Please welcome Mary Sanchez, Senior Director of Space Exploration Systems for Sierra-Nevada Corporation. [ applause ]
Mary Sanchez: Good morning. This morning I'd like to talk to you about
following your dreams and how America can build Spaceships.
America is number one in Space which a lot of people seem to forget.
I found Luis' video interesting about NASA, they've shut their doors, they've gone away from home.
America still needs Spaceships. We started with the innovation.
Two brothers, wright brothers, back in 1903 started together.
They were bicycle repairmen and got together and said, we can do this flight thing.
We can innovate, and we can achieve. They did.
This went on to the cold war during the "Apollo" era where we had the rocket
on the launch pad here and had our nation's heroes walk on the moon.
In 1969, i was a 7-year-old watching a little grainy black and white TV and said, wow, this is great.
I want to grow up, i want to be a test pilot. I want to be an astronaut, work for NASA.
I want to go to mars, and i want to do all of these things in my lifetime.
I was really lucky. In high school, got to see the first Mars lander.
Got to see the pictures, the great landscapes. We recently landed a rover on mars in,
what was it, two weeks ago, three weeks ago. The "Curiosity" rover.
We're still trying to achieve. One of the things we really want to make sure
that America remembers is they are a Space nation, and we will get back to Space.
We have a mission. This mission is to send humans to Space, to send
humans to do exploration, to do science, to do research.
And we believe that America can get back there.
Some of these vehicles will launch from the Kennedy Space Center.
They will climb back once to orbit from this coast. They'll go on to orbit,
they will dock to the Space station.
They'll remain on the Space station as a rescue vehicle in order
to bring home the crews in case of emergency.
They'll come back, they'll de-orbit, and they'll come and land here at the Kennedy Space Center.
You'll have the crews come out.
They'll be able to bring their payloads out, bring their science out, and recycle and go to another launch.
So we can build Spaceships. One of the things i wanted to talk to
but is the innovation at this point Spaceship building.
You see the Space shuttle here, one of the most magnificent flying machines ever built.
I was lucky enough to work for NASA for 25 years.
Spent a lot of time here supporting the launch, processing landings,
getting to Crawl through the Space shuttle.
I had the opportunity to actually come and climb into the Space shuttle to help
pull cargo off right after it was landing where you could still smell Space.
I could also smell two weeks of people without showers when you went in there.
But it was a marvelous flying machine. It was great.
And it's unfortunate that we Actually as a nation had to choose to retire the Space shuttle,
but there are other future Spaceships coming. They're being built by multiple companies.
Some are in traditional contracting methods, like the Orion Spaceship where Lockheed
is building it using traditional government contracts, requirement, acceptance.
That's how the Space shuttle was president. That's how "Apollo" was built.
That's how many of the other Spacecrafts would have been built in this nation.
The other thing happening is a commercial crew program where there are
three companies working to do things a little bit more innovatively.
To work in a partnership with NASA, where companies co-invest with NASA.
Each of the companies have brought forth their own money and ideas, and they're designing a
Spaceship that will meet NASA requirements and also serve other markets and hopefully will commercialize Space.
One of the neat things about the way that the commercial crew program works is NASA gives companies money, requirements.
They say build me a Spaceship that will do these things.
But then the companies have an opportunity that to see come back to NASA.
The expertise in human Spaceflight lies within NASA. The propulsion expertise,
the rendezvous and docking expertise, the launch, the landing well.
All of those areas rely within NASA at Kennedy Space Center, at the Centers, Johnson Space Center,
Goddard, Marshall, all of those places have a world classwork force.
The contracting mechanism with the commercial Spaceflight allows
the government an innovative way to do business.
The government says, okay, there are some things we can do better and contract back out to you,
the contractor, to allow you to get the best in class, the best available.
One of the Spaceships that's being built is the "dream chaser."
this is kind of interesting because it actually started in a very circuitous route.
back in the 1980's the russians saw the space shuttle and thought this is really neat.
we wish we had a vehicle that could go to space, come back, launch and land on a runway.
they invented what they called the Bor-4 spaceplane.
The Spacecraft was designed to be a Space-based fighter plane.
It was going it launch with the crew of one, the original concept was you would put
three in a launch vehicle, they would go up and do war in Space.
They would protect Space, they would protect their assets.
Well, back in the '80s, we happened to get photographs of it back in the height
of the cold war when everybody spied on everybody and took pictures of everything.
And the U.S. Government went to NASA and says, okay, we just saw this thing.
What does it do? So NASA Langley built it and said this is pretty good, they did improvement,
wind tunnel testing, did a lot of piloting handling evaluations.
And in the early '90s came one a concept that would be a crew return vehicle for the Space station.
NASA being NASA, they changed their mind.
They actually ended up funding a different program which I worked as a NASA engineer
called the X-38, also used in lifting body. This was all heritage NASA work.
So the "Dream Chaser" is based on NASA heritage work taking benefit of what's already been done.
We talked about the Russians. From the United States to Russia,
there was a lot of the lifting body work going on, a lot of lifting body testing.
The X-38 that I mentioned was based on the X-24 shape which was flown pie the air force.
It was flown by suborbital flights as well as crew flights.
And NASA actually built that and tested it in the '90s.
You see some of the other vehicles that they've tested.
And I like this because you see the video going on.
If you look on the left side of the picture, those are all pictures taken from the air.
Those were taken from an Australian p-3 of where the Australians saw the Russians
recovering something from the ocean and went and took pictures.
This was the original pictures they sent NASA were coming from.
On the right, it's the pictures that the Russians did of the recovery.
In one of the views you'll see the p-3 overflying -- you actually see the full
circle of each side taking pictures of what they're doing. I'm a home build pilot.
I helped build two, I'm building a third airplane. I love flying. I love building when i fly.
One of the really great things about the new, innovative partnership,
is it allows you to build a little, to test a little, to fly a little.
And in that process you bring up the innovation of engineers.
You've heard talk about collaboration, about innovation, involving people in the decision making process.
What you see is called an engineering test article used for captive carry
flights and relief flights at the end of the year.
One of the great things about this type of sponsorship you allow engineers to do hands-on work.
We had painting parties late at night where we had managers drilling holes to install the final air shelf.
We had engineers working with paint trying to get the vehicle painted doing the hands-on work
to where they felt ownership and commitment in the product that they were building.
See great scenery, turns out Colorado's a great place to do test flights. Most people think of
Edwards Air Force base which is actually a great place to do test flights to out of the research center.
The captive carry of this vehicle was done just east of boulder, Colorado.
One interesting thing is you look for a great big area when you're
doing something that was helicopter flight.
You look for a great, big area when you're carrying a helicopter that has no population, no people.
There's a little place near boulder called rocky flats where they use today to make plutonium.
No people there. It's a really good place to fly over. But you really don't want to land there.
And so you can see the helicopter, you don't get to see the barren ground
where they scooped up all the earth from this view.
So we are looking at America's stain in Space.
America returning to Space, and American back to having human Spacecraft to where we don't rely on other assets,
where we look at innovative and collaborative approaches toward partnership.
One thing to remember is that while NASA is doing this for the first time,
this is actually in the history of America.
When you look at the original airlines that they were all started out with some input from government
funding, with the companies doing their own resources and turning it into a commercially viable business,
you look at airlines and you look at air mail.
Government started out funding all of the air mail.
It went -- city to city, landmark to landmark, to deliver that.
Now you have Fedex and UPS Doing it all commercially where it is a completely viable business.
So there are different ways to do business.
There are different ways to do innovative,
collaborative partnerships between the government and between industry that bring value to the government,
that bring value to the taxpayer because there's a lot less government dollars and some
corporate dollars invested where you end up with a cheaper,
more innovative and just a good and safe product.
With that, I think we're ready for our next one. [applause]