The Space Access Society (SAS) is an organization dedicated to increasing the viability and reducing the cost of commercial access to space travel

Spaceflight

Spaceflight is the act of travelling into or through outer space. Spaceflight can occur with spacecraft which may, or may not, have humans on board. Examples of human spaceflight include the Russian Soyuz program, the U.S. Space shuttle program, as well as the ongoing International Space Station...

. It was founded by Henry Vanderbilt, who was the president from the organizations' founding in 1992 until January 2006.

Activities

The SAS is primarily noted for two activities:

• Space policy activity and review reports, known as SAS updates, which were emailed and web posted at irregular intervals. These included both factual current events and policy analysis, and were largely or entirely written by Henry Vanderbilt.
• Space Access conferences, held in the spring in Phoenix, Arizona
  Phoenix, Arizona
  Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...
  
  , since 1994. There was also a Making Orbit conference held in Berkeley, California
  Berkeley, California
  Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
  
   in 1992.

The Space Access conferences are well known in the reusable space launch development community and space launch vehicle communities for bringing together key players at most of the companies working in the field, ranging from large conventional aerospace companies such as Boeing

Boeing

The Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...

 and Lockheed-Martin, and smaller companies such as Rotary Rocket

Rotary Rocket

Rotary Rocket, Inc, was a rocketry company headquartered in a facility at Mojave Airport that developed the Roton concept in the late 1990s as a fully reusable single-stage-to-orbit manned spacecraft. Roton was intended to reduce costs of launching payloads into low earth orbit by a factor of...

, XCOR Aerospace

XCOR Aerospace

XCOR Aerospace is an American private rocket engine and spaceflight development company based at the Mojave Spaceport in Mojave, California. XCOR was formed by former members of the Rotary Rocket rocket engine development team in September, 1999...

, Pioneer Rocketplane

Pioneer Rocketplane

Pioneer Rocketplane was an aerospace design and development company intent on developing affordable manned space flight. The company is most famous for advocating a horizontal takeoff, turbo-jet and rocket propelled, aerial-refueled, rocket plane concept called the Pathfinder. The company still...

, Armadillo Aerospace

Armadillo Aerospace

Armadillo Aerospace is an aerospace startup company based in Mesquite, Texas. Its initial goal is to build a manned suborbital spacecraft capable of space tourism, but it has stated long-term ambitions of orbital spaceflight. The company was founded by John Carmack.On October 24, 2008, Armadillo...

 and the like. NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

 and the Federal Aviation Administration

Federal Aviation Administration

The Federal Aviation Administration is the national aviation authority of the United States. An agency of the United States Department of Transportation, it has authority to regulate and oversee all aspects of civil aviation in the U.S...

 Office of Commercial Space Transportation also have consistently sent representatives. Many Ansari X-Prize team members were consistent attendees.

Presentations at the conference range from informal to viewgraphs and paper handouts. There is no conference proceedings, to encourage the free discussion of issues which participants may not want to go on documented record. Social networking among the industry leaders present is a major feature of the conferences as well.

See also

• Private spaceflight
  Private spaceflight
  Private spaceflight is flight above Earth altitude conducted by and paid for by an entity other than a government. In the early decades of the Space Age, the government space agencies of the Soviet Union and United States pioneered space technology augmented by collaboration with affiliated design...
  
  
• Space advocacy
  Space advocacy
  Space advocacy can be described as the general position supporting, pleading or arguing for the idea or cause of space exploration and settlements...
  
  
• Space colonization
  Space colonization
  Space colonization is the concept of permanent human habitation outside of Earth. Although hypothetical at the present time, there are many proposals and speculations about the first space colony...
  
  
• Space exploration
  Space exploration
  Space exploration is the use of space technology to explore outer space. Physical exploration of space is conducted both by human spaceflights and by robotic spacecraft....
  
  
• Vision for Space Exploration
  Vision for Space Exploration
  The Vision for Space Exploration is the United States space policy which was announced on January 14, 2004 by President George W. Bush. It is seen as a response to the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, the state of human spaceflight at NASA, and a way to regain public enthusiasm for space...