Dave Matsen of Matsen Space Systems, Inc. is the last speaker before lunch. They have been working out details, hammering out bugs. For example they know how many seconds it takes to wear something out. Building reusable vehicles is different than building one time use rockets. Their goal is to be operable and reusable.
Dave Matsen is hoping to be in the Lunar Lander Challenge this year. There is some chance they may be too busy. Some people have approached Matsen about doing R&D, but there are no public announcements at this time.
The cost to machine and engine and assemble it is in the tens of thousands of dollars. Insurance is more.
They moved to Mohave in June of last year. Mohave had been very supportive. They have four people in Mohave, and a business person in Atlanta. And a few more volunteers.
Much of what they do is to see how operable and how reusable is a design.
A bit of history: Dave gave credit to Henry Vanderbilt. Dave got seriously started after going to Space Access ‘01. He meet Jonathon Goff at Space Access ‘03. All the founders got together at Space Access ‘04, this was the first time they had all been together at the same time. In 2004 to 2005 they laid the foundation, built test facility
Future plans: First they want to finish their XA-0.1 hold-down tests, then do some XA-0.1 flight tests. They will do a lot of flight tests. It showed a picture of their XA-0.2.
They have found the geometries of their engine makes a different for some heat issues.
Their basic road map is to start with a vehicle which flies, then have something which goes suborbital, and then continue to improve.
Their initial markets are science experiments and education experiments. They have a $99 program for small experiments. They are hearing that many people are frustrated with not being able to do quick small experiments with NASA. NASA takes three to five years. Most of the high end science experiments want 400 to 500 kilometers. Matsen plans to be up their.
Clark’s report
Rand’s report
First: Introduction
Overview: the agenda
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Next: Leik Myrabo on Beamed energy
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