The Year’s Most Audacious Private Space Exploration Plans

From Wired.com:  The Year’s Most Audacious Private Space Exploration Plans

It has been a remarkable and exciting year for commercial spaceflight companies.
Private asteroid mining! Commercial trips to the moon! Mars settlements! We barely had time to catch our breath from the last secret organization announcement when suddenly some other team was cropping up and declaring a bold new adventure in space.
“You had the unveiling of these really audacious business plans that at first blush you would dismiss as impossible,” said journalist and aerospace analyst Jeff Foust, editor and publisher of the space-industry-watching The Space Review. “But when you look at both the technical and financial pedigree of the people backing these systems, you step back and say, ‘Well, maybe there’s something here.’”
Many of these new companies have experts at their helms, founded or run by former NASA engineers and veterans of the spaceflight community. Others showed off their deep entrepreneurial pockets and touted the potential profits to be made in space.
So how did 2012 turn into the year of private space? Perhaps the most important factor was the trailblazing success of SpaceX, a commercial rocket business started by entrepreneur and PayPal founder Elon Musk. This year, the company conducted two launches to the International Space Station using their Falcon 9 vehicle, with the second mission bringing supplies and helping prove that SpaceX was on the path to ferrying astronauts.
The company is already planning their next rocket, the enormous Falcon Heavy, for launch in 2013 and recently won important contracts with the U.S. military to deliver hardware to space. With all these notches on his space belt, Musk is no doubt already eyeing the perfect ridge for his retirement home on Mars.
Contributing influences to 2012’s commercial space focus include an aimless NASA. Though it saw spectacular successes such as the Mars Curiosity rover landing, the agency is still wrestling with frozen budgets and a deeply divided Congress that disagrees on its overarching mission. Alongside NASA’s existential crisis was the aftermath of the second dot-com boom, which created a crop of young, sci-fi-crazy tycoons.
“When you give these Silicon Valley guys a billion dollars,” said astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of Harvard, who tracks rocket launches, “Their first thought is ‘Cool, now I can have my own space program.’”
Just in case you are having trouble telling the Planetary Resources apart from the Golden Spikes, Wired presents a gallery of the year's most impressive, daring, and wild business plans from commercial companies. We also talked to a small handful of spaceflight experts to get their take on which of the big dreams will pan out and which will burn out.
“I don’t expect them all to succeed, but I don’t expect them all to fail,” said space lawyer Michael Listner, founder of Space Law & Policy Solutions. Taken together, the companies’ ambitions underscore just how much times have changed. “About 10 years ago, if you presented one of these plans, people would have looked at you like you’re crazy. Now people can say, well it’s a little crazy, but considering what’s been done, it might be possible.”

 

Military Notes: Space exploration music alternatives

From PNJ.com:  Military Notes: Space exploration music alternatives

Alternative space music for the unveiling of the lunar landing module replica, the National Naval Aviation Museum’s LEM model could eventually take to the air, and complete blueprints to the original space vehicle couldn’t be found.

Space oddity

If you attended the unveiling of the National Naval Aviation Museum’s new replica of the Apollo 17 lunar excursion module last weekend and think you heard a different tune when the curtain went up than the music playing on our website’s video recording of the moment, you’re right.
At the event, 550 guests heard “Telstar,” a recording by the British group The Tornados, which was a hit on U.S. pop charts in 1962. And while the instrumental is certainly stirring, the Pensacola News Journal’s videographer Ron Stallcup decided to dub in music he thinks is more rousing and a better fit.
So those who tuned into pnj.com’s video of the unveiling on Sunday heard the theme from the 1968 Stanley Kubrick movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Neither melody is from 1972, the year that Apollo 17 landed on the moon. Stallcup and the museum could have revived a hit song about space that was actually from 1972: “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to Be a Long, Long Time),” composed by Bernie Taupin and Elton John.

LEM trivia

Here are some more tidbits about the museum’s new LEM replica, which is 23 feet fall, made of steel and aluminum and weighs 4,500 pounds. For all that bulk, the manufacturer, Digital Design LLC in Phoenix, constructed the life-size model so that while it now rests on the floor of Hangar Bay 1, curators could eventually hang it from the ceiling — perhaps to dramatize the presentation and clear the way for another exhibit.
Another bit of LEM trivia, the museum’s replica, even though it’s made to sell at retail price of $180,000, is a bargain compared with the ones made for NASA’s Apollo program by Grumman. Those cost about $17 million apiece. Of course they were working space vehicles, while the museum’s replica is an empty shell.

Winging it

Grumman didn’t save complete blueprints of the original LEMs, according to Jaime Johnston, general manager of Digital Design. He said his company’s engineers and designers had to visit museums that contain four of the surviving real LEMs, none of which went into space, to make accurate drawings on which to base their replica.
Johnston said that if Grumman wanted to build another real-life LEM today, “They would have to grab one of the existing ones and take it apart.”

 

New posting schedule

Now that I've got this new full-time job, I'll be posting in this blog twice a week - on Monday's and Wednesdays.

So the next post for this blog will be on Monday.

Thanks for your patience.

Who's next in line for the 'one small step' on moon?

From Alamagordo Daily News:  Who's next in line for the 'one small step' on moon?

Last week marked the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 17 mission Ð the sixth and last manned lunar landing mission.
The Apollo 17 crew included mission commander Eugene Cernan, lunar module pilot Harrison "Jack" Schmitt and command module pilot Ronald Evans.
Apollo 17 lifted off on Dec. 7, 1972 the only nighttime launch in the Apollo program and after a three-day voyage (which the onboard astronauts took the famous and iconic "blue marble" photograph of Earth) arrived in lunar orbit. Cernan and Schmitt then departed the command module America, and in the lunar module Challenger, descended toward their planned landing site, the Taurus-Littrow valley in the lunar highlands, arriving there on Dec. 11.
Cernan and Schmitt a geologist by profession and the first and only trained scientist to visit the moon Ð spent three days at Taurus-Littrow, performing three seven-hour moonwalks and conducting a variety of scientific investigations during the course of these.
Forty years ago this Friday, on Dec. 14, 1972, Schmitt, and then Cernan, ascended the ladder of Challenger from the lunar surface.
They then lifted off from the moon and met with Evans and America. Afterward, the three astronauts and America departed lunar orbit and headed toward Earth and splashed down into the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 19.
No one has visited the moon since the Apollo 17 crew departed it four decades ago.
Although there were originally three additional Apollo missions scheduled to fly after Apollo 17, these were cancelled due to budget cuts.

Meanwhile, even unmanned lunar exploration soon ground to a halt. At the same time, the former Soviet Union continued to launch a few more Luna missions during the subsequent years, including the Luna 21 mission, which deployed a rover in early 1973 and the Luna 24 mission, which successfully returned lunar samples to Earth in 1976, with the completion of this latter mission even that program ceased.
It wasn't until the 1990s that probes of any kind visited the moon; the earliest ones were the Japanese Hiten probe in 1991 and the American Clementine probe a Department of Defense mission in 1994. They were followed by the low-budget American Lunar Prospector mission in 1998.
Although these were not especially sophisticated missions, Clementine data indicated the possibility that ice might exist in permanently-shadowed craters near the moon's poles and data from Lunar Prospector somewhat strongly supported this.
The past few years have seen a resurgence in interest in unmanned lunar missions, both here in the U.S. and in several other countries.
In addition to the American probes, lunar-orbiting spacecraft have been launched by Japan, China, India and the European Space Agency.
The two primary American missions have been the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission, which has been photographing the moon's surface in unprecedented detail, including various images of the Apollo landing site and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) spacecraft.
The two probes were co-launched in 2009, and in October of that year, LCROSS impacted a crater near the moon's south pole, with water being definitely detected in the resulting debris plume.
A recent American effort was the Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, which consisted of two spacecraft since named Ebb and Flow that have been orbiting the moon closely in tandem with each since the beginning of this year in an effort to perform high-resolution mapping of the moon's gravity field.
According to recent results from the GRAIL mission, the moon's crust nowhere thicker than 27 miles is a crushed and pulverized "rubble pile" due to the violent and enormous impacts the moon has undergone since its original formation.
Ebb and Flow are being targeted to impact the moon's surface just before 3:30 p.m. MST Monday, Dec. 17.
So when will humans ever visit the moon again? This question cannot be easily answered.
The American Constellation program, originally proposed and initiated in 2004, had established a timetable of a flight to the moon to take place by 2020, however in reality, Constellation was never adequately funded and it was cancelled in 2010.
While potential lunar missions are presently being discussed, there are no formal American plans for a return to the moon anytime in the near- to mid-foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, the Chinese space program, which has successfully launched several manned Earth-orbital missions over the past nine years as well as two unmanned lunar orbiting missions within the past five years, has announced plans to launch an unmanned lunar rover mission late next year and to send astronauts to the moon in the 2025-2030 timeframe.
Perhaps the next lunar visitors will come from private efforts.
There is already the Google Lunar X-Prize, a $30-million prize to be awarded to the first private-developed effort to land and deploy a lunar rover, with a deadline date of the end of 2015.
The firm Space Adventures, which has facilitated several private citizen visits to the International Space Station (ISS) over the past decade, is currently marketing an around-the-moon trip, and meanwhile just last week came the announcement of a new company, Golden Spike, that is envisioning taking private visitors on lunar orbiting, and even lunar landing, journeys.
The prices for such trips are not cheap Ð the cost of a Golden Spike lunar landing mission is being estimated at $1.5 billion Ð so the next human to set foot on the moon might be one of our planet's wealthiest.
But in the precedent being set by the Space Adventures ISS flights, the costs could conceivably become more accessible to more "average" citizens within a generation or two.
The first human to walk upon the moon, Neil Armstrong, passed away earlier this year.
One can perhaps hope that the next person to do so is already alive, and may take that "one small step" sometime within the not-to-distant future.

Posts resume this Wednesday

I'm a freelance writer and I am way behind on a job I have to do, so I won't be posting here until Wednesday..

Thanks for your patience!

First piloted rocket got attention, but not success

From Alamogordo Daily News:  First piloted rocket got attention, but not success

"Germans Plan First Rocket Flight With Pilot," the New York Times headlined the Associated Press story on Dec. 18, 1932.
"In an attempt to further the practical development of rocket flying," the story reported, "the city authorities, the police and the Governor of Magdeburg district have decided to grant permission for the first ascent of a rocket device occupied by a pilot."
The city of Magdeburg would contribute half of the $4,000 needed to build the 25-foot tall rocket; the Magdeburg Bank would loan the remainder.
"The rocket, which is expected to reach an altitude of 3,000 feet, is to return to the grounds by the means of a large parachute that unfolds itself automatically, and the pilot, after leaping out of the fiery sky ship, is to be brought down by a parachute," the Times stated.
Rudolf Nebel, a World War I combat pilot, was the rocket's "inventor," but at the time, he had little experience. Hermann Oberth had hired Nebel in 1929 to work in Berlin on rocketry for Fritz Lang's film "Frau in Mond" ("Woman in the Moon"). German ex-patriate Willy Ley wrote in "Rockets, Missiles, and Space Travel" that Oberth "did not make certain whether Nebel had the qualifications," such as "in working with aluminum and magnesium alloys or at least with liquefied gases." According to Ley, Nebel later revealed "he had been graduated in a hurry during the war because he had volunteered for the air arm (of the military), and that after the war, he had never worked as a designing engineer but for some time as a salesman of mechanical kitchen gadgets."
The German Rocket Society/Society for Space Travel, or VfR, would build what was called the "Pilot Rocket"; even though Ley said the passenger wasn't really a pilot "since he did not do anything" except "jump out with his own parachute."
Nebel was secretary of the VfR; Wernher von Braun and Oberth were members. Ley, Nebel, and Jacques Valier were two of the founders. Valier, in 1928, had built the world's first rocket car, funded by automaker Fritz von Opel. On Sept. 27, 1930, the VfR had begun using the Raketenflugplatz, a former German military base, in Berlin to experiment.
"Berlin now has a rocket flying field with an area of about two square miles," the the Times reported on March 8, 1931. The story mentioned "references in the German press" regarding "discussions of the possibility of rockets," and warned of the "extraordinarily dangerous character of the experiments now being carried on at the Berlin rocket flying field."
By October 1931, the VfR had developed a water-cooled combustion chamber to feed an aluminum engine that burned 160 gallons of liquid oxygen and gasoline per second for 200 seconds. Members next designed dual tanks to separately hold, and then feed, liquid oxygen and gasoline.
The Magdeburg rocket was not Nebel's idea. One day, Fritz Mengering, an engineer with the City of Magdeburg, "showed up at Raketenflugplatz espousing a crackpot theory (dreamed up by someone else) that the apparent form of the universe was an illusion and the surface of the earth was on the inside of a sphere!" Michael Neufeld documented in "The Rocket and the Reich" (Smithsonian/1995). "By developing a large rocket one could prove this thesis."
The theory, Ley said, "began like a story by Jules Verne.
A mentally decrepit 'philosopher' had written a badly printed pamphlet about the true shape of the universe, in which he insisted that the earth is the universe, that we live inside a hollow globe of the dimensions of the earth, that there is nothing outside that globe, and that the universe of the astronomers is only an optical illusion. Since every crank can find some fellow cranks, the "hollow-earth philosophy' had found some too, among them an engineer named Mengering. É He conceived the idea of testing the hollow-earth theory by means of a rocket. If a rocket going vertically upward crashed É proof would be established."
Von Braun, among others, "emphatically rejected the theory." Nebel, however, "saw this idea as a new opportunity for raising money." They would launch during the next Pentecost.
"It looked like something in which we did not like to see the VfR involved," Ley said.
They didn't worry for long. Ley pointed out Nebel informed them the project "was to be entrusted to him personally (and) not the VfR," even though the members would be the labor.
It was Mengering who convinced Magdeburg to fund the project even though the government didn't buy the Hollow Earth theory. Ley said they did "welcome É scientific achievement," and the rocket would be "the crowning feature of a kind of city-wide holiday" during Easter 1933.
The Magdeburg Project failed. Neufeld, in "Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War" (Knopf/2008), called Nebel "more of a con man than an engineer."
"We all began to work feverishly although we knew that it would be impossible to get such rockets ready in the time interval agreed upon," Ley wrote. "But it meant an opportunity to build large rockets without being handicapped by lack of funds."
The VfR began building at Christmas 1932. A motor was tested on March 9 and "could be heard for miles," Ley said. A test three days later "exploded at the instant of ignition; the concussion was so bad that the eyeballs of the observers pained considerably." Another motor exploded on April 3.
At a June 9 launch, Ley said "the rocket began to rise slowly" up the 30-foot "launching rack É built in a cow pasture." The rocket never cleared the rack, and simply slid back down. "Another attempt two days later was spoiled by a leaky gasket." The engine "roared" for 2 minutes but never developed thrust. A June 13 launch "ended prematurely" when the rocket, rising only to six feet, "popped" a vent screw.
On June 29, because rain "had warped the wooden launching rack," the rocket caught as it came off the guide and launched "almost horizontally," making a "belly landing 1000 feet" away.
The Magdeburg government wasn't impressed.
"In return for partial fulfillment of his promises," said "To A Distant Day: The Rocket Pioneers" (University of Nebraska/2008), "Nebel received only partial payment."

Column: Obama's free market space exploration success

From USA Today:  Column: Obama's free market space exploration success

Innovation in space exploration shows how far capitalism can take us.

So a while back, I noted here that one of the Obama administration's policy successes involves the increasing commercialization of space. And (some would say in a marked contrast to the Obama administration's approach elsewhere) this has been a considerable success.
But one criticism has been that while we've seen some interesting approaches to getting objects, and people, into orbit, we haven't done anything big. Heck, it's been just about 40 years since the last human being walked on the Moon.
Now we have a new commercial venture aimed at doing something about that. It's called "Golden Spike" -- after the final spike that connected the Transcontinental Railroad -- and it's a commercial venture aimed at taking missions to the Moon.
As founder Alan Stern told an interviewer:
"When [NASA's] Constellation [project] was canceled, I wanted to look at the private sector. We talked to a number of private experts; about 20 accepted, and over a period of four months, we put together proposals. This culminated in a meeting in Telluride, Colorado, where we concluded it really was possible to make Moon travel commercial. . . .
Our business line is simple: selling lunar expeditions to any country. In the '80s and '90s, the Soviets were selling countries trips to the Mir space station. Japan, Austria. … France bought six trips! We think that trips to the Moon will be at least as popular. One and a half billion for two people to the surface of the Moon — countries already spend that much on robot exploration."
Will this venture work? Maybe. On the one hand, a major reason that countries might want to launch a Moon mission is to demonstrate homegrown technical prowess, something that outsourcing to an American company may not exactly underscore. On the other hand, not that many people have walked on the Moon -- and nobody has for almost 40 years -- so sending your astronauts there, by whatever means, is still pretty cool. And, of course, the science is just as good no matter how you get there.
Then there's Elon Musk's plan to take people to Mars, and in large numbers: "For $500,000 each. At a rate of 80,000 a year." Though Elton John says that Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids, if we send that many people to Mars, we'll be colonizing and raising a lot of kids. That would be cool.
Will these dreams pan out? Maybe, maybe not. But they are serious efforts, by serious people, at doing the kinds of exciting things in space that NASA hasn't seriously thought about in 40 years. That they're bearing fruit now is a testament to Obama's space policy and its endorsement of free markets.
With free markets, you don't have to convince government bureaucrats and Congressional appropriators that your idea is a good one -- you just have to convince customers and investors. And though government bureaucrats and Congressional appropriators are deathly afraid of failure for political reasons, entrepreneurs succeed by courting -- and, sometimes, learning from -- failure. That's something government programs can't do.
By endorsing free markets, Obama has created an environment for dramatic innovation in space. It would be nice if he took the lesson and tried the same thing here on Earth.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is professor of law at the University of Tennessee. He blogs at InstaPundit.com.