I had an amazing week at National Space Symposium (NSS). Several of us from Dynetics attended this event in beautiful Colorado Springs for the entire week. Sessions and functions went from morning till late night, and it was good to catch up with customers, partners, and friends I have known for years. Consequently, I am going to delay Part 3 of my blog this week for some notes about NSS stuff. NSS is a great forum for serious space folks to get together, network, and learn about the latest space happenings in the government and commercial world. This year’s theme had a heavy emphasis on “Commercial.”

We had a huge announcement this week: We brought on Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) as the newest team member of the Rocket City Space Pioneers. We’re excited to add this proven heritage hardware company to our team. PWR brings experience and proven hardware in the storable propulsion arena. Check out the press release at http://www.rocketcityspacepioneers.com/space/space-news/16. I got to spend some time with Jim Maser who is president of PWR. Both he and his team are excited about supporting this very “Commercial” affordable “rideshare” architecture.

We also made a press announcement about our rideshare program, being led by Spaceflight Services. I think a lot of folks have been surprised to learn that we can use heritage hardware to get their payloads to orbit for about ½ the cost of a dedicated launch provider/system. It was good to talk with Jason Andrews, president and CEO of Spaceflight Services, as well as some of our other team members.

We got to spend a little time with X PRIZE Foundation friend Nicky Jordan and Will Pomerantz, who is now with Virgin Galactic.

The week was filled with meetings, presentations, events, networking, and exhibits. We had face time with some of the commercial space entrepreneurs who are making cool things happen, like Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace, Gwynne Shotwell of SpaceX, and George Whitesides of Virgin Galactic. Incidentally, these three shared their insights on an interesting panel on Wednesday about commercial space.

We shot some video interviews this week, which we will be posting to our YouTube channel, RCSpacePioneers. http://www.youtube.com/user/RCSpacePioneers
All in all, it was an exciting week. We got to see some cool people and some cool hardware.

Now, back to the Rocket City!

NSS was held at the beautiful Broadmoor Hotel.