Rick Tumlinson of the Space Frontier Foundation is starting with his standard greeting–“Welcome to the Revolution!”

Congratulating Henry on the quality of his conference, and comparing it very favorably to the Esther Dyson event. A lot cheaper, and a lot more fun.

2004 was a very important year, beginning with the president’s speech, then the Aldridge Commission speech, then Rutan’s flight, and finally the regulatory legislation, and they’re all tied together. Direction from the White House of permanence and moving outward, working with the private sector–unprecedented. O’Keefe’s job was to bail the water out of the boat, make sure it didn’t sink, but he’s not a ship’s captain. Roadmaps were confusing, and unfocused.

Now new team coming in–boat is floating, has a new rudder, with a new captain and officers. Courtney Stadd, Scott Pace coming in, with O’Neillian viewpoint.

Three kinds of space people:

Saganites: “Space is big, billions of stars, isn’t God’s creation incredible…DON’T TOUCH IT.”

Von Braunians: “We vill go boldly into space, and you vill watch on television, and you vill enjoy it.” That’s the current space program.

O’Neillians: “We will build the tools, go into space, and use its resources to expand humanity and freedom into the cosmos.”

Dichotomy between people who want to “do” space (contractors and NASA), and people who want to actually open space.

Griffin has some of religion and ideas, but “I’m not naive.” Don’t trust, and verify. Griffin is centralizing control–the spirals are going away. He has a mandate to the White House. President screwed up in one big way in his speech when he said “Crew Exploration Vehicle” instead of crew exploration system, which has some thinking that one vehicle has to do the whole job. Griffin using sixties model to accelerate the program, which is strong central control, dictating to the contractors. But underneath, he is sympathetic to permanence, and opening up space, and really wants it to happen. Roadmaps not going away, but wrapping up in the next few weeks (though transportation roadmap is going away).

Looking at creation of a non-traditional programs office (more detail tonight from Jim Muncy). Has had some exchanges with Dr. Griffin about the “Frontier-enabling test.”

Rick reads an email from Griffin (yesterday) explaining that he supports the test, but that it’s not his only goal, and that it would be irresponsible of him to allow NASA to sit on the sidelines hoping that the private sector will deliver (I’ll get an exact copy from Rick after the session and post it here).

“We need to get the word out about what we’re doing–we’re one of the best-kept secrets around.” “Don’t overpromise.” “We’re space geeks–people don’t believe us when we start talking.” “Stick together, don’t let personal differences keep us from the goal–the trash talk has got to stop.” “Build each other up, not tear down.” “Need to carry on what Henry Vanderbilt has started–the creation of a community.” “Even if we can only agree on three bullets, we need to find them and push them as an industry.”

One of the bullets should be to kill ITAR. “It is killing this industry. All ITAR does is force the foreigners to go and develop it themselves in an uncontrolled way.

Mentions “Teachers in Space” initiative, giving teachers vouchers to fly, and then take the knowledge and enthusiasm back into the classroom.

Wants to create “Port Authority” for ISS that goes beyond NASA, more like and airport authority, to allow everyone to work on free-enterprise activities to the benefit of all. Wants to involve private sector in lunar activities from first landing. Give companies leases to property on the Moon if they can demonstrate capability to utilize it, and allow them to retain intellectual property (with perhaps tax sweeteners). Allow someone to put together a total package for investment, modeled on railroad land grants.

Build and fly, and make sure the world sees it.” “You are the experts, the da Vincis, the Raphaels of building spaceships, and it makes people believe and want to invest their heart, soul and money in what you’re doing.”

Question about raising prize authority from $250,000.

Rick responds that Griffin’s distrust of commercial companies includes the main aerospace industry. As far as prize authority, it should be raised, but probably taken out of NASA, but someone needs to propose a different model or entity for who would manage it.

Jerry Pournelle points out that Rohrabacher wants to start a National Space Foundation that looks like NSF except it can receive private donations as well as government funding, and hand out prizes (preview of his talk tonight). This would help with some of the bookkeeping problems. If this is a bad idea, now is the good time to tell him, because he’s about to tell Rohrabacher that he thinks it’s a good idea.

Len Comier says that investors aren’t interested in one-shot prizes–they want to see steady ongoing markets.

A Bob Ashman says that the people from Griffin’s team at Johns Hopkins are in tune with any of the things that Tumlinson is saying, and he’s supporting this through making videos and documentaries, and wants to serve as an interface between the nascent space industry and the entertainment community.

Breaking for lunch now.