NASA aims to ease doubts over private space taxis

NASA aims to ease doubts over private space taxis

WASHINGTON — NASA is reassuring commercial space firms that it will be a supportive customer for privately built space taxis even as it cautions that Congress could stymie efforts to foster development of such vehicles.

During an Aug. 19 industry event at NASA headquarters here, agency officials said 35 companies had responded to a May 21 NASA solicitation seeking input on the fledgling commercial crew initiative that U.S. President Barack Obama has proposed for a $5.8 billion investment over the next five years.

"We believe that we can fund up to four providers with that $5.8 billion," Phil McAlister, NASA's commercial crew planning lead, told an audience of mostly space industry executives and advocates attending the forum. "This is going to be a challenging program for both NASA and the private sector, and if somebody stumbles along the way we would like to have other providers that hopefully we can rely on." [ 6 Companies That Could Launch Humans Into Space]

Commercial space advocates — including the companies aiming to build the private space taxis and launchers NASA says it needs — remain upbeat despite a series of legislative setbacks in the U.S. House and Senate, which pared back Obama's commercial crew request in draft legislation moving through Congress and revived elements of the Moon-bound Constellation program Obama seeks to abandon.

"Of course, there is a lot of discussion here in D.C. and throughout the nation on what this program is going to be going forward," McAlister said. "We are going to adjust if necessary, but this is sort of the baseline program that we are putting together today."

McAlister said if NASA is directed to invest less money in commercial crew than the nearly $6 billion it has requested, it will have to re-evaluate its plans.

"However, competition is a fundamental aspect of the strategy," he said. "I don't want to say exactly what we would do, but we would have to trade schedule for the potential for competition, and I would say competition is a very strong driver."

James Cameron Says We 'Live In A Science-Fiction World'

James Cameron Says We 'Live In A Science-Fiction World'

'I don't draw a line between fantasy and reality,' 'Avatar' director says of taking same approach to film and space exploration.
By Kara Warner

With the theatrical re-release of "Avatar" — including a much-discussed nine extra minutes of footage that features an "alien kink" scene — just days away, MTV News recently conducted an interview with the Oscar-winning maestro himself, James Cameron.

So far the director has shared his thoughts on sending 3-D cameras (and people) to Mars, his wish list for future film technologies and revealed what other project might come before an "Avatar" sequel.

Given the filmmaker's unparalleled success in Hollywood and his project with NASA, we wondered if the prospect of changing the history of space exploration carries more weight for him than making the two most successful movies in history.

"I don't draw a line between fantasy and reality," Cameron told us. "To me, I love science fiction, but we kind of live in a science-fiction world right now. And I've done deep-ocean exploration. I've been in situations personally, for real, that I would have considered science fiction when I was younger."

Cameron added that he prefers to blur the lines between fact and fiction when it comes to the relationship between his films and the real world.

"For me, it's just a continuum between cinema, where we know kind of that it's a fantasy world, but it requires a lot of advanced engineering to create it," he said, comparing movies to the "real world of exploration, where it requires equally advanced, but very different technology to go do interesting and new extraordinary things."

Not surprisingly, Cameron said he happily moves between the two realities. "I'm comfortable in both worlds," he said.

New Private Space Capsule Passes Big Drop Test

New Private Space Capsule Passes Big Drop Test


A new private spacecraft designed to carry supplies to the International Space Station has passed a major milestone — a high-altitude drop to its parachutes and ocean splashdown.

The Dragon space capsule built by Hawthorne, Calif.-based Space Exploration Technologies survived the Aug. 12 test drop from 14,000 feet (4,240 meters), SpaceX officials have announced. [Video of SpaceX's Dragon drop test.]

The drop marked the last in a series of tests to validate Dragon's parachute and splashdown systems before the spacecraft's maiden launch on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which is expected later this year.

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www.space-careers.comWhile SpaceX currently plans to use unmanned Dragon capsules to the space station for cargo deliveries, the company said the drop-tested systems that could be used for crewed Dragon vehicles as well.

"By holding the Dragon to stringent standards for manned missions from the start, tests like this will ensure the highest quality and reliability for Dragon over the long term," said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the millionaire co-founder of the Internet payment system PayPal, in a statement. "We are proving, every day, that the future of American missions to space will rely on American-made commercial companies."

SpaceX launched its first Falcon 9 rocket in June from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in a successful test flight of the two-stage booster.

This SPACE.com graphic shows a comparison of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to Russia's Soyuz vehicles and NASA's space shuttles. NASA currently plans to rely on American-built commercial spacecraft, when they become available, to ferry supplies and astronauts into low-Earth orbit after its space shuttle fleet retires next year.

The space agency's plans to fly two more scheduled shuttled missions to complete construction of the International Space Station. The addition of a third shuttle mission is under discussion in Congress. Once the shuttles retire, NASA will use Russian, European and Japanese spacecraft to send supplies and astronauts to the station until commercial American vehicles are available.

Big Dragon drop

During the Dragon drop test, SpaceX used a helicopter to drop the space capsule over a target zone about 9 miles (15 km) off the coast of Morro Bay, Calif., about 45 miles (73 km) north of Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Two secondary parachutes deployed to stabilize and slow the space capsule. They were followed by three main chutes — each 116 feet (35 meters) wide — which slowed the vehicle even more during its descent and splashdown into the Pacific Ocean. Recovery ships then returned the craft and its parachutes to shore.

"Data gathered during the drop test will be invaluable as we prepare for the upcoming demonstration flight of the first operational Dragon spacecraft," said Chris Thompson, SpaceX vice president of structures.

Landing of an operational Dragon is a far more precise operation than seen in the drop test. In an actual landing, thrusters will fire during re-entry, ensuring the craft lands less than one mile from its target (winds can push it off target slightly). In low winds, Dragon's landing accuracy will be within a few hundred feet, SpaceX officials said.

Once SpaceX demonstrates the ability to control Dragon's re-entry, the company plans to add deployable landing gear to the craft and use thrusters to bring Dragon down on land.

Next stop: Space

Dragon's parachute test comes close on the heels of the Falcon 9's maiden flight, which took place this past June in Florida. SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 into successful Earth orbit, about 155 miles (250 km) up.

The spacecraft will initially be used to transport cargo to the International Space Station, under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA, with flights slated to begin in 2011.

The gumdrop-shaped space capsules are designed to haul up to 13,228 pounds (6,000 kg) of cargo to low-Earth orbit and return about 6,614 pounds (3,000 kg) to Earth.

The cargo ships are designed to fly near the International Space Station and be grappled and attached to the outpost using the station's robotic arm. Plans for a crew-carrying Dragon spacecraft show the vehicle carrying up to seven astronauts.

Musk and other SpaceX officials have said that a manned version of the Dragon spacecraft could be ready for flights within three years of receiving orders from NASA

Our economy needs a robust space program

Houston Chronicle: Our economy needs a robust space program

Our economy needs a robust space program
By SCOTT SPENCER and CHRISTOPHER C. KRAFT JR.
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Aug. 21, 2010, 3:37PM

As the end of the space shuttle program nears, where and how America next travels into space appears unclear. There are no defined missions, destinations or deadlines. With the upcoming 50th anniversary of the first U.S. manned spaceflight — Alan Shepard's Mercury Freedom 7 suborbital flight on May 5, 1961, - America's leadership in space exploration is at risk of being set adrift into an uncertain future, cluttered with program cancellations, budget cuts and conflicting directives for government and commercial spaceflight development.

In addition to the need to retain the unique technical expertise of tens of thousands of workers, the future of the space program is vital to the economic future of our nation. No other government program can match the economic impact of space program spin-offs that include applications in medicine, computer technology, communications, public safety, food, power generation and transportation. Where our economy goes in the future depends on where we go in space now. MRI testing, flat screen TVs, cordless power tools and solar power are examples of the long-term economic benefits of space technology spin-offs.

A robust manned space program, with well defined missions, destinations and deadlines, is essential for NASA and U.S. advancement in science, technology, engineering and medicine. Such advancements inspire continued academic achievement and employment opportunities in these areas for America's youth.

In the midst of the current political debate about NASA and America's future in space, it is easily overlooked that the dangerous endeavor of traveling into space requires purpose and focus on two principles that have been essential to successful U.S. manned space flight for nearly 50 years - proficiency and redundancy.

Keeping the space shuttles flying will be essential to preserve the continuity of 30,000 jobs and maintaining American technical proficiency with regular space missions. The space shuttles also provide the United States with vital space transportation redundancy.

After the final space shuttle flight, scheduled for next year, the United States would need to depend on Russia for transportation to and from space. While this pay-per-ride arrangement has been used successfully to provide some trips to the International Space Station, this would mark the first time in history that our nation would be left with no alternative but to accept the technical and political risks of depending entirely on a foreign nation for access to space.

It would be prudent to keep the space shuttles flying with new missions to maintain a vital back-up contingency, until replacement spacecraft and commercial space transportation achieve reliable operations.

The space shuttle's unique capability to launch heavy payloads into space, or return hardware from orbit, is the only means available of flying critical replacement components to support the $100 billion International Space Station. If the 300-ton space station is ever taken out of service, the space shuttle is the only vehicle in existence that could safely deorbit the massive structure.

No other spacecraft has flown more flights in the last 30 years and carried more passengers into space than the space shuttle. It is the only reusable spacecraft in the world capable of carrying more than a half dozen passengers and school-bus-sized cargo into space. Although designed to fly at least 100 flights each, the three space shuttles have been flown on average only a quarter of their useful lives.

Since the first flight in 1981, the space shuttle fleet has completed more than 100 missions and carried more than 600 passengers into space. The fleet has accumulated more than 2.5 years in orbit and yet has 75 percent of its design life remaining.

After the tragic loss of the Challenger and Columbia crews and shuttles, modifications to the remaining shuttle fleet and improvements to inspections and flight procedures have made the space shuttle the most reliable and capable vehicle in the U.S. rocket stable.

The space shuttles, used in unmanned and manned mode, plus future variations, have the unique capability to transport humans and large payloads. They also have the capability to assemble vehicles to go to any and every destination in this solar system from the International Space Station as a spaceport in Earth orbit or a more efficient low Earth orbit assembly location.

Some have called for skipping return flights to the moon in order to conduct more spectacular missions to asteroids and Mars. However, regular and extended moon missions, utilizing the spacecraft designed for Mars missions, will be necessary to confirm the readiness of spacecraft, astronauts and flight procedures for future Mars missions. In fact, several dress-rehearsal-type missions, simulating a multiyear Mars mission, within the relative safe-return distance between the Earth and the moon, would be vital before attempting to risk the unforgiving demands of sending a manned spacecraft more than 100 million miles to Mars.

We are requesting that President Obama, Congress, NASA and our fellow Americans continue America's leadership in space with a commitment to a space program with the purpose, focus and deadlines to go to the moon and Mars and generate the tremendous economic benefits that space program spin-offs will provide our economy.

Our proposal is for the development of a modular, reusable Planetary Transport Vehicle (PTV) System for manned landings on the moon, Mars and asteroids. The modular components of the PTV spacecraft would be designed to fit in the cargo bay of the space shuttle to be flown to a spaceport at the International Space Station or a more efficient low Earth orbit location for assembly in Earth orbit.

Designed as an exo- atmospheric spacecraft, reusable PTV landers would operate successive missions entirely in space, traveling to the moon and Mars from the Earth orbit spaceport then returning to the spaceport to be serviced for the next mission. Shuttles and commercial spacecraft would ferry crews back and forth to the PTV spaceport in Earth orbit.

Eliminating the need to launch every moon or Mars lander from the surface of the Earth generates considerable savings in fuel. The reusable PTV also eliminates the expense of throwaway spacecraft and rocket boosters. Modular components of the PTV system create the opportunity to realize additional savings by encouraging funding and construction participation from our foreign-nation partners on the space station to share the costs of international planetary exploration.

As a reusable spacecraft, PTV landers will operate with a high degree of service-proven reliability. This will provide the proficiency and redundancy essential for the success of repeated landings on the moon and Mars.

The PTV spacecraft fleet, supported by the space shuttle assembly missions and the return to Earth of PTV modules when needed for repair, refurbishment or replacement, will also create a significant market for commercial spacecraft to ferry crews, supplies and fuel to the PTV spaceport in Earth orbit.

Given the modular simplicity of the PTV spacecraft landers, it is conceivable that our nation could mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing with the resumption of lunar flights in 2019. An asteroid flight in 2025, establishing a permanent base on the moon to celebrate our nation's 250th birthday in 2026 and a mission to land on Mars by 2035 would be more feasible goals with the experience gained from utilizing the PTV spacecraft.

This is the course that our country should follow into space for the next decade to the moon, Mars and beyond.

A robust space program with a focus on mission definition, destinations and deadlines is essential to avoid stagnation of leadership, economic progress and the technological achievements of our nation.

Kraft is the former director of NASA's Manned Spaceflight Center in Houston. Spencer is a transportation management consultant in Wilmington, Del.

What Happened in Space News August 20

Viking 1 - USA Mars Orbiter/Lander - 3,399 kg was launched on August 20, 1975.

Both Viking 1 and 2 were designed after the Mariner spacecraft, and consisted of an orbiter (900 kg) and lander (600 kg).

Viking 1 went into orbit about Mars on June 19, 1976. The lander touched down on July 20, 1976 on the western slopes of Chryse Planitia.

Both landers had experiments to search for Martian micro-organism. The results of these experiments are still being debated. The landers provided detailed color panoramic views of the Martian terrain. They also monitored the Martian weather. The orbiters mapped the planet's surface, acquiring over 52,000 images.

The Viking 1 orbiter was deactivate on August 7, 1980 when it ran out of altitude-control propellant.

The Viking 1 lander was accidentally shut down on November 13, 1982, and communication was never regained.

Florida Senator Seeks Tax Breaks for Space Ventures

Florida Senator Seeks Tax Breaks for Space Ventures

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, proposed on Tuesday legislation that would introduce tax breaks for investments in commercial space ventures to offset job losses from the end of the U.S. space shuttle program.

Florida, where the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) at Cape Canaveral serves as the shuttle launch site, is expected to lose between 8,000 and 9,000 jobs when the NASA space agency transporters are retired after two or three more flights. Jobs in Texas and Alabama will also be lost.

Nelson plans to introduce a bill amending the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to let investors write off 20 percent of their investments in commercial space firms operating in special enterprise zones.

The bill envisions up to five such zones in the United States, which would be selected by the Department of Commerce in areas impacted by the loss of space jobs.

"What we're doing now is everything we can to ensure KSC's continued importance to our nation's space exploration effort, while also broadening the economic opportunities along our Space Coast," Nelson said in a statement.

The proposal dovetails with an initiative by President Barack Obama's administration to replace NASA-owned and operated launch services with commercial space taxis.

Congress has not yet passed a spending plan for NASA for the year beginning October 1, or decided how to bridge the gap in U.S. human space flight that will open when the shuttles stop flying next year.

Until a replacement vehicle is ready, the United States will be solely dependent on Russia to fly crews to the International Space Station, a $100 billion project involving 16 nations, which has been under construction 220 miles above Earth since 1998.
Russia currently charges NASA about $51 million per seat for a ride on its Soyuz spacecraft. The price goes up to $56 million in 2013.

Obama also wants to spend $40 million in Florida and $60 million elsewhere in the county to soften the upcoming space sector job cuts.

A task force headed by Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden submitted a report this week that suggested spending $35 million for a competitive grants program in Florida, and $5 million to staff a new Commercial Spaceflight Technical Center at the Kennedy Space Center.

Russia marks 50th anniversary of space dogs flight

Russia marks 50th anniversary of space dogs flight

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV (AP) – 2 hours ago

MOSCOW — Russia remembered two unlikely national heroes Thursday — a pair of skinny street mutts who moved the Soviet Union into the lead of the space race when they became the first living creatures to circle the Earth and come back alive.

The Aug. 19, 1960 mission by Belka and Strelka was a key step in preparations for the flight of Yuri Gagarin, who became the first human in space about a year later.

It showcased the Soviet lead in space exploration and turned the two dogs into global celebrities. Celebrations of the mission's 50th anniversary topped national newscasts on Thursday.

By 1960, Soviet space engineers had designed a returnable spacecraft capable of carrying a human into orbit, but they needed to run an extensive program of animal tests first and many of the dogs died during tests. Only stray mutts were picked up for such flights — doctors believed they were able to adapt quicker to harsh conditions — and they were all very small so they could fit into the tiny capsules.

Laika became the first dog to orbit Earth in a non-returnable capsule but died of overheating after her 1957 launch. Two other dogs died in a July 1960 launch when their rocket exploded seconds after blastoff.

Boris Chertok, a top engineer in the Soviet space program at the time, recalled the sense of relief space engineers felt when they heard Belka and Strelka barking in orbit and realized they were in good shape.

"They aren't howling, they are barking — that means they will return," Chertok quoted a colleague as saying.

Belka (Squirrel) and Strelka (Little Arrow) were accompanied by mice, rats, flies and some plants and fungi. The spacecraft landed successfully a day after making 17 orbits in more than 25 hours.

"These dogs acted like real pros," said Vladimir Tsvetov, an engineer who took part in the mission, said on Rossiya state television.

Soviet official reports claimed that the dogs felt well throughout the flight, but a participant in the program recalled later that it wasn't completely trouble-free. Dr. Vladimir Yazdovsky, who prepared the experiment, said that Belka was very nervous during the flight.

"She was very restless, tossing about and trying to get rid of the belts fixing her and barking," Yazdovsky wrote in his book chronicling the story of Soviet space medicine. However, post-flight medical checkups showed that both dogs were in fine condition without any adverse effects from the flight.

Strelka later had six puppies, one of which, Pushinka (Fluffy), was sent by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to President John F. Kennedy's daughter Caroline.

Earlier this year, the dogs' story came to the screen in Russia's first 3D computer-animated movie, "Belka and Strelka: Star Dogs."

'Bonk' author Mary Roach explores the oogie aspects of space exploration in 'Packing for Mars'

'Bonk' author Mary Roach explores the oogie aspects of space exploration in 'Packing for Mars'

At a convention of space junkies in Santa Clara last weekend, Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart was giving an earnest PowerPoint lecture on the threat of asteroid impacts on Earth. As he spoke, swells of laughter seeped through the wall.

Oakland author Mary Roach was drawing howls in the next conference room, describing the perils of body odor, burping and other physical complications of close-quarters space flight. Then she mentioned Schweickart -- and his vomit.

"Throwing up and down in zero gravity," is how she put it. Schweickart was the first to admit getting sick in space, and he left the flight rotation to become a nauseous guinea pig for NASA researchers.

"He said, 'I have to wear the hat saying I got sick in space. All right, yes, I was first,'" she said.

That reverence for vanguard human feats, and irreverence in the variety of feats she explores, has garnered Roach acclaim as a popular science writer with a waggish fascination for the human body.

In her books, Roach has tackled the odd worlds of sex research ("Bonk"), cadaver research ("Stiff") and afterlife research ("Spook"). With her fourth book, "Packing for Mars," she has turned her probing curiosity and wit to man's quest to launch humans into space, and the massive physical, psychological and engineering challenges of a three-year Mars round-trip.

"I'm always writing about the human body in unusual circumstances," Roach said over a peanut-butter-and-jelly


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sandwich during a break at the conference. "To me, the human body is just a fascinating planet."

Roach, 51, started out working as a public relations scribe for the San Francisco Zoo before moving on to magazine stories and then books. A liberal-arts major at Wesleyan University who was "in it for the parties," she is quick to note that she has no formal science training.

"I really just pick it up as I go along by being the kind of irritating reporter who doesn't ask questions, but kind of says, 'Can you explain to me how the human nose works?' And asking for a two-hour lecture. These incredibly busy (scientists) ... they're too polite to hang up."

She is drawn to "surreal, quirky" science that rarely gets noticed. The nitty-gritty of astronauts and space researchers -- the trial-and-error mishaps that spur progress -- was a natural.

"I'm the kind of person, when I was young, I would look at a map, and the empty spaces intrigued me. I wanted to go to Antarctica, and then you get there and you realize why hardly anyone lives there," she said. "There's a pull toward the unexplored, empty reaches that is hard to explain."

Roach devotes a full chapter to space sickness. Another to zero-gravity toileting ("fecal popcorning" is a zero-gravity problem with troubling consequences, she writes). She explores research into human isolation, atrophy and bone loss, talking to subjects who are paid to lie in bed for months. She chronicles NASA's sometimes comical recipes for food that works in space.Roach is more than willing to throw her body into her work. She took a parabolic flight that generated 20-second intervals of zero gravity. She joined NASA researchers at anArctic station that resembled the Mars landscape and tried out a test toilet with a camera inside, designed to help astronauts achieve critical aim. It's the kind of swan-dive journalism Roach says she loves.

Then again, not always. For "Bonk," she convinced her husband, Ed Rachles, to engage in awkward sex inside an MRI tunnel, overseen by the research doctor. "I was really happy when it was over," she said. "It wasn't like sex at all. But I knew when I was doing it, this was going to be so fun to write."

Rachles, her husband of 11 years, wasn't so sanguine.

"I was thinking, anything for a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich," he joked.

Access grows a little easier with each book, she says, but doors still regularly slam shut. Convincing NASA to let her in on some of its more bizarre research proved a heavy chore. "Ninety percent of my time is badgering," she says. "I try to find out what's behind the 'No.' Usually, it's sort of fear of the unknown."

At the conference, Roach asked an audience who would volunteer for a Mars trip. A dozen hands rose. Then someone turned the question on her.

"Hell, no," she replied. Later, she explained.

"I'm grumpy. I dwell on the negative things. I'm kind of a pessimist, and I complain a lot. You don't want to go on an RV trip with me," she said. "I don't handle emergencies particularly well. I can barely change a light bulb. I would be the last person you'd ever pick for a long space mission."

Roach considers the "Mars" book a tribute to the ingenuity and doggedness of space scientists and astronauts. The focus on bodily functions, she notes, is not trivial. In past space flights, toileting challenges in confined spaces led NASA to exclude women.

"It's way more complicated than how do you go to the bathroom," she says. "I do get concerned a bit that for people who haven't read the book, the impression is it's trivial, 'tee-hee' stuff."

Even so, Roach isn't one to miss a fun turn. At the SETI conference, she carried with her a folded paper bag.

"I'm trying to get Rusty (Schweickart) to sign a barf bag."

Can the UK aerospace base drive human space efforts forward?

Can the UK aerospace base drive human space efforts forward?

During the Apollo moon program following John F. Kennedy’s decision to land a man on the Moon, thousands of companies and hundreds of thousands of employees were contracted in order to make this prestige dream a reality. The decision was made in response to the Soviet Union’s preeminence in space at around the time and Kennedy wanted the United States to be “first, period”. At around the same time in Britain, much overlooked and arguably hugely under-credited, were developments at the edge of technology that were similarly Cold War focused but rather than exploiting space for prestige exploited it for practical benefits, most notably defense.

By the end of the Apollo Moon landings, the UK had managed to launch a satellite and then cancel the program.
The Mach 2+ capable TSR-2 was being developed which would become one of the first aircraft designed to fly beyond the sound barrier with afterburners, or, supercruise. The first aircraft to supercruise was also British, the English Electric Lightning in 1954. The Lightning itself had an impressive heritage and record. In service until the 1980s, the aircraft once intercepted an American U-2 spy plane at over 26,300 meters (87,000 feet), something that the U-2 pilots must have thought impossible. The technology that produced the Electric was based on the Miles 52 supersonic research aircraft, whose development involved sharing data that—controversially, in the view of the British—led to United States Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier in 1947. The TSR-2, despite even accelerating away from the Lightning on one test flight, was cancelled in favor of a planned imported cheaper option which was never bought but its technology found outlets in the form of its swing wings in the Panavia Tornado (until recently the combat workhorse of the RAF) and its engines in Concorde. British Airways was impressed enough with Concorde to invite any NATO aircraft on one occasion to intercept her, something that only the Lightning did. Concorde was also able to supercruise and reach high altitudes.

While developments were progressing in aerospace, fewer people know that a British space program was long underway with the Blue Streak ballistic missile that is an ancestor of the world-leading Ariane launch vehicles. Blue Streak underlines the way in which the US and British space programs started off in the same way. Both Blue Streak and the Atlas rocket, which was used to carry the first Americans into orbit in the Mercury program, were initially intercontinental ballistic missile designs. Both were designed in the mid-1950s, although Blue Streak did not make the astonishing progress of the American equivalents. Conceivably, however, the British governments of the era could have used the rocket for manned flight with further development of the boosters and a manned spacecraft on top. The cost of Blue Streak was estimated to be £300 million to complete, yet the total cost of the Mercury program in total has been estimated at almost $400 million. It is possible, then, that the third country to launch a human in space could have been Britain, perhaps as much as 40 years before China did in 2003. Even the European Space Agency, which had access to the fruits of British developments, has never achieved this.

Thus, there would be no famous landmark achievement like a man on the Moon at the end of this program, only the bittersweet achievement in 1971 of launching a British-built satellite, Prospero, from a British-built satellite launcher, Black Arrow, after the program had been shut down for good. Like many of the projects in that program as well as elsewhere in aerospace, such as the predecessor to Black Arrow, Black Knight, the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) was involved in contracting out work to suitable companies.

And so by the end of the Apollo Moon landings, often described as the most significant technological achievement in human history, the UK had managed to launch a satellite and then cancel the program. The US had looked on in interest in what would become a recurring theme in British aerospace and space projects.

So with capabilities still remaining in this country it seems that the missing ingredient has been a lack of consistent support to see these projects through.
The McMahon Act 1946 terminated US collaboration on nuclear technology with other countries despite British involvement in the Manhattan Project that developed the first ever atomic bombs dropped in World War Two. Exploding an independently-built hydrogen bomb in 1958 helped to convince the American government to rethink that appoach, leading to a mutual defense arrangement. A similar arrangement was made with the development of Blue Streak, during which the US offered rocket engine technology. Also, while work by RAE and Saunders-Roe on the British satellite launcher Black Arrow continued with its innovative aspects such as high test peroxide as a propellant, the US offered free launches on Scout rockets.

Following the end of the official program what remained was a piecemeal, fitful attempt of using space hardware in the national interest, such as the Falstaff hypersonic research rocket and the Skylark sounding rocket, both also coordinated by RAE. Falstaff was used by RAE as a platform to enhance the Polaris nuclear deterrent missile, taking over work carried out by the Rocket Propulsion Establishment (RPE) and later by Royal Ordnance and British Aerospace to investigate space launchers which, unlike the Polaris enhancements, remained on the drawing board. RPE’s contribution was Chevaline, an upgrade to the British warheads for Polaris, designed to penetrate Russian anti-ballistic missile systems.

Later in the 1980s came HOTOL, an attempt by RAE, the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Rolls-Royce, and British Aerospace to build a space shuttle that took off conventionally on a runway without the aid of rockets. Recently published records have shown American interest in this project, but British governmental support was dropped. In fact these records were only released recently following a freedom of information request and even then details about then-defense minister Michael Heseltine’s response to an enthusiastic minister’s interest in HOTOL remain classified, as I wrote in a recent article (see “Breaking old habits”, The Space Review, June 7, 2010). A few years later, HOTOL was also shelved.

Today, RAE remains in the form of the British-owned defense company Qinetiq, while RPE became Royal Ordnance, which was then taken over by British Aerospace, itself becoming BAe Systems. BAe has became the final resting place of the talents, records, and facilities of many companies and organizations that have been involved in British flight, aerospace, space, and defense research and production since the early part of the 20th century. Rolls Royce Plc, whose technology was used by Dehavilland for Blue Streak, is one of the world’s largest defense contractors and still very much involved in aerospace. Saunders-Roe became part of Westland Helicopters, which is now foreign-owned AgustaWestland and whose overwhelming focus remains helicopters, despite being a company that once helped design and build rockets and unmanned aerial vehicles. So with capabilities still remaining in this country it seems that the missing ingredient has been a lack of consistent support to see these projects through to a point where benefits can be reaped in the way of transportation, defense, space science and exploration, and commercial satellite launches.

While the UK Space Agency awaits funding and advances on regulatory and legislative issues, potential progress is slipping away from the country.
What options, then, does the current coalition government have? David Cameron’s recent trip to India, accompanied by many government and industry representatives, involved promoting BAe and Rolls-Royce defense equipment. The Science Minister reportedly briefly engaged with ISRO. Meanwhile, however, the Prime Minister is faced with retaining the successor to Polaris, Trident, whilst demanding cuts in government departments. One can clearly see that key private or public organizations that played so much of a part in the initial British space program retain great importance in the political decisions of the present and thus it is fair to question if their prospects can benefit space exploration as well as national economic and defense matters.

The commercial space launch sector, favored by the current US president to take over human access to low Earth orbit, is also establishing itself in the UK. Skylon, from Reaction Engines Ltd, is a reusable spaceplane (whose development is overseen by Blue Streak, Rolls-Royce, and HOTOL veteran Alan Bond) that has eventually secured limited governmental support. Starchaser Industries competed for the X Prize in 2004, in the process building and launching the biggest rockets or privately built rockets ever from the UK and Europe, respectively. However, along with Virgin Galactic, Starchaser had to pursue its dream of “putting Britain back in space” and its vision of “contributing positively to a permanent human presence in space” from Spaceport America in New Mexico. Thus, while the UK Space Agency (UKSA) awaits funding and advances on regulatory and legislative issues, potential progress is slipping away from the country.

Arguably the ideal strategy for the UK coalition government with regards to space exploration and activities that benefit society is a combination: supporting and nurturing the strengths of national aerospace industries, empowering UKSA to coordinate major civil and defense space projects in the national interest, facilitating direct commercial space projects, and ensuring that the RAF retains sufficient sweep in capabilities and infrastructure to be able to drive the development, test, or even launch major projects such as spaceplanes, rockets, and engines.

A fascinating documentary made by UK’s Channel 4 a few years ago titled “Engineering Britain’s Superweapons” included contributions and laments by former contributors to the ballistic missile program and civilian space program of the era. One, John Salton, remembers with pride about the Black Arrow program:

“We had the best technicians in the world […] We will never, ever have the community we had at that time with so many people that were so keen to do so much.”

Another, Nobby Clarke, remembers painting an inscription on one of the girders for the Blue Streak platform at RAF Spadeadam, as re-enacted in the documentary, for future generations to see what was done there: “We did good work here for a long, long time”.

Britain can seek to assume a lead in the new wave of space exploration, given the earlier leads it abandoned, to the dismay of those involved and those that learn what could have been.

This sentiment resonated through the decades such that the same gantries where Blue Streak was tested was used many years later, in 2006, by Starchaser to test one of their rocket engines. The sound of British rockets being tested in the deep was heard not for one last time but for one more time. What was most striking about these tests was the size difference between what Starchaser was working on in the 21st century and the huge test bays and platforms at the base in the remote Cumbria wastes used by RAE and others in the 1950s. At first sight the investment made decades earlier was visibly benefiting a company with a mission to benefit society in the present. Beneath that, it can be argued that the RAF as an organization designed to push aerospace technology to the limit has necessitated the maintenance of an innovation, skills, and research and development base across the decades. One can speculate whether the current defense secretary, Liam Fox, recognizes the historical contribution the RAF has made to technological progress by facilitating the growth of aerospace industries.

The industrial base is not the whole story, of course. UK space science has long been high in world rankings, even the world leader in Thompson Reuters’ research relative impact factors in 2008. However, the aerospace commercial base and military infrastructure has delivered advance after advance. Some of these have been spectacular while some were destined to be a footnote in space history, but this resource continues to offer possibilities in space exploration and exploitation as the existence of Reaction Engines, the success of UK satellite manufacturing, the work of Starchaser, and the ambitions of Virgin Galactic attest to.

The closing commentary at the end of “Engineering Britain’s Superweapons” was, “Britain had reached the stars and fallen short.” However, a new phase of space exploration now beckons with NASA, still by far the most well funded space agency in the world, seeks to leverage more capabilities of the commercial space sector. Perhaps with the effective instigation of a new, formal, top-level, official space program following the arrival of UKSA, Britain could start that journey again, setting itself a target to regain satellite and perhaps even human launch capability well before Prospero’s orbits collapses. Britain can seek to assume a lead in the new wave of space exploration, given the earlier leads it abandoned, to the dismay of those involved and those that learn what could have been. It will be good, for one, for those who were “so keen to do so much good work” to see that their efforts were not in vain.

“Lost in Space” and Obama’s Vision for Space Exploration

“Lost in Space” and Obama’s Vision for Space ExplorationAllen Herbert, Vice President, JAKA Consulting Group

Many African Americans will remember the scene from the hit film, The Original Kings of Comedy, in which royal stand-up comedian Cedric the Entertainer lampoons the stereotype that black people don’t do space and white Americans have a greater affinity for the Moon and Mars. In his patented style, Cedric quickly puts that line of thinking in check by letting them know, “ya’ll move to the moon…we coming to the moon – oh we’ll be right behind ya’ll in space shuttles with Cadillac grilles.” And if that didn’t clear it up, Ced pours it on heavy by physically illustrating the vision of a cool brother laid back, with one hand on the steering wheel, cigarette in the other, in a 1972 Deuce-and-a-Quarter space shuttle with an all bass sound system listening to “Cutie Pie” by the early 80’s funk/R&B band One Way – cruising around outer space. You get the picture.

As farfetched and comically humorous as that may sound, the idea of all Americans not having the opportunity to participate in the 21st Century race to space is a very real possibility. There is very little public data available on African American attitudes and thoughts on NASA and space exploration in general. That which does exists paints a very complicated picture for black folks. Take for instance a 2003 public poll by Zogby International which discovered that African Americans were about 14% less likely to support NASA’s human space program than Whites and only 24% less so than Hispanics. That’s enough to make you wonder why President Obama is facing such harsh criticism of his approach to space exploration. As is the case in most scientific advances, African Americans stand the most to lose in opportunities to participate at the front end especially in an area where neither race has the monopoly, yet – the next frontiers in space.

In September 2009, The Jurban Group a Google Lunar XPRIZE participant and JAKA Consulting along with the Congressional Black Caucus, collaborated on the first ever “Space Entrepreneurship Forum” to kick-off the CBC’s Annual Legislative Conference weekend. During the forum NASA Administrator Charles Bolden stated:

“We believe that the development of commercial space is a great future Frontier of American economic growth. It offers to African-American risk takers, men and women with ideas and the courage to pursue them, a place at the table not just at NASA, but also on the space frontier. One of my jobs as Administrator is to welcome these new ideas and find ways to take advantage of this entrepreneurial spirit. That spirit – of risk bringing rewards; of creativity and innovation – is the spirit that America will need now more than ever to strengthen our economy and remain competitive in the global marketplace. But this is not just about selling to NASA – actually it’s not even about NASA. It is about finding your place in this industry, whether inside the government or out.”

There are very important and wide-reaching effects a commercialized space industry will have on the African American community. The Zogby poll oddly suggests that African Americans are probably the racial group more likely (by 17%) than any other to support NASA’s efforts, yet least likely to know about the agency and the benefits and affects of its research on their everyday lives. And that’s mostly attributable to blacks having less knowledge than other groups about what NASA actually does. With the President’s shift in the direction of how manned space development takes place, opportunities for minorities to know about and engage with NASA will drastically move to the private sector along with the changes that may go on inside NASA.

Now is the time for those interested to get in on the ground floor and gain understanding of how the Obama Administration’s vision for spaceflight and the aerospace industry will affect the African American community. There are many questions remaining to be answered. What will come out of all of this in five, ten or twenty years? Will this mean new industry for cities with major black populations on the verge of more job loss like Detroit or other cities with high unemployment such like Baltimore, Cleveland, and Newark? What kind of incentives will be offered and used to attract these new commercial interests? How will President Obama, Administrator Bolden and CBC members and others come to a negotiated end to ensure minority inclusion in this bold new venture? Will African Americans be at the table or will be as Cedric the Entertainer says left following the majority or like The Robot “Warning! Warning!” Lost in Space?

Allen Herbert, Vice President, JAKA Consulting Group. Allen is a graduate of University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aero-space Engineering, and a Government Relations/Business Development executive with 20+ years experience in business development, strategic planning, international business and technology projects.

International Space Station could tackle asteroid exploration next

International Space Station could tackle asteroid exploration next

NASA plans to retire the International Space Station in 2020, and the agency is currently looking at ways that the venerable orbiter could further serve the world's space exploration needs. One idea? Using a module from the station to go check out asteroids.

During brainstorming sessions in January and June, NASA and its related agencies spent some time looking at the best ways to explore NEOs, or Near Earth Objects. (Interested parties can see the fruits of those brainstorms here, if you don't mind a PDF download.)

One such idea is to use the ISS's Node 3, or Tranquility crew module, and attach it to one or more smaller space craft. The crew module's docking ability and its design to cater to the needs of a crew that'll be in space for a while make it ideal for something like asteroid exploration. When astronauts near a NEO, the smaller spacecraft could then undock from the Tranquility module, returning when a mission checking out a space rock is complete.

This could be the first step in what could become a profitable business in the near future: using a crew module as a small space station of a kind, while smaller craft launch from it and mine a nearby asteroid belt.

It's all part of NASA's new initiative to explore and possibly exploit asteroids by 2025 instead of returning to the moon by 2020.

Via New Scientist

Who is Sean O'Keefe?

Washington Post Blog: Who is Sean O'Keefe?
By Ed O'Keefe and Emma Brown


Though most of the coverage of Tuesday's Alaska plane crash is focused on former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), many in Washington and the corporate and academic worlds are familiar with another passenger on the plane, Sean O'Keefe (no relation to Ed).

O'Keefe, 54, and his teenage son Kevin survived the crash with multiple injuries, according to the Associated Press. The news service cited a former NASA spokesman, who said he had spoken to O'Keefe's family.


Sean O'Keefe. One of many senior government officials who weave between the public and private sectors, O'Keefe has served on Capitol Hill, in the Executive Branch, and most recently as an executive at EADS North America, sitting at the intersection of government and business as he led the company’s efforts to win a mammoth Pentagon contract to build a new generation of aerial tankers for the military.

O'Keefe began his Washington career as a Presidential Management Intern (now known as Presidential Management Fellows) and later served as a senior staffer with the Senate Appropriations Committee. He specialized in defense spending and became close to powerful Senate Republicans including Stevens (who in 2003 called O’Keefe “one of the closest friends I have in the world,") and then-Rep. Dick Cheney.

As defense secretary, Cheney tapped O'Keefe as chief financial officer of the Defense Department in 1989. He turned to him again in 1992, naming O'Keefe secretary of the Navy in the wake of the Tailhook sexual harassment scandal. O'Keefe oversaw an investigation of the scandal that led to the resignation of two Navy admirals and the reassignment of a third.

"We get it," he told reporters at the time. "We know that the larger issue is a cultural problem which has allowed demeaning behavior and attitudes toward women to exist within the Navy."

The Tailhook scandal was just the first of several high-profile incidents O'Keefe would manage.

"He found himself in challenging places everywhere," said Max Stier, president of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service. Stier recruited O'Keefe to join the board about 10 years ago.

O'Keefe spent the Clinton years in academia, teaching at Penn State and Syracuse universities. He returned to government during George W. Bush's administration, serving briefly at the Office of Management and Budget and later as NASA administrator.

Though he lacked formal training in science or engineering, O'Keefe's reputation for reining in costs and untangling bookkeeping problems earned him Congressional support for the job.

NASA was struggling at the time with cost overruns for the International Space Station. He promised during his Senate confirmation hearings to “get the house in order,” and brought space-station spending under control. Then came the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in Feb. 2003.

Seven astronauts died in the accident and O'Keefe later walked a delicate line between protecting agency morale and satisfying inquiries from Congress and the press. Though he was criticized for decisions, such as limiting access to NASA documents and e-mail messages related to the accident, O’Keefe largely won praise for the open way in which he handled the accident -- particularly in contrast with the agency’s evasiveness after the Challenger space shuttle exploded in 1986.

The relentless scrutiny took its personal toll. “Every day,” O’Keefe said during the investigation, “is like a year.”

Known in NASA circles as "a budgeteer, not a rocketeer,” he became an outspoken advocate for continued space exploration and played a key role in guiding the president’s decisions about the agency’s post-Columbia mission. His advocacy led to Bush’s announcement in 2004 of NASA’s new Vision for Space Exploration, a plan to return to the moon, journey to Mars and continue exploring the solar system.

But O'Keefe stirred controversy near the end of his NASA tenure when he decided against sending a manned space shuttle to repair the popular Hubble Space Telescope, a decision later overturned by his successor. He also drew criticism after a Government Accountability Office report revealed the agency spent $20 million extra to fly senior NASA officials on government jets instead of commercial flights.

O’Keefe resigned from NASA in 2005 and became chancellor of Louisiana State University, joining the school just before Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast region. He left in 2008 to join EADS.

Sean O'Keefe survives plane crash

Ex-NASA chief, son survive Alaska plane crash

A former NASA spokesman says ex-NASA chief Sean O'Keefe survived the plane crash in Alaska that killed former Sen. Ted Stevens.

Glenn Mahone (Muh-HOHN') says O'Keefe's teenage son, Kevin, was also among the four survivors.

The plane crashed Monday night near a remote fishing village in Alaska, killing five.

The former spokesman for the space agency says he has talked to O'Keefe's family. They told him that O'Keefe and his son had some broken bones and other injuries.

O'Keefe was a long time friend of Ted Stevens, and they'd often gone fishing together.

Griffin’s critique of NASA’s new direction

The Space Review: Griffin’s critique of NASA’s new direction

Former NASA administrators are not generally known for being outspoken about space policy after their tenures running the agency. They tend to go on to other pursuits, often outside of space entirely, rarely holding forth on NASA in any public capacity. Sean O’Keefe focused his attention first on running a university, LSU, and more recently as an aerospace executive, emphasizing the “aero” more than the “space”. His predecessor, Dan Goldin, was NASA administrator for nearly a decade but virtually dropped out of sight afterwards, beyond the odd situation in late 2003 when he was selected to become president of Boston University only to have his contract bought out immediately before he was to take office.

Griffin summarized his opinion of the White House plan for NASA in a single sentence: “We’re not going anywhere and we’re going to spend a lot of money doing it.”
Mike Griffin, however, is not content to remain quiet during this period of upheaval in space policy. The administrator who oversaw the formation and initial development of the Constellation architecture—most notably the Ares 1 rocket and Orion capsule—is clearly not happy to see the White House and even Congress willing to dismantle part or all it in favor of a new approach to human space exploration. Speaking Friday at the Thirteenth Annual International Mars Society Convention in Dayton, Ohio, Griffin made perhaps his strongest criticism yet of the administration’s plans, as well as described what he thinks a space program should do.

Spending money going nowhere
Griffin started his speech by first reviewing the administration’s proposed plan for NASA, and his take on it—which, not unexpectedly, wasn’t particularly positive. One area of concern he expressed was the plan by the White House to defer a decision on a heavy-lift vehicle (HLV) to no later than 2015. “I would ask you to note the timing,” Griffin said: a 2015 decision would come near the end of President Obama’s second and final term (assuming he wins reelection in 2012), and thus the funding decisions would be put in the lap of his successor. “By the time there was any budget year that would actually have to support the development of a real heavy-lift rocket, the president who is promising to do it will be gone,” he said.

Griffin also suggested that the plan didn’t put much thought into the decision to defer a human return to the Moon in favor of a mission to a near Earth asteroid by 2025. The made that choice, he suggested, “apparently without realizing that the delta-V to get to almost all asteroids is higher than the delta-V to get to Mars” with similarly long travel times and limited launch windows. “In a number of ways reaching asteroids can be harder than reaching Mars.”

He was skeptical of the plan’s emphasis on “gamechanging” technologies to enable human space exploration. “Any time I develop a new technology I potentially change someone’s game,” he said. “Without a plan, I don’t know what game, I don’t know if it’s the game I ought to be changing, or if it’s a high-value game or a low-value game, but I’m going to change something, so it’s pretty easy to promise that I’ll do gamechanging technologies.”

He added that such technology development programs can be prime targets for future budget cuts, either by the Office of Management and Budget or in Congress. “The Congress surgically removes those programs and spreads the money to goals that they have in mind,” he claimed. “No congressman or senator ever gets credit for a technology program. Congressmen and senators get credit for projects.”

“If you can’t beat the government deal you shouldn’t be in business, and if you can beat the government deal I ought to get the best deal that you can make as an American taxpayer,” Griffin said of commercial crew providers.
Griffin summarized his opinion of the White House plan for NASA in a single sentence: “We’re not going anywhere and we’re going to spend a lot of money doing it.” He referred to a 2007 essay he wrote for Aviation Week where he concluded that the agency actually received more inflation-adjusted funding in its last 15 years than it did in its first 15. “The US space program has not accomplished as much in its last 15 years as in its first 15 years, given more money,” he said. “So, if you like that, you’ll really like the next decade, in which we do almost nothing and spend just as much.”

Government vs. commercial human spaceflight
Much of his speech addressed one of the biggest areas of debate about the White House’s plan: its reliance on commercial providers for transporting astronauts to and from LEO. Doing so, and in the process abandoning the government capability to do so, is unwise for a number of reasons, he argued in his speech.

“As a matter of national strategic posture and purpose—national position in the world—I consider this to be regrettable,” he said. “I believe that our civil space program does provide strategic value for the United States and our partners and allies” by doing something that makes countries around the world partner with us. Abandoning the “the most basic and functional thing one can imagine” for the program, the ability to put people in orbit, “is strategically unwise.”

Griffin had more specific concerns about relying on commercial providers without any sort of government backup vehicle. One is the worry about the loss of access to space should a commercial provider have an accident. “How does the provider stay in business?” he asked, if the damages created by the accident exceed the value of the company. He also noted that if only a single commercial crew provider emerges, it could charge NASA exorbitant rates since the agency would have nowhere else to turn. “How do we protect ourselves from monopoly pricing?”

One solution he had to those concerns was to continue development of a government human spaceflight system, one that would be a backup if a commercial provider had an accident—or never entered service at all—of and also protect against monopoly pricing if there’s only one provider. “If there’s a government capability, then we’re okay,” he said.

He was particularly critical of unnamed companies that he claimed wanted protection from government competition while at the same time seeking a variety of support from the government. “Why is there a threat from a government provider of human spaceflight services by putative commercial providers?” he asked. “If you can’t beat the government deal you shouldn’t be in business, and if you can beat the government deal I ought to get the best deal that you can make as an American taxpayer.”

Those companies, he claimed, were really trying to get all the advantages of both commercial business practices and standard government contracting. “How is it a commercial enterprise if the government is providing upfront money, if the only market that is foreseen of any size is the government market, and if the government has to indemnify the company against egregious losses in order to keep the company in business?” he said.

He emphasized, though, that his criticism of commercial crew transportation did not mean that he was against commercial spaceflight, only that the current policy had made it an “either-or choice” versus government human spaceflight. “We seem to be setting up for an adversarial position between government enterprises and commercial enterprises, something that would serve us extremely poorly if it were allowed to continue,” he said. In other fields, like aviation, government and commercial entities coexist, and government makes considerable use of commercial aviation, but, he added, “The government does not choose, when strategic purposes are at stake, to give up its own capability to favor commercial contracts exclusively.”

What is a real space program?
During the question-and-answer session following his speech Griffin acknowledged the House and Senate NASA authorization legislation working its way through Congress (the full Senate passed its version by unanimous on Thursday night) that roll back some of the administration’s proposed changes. Even though the House version arguably is closer to Griffin’s original vision for Constellation—calling for the development of a crew launch vehicle and spacecraft first, whereas the Senate version provides for immediate development of an HLV—he took no stand on one versus the other. “Either one—both of those bills are, in my view, radically better than the administration’s plan,” he said. “They’re not as good, in my view, as we had, but radically better than the administration’s plan.”

“Does this nation want to have a real space program or not?” Griffin asked. (“Yes!” at least one person in the audience shouted.)
He did appear to take issue, though, with the Senate’s plans for an HLV that would place as little as 70 tons into LEO. “The question is what payload do you need for human exploration,” he said, noting that various studies concluded that the Saturn V “was about the lowest useful capability for exploration beyond LEO.” The Saturn V, of course, could put about 130 tons into LEO, nearly twice the capacity of the proposed vehicle in the Senate bill (although the bill's intent is that vehicle could be upgraded later to launch heavier payloads).

Towards the end of his speech, Griffin turned away from his criticism of the White House’s NASA plan and looked at the big picture. The fundamental issue of the ongoing debate, he said, is this: “Does this nation want to have a real space program or not?” (“Yes!” at least one person in the audience shouted.) “A real space program goes somewhere, goes somewhere worthy, it does something worthy when it gets there. It does it in a timeframe that is of interest to normal human beings.” And, he added later, in a subtle reference to the funding problems he experienced with Constellation during his tenure as administrator, “we’re going to pay for it. We don’t decide that we’re going to do it on half of what people tell you is needed.”

But what is the driving purpose for having a “real” space program? “What is the role in a democratic society of a government-funded space program?” he asked. He agreed with the rationale provided in the Augustine Committee’s final report, that human presence should be expanded into the solar system, providing “leadership on the frontier of human progress,” as he put it.

“There are unspoken larger issues about which we need to speak, and are not,” such as the purpose of a space program, Griffin said of contemporary space policy debate. Griffin made it clear Friday that he, at least, is willing to talk about them.

What Happened in Space News August 7

Viking 1 - USA Mars Orbiter/Lander - 3,399 kg was launched on August 20, 1975.

Both Viking 1 and 2 were designed after the Mariner spacecraft, and consisted of an orbiter (900 kg) and lander (600 kg).

Viking 1 went into orbit about Mars on June 19, 1976. The lander touched down on July 20, 1976 on the western slopes of Chryse Planitia.

Both landers had experiments to search for Martian micro-organism. The results of these experiments are still being debated. The landers provided detailed color panoramic views of the Martian terrain. They also monitored the Martian weather. The orbiters mapped the planet's surface, acquiring over 52,000 images.

The Viking 1 orbiter was deactivate on August 7, 1980 when it ran out of altitude-control propellant.

Astronaut’s widow continues husband’s legacy, ensures space exploration

Astronaut’s widow continues husband’s legacy, ensures space exploration

For more information on this program go to http://www.challenger.org.

8/4/2010 - VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- In 1986, seven crewmembers perished 73 seconds into flight during what is now referred to as the "Space Shuttle Challenger accident."

One of those fallen members was Lt. Col. Ellison Onizuka, the first Asian American to reach space and a University of Colorado alumnus. Though this final flight was short, his legacy and the continuance of space exploration lives on through the Challenger Center for Space Science Education.

This non-profit organization was created by the families of the astronauts from Challenger Space Shuttle mission STS-51-L and was dedicated to that mission's educational spirit.

According to the Challenger Center Web site, all seven crewmembers were dedicated to education and reaching young people, which is one of the many reasons that Christa McAuliffe, America's first teacher in Space, was such an integral part of the Challenger team.

Lorna Onizuka, Colonel Onizuka's widow and a founding director for the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, has lived this mission for the past 25 years.

"We wanted to come up with the best way to represent the crew based on what their mission objectives were, trying to find common denominators with what was important to them and with all of the astronauts. It was the outreach that they were able to have with kids... we needed to inspire these kids in science and math to maintain that populous for future generations," Mrs. Onizuka said. "So we started the foundation and basically invited junior high kids, because we felt that was the critical age. We have our first protype center in Houston, Texas....it is a mock-up of mission control, a cabin of a cockpit and laboratories."

This program wasn't created to let young minds run-amok inside of a mock space shuttle; the schools involved are given a curriculum and specialized teacher instruction as well as hands-on objectives.

"The kids are given a mission to run with objectives and experiments on board," Mrs. Onizuka said. "They're put into mission control and fly their own missions, taught by teachers. They're also controlling a payload bay, thrusts and things like that...its very hands on. We have 50-55 of these mock space shuttle centers and more that are standing by to be open."

Schools geographically separated from a site can utilize the program's instruction through the exact technology they're learning to cultivate.

"We are also connected to other classrooms by way of internet so they can join in the mission that's being run," Mrs. Onizuka said. "We're hoping to keep them motivated into doing things that they might not think that they can."

This exclusive program isn't just for districts with generous taxpayers.

"We bring in inner-city kids to private school kids because the members of these crews came in from normal middle class backgrounds, some even lesser so, and yet they could part-take in a profession that wasn't open to very many," Mrs. Onizuka said. "We want these kids to know that they can... they don't have to be astronauts. They can be scientists, teachers... or just more than they previously aspired to be."

The Challenger space mission STS-51-L had a specific mission not so different from the Challenger Center for Space Education: to further space operations.

"Our program is important for furthering space operations because there is a continuum even beyond where we are right now," Mrs. Onizuka said. "Because we're in it we feel like the ones doing it but there is always the tomorrows. We have to have these people ready for those tomorrows, and hopefully they'll have an interest that will keep them driven towards it because it is where we need to go."

For more information on this program go to http://www.challenger.org.

Pentagon's space partner eyes new frontiers

CEO Wanda M. Austin of Secretive Aerospace

Los Angeles Times: Pentagon's space partner eyes new frontiers

Secretive Aerospace Corp., which makes sure that contractors' work on classified government space projects is being done properly, could find a new niche in the private sector.

Aerospace Corp.'s warren of low-rise office buildings in El Segundo offers little clue to the work that goes on behind the double security doors, where thousands of scientists and U.S. Air Force officers toil in secrecy.

The company, which gets almost all of its funding from the Pentagon, is responsible for overseeing many of the nation's most classified programs, including the development of multibillion-dollar spy satellites and rockets that lift them into space.

"I've spent most of my life keeping secrets in this business," said Joseph F. Wambolt, 76, a rocket propulsion engineer who joined Aerospace the year it was founded 50 years ago and still won't divulge what he's working on, even to his wife. "At Aerospace, we've always tried to keep a low profile."

But the days of lying low may be over.


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Wanda M. Austin, president and chief executive of Aerospace, said she saw the El Segundo-based research center taking on new roles that could increasingly bring it out from under the shroud of secrecy.

Under President Obama's proposal to outsource more space missions to private ventures, the government will want more oversight of missions carried out by private businesses, such as Hawthorne's Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX.

Aerospace could be the organization to do that, Austin said.

"There's a new energy and a new direction for space," she said. "We're excited about the promise that the industry holds for us."

Aerospace is neither a defense contractor nor part of the Air Force, which manages military space programs.

Rather, Aerospace is a federally funded brain trust for the Pentagon's $26-billion space program, which far exceeds NASA's budget of $18 billion and has increased almost 90% since 2000. Although it's not well known outside defense circles, it is regarded as one of the nation's most important assets.

Aerospace scientists oversee the technical side of contracts awarded to defense firms to make sure the work is being done properly. A separate Pentagon agency audits the contracts.

The firm also provides consultation and advice to both the government and the defense industry on how to best develop spacecraft. In all, 87% of its budget comes from military contracts and the rest from civilian government agencies such as NASA.

"Aerospace is the glue to the Pentagon's space infrastructure," said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a website for military policy research. "It's an independent voice that's has become a vital component to national security."

Despite proposed cutbacks in Pentagon spending, Aerospace's budget increased to $868 million last year — its largest — and Austin believes it will be busier than ever in the coming years.

In addition to its potential new role for private space ventures, the National Reconnaissance Office, or NRO, the umbrella organization that operates spy satellites, has said it's set to begin "the most aggressive" launch schedule it has undertaken in 25 years. That is expected to keep Aerospace engineers and scientists busy for a while.

The research center was formed in 1960 at the height of the Cold War as a way to avoid a potential conflict of interest. At the time, a technology company was about to begin development of a spacecraft, but it was also advising the Pentagon on what kind of space systems it should consider funding.

That company, Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc., or TRW, spun off its Space Technology Laboratories, the predecessor to Aerospace.

Simon Ramo, co-founder of TRW, which was later acquired by Century City-based Northrop Grumman Corp., said he wanted to begin making space hardware but that it posed an obvious conflict of interest for the company.

"We couldn't tell the Air Force what to do in space on one side of our mouth, and then on the other side tell them that we'd build it for them," Ramo said.

Since it was formed, Aerospace has built a reservoir of talent that's more comparable to a major university. Aerospace has produced more than 68,000 scientific papers on a wide variety of space-related topics. Its staff now features 831 scientists and engineers with doctorate degrees.

Aerospace also helps the Air Force monitor rocket launches. Engineers pore over data and the fine print to make sure everything is in its right place. A misplaced decimal point can turn billions of dollars' worth of intricate hardware into blazing debris in just a fraction of a second.

The company's 41-acre campus sits across the street from Los Angeles Air Force Base, which oversees military rocket development. The two complexes are linked by a 135-foot bridge over El Segundo Boulevard.

Aerospace recently built a $66-million building with a space launch center in the basement. Resembling NASA's mission control center in Houston, the facility allows Aerospace engineers to keep real-time tabs on rocket launches at Cape Canaveral, Fla., or Vandenberg Air Force Base. They monitor incoming data streams looking for anomalies and can order the launch to be scrubbed if there are any.

Since Aerospace has kept a close watch, the Pentagon has had a string of 65 consecutive successful launches stretching back to 1999.

"That kind of reliability is unprecedented," said Gary Payton, who last week retired as deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for space programs.

It may cost $20 million to $30 million more in launch costs for the type of "mission assurance" that Aerospace provides, but it's well-worth it, he said. "I would like to save money on a launch. But if the launch vehicle fails, I splash a $2-billion satellite."

In May, the Air Force launched the first of a new generation of GPS satellites, part of an $8-billion upgrade designed to make the system more reliable, more accessible and much more accurate. A failure could have set the GPS upgrade back a year or more and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

"Aerospace has the kind of expertise to help ensure our launches" are successful, Payton said. "It's a brain trust that's unmatched."

Space station breakdown has NASA scrambling

Space station breakdown has NASA scrambling

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Astronauts in orbit and on the ground practiced Monday for a major repair job later this week at the International Space Station, struck by a massive cooling system failure.

The weekend malfunction knocked out half of the space station's cooling system, forcing the crew of six to turn off unnecessary equipment and halt scientific work to avoid any overheating.

NASA's space station program manager, Mike Suffredini, ranked the problem as one of the most serious in the 12-year history of the orbiting lab, but stressed the outpost could keep going indefinitely given the current situation. The fear is that the second cooling loop could shut down at any moment and leave the station in precarious shape.

For now, "everything the crew needs to survive, they're in good shape, all those systems are active," Suffredini told reporters Monday. "What we're talking about, really, is it would be a significant challenge if we suffered the next failure."

Two of the Americans on board — Douglas Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson — will venture out on a spacewalk to replace the pump Thursday. A second spacewalk will be needed to finish the job, probably Sunday.

The 780-pound pump is difficult to handle, and the astronauts will need to guard against any hazardous ammonia leaks.

Engineering teams have been working nonstop since the right-side cooling loop shut down Saturday night. A pump that drives ammonia coolant through those lines failed when a circuit breaker tripped.

The disabled pump has been at the space station since 2002 and operating fully since just 2006; it was a premature failure. The electrical short is believed to be internal to the pump. Engineers believe a new pump will solve the problem, but there is no guarantee, Suffredini noted.

Four spare pumps are on board.

"This is an anomaly we knew some day would happen," Suffredini said. "We're in a good position to go solve this problem. It is a significant failure, though, in terms of systems."

Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson trained for this type of repair job before they launched to the space station. They were going to take a spacewalk anyway Thursday to perform prep work for a shuttle visit in November; all those original chores have been pushed to the side.

A pair of astronauts in Houston took to a giant swimming pool Monday afternoon to rehearse the repair procedures. Another practice session was set for Tuesday. The spacewalk will be delayed until Friday if extra time is needed to prepare, flight director Courtenay McMillan said.

NASA officials repeated Monday that the astronauts are safe and the outpost is stable. But lots of equipment remains shut off: extra lights, heaters and science experiments.

If both cooling loops were to fail, the Russian side of the space station would have to carry the entire cooling load. The crew would have just enough time to attempt emergency repairs before, in all likelihood, abandoning ship in Russian Soyuz capsules to return to Earth.

The space station is meant to operate until 2020. Shuttles will stop visiting, though, early next year. Only two shuttle flights remain, and there is no room on board either Discovery or Endeavour to return the failed pump, Suffredini said. If a third and final mission is approved for next summer, the discarded piece could be returned for analysis.

Any additional spare pumps that might be needed in years to come, Suffredini said, could fit aboard a Japanese cargo carrier or commercial craft such as the type being designed by Space Exploration Technologies of California.

Coolant system fails aboard space station

From Chicago Tribune: Coolant system fails aboard space station
Spacewalks are planned this week to repair system

WASHINGTON — A malfunction aboard the International Space Station had NASA scrambling this weekend as astronauts and engineers worked to repair a coolant system that failed after a power surge on Saturday night.

The cooling loop — one of two onboard — keeps the station from overheating and the six-member crew now must rely on the one remaining system with no backup. While there is no immediate danger, the loss of the second cooling loop could be disastrous.

With the worst in mind, astronauts shut down nonessential equipment — including at least one rack of experiments that was transferred to another hold, according to one NASA official — so the remaining coolant system wouldn't be overtaxed.

NASA also began planning for a repair mission later this week, after an attempt to restart the broken coolant system failed on Sunday. The agency blames the breakdown on a pump module that uses ammonia to keep the station cool.

"We're pretty confident that it was the pump module itself that failed," said NASA spokesman Rob Navias. "There was a spike in current a few minutes before 8 p.m. Eastern [Saturday] that tripped the circuit breaker and took the pump module down."

The $100 billion station has two spares onboard and the tentative plan is for astronauts Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson to replace the broken pump during a spacewalk on Thursday. A second spacewalk then would be done two or three days later to attach the necessary wires and fluid lines and "bring it to life," Navias said.

The new mission means an earlier spacewalk will be cancelled or postponed. That spacewalk, also to be done by Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson, was to prepare the station for a new piece to be brought by the space shuttle Discovery in November.

The incident so far has had little direct impact on the crew — other than a rude awakening that came Saturday when alarms sounded after the cooling system failed. Despite the broken pump, the station has remained at its usual climate of 75 degrees with moderate humidity.

"This had no impact on environmental factors," Navias said.

Still, the incident could rekindle a months-long debate about NASA's future.

The agency plans to retire the space shuttle after two or three more missions — a move that has worried some lawmakers because NASA does not have an immediate replacement spacecraft.

Plans are under way, but until NASA or the private sector builds a successor, the U.S. must rely on Russia and other international allies to ferry crew and cargo to the station, which orbits at about 200 miles above Earth.

That has led some lawmakers, such as U.S. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, to call for the continuation of shuttle flights until there is a replacement to ensure that the station can be stocked with crew and supplies through 2020, which is the current plan.

But keeping the shuttle flying is expensive and NASA officials have raised concerns that they cannot continue shuttle flights and build a new spacecraft that could travel beyond low-Earth orbit on an annual budget of about $19 billion.