Fast Forward: The Case Builds for P2P

The thought-provoking White Paper: GETTING FASTER: A Case for High Speed Point-to-Point Flight as a Logical Transition Between Suborbital Space Tourism and Low-Cost, Reusable Space Access was released at the 2009 International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight being held October 21st in Las Cruces, New Mexico. It is worthy of the read.

The FastForward study group is an ad-hoc study group consisting of major aerospace contractors, emerging new space companies, spaceports, key federal government agencies, and academic representatives. It is an all-volunteer effort formed in August 2008 currently consisting of more than 20 invited organizations and hosted by SpaceWorks Commercial (Atlanta, GA). Derek Webber is among the participants. He conducted a recent GoogleTalks about the progress and referencing a now-defunct but ahead-of-the-curve effort in Virginia.

The focus of the group is on pre-competitive analysis and assessment of future global high speed point-to-point (PTP) passenger and cargo services. The study group produces technical papers and white papers on topics of PTP transportation for use by our members and the community at-large Members meet regularly by telecon, support a range of conference and panels, and use virtual collaboration tools to conduct business and exchange ideas.