ITAR / Payload trajectories

Are you any further forward in resolving the ITAR issues, so people outside the US can take up your launch offer ?

When you get to the stage of launching and discharging cargo are you able to change trajectories of cargo in flight using your RCS, or is it a case of separate flights for different trajectories. (Some people will want to maximise the heat/G load upon reentry whilst others would want to minimise it.)

All the best in your efforts.

Mark

I may be mistaken, as I am only an engineer, but -

Currently, we are not talking officialy about discharging payloads. There are some regulatory issues that are involved with dropping something out of a vehicle at 100km that we have not resolved at this point.


Obviously, as time goes on we plan to have this capability avaliable, but it may not be part of the SODAsat program.

As far as the ITAR issues - all I can say is we are working on it. Unfortuantely it takes a considerable amount of effort and we need to see the demand sufficiently high to jusitfy taking the next few steps to actually get it done.

I will try to get someone on here who actually works on these regulatory issues to give some better answers.

Mark,


Not at this time. We are extremely focused on getting the vehicles in the air and building the US markets. ITAR attorneys aren't cheap so they will have to wait until we can afford to do that as well as all the other things currently on our plate. It is a high priority so its not like you'll have to wait years for it.



We will probably stick to separate flights for different trajectories. That means we may ask some payloads that require a particularly unique trajectory (such as ejection/reentry) to wait until there are enough other payloads to make up a single flight. We do plan on offering the ability for payloads to be ejected but the regulatory environment for that will require some work from the customer as well as us. AST would require a separate reentry license as well as work on ensuring that the reentry interfaces with normal air traffic correctly.