Press Release

Space Access ’12 Conference – April 12-14 – Phoenix Arizona

By SpaceRef Editor
March 6, 2012
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SA ’12 will be the next round of Space Access Society’s long-running annual get-together for people seriously interested in the technology, business, and politics of radically cheaper space transportation. This year’s conference sessions will run from Thursday morning April 12th through Saturday evening April 14th. (Our Space Access hospitality suite will be open Wednesday evening for early arrivers.)

Conference location is the Grace Inn (http://graceinn.com) 10831 South 51st Street, Phoenix, AZ, about ten freeway miles from the Phoenix airport. For room reservations, call 800 843-6010 or 480 893-3000, and mention “space access” to get our discount $69/night single-or-double breakfast-included rate. (This rate is good for up to three days before or after the conference.)

Conference registration is $120 in advance, $140 at the door, student rate $40 either way. There are two options for advance registration:

– You can mail us a check or money order. Include for each registrant the name and affiliation (if any) to be listed on the badge, plus their email address. Make the check out to Space Access ’12, and mail it to: Space Access ’12, PO Box 16034, Phoenix AZ 85011.

– You can follow this link (http://www.space-access.org/updates/sa12paypalbutton.html) to register online with your credit card or Paypal account. (Note that you won’t be asked for an email for the person being registered until the “Review Your Information” page on the payment website. Under “Special Instructions”, “Registrant’s Email, please (important!)”, click on “Add” then enter the email address.)

Less than six weeks till the conference begins! Time to start thinking about booking those flights to Phoenix; they’ll cost more if you wait too long.

Space Access ’12 Confirmed Speakers as of 3/6/12

Altius Space Machines/Jon Goff
Armadillo Aerospace
Dallas Bienhoff
Matt Cannella, student, “HySoR Hybrid Sounding Rocket”
Phil Chapman
Commercial Spaceflight Federation
FAA AST/Mike Kelly
Osa Fitch, “The Rocket Test Company: 2011 Update”
Frontier Astronautics/Timothy Bendel
Jeff Foust
Garvey Space
Keith Henson
David Hoerr, “The Rocket Company, 10 Years After”
JP Aerospace/John Powell
Lasermotive/Jordin Kare
Liftport
Clark Lindsey
Masten Space/Dave Masten
Doug Messier
Charles Miller/NextGen Space
NASA OCT/Dr. Lagudava Kubendran
Orbital Outfitters/Jeff Feige
Panel: Newspace Lessons Learned – Gary Hudson, Henry Spencer, Henry Vanderbilt
Bruce Pittman/NASA Ames, “Barriers And Opportunities For Reusable Launch Vehicles”
Team Phoenicia/Will Baird
Rocket Crafters, Inc.
Rocketplane Global/Chuck Lauer
John Schilling, “Halfway to Anywhere, Part II: Groundwork For Going Beyond LEO”
Rand Simberg
Space Frontier Foundation/Ryan McLinko
Space Studies Institute/Gary Hudson, President
Speedup/Robert Steinke
Henry Spencer, “Beyond Chemical Rockets: Overview and Near-Term Options”
and “Lessons From Smallsats for Small Launchers”
Stratofox Aerospace Tracking & Recovery Team/Ian Kluft
Students for the Exploration and Development of Space/Sara Meschberger
Scott Tibbitts/eSpace, “From the Hardware Store to Pluto: Adventures in Space Entrepreneurship”
Rick Tumlinson, on the EarthLight Institute
United Launch Alliance/Frank Zegler
Unreasonable Rocket/Paul Breed
Ventions/Adam London
Max Vozoff/mv2space
XCOR Aerospace/Mark Street

Stay tuned to http://www.space-access.org as we fill out the SA’12 program.

Conference Background

Space Access ’12 will be the next round of our long-running annual get-together for anyone seriously interested in the technology, business, and politics of radically cheaper space transportation. The conference is intensive and informal – long days, single program track, tightly scheduled sessions, no requirement for a prepared paper, speaking off-the-cuff is fine. The idea is to get a snapshot of where things are and where they’re headed next, not where they were six months ago. We have long on-your-own meal breaks (no rubber-chicken mass banquets) and we make sure there are convenient places nearby to go and talk with other attendees. We figure networking is a better use of your conference time than listening to canned dinner speeches.

Conference attendees range from students and amateur rocket enthusiasts, through cheap-access political activists and startup rocket companies, to government and established aerospace company people. Typical attendance is in the mid to high one hundreds.

We understand that many of you in our target audience aren’t rich – yet. We work hard to keep overall conference attendance costs low. Phoenix is a major air hub, we schedule the conference so you can travel at off-peak parts of the week despite it still being weekend winter-tourist season here, we negotiate great room rates at our pleasant and well-kept resort style conference hotel, and our registration fee speaks for itself. We’ve been called a far better conference than some that go for many times our price.

To a considerable extent, Space Access has been (by design) an incubator for the “newspace” entrepreneurial end of things. Bottom line, it has been a useful conference over the years – companies have been started, investments made, ideas spread, people hired – pretty much what we’ve aimed for.

SpaceRef staff editor.