Yes, there is a connection, however tenuous it may be. The Republican challenger to Robert “Bob” Hull, a Democrat who represents the 38th District (covering a portion of Fairfax County in northern Virginia) in the House of Delegates, is B. Leland Cheung, who the Washington Post describes as a “space tourism entrepreneur”. The term “entrepreneur” might be a bit of a stretch: Cheung works for Space Adventures as its chief information officer, and has a satellite engineering background.
Space policy, as you might expect, is not a major issue in Virginia in general nor the 38th District, although the Post article notes that Cheung believes “his business experience and training as an engineer position him to help lead Virginia’s high-tech economy, and to help students acquire ‘the tools they need to reach for the stars.'” And you probably knew a quote like this would be coming from Cheung himself, regarding his opposition to a proposed gas tax increase: “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize we’re currently being overtaxed.”
While the article doesn’t include any polling information about the race, reading it leaves the impression that Cheung may be in a bit over his head in this campaign. While Del. Hull has raised $54,000, Cheung has raised less than a tenth of that, and is relying primarily on door-to-door campaigning; even that has proven tough. “I really haven’t had the time to dedicate to the campaign and to do the things I wanted to do,” he told the newspaper. “I had no idea the amount of work I was getting myself into.”
“I had no idea how much work I was getting into” would be a useful admission for a lot of alt.space entrepeneurs too.
That would assume that at sometime in the past someone had said it was easy. Its not and no one suggested it was. Many of the people at XCOR went without salaries for a long time. Most of us are taking huge paycuts to be in this business and we know the risks are huge.
If you’re going to say something like that at least have the courtesy to point out who you are refering to. Painting an entire industry with your personal assumptions about other people’s abilities and beliefs is a bit much…
No, even if you said all along that it would be hard, you should still have the humility to admit it if it’s much harder than you expected. Which is to say, you should not follow the example of the Bush administration in its doings in Iraq.
If I were to give one example of hubris in the alt.space business, I would quote Gary Hudson’s testimony to Congress:
But look at what happened to Mr. Confident’s company in the end. Even if I were equally confident about any of my own plans, I would not promise success and gifts to Congress.
Hey Greg, your schadenfreude is showing…..
I’d call what Gary was doing as marketing and sales. The only people that Gary should have told how hard it was or how hard they expected it to be was their investors.
Why do you have such an ax to grind about how hard or easy someone thinks some engineering or business task is?
If you want to call Congressional testimony “marketing”, it undercuts the claim that there would have been any real “gift” to the American taxpayer.
For that matter, when you said that everyone understands that alternative space efforts are hard, you didn’t explain that it only needs to be a secret that you whisper to investors. It rather shows contempt for customers to tell them the opposite of what you whisper on the inside. Especially if the “customer” is the United States government.
But really I think that Gary Hudson completely believed what he said. Which is to say, if he thought that his project was hard, he was also confident that it wasn’t too hard.
Greg, this is ridiculous. Of course it’s hard. Of course people have underestimated the difficulty. Both of these are common to every human endevour, from getting born or giving burth to going to school, from dating to getting your first job.
The point you seem to be making is that because it is hard, and because some have underestimated the difficulty — and because it doesn’t directly benefit some abstract notion you have of “science” — we shouldn’t be trying to do it. If that were the decision making process, we as a society would not be paying mathematics professors to carp from their ivory towers.
— Donald
“Which is to say, if he thought that his project was hard, he was also confident that it wasn’t too hard.”
Well, don’t you kind of have to believe that in order to make the case that it can be done? Or are you asking for people to say something like “this task is actually impossible and we’re all just in denial about it”?
And just to be clear here, the engineering is actually the easy bit (relatively speaking). Its the business side that’s hard. And its just as hard as building out any other new marketplace with a new technology no one knows they need or want yet.
Donald: No, that is not my point here. My point is, as I said, if your project turns out to be harder than you expected, you should admit it. I’m not saying that you should quit or not try. In fact, the very worst that you can do is to quit without admitting the reason. It isn’t good enough if you said all along that it would be hard, especially if you only whispered that wisdom to investors.
It has nothing to do with science. This is pure business. This is exactly what I would expect of any company that I might invest in. Nor is it an anti-space position — I once seriously considered buying stock in Orbital.
If it’s bad to deny unexpected difficulties in spaceflight (or anything else), it’s even worse to brag to Congress that there won’t be any. Would you ever do that?
Michael: The only honest approach to a throw as long as alternative spaceflight is, “I don’t know how hard this will be, but I will do my best.” That is exactly my message in my own grant proposals (which fortunately do not go straight to Congress).
If the engineering of the Rotary Rocket company was the easy part, that is at variance with what their main test pilot said in Aviation Now. Besides, Gary Hudson did not say that the business side was hard either, in the testimony that I linked. He said that the business side was a solved problem, and that the only real obstacle was government regulations.
In that case shouldn’t your comment have been:
“I had no idea how much work I was getting into” would be a useful admission for Gary Hudson too.
It takes a mighty big brush to paint “a lot of alt.space entrepreneurs” with that kind of claim based on one persons testimony that was meant as a marketing speech, not a 8-K SEC filing.
Watch the topic drift, please, gentlemen…
Michael: I have heard the idea that the engineering is not the hard part from several alt.space people, not just you and Gary Hudson. I really think that anyone who thinks so has something to learn about the difficulty of rocketry. (And I hope that Jeff can accept this general point as germane.)
I didn’t say it was easy. I said it was easy compared to the business side. If you can close a business case then the engineering will follow if its possible to do. I figured I didn’t have to explain what “relatively easy” meant…
And that’s my last on that….. sorry Jeff!
If the engineering of the Rotary Rocket company was the easy part, that is at variance with what their main test pilot said in Aviation Now.
Scaled Composites built the Rotary Rocket fuselage. That made the engineering easier for Rotary Rocket.
The guys at SC probably laughed their asses off, getting paid to build such a caroonishly goofy obvious loser.
I will bet that RR also subcontracted out most of its other engineering and manufacturing work, and that RR was in fact a false store front and shell company posing as a aerospace start-up firm. Oh yeah, enigneering was the easy part at Rotary Rocket.
I will bet that RR also subcontracted out most of its other engineering and manufacturing work, and that RR was in fact a false store front and shell company posing as a aerospace start-up firm.
You would lose.
All of Rotary’s propulsion work was engineered, developed and tested in house. This is, in fact, the origin of XCOR.
Yes, Rotary Racket’s crack propulsion engineering department, who had an easy time of it:
… … Before there was XCOR, there was Rotary Rocket Company, which hired Jeff Greason and Dan DeLong to do propulsion. Jeff married his wife Carrine before moving to the Mojave Desert to join Rotary Rocket. The Space Review caught up with her in Los Angeles at Dennis Tito’s house and asked her some questions there and via email.
…
While the likelihood of Rotary’s success was hit-or-miss, it offered an on-the-job aerospace education. [That was certainly nicer option than Jeff going] back to college, paying tuition instead of drawing a salary. The choice to join Rotary turned out to be a winner, even though the company folded two years after Jeff joined. He and his pink-slipped development team dusted themselves off and set up shop as XCOR Aerospace.
…
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/365/1
David, I’m trying to figure out how that in any way disputes (or is even minimally responsive to) anything I wrote. Do you just like to waste Jeff’s bandwidth? And our time?
In any event, what’s wrong with subcontracting? Boeing does it all the time. Does it make them just a “shell company”?
Press Release
XCOR AND SPACE ADVENTURES ANNOUNCE
NEW SUB-ORBITAL SPACECRAFT
Mojave, CA and Arlington, VA , July 22, 2002 – XCOR Aerospace and Space Adventures, Ltd., announced today a marketing agreement that enables Space Adventures to offer flights to 62 miles (100 km) altitude aboard XCOR’s Xerus (pronunciation: zEr’us) sub-orbital vehicle, designed specifically for space tourist flights.
“Our experience building and flying the EZ-Rocket airplane has shown that we can fly rocket-powered vehicles multiple times per day with a small ground crew,” said XCOR CEO Jeff Greason. “By developing rocket engines that have essentially gas-and-go operation, we can operate at a fraction of the cost of competitive vehicles.”
The Xerus vehicle project has begun preliminary design including development of XCOR’s next-generation rocket engine and propulsion system using non-toxic propellants. The Xerus will be capable of flying one pilot and one Space Adventures paying passenger on a one-hour sub-orbital space flight. At the peak of its parabolic trajectory, passengers will experience several minutes of weightlessness and see the Earth from space.
“XCOR’s recent successes with the EZ-Rocket has demonstrated their determination to push the envelope,” said Space Adventures President and CEO Eric Anderson. “We look forward to offering our clients the opportunity to fly aboard the Xerus.” …
http://www.xcor.com/spaceadv-press-content.html
Rand, is Gary Hudson your brother in law?
Given the current (poor) state of discussion here I am closing comments for this post.