Michael Marlaire
Good afternoon and welcome. I'm the Director of Consumer Relations here at Ames. We've been planning this conference for over three months. We are putting together a team called Space Portal and are reorganizing to make it substantive. A diverse group of organizations are part of that. The fundamental premise is to reach out to venture capitalists and others to think about and evaluate the programs.
Today the threshold of opportunities are phenomenal. Our new boss is coming in at the right time to setup up the future. Some groups are already here, like ACES. We also have major announcements, like Goggle, coming out. The agency wants to do it, and we have the ground floor to setup the development for it.
My role is to welcome you and be a resource for the session. I'll be back for rest of the day in a little while.
Phil Smith
Click here to view Phil's presentation on the Commercial Space Forum
Thank you, Mike. The Space Portal will be located at the NASA Research Park and our charge is to facilitate meetings like this. I will also talk about the demand side of commercial space. There are lots of directions being set but this is not the time to define that. This is an opportunity to discover the skills and interests in this room; it's about communicating and learning. Folks in this room cover a broad spectrum of making commercial space successful.
One of the things we will focus on is making space enterprise work. Closing the business case for both national and commercial investment in the programs is essential.
Key Elements - Return on time, effort, and capital is a key element of commercial enterprises. We also need to address the public and non-profit perspectives. We spent a lot of time thinking about things and contacted experts throughout the country about these three aspects so that all will be rewarded.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Commercial Space - We have to bring together demand, supply, and investment. I spent a lot of time consulting with the ACES executive committee and we decided that capital and supply couldn't have much done for it, but demand could. There's a lot of money to be made with space.
Engaging the Commercial Space Industry - A conference was held last June and October. We came together to record, learn, and work together to form plans. Some major overarching elements came from those sessions. One of those was to establish a fair facilitator, team builder, and enabler organization. Partnerships can come together to find ways to work together to mutual benefit. A March event concentrated on simulated space where convergence of operational solutions and using technologies from that to apply to education throughout engaging and appealing methods. All these workshops are on the website if you would like to catch up on what we've been doing.
Finding Home Run Investment Opportunities - Taxpayers are investors in space enterprise through the federal government. Is it worth it and can we show that a large profit can be made from engaging in the business? Is it real? There is low government uncertainty. It is perceived in the commercial industry that NASA can turn directions, as well as regulatory implications. Can we win? Do we have a good management team? Are there high competitive barriers to entry? Things like IP, patents, and licenses need to go into a successful formula. There are many integral parts to the solution.
Value Not Apparent Until Late Stage - The value of investments is not always apparent at first. There are pre-stages to consider. Investment angels come in usually at stages one and two, then you need a major occurrence to get more money. Today we will learn about opportunities.
We Are Gathered Here Today - The genesis of the workshop occurred in August 2005 prior to NASA's restructuring of the SPD program. We are not revisiting past funding models; rather we are seeking new innovation and product development. We hope to have a very innovative program.
Moving Forward - This will be a very collaborative environment. We will learn from each other and look at value, market size, proven science, manufactureable products, management teams, and high competitive barriers to entry. We will explore partnership models and plans. ACES is all about creating opportunities for very diverse groups. Everything has to come together in a way that closes the business case. There's a real opportunity for that to happen in this session.
Michael Kaufman is with InnovationLabs and he and his team are here to work with us in reaching our goals.
Michael Kaufman
The focus and objective of our time together is to explore opportunities and partnerships. We will do that in a very innovative way. I'll explain more about that soon. First, there are some logistics to cover.
Before we can focus on the opportunities, we need some context and history. Mark and Fred will help us do that through some presentations.
Mark Nall
Click here to view Mark's presentation on Research Partnerships Background
Click here to view Mark's presentation with audio narration
Thank you. Also thanks to Ames Research Center and ACES to make this possible. I want to go into a little of the background of the program.
Program Background - This was really the genesis of the space program in 1984. The CCDS's have gone through several transformations.
The RPCs - The focus at first was simple. How can we make commercial development of space viable. The RPC centers can be a conduit to companies vs. them working with NASA. At first, NASA would not be a customer, and there were unique expectations when the program was setup in 1985. The shuttle would be flying several times a month, etc, and none of those things happened. We learned quickly that working a commercial lab in space couldn't happen overnight. The reality of what the actual shuttle time and space access was going to be hit hard; we had to change accordingly.
SPD Realignment Success - We shifted from industry focused to NASA focused programs. We need to find out how to apply benefits back to the agency. From 2004 to 2005, there was 70% success.
SPD Heritage - The contract was put in place for Commercial Middeck Augmentation Module Contract. We leased 200 lockers on a middeck module. We had a backlog after the Challenger accident and this was a way to work off that backlog. It turned out to be very effective for us. It also showed some of the problems. We continued to fly international customers for free on Space Lab missions, which hurt their marketing activities. We also flew 30% of the US research on the International Space Station. This was possible due to the strong relationships.
Ford Motor Company has worked with us for their engine blocks. We've also had work with pharmaceutical companies. It's hard to bring samples here of the work done with those companies. However, I do have one example I can show you. I've brought Zen perfume as a visual aid. We did readings on smells in space that helped develop this perfume. However, nothing about the space flights is mentioned in their marketing.
What we are - We are a program of true partnerships between industry, academia, and government. We have 12 centers.
Research Partnership Centers - You can see that we're setup mostly at universities but there are always exceptions to the rule.
Why base partnership at universities? - Many universities have a tradition of working closely with NASA field centers. They can bridge the gap between the goals of government and industry. There is access to highly capable students and they are educating future scientists and engineers.
Industry/University/Government Partnerships - We hit the sweet spot between these three. We all have separate needs, but they can sometimes be common and that is where the program has focused.
Affordable Spaceflight Hardware - NASA has a reputation of being very expensive.
Dual Use Technologies - There is a broad spectrum of technologies.
International Participation - There are many international partners.
Affordable Technology - The R&D expenditures per invention disclosure is good.
The Research Partnership Centers - The budget of $12M includes 86 industrial, 41 academic, and 39 government partners. There's pretty good bang for the buck. The answer is to make capabilities available to industry.
Leveraging - A third is industry.
Supporting Space Exploration - These are examples of RPC products used by NASA. We don't do spinoffs of products. The industrial partners we have do their own spinoffs. Consequently, products used on earth occur.
Creating Societal Benefits - Here are some examples of RPC products used here on earth.
Commercial Participation - We're now looking out for potential commercial demonstrations. The RPCs are looking at the capabilities of their partners. The RPCs are forming alliances with entrepreneurial space companies to build a truly independent space program.
RLEP-2 - There are several SPD contributions.
The Exploration Vision - We started out focused on industry, then NASA, and are now looking at establishing an infrastructure for a commercial cis-Lunar economy. How can we facilitate that?
Strategy Based on Long-term Affordability - What does the infrastructure need to be? It can be pretty expensive. The realistic answer is to leverage commercial infrastructure.
Commerce Potential - There reasons to think it can be done. There is a clearly defined market for other space activities.
Possible Commercial Activities - There is a long list of potential activities. These are just a few of the examples. The real key is how many of these have common needs that we can focus on?
Space Commerce Zones - Moving out from earth to lunar surface is the next step. Beyond that of course are the planets.
Notional NASA/Commercial Planning Milestones - We are not alone. There are zones. The first is earth to orbit. Zone 2 is the earth orbit to lunar surface. This shows many things are inter-connected. There are many things we can do to ensure we are not alone.
New Partnership Opportunities - We have a good heritage with private sector organizations that directly support NASA exploration.
That's all I have. Are there any questions?
Q: Is the genesis for change?
A: The commercial space centers changed to RPC's about four years ago.
Q: Did I hear there was 20% of the funding in 2001, and now there is 70%, correct?
A: No. In 2001 20% were co-funded by other NASA organizations. In 2005 and 2006, that number was 70-72%, so a vast majority of the co-funding is from NASA.
Q: Why isn't NASA putting more in?
A: NASA as an agency put more money in over time.
Q: What about the split of NASA vs. non-NASA?
A: It's about a 50-50 mix. Some are involved with space businesses, some are not. RPCs look for the common needs between them.
Q: Were any of these RPC and CCDs recipients of earmarked dollars?
A: I don't recall any specific earmarks but that doesn't mean there haven't been.
Q: When you talk about the basic SPD money, it's program money, correct?
A: Some may have been specific organizational; I have no insight into that.
Q: Regarding going in the future on partnership opportunities, is there any guidelines on IP, etc.?
A: They negotiated IP restrictions with their specific partners. It varies project by project by who brings what to the table.
Comment: NASA funded research done at a university becomes the IP of the university.
Q: It's been NASA's practice to get a research licence out of its activity. Is there a general strategic trust?
A: If it's coming directly to NASA, yes that is the case.
Comment: NASA will not take title. The RPCs are protected from that.
Comment: You mentioned having the private sector involved.
One of the good aspects of having early commercial operations on the return to the moon is it may serve as a mechanism to drive out property rates. It may take something having to actually happen on the moon to drive that out.
Comment: We never challenged the rights of the moon and the things taken off the moon such as rocks have not been challenged.
We're not going to solve that problem now.
Comment: Resources from the moon are treated as universally ownable. That applies to things like mining lunar ice.
Industry could get together to make a gentleman's agreement and then let that become de facto.
