Student Spaceflight Initiative

At Stanford
A group dedicated to changing the space culture at Stanford by promoting space entrepreneurship and strengthening the Stanford space community. September-December 2012 Newsletter Welcome
Welcome to the first official newsletter of the Student Spaceflight Initiative at Stanford. After laying out a path last spring, we officially kicked off this fall and despite the usual difficulties that come from starting a new group, SSI has gotten off to a very successful start. We have held six great events, developed a strong core of both undergraduate and graduate students, and have started forming strong connections with other parts of the Stanford and Bay Area space communities. All of this and our goals moving forward are described in this newsletter- more information and how to get involved can be found at our website, sites.stanford.edu/spaceflight, or by emailing the current president, David Gerson, at dtgerson@stanford.edu. Thank you very much for reading!

sites.stanford.edu/spaceflight
Switzerland, then joined us to demonstrate how to apply business model innovation to aerospace. We ended with the wider vision for space at NASA and within astrobiology from Dr. Pete Worden, Director of NASA Ames Research Center. Each event had a fantastic turnout of a wide variety of students, culminating with the over 80 people who showed up to hear Dr. Worden. The next, more difficult, step was to start investigating how to get Stanford students directly involved with the industry. To help students develop their own ideas, we set up Thinktank, a multidisciplinary group of students studying the intersections of technology, policy, and markets to determine the next steps needed to push the space community from satellite data collection to expanded exploration and colonization. It serves as both a forum to discuss general topics and get feedback on a specific idea or project. The weekly meetings succeeded in forcing the members to think in new ways and laying the foundation for deeper work next quarter. We also had a number of small groups investigate starting student-led project groups with the goal of determining the best approach, how to interface with the wider space community, and what help from SSI they would need to succeed. Initial groups looked into a Lunabotics team to compete in the annual competition at NASA Kennedy to develop an autonomous, lunar-dust mining robot, a Phonesat team to make CubeSats based on Android phones, and specific projects to interface with companies such as Skybox, Made in Space, and Moon Express. Our findings from these initial investigations are that SSI can best serve project groups as an incubator. Moving forward we plan to continue fostering ideas through events, to encourage students to explore ideas hands-on in small teams, and to provide the necessary resources and support 1

Getting Started
The founding goal of SSI was to push students at Stanford to learn more about the space community and to then inspire them to get involved in the future of the field. To do this, we chose to focus on idea development and entrepreneurship to fit into the Stanford and Silicon Valley mentality. We felt the first critical step was creating a multidisciplinary dialogue between students at Stanford themselves and with the space community at large. To accomplish this, we reached out to alumni and others deeply involved with the field in order to begin a speaker series on a wide range of topics. In the fall we hosted six speakers to give us different perspectives on NewSpace. We started with the financial perspective with Richard David from New Space Global and then moved to what its like to run a small start-up with Jason Dunn from Made In Space, Arif Karabeyoglu from the Space Propulsion Group, and Adam London from Ventions. Michaela Csik, a visiting research from

to enable those teams to succeed. Next quarter we will host workshops and startup evenings aimed at aiding students in the process of starting these small project teams.

Fall Quarter Events The Search for Life with Dr. Pete Worden, NASA Ames Administrator
For our biggest event of the quarter, SSI with the support of the Stanford chapter of AIAA was proud to host the current director of NASA Ames Research Center, Dr. Pete Worden, to talk on Thursday November 29th about his vision for the future of NASA and space- with the search for life at the center of it all. Dr. Worden discussed his opinion that more attention should be given to the technology needed for the human expansion into space to build on the greater access to space that the private sector is bringing about. He highlighted his excitement at the recent advances in this area, with Curiosity landing on Mars, the number of earth-sized exoplanets found by Kepler, and for future mission such as sending probes to Europa or Enceladus and the launching of the James Webb Telescope. Moreover, Dr. Worden described the paradigm shift he feels is occurring in the field of space with developments in synthetic biology. Since Craig Venter sequenced the human genome and as 3D printing technology develops, its easy to imagine sending a DNA sequence to a machine on another planet and printing the bacteria or plants needed to pave the way for human exploration.

What we need is a Stanford of New Space- and youve already got the nameRichard David, New Space Global
To kick off the quarter, SSI hosted Richard David, CEO and Co-founder of New Space Global at Stanford on Monday October 22nd. For Mr. David, New Space is clearly the next big thing: 2

eight million people watched the YouTube video of the Red Bull Stratos launch, SpaceX became the first commercial company to resupply the International Space Station with the successful launch of its Dragon Capsule, and Blue Origin successfully tested their suborbital Crew Capsule escape system, all in the same month. SpaceX, he says, has added over 1200 new jobs during one of the hardest economic climates in history a fact he states to the audience with enthusiasm. However, while New Space has been growing steadily since 2004, Mr. David feels that it lacks institutional investment due to a lack of understanding surrounding the market. He created New Space Global to solve that problem. NSGs fundamental goal is to educate the community on the economic potential of New Space so that they not only want to support the field, but know how to do so. During his talk, Mr. David gave several pieces of advice to an audience of aspiring space entrepreneurs: build up to your big ideas incrementally, work with the Business school and the d.school, and most importantly learn salesmanship. Mr. David pointed out that Elon Musk had worked on several successful companies before founding SpaceX and his experience building top management teams is as important as technical excellence. Mr. David also emphasized that given Stanfords location and background, an interdisciplinary group connecting alumni, students, and this burgeoning industry can become the hub that this growing industry needs. As Mr. David put it, About 550 people have been to space- thats bull What we need is, well, a Stanford of New Space- and youve already got the name.

Bootstrapping Entrepreneurship with Jason Dunn, Made in Space

How can you start revolutionary space companies as a student with very little money? To answer this question, we were proud to bring in

Jason Dunn, CTO and Co-founder of Made in Space (MIS) on October 25th. Jason began by arguing that in his opinion, the next step towards further exploitation of space is a paradigm shift to where Everything in space is 'Made in Space.' Therefore, despite the fact that he lacked millions of dollars, Jason decided to cofound Made in Space to work towards his vision- starting with 3D printing technology. By combining the advantages of additive over subtractive manufacturing, the possibilities of manufacturing directly in microgravity, and the freedom of not having to withstand the extreme loads of launch, 3D printing in space would allow a vastly greater range of geometries and structures, at much lower cost and on short demand. Their determination allowed them to win a contract from NASA to test their technology on hundreds of 20-second parabolic flights and showed that 3D printers can be modified to operate perfectly in microgravity. This early success has given MIS such credibility that NASA has already given them a paid contract to fly a 3D printer on the International Space Station during 2014-2015, and they havent accepted a single penny of venture capital. Jason stresses three aspects of the approach at MIS that he feels are essential for any aspiring young space start-up. First is their business model, which is to iterate quickly on very little money to allow them to fail early and often. Second is that they are capitalizing on a technology with clear Earth applications, which provides a clear revenue stream when they need to start making real capital. Third is that they have immersed themselves in the growing commercial space community, where everyone needs everyone else to succeed, allowing them to get advice and support on 3

all fronts. They have given us a tremendous amount of advice so far and we wish Jason and MIS the best as they work to send a 3D printer to the ISS!

Business Model Innovation with Michaela Csik

To actively explore the business side of New Space, on November 13th, we were lucky to have a workshop on Business Model Innovation for Aerospace Engineering run by Michaela Csik, a PhD candidate at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland where she is developing a toolset to help companies reinvent their business model. Michaela began with a short presentation on the importance of a business model. She quoted Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, who said, The history of innovation is littered with companies that had a disruptive technology but failed to commercialize it successfully because they did not couple it with a disruptive business model. The idea behind business model innovation therefore, as Michaela explained, is to take an existing business model and apply it in a new way to fit your technology. The first step is to look at past successful companies and see what patterns emerge among their business models. Michaela had created 55 cards for the most important patterns she and her research group had identified and split us into groups to play with sets of the cards to see what different ideas we could come up with. Some of the favorite ideas were as follows: Business Model Pattern: Versioning- Sell different versions with different capabilities at different prices Possible application: Sell rocket launches or satellite parts at decreased cost for decreased reliability, communicated clearly to the customer so they can willingly take on the risk to save money.

Business Model Pattern: Trash to cash- take things that other people dont want and turn them into working products that can be sold for a profit Possible Application: Build satellites with lower quality parts to save money. Collect and reuse space junk rather than having to relaunch the parts. Business Model Pattern: Layer Player- specialize in something that fits into someone elses business model Possible Application: Buying and selling of space commodities and services (e.g. buy water that someone else puts into water, sell water in orbit for others to use, or provide the capability to get the water down to or up from Earth), derivatives trading, sell futures on valuable things in orbit

Develop a superior technology and the market will come" Dr. Arif Karabeyoglu, Space Propulsion Group
To hear from someone who has spent years following his passion and challenging the standards of the aerospace industry, SSI was proud to sponsor a presentation by Dr. Arif Karabeyoglu, CTO and Co-Founder of the Space Propulsion Group Inc on November 8th. Arifs expertise lies in hybrid rocket technology, the technology he believes will revolutionize the space field by solving the launch problem: achieving lower costs, increased safety, and higher reliability than either liquid or solid rockets can allow. Fundamentally, Arif explained, liquid and solid rockets are expensive simply due to the physical nature of the rocket motor- problems that hybrid rockets can avoid. By using a liquid oxidizer and solid fuel, they can achieve performances similar to and even better than any liquid or solid engine. Since the fuel and oxidizer are in different states, it is much more difficult to cause undesired combustion of the propellant. Moreover, the system is extremely simple because only a valve between the oxidizer tank and combustion chamber is necessary. Additionally, the very low 4

fabrication costs mean that hybrid rocket motors can be tested numerous times at low cost in order to achieve a more reliable system. Despite all of these benefits, there have historically been two major issues that have held back hybrid rocket technology: low regression rate fuels and major combustion instabilities. While these issues remain today, Arif and SPG are well on the way towards solving them. At Stanford in the 1990s, Arif discovered a new class of fuel, paraffin waxes, that had a regression rate five times higher than typical hybrid fuels. Moreover, SPG has recently eliminated nearly all of the instabilities in their 10-inch motor and have shown that all of the technology is scaleable with their 21-inch motor. However, Arif emphasizes caution. Despite the success that SPG is having with a low budget, the technology is still under development and rockets are inherently dangerous. When I push that button [to start combustion], I never fully know what is going to happen is a common refrain among the rocket experts at Stanford- Arif included. While hybrids can be safer, if shortcuts are taken and people become complacent, people will die, as shown in the Scaled Composites accident that killed 3 people in 2010 when their oxidizer tank exploded during a cold flow. But nonetheless, Arif is quite optimistic. Completely focused on developing the technology, SPG has been progressing with SBIR grants from NASA and money from the Air Force. When asked about tuning his company for marketability, Arif shrugs and says he isnt really worried about that. He believes that SPG is the best hybrid rocket company in the world and that if anyone wants frequent, cheap launches, essential to space tourism or any increased activities in orbit, they will have to come to him eventually. For example, while in 2005 when Scaled Composites was looking for a hybrid motor, SPG wasnt ready, now in 2012, SPGs rockets, though smaller, are scalable and have much higher performance and reliability than those used on SpaceShipTwo. Safety is paramount and there is work yet to be done, but

listening to Arif, its hard not to believe, as he does, that it is only a matter of time.

Thermal Vaccing with Skybox

One of the first companies to express a desire to connect with a student space group at Stanford was Skybox and they have given us a tremendous amount of help and advice ever since. They allowed some members to see up close the testing that a satellite has to go before it is launched by having us help thermal vacuum test their satellite to be launched next year. We got to see the actual satellite, the facilities where it was manufactured and tested, learn about the actual tests, and join in the celebration when all was successful. It was a ton of fun and we hope that all goes well with the launch!

Were successful because we make and test real hardware -Dr. Adam London, Ventions
To hear about another innovative small company challenging the status quo, SSI was proud to host Dr. Adam London, CEO and Co-founder of Venctions, on Tuesday December 4th. Ventions is a 10 person company working to develop microthrusters through chemical etching and diffusion bonding to help create a launcher specific to smallpayloads. Adam argued that due to the increase in computing power and the resulting decrease in the necessary electronic components for areas such as Guidance, Control and Navigation, modern rockets no longer need to be huge beasts capable of carrying huge payloads. In this vein, while Ventions thrusters can deliver 100 to 5000 lbs of thrust, theyre only a couple inches long; this size is only possible because their process allows them to start with sheet metal and create a very complex system of cooling channels to increase efficiency. When asked how he has maintained a company around a product that takes so long to develop, Dr. London stressed two things. First, he pointed out the importance of iterative design and refining using testing and field set-ups rather than simply running computer simulations. Especially for something as complicated as rockets, the only way to work out the issues is by testing again and again and this has allowed them to make constant progress and impress their contractors- they have demonstrated a thruster capable of a 45 second burn with a c-star efficiency around 98%. Dr. London also reiterated the importance of pursuing a project you are passionate about, because then you will do what it takes to achieve your goals and convince others that its worth the time.

Thinktank Updates
Thinktank meetings this quarter revolved around a few central questions: What is required for colonization from a technology, policy, and market point of view?; What are the most effective ways to turn your ideas into products (e.g. start a company vs. convince someone with money that your idea is the best one)? and Is the best way to increase access to space to get everyone focusing on the big issues like cost of launch or to get more people excited about space in general to increase the number of ideas and thus likelihood that someone comes up with a breakthrough?. We got some very interesting opinions by talking to in-house entrepreneurs who are in the process of starting small space companies and attending a talk by Peter Diamandis at NASA Ames. The debates often got quite heated and we certainly forced ourselves to consider the issues from different angles and heard opinions wed never heard before. Moving forward were going to focus on coming up with more specific innovative ideas to work on with the larger goal of putting together a general roadmap for our vision for space.

Looking Forward
The main focus for SSI in the winter is to expand: get more people involved, develop stronger relationships with the Business school and other departments, and form more connections with aerospace companies and alumni. Below are the main areas that teams are already working on.

More Speakers Following on the success we had last quarter, were already working to continue our speaker series. We already have John Cumbers coming to talk about synthetic biology in space and running a start up weekend on that topic on January 10th and the Skybox founders giving a presentation on how they took their idea from conception to company on February 5th. Big Stanford Commercial Space Event The Center for Excellence in Commercial Space and the Stanford Institute for Economics Policy Research are hosting a conference on Commercial Space with the FAA that we are very excited for. Look for the exact date on our website but its likely to be Thursday and Friday January 31st and February 1st. Workshops Working in the aerospace field, let alone being a space entrepreneur, is not easy. To provide people with experience working in teams to solve real world problems, technical knowledge, and the ability to organize and start a company, we are working with the Business School, local space companies, and NASA Ames to hold a series of workshops that anyone is welcome to attend. The first one with the Business school on basic entrepreneurship for engineers is tentatively scheduled for February 11th or 14th. Lunch Series Since there are so many amazing faculty members at Stanford, were looking to add a few lunch sessions with professors to talk about their work and view of the industry. The goal is to give undergraduates a way to learn more about what is happening at Stanford and how they can get involved. Startup Evenings To create a forum for people to share their ideas and learn what others are thinking about, we're organizing startup evenings dedicated to space. The goal is to have people take an idea, determine its feasibility, and figure out a plan to take that idea forward in only a few hours. Eventually, we hope to scale these up to Startup 6

Days and Startup Weekends where real hardware can be produced and new companies can be formed. Our first one is going to be held early the second week of Winter quarter. Business Cases What better way to learn about becoming a space entrepreneur than by studying those who have already done so? We're going to study business cases in general and of space companies specifically in order to learn what goes into a business case and what can we learn about the successful space startups. We're also planning to write a few of our own with help from the Aero/Astro department and the Business school. Projects Moving forward, we will continuously push our members to work on their own projects with support from the larger group. Current projects being investigated include: Lunabotics, competing in an annual competition at NASA Kennedy wherein a robot has to autonomously mine lunar dust; Phonesat, developing CubeSats based on Android phones; a Space Tug feasibility analysis and design; and the development of an aerospike nozzle. The hope is that as our events and startup evenings progress, more project teams will pop up and we will do everything we can to support them.

Thank you!
Wed like to thank all of our speakers, the faculty members at Stanford who helped us get off the ground, and all of the people who have been coming to our events. Were excited for 2013 and will keep you posted with more frequent newsletters and updates on our website.