Group. It was presented at the recent ASM conference in Orlando. It may be accessed at: http://www.gttcfacilities.com
, or to go to the GTTC site: https://info.aiaa.org/tac/ASG/GTTC/default.aspx
and click on the GTTC facilities database link on the right side of the page. Future plans are to move the database to the AIAA system from the Vigyan host.
 Treasurer Report (Carl Ehrlich) o We have $7, 837.10 in our account. We will spend a little at this meeting, but still have lots of funds for what we do. o Bonus – Carl’s flying lawnmower video!
 Peter’s Role as TAC Director – Deputy Director of Space and Missiles Group o STTC is part of the Space and Missiles Group (SMG) o TAC Updates – New awards being considered. Both an opportunity and concern as many committees are struggling with getting enough nominations to present an award. TAC waiver policy will not change – TC members cannot be considered for award their committees present. o AIAA is continuing to make progress in co-location to partner with other conferences o New conference activities – International Conference for Environmental Systems,
Centennial of Naval Aviation, consider hosting the 2013 IAC meeting o IT Updates – 80% of TCs, 30% of PCs migrating to Sharepoint. ScholarOne Abstract
Central is now being used for several conferences. Making aiaa.org easier to navigate and search. o CVD will be 16-17 March in DC o Exhibit advisory committee raised concerns about increasing traffic to exhibit area.
If they don’t get the traffic, companies will not be willing to spend the $$ to sponsor the conferences. o New SMG Organization – added new Deputy
 Tony Williams – member services
 Grant Anderson – public policy TC cooperation
 Peter Montgomery – Products – publications/conferences
 Karen Barker
 Also will have TCs assigned to a deputy for coordination across SMG o Best TC Metrics – new metrics in work will disseminate when available
 Awards and levels - $1000/500/250 to 1 st-3rd place TCs
 Surveys due 12/31/10 o Exceptional service award – recognition for outstanding contributions from a TC member (including chairs) – awarded as warranted with annual calls for nominations
– TC chairs and SMG deputy director can nominate at any time o Associate Fellow nominations are due on April 15 th - Peter Montgomery made associate fellow this year

o Peter’s SMG Vision and goals – SMG technical excellence – “the standard” within
AIAA and beyond
 Maintain & Grow SMC conference and publications technical quality
 Preserve critical SMG technical knowledge
 Broaden the SMC Technical Excellence Impact
 Accelerate Impact through Increased SMG collaboration
 SMG STARS Team Goals – to build team unity within the TCs under his purview – Look at joint activities, conference tracks or sessions, one lessons learned session at a conference on non-conference, put together one document on technical preservation, hold one young professional/student activity at a TC/PC meeting, invite at least 1 young professional speaker to each TC/PC meeting, share at least one best practice with another TC, support CVD with at least one TC member, increase support to at least one new conference, implement the Space 2010 technical model, support development of technical quality guidance documents o Tony Taylor – Explosive Nut Nominee – “Do we need to multiply our workload by a factor of three if Aerospace is independently reviewing our abstracts.”

Gary Moyer is helping to put together an Apollo 13 greybeard session for the 40 th anniversary of Apollo 13 on 17 April, at the North American/Rockwell/Boeing facility on
Lakewood Blvd. in Downey

Paper Presentation: Patrick W. Goulding II (co-author Douglas S. Adams) – Addressing
Requirements Creep and Other Challenges in the Mars Science Laboratory Full-Scale
Parachute Decelerator Test Series - extremely large scale of test led to high degree of uncertainty in test requirements and hence requirements creep throughout test (lighting and video, accounting for dynamics due to area oscillations, schedule/budget contingencies)

Nick Pelster – Technical Director of California Space Authority – Role to produce Voice,
Visibility and Edge to promote space-related activities in California. Help promote and advocate for commercial, military and civil space. o California supports between 5,500-7,500 California aerospace suppliers, 3 commercial spaceports: Mojave Air and Space port, SSI at VAFB, and Sea Launch
Port. Total economic impact of California Space in 2007 was $76 Billion, ~44% of US space market. o Major initiatives: CA enterprise advisory council/strategic plan, CA Space Week in
Wash DC, California Space Day in Sacramento, Annual spot beam awards dinner, roundtables, Aerospace Supplier and Innovative Asset portals, Lunar Regolith simulant testbed at NASA Ames-NASA Centennial challenges. California Innovation
Corridor/WIRED - $15 million Dept. of Labor investment. o Sister organization: California Space Education and Workforce Institute. o California Space Center under development – right outside the gate of VAFB, with a
Visitors Center and youth and adult education and conference center, mission support center, Tourism – peak at 500,000 visitors per year.
 Lunch

o Carl reviewed recent TC trip to Kourou
 Wake Up Story 2 (Carl Ehrlich) – Piece of Road, Cycle Path
 2010-2012 Vision & Goals (Tony Taylor) o If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! o Continuous Improvement and Education o Challenges – loss of critical technical expertise, STEM, downturn in economy and revectoring of exploration program o Increase Archived Space Transportation Technical Information – technical archives and producing short course – what can we do as a TC to preserve knowledge, and from a policy perspective, what can we do with AIAA at the National level? Lots of archives in people’s garages or in the local dumps, or in massive archives where no one knows what is there – how do we prevent this going forward? o Provide continued focus on Technical Excellence o Grow the space transportation engineers and leaders of tomorrow o Eric Rice: Expressing frustration that the administration’s new space policy has killed the goal that motivates people to get interested in space transportation and exploration. Advocating for taking action and being more vocal to fight for a mission to focus the technology development and so that people can get excited about it.
Eileen Wyckoff – this is a policy issue, need to go to CVD, if you can’t, get your whole section to write letters to your senator/congressman. Technical committees need to get together with the policy committees and have workshops or presentations to the congressional delegations to educate them.
o Action: Tony Taylor to investigate AIAA support to bring in speakers

Election of Officers o Vice Chair
 Allison Zuniga – Was the sole nominee for the Vice Chair, was affirmed by unanimous voice vote o Exploration Sub-Committee
 Jason Hundley nominated to assess whether we need an exploration subcommittee

Great Debate: Format used to be different. We would pick position paper issues and pick 2 people to take pro and con. Use more formal debate structure? o Potential Future Topics
 Commercial crew transportation – is it a good idea for the US government to cede their responsibility/intellectual capacity for developing manned spaceflight, either for civil space or military
 Do we need heavy lift capability, and if so should, it be shuttle derived, should development be commercial/govt./ or (Shuttle/Saturn model)
 Round Table - Where is this all going? - Jason Hundley o Analysis of current NASA budget – Zero Point Frontiers did this analysis for their own purposes, as well as to support questions from their NASA customers o Looked FY08-FY15 timeframe – new FY11 request is ~$10 billion less than original
Exploration vision request, and ~30 billion less than the peak ESA request – lots of really good data, see Jason’s charts for details

o NASA budget is projected to be at historically low levels as a percentage of overall government spending. Not having a clear vision to rally around will not help in defending the budget that remains. There is one theory that this is a deliberate shift to drive NASA back to a NACA-like model.
 Future Meetings o JPC – Planned Tour of AEDC – Peter’s preliminary plan
 From JPC in Nashville – stay in Manchester, TN, or Tullahoma, TN if arriving from Huntsville
 Wednesday, 28 July – Do grey beard session at Univ. of Tennessee, TC
Welcome dinner – historic high point restaurant
 Thursday, 29 July – TC meeting at AEDC, tour J6 rocket test facility, space sensor testing facilities, arc jet test facilities, aerodynamic and propulsion test facilities, hypervelocity ballistic range G o April – Wallops, Alison should provide update
 Requested conference room at Wallops the week of April 10 th , probably 13-
14 April, first day meeting, second day tours o Space 2010 - Anaheim – Time and Date of TC meeting TBD

Eric Rice o Gentleman named Steckler willed money to be used for studies related to Space
Colonization. Eric’s company has Phase 1 grant with U-W Green Bay. o Study of space law in terms of the property rights on the moon – There is nothing valuable enough on the moon that you can bring back and recoup the investment necessary to get there. The law saws Nations cannot claim or own land on celestial bodies, but individuals and corporations Can! You have to go there, make your claim, and do something within 10 years. o Trying to get congress to pass an act to promote and recognize privately funded space exploration and human settlement on the moon – the idea is to create value in the form of a deed that could be legally sold back on earth to allow for recovery of the investment necessary to get there. o For this TC, what is the architecture for a space transportation system (space line) that could reliably and cost-effectively go to the moon and back. o Request: Eric is looking for comments on these documents. Email address and phone number on the back of the act. Will provide a link to a web site.

Explosive Nut Award o Clinton Plaisted – Win’s the explosive nut award for his comment, piling on Tony
Taylor’s comment on the Aerospace “factor of three” workload comment – “that’s not that unreasonable”
 Adjourn
th

Summary of Open Actions:

Action: Tony Taylor to publish notes from discussion at last September 2009 discussion on vision for what the SE subcommittee should be doing besides monitoring the inactive SE PC.

Action: Tim Bulk will look into organizing a short course that TC could give.

Action: All TC members - email to Chuck Larsen ideas for a greybeard (lessons learned) session in space transportation for the Space 2010 conference

Action: Tony Taylor to bring some resolution to re-invigorating a speaker’s day. Due date: for the next meeting. Peter will look into inviting other TCs as well to ensure robust attendance
 Action: Dennis Poulos to communicate with RLV PC on desire for closer ties with STTC, coordinate with Peter and Tony on some joint activities for Space 2010
 Action: Randy Kendall to find out what the latest publicly releasable version of the Spacelift
Development Plan is that can be shared with the STTC at the next meeting
 Action: All TC members - if you can help with updating information on new Sharepoint web site please contact Susan Elrod
 Action: Tony Taylor to investigate AIAA support to bring in speakers