In the Hardware area, we are finishing upgrades to our test area and test systems in preparation for a “Hot Fire” test of our Lander system. This will be the first test with our updated, flight ready hardware. We expect to run the first of these “Hot Fire” tests, with thrust monitoring, next week. Several of these tests are scheduled to nail down our current performance with very long motor runs. Some parts of the control systems will be actively tested only in the last tests of this series.

Following the “Hot Fire”, systems tests, we will transition to tethered tests using a flight system already prepared and the same test area. We also are preparing for “Mobile Tether” tests to closely represent the Northrup Grumman competition flights before completed FAA licensing. Concurrent work on the FAA license will make follow on free flights possible.

Work continues on the “Early Spaceflight” concept presented last week. This would use the UP Aerospace vehicle to demonstrate our propulsion and other systems in space with a relatively low cost launch.

We now have a handful of qualified individuals anxious to try our “Human Transport System” in terrestrial flights. The safest form of these flights emphasizes parachute descent from the vehicle. This will be the vehicle we present to the EAA in August, with the understanding that it is suitable for landing a rover or an astronaut on the Moon as well as for terrestrial flight. These high visibility demonstrations will help to build acceptance of “Open Frame” human lunar landers (proposed by NASA in 1961) as today's answer for affordable human exploration.

We are concurrently pushing into hypersonic flight modeling for our “Ultralight” human flight systems. As described below, we have a group seriously interested in our low cost, human Moon access – building on our Google Lunar X PRIZE designs. No major obstacles have appeared in this effort, which – like the Google prize – assumes that flight to orbit will be commercially purchased. The challenge in this case is to make the human flight systems so mass efficient that the high cost per pound to orbit is tolerable.

The contact mentioned above is a breakthrough in the funding area. As usual, the bulk of funding will wait for results with the present hardware which will make our projections more credible. Funding commitments will probably follow the stepwise pattern we have outlined in prior posts. But this is far easier to arrange than attracting tens of millions ($$) using nothing but a power point presentation. Success counts: success in static and tethered tests, in terrestrial flights, in space flights; next deep space with robotic systems and finally human expeditions. Cost effective accomplishments make the promise of bigger cost effective accomplishments (even profitable success) easier to believe.