Welcome to the Commercial Space Wiki!

 

 

 

Thank you for coming to the Commercial Space Wiki, sponsored by Masten Space Systems (and Michael Mealling, in particular). My name is Ken Davidian and I'm the owner. You can find out more about me here. I'm hoping that you'll at least read and think about the material you find here, but the real goal is that you contribute your thoughts and ideas in the appropriate places.

 

Listen to a description of this wiki, a 26-minute interview, excerpted from the complete show (2 hours) that aired on Sunday, 3 August 2008 on The Space Show with host Dr. David Livingston. Click here to listen to the complete show.

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SECTIONS ON THIS PAGE:

Description	Ground Rules	Who
What	Where	When
Why	How	Questions

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Ground Rules

 

Before I get too far into Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How of this wiki, let me lay out the basic ground rules that the material in these pages will live by:

 

1. This is an open and public page (for now, at least). That means that no material can be included here that is sensitive in any way. We will post no information about specific companies or individuals unless that information can be referenced to a publicly available source, such as a press release or news report. Any NASA material appearing on this wiki has been deemed appropriate for public release from its author(s) before being posted. Please make no presumption of privacy and assume that anything you write will appear in the New York Times or the Washington Post.
2. All interactions shall be professional and courteous. Hopefully, some will even be funny and light-hearted. As much as I believe that there are no "sacred cows" (sorry, no disrespect meant to our Asian-Indian/Hindu friends!), I also believe that any conversation of differing viewpoints can be had in respectful ways. A corollary of this is don't use a sledge-hammer when all you really need to do is jab. Jabbing is good. Sledge-hammering is not.
3. This Commercial Space wiki is non-political. No matter what political label one gives oneself, I believe that the interest in space and commercial space either (a) transcends those differences (i.e. we all can believe in the goodness of space), or (b) doesn't rise to a meaningful level in the political discussion (i.e. space is a tertiary-level issue *at best*). Either way, I decree that the same goes for this wiki. We can (and should, especially in an election year) talk politics, but let's check our personal politics at the door, and let's talk commercial space!
4. If I see any behavior that I deem objectionable, I'll take corrective action. If you see any behavior that you deem objectionable, please let me know, and I'll figure out what to do about it. Because of a bunch of reasons, every aspect of this wiki is *not* a democracy, and some will be run in a very authoritarian way. All in all, I hope you'll find that I'm reasonable, but if I'm forced to draw boundaries, I may do so in very conservative ways. This wiki can be very valuable, but it's *nowhere near* losing my job over.
5. I'll retain the right to make and add arbitrary ground rules as I see fit, or as my lawyers recommend. If this is a problem, please come to peace with it quickly.

 

Having gotten that out of the way, here are the basics of this wiki:

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Who

 

If you missed my self-introduction in the first paragraph, I'm Ken Davidian. I created this page with the intention of pulling together a number of activities in which I'm involved, including the communities associated with those activities. These groups include:

 

• My colleagues within NASA who are part of my ad-hoc ESMD Commercial Development Team
• Participants from the 2nd Next Generation Exploration Conference
• Other intertested university students, like those in the AIAA Student Chapter at the University of Cincinnati I gave a talk to in late May
• Participants in the AIAA Commercial Space Group (which is just in the formative stages)
• Participants in the NASA Academy classes of 2008
• NASA Academy alumni of past classes
• Other interest parties

 

I expect this list to grow over time, and I think that's a good thing!

 

If you're a new contributor or follower of this wiki, please go to the FAQ-Twitter and Tweme file in the MISC folder and add your name to the list of people who others should follow on twitter. There's a table there that you can add your name, twitted userid, and affiliation. That way, when new people get onto twitter, they will easily know who they should follow to be in contact with everybody else.

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What

 

This wiki will house a bunch of information that I've been kicking around with folks inside NASA for a long time.

 

• BUSINESS. Includes "sub-folders" (not really) relating to Markets and Topics of Discussion pages.
• MISC. This folder contains miscellaneous items, such as administrative pgase, and a list of acronyms as well as a Frequently Asked Questions file.
• POLICY - REGULATORY - LEGAL. Includes sub-folders to the ESMD Commercial Development Policy (ECDP) as well as "Topics of Discussion" pages.
• PRIZES. This includes a set of pages relating to specific prizes as well as to prizes in general.
• TECHNICAL. Besides links to studies about different technical issues surrounding commercial space, this folder will also contain some "Topics of Discussion" pages.
• The Roadmap. This is the folder that was created by the NASA Goddard Academy participants and includes working files for their project, whose short title is "The Roadmap".

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Where and When

 

Here and now!

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Why

 

The purpose of this wiki is to enable a virtual collaboration of the divers group of professionals (in government agencies, the prime contracting community, and the emerging private sector) and individuals (students and private citizens) to support active projects and discussions pertaining to the emerging commercial space markets.

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How

 

If you are interested in providing content to this wiki, it seems that I can do it multiple ways:

 

1. It seems I need to send invites out to folks in order for them to be able to edit this wiki. If I have your email address already, I'll send you an invite to become a writer (contributor) to this wiki.
2. If you're not on one of my email lists, then please just send me an email requesting  access and I'll  send you an invite to become a writer. 

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Questions?

 

If you have any questions or comments that you don't want to leave in this public forum, please feel free to email me at ken.davidian@gmail.com. Thanks!

 

Ken