Monday, May 21, 2012
5/21/12 news
Monday, May 21, 2012
JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1. OB1 Informal Mentoring Mixer on May 30
2. 'Sulu Takes the Helm': George Takei to Speak May 29 in Teague
3. Hispanic Employee Resource Group Brown Bag Lunch
4. Five Days Left Before the SATERN Downtime
5. IEEE Workshop: Become an Effective Consultant
6. Career Path Development - The Ins & Outs of an Individual Development Plan
7. JSC-EWB Presents: The Director of a Rwanda Orphanage
8. NASA-JSC Health and Fitness Month - Earn Your Tickets Before It's Too Late
9. Nutrition Tour - Dining Out with the Dietitian
10. New IEEE Tools, Services and Programs
________________________________________ QUOTE OF THE DAY
“ Do you wish men to speak well of you? Then never speak well of yourself. ”
-- Pascal
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1. OB1 Informal Mentoring Mixer on May 30
Have you registered yet for the OB1 Informal Mentoring event? From 4 to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, May 30, JSC contractors and civil servants have the chance to "speed mentor" with JSC and contractor senior managers. Light refreshments will be served.
OB1 is the Informal Mentoring program developed by the JSC Joint Leadership Team (JLT) to complement the Formal Mentoring Program (YODA). OB1 promotes unlimited entry/exit points and mentoring opportunities in group and individual settings.
OB1 events are open to JSC civil servant and contractors. All employees should consult their supervisors about participation in the event to ensure continued support for mission success.
Registration for this event is limited. Register today by sending an email to jsc-informal-mentoring@mail.nasa.gov. Include your name, organization code, email address and phone number.
Jeanne Newman 281-433-9731 http://jlt.jsc.nasa.gov/
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2. 'Sulu Takes the Helm': George Takei to Speak May 29 in Teague
George Takei, known for his role as Capt. Hikaru Sulu in the acclaimed television and film series Star Trek, will speak to JSC team members about leadership and inclusiveness in a personal, inspiring and thought-provoking dialogue Tuesday, May 29, at 11 a.m. in the Teague Auditorium. At the conclusion of his presentation, there will be an opportunity for questions and answers from the audience. There will NOT be an opportunity for individual autographs or photographs with Takei. The event is jointly sponsored by the center's ASIA and Out and Allied Employee Resource Groups to recognize JSC's diverse workforce during the months of May and June for the Asian Pacific American and LGBT Observances, respectively.
Carolyn G. Fritz x32017
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3. Hispanic Employee Resource Group Brown Bag Lunch
All JSC team members are invited to participate in the monthly Hispanic Employee Resource Group (ERG) Brown Bag Lunch meeting on Thursday, May 24, in Building 1, Room 966, from noon to 1 p.m.
The Hispanic ERG was formed to draw upon the experiences of the JSC Hispanic Community to promote recruitment and onboarding activities to create a diverse and inclusive workforce. Members of the Hispanic ERG are individuals interested in increasing the number of Hispanics in the Federal government, specifically in technical and scientific fields; strengthening leadership and communication skills; learning about Hispanic culture; and establishing forums to share experiences and expertise with the JSC community and beyond. Please join us to learn more or visit our webpage at:
http://collaboration.jsc.nasa.gov/iierg/hisp/default.aspx
Hispanic Employee Resource Group x42835
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4. Five Days Left Before the SATERN Downtime
SATERN will be unavailable from this Friday, May 25, at 5 p.m. until Monday, June 4 at 8 a.m. as new features and enhancements are implemented.
Register for June training classes in SATERN before the downtime on May 25. (Please keep in mind the time needed for the approval process.)
Check the status of your Individual Development Plan. IDPs that are in pending status must be approved prior to downtime.
IT Security Training and all other Federally Mandated courses that are due during the downtime (May 25 to June 3) should be completed by May 25 for all SATERN users at JSC, contractors and civil servants.
Complete any required Computer Based Training courses.
Updated training materials, job aids and quick reference guides will be available on the SATERN Informational website after the June 4 go live date: https://saterninfo.nasa.gov
Contact the NSSC Contact Center for technical assistance: 1-877-NSSC-123
(1-877-677-2123) or nasa-satern.support@nasa.gov
Jennifer Ahmed-Alonso x27851
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5. IEEE Workshop: Become an Effective Consultant
Dr. Gary L. Blank, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA Vice-President, will present a six-hour seminar/workshop designed for engineers, scientists, and other professionals interested in starting a consulting practice or improving the performance of a current consulting practice. The workshop will discuss how to get started, set your fees, win the contract and find clients.
Blank is the founder of the IEEE Chicago/Rockford Consultants Network, which has more than 200 members. His current IEEE-USA VP responsibilities include more than 40 IEEE Consultants Networks in the USA.
Location: Gilruth Center Discovery Room
Date: June 9; Registration 8:30 a.m.; Presentation 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Coffee breaks and lunch provided
COST: $100.00, (special discount of $30 for New IEEE Members); CEU/PDU provided with additional fee of $18 for certificate
Please RSVP to Stew O'Dell at stewart.odell@ieee.org before noon on Wednesday, May 30. All no-shows will be billed.
Stew O'Dell 281-461-5920
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6. Career Path Development - The Ins & Outs of an Individual Development Plan
The African American Employee Resource Group will host a Career Development Plan "Brown Bag" Lunch on Wednesday, May 23, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Building 1, Room 966. This educational opportunity will focus on helping employees create an Individual Development Plan with a focus on career development. Natalie Saiz and Judith Sanders from the Human Resources Development Office will be the facilitators.
Orlando C. Horton x46584
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7. JSC-EWB Presents: The Director of a Rwanda Orphanage
The JSC chapter of Engineers Without Borders has been working with the L'Esperance Children's Aid Orphanage in Rwanda since 2006 on rainwater catchment, water treatment and currently fruit dehydration. The L'Esperance orphanage director Victor Monroy will be visiting JSC on his first trip to the U.S. and would like to invite all JSC employees to the Building 30 Auditorium (Building 30, Room 1093) today, May 21, from noon to 1 p.m. to learn about the work he has done at L'Esperance and the upcoming work on a small business initiative, with EWB-JSC, that will become the funding source for the orphanage making it the first self-sustaining orphanage in Rwanda. No RSVP required.
Angela Cason x40903 http://lesperancerwanda.org/
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8. NASA-JSC Health and Fitness Month - Earn Your Tickets Before It's Too Late
Welcome to Week 4 of Health and Fitness Month! You won't want to miss the many fun events planned! First - challenge yourself to an indoor triathlon and earn multiple tickets! Just complete 30 minutes on each "leg" of the triathlon (treadmill, bike and elliptical) in the fitness center (for a total of 90 minutes of aerobic activity) throughout the week. Also, attend a nutrition class to learn about "Overcoming Weight Loss Barriers" with Glenda Blaskey, registered dietician, on Tuesday, May 22, (Gilruth, 5 p.m.). Then learn how strength training compliments your overall health and fitness routine with Dr. Larry Wier on Wednesday, May 232 (noon, Building 3 Café). Don't forget that you can earn extra tickets all month long for biking to work, taking Starport GroupX classes, attending educational wellness classes and completing your health assessment online! Check out the official interactive online HFM calendar for event information and prize details. http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/documents/MAY2012NEW.pdf
Jessica Vos x41383 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/documents/MAY2012-NEW.pdf
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9. Nutrition Tour - Dining Out with the Dietitian
Are you are making the best choices when dining out? With hectic schedules, many of us find ourselves visiting restaurants for meals. Regardless of why we dine out, we often wonder which menu items will fit into a healthy lifestyle. Join the JSC Registered Dietitian at a local restaurant to learn how to make sensible choices when dining out. Family members are welcome to attend, but need to be registered to attend the class. Class will be held on May 29 at 5pm, restaurant TBD. You can sign up for this class and other upcoming Nutrition classes online at: http://www.explorationwellness.com/WellnessCSS/CourseCatalogSelection/ If you're working on improving your approach to healthy nutrition, but can't attend a class, we offer free one-on-one consultations with Glenda Blaskey, the JSC Registered Dietitian.
Glenda Blaskey 281-244-1503 http://www.explorationwellness.com/Web/scripts/Nutrition.aspx
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10. New IEEE Tools, Services and Programs
Dr. Gary L. Blank, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA vice president, will describe new and updated tools, services and programs at this special section dinner meeting. These are all designed to advance the careers and practices of consultants, entrepreneurs, employed engineers and unemployed engineers.
During his one-hour talk, Blank will explain how the Consultants Networks function and how they work with other IEEE organizations. He will describe the powerful IEEE-USA Consultants Database website, Entrepreneurs Networks, Employment Networks and some of the new career advancement tools and services.
The presentation will start at 7 p.m. and finish by 8 p.m. on Friday, June 8, in the Lone Star Room of the Gilruth Center. We will offer dinner at 6:30 p.m. for $12; there is no charge for the presentation. Please RSVP to Stew O'Dell by noon, Wednesday, May 30, at stewart.odell@ieee.org and specify whether you are ordering dinner.
Stew O'Dell 281-461-5920
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JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.
NASA TV:
· 1:30 am Central TUESDAY (2:30 EDT) – SpaceX Falcon 9/Dragon Launch Coverage
· 2:44:38 am Central TUESDAY (3:44:38 EDT) – Falcon 9 Launch (instantaneous window)
· 4:15 am Central TUESDAY (5:15 EDT) –Falcon 9/Dragon Post-Launch News Conference
Human Spaceflight News
Monday, May 21, 2012
HEADLINES AND LEADS
NASA Budget Would Be More of the Same ... on the Surface
Kenneth Chamberlain - National Journal
On the surface, the funding that the Senate and House appropriations committees want to allocate for NASA in fiscal year 2013 isn't that much different from what they provided to the agency in recent years. The total House NASA appropriation is $17.5 billion. Although the Senate appropriation would be a bit more -- $19.4 billion -- $1.6 billion of it would be to help the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration purchase satellites, leaving an effective budget of $17.8 billion, which is the amount of NASA's fiscal year 2012 budget. The proposed funding levels would also not be much different from past budgets, at least since the late 1970s, as a percentage of total federal spending.
Budget pressures prompt ISS Partners to justify costs
Amy Svitak - Aviation Week
More than two decades in the making and less than three years into its operational phase, the International Space Station (ISS) is experiencing a public relations crisis of sorts. Led by NASA, the ISS remains the largest international technology undertaking in history, one in which the U.S., Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan expect to have invested more than $100 billion by the end of the decade. In addition, NASA's ISS operations, transportation and research costs are estimated at more than $3 billion annually through 2020, excluding research expenses incurred by other space station partners. So far, this expenditure has fully satisfied at least one of the space station's key goals—bringing together an international coalition, including the former Soviet Union, in pursuit of a common scientific endeavor. A second goal—to get these same partners to view the station as a springboard for future exploration—has yet to be fully realized.
SpaceX Set to Go Again
Company Acts Fast in Wake of Aborted Spacecraft Launch in Show of Confidence
Andy Pasztor - Wall Street Journal
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., reacting quickly to Saturday's aborted mission to the international space station, intends to launch again early Tuesday after swapping out a faulty part. The closely held company's swift reaction, according to industry and government officials, reflects a corporate culture determined to demonstrate confidence and rapid problem solving. But the anticipated two-week mission—aiming to have the first commercial spacecraft dock with the space station—promises to be a significantly tougher test of the 10-year-old Southern California company's resilience and engineering abilities.
SpaceX set for second shot at launch
Suspicious valve fixed; Countdown for ISS journey begins tonight
James Dean - Florida Today
The second countdown to the launch of a privately operated supply ship to the International Space Station is expected to begin tonight, with liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station planned at 3:44 a.m. Tuesday. SpaceX teams over the weekend replaced an engine valve thought to be responsible for the last-second abort of Saturday’s first launch attempt, shortly after engines lit beneath a Falcon 9 rocket at Launch Complex 40. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted Sunday that simulations showed the launch would have been OK even with the problem valve.
SpaceX Replaces Faulty Rocket Valve for Space Station Flight
Clara Moskowitz - Space.com
SpaceX engineers have replaced a faulty engine valve on a private rocket carrying the first commercial space capsule bound for the International Space Station following the last-second abort during an attempted liftoff Saturday. The valve replacement came after SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which will loft the firm's unmanned Dragon capsule toward the station, aborted its launch attempt a half-second before liftoff from a pad here at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Technicians investigating the glitch discovered a faulty check valve was to blame for the high engine pressure that forced the booster's engines to unexpectedly shut down. SpaceX engineers replaced the balky valve late Saturday, and are now inspecting the Falcon 9 rocket in preparation for a possible second launch attempt early Tuesday.
SpaceX set for high-profile station flight (mission preview)
William Harwood – CBS News
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL--In what proponents hail as the dawn of a new era, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is in the final stages of prepping a low-cost Falcon 9 rocket for launch Tuesday on a long-awaited mission to boost the company's unmanned Dragon cargo ship on an inaugural flight to the International Space Station. The solar-powered capsule is the first of a new breed of private-sector spacecraft built for NASA in a commercial venture to deliver critical supplies to the space station in the wake of the shuttle's retirement and, if the company's founder has his way, to eventually carry astronauts to and from the lab complex. "I think we are at a major inflection point in space," Elon Musk, the internet entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and serves as its chief designer, told "60 Minutes." "I think we're at the dawn of a new era, and I think it's going to be very exciting to people in America and around the world."
Design Dilemma: Redundancy Adds to Complexity
Andy Pasztor - Wall Street Journal
The last-second abort on Saturday of Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s test flight to the international space station highlights a fundamental aerospace design dilemma: adding redundancy sometimes leads to its own problems. The company's Falcon 9 rocket, with a cluster of nine identical first-stage engines, is a prominent example of engineers relying on extra levels of redundancy. The goal is enhanced reliability, greater safety and enough thrust to blast more than 11 tons into low-earth orbit. The extra power also provides a cushion, allowing Falcon 9 to complete its mission even if there is a malfunction with one or even two of its Merlin, liquid-fueled engines after the initial portion of a flight. All the engines, however, are needed for a safe liftoff.
SpaceX No Stranger to Launch Day Rocket Glitches
Tariq Malik - Space.com
When a privately built rocket aborted its launch attempt at the very last second Saturday, it was likely a familiar sight to the booster's builders: the California-based company SpaceX. SpaceX's unmanned Falcon 9 rocket aborted its launch attempt this morning just as the countdown reached T minus 0.5 seconds and the rocket's nine main engines ignited, apparently due to an unexpectedly high engine pressure reading. The rocket will now have to wait until at least Tuesday to attempt to launch SpaceX's first robotic Dragon space capsule flight to the International Space Station.
Kelly once against Obama space plan, now open to it
Alex Witt - MsNBC TV
Astronaut Mark Kelly joins MSNBC to discuss private space travel and the plan to launch SpaceX into orbit. Welcome back to "weekends with alex witt ." at just past the half hour now, technicians are trying to figure out what delayed this morning's historic rocket launch . the spacex falcon 9 rocket and its dragon capsule will be the first private spacecraft to make to it the space station . this is a critical test for nasa's plan to outsource trips to the space station . captain mark kelly joins us. thank you for being here.
As NASA scales back, commercial adventurers look to new horizons
Tom Fontaine - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
The first launch of a privately owned rocket to the International Space Station as early as Tuesday would punctuate a shift in American space travel: The longtime government domain increasingly is becoming commercial. Astronauts, space experts and other observers say the shift likely won't kill NASA, the pioneering space agency that last summer canned its landmark space shuttle program and watched its share of federal money dwindle to the lowest point in more than a half-century. The ramifications of public-private partnerships or wholly private investments in space exploration could be huge if Congress does not balk, experts say…
Elon Musk shoots for the stars with SpaceX
The cofounder of PayPal shoots for the stars
Tony Dokoupil - Newsweek Magazine's Daily Beast
“Engineering is the closest thing to magic that exists in the world,” the inventor Elon Musk likes to tell students. This week he sets out to prove it, as he attempts to do what no private citizen has done before: send a vessel to the International Space Station. Musk, who cofounded PayPal before plowing $100 million into space exploration in 2002, plans to blast a gumdrop-shape capsule from the pads at Cape Canaveral to Earth’s only extraterrestrial embassy, a journey shorter than the bus route from Detroit to Chicago, but straight up and considerably more scenic. Besides surviving the hellfire of Earth’s atmosphere, Musk’s craft, which he’ll oversee from mission control in Hawthorne, Calif., must deliver a half ton of cargo (yes, Tang included), and splash down safely somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
Is private industry ready for space?
SpaceX set to make historic launch to International Space Station in May
Andrew Pinsent - CBC News
Space Explorations Inc., better known as SpaceX, is about to make one giant leap for the private sector. The company is poised to become the first private firm to dock and deliver cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). It made its first attempt on Saturday, but the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon spacecraft was aborted at the last second when onboard computers automatically shut down. The next possible attempt at launch is Tuesday. Until now, space has belonged to government- and military-backed projects. The California-based company is sowing the seeds for private enterprise above Earth’s atmosphere, but some have questioned whether private industry is ready for such an expensive and dangerous undertaking. “Why not?” is the simple response from Julie Payette, former chief astronaut of the Canadian Space Agency and a veteran of NASA space flights in 1999 and 2009.
KSC master-plan rewrite under way for new launches
Spaceport's planned transformation to multi-user facility prompts update
Rick Neale - Florida Today
Snapped in 1964, the black-and-white photograph depicts Pad 39A under construction — and in the background, metal rebar of the future Vehicle Assembly Building is emerging from the ground. For the past half-century, the $5.6 billion, “irreplaceable” Kennedy Space Center has operated as a NASA-monopolized installation, said master planner Trey Carlson. But looking 20 years ahead, stakeholders will include a growing number of still-unknown commercial space start-ups; NASA’s heavy-lift rocket program; federal agencies like the Department of Defense and Department of Energy; and the state of Florida, in conjunction with its other spaceports.
What is an Astronaut's Life Worth?: An Interview with Robert Zubrin
Anthony Fisher & Matt Welch - Reason Magazine (Reason TV)
You're saying that you're going to give up four billion dollars to avoid a one in seven chance of killing an astronaut, you're basically saying an astronaut's life is worth twenty-eight billion dollars," says astronautical engineer and author Dr. Robert Zubrin. Zubrin, the author of a popular and controversial article in Reason's space-centric February 2012 Special Issue, argues that the risk of losing one of the seven astronauts who repaired and rescued the Hubble Space Telescope was well worth it. "If you put this extreme value on the life of an astronaut...then you never fly, and you get a space agency which costs seventeen billion dollars a year and accomplishes nothing." NASA's role, according to Zubrin, should be in the pursuit of ambitious missions such as "opening Mars to humanity," rather than a bloated, safety-obsessed bureaucracy. "The mission has to come first." (NO FURTHER TEXT)
The Astronaut Challenge helps make science 'real'
Elizabeth Mack - Tallahassee Democrat
Claudia Richbourg, 16, a 10th-grader at FSUS, participates in all kinds of academic competitions — Brain Bowl and Latin Club — but none of them compare to the first-ever Florida Student Astronaut Challenge. "This was a lot of fun," she said. "It was more hands on. And it's different because there isn't a class around it." Sixteen high schools from around the state applied for the space-related science challenge. Only the top eight were selected. Seven of those schools participated in the competition Saturday at the Challenger Learning Center.
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COMPLETE STORIES
NASA Budget Would Be More of the Same ... on the Surface
Kenneth Chamberlain - National Journal
On the surface, the funding that the Senate and House appropriations committees want to allocate for NASA in fiscal year 2013 isn't that much different from what they provided to the agency in recent years.
The total House NASA appropriation is $17.5 billion. Although the Senate appropriation would be a bit more -- $19.4 billion -- $1.6 billion of it would be to help the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration purchase satellites, leaving an effective budget of $17.8 billion, which is the amount of NASA's fiscal year 2012 budget. The proposed funding levels would also not be much different from past budgets, at least since the late 1970s, as a percentage of total federal spending.
Below the surface, however, there are some noticeable changes in the House and Senate proposals from past years:
· Plutonium-238: The House bill would provide $14.5 million to restart production of plutonium-238, an isotope that is ideal for generating electricity for years in deep space, far away from solar power. Current American supplies of Pu-238, which was a byproduct of nuclear weapon development, are running out, forcing NASA to purchase it from the Russians. The Senate bill would appropriate the same amount.
· JWST: The James Webb Space Telescope, a space-based telescope that the House Appropriations Committee tried to eliminate last year, is fully back on track this year for a proposed 2018 launch, but not without some caveats in both the House and Senate committee reports. The cost overruns that led the House committee to try to end the JWST program last year are still very much on the minds of both House and Senate appropriators. Both chambers' committee reports require assurances and reports from NASA that the program will proceed within budget.
· NOAA: The Senate proposal, but not the House, includes funding to NASA to procure four weather satellites for NOAA. "It doesn't matter what agency buys the satellites. It matters that the procurement is managed frugally and gets us data and information we need," Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., said in a statement. Mikulski is the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee in charge of NASA's budget. "Unfortunately, the Committee has lost confidence in NOAA's ability to control procurement costs or articulate reliable funding profiles. Therefore, we have taken the unprecedented step of transferring responsibility for building our Nation's operational weather satellites from NOAA to NASA," she said.
· Commercial Space Flight: As the traditional human-based space program is still in a state of some flux, and with the planned test launch of the commercial Dragon spacecraft this weekend, NASA is trying to foster a commercial space-flight program. NASA had sought $830 million to this end, but the House only approved $500 million. The Senate funding level would be a bit more at $525 million.
Although $17.5 billion, or thereabouts, sounds like a tremendous amount of money, in relation to the total federal budget, it's a small fraction of spending. NASA's budget peaked during the height of the space race in the mid- to late-1960s, and fell significantly thereafter. Whether the final FY2013 NASA budget is $17.5 billion or $19.4 billion (taking into account the NOAA satellite purchases), it also won't be more than 0.4 or 0.5 percent of total federal spending.
Budget pressures prompt ISS Partners to justify costs
Amy Svitak - Aviation Week
More than two decades in the making and less than three years into its operational phase, the International Space Station (ISS) is experiencing a public relations crisis of sorts.
Led by NASA, the ISS remains the largest international technology undertaking in history, one in which the U.S., Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan expect to have invested more than $100 billion by the end of the decade. In addition, NASA's ISS operations, transportation and research costs are estimated at more than $3 billion annually through 2020, excluding research expenses incurred by other space station partners.
So far, this expenditure has fully satisfied at least one of the space station's key goals—bringing together an international coalition, including the former Soviet Union, in pursuit of a common scientific endeavor.
A second goal—to get these same partners to view the station as a springboard for future exploration—has yet to be fully realized. The consortium cannot agree on a common destination—an asteroid, the Moon or Mars—though after more than two decades working together, all say the ISS partnership is a model for how to move forward.
More troublesome is the station's third goal, scientific and industrial research, perceived by budget-stressed governments in Europe, the U.S. and Japan as not having paid off, at least not yet.
Over the past decade, as construction of the ISS got underway, budgetary constraints led NASA to neglect the life and physical sciences portfolios most likely to benefit from unparalleled research opportunities aboard the station.
Since 2002, NASA spending on life and physical sciences research dropped from approximately $500 million to less than $200 million in 2010, according to an April 2011 National Research Council report titled “Recapturing a Future for Space Exploration: Life and Physical Sciences for a New Era.”
The report says NASA's present program has contracted to below critical mass and is perceived from outside the agency as lacking the stature and resources needed to attract researchers or accomplish meaningful science.
Under fiscal pressure to demonstrate the orbiting lab's real-world value, managers from the five partner nations attending an ISS symposium here May 2-4 said it is unfair to ask any infrastructure devoted to basic research to yield rapid results.
But, despite having been operational for less than three years, the station “seems old,” according to European Space Agency (ESA) Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain, because it took more than a decade to complete after the first module was launched in 1998.
“Utilization started only two or three years ago,” Dordain says. “You cannot expect tens of Nobel prizes after two years of using this laboratory. But even though it's very recent, we have already a lot of very interesting research.”
Soon after the ISS became habitable in 2000, researchers began using it to study the impact of its near-zero-gravity environment, making new discoveries in life sciences, biomedicine and materials science that could spur development of valuable high-technology products and services. One near-term industrial application the ISS currently supports is the Intermetallic Materials Processing in Relation to Earth and Space Solidification (Impress), a pan-European materials science research project.
Robert Guntlin, managing director of Access, an independent research center associated with the Technical University of Aachen in Germany, says the project has the potential to give European industry a leading position in fuel-cell development and turbine production, noting that new designs from Airbus, Boeing, Comac and Bombardier incorporate engines made with titanium aluminide blades.
Dordain says that the ISS has been instrumental in the fundamental science enabling development of these ultra-lightweight titanium aluminide turbine blades, which are expected to cut aircraft fuel consumption in half. But the public relations benefit of branding such ISS-enabled products is complicated by the fact that it is cheaper to manufacture technologies on Earth.
“It makes it very difficult to say the product was 'made in space,'” he says. “But without the research onboard the ISS, this type of turbine blade would never have been made.”
Other real-world spinoffs use technology from the space station's Canadarm2 and Dextre, Canadian robots that service and maintain the ISS, to produce the world's first robot capable of performing brain surgery. Dubbed the neuroArmTM, the technology is now licensed to a private, publicly traded medical device manufacturer planning to develop a two-armed version that will enable neurosurgeons to see three-dimensional images and apply pressure to tissue.
Packaged-food giant Nestle is also using the space station's microgravity environment to develop flavor enhancers and stabilizers to preserve storable foods.
The station's scientific and industrial research potential notwithstanding, its utilization comes at a price, one that Dordain says must be reduced to continue innovative development activities that could attract a new generation of scientists and engineers to space exploration.
“The ISS budget should not prevent implementing other space activities and other exploration missions—we have to perform other exploration missions also, especially to the Moon and Mars, and before 2020,” Dordain says.
EADS Astrium is under contract to manage Europe's ISS operations and has agreed to impose regular cost reductions to reduce annual operating costs 30% by 2020. Dordain also suggests that staffing four ISS operations centers in Houston, Moscow, Tokyo and Germany might be a luxury that the space station partners could do without.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden says the agency last year selected the non-profit group Casis (the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space) to compete proposals for scientific experiments on the station's U.S. segment, a designated U.S. national laboratory, 50% of which has so far gone unutilized.
“NASA needs to get out of the business of running the competition and selecting experimenters and researchers to fly on ISS,” Bolden says. “We realize if we truly want to enhance the utilization, we've got to cast our net as wide as we can in bringing people aboard to do experiments.”
But Florida-based Casis has yet to identify any proposals worth funding and has been dogged by public relations issues, notably the resignation of its CEO after less than six months on the job. If Casis can sort itself out, “then our proposal would be that we expand it even more broadly so you don't just have academia and the partner organizations doing the research on station,” Bolden says.
NASA has already contracted two private firms—Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., and Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va.—to ferry cargo to the space station. After years of delays, SpaceX is expected to launch its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo vessel to the ISS this month.
“When the hatch is opened on the Dragon module and Dragon becomes an integral part of the space station, that will be the realization of a whole new era in what we do, because that will mean that private companies have now entered the fray and are true partners with us,” Bolden says.
NASA ISS Director Mark Uhran says the logical next step for low Earth orbit is exploitation by non-governmental players. “I think by 2030 the ISS will be an important part of our legacy,” Uhran says. “I hope that we are able in the next decade to turn over the low Earth orbit environment for development by the private sector and I remain optimistic something like that is entirely feasible based on the progress that I see today.”
With its potential to function as a springboard for exploration, the partners have agreed to operate the ISS until at least 2020. They also agree there is potential to recertify ISS hardware and ensure spare components are available to 2028. Less certain, however, is the urgency with which the partners need to start planning for continued operation beyond the end of this decade.
Russia, for example, which has a plan for manned spaceflight in 2015-25, needs to start preparing for continued operations as early as 2014, according to Alexey Krasnov, head of human spaceflight at the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
Although the Russian government does not have an excess of cash, it is investing $1 billion a year in manned spaceflight and is willing to consider extending the ISS beyond the current decade.
After operating in low Earth orbit for the past 50 years, “it is evident that we have not learned all that we can from LEO,” Krasnov says. “Hopefully, again in the next decade we will witness the next step in the exploitation, in the evolution of the ISS for the future.”
The U.S. and Europe are less certain as to the space station's role beyond 2020. Dordain says, “clearly there will be something in low Earth orbit after this space station,” though it might look quite different than the football field-sized facility orbiting the planet today.
“This was the only way to make a space station together. But it is too big for one orbit,” he says. “I would like to look at how we can make an international space station in smaller pieces and maybe in different orbits.”
Bolden, who notes that the ISS is a less-than-ideal environment for certain types of experiments, sees a series of commercially owned free-flying space stations as the logical successors to the ISS.
“I think every experimenter knows one of the worst contributors to their experiments sometimes not working—protein-crystal growth or materials processing—is some astronaut jumping around on a treadmill,” Bolden says. “We need standalone or other platforms in orbit we can put experiments on that will not be bothered by humans for long periods of time.”
Bolden says NASA should encourage private industry to invest in free-flyers. “The way that we open up business is by allowing industry to build the second-, third- [and] fourth-generation space station, not nations,” he says.
SpaceX Set to Go Again
Company Acts Fast in Wake of Aborted Spacecraft Launch in Show of Confidence
Andy Pasztor - Wall Street Journal
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., reacting quickly to Saturday's aborted mission to the international space station, intends to launch again early Tuesday after swapping out a faulty part.
The closely held company's swift reaction, according to industry and government officials, reflects a corporate culture determined to demonstrate confidence and rapid problem solving. But the anticipated two-week mission—aiming to have the first commercial spacecraft dock with the space station—promises to be a significantly tougher test of the 10-year-old Southern California company's resilience and engineering abilities.
On Saturday, a launch from Cape Canaveral was scrubbed less than a second before liftoff after high temperatures were detected in one of the rocket's engines.
Should Tuesday's launch occur without further problems, the company intends to maneuver its unmanned Dragon capsule to approach the space station more than 200 miles above the earth. It also hopes to test the vehicle's sensors and computer-run propulsion systems, which have never before operated in space.
If all that pans out, Elon Musk, chief executive and top technical official of SpaceX, as the company is known, will get the chance to give the go-ahead for the most difficult feat of all: inching the bell-shaped capsule practically next to the space station's docking port, while both are orbiting the earth at roughly 17,000 miles per hour.
In an interview earlier this month, Mr. Musk stressed that his team will be "trying some things that are very difficult to do, for the first time." Even partial success, he said, will advance the agenda of using commercially developed and operated spacecraft to carry astronauts and supplies to the $100 billion space station.
It may be tough for outsiders to understand how much was accomplished if the capsule's computer navigation falters, forcing National Aeronautics and Space Administration managers or the astronauts in orbit to wave off an actual linkup. "Black-and-white judgments are going to be difficult," according to former astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who once headed NASA's space station operations and now serves as president of an industry association championing commercial space ventures.
Compared with SpaceX's looming challenges, fixing what caused the scrubbed launch turned out to be relatively simple. Unexpected high temperature inside one of the Falcon 9 rocket's engines prompted an automated shutdown less than a second before liftoff. Within hours, SpaceX officials identified the culprit as a single defective valve, and were able to replace the part because it was easily accessible. Previous tests hadn't hinted the valve was substandard.
But often, rocket and spacecraft malfunctions are much more complex to diagnose and resolve. NASA's traditional approach has been to invest heavily in detailed systems engineering, computer simulations and extensive analysis through the early stages of major projects. That can slow a project's timetable considerably, but agency officials over the years have maintained the approach gives them deeper understanding of potential design weaknesses and how to respond when failures occur.
SpaceX, by contrast, has stressed moving faster through early design issues and relied more heavily on building and testing actual prototypes. Company engineers, and particularly Mr. Musk, also haven't been shy in making decisive decisions about the best way to solve problems—despite skepticism from segments of NASA's leadership.
A company spokeswoman on Sunday said, "We are constantly looking at how we can remove unnecessary hurdles to achieving excellence."
NASA already has committed more than $2 billion to help SpaceX achieve its goals of routinely transporting cargo to the space station in several years. But over the weekend, comments by agency officials underscored that the company, rather than its government partner, is calling the shots about how and when to start another countdown.
"We're ready to support when SpaceX is ready to go," Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of NASA's commercial crew and cargo program, told reporters during a Saturday briefing.
In the past, SpaceX has shown the caliber of its troubleshooting. In December 2010, when two cracks were discovered at the end on the second-stage engine nozzle on the Falcon 9, a cadre of NASA experts urged extensive analysis and testing before attempting to launch. Many industry officials speculated about weeks or months of delays. Mr. Musk and his designers, though, took only a day to analyze the problem and implement a makeshift but perfectly workable solution. They cut off the part of the nozzle where the cracks occurred.
In his interview two weeks ago, Mr. Musk recalled that William Gerstenmaier, NASA's top manned space official, raised questions about whether additional testing was necessary. "He called and said, did we feel comfortable about it?" Mr. Musk recalled. The SpaceX chief expressed his confidence to proceed with the launch.
Dragon went on to become the first commercial spacecraft to reach orbit and safely return to earth.
SpaceX set for second shot at launch
Suspicious valve fixed; Countdown for ISS journey begins tonight
James Dean - Florida Today
The second countdown to the launch of a privately operated supply ship to the International Space Station is expected to begin tonight, with liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station planned at 3:44 a.m. Tuesday.
SpaceX teams over the weekend replaced an engine valve thought to be responsible for the last-second abort of Saturday’s first launch attempt, shortly after engines lit beneath a Falcon 9 rocket at Launch Complex 40.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted Sunday that simulations showed the launch would have been OK even with the problem valve.
"Still, better to stop & fix," he tweeted. "Recalling rockets after launch is not an option."
The weather forecast for Tuesday's attempt looks good, with a 70 percent chance of acceptable conditions during the seconds-long launch window.
The demonstration mission could make SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, which is loaded with about 1,000 pounds of cargo, the first commercial vehicle to visit the space station.
After flying under and around the station in a series of complex maneuvers 250 miles above Earth, if all goes well, the automated Dragon would be grappled by a robotic arm and berthed at the station three days after reaching orbit.
The goal is to prove the rocket and spacecraft are ready to execute resupply runs to the station under a $1.6 billion NASA contract.
The mission is a test flight, so SpaceX and NASA officials say problems such as the aborted countdown present learning opportunities, and any unfinished objectives can be completed on a later flight.
The liquid-fueled Falcon 9 is launching for just the third time, after two successful flights in 2010. The Dragon spacecraft is flying for the second time, with significant system upgrades.
SpaceX has yet to complete a Falcon 9 countdown without interruption.
Saturday’s abort occurred when computers detected above-normal combustion chamber pressure in one of the rocket’s nine first-stage engines, which are built by SpaceX.
SpaceX spokeswoman Kirstin Grantham said a valve on a nitrogen gas line used to purge the Merlin engine before ignition remained stuck open.
Tests performed Sunday appeared to show the new valve working properly and no evidence of similar problems on the eight surrounding engines.
“Things are looking good,” Grantham said Sunday after the repair work was complete.
The countdown is expected to pick up after 8 p.m. today, with loading of liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene propellant starting around midnight.
If there is no launch Tuesday, SpaceX has said it could make an attempt Wednesday.
SpaceX Replaces Faulty Rocket Valve for Space Station Flight
Clara Moskowitz - Space.com
SpaceX engineers have replaced a faulty engine valve on a private rocket carrying the first commercial space capsule bound for the International Space Station following the last-second abort during an attempted liftoff Saturday.
The valve replacement came after SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which will loft the firm's unmanned Dragon capsule toward the station, aborted its launch attempt a half-second before liftoff from a pad here at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Technicians investigating the glitch discovered a faulty check valve was to blame for the high engine pressure that forced the booster's engines to unexpectedly shut down.
SpaceX engineers replaced the balky valve late Saturday, and are now inspecting the Falcon 9 rocket in preparation for a possible second launch attempt early Tuesday.
"We will continue to review data on Sunday," company officials said in a statement Saturday evening. "If things look good, we will be ready to attempt to launch on Tuesday, May 22nd at 3:44 AM Eastern."
Dragon is set to become the first non-governmental spaceship to rendezvous and berth at the space station during a mission sponsored by NASA's COTS program (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) aimed at procuring commercial U.S. vehicles capable of filling the gap left by the retired space shuttles.
The Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX (short for Space Exploration Technologies Corp.) planned to launch Dragon atop its Falcon 9 rocket Saturday, but a high pressure reading in the booster's fifth engine caused a last-second abort.
"We had a nominal countdown right until about T minus 0.5 seconds," SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said during a news briefing following the abort. "Software did what it was supposed to do, aborted engine five, and we went through the remaining engine shutdown."
Technicians went out to the rocket's launch pad at the Air Force station's Complex 40 Saturday to examine the engines for signs of the issue's root cause.
"During rigorous inspections of the engine, SpaceX engineers discovered a faulty check valve on the Merlin engine," officials said in the statement.
The robotic Dragon capsule is due to deliver food, clothes, science equipment and other supplies to the space station when it arrives.
The mission is the final test flight scheduled for SpaceX before it can begin running regular delivery missions to the outpost. The company is contracted to fly at least 12 of these for NASA at a total price tag of $1.6 billion.
SpaceX set for high-profile station flight (mission preview)
William Harwood – CBS News
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL--In what proponents hail as the dawn of a new era, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is in the final stages of prepping a low-cost Falcon 9 rocket for launch Tuesday on a long-awaited mission to boost the company's unmanned Dragon cargo ship on an inaugural flight to the International Space Station.
The solar-powered capsule is the first of a new breed of private-sector spacecraft built for NASA in a commercial venture to deliver critical supplies to the space station in the wake of the shuttle's retirement and, if the company's founder has his way, to eventually carry astronauts to and from the lab complex.
"I think we are at a major inflection point in space," Elon Musk, the internet entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and serves as its chief designer, told "60 Minutes." "I think we're at the dawn of a new era, and I think it's going to be very exciting to people in America and around the world."
With a rock star persona, deep pockets and a relentless drive to lower costs and change the way the space industry operates, Musk hopes to beat out Boeing and other aerospace competitors by selling NASA on a manned version of the Dragon cargo ship to ferry astronauts to and from the station.
Beyond that he envisions building fully reusable rockets for eventual flights to Mars with a long-range goal of reducing the cost of spaceflight to the point that it becomes widely affordable.
"I'm hopeful that in 20 years we'll be taking lots of people and equipment to Mars and that the beginnings of a self-sustaining base on Mars will be there. I'm not saying this will happen. You asked what I hope will happen, so I hope that will happen. Yeah, I think it's possible."
But even Musk knows SpaceX must learn to walk before it can run and a major step on the road to credibility will be Saturday's planned launch of the Falcon 9/Dragon spacecraft. Criticized at times for what some perceive as over confidence or even arrogance, Musk has gone out of his way to lower expectations for this first space station test flight.
"This is pretty tricky," he said in a pre-flight news conference. "The public out there, they may not realize the space station is zooming around the Earth every 90 minutes and it's going 17,000 miles an hour. So you've got to launch up there, you've got to rendezvous and be tracking space station to within inches, really, and this is a thing that's going 12 times faster than the bullet from an assault rifle.
"So it's hard. I think we've got a pretty good chance, but I want to emphasize this, this is a test flight. If we don't succeed in berthing on this mission then we've got a couple of more missions later this year and I think we'll succeed on one of those."
The goal of the mission, repeatedly delayed to allow more time for software tests and checkout, is to rendezvous with the International Space Station and in so doing, demonstrate the Dragon capsule's ability to autonomously fly a precise trajectory, respond to commands and to safely abort an approach if something goes wrong.
If the flight goes well, SpaceX will be clear to press ahead with routine cargo delivery missions later this year under a $1.6 billion NASA contract calling for at least 12 flights to the space station at an average cost of some $133 million per mission -- a bargain in the high-cost world of space operations.
If there are any major problems, that schedule likely would be disrupted. But NASA's final shuttle flight to the station last summer left the outpost well stocked and NASA managers say there's plenty of time to recover from a mishap or software problems that might prevent a linkup.
"I think this is an interesting test flight, I think it's ambitious, I think if they get up there and they fly safely around the station that's a great success," said Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. "I think it'll be really, really impressive if they, in fact, can berth. I think that's a stretch, but if that's done then I would be very technically impressed."
Pulling off an orbital rendezvous is a feat only a handful of nations and major aerospace contractors have achieved and despite Musk's efforts to downplay the significance of the Falcon 9/Dragon mission, many view the flight as a watershed moment for NASA and the Obama administration's push to commercialize space.
"(Tuesday) is a huge day for NASA and the nation," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told CBS News. "It will mark the return of cargo launches to American soil. We've been reliant on our international partners since we phased the space shuttle out, but this will be bringing it back home -- American jobs, launches from Cape Canaveral, and that's critical."
That level of attention focused an unmanned test flight by a company with a comparatively short track record rankles critics and competitors alike. United Launch Alliance, which builds Delta 4 and Atlas 5 boosters for NASA and the military, does not get nearly this level of public scrutiny even though the company routinely launches some of the world's most sophisticated satellites and space probes.
The latest versions of the workhorse Atlas and Delta rockets have perfect flight records and ULA plans to "man rate" the Atlas 5 for use by SpaceX's competitors bidding for separate NASA contracts to build a commercial manned spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the space station.
But SpaceX engineers believe they have a leg up on the competition, gaining valuable flight experience with the unmanned Falcon 9/Dragon cargo missions, knowledge that will be plowed directly into the manned version of the spacecraft.
And so, in the wake of the shuttle's retirement and the Obama administration's directive for NASA to "buy" rockets for flights to low-Earth orbit, SpaceX, with its relatively low-cost boosters, has emerged as a major player in the space agency's near-term future.
"I would argue part of the attention (SpaceX is) getting is very natural just given the end of the shuttle," said Pace. "But there maybe is extra attention to it because there's a realization there really is nothing else, that either the private sector approach that the administration has put front and center works or it doesn't. And so the stakes are higher. It's a riskier approach, and therefore people pay more attention to it."
Some commercial space proponents view the SpaceX launch as "validating a narrative about the private sector, which I think is overblown," Pace said. "This is an innovative effort, I'm glad that NASA initiated it ... but it's taken on some extra attention precisely because of the feeling that the stakes have been made higher for it and, I argue, unnecessarily higher."
Unnecessary or not, the stakes are, in fact, high. And a major question mark is how reliable the SpaceX rockets and capsules will prove to be and whether Musk can routinely deliver Falcon 9 boosters for the bargain-basement prices he advertises on the web -- $54 million.
It is difficult to compare that to the cost of an Atlas or Delta because the ULA rockets are built under a different type of contract and the boosters vary widely depending on customer requirements. But the low end of the cost spectrum is believed to be around $100 million.
While the idiom "you get what you pay for" might occur to some observers, Mike Horkachuck, the NASA project executive for SpaceX, insists any concern along those lines is misplaced.
"When you hear 'cheaper' you sometimes think it's going to be less reliable," he said. "I know for a fact that SpaceX is very focused on trying to make sure that their systems work. They know that as a company they have to make their products successful or they're not going to get new business. So they're very focused on making sure that their systems will work and that they have high reliability built into the systems.
"They may go about doing it a little bit different than we have in the past, but it's always in the back of their minds that they have to make these vehicles work or they're not going to have a long-term viable company. In some cases, it's even more important to them that it's all successful than other companies."
Making only its third flight, the 157-foot-tall two-stage Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to blast off Tuesday from complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 3:44:38 a.m. EDT (GMT-4), roughly the moment Earth's rotation carries the pad into the plane of the space station's orbit. Forecasters are predicting a 70 percent chance of good weather.
Unlike the more-powerful but now-retired space shuttle, which had enough thrust to launch five minutes to either side of that "in-plane" moment and still steer into the proper orbit, the 690,000-pound Falcon 9 must take off on time to the second to catch up with the space station. If the countdown is interrupted for any reason, the flight will be delayed to Wednesday.
But if all goes well, the Falcon's nine first-stage Merlin engines, generating a combined 1.1 million pounds of thrust, will burn for three minutes, pushing the spacecraft out of the dense lower atmosphere. The second stage, powered by a single Merlin engine burning kerosene and liquid oxygen, will finish the climb to orbit nine minutes and 14 seconds after liftoff.
Thirty-five seconds later, the Dragon capsule will be released from the second stage and a few moments after that, its two solar panels should unfold to begin generating power and recharging on-board batteries. That will set the stage for a complex series of tests to check out the spacecraft's complex flight software, its navigation system and sensors, its 18 Draco thrusters and communications systems.
"Dragon is autonomous, it's a robotic spaceship and it's going to go and do this complicated maneuver where it's going to work with the space station," Musk said. "It's not as though there were somebody flying it with a joystick or there is somebody on board who can make realtime corrections. Dragon is making lots of decisions all the time to optimize the probability of success. There's a lot of intelligence on board the spacecraft."
But this will be just the second flight of a Dragon capsule following a successful test flight in December 2010. And it will be the first featuring solar panels and the first to fly all the way to the International Space Station.
SpaceX flight controllers will be responsible for the mission from launch through arrival near the space station. From there, NASA will have the final say. The Dragon will not be allowed to begin its final approach to the station until the NASA flight control team is convinced the spacecraft is operating properly.
"Our role here in Houston is really the safety of the crew on board the space station, the space station itself and then the SpaceX/Dragon team is responsible for mission success," said space station Flight Director Holly Ridings. "And we've built a framework working together where we should be able to get both of those items successfully accomplished."
Starting from a point 6.2 miles below and well behind the laboratory, Dragon's suite of flight computers will use data from navigation satellites and the space station to precisely compute its position, using those data to maneuver itself to a point just 1.6 miles below the complex.
A variety of tests will be performed before the Dragon drops back down to a point 6.2 miles below the station. Over the next day, the capsule will pull out in front of the station, loop up and over it and eventually return to a point 6.2 miles below and behind the laboratory.
"That fly under is very important to us because it's the first time the Dragon and the space station will communicate with each other, an absolute requirement for proximity operations," Ridings said. "It's the first time the crew on board the ISS will send commands to Dragon and get a response.
"This is just a test command ... but it's leading towards the crew potentially being able to send more invasive commands, such as hold or retreat or even an abort later, and command the Dragon when it's at the capture point."
The flight control team also will be testing the spacecraft's navigation system to make sure the flight computers are able to accurately calculate the ship's position in space relative to the space station.
"The way the two vehicles navigate together is relative, where you get pieces of information from both vehicles and you do the calculation and then they know exactly where they are in space relative to each other," Ridings said. "And so we're gathering information to make sure that navigation system works."
If all of that goes well, the Dragon spacecraft will be cleared to move in for berthing on Friday, May 25, flying a stepwise automated approach to hold points 1.5 miles and .9 miles directly below the station.
Assuming all systems are operating normally, the capsule will move up to a point just 820 feet below the station for another series of controllability tests. Only then will Dragon be cleared to approach to within about 30 feet.
"The Dragon will approach from 250 (meters; 820 feet), so it starts moving toward the space station," Ridings said. "The crew will then command a retreat and so it will turn and head back to that 250-meter hold point. ... Then the dragon team at Hawthorne will send the Dragon again towards the space station. The crew will tell the Dragon to hold, that'll be at about 220 meters. That will be the last of our go-no go objectives in terms of the demonstration objectives."
At that point, "we take a poll and make sure that all of the systems on board the ISS, all the systems on board the Dragon, any type of failure detection, the robotic arm, the cameras, basically everything you need in order to do that next step of the mission is in the configuration you expected. And then after you've had that communication between the two teams and everything is in the proper configuration, then the go is allowing the Dragon to proceed and continue with the next step of the mission."
Once at the capture point 30 feet from the station, rocket thrusters will be disabled and the lab's Canadian-built robot arm, operated by flight engineer Donald Pettit, will latch on.
Pettit then will trade places with European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers, who will use the arm to maneuver Dragon into position for berthing at the forward Harmony module's Earth-facing port. Pettit will make sure the common berthing mechanism operates as required to firmly lock Dragon to the space station.
"We've been doing quite a bit of training, particularly oriented towards the crew role, which is flying the robotic arm and capturing the SpaceX vehicle when it gets in a holding pattern near space station," said Pettit. "And then the arm will maneuver the Dragon vehicle to one of our docking ports and then we'll fasten it to station and then we can go about ... opening the hatch (the next day).
"That whole process is going to be a long day for us, it's going to be 10 hours-plus to get all of that done. If we have a few hitches, we may have to put things on hold and pick it up the next day."
For its initial visit, the Dragon capsule will be carrying nearly 1,150 pounds of cargo: 674 pounds of food and crew provisions; 46 pounds of science hardware and equipment; 271 pounds of cargo bags needed for future flights; and 22 pounds of computer equipment.
NASA originally planned for the Dragon to remain docked with the station for about three weeks. But in early June, the angle between the sun and the plane of the station's orbit will begin resulting in temperatures that will require flight controllers to either bring the capsule home early or keep it at the station for an extended period.
As it now stands, Dragon will remained docked until at least May 31. At that point, the station's robot arm will unberth the capsule and then release it. Unlike all other Russian, European and Japanese cargo ships servicing the International Space Station, the Dragon is equipped with a heat shield and parachutes for an ocean splashdown off the coast of California.
The spacecraft is capable of carrying more than 5,500 pounds of cargo back to Earth, a critical consideration when it comes to getting biological samples and failed components back to scientists and engineers on the ground. For the initial test flight, NASA only plans to bring back about 1,455 pounds of equipment and no-longer-needed material.
"This is an important mission, but it is still a test flight," Horkachuck said. "There are a lot of things that could go wrong. We've done a lot of work on the ground and a lot of testing to try to make sure things work, but invariably once you get into space something doesn't work the way you necessarily thought it was going to work. So we'll look at the data and see how the mission went and then decide if we need another test flight or if we an move on to the operations phase."
The commercial cargo contracts grew out of a 2004 decision by the Bush administration to complete the space station, retire the space shuttle and to use the money saved to develop new rockets and spacecraft for flights back to the moon in the early 2020s.
The Obama administration later canceled the moon program but left the shuttle retirement in place and along with it, a NASA initiative to encourage development of private sector rockets to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.
Two contracts ultimately were awarded by the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program (COTS), one to SpaceX, headquartered in Hawthorne, Calif., and the other to Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Va.
"When the decision was made to retire the shuttle and continue our exploration program, we very much would have liked to purchase commercial services to resupply the space station," said Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of NASA's commercial crew and cargo program. "But those capabilities just simply didn't exist in the U.S. market.
"So we decided to think like an investor, we wanted to become a consumer of services rather than a customer with requirements. That would be our more traditional approach -- write requirements, go hire a prime contractor and develop the capability. But we believed that these capabilities were within the grasp of U.S. commercial industry."
The program got underway five years ago.
"We had to learn how to think like an investor, we wanted to place strategic financial investments to help stimulate the commercial space industry," Lindenmoyer said. "Then we put some structure around those investments where we developed the program to have the companies demonstrate these capabilities with the goal of achieving safe, reliable and cost-effective services. We were looking to help lower the cost of access to space. We believed that would, of course, help us out and also be the key to opening up new markets in low-Earth orbit."
When all was said and done, Orbital Sciences won a contract valued at $1.9 billion for eight cargo flights to the station. Another $288 million was budgeted for development and at least one test flight. An initial demonstration mission is planned later this year.
SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion contract to provide 12 cargo flights to the station for delivery of more than 44,000 pounds of equipment and supplies. The company initially planned three test flights under a separate contract valued at up to $396 million. The first flight was successfully carried out in December 2010 when a Dragon capsule was lofted into orbit and guided to a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, the first commercial spacecraft ever recovered from orbit.
As originally envisioned, the second test flight would have tested rendezvous procedures and included a close-approach to the station with berthing deferred to the third flight. But SpaceX successfully lobbied NASA to combine the second and third test flights into a single mission and that is the flight scheduled for launch Saturday.
The Obama administration's push to develop a commercial manned spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the space station is a separate effort. A half-dozen companies, including SpaceX, currently are competing for NASA contracts to refine their designs. It's not yet clear whether NASA's budget will support more than one provider, but no one is expected to fly before 2017.
Design Dilemma: Redundancy Adds to Complexity
Andy Pasztor - Wall Street Journal
The last-second abort on Saturday of Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s test flight to the international space station highlights a fundamental aerospace design dilemma: adding redundancy sometimes leads to its own problems.
The company's Falcon 9 rocket, with a cluster of nine identical first-stage engines, is a prominent example of engineers relying on extra levels of redundancy. The goal is enhanced reliability, greater safety and enough thrust to blast more than 11 tons into low-earth orbit.
The extra power also provides a cushion, allowing Falcon 9 to complete its mission even if there is a malfunction with one or even two of its Merlin, liquid-fueled engines after the initial portion of a flight. All the engines, however, are needed for a safe liftoff.
According to the company's critics, however, that basic design approach may be partly to blame for Saturday's surprising chain of events. Some industry officials have long argued that SpaceX, as the closely-held company is known, faces a particularly tough challenge in trying to ensure so many engines can operate precisely in unison during, and immediately after, a launch. More engines, these critics contend, entail more parts or systems that can go wrong at crucial moments despite passing rigorous testing.
A SpaceX spokeswoman on Sunday said that the company's aim is creating a culture "able to respond quickly to any challenges," adding that officials have done "everything we could to improve the (likelihood) that this mission will be successful."
Since it unveiled plans for the 18-story Falcon 9 booster, the company has emphasized the robustness and redundancy of its propulsion system. The company's website emphasizes the design—an improved version of concepts developed earlier by NASA—harkens back to the glory days of the Saturn rockets that blasted Apollo astronauts to the moon
Saturday's attempt to launch the first private spacecraft to a planned rendezvous with the orbiting station was halted when a malfunctioning valve caused a Falcon 9 engine to perform somewhat differently from the rest. The result was an automatic and instantaneous shutdown of all nine engines.
A version of the redundancy debate has played out for decades inside the Defense Department. Navy admirals traditionally prefer jets with two engines, stressing their crews particularly need the redundancy because they often fly long distances over water. Air Force generals have tended to counter that single-engine fighters are less complex—and therefore generally less prone to unexpected breakdowns.
Joseph Dyer, a retired Navy vice admiral who heads the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's outside panel of safety watchdogs, sees another aspect to the redundancy debate. NASA and Pentagon brass typically devote lots of time and resources—frequently during early phases of major procurements—on detailed assessments of how to react to various potential failure scenarios, he said in a Saturday interview.
By contrast, he said, SpaceX officials have been willing to move faster in the early years of design and rely more heavily on testing prototypes and developing redundant safeguards. Their attitude, according to Mr. Dyer, is less caution at the start and more confidence in the notion that "we're going to test and fix it when something goes wrong."
He calls the result a "great, real-life experiment" to demonstrate which camp has the ability to "fix problems faster and at lower cost when they crop up late in a program." Many industry experts predict the optimum answer probably will entail melding the two approaches.
The SpaceX spokeswoman said prototypes are "a way for us to get real world data that will make the final product better."
SpaceX officials said their rockets have experienced a similar engine problem just before the start of at least one previous mission, but they had time to fix it and still conduct a successful launch. The company also has had its share of software bugs.
After Saturday's launch was scrubbed, Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, told reporters "we cannot blame the software guys for this one." She said software intended to monitor engine performance and automatically abort a launch in case of discrepancies did exactly "what it was supposed to do."
SpaceX No Stranger to Launch Day Rocket Glitches
Tariq Malik - Space.com
When a privately built rocket aborted its launch attempt at the very last second Saturday, it was likely a familiar sight to the booster's builders: the California-based company SpaceX.
SpaceX's unmanned Falcon 9 rocket aborted its launch attempt this morning just as the countdown reached T minus 0.5 seconds and the rocket's nine main engines ignited, apparently due to an unexpectedly high engine pressure reading. The rocket will now have to wait until at least Tuesday to attempt to launch SpaceX's first robotic Dragon space capsule flight to the International Space Station.
The launch abort, while a delay, isn't a surprising turn of events for SpaceX. The company repeatedly pushed back the launch in recent months to allow extra time to review the rocket and Dragon capsule's flight software. The goal, SpaceX and NASA officials said at the time, was to make sure the rocket was as ready to fly as possible.
As recently as April 30, SpaceX pushed the launch back when the Falcon 9 rocket experienced a hiccup during an engine test atop the launch pad. A second engine test later proved everything was ready for launch.
No guarantees
SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract to provide 12 Dragon capsule cargo flights to the space station for NASA, with this mission aimed at proving the space capsule's capabilities. With NASA's space shuttle fleet retired, the agency is depending on SpaceX and other commercial spaceship builders to provide much needed robotic cargo and manned vehicles to fill the void left by the shuttle program's end.
But SpaceX has repeatedly stated that the Falcon 9 and Dragon launch to the space station is an unprecedented test flight, one in which success is never guaranteed.
"This mission is important, although I wouldn't want to place too much emphasis on the success of this mission, because it is a first time effort," SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk told SPACE.com in a recent interview. "If there's any danger or concern with respect to the space station, then we will have to abort and try again on a different flight."
Musk is a billionaire entrepreneur and co-founder of the Internet payment service Paypal. He founded the Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., in 2002 with the intention of developing a manned spacecraft capable of orbital and deep space flight.
The Falcon 9 rocket stands 157 feet tall (48 meters) and is a two-stage booster fueled by liquid oxygen and kerosene.
The challenge of private spaceflight
On Friday, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell acknowledged the company's challenges in hitting liftoff at launch time on the first try.
"We have not hit a T-Zero yet," Shotwell said, adding that she felt SpaceX had a better than 50-50 chance of launching today.
The current Falcon 9 mission is SpaceX's third mission for the rocket design, which made its debut in June 2010. A second flight successfully launched a Dragon capsule prototype into orbit in December 2010. The earlier Falcon 9 launches also saw delays or aborts, Shotwell said.
The Falcon 9 rocket's successful track record marked a major step forward for SpaceX, which launched three of its smaller Falcon 1 rockets before achieving a successful flight on the fourth try.
SpaceX's next chance to launch the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule toward the space station comes before dawn on Tuesday, with Wednesday (May 23) available as a backup day if it is needed, NASA officials said.
After standing down from today's launch attempt, Shotwell stressed that there's a big difference between a launch abort and an outright launch failure.
"This is not a failure," Shotwelll said. "We aborted with purpose. It would have been a failure if we had lifted off with an engine trending in this direction."
Kelly once against Obama space plan, now open to it
Alex Witt - MsNBC TV
Astronaut Mark Kelly joins MSNBC to discuss private space travel and the plan to launch SpaceX into orbit.
Welcome back to "weekends with alex witt ." at just past the half hour now, technicians are trying to figure out what delayed this morning's historic rocket launch . the spacex falcon 9 rocket and its dragon capsule will be the first private spacecraft to make to it the space station . this is a critical test for nasa's plan to outsource trips to the space station . captain mark kelly joins us. thank you for being here.
>> good to be here.
>> i can't get over, one half second before launch -- how often does that happen when something just stops?
>> it's happened with the space shuttle before. in the case of the space shuttle , it could be a month delay to replace an engine. with spacex, they might be able to swap this engine out f. they do that, they could do it from a couple of days at the pad.
>> do you think that's safe, though? i know a lot of people were questioning that rapid turnover. more were suggesting like you, where it would take more like a month to do?
>> they're not going to do anything that's not safe. this is a company that has done things differently. the idea is ultimately to lower the cost and increase the access for people and cargo to get to space. i imagine they'll be careful about it.
>> do you think that private companies going into space will work? do you see this as truly the future of space flight ?
>> you know, initially i didn't. i was not a big fan of this plan that the obama administration had early on. but just seeing how it's developed over the last few years, to see companies, as an example, sparcex, how close they are, they're going to deliver cargo to the space station next week. that's amazing. they're going to ultimately be able to deliver people to the space station . so i see the decisions that were made were very innovative. so they can be a little bit disruptive but ultimately i think this is good for our country and i think it's good for the state of florida as well.
>> how about the company with a $1.6 billion are the, spacex has that contract with nasa for 12 flights to the space station . is this a big payoff for nasa and what about taxpayers?
>> well, i think ultimately by trying to commercialize this industry, it should drive the costs down. and even at $1.6 billion to send 12 cargo flights to the space station , that sounds like a lot but when you compare what it costs to get cargo to the space station with the space shuttle , it's a bargain, significantly less expensive than it was with our old delivery system.
>> what about that nasa wants? does it say that it wants private companies to conduct missions to the space station ? and if so, what types of missions does nasa want to focus on instead?
>> well, that's part of the idea, would be to get those private companies to focus on the stuff that we're pretty good at doing now, which is operating the space station , delivering cargo, ultimately crew to the space station . and nasa would do those harder things in the future, maybe sending back people to an asteroid or to the moon or one day going on to mars. what could ultimately happen is if we could keep some competition out there and keep the costs down, it could cause this industry to grow very rapidly.
>> captain mark kelly , thank you for joining us. pass along our best wishes to your wife. she's always in our thoughts.
>> i'll do that, alex, thank you very much.
As NASA scales back, commercial adventurers look to new horizons
Tom Fontaine - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
The first launch of a privately owned rocket to the International Space Station as early as Tuesday would punctuate a shift in American space travel: The longtime government domain increasingly is becoming commercial.
Astronauts, space experts and other observers say the shift likely won't kill NASA, the pioneering space agency that last summer canned its landmark space shuttle program and watched its share of federal money dwindle to the lowest point in more than a half-century.
The ramifications of public-private partnerships or wholly private investments in space exploration could be huge if Congress does not balk, experts say: Space projects could boost companies, including some in Pittsburgh, with millions of dollars and talented recruits. NASA would not have to rely on Russia to reach the space station. Through commercial involvement, prospecting in space could lead to greater discoveries.
"If done right, this will open up a whole new industry and allow NASA to focus on the fun places to go, like the moon and Mars," said Mike Fincke, 45, an Emsworth native who has logged more space time than any American astronaut with almost 382 days.
If he's right, NASA must learn to do more with less.
Less than one-half of 1 percent of the federal budget goes to NASA this year, according to the Office of Budget and Management. That is the lowest percentage since 1959, the agency's second year of existence. NASA's share of the budget peaked at 4.4 percent in 1966, midway through the Apollo program that would send two dozen Americans to the moon by 1972.
President Obama's proposed $17.7 billion NASA budget for the coming fiscal year would be almost $60 million smaller than this year's spending plan and would shift money to reflect NASA's changing focus.
Closing out the space shuttle program at a cost of $70.6 million would save $485.6 million. The planetary science program would be cut by $309.1 million, or more than 20 percent, including a $130 million reduction in spending on Mars exploration.
Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye, best known for his TV role in "Bill Nye the Science Guy," believes the latter cut would "result in a loss of the greatest thing that NASA does right now, these successful missions to other worlds."
"Space exploration brings out the best in us. It's what great governments do. I want us to continue to explore for the sake of the economy and our national image, but also because we're trying to make the next big discovery in science," Nye said from Los Angeles. "If we found life on another world, it would change this world and the way we think about everything."
Focus on deep space
NASA's biggest spending increase would support commercial flights. The $829.7 million the president requested would more than double the estimated $406 million that NASA will spend this year on such efforts.
SpaceX has a $1.6 billion deal with NASA to make 12 cargo-carrying missions to the station about 240 miles away from Earth. The California-based company's first launch had been set for Saturday but was scrubbed at the last second because of an engine problem. The earliest a launch could be tried again is Tuesday, but Wednesday also is an option. The company will send about 1,000 pounds of food, clothing and other supplies to the station and plans to bring back 1,300 pounds of material in this mission.
Ultimately, SpaceX hopes to carry as many as seven astronauts at a time to the space station at a cost of $20 million a seat. With its space shuttles grounded, NASA pays Russia about $62 million a seat to get to the station.
"It's time to allow America's commercial space industry to take over transport to the International Space Station so that NASA can do what we do best: Make it possible for our astronauts to go deeper into space than anyone has ever gone before," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a speech this month to the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee.
"I have no problem with a shift to privatization (for low Earth orbit projects), but are we then really going to shift dollars to deep space? Right now, it's just words," said John Radzilowicz, director of science and education at the Carnegie Science Center on Pittsburgh's North Shore.
Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology, a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff founded by roboticist William "Red" Whittaker, is another NASA partner. The recipient of $12 million from NASA for various lunar projects, the Oakland company will develop a $100 million lunar lander/rover called Polaris that it hopes to launch in October 2015 on board a SpaceX rocket. It would prospect for ice on the moon's north pole.
"There's a lot of things you can do to water once you have it," said Astrobotic President John Thornton. "You can turn it into rocket fuel by separating the oxygen. You can also have water for astronauts if they are there." It also advances the understanding of where water is in the solar system, he said.
The project is among 26 competing for the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize. It also is competing for a contract to carry 158 pounds of prospecting gear to the moon on behalf of NASA at a cost of $820,000 to $910,000 a pound. That could translate to a payment of $129.6 million to $143.8 million.
"That is a fraction of what (NASA) would expect to spend" if it conducted the mission, former Astrobotic President David Gump said, estimating those costs at more than $700 million.
More risks, more projects
Aside from savings for taxpayers, Gump thinks increased commercial involvement and competition could lead to greater discoveries.
"More risks will be taken, and many more projects will be pursued," Gump said, referring to a Bellevue, Wash.-based company's plans to mine asteroids for resources ranging from water to platinum. "That's not something NASA had any intention of doing."
Former astronaut Jay Apt, a technology professor at Carnegie Mellon, supports increased commercial involvement. A potential barrier: "Some in Washington are doing everything they can to kill private enterprise. All politics is local," Apt said, noting some lawmakers fear commercial expansion might harm NASA programs in their home districts.
Apt said NASA needs to pursue ambitious, deep space projects to attract the brightest minds. Some of those thinkers are attracted to private companies such as SpaceX and Astrobotic because "they have the ability to quickly execute exciting projects. Right now, the real revolutionary advances are not happening within NASA."
Bolden said NASA had a near-record 6,300 applicants for its astronaut Class of 2013.
Yeonsoo Sara Lee, 16, of Charlotte could be bound for the stars. The Pittsburgh-born high school junior competed in last week's Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown, with an astrophysics entry.
Asked whether she would prefer working for NASA or in the emerging commercial space industry, Lee said: "I would definitely say NASA. Private companies don't have the backing of the government, nor do they have the history."
Elon Musk shoots for the stars with SpaceX
The cofounder of PayPal shoots for the stars
Tony Dokoupil - Newsweek Magazine's Daily Beast
“Engineering is the closest thing to magic that exists in the world,” the inventor Elon Musk likes to tell students. This week he sets out to prove it, as he attempts to do what no private citizen has done before: send a vessel to the International Space Station.
Musk, who cofounded PayPal before plowing $100 million into space exploration in 2002, plans to blast a gumdrop-shape capsule from the pads at Cape Canaveral to Earth’s only extraterrestrial embassy, a journey shorter than the bus route from Detroit to Chicago, but straight up and considerably more scenic.
Besides surviving the hellfire of Earth’s atmosphere, Musk’s craft, which he’ll oversee from mission control in Hawthorne, Calif., must deliver a half ton of cargo (yes, Tang included), and splash down safely somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
Only the governments of China, Russia, and the United States have accomplished the feat. “I mean, touch wood,” Musk says by phone. During a decade of trial and error, he’s had at least three failed launches, including a rocket that dumped the ashes of James Doohan—Scotty from Star Trek—into the sea. Lesson learned: keep the celebratory champagne in storage. “Otherwise, if it doesn’t go well it just kills you.”
Either way Musk has earned the drink. His company, SpaceX, is one of a handful that President Obama hopes will service the space station now that the shuttle is gone. Success would quiet critics and cement a $1.6 billion contract with NASA, making SpaceX the go-to taxi for supplies and, eventually, astronauts.
It would also make Musk a 21st-century robber baron, extracting cash from the cosmos. With $4 billion in contracts and more than 40 other launches already booked, SpaceX has outpaced competition from companies backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, not to mention aerospace stalwarts like Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
But Musk sees his efforts in more transcendent terms. He hopes to colonize Mars, thus ensuring the survival of humanity, whatever the fate of Earth. “What we’re talking about here is insurance on a grand scale,” he says, and he expects to have it for us, for all of humankind, within 20 years, give or take. “I can see a way,” he says, as though spotting a free parking space, “and we’re making progress. So if I don’t die ...”
This fall he’s hoping for another term for Obama, the best friend of private space, Musk says. “Obama seems to care about inspiring events in the country,” Musk says. Romney, on the other hand: “He’s got that whole business-school thing going on, which I’m not a huge fan of. It’s hard to make a business case for inspiration.”
For now Musk has more immediate worries, like the performance of his rocket with the whole world watching. Isn’t he worried he’ll suffer a Kim Jong-un-like fizzle? Nah, Musk says. Believe him. “Elon has huge steel balls,” his ex-wife notes on her blog. “He truly does.”
Is private industry ready for space?
SpaceX set to make historic launch to International Space Station in May
Andrew Pinsent - CBC News
Space Explorations Inc., better known as SpaceX, is about to make one giant leap for the private sector.
The company is poised to become the first private firm to dock and deliver cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). It made its first attempt on Saturday, but the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon spacecraft was aborted at the last second when onboard computers automatically shut down.
The next possible attempt at launch is Tuesday.
SpaceX has already done a pair of successful test launches to prepare for the mission.
Until now, space has belonged to government- and military-backed projects. The California-based company is sowing the seeds for private enterprise above Earth’s atmosphere, but some have questioned whether private industry is ready for such an expensive and dangerous undertaking.
“Why not?” is the simple response from Julie Payette, former chief astronaut of the Canadian Space Agency and a veteran of NASA space flights in 1999 and 2009.
Payette is the scientific authority for Quebec in Washington on behalf of Quebec’s Department of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade. She likens the beginning of private space travel to the development of commercial aviation and the transportation sector in general, but says differences lie in the safety level, because of the environment and complexity of sending people to space.
“That doesn’t mean they can’t do it,” she says.
"It's in the best interest of a commercial company that would offer space flight to people to do it properly, because they are not going to stay in business [otherwise].”
Along with SpaceX, a handful of private companies are dabbling in space transportation for people and cargo.
Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada Corp. are all working on different facets of space travel in the United States. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, for example, bills itself as an "airline offering suborbital spaceflights" and is selling advance tickets at $200,000 US apiece for sub-orbital flights, which the company hopes will begin in 2013.
The stakes are high, and none of the companies agreed to do interviews about their plans. But while the companies are tight-lipped about their craft and schedules, Payette says she believes the private sector is more than ready to take on the challenge.
John Lodgson, founder of the Elliott School's Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, agrees. He says these companies have invested a lot of money, time and resources in these projects.
“They’re smart enough people not to take unnecessary risk,” Lodgson says, noting the challenges will be “keeping their costs down, and being able to operate at a high enough frequency to offer seats at a pace that can eventually turn a profit.”
Mining the heavens
Planetary Resources Inc. is another company hoping to be a major player in a new commercial space industry. It is looking at exploiting space and bringing some of its vast resources back to Earth.
The new private space company — backed by the likes of director James Cameron, Google founder Larry Page and a number of other deep-pocketed investors — announced on April 24 that it is developing technology required to mine minerals from near-earth asteroids.
Payette is a little more skeptical of plans to mine in space, noting that in all of space exploration history, all that has been brought back to Earth in terms of minerals so far is about 382 kilograms of moon rocks. She points out that humans haven’t been anywhere else but lower-earth orbit for more than 40 years, “so I think we have a little bit of development to do before we get there,” and can profitably mine resources beyond Earth's orbit.
“It’s interesting and visionary to think we will in the next decade go to an asteroid to mine it and bring it back, but we’ve got a ways to go,” Payette says.
She adds that she believes mining in space could eventually have huge benefits for humanity, “but 'eventually' may be a long time away.”
As a long-time space scholar, the idea of resource extraction in space excites Lodgson, since the more people that get involved in such ventures, he says, the better it is for the combination of government and private sector programs.
He admits the profit margins might not be there right away, but says the fact that these ideas are being tested is a victory for science.
“It’s a well-conceived venture, but in terms of being an economic success, I would say it's high risk,” Lodgson says. “The good thing about Planetary Resources is that they're one of the first companies to begin to go down the path to see whether these ideas are viable or not.”
Government contracting
NASA's decision to retire its shuttle fleet has created opportunities for private ventures in space that could turn quicker profits. The agency has turned to independent companies like SpaceX — headed by Elon Musk, multimillionaire co-founder of the PayPal electronic payment system — for help getting astronauts and material into orbit.
NASA's Commercial Crew Development program — which is intended to fund private development of vehicles that could eventually transport astronauts to the space station — has handed out a total of $320 million so far to six private companies in the U.S.
NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6-billion contract in late 2008 to resupply the space station. The contract calls for a minimum of 12 flights, but there's an option to order more flights, which could boost the contract's value to $3.1 billion. SpaceX has done several successful test launches of its Falcon rocket and Dragon spacecraft in preparation of the upcoming cargo run to the space station.
Boeing is another of the leading players. It successfully test launched a spacecraft called (CST)-100 — nicknamed the "capsule" — on May 3 this year. John Mulholland, the company's vice-president and program manager for the (CST)-100 spacecraft project, says the goal is to take over transportation to the ISS as early as 2015.
“It’s designed for lower Earth orbit,” Mullholland adds. “Our capsule will be able to take up to seven crew, or any combination of crew and cargo up to 2,800 pounds.”
Mulholland says Boeing faces a different challenge than its competitors, because the company is attempting to transport astronauts as well as cargo to the space station. There is a little more room for "trial by error" for companies that only deal in cargo.
“The difference with cargo is if you lose cargo, yes it's money, and yes there are losers, but it doesn’t cost you human life."
Safety in the project is paramount to Mulholland. He himself was involved in the investigation of the Columbia shuttle disaster in February 2003.
“[We are] performing a number of risk reduction development tests,” Mulholland says.
“Across all systems we are trying to very early get out in the field and do some demonstration tests to help us validate [the capsules] design, and decrease our risk looking forward.”
Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. has also signed a development contract with NASA to deliver cargo to the space station using its new Taurus rocket.
KSC master-plan rewrite under way for new launches
Spaceport's planned transformation to multi-user facility prompts update
Rick Neale - Florida Today
Snapped in 1964, the black-and-white photograph depicts Pad 39A under construction — and in the background, metal rebar of the future Vehicle Assembly Building is emerging from the ground.
For the past half-century, the $5.6 billion, “irreplaceable” Kennedy Space Center has operated as a NASA-monopolized installation, said master planner Trey Carlson.
But looking 20 years ahead, stakeholders will include a growing number of still-unknown commercial space start-ups; NASA’s heavy-lift rocket program; federal agencies like the Department of Defense and Department of Energy; and the state of Florida, in conjunction with its other spaceports.
How should KSC morph its 144,000-acre footprint to handle this transformation?
“(NASA) dictated how we developed, how things went, because they had all the money. How do we go from that to a multi-user spaceport on federal property?” Carlson asked the Space Coast Transportation Planning Organization during a recent meeting.
KSC’s master plan has not received a major revision since 2003, Carlson said. That was a year before President George W. Bush announced his now-scrapped plan to create a lunar outpost and sent astronauts to Mars.
Now, Carlson’s department has drafted a 44-page master-strategy rewrite through 2031 — much of which “flies in the face” of typical NASA planning. For example, new safety guidelines must be set “so Company A doesn’t make a mistake and blow up Company B,” he quipped.
These concepts were approved in February at NASA headquarters. Now, Carlson’s office will spend the next 12 to 15 months fleshing out details.
Among infrastructure and operational initiatives discussed during the TPO meeting:
· Introduce simplified billing policies offering flexibility for commercial companies, including calculating up-front how much a launch will cost. “They want to buy services by the yard. They don’t want to have to pay for a standing army, the way we’ve been used to operating for a while,” Carlson said.
· Fashion launch-pad architecture to accommodate multiple vehicles. “We have never used more than one pad for more than one launch vehicle,” he said.
· Forge maintenance partnerships with the Florida Department of Transportation for KSC’s five rail and vehicle bridges.
· Establish a rail link with Port Canaveral.
“With this vision of diversifying ourselves, we will be in a better position five years from now and 10 years from now,” Carlson said.
“When — not if, but when — the federal government once again changes its mind of how it wants to use the space center, NASA will adapt and change appropriately,” he said.
The Astronaut Challenge helps make science 'real'
Elizabeth Mack - Tallahassee Democrat
Claudia Richbourg, 16, a 10th-grader at FSUS, participates in all kinds of academic competitions — Brain Bowl and Latin Club — but none of them compare to the first-ever Florida Student Astronaut Challenge.
"This was a lot of fun," she said. "It was more hands on. And it's different because there isn't a class around it."
Sixteen high schools from around the state applied for the space-related science challenge. Only the top eight were selected. Seven of those schools participated in the competition Saturday at the Challenger Learning Center.
The idea for the competition started at Florida State University School.
Two years ago the school received a $10,000 grant from the Florida Department of Education to build a space shuttle simulator, said Peter Carafano, FSUS science instructor.
"We wanted to use it to teach the kids problem-solving and communication using science as a real-world application," he said.
Once the grant ended, the school was going to use the simulator as the basis for a class, Carafano added. When the idea was brought before FDOE, it was suggested that all schools get to experience the simulator, which is what led to the competition.
There were four components to the competition: a written multiple-choice test, an engineering challenge, a presentation and demonstration of a zero gravity experiment and a demonstration of the pre-flight operation, launch, orbit and landing of the Space Shuttle Enterprise flight simulator, Carafano said.
"It's really about teaching them science," he said. "The best way to teach them science and the importance of engineering, physics and mathematics is to let them see how people in the real world use this stuff."
According to Bradley Sikes, 15, a ninth-grader at Nassau West High School, Carafano was right.
"It was kind of like a new door was opened," he said. "It was new; it was a challenge; it was hands on and different. But it's been a great opportunity and experience, because I've always had an interest in being a pilot. And today really spiked that interest even more."
All the students who participated in the competition received a one-day pass to Disney World. The winning team also gets to have lunch with Disney's Imagineers, along with a behind the scenes tour of the theme park.
END
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