Happy Friday everyone,,,,have a great Mother’s Day weekend.
Friday, May 11, 2012
JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1. Calling ALL Entrepreneurs: Houston Technology Center Orientation Today in Building 3
2. JSC Featured in 'Off Limits' on the Travel Channel!
3. JSC NMA May Luncheon - Dr. Doug Terrier
4. ViTS Classes in June
5. Just for the Guys
6. The 'Model = Code' Debate in Model Driven Development
7. Starport Building 3 Café Has Some 'Sweet' Treats
8. Starport Presents: Father-Daughter Dance 2012
9. Starport Summer Camp is Still Taking Registrations
10. Dreamtrips Vacations at the Gilruth Center
11. Drinking Water Week 2012
12. System Safety Workshop Class: Aug. 7 to 9 - Building 226N, Room 174
________________________________________ QUOTE OF THE DAY
“ A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault. ”
-- John Henry Cardinal Newman
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1. Calling ALL Entrepreneurs: Houston Technology Center Orientation Today in Building 3
Calling all tech Entrepreneurs!
Creatorspace.org, a local non-profit that unites creative people toward mutual success, is pleased to announce that we will be hosting an entrepreneur client orientation for the Houston Technology Center (HTC) in the Building 3 café today from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. (Come a little early to get your food so as not to miss the start.)
HTC is a non-profit business incubator that works closely with entrepreneurs to provide strategies, guidance and fund-raising advice and connect them to needed opportunities, allies and capital.
Tim Budzik, managing director of HTC, will be giving the orientation about their services for entrepreneurs.
If you are currently doing product development and looking to spin up a business in the technology, Information Technology, energy, life science and/or aerospace sectors, you should not miss this event!
Attending this or another orientation is required to take advantage of their offerings and services.
Please RSVP to: adam.d.burnett@nasa.gov
For additional information, visit: http://www.creatorspace.org and http://houstontech.org
Adam David Burnett 281-935-9590 http://www.creatorspace.org
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2. JSC Featured in 'Off Limits' on the Travel Channel!
The "Off Limits" Travel Channel show, with host Don Wildman, will air its episode featuring a JSC segment on the Travel Channel this coming Tuesday, May 15, at 10 p.m. CST. The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, EVA tools and Space Exploration Vehicle were filmed for this segment. The show will also include a segment on the San Francisco area Bay Bridge.
Susan H. Anderson x38630 http://www.travelchannel.com/tv-shows/off-limits
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3. JSC NMA May Luncheon - Dr. Doug Terrier
Join the JSC Chapter of the National Management Association (NMA) this month to learn about the center's history and plans to lead the next era of space exploration with strategic planning, new business pursuits, technology investments, commercialization and partnership development.
Date: May 23
Location: Hilton, Discovery Ballroom
Speaker: Dr. Doug Terrier, Deputy Director, Strategic Opportunities and Partnerships Development Office
Topic: "Leading the Next Era of Space Exploration"
Cost for members: $0
Cost for non-members: $20
RSVP due date: Close of business on May 17 at http://www.jscnma.com
Cassandra Miranda x38618
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4. ViTS Classes in June
Particle Count Training - June 8, 9 a.m.
https://satern.nasa.gov/plateau/user/deeplink.do?linkId=SCHEDULED_OFFERING_DE...
Machine Guarding Seminar - June 8, noon
https://satern.nasa.gov/plateau/user/deeplink.do?linkId=SCHEDULED_OFFERING_DE...
Personal Protective and Life Saving Equipment - June 22, 8 a.m.
https://satern.nasa.gov/plateau/user/deeplink.do?linkId=SCHEDULED_OFFERING_DE...
Signs, Signals and Barricades - June 22, noon
https://satern.nasa.gov/plateau/user/deeplink.do?linkId=SCHEDULED_OFFERING_DE...
Welding and Cutting - June 29, 8 a.m.
https://satern.nasa.gov/plateau/user/deeplink.do?linkId=SCHEDULED_OFFERING_DE...
Material Handling, Storage, Use and Disposal - June 29, noon
https://satern.nasa.gov/plateau/user/deeplink.do?linkId=SCHEDULED_OFFERING_DE...
Use these links to register in SATERN.
Shirley Robinson x41284
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5. Just for the Guys
This is a meeting for the male population at JSC to discuss ideas and suggestions on issues related to male stereotypes. Takis Bogdanos, MA, LPC, of the JSC Employee Assistance Program (EAP), will facilitate the meeting and offer tools. Through discussion and feedback, we can expand our view of the male role on how to manage life more resourcefully. Some of the "men's issues" discussed include work and responsibility, relationships and parenting. The meeting will be Thursday, May 17, in the EAP Office (Building 32, Room 132) at 12 noon.
Takis Bogdanos x36130
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6. The 'Model = Code' Debate in Model Driven Development
Gordon Morrison has presented his software concepts at various forums such as SSTC 2010, CodeRage 2010, Stanford Research International and at the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratory. He is the author of "Breaking the Time Barrier - The Temporal Engineering of Software" and "SoftwareTech Magazine" (January 2010). He is the inventor of multi-core and hyper-threading technology (U.S. Patent 4,847,755).
Morrison is a member of Association for Computing Machinery and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
The presentation will start at noon and finish by 1 p.m. on May 17 in the Gilruth Center Discovery Room. We will offer lunch at 11:30 a.m. to the first 15 requestors for $8. There is no charge for the presentation. Please RSVP to Stew O'Dell at stewart.odell@ieee.org and specify whether you are ordering lunch. Lunch free for VTS members and unemployed IEEE members; advise when reserving.
Stew O'Dell 281-461-5920
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7. Starport Building 3 Café Has Some 'Sweet' Treats
Just in time for Mother's Day! The Building 3 coffee cart will feature decadent decorated cupcakes for sale. Choose a single or four-pack of our dark chocolate or moist yellow cupcakes. Prices start from $2.59 for a single and $7.99 for the four-pack.
Since ANY DAY can be a cupcake day, be sure to check by every day for the rest of May for these beautiful creations. You can treat yourself or surprise an officemate and family members with some of these delicious desserts. (Pre-orders are welcomed.)
Y. Marquis Edwards x30240
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8. Starport Presents: Father-Daughter Dance 2012
Make Father's Day weekend a date your daughter will never forget! Enjoy a night of music, dancing, refreshments, finger foods, dessert, photos and more. Plan to get all dressed up and spend a special evening with the special little lady in your life.
- June 15 from 6:30 to 9 p.m. in the Gilruth Center Alamo Ballroom.
- Cost is $40 per couple ($15 per additional child). Each couple will receive one free 5 x 7 photo.
Visit our website at http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Events/ for more information.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
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9. Starport Summer Camp is Still Taking Registrations
Summer is just around the corner. Do you know what activities you have planned for your children? Starport Summer Camp is a great option for the JSC workforce and their dependents! Registration is still taking place at the Gilruth Center, and all sessions still have spots available. But hurry, because space is limited. Visit http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/camp/index.cfm for more details on the session themes and planned activities.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
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10. Dreamtrips Vacations at the Gilruth Center
Dreamtrips Vacations will be at the Gilruth Center on May 15 at 4 p.m. in the Discovery Room. Learn how to save up to 50 percent off vacations. Dreamtrips is an elite vacation club with no contract. Offers are available to NASA employees, contractors and retirees. Visit the Starport website for more information: http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/EmployeeDiscount/LeisureAndTravel/index.cfm
Lorie Shewell x30308 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
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11. Drinking Water Week 2012
May 6 to 12 is recognized by the American Water Works Association as Drinking Water Week 2012. Civil servants and contractors for Facilities, Occupational Health and Environmental continually monitor the drinking water here at JSC to provide the best quality potable water possible. Join us this week as we recognize the significant impacts that drinking water has on our daily lives and operations here at JSC.
Environmental Office x36207
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12. System Safety Workshop Class: Aug. 7 to 9 - Building 226N, Room 174
This course teaches the fundamentals of hazard recognition and analysis for hardware and operations. Basic hazard concepts and basics of the analytical process are stressed. Types and techniques of hazard analysis are addressed in enough detail to give the student a working knowledge and provide a basis for continued refinement of analytical skills. Extensive use of in-class workshops and group exercises allow hands-on practice in techniques discussed. Note: Students who have attended SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0002, System Safety Fundamentals, should not attend this course. Attendees should arrive prior to 8 a.m. to be ready to start class at 8 a.m. SATERN registration REQUIRED. Contractors, note: You need to update your SATERN profile with a current email, phone, supervisor and NASA organization code your contract supports prior to registering to speed the approval process. Class is 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. https://satern.nasa.gov/plateau/user/deeplink.do?linkId=SCHEDULED_OFFERING_DE...
Polly Caison x41279
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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:
· 11 am Central (Noon EDT – Video File of the Expedition 31/32 Crew Activities in Baikonur
· 11 am Central SUNDAY (Noon EDT) – Video File of Soyuz mating & Rollout to launch pad
Human Spaceflight News
Friday, May 11, 2012
HEADLINES AND LEADS
House bill directs NASA to scrap commercial crew competition
Ledyard King - Florida Today
NASA is being directed to speed up its selection of a company to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. A spending bill the House approved Thursday says NASA needs to make an "immediate" choice of a company for the commercial crew program. Currently, NASA is providing subsidies to four companies vying to develop a rocket to replace the space shuttle. At least two of the companies are planning test flights to the station this year, but a manned mission is not expected until 2017. The spending measure, which still needs Senate review and approval, was authored by Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA's budget. It also covers other federal agencies.
House passes $17.6 billion NASA budget for 2013, but veto threatened
Lee Roop - Huntsville Times
The House passed a $17.6 billion NASA 2013 budget Thursday with $1.45 billion for a rocket being developed in Huntsville, but President Obama is threatening to veto it. U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Huntsville, voted for the budget, but criticized a late amendment that took $126 million from NASA to support community policing. "I was pleased enough to vote for it," Brooks said, "but not as pleased as I would have been" without the amendment. Brooks said 81 percent of Republicans in the House voted against the amendment, but 74 percent of Democrats voted for it.
'Made in Space': Coming soon to a product near you
Chris Wickham - Reuters
The European Space Agency is hatching plans for a branding campaign aimed at making people more aware of the benefits of spending their hard-earned taxes on the International Space Station. The list of products and technologies that have their roots in space research is long, from memory foam to the in-ear thermometer, but in a world struggling to pay the bill from the financial crisis, the billions of dollars spent on space exploration can be challenging to justify. The branding plan is an indication that space scientists are concerned about cuts to space agency budgets, and worried that their contribution to economic growth is not fully recognized.
How Nanoracks Sends Scotch, iPhones and School Experiments to Space
Rebecca Boyle - Popular Science
The private space industry is holding its breath for later this month when SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will lift off en route to the International Space Station. It will be a milestone for commercial spaceflight — no more will Americans have to rely solely on Russia or other international partners to get stuff into space. It will also enable an entire private space ecosystem, one in which private companies design and build experiments, send them to space and gather data, all with minimal astronaut help. A small company called Nanoracks, which made headlines lately for its plans to send components of Ardbeg single-malt whisky to the ISS, will be the first commercial cargo to fly on SpaceX's Dragon capsule.
Agreement lays groundwork for private missions to space hotel
W.J. Hennigan - Los Angeles Times
How about a few nights in a space hotel? That one day may be possible under a new agreement between Hawthorne-based rocket venture Space Exploration Technologies Corp., better known as SpaceX, and Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas. The two companies announced Thursday they plan to offer rides to orbiting Bigelow habitats, using SpaceX’s Falcon rocket and Dragon spacecraft, which is designed to carry up to seven people.
Las Vegas aerospace company in new partnership for space travel
Jennifer Robison - Las Vegas Review-Journal
A Las Vegas aerospace company is a giant leap closer to going where no Sin City company has gone before. Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas and California-based Space Exploration Technologies on Thursday announced a new partnership to promote space travel to international customers flying SpaceX's Dragon reusable spacecraft launched atop its Falcon rocket to reach Bigelow's orbiting BA 330 space habitat. "This is an incredibly exciting venture," SpaceX spokeswoman Kirstin Grantham said. "Our partnership with Bigelow should present opportunities to businesses and governments that previously didn't have access to space."
Bigelow enlists SpaceX for rides to its station
Falcon 9 would boost Dragon capsule to orbit
James Dean - Florida Today
SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, now nearing a first unmanned flight to the International Space Station, could eventually carry passengers to private space stations, under a partnership announced Thursday. SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace said they have teamed up to market flights to Bigelow’s proposed stations, targeting international customers that could include national space agencies, companies and universities. “Both companies were founded to help create a new era in space enterprise,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement. “Together we will provide unique opportunities to entities — whether nations or corporations — wishing to have crewed access to the space environment for extended periods.”
SpaceX teams up with Bigelow on space station marketing
Alan Boyle - MsNBC.com's Cosmic Log
SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace plan to meet with officials in Japan soon after this month's scheduled launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, to kick off an international marketing effort for private-sector space stations. The plan, laid out today in a jointly issued news release, calls for clients to go into orbit inside the Dragon and link up with Bigelow's BA 330 inflatable space habitat. "Together we will provide unique opportunities to entities — whether nations or corporations — wishing to have crewed access to the space environment for extended periods," said SpaceX's president, Gwynne Shotwell. "I'm looking forward to working with Bigelow Aerospace and engaging with international customers."
Space Capsule Test Brings Strange Sight to the Desert
George Knapp - KLAS TV (Las Vegas)
Residents of rural Nevada are not surprised by weird objects they see in the sky. But the spacecraft recently spotted near Alamo must have caused a few folks to rub their eyes in disbelief. The NASA space program is in a holding pattern now that the space shuttle has been retired, but the private space industry is in full-speed mode. A test conducted over a Nevada lake bed is evidence of that , though it looks like the space race has gone retro. If you were among the very few watching from the Delamar dry lake bed a few days ago, you might have been tempted to double check the year. There, floating down from the sky, suspended by what looked like gigantic fried eggs, was a seemingly vintage space capsule, like something from the Apollo Program that had slipped through a time warp.
Purdue to erect solar system sculpture to honor late NASA astronaut
Associated Press
A NASA astronaut who died this year will be honored at Purdue University with a sprawling interactive sculpture depicting the solar system. Purdue students designed the sculpture, which will be installed in 2014 in honor of Janice Voss, who flew on five space shuttle missions. The Purdue alumna and South Bend native died in February at age 55 from complications of cancer.
Sponsor-a-shuttle: Museums offer tiles and stars for display funds
Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com
The New York and Los Angeles homes for two of NASA's space shuttles want to put your name in lights — actually on heatshield tiles and stars — in return for your help funding the construction of new buildings for their incoming orbiters. The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City and the California Science Center (CSC) in Los Angeles have each launched fundraising campaigns to develop the exhibit halls for space shuttles Enterprise and Endeavour, respectively. Both museums will have temporary displays ready for their shuttles later this year, but they need help to make their plans for permanent displays a reality.
He's the last pilot space shuttles see
Julia Bishop Beautie - Ultimate Friendswood
Throughout the ending of the historic Space Shuttle Program, Kingwood resident Jeff Moultrie is dutifully helping to close the door. On April 17, Moultrie, who is an instructor pilot and aerospace engineer with NASA, flew the modified 747 that carried the space shuttle Discovery from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to Washington Dulles Airport. Post-NASA, the shuttle will be exhibited at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Museum. Of the event, Moultrie said it was well ordered and will be a memorable highlight in his career.
Behind the scenes with Big Bang Theory's real-life astronaut actor
Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com
On Thursday evening's (May 10) season finale of "The Big Bang Theory," a main character on the CBS TV sitcom launches into space. Sitting beside him in the spacecraft is Mike Massimino, a real NASA astronaut, making his second cameo appearance on the show. Massimino, who in real life flew twice on the space shuttle to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, joins aerospace engineer Howard Wolowitz, played by Simon Helberg, and a fictional cosmonaut as Expedition 31 crewmates aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule flying to the International Space Station. collectSPACE caught up with Massimino by phone a few hours before the episode was set to air to talk about being an astronaut on the show, the set and the future of space exploration, both for NASA and on "The Big Bang Theory."
Shuttle with Aft Cargo Carrier (1982)
David Portree - Wired.com
The destruction of the Orbiter Challenger at the start of the Space Shuttle Program’s 25th mission on January 28, 1986, put an end to many proposals and plans for Shuttle augmentation. The Manned Maneuvering Unit, the powerful liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen Centaur-G’ upper stage, routine satellite servicing, launches from the U.S. West Coast, polar and retrograde orbits, frequent non-astronaut passengers, long-duration missions relying on solar panels, on-orbit satellite refueling, and a flight rate upwards of 50 per year – all of these were abandoned as NASA acknowledged the Shuttle’s frailties and foibles. Among the proposals abandoned after Challenger was Martin Marietta’s Aft Cargo Carrier (ACC), a 27.5-foot-diameter, 31.9-foot-long cargo canister that would ride into space bolted over the dome-shaped aft end of the Shuttle External Tank (ET).
How NASA moon rock heist was inside job carried out by physics geniuses
London Daily Mail
A new British documentary is set to reveal the incredible story behind the multi-million dollar moon rock heist at NASA - and how it was an inside job. In July 2002 'physics genius' Thad Roberts and three accomplices pulled off perhaps the greatest ever theft in NASA history at the Johnson Space Centre, Houston, Texas. Using their NASA IDs Roberts, and one female partner in crime, slipped into the centre at night stealing a 600lb safe containing moon rocks from every Apollo mission.
“Why Postpone a Success?” The Days Before Freedom 7
Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org
More than five decades have passed since the United States launched its first astronaut, Alan Shepard, into space. His 15-minute flight was ‘suborbital’ – it rose from Cape Canaveral in Florida and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, 160 km north of the Bahamas – and for a relieved America it was a tremendous success…though it was distinctly overshadowed by Yuri Gagarin’s orbital mission, a few weeks earlier. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev lambasted Shepard’s flight as a “flea hop” and, in a sense, he was right, but the bravery exhibited by America on 5 May 1961 cannot be underestimated. Its rockets averaged only a 60-percent success rate in this period and Shepard’s mission brought intense political relief, too. President John Kennedy had been in office for a matter of months and his administration had already been battered by a failed attempt to depose Fidel Castro at the ‘Bay of Pigs’. Whilst the Soviets could crow loudly about their ‘peaceful’ accomplishment of putting a man into orbit, America – the leader of ‘The Free World’ – was presented as little more than a warmonger. In the words of journalist Julian Scheer, Shepard’s flight changed that perception and “bailed out the ego of the American people”.
How to Land the Mercury Capsule
Amy Teitel - AmericaSpace.org
When NASA introduced the Mercury astronauts to the country during a press conference in 1959, getting them to space wasn’t a problem. The Redstone and Atlas rockets were on their way to being man rated and the agency had settled on a blunt body capsule for the Mercury spacecraft over competing spaceplane designs. Landing the capsule was a different matter. How to bring the astronauts back from space alive was much less straightforward.
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COMPLETE STORIES
House bill directs NASA to scrap commercial crew competition
Ledyard King - Florida Today
NASA is being directed to speed up its selection of a company to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station.
A spending bill the House approved Thursday says NASA needs to make an "immediate" choice of a company for the commercial crew program. Currently, NASA is providing subsidies to four companies vying to develop a rocket to replace the space shuttle. At least two of the companies are planning test flights to the station this year, but a manned mission is not expected until 2017.
The spending measure, which still needs Senate review and approval, was authored by Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA's budget. It also covers other federal agencies.
The bill would provide about $17 billion to the space agency in fiscal 2013, including money for its top three priorities: a mission to Mars powered by a "heavy-lift" rocket, the launch of a powerful new space telescope, and the commercial crew program.
The program has come under greater scrutiny lately from lawmakers who question why NASA isn't moving faster. The last shuttle flew in July and NASA is paying Russia more than $60 million each time it flies a U.S. astronaut to the orbiting lab.
"Continuing on the current path runs a high risk of failure by one or more companies receiving government subsidies ... and leaving the taxpayer with no tangible benefits in exchange for a substantial investment," Wolf said earlier this week on the House floor explaining his proposal.
NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. said forcing the agency to move quickly would be counterproductive.
"Ending competition by down-selecting to a sole commercial space company could double the cost of developing a privately built human spaceflight system and it will leave us in the same position we find ourselves today -- having only one option for getting our astronauts to the space station," he told an FAA commercial space advisory committee Thursday.
Other backers of the commercial program say it would be shortsighted to winnow the field before competitors have had an opportunity to fully demonstrate their capabilities.
"It is unfortunate that Congress would direct an agency to pick a company before the magic of the marketplace had a chance to work," said Dale Ketcham, director of the Spaceport Research & Technology Institute at the University of Central Florida.
Though he supported a plan to have two competitors, Rep. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, shares Wolf's desire for a faster process, spokesman George Cecela said Thursday.
Cecela said Posey voted for the spending bill on Thursday because he's concerned Congress' growing impatience with the commercial crew program could give budget cutters more incentive to cut the agency at a time of fiscal austerity.
"When NASA's not making much progress or is so over-budget, members start asking, 'We're paying all this money to NASA but we're not seeing anything in return,'" Cecala said. "The more that happens, the more NASA is put on the chopping block."
Rep. Sandy Adams, R-Orlando, also voted for the bill despite sharing some of Wolf's misgivings, spokeswoman Lisa Booth said Thursday.
Adams plans to work with House leaders "to ensure that we get the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars in the program without compromising the safety or spirit of competition, which has been the cornerstone of the commercial crew program."
Posey and Adams voted against an amendment that would cut $126 million from of NASA's budget. The measure passed 206-204.
The money, slated for maintenance, operation and safety programs at NASA's nine centers, including Kennedy Space Center, would be shifted to the COPS program that provides subsidies to communities looking to beef up law enforcement.
Hours before the vote, Posey and Adams wrote a joint letter to their fellow Florida lawmakers hoping to convince them to oppose the proposal.
"If enacted, this cut will cost jobs, endanger both manned and unmanned programs at NASA, render NASA more vulnerable to cyberattacks, and impair NASA projects at Kennedy Space Center and other space centers," the letter said.
House passes $17.6 billion NASA budget for 2013, but veto threatened
Lee Roop - Huntsville Times
The House passed a $17.6 billion NASA 2013 budget Thursday with $1.45 billion for a rocket being developed in Huntsville, but President Obama is threatening to veto it.
U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Huntsville, voted for the budget, but criticized a late amendment that took $126 million from NASA to support community policing. "I was pleased enough to vote for it," Brooks said, "but not as pleased as I would have been" without the amendment. Brooks said 81 percent of Republicans in the House voted against the amendment, but 74 percent of Democrats voted for it.
It had appeared NASA might get a break this year from several years of fighting over money and mission. Budgets passed by committees in the Senate and House weren't far apart, as Washington numbers go, and an agreement was in place with the White House on NASA's top priorities. The full Senate has not yet considered NASA funding.
Those priorities are a new heavy-lift rocket being designed and developed at Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center, financial support for the International Space Station, completion of the James Webb Space Telescope, and continued funding to develop a commercial space industry.
Obama threatened Monday to veto the House budget the includes NASA because he said it violated an agreement over spending limits reached between Congress and the White House last summer. The White House also said the House bit cut funding for commercial space development by $300 million from Obama's request. And the White House didn't like a provision in the House funding committee's report saying NASA should select one commercial provider and one backup for taxpayer support, not the four competing companies currently being funded. NASA has agreements now with Boeing., SpaceX, Sierra Nevada Corp., and Blue Origin.
'Made in Space': Coming soon to a product near you
Chris Wickham - Reuters
The European Space Agency is hatching plans for a branding campaign aimed at making people more aware of the benefits of spending their hard-earned taxes on the International Space Station.
The list of products and technologies that have their roots in space research is long, from memory foam to the in-ear thermometer, but in a world struggling to pay the bill from the financial crisis, the billions of dollars spent on space exploration can be challenging to justify.
The branding plan is an indication that space scientists are concerned about cuts to space agency budgets, and worried that their contribution to economic growth is not fully recognized.
"It frustrates people, because we know we have a valuable asset," Mark Uhran, NASA's assistant associate administrator for the International Space Station, told Reuters at a conference in Berlin of scientists from the 15 nations backing the project.
The European Space Agency estimates the bill for the space station will come to about $130 billion (100 billion euros), including running costs for the next 10 years. The European share of 8 billion euros, it says, equates to 1 euro ($1.30) a day from every European, or less than the price of a cup of coffee.
"If we stop investing, we will harm our economies," said Julie Robinson, space station program scientist at NASA. Robinson points out that the construction of the station was only fully completed last year, but since then there has been a surge in the amount of scientific work being done on board.
Research in orbit
Research on the space station cuts across disciplines, from biotechnology to materials science, all in a series of laboratories stuffed with equipment. The space station now covers an area equivalent to a football field, orbiting the earth at more than 17,000 miles an hour.
It is run by a government consortium including the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and 11 of the 17 European Space Agency nations: Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
What it offers science is a stable environment in microgravity, essentially weightlessness, that can only be replicated in short bursts on Earth through the parabolic flight of aircraft used for spaceflight training and research.
Research in microgravity has led to advances in metallurgy, particularly the production of metallic foams - blocks of metal that contain bubbles - that are strong, light and provide a cushioning effect on impact. Foams are unstable, and therefore harder to study in gravity, said Professor John Banhart from the Technical University of Berlin. The car industry is excited, and lightweight crane lifting arms are already using the technology.
Turbine blades made from an alloy called titanium aluminide could lead to a 50 percent reduction in the weight of a typical jet engine, which would reduce fuel consumption and emissions from air travel. This was another spin-off from research in weightless conditions.
"Without the research on the ISS this type of turbine blade would never have been made," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of the European Space Station.
From bacteria to bubbles
Station-linked research into "cold plasma," a version of the ionized gas that exists at thousands of degrees and is used to sterilize surgical tools, has found it can kill bacteria in a form closer to room temperature, and therefore not harmful to human tissue. Germany's Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics is a leader in the field.
Such a breakthrough could become vital to medical science in the struggle to fight superbugs that are increasingly resistant to antibiotics.
"We may be looking at a total game change on how we control bacteria," NASA's Uhran said.
The behavior of bubbles in microgravity has also caught the attention of Nestle, the world's biggest packaged-food company. Nestle research scientist Cecile Gehin-Delval told the conference that the Swiss group is carrying out expensive research on the station to enhance the taste and shelf life of a range of its products from chocolate mousse to coffee.
Winning hearts and minds
There are huge challenges in building more public support for space research and convincing politicians and industry that the benefits are worth the expense.
Uhran notes that the timescale of a typical research project is three to five years, which doesn't easily mesh with corporate priorities like reaching sales or profit targets for the next quarter, or even the next year.
But scientists are adamant that the economic dividend is unquestionable.
"One of the issues is that people don't really understand the process by which knowledge is turned into the things around us," Mike Cruise, a British scientist from the University of Birmingham who also works for the European Space Agency, told Reuters.
Cruise cites satellite navigation, digital cameras and even the tiny laser that runs a humble DVD player as innovations with roots in space research.
"If we are going to get the most out of the space station, we need to move concepts into action as quickly as possible," he said, adding that it can take decades to go from idea to market.
Cruise said it was impossible to predict how long some ideas could lie dormant and that although governments had a duty to balance their budgets every year, more research inevitably resulted in a greater number of advanced products.
It's a hard argument to sell to a finance minister or a chief executive, but Cruise says the alternative would be much more alarming. "If you think knowledge is expensive, just try ignorance for a while," he said.
How Nanoracks Sends Scotch, iPhones and School Experiments to Space
Rebecca Boyle - Popular Science
The private space industry is holding its breath for later this month when SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will lift off en route to the International Space Station. It will be a milestone for commercial spaceflight — no more will Americans have to rely solely on Russia or other international partners to get stuff into space.
It will also enable an entire private space ecosystem, one in which private companies design and build experiments, send them to space and gather data, all with minimal astronaut help.
A small company called Nanoracks, which made headlines lately for its plans to send components of Ardbeg single-malt whisky to the ISS, will be the first commercial cargo to fly on SpaceX's Dragon capsule.
As startups go, the company is not terribly unusual — it’s self-funded, it’s helmed by energetic and feisty leaders, and it’s filling a small but lucrative niche. But this is space exploration we’re talking about, and that makes Nanoracks a bit different. The company started with a goal to avoid working with government funds, a rarity in space exploration, according to the company’s managing director, Jeffrey Manber.
“With that money comes problems. They look over your shoulder, they design everything, they tell you what to do,” he said. “We didn’t want to do that. We wanted to create a company that would have low prices, reach out to the public, and increase the number of people who use the space station.”
Manber has done it before, as CEO of a company called MirCorp, which leased the former Russian space station Mir. Nanoracks signed an agreement with NASA in September 2009 and now sends small experiments to the space station, on behalf of anything from private companies like Ardbeg to entire school districts and their eager students. The company’s motto, “Space 4 Everyone,” encompasses what Manber and his colleagues want to do with the space industry — a modular approach with plug-and-play components that can be easily and cheaply customized and mass-produced.
“Up to now, space hardware has been like a pocket watch. It’s beautiful craftsmanship, done well. And we’re trying to Wal-Mart the business,” he said. “We’re saying, look, here’s a box. ... There are companies now creating circuit boards that fit inside Nanolabs. We’re starting an entire private-sector ecosystem in low-Earth orbit.”
In anticipation of SpaceX’s historic launch — and the prospect of space scotch whisky — PopSci talked to Manber about Nanoracks’ business plan and future goals.
PopSci: How does a Nanolab work?
Jeffrey Manber: You can do a lot of good science and a lot of good education in a Nanolab. They are four inches cubed, and we put a USB port in it, so we call it the ultimate plug and play. You design something in a Nanolab, it goes up in a standard camera bag, goes to the station, an astronaut takes it out, and just attaches it with a USB port to our platform. The platform holds 16 Nanolabs. That’s plugged into the power of the station, and the data flows down to the customer.
We say we're the world’s first commercial lab in space. We don’t seek profit from the hardware; we seek to profit from the utilization. The big boys make their money from building things. Nobody really shows a good revenue stream from customer utilization, and that’s what we’re looking to change.
PS: What have you sent up, aside from some scotch components?
JM: We have flown about 20 payloads, and we have over 60 payloads under contract. We’ve flown 27 school districts, with our educational partners at the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education. We have 11 more school districts flying in the next few months. This is all with no NASA funding — school districts are coming up with the funds. We’ve flown an experiment for the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies of Israel, we did a stem cell experiment for an organization in Romania. We are the first commercial cargo on the SpaceX launch on May 7.
PS: A few weeks ago, NASA awarded Nanoracks a contract to build a commercial research platform on the exterior of the ISS. What’s that for?
JM: The External Platform Program is a $1.5 million contract for a four-Nanolab setup. Nanoracks and Astrium are coming up with the money. NASA is providing hardware to us that was in a warehouse, and some services.
The market for that is for sensors, earth observation, testing of advanced satellite components. So that’s an entirely different market. We also got a contract with Virgin Galactic a few months ago to build their research rack, and we’re building that now. For the first time, you’ll be able to start very inexpensively and quickly, on SpaceShipTwo, build a lab, fly it at suborbital altitudes, and then if you want you can put it on the ISS next.
What this is showing is the proper relationship that can and should exist between NASA and a company. NASA is our landlord. It’s our regulator — all payloads have to pass NASA safety checks. And it’s sometimes our customer — they have purchased 7 Nanolabs. They’re a customer, a regulator, but not a competitor. For too long, NASA was a competitor to the private sector. We are proof that NASA is evolving.
PS: What’s your price list? Can I send something up?
JM: It’s like buying a car — there’s a sticker price and there’s little add-ons. If you’re a student, a single Nanolab will cost $30,000. That gets you everything — the ride up, 30 days on the station, power, data, astronaut installing it in the platform, and a little bit of our help. It could cost more if you want air conditioning and other options. If you want payload return, we might charge more.
The basic commercial price is $60,000. Some companies do it with two or four together, which will run $250,000. Those prices are just unheard of for the space station. And we’re very proud of this: We’re averaging nine months from when the payload applies, to when we fly.
We honor the image of a U.S. national lab, so we don’t do coffee mugs or souvenirs. But you could come to us and say, ‘I want to study earthworms, or I want to grow plants, or test radiation.’ We could walk you through that, or your science teacher could, and we would give you insight in to how it gets through safety review. Within a year, you may pay us $30,000-$40,000, and it may cost you $5,000 or $10,000. You’d have a project that students absolutely will remember for the rest of their lives. And not only is it real science, but it happens in their attention spans. With the shuttle program, projects would take six or seven years. This changes everything.
PS: So how did Ardbeg get involved?
JM: Our chief financial officer is a scotch lover, and knew somebody associated with Ardbeg. We began talking to them about doing an experiment to see how these terpenes work in space. The key is that things must be done for education on a U.S. national lab. The company had to learn this was not simply a commercial project, but it was for education. Terpenes have never been studied in zero gravity, so that works.
At the root of it, it’s an interesting educational process. In two years, we’ll bring down their mixtures that are up there, and see if the processes that took place are different in space. We may learn things about terpenes we did not otherwise know, and that has applications for not just beverages, but cosmetics, perfumes, etc. In five years, you may be drinking a soft drink with a fascinating new flavor that came out of the U.S. national lab.
We got some negative flak because it was for whisky, but there is no whisky on the station. I applaud NASA for understanding that this is an interesting experiment. After this, we were contacted by a flavoring company asking, what can you do in zero gravity? For instance, oil and vinegar in a salad dressing doesn’t mix on the ground. In space, it mixes. So what other compounds we use on the Earth, in food or in manufacturing, etc., may be created in space? It’s a serious effort.
PS: Has anything ever been rejected?
JM: We work on it from the beginning, and we’ll tell a company ‘don’t use this,’ or if you’re going to use plastic, use this plastic approved by NASA. Safety review goes through three levels. Nanoracks makes sure there’s nothing NASA will reject out of hand.
At the second review, they will say, can you tweak this, or why are you using this. You come back for the third, and you show what’s been done and it gets accepted. Nothing has been rejected yet. Although we had huge problems with the iPhone.
It was done because our customer, Odyssey Research, said we could use an iPhone because it has accelerometers, gyros and other sensors. NASA said they wanted to get it up quickly, but the batteries had to be certified. And you’re dealing with an iconic brand — that was a very difficult project.
PS: What else do you want to send up?
JM: We’re getting a lot of biological processes from students and commercial people, applications for cancer, stem cells, how materials interact. We’re getting some materials research, some botany projects, growing plants; projects about understanding the environment of space. There’s still a lot to learn 50 years into the space age.
But if NASA was to relax a little bit more, we would get also creative things like art. I want to unleash some of the artists. But so far, NASA is still a little reluctant on that.
Still, this is a precious new resource of the United States. We spent billions of dollars on this thing, and it’s open for business now.
Agreement lays groundwork for private missions to space hotel
W.J. Hennigan - Los Angeles Times
How about a few nights in a space hotel?
That one day may be possible under a new agreement between Hawthorne-based rocket venture Space Exploration Technologies Corp., better known as SpaceX, and Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas.
The two companies announced Thursday they plan to offer rides to orbiting Bigelow habitats, using SpaceX’s Falcon rocket and Dragon spacecraft, which is designed to carry up to seven people.
Bigelow, founded by Budget Suites of America owner Robert T. Bigelow, is building mini space stations that expand in orbit so paying customers have access to space. They have launched two prototypes, and have future plans to launch a larger version.
SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket are being readied in Cape Canaveral, Fla., for a May 19 test run to the International Space Station in an unmanned supply mission.
Following the launch, the companies said they will kick off their marketing effort in Japan. The companies envision national space agencies, companies and universities as future customers. They did not say when the crewed missions to the private space stations will commence.
"Together we will provide unique opportunities to entities -- whether nations or corporations -- wishing to have crewed access to the space environment for extended periods," SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement. "I’m looking forward to working with Bigelow Aerospace and engaging with international customers."
Las Vegas aerospace company in new partnership for space travel
Jennifer Robison - Las Vegas Review-Journal
A Las Vegas aerospace company is a giant leap closer to going where no Sin City company has gone before.
Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas and California-based Space Exploration Technologies on Thursday announced a new partnership to promote space travel to international customers flying SpaceX's Dragon reusable spacecraft launched atop its Falcon rocket to reach Bigelow's orbiting BA 330 space habitat.
"This is an incredibly exciting venture," SpaceX spokeswoman Kirstin Grantham said. "Our partnership with Bigelow should present opportunities to businesses and governments that previously didn't have access to space."
Bigelow Aerospace has a 342,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in North Las Vegas and another factory in Maryland.
The company's founder, Robert Bigelow, made a fortune developing motels and hotels such as Budget Suites nationwide.
Nearly 15 years ago, he turned his attention to researching and developing spaceflight options for space agencies and businesses.
Bigelow Aerospace has launched two of its Genesis satellites into orbit using Russian rockets. It is working with Boeing to develop a spacecraft to ferry crews to the International Space Station and, eventually, to a Bigelow space station.
Last week the two companies conducted parachute drop tests of the spacecraft at the Delamar Dry Lake Bed near Alamo.
Bigelow and the Review-Journal were unable to connect for an interview Thursday.
SpaceX is a 10-year-old company started by PayPal founder Elon Musk.
The company designs, manufactures and launches rockets and spacecraft from sites including Florida's Cape Canaveral and California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. It has more than 1,700 employees in California, Texas, Florida and Washington, D.C. In 2010, SpaceX became the first commercial corporation to put a spacecraft into orbit and return it safely to Earth.
The companies said they would launch their marketing efforts in Japan.
Grantham said the companies aren't ready to publicly discuss what flights would cost, but she said they would cost "significantly less than what is currently available on the market" once the service starts as scheduled in 2015.
There's no an industry average for pricing, but Virgin Galactic, tickets on Virgin Atlantic owner Richard Branson's suborbital airline start at $200,000.
Grantham also didn't say how much it would cost to get the joint project off the ground, but SpaceX has a $75 million NASA grant to modify rockets built to launch satellites to instead carry people in spacecraft.
Necessary upgrades include a launch-escape system for emergencies and advanced environmental controls, which include plenty of oxygen.
SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft can carry seven passengers, while Bigelow's BA 330 can house as many as six people long-term.
Bigelow's 12,000-square-foot modules can be connected in space to form larger habitat. The company markets its modules to governments that are training astronauts or to companies interested in conducting research in space.
Joseph Katz, a professor of aerospace engineering at San Diego State University, said the joint project's technologies are workable and proven. The economics of space tourism remain untested, however.
"It's like trying to write a new book, and maybe there's no book like that in the market," Katz said. "The publisher asks you, 'Oh, that's a nice book, but who's going to buy it?' And you say, 'I don't know.' You produce something that may make sense for some people, but who's going to buy it?"
Katz said there are several other ventures designed to take civilians into space, but he called Virgin Galactic the "only serious one."
The privately funded Virgin Galactic has run dozens of test flights out of the New Mexican desert.
It hasn't given a firm start date, but its website says 500 people have put down $20,000 deposits to book its flights.
Bigelow enlists SpaceX for rides to its station
Falcon 9 would boost Dragon capsule to orbit
James Dean - Florida Today
SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, now nearing a first unmanned flight to the International Space Station, could eventually carry passengers to private space stations, under a partnership announced Thursday.
SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace said they have teamed up to market flights to Bigelow’s proposed stations, targeting international customers that could include national space agencies, companies and universities.
“Both companies were founded to help create a new era in space enterprise,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement. “Together we will provide unique opportunities to entities — whether nations or corporations — wishing to have crewed access to the space environment for extended periods.”
The announcement did not include details about the timeline or cost for flights, or where they would launch from.
In a visit to the Space Coast last year, Robert Bigelow, the founder and president of Las Vegas-based Bigelow, pitched Florida as a promising site for both launches and eventually manufacturing of his inflatable habitats. He said assembly of the first station called for seven launches.
Bigelow’s BA 330 station provides about 330 cubic meters of usable volume — larger than an ISS crew module — and can support up to six crew members. At least two would be linked together.
A Kennedy Space Center-based NASA program is working with multiple companies to develop commercial crew systems, and anticipates first flights by 2017. The program plans to award its next round of funding this summer to at least two companies.
Bigelow already is partnered with The Boeing Co. in development of the CST-100 commercial spacecraft, which is competing with the Dragon and several other vehicles to fly NASA crews. The CST-100 plans to launch atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, while Dragon would use SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
Bigelow and Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX said they would focus their marketing efforts on international customers, starting in Asia, but the effort is not limited to that market.
Company officials plan to visit Japan soon after the next launch of Falcon 9 and Dragon from Cape Canaveral, which is targeted for May 19.
Bigelow has previously announced preliminary agreements with potential customers in Japan, Australia, Singapore, Sweden, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Dubai.
SpaceX teams up with Bigelow on space station marketing
Alan Boyle - MsNBC.com's Cosmic Log
SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace plan to meet with officials in Japan soon after this month's scheduled launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, to kick off an international marketing effort for private-sector space stations.
The plan, laid out today in a jointly issued news release, calls for clients to go into orbit inside the Dragon and link up with Bigelow's BA 330 inflatable space habitat.
"Together we will provide unique opportunities to entities — whether nations or corporations — wishing to have crewed access to the space environment for extended periods," said SpaceX's president, Gwynne Shotwell. "I'm looking forward to working with Bigelow Aerospace and engaging with international customers."
Robert Bigelow, the billionaire founder and president of Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace, said he was eager to join up with California-based SpaceX and tell international clients about "the substantial benefits that BA 330 leasing can offer in combination with SpaceX transportation capabilities."
SpaceX is planning to launch an unmanned Dragon cargo capsule into orbit as early as May 19 for a potential test linkup with the International Space Station, and is already working with NASA to modify the Dragon for carrying astronauts as well. Just this week, NASA announced that SpaceX reached a milestone in that development effort by showing that seven astronauts could maneuver effectively inside the Dragon space taxi, even under emergency scenarios.
Bigelow's BA 330 space module would be designed to provide 330 cubic meters of usable volume, which is about the size of a two-bedroom apartment. The BA 330 could accommodate up to six astronauts, depending on how cozy they plan to get. Two or more BA 330 modules could be connected together in orbit for lease by national space agencies, companies or universities, according to Bigelow Aerospace.
Bigelow made his fortune in the hotel industry, which led some to suppose that he was getting into the space-hotel business — but the first users are likely to be researchers or governments aiming to pursue their own space programs on a leased orbital platform. The company has launched two prototype inflatable modules on Russian rockets — Genesis 1 in 2006 and Genesis 2 in 2007 — and both of those unmanned spacecraft are still in orbit.
Mike Gold, who serves as Bigelow Aerospace's director of Washington operations and business growth, told me that the company was ready to move forward with the BA 330 as well as the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, an upscale version of the Genesis module that could be attached to the International Space Station. Future progress on both those projects is dependent on decisions made by NASA, however. NASA has not yet made a commitment to using the BEAM, and it has not yet announced how it will proceed with the next phase of its effort to support the development of commercial space taxis such as SpaceX's Dragon.
"We'll be ready to proceed when commercial crew is," Gold told me.
In addition to its marketing arrangement with SpaceX, Bigelow has partnered with the Boeing Co. on a project to create a space taxi called the CST-100 to ferry NASA astronauts. That scenario could see a successor to the CST-100 launched toward a Bigelow-built space station atop United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rocket.
Gold said the commercial crew vehicle development program was the "long pole in the tent" for Bigelow Aerospace's plans. Even if Bigelow Aerospace built its BA 330, it would have to rely upon an affordable, reliable, safe system for orbital transport — and that system probably would have to be developed and tested with NASA's help.
Four companies, including Boeing and SpaceX as well as Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada Corp., have been receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from NASA, but it's not yet clear how much money Congress will approve for the next phase of the program. If the funding matches NASA's projected levels, space agency officials have said commercial space taxis could be flying astronauts by 2017. "We hope it could be even earlier," Gold said.
However, it's highly questionable whether NASA will get as much money for commercial crew development as it has requested. The request for fiscal year 2013 was almost $830 million, but a Senate subcommittee cut that figure to $525 million. Today the House passed a bill specifying an even lower funding level, $500 million. The White House has threatened a presidential veto of that bill, in part because of its concerns about the cutback in commercial crew support.
Space Capsule Test Brings Strange Sight to the Desert
George Knapp - KLAS TV (Las Vegas)
Residents of rural Nevada are not surprised by weird objects they see in the sky. But the spacecraft recently spotted near Alamo must have caused a few folks to rub their eyes in disbelief.
The NASA space program is in a holding pattern now that the space shuttle has been retired, but the private space industry is in full-speed mode. A test conducted over a Nevada lake bed is evidence of that , though it looks like the space race has gone retro.
If you were among the very few watching from the Delamar dry lake bed a few days ago, you might have been tempted to double check the year. There, floating down from the sky, suspended by what looked like gigantic fried eggs, was a seemingly vintage space capsule, like something from the Apollo Program that had slipped through a time warp.
"The physics of space travel is the same. We did a real good job on Apollo and we have no reason to try and do something that looks different," said James Johnson with the Boeing Commercial Crew Program.
For Boeing and its Nevada partner, Bigelow Aerospace, the future of space travel looks a lot like the past. It's as if the space shuttle era never happened.
For all of its successes, the shuttle is just too expensive. The bottom line didn't matter that much when the space program was strictly a government program, but if private industry is going to take the lead in the conquest of space, the whole shebang has to pencil out.
"We have to be affordable, just like flying on an airplane. If you had to pay for the entire airplane, you couldn't make it happen. We're looking to make it more economical," said Bigelow aerospace engineer Jay Ingham.
The test near Alamo represents an important milestone in the development of a new and improved commercial capsule, which is why there were anxious moments on the ground as a massive sky crane lifted the test spacecraft to an altitude of 14,000 feet, which is 10,000 feet above the dry lake bed. When all was ready, they cut it loose.
Small cameras attached to the capsule give an astronaut's eye view. The first nervous moment was when a trio of drogue parachutes deployed to put the brakes on the descent. And then 20 seconds into the drop, the drogues were blasted away and a trio of main parachutes took over. Anyone who didn't know what was going on might have reported this as a triple-yolk UFO.
Unlike Apollo-era space capsules, which were designed to land in the ocean, this new generation of spacecraft will come down on land to save on cost. But since parachutes alone don't slow them down enough, the designers installed gigantic air bags on the bottom to absorb the impact.
"It worked really well," said Ingham. "These guys have landed on air bags -- a very large version of what you have in your car that, on impact, attenuates the landing loads."
Ingham beams like a new dad for a reason -- though Boeing is being lauded for the success of this test, the capsule is locally-made.
"We fabricated the entire unit. We did a lot of the design work on the metallic structures, we designed and built all the avionics in there. It was a fairly complicated task," he said.
And it was a departure from the company's main focus, which is to build and market inflatable space habitats -- modules that will one day be the core of privately owned space stations and, eventually, bases on the moon or Mars or beyond.
But as founder Bob Bigelow recognized years ago, the only way his space stations can ever work is if there is a cheap and reliable way to move people and material back and forth. It is in Bigelow's own interest to help partners like Boeing develop safe spacecraft and economical rockets.
"The quicker we can help them get there, the quicker we can get our stuff going and have people capable of getting back into space," said Ingham.
The Boeing/Bigelow capsule is one of four private designs vying for an eventual NASA contract. It could carry as many as seven astronauts or space tourists, and if this version is chosen by NASA, at least some of the components could be manufactured locally.
Purdue to erect solar system sculpture to honor late NASA astronaut
Associated Press
A NASA astronaut who died this year will be honored at Purdue University with a sprawling interactive sculpture depicting the solar system.
Purdue students designed the sculpture, which will be installed in 2014 in honor of Janice Voss, who flew on five space shuttle missions. The Purdue alumna and South Bend native died in February at age 55 from complications of cancer.
Purdue officials were scheduled to unveil a three-foot-high model of the sculpture Friday.
When completed, the full-size sculpture will span the length of a football field and include a model of the sun with a diameter of as much as 30 feet surrounded by the planets, including a 6-inch-wide Earth.
Each planet will be lighted and suspended from curved walls at a new mall at Purdue's Discovery Park.
Sponsor-a-shuttle: Museums offer tiles and stars for display funds
Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com
The New York and Los Angeles homes for two of NASA's space shuttles want to put your name in lights — actually on heatshield tiles and stars — in return for your help funding the construction of new buildings for their incoming orbiters.
The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City and the California Science Center (CSC) in Los Angeles have each launched fundraising campaigns to develop the exhibit halls for space shuttles Enterprise and Endeavour, respectively. Both museums will have temporary displays ready for their shuttles later this year, but they need help to make their plans for permanent displays a reality.
The Intrepid's "Project Enterprise" and "Team Endeavour" from the California Science Center offer to display donors' names alongside the spacecraft they support, on graphics of stars or shuttle thermal tiles. The more supporters give, the more gifts they will receive in return, including limited collectibles, event invites and priority viewing of the space shuttles themselves.
Both the Intrepid and CSC have begun to build temporary displays that will house Enterprise and Endeavour as they fundraise and then construct the permanent exhibits.
NASA's two other retired shuttles, Discovery and Atlantis, already have funded permanent displays.
Discovery was delivered to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, where it was rolled into the hangar display space previously filled by Enterprise. Atlantis' new home at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is under construction, financed by admission and concession sales.
Project Enterprise
Enterprise, which never flew into space but was used for a series of approach and landing tests in the 1970s, touched down at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on April 27 and will be delivered by barge to the Intrepid on June 6.
Enterprise's temporary home, a climate-controlled "Space Pavilion" on the converted aircraft carrier's flight deck, will open to the public on July 19. It will cost an additional $4 to $6 above regular admission to tour the shuttle exhibit.
Ultimately, the Intrepid plans a more expansive display for the prototype shuttle.
"Be a part of building a permanent home for the space shuttle Enterprise," reads the "Project Enterprise: Support the Space Shuttle" promotional card that was given out at the orbiter's arrival. "This new home on the West Side of Manhattan will make possible an expanding curriculum of educational programs designed to inspire future scientists, engineers and researchers."
Supporters can take part in Enterprise's "next journey" by sponsoring a star.
"Your star will appear now in a high visibility area of the temporary Enterprise exhibition space and prominently in the future permanent home of Enterprise," the card reads.
Sponsorship levels begin at $250 per star. For those who donate more, between $500 and $1000, additional gifts are offered, including an "Enterprise Star crystal cube" and a commemorative photo of Enterprise.
Beginning at the $5,000 level, the Intrepid is also offering invitations to "Enterprise events." These include viewing Enterprise being craned onto the museum's flight deck, or for $10,000, riding on a boat next to Enterprise as it sails up the Hudson River to the Intrepid.
And for its top tier supporters donating $25,000 (or more), donors will be invited to the opening of the Space Pavilion with visiting dignitaries.
Team Endeavour
NASA will ferry Endeavour out to Los Angeles on top of a modified Boeing 747 in September. The following month, the shuttle will arrive in the "mother of all parades" to the California Science Center, where it will be displayed in a temporary hangar pavilion, now under construction.
Like the Intrepid, the CSC has plans for a more ambitious, permanent Endeavour display.
"The public will be able to view the space shuttle in the Endeavour Display Pavilion, located just outside the main [CSC] building, while a new Air and Space Center is being built," the science center describes on its website. "When completed, Endeavour will be the centerpiece of this new building, a 200,000 square foot expansion envisioned as part of the Science Center's 25-year master plan."
As part of its display plan for the Air and Space Center, the CSC is looking to mount Endeavour vertically, as if it was back on the launch pad, paired with twin solid rocket boosters and an external fuel tank that the center is set to receive from NASA.
To fund construction of this new Air and Space Center, the California Science Center is inviting the public to join "Team Endeavour" and sponsor one or more of the 23,000 heat shield tiles that protected the orbiter from the searing heat upon reentry into Earth's atmosphere.
"These tiles [were] integral to the safety of the orbiter, just as you, our friends and supporters, are integral to the success of the California Science Center," the CSC states on its Team Endeavour website. "Join us in showing your support by sponsoring a tile today!"
For $1,000, donors will receive a limited edition Endeavour gift, a newsletter to keep informed of Endeavour's arrival and the random selection of a sponsored thermal tile from underbelly of Endeavour.
The shuttle's real heat shield tiles won't be altered. Instead a digital representation of Endeavour exhibited alongside the orbiter will display the sponsors' names.
As the donation level increases from $2,500 to $10,000, supporters also receive priority viewing opportunities and event invitations, and their chance to choose the location and personalize the message on their tile on the lower or upper surfaces of the virtual space shuttle.
At the highest level, $25,000, Team Endeavour members will also be permanently recognized on a donor wall.
He's the last pilot space shuttles see
Julia Bishop Beautie - Ultimate Friendswood
Name: Jeff Moultrie
Age: 50
Occupation: Instructor pilot and aerospace engineer for NASA
Fast Fact: Jeff Moultrie is expected to be the last NASA employee to interact with an orbiter that had a part in the now-retired Space Shuttle Program.
Throughout the ending of the historic Space Shuttle Program, Kingwood resident Jeff Moultrie is dutifully helping to close the door.
On April 17, Moultrie, who is an instructor pilot and aerospace engineer with NASA, flew the modified 747 that carried the space shuttle Discovery from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to Washington Dulles Airport. Post-NASA, the shuttle will be exhibited at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Museum.
Of the event, Moultrie said it was well ordered and will be a memorable highlight in his career. "We ended up working very closely with the FAA," he said. "It was a very coordinated event. We were lucky enough that air space around the White House shut down -- around the Capitol Building -- for about an hour.
"It was very unique to fly in prohibited air space over all the monuments. Kind of once in a lifetime -- it's a special thing I'll remember."
With similar plans in September, Moultrie is expecting to fly the defunct program's remaining shuttle, Endeavor, to Los Angeles International Airport, after which it will be taken to its new home at the California Science Center -- a role, he says, he also finds touching.
"It's significant," he said. "I'm going to be the last guy, basically, the last NASA employee to interact with an orbiter that's been a part of what was a very large program for 30 years. It's very unique that I'm in this position. It's a fun thing and sort of sad at the same time."
The Space Shuttle Program run by NASA was officially known as the Space Transportation System. The space shuttle fleet conducted its first launch on April 12, 1981, and its last on July 21, 2011. NASA's website credits the program with producing "humanity's first reusable spacecraft."
Before his time with the government, Moultrie worked for Boeing and flew for commercial airlines after having served in the Air Force. That Moultrie was selected for his role in closing the program was largely incidental and comes at the end of 12 years working for NASA.
Born in Alabama, Moultrie was raised in Huntsville, Ala., where his parents still reside. "I'm a big fan of Alabama and the people there," he said. "My parents are probably the best people in the world." He went on to add, "I was always a model airplane guy, even as a kid.
"Growing up, there was an old airport they no longer used close to my house. My model airplane club was out there. I'd get on my bicycle with a big basket full of model airplanes and go out there and fly 'em. I started flying lessons when I was 15."
"My family did not have the means to pay for my lessons, so I got a paper route to pay for them. Because of money challenges, there was a lot of time between lessons."
Moultrie said he received the pilot training he needed when he joined the Air Force, but even at the beginning, flight came easily. "There's not too many things I'm good at, but this is one of the few I am really good at," he said. "You could say I'm sort of a natural at it. So why I'd get selected (to fly the last shuttle's carrier)? 'Cause that's just the way it was."
Behind the scenes with Big Bang Theory's real-life astronaut actor
Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com
On Thursday evening's (May 10) season finale of "The Big Bang Theory," a main character on the CBS TV sitcom launches into space. Sitting beside him in the spacecraft is Mike Massimino, a real NASA astronaut, making his second cameo appearance on the show.
Massimino, who in real life flew twice on the space shuttle to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, joins aerospace engineer Howard Wolowitz, played by Simon Helberg, and a fictional cosmonaut as Expedition 31 crewmates aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule flying to the International Space Station.
The Soyuz and Sokol spacesuits the astronaut and actors board and wear are of course Hollywood replicas, but true to the show's reputation, are surprisingly realistic.
collectSPACE caught up with Massimino by phone a few hours before the episode was set to air to talk about being an astronaut on the show, the set and the future of space exploration, both for NASA and on "The Big Bang Theory."
collectSPACE (cS): This is your second time appearing on the show. Are you becoming a cast regular?
Michael Massimino (MM): I don't think so. (laughs) I don't know. We'll see how it goes tonight.
cS: The Soyuz spacecraft set that they built was pretty impressive for TV. Were you impressed by how much attention to detail they gave?
MM: Yeah, it was incredible. The detail to the set, to the costumes — what we were going to wear — they wanted everything, the patches, the name tags that we were going to wear, every little detail to look as authentic as possible, and what we would be doing before the flight, during the countdown.
They really try to be very, very accurate in all their stuff, in all the science that they represent on the show. They have a consultant, a guy from UCLA, that helps them out for the science stuff. And then for this, they got a lot of help from NASA to make sure that the set, the costumes and all that stuff looked pretty accurate.
cS: You've flown on the space shuttle but you haven't yet flown on board the Soyuz. So were you part of the technical consultants for the set?
MM: Yeah, but as you say, I've never flown on the Soyuz. I know a little bit about the Soyuz but as I've never flown on it. Their questions after awhile got to where I had no idea.
So I recruited some help from my friends, [astronauts and Soyuz crewmembers] Ron Garan and Mike Fossum. They helped answer a lot of the questions.
cS: So how long were you in the spacesuit and mock Soyuz?
MM: It was a few hours. It was kind like a real launch day, almost.
We arrived, got suited up and they even had a cooling unit for us, too. They were not real suits but they were pretty close replicas, as far as how they looked. They weren't as heavy as a real suit but they were still concerned about us getting overheated under the lights and everything. So, they gave us a cooling water bag to wear on our chests to help keep us cool. It was great.
We were in there, I guess, two-and-a-half to three hours in the suit and inside the mockup.
cS: So this could count for you towards training for a future flight on a Soyuz, right?
MM: I don't know about that! I mean I don't make that call, but it could certainly get you excited about going.
cS: How concerned were they about your dialog in the Soyuz? Or where you put your hands as compared to what would happen during an actual mission?
They wanted to know that as well, and that is where Ron Garan helped out, telling them the kind of conversations you'd have and it would be in Russian. You would speak Russian to the control center.
And even the hands were a big thing, too. Because they wanted to know what we would have as books and how you would hold the books. Ron helped them out with those questions.
cS: If you're allowed to say, is this the last we're going to see of the Soyuz, or you in the Soyuz?
MM: I don't know. I don't know what they are going to do. This was the season finale, so they don't know what they are going to do to start next season.
I did a media event last week with Bill Prady, one of the executive producers, and Simon Helberg, who's Wolowitz, and the entertainment media was asking Bill in particular what was going to happen. Is he going to be in space? And he was like, "We have no idea. We're on vacation."
So more or less, they're going to pick up their writing for the next season sometime over the summer and then they will figure it out. I think they really don't know. I think they are going to look at a few different options.
They could pick it up like it is the next day, or it could be the continuation of that day when they start their season again, or they could have the guy up in space, or they could have him return from space because it will be a few months between the last show of this season and the first show of next season.
It could be the very last we see of the Wolowitz-in-space saga or just be the beginning. They don't know yet, so I certainly don't know.
cS: What do you think is the value of something like this on television? Does it get the public more excited about real space exploration?
It's a good question and I've thought about this. I think what it is, and why NASA has supported this — not only sending me out there, but sending the information they need to help with their show and helping them in any way — is that they are trying to represent the space program in a very truthful light and that means a very positive light. That they are trying to educate people in some way about what is going on with our space program. So for that part of it, I think it is a good thing because it reminds people we still have people flying in space.
After the space shuttle program ended last summer, a lot of people — even people who live here in Houston — have asked me what am I doing now the space program is over. And I'm like, "Well, the space program is not over. We still have people flying, they're just not launching on the space shuttle to go to space."
"We're working with our friends, the Russians, but we are also planning to build our own spaceship and we're looking forward to the day we are able to launch again, not only on Soyuz but also on a US vehicle, whether it's a commercial vehicle or the NASA Orion vehicle or whatever."
So I think it is a way to get people aware that we're still in business. And even though the space shuttle program has ended, we still have a very active program with people on the space station. So I think it helps get that point out to a lot of people. There are so many millions of people who watch this show, the audience is so big, that it is a way for us to reach a lot of people that we would normally not be able to reach.
cS: Now they have some down time, have you invited the cast, Bill Prady and others out to Johnson Space Center to see your "set" — your workspace?
MM: Hah! They have an open invitation. They can come any time they like and I hope they are aware of that. We do have one of their producers coming in to see NASA, but that's just because he has family in the area and he'll be visiting.
I think they were invited to see a shuttle launch because one of the times I was on the set, they said they wished they had gotten a chance to go. They had been invited and they were going to try to go and they didn't and they were disappointed they didn't go. So hopefully, they'll have a chance to come and visit the Johnson Space Center and also maybe see some astronauts launch from Florida someday, hopefully not too many years from now.
But they are all very interested in the space program. The producers, the actors, the cast are just great. They really are fun people and very interested in NASA. The times I've been there on the set, they've introduced me to their families, they've brought their kids, their parents, to come say hi to an astronaut. It was kind of a big deal for them to be working with NASA. It's been a very nice relationship I think between the show and NASA.
cS: Now you've had a chance to sit in a mock Soyuz and work on a Hollywood set, if you had your choice, what would you like as your next assignment: another role in a sitcom or a flight to the International Space Station?
Either one of those things would be good but I don't really trust my Hollywood career as something I could actually sustain myself on. I think it is a fun thing to do and I think it's good for NASA but this acting thing, as fun as it is, I'm not quitting my day job.
Shuttle with Aft Cargo Carrier (1982)
David Portree - Wired.com
The destruction of the Orbiter Challenger at the start of the Space Shuttle Program’s 25th mission on January 28, 1986, put an end to many proposals and plans for Shuttle augmentation. The Manned Maneuvering Unit, the powerful liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen Centaur-G’ upper stage, routine satellite servicing, launches from the U.S. West Coast, polar and retrograde orbits, frequent non-astronaut passengers, long-duration missions relying on solar panels, on-orbit satellite refueling, and a flight rate upwards of 50 per year – all of these were abandoned as NASA acknowledged the Shuttle’s frailties and foibles.
Among the proposals abandoned after Challenger was Martin Marietta’s Aft Cargo Carrier (ACC), a 27.5-foot-diameter, 31.9-foot-long cargo canister that would ride into space bolted over the dome-shaped aft end of the Shuttle External Tank (ET). Martin Marietta, prime contractor for the 27.5-foot-diameter, 154-foot-long ET, had begun in-house studies of the 13,000-cubic-foot ACC at about the time of the first Space Shuttle mission (STS-1, April 12-14, 1981). It began to aggressively pitch the concept at conferences by mid-1982. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, soon contracted with the company for ACC engineering and economic feasibility studies.
The ACC was a response to the realization that, while in NASA’s traffic model more than 90% of Shuttle Orbiter volume capacity was spoken for, on average the Orbiters would carry into space only 66% of the mass they were theoretically capable of delivering to any given orbit. The mass shortfall occurred in part because the Orbiter’s payload bay measured 15 feet wide by 60 feet long. While well-suited to the U.S. Air Force spy satellites that had dictated its size, the narrow, 10,600-cubic-foot volume placed restrictions on other payloads. Center-of-gravity and launch-and-ascent abort considerations also limited what an Orbiter could carry. In general, heavy payloads could ride only in the aft half of the payload bay, where they would be centered over the Orbiter’s main landing gear.
Martin Marietta described an ACC Shuttle flight to a 160-nautical-mile circular orbit inclined 28.5° to Earth’s equator. As in flights lacking an ACC, the Orbiter’s three Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs) would ignite, then twin Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) would kick the Shuttle stack off the launch pad. The SSMEs would draw liquid hydrogen fuel and liquid oxygen oxidizer from the ET.
The ACC’s position adjacent to the SSMEs and between the powerful SRBs meant that payloads it carried would be subjected to more heating and acoustic pounding than would those in the Orbiter’s payload bay. Martin Marietta proposed an ACC “environmental protection system” comprising 707 pounds of thermal insulation and a 2989-pound “acoustical barrier.” These protective layers would thicken the ACC’s walls, limiting the maximum diameter of the payload it could carry to about 25 feet.
The SRBs would burn out and separate 120 seconds after liftoff at an altitude of about 146,000 feet. The ACC would have two main parts: the aft shroud and the forward skirt. The 7429-pound shroud would detach from the skirt and fall away 35 seconds after SRB separation.
Martin Marietta assumed that, with planned Shuttle performance upgrades and mass reductions, an Orbiter could put payloads with a combined mass of 73,800 pounds into a 160-nautical-mile orbit inclined 28.5° to Earth’s equator. An empty ACC would add 16,508 pounds to the Shuttle’s mass at liftoff, This would reduce by a corresponding amount the payload mass the Orbiter and ACC could deliver to orbit. If the entire ACC remained with the Shuttle until SSME cutoff, then the payload mass the Orbiter and ACC could place into orbit would total 57,300 pounds. Discarding the ACC shroud as early as possible in the Shuttle’s eight-minute climb to orbit, on the other hand, would mean a payload mass loss of only about 7900 pounds. The Orbiter payload bay and ACC skirt could thus together deliver payloads totaling 65,900 pounds.
On non-ACC Shuttle missions, the Orbiter would shut down its SSMEs and discard the ET before it had attained orbital velocity so that the tank would reenter the atmosphere and be destroyed over the Indian Ocean. This would, of course, deprive the SSMEs of their source of propellants. The astronauts would then ignite the Orbiter’s twin Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines for the first of two orbit insertion burns.
On ACC missions, SSME cutoff would see Orbiter, ET, ACC skirt, and payloads in a 57-by-160-nautical-mile orbit, so the first orbital insertion OMS burn would not be necessary. When the assemblage attained apogee (the highest point in its orbit around the Earth), the astronauts would ignite the OMS engines, increasing its velocity by 183 feet per second, raising its perigee (the low point in its orbit around the Earth), and circularizing its orbit at an altitude of 160 nautical miles.
Martin Marietta proposed a host of potential ACC payloads. “Catch tanks” might collect residual ET propellants for later use in orbit, or a turbine generator might burn leftover propellants to make more electricity than the Orbiter’s fuel cells could provide. The ACC skirt might also carry a 25-foot-diameter, 20-foot-long space station module, a space tug almost as large, or deploy a large structure such as an umbrella-like radio dish antenna more than 50 feet across. A space station module might be designed to remain attached to the ET on which it launched, enabling the big tank to serve as a strong-back for mounting payloads or a large enclosed volume for experiments or habitation. By providing a second payload volume, the ACC could also enable secret Department of Defense (DOD) payloads to be carried separate from but on the same flight as NASA civilian payloads.
Martin Marietta described three example Orbiter/ACC payload manifests and deployment scenarios. Flight 1, a mission with an initial 160-nautical-mile orbit at 28.5° of inclination, would see three satellites with identical solid-propellant upper stages launched in the ACC: the 8848-pound Brazilsat/Payload Assist Module (PAM)-D, the 8848-pound GOES/PAM-D, and the 9399-pound Telsat/PAM-D. The Orbiter, meanwhile, would carry a 58-foot-long, 14-foot-diameter “large observatory” with a mass of 18,700 pounds.
Without the ACC, payload mass for Flight 1 would be limited to the 18,700 pounds carried in the Orbiter payload bay, or about a quarter of the 73,800-pound theoretical maximum for the flight; with the ACC, the payload could total 45,800 pounds. Following deployment from the ACC skirt, the satellites would ride their PAM-D stages to their assigned slots in the geostationary orbit (GEO) belt.
The Orbiter crew would then cast off the ET and ACC skirt. A 4100-pound pair of solid-propellant deorbit rocket motors on the ACC skirt would ignite over the western Pacific Ocean, causing the ET/ACC skirt to tumble and reenter the atmosphere. Any parts that survived reentry would splash harmlessly into the Pacific south of Hawaii.
The astronauts, meanwhile, would maneuver the Orbiter to a 190-nautical-mile orbit and deploy the large observatory. They would then ignite the OMS engines to slow the Orbiter and cause it to reenter Earth’s atmosphere. The delta-winged space plane would glide to a runway landing.
Flight 2 would launch the 3343-pound Tiros-N satellite inside the ACC and the 16,300-pound Atmosphere Monitor satellite at the aft end of the payload bay. Because the Orbiter/ET/ACC skirt/payloads assemblage would ascend to an energetically challenging 160-nautical-mile, 98.2° near-polar retrograde orbit, Flight 2's payload mass could total only 23,640 pounds.
The crew would first retrieve from orbit the 4000-pound Thermosat and stow it at the front of the payload bay. They would then fire the OMS engines to climb to a 380-nautical-mile orbit, into which they would deploy the Atmosphere Monitor.
Next, they would ignite the OMS engines to climb to a 448-nautical-mile orbit inclined 98.8° to Earth’s equator. There they would deploy Tiros-N from the ACC skirt. After discarding the ET/ACC skirt, they would ignite the OMS engines to return Orbiter, crew, and Thermosat to Earth.
Flight 3, with an initial 100-nautical-mile orbit at 28.5° of inclination, would see introduction of a new reusable hardware element made possible by the ACC’s large payload envelope: the 15-foot-long, 25-foot-diameter, 34,100-pound Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV). The payload bay would carry the NATO IV/PAM-D DOD satellite and the 35-foot-long, 10-foot-wide, 13,000-pound Synchronous Observation Satellite (SOS), bringing the total payload mass for Flight 3 to 52,950 pounds.
The OTV would fill its tanks with residual ET propellants, then would detach from the ACC skirt. The Orbiter crew, meanwhile, would raise the SOS on a tilt-table mounted in the payload bay. The OTV would dock with the SOS and extract it from the bay, then boost it to its assigned slot in GEO. The OTV would subsequently return to low-Earth orbit for refueling and a new mission.
The Orbiter crew, meanwhile, would cast off the ET/ACC skirt and maneuver to a 160-nautical-mile orbit, where they would deploy NATO-IV/PAM-D. The PAM-D stage would boost the satellite to GEO and the astronauts would fire the Orbiter’s OMS engines to return to Earth.
Martin Marietta placed great emphasis on the cost savings it said would accrue from adding the ACC to the Shuttle system. First, however, it estimated the costs of developing and using the cargo canister. The company assumed that NASA would give a green light to begin ACC development in late 1983, and that the first ACC would reach space three years later. They calculated that ACC development would cost $113 million, changes to the Shuttle system to accommodate it would total $78 million, and changes to Kennedy Space Center facilities would cost $35 million. Use of the ACC would also add about $5 million in recurring costs to the $75-million base cost of a Shuttle flight.
For its cost-savings calculations, the company bravely employed a Shuttle traffic model less optimistic than the “official” NASA model. It assumed that 331 Shuttle flights would occur between 1988 and 2000, with the number of flights per year starting at 34 and trending downward to 20 by the end of the 12-year period. For the same period, NASA assumed 26 flights per year to start, an upward trend to nearly 60 flights per year, and a total over 12 years of 581 flights. Based on its “low” model, the company estimated that NASA might benefit from flying 71 civilian and 35 DOD Orbiter/ACC missions. In a further effort at conservativism, however, it assumed that NASA would fund only 75 Orbiter/ACC missions.
Martin Marietta determined that the increased payload capacity that the ACC would provide would permit elimination of 40 non-ACC Shuttle missions. It placed the cost of 331 Orbiter-only missions at $24.8 billion and the cost of 216 Orbiter-only and 75 Orbiter/ACC missions at $22.2 billion. The program that included the ACC would thus save NASA $2.6 billion.
How NASA moon rock heist was inside job carried out by physics geniuses
London Daily Mail
A new British documentary is set to reveal the incredible story behind the multi-million dollar moon rock heist at NASA - and how it was an inside job.
In July 2002 'physics genius' Thad Roberts and three accomplices pulled off perhaps the greatest ever theft in NASA history at the Johnson Space Centre, Houston, Texas.
Using their NASA IDs Roberts, and one female partner in crime, slipped into the centre at night stealing a 600lb safe containing moon rocks from every Apollo mission.
As well as samples from every Apollo mission between 1969 and 1974, they also managed to bag ALH84001 - a famous meteorite that might contain fossilised evidence of micro-biotic life on Mars.
Thad and his accomplice Tiffany Fowler managed to escape the lab and met the third gang member Shae Saur who was waiting in a car for them.
Thad and his fellow interns then were supposed to contact student Gordon McWhorter who was waiting 1,400 miles away in Salt Lake City, Utah, having tried to find buyers online.
The brainiac burglars eventually put the rocks up for sale on the web site of the Mineralogy Club of Antwerp, Belgium.
But a Belgian rock collector who got wind of the sale was suspicious, and he decided to contact the FBI. With the collector’s help, special agents set up a ruse to catch the thieves.
FBI agents had the collector e-mail 'Orb Robinson' (one of the interns who was offering the rocks for sale) and say he was interested in buying the lunar treasures.
But when Roberts and his gang agreed to meet the Belgian collector's 'relatives' in a Italian restaurant in Orlando, Florida, they were rumbled when the relatives were in fact FBI agents.
Thad was arrested along with the two women and McWhorter was also later picked up. Ironically the moon rocks - which were recovered from a nearby hotel room - were all safely returned to NASA on the 33rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Sadly for NASA 30 years worth of hand written Apollo note books - which were also in the loot - have never been recovered.
All three interns pleaded guilty. On October 29, Roberts was sentenced to more than eight years in prison for his role in the moon rock caper, as well as for stealing dinosaur bones from a Utah museum - the fossils turned up during a search of Roberts’ house. The fourth accomplice was convicted at trial.
Now the full story of the 'Million Dollar Moon Rock Heist' will be aired for the first time on the National Geographic channel at 9pm on Thursday, May 10.
Cris Warren, assistant producer for British filmakers Iconic Films, said it was estimated that the Johnson loot could have fetched up to $300million on the black market.
He said: 'The moon rocks were returned to US custody on, ironically, the same day Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the moon 33 years earlier.
'Thad Roberts, a member of NASA’s elite Co-operative Education Programme, was hailed in some quarters as a Physics genius and had a possible future as an astronaut.
'He had already been stealing fossils from the University of Utah and decided to hatch this can’t fail get rich quick scheme.
'The person you feel sorry for is Gordon McWhorter, he was recruited by Roberts to find a buyer for the rocks, but at the time he was vulnerable of smoking quite a lot of drugs.
'Gordon agreed to be interviewed for the film and gave us a brilliant interview. We also have the FBI and NASA and interviews with the other gang members.
'These rocks are national treasures and could not have been sold anywhere in the US, but if it had worked the gang could have been looking at six to 500 million dollars.'
Million Dollar Moon Rock Heist features exclusive interviews with key characters on both sides of the story.
They include the people closest to the real Thad Roberts, the world renowned scientists he betrayed, and the unlikely Belgian super-hero who proved to be his nemesis.
Undercover agents from both the FBI and NASA’s internal Federal investigations branch The OIG are also featured, to reveal the extraordinary operation they undertook to crack the case.
“Why Postpone a Success?” The Days Before Freedom 7
Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org
More than five decades have passed since the United States launched its first astronaut, Alan Shepard, into space. His 15-minute flight was ‘suborbital’ – it rose from Cape Canaveral in Florida and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, 160 km north of the Bahamas – and for a relieved America it was a tremendous success…though it was distinctly overshadowed by Yuri Gagarin’s orbital mission, a few weeks earlier. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev lambasted Shepard’s flight as a “flea hop” and, in a sense, he was right, but the bravery exhibited by America on 5 May 1961 cannot be underestimated. Its rockets averaged only a 60-percent success rate in this period and Shepard’s mission brought intense political relief, too. President John Kennedy had been in office for a matter of months and his administration had already been battered by a failed attempt to depose Fidel Castro at the ‘Bay of Pigs’. Whilst the Soviets could crow loudly about their ‘peaceful’ accomplishment of putting a man into orbit, America – the leader of ‘The Free World’ – was presented as little more than a warmonger. In the words of journalist Julian Scheer, Shepard’s flight changed that perception and “bailed out the ego of the American people”.
Shepard rode into space aboard a cone-shaped Mercury craft, whose cramped nature once prompted McDonnell launch pad leader Guenter Wendt to quip that astronauts climbed aboard “with a shoehorn” and disembarked “with a can opener”. Named in honour of the fleet-footed messenger-god of the ancient Roman pantheon, Mercury was one of the most complex machines ever built and ‘Spacecraft No. 7’ – the craft destined to fly Shepard – arrived at Cape Canaveral from its contractor, McDonnell Aircraft, in December 1960. The astronaut should have flown in March of the following year, but technical problems and the unfortunate experience of the chimpanzee, Ham, prompted lengthy delays…and a failure to beat the Soviets into space. Moreover, the single-stage Redstone rocket (a direct descendent of Nazi Germany’s infamous V-2 missile) could accelerate only to 3,500 km/h and thus lacked the impulse to deliver Shepard directly into orbit.
The marriage between Mercury and Redstone had proven both successful and embarrassing, in equal measure. The first unmanned test, in November 1960, seemed to go well at first: the booster’s engine ignited, but as it made to leave the launch pad a shutdown signal was transmitted. The Redstone’s thrust was enough to cause it to rise a few centimetres and settle back onto its pedestal. Unfortunately, the shutdown command caused the Mercury capsule’s escape tower to fire, producing vast clouds of smoke, which momentarily hid the entire vehicle from view. Watching from the control centre was Flight Director Chris Kraft. Thinking that he was seeing the actual liftoff, he was amazed by the rapid acceleration. When the smoke cleared, Kraft later recalled, the control team were depressed to see that the rocket was still firmly shackled to the pad! It was “a memorable day,” according to astronaut Wally Schirra, “especially for someone who likes sick jokes!”
The Redstone swayed a little, but remained upright and did not explode. Worryingly, the escape tower – which shot 1.2 km high and landed a few hundred metres away – had not pulled the Mercury capsule clear. As Kraft and his depressed team watched, the drogue parachute popped out of the capsule’s nose, followed by the main canopy and, lastly, accompanied by a smudge of green marker dye, the auxiliary chute. All three fluttered, pathetically, down onto the pad. “The press had a field day,” wrote Kraft. “It wasn’t just a funny scene on the pad. It was tragic and America’s space programme took another beating in the newspapers and in Congress.” Time magazine berated “Lead-Footed Mercury” and others ridiculed NASA’s efforts to downplay the fiasco.
Investigators later traced the cause to a pair of electrical connectors in the Redstone’s two-pronged tail plug, which separated in the wrong order. The failure of the capsule to separate with the escape tower was attributed to a sensor problem. Ordinarily, after an engine cutoff, a ten-second timer started and when it expired the capsule would separate, with the escape tower, if accelerations were less than 0.25 G. Unfortunately, the Redstone settled back onto the pad before the timer expired and, sensing 1 G of acceleration, the sensor blocked the separation signal. Barostats, meanwhile, properly sensed that the rocket’s altitude was less than 3 km and triggered the parachutes to deploy from the nose of the capsule. It became clear, recalled John Glenn, that the capsule had actually “made the best of a confusing situation and had gone on to perform its duties just as it would have on a normal flight”. With this in mind, he concluded, “we were rather proud of it!”
Since the Mercury capsule was undamaged, it was reflown, four weeks later, and on 19 December a success could be declared. The Redstone boosted the capsule a little higher than its target 205 km and splashdown occurred a few dozen kilometres further downrange than intended, but a few minor adjustments cleared the way for the flight of the chimpanzee, Ham, in January 1961. The problems encountered on Ham’s flight – an over-thrust of the Redstone, an early engine shutdown, a high-G re-entry and puncturing to the pressure bulkhead upon splashdown, which almost drowned the chimp – led directly to a decision to postpone the manned mission with Alan Shepard from early March until at least the end of April. Still, the craft’s habitability and controllability were good and predictions estimated the reliability of the Mercury-Redstone at 88 percent, with a 98-percent chance that the astronaut would survive the flight. A final test on 24 March confirmed these assurances, but by now Shepard’s mission had been postponed…with fateful consequences.
On the morning of 12 April, the electrifying news spread like wildfire, around the world: the Soviet Union had successfully launched a man into space. In fact, the news hit America like the double blow of a sledgehammer: for Yuri Gagarin had not only flown into space, but he had completed a full orbit around Earth.
There was little that could be done but proceed towards the manned suborbital flight, which was now rescheduled for no earlier than 2 May. Shepard and his backup, John Glenn, spent much of their time rehearsing procedures, spending up to 60 hours per week in the spacecraft simulator alone, and countless more reviewing checklists and plans. Daily, they were instrumented in biosensors and outfitted in their silver space suits for test after test. Shepard named his spacecraft ‘Freedom 7’; not, as some observers hinted, in honour of the ‘Original Seven’ Mercury astronauts, but actually reflective of its status as the seventh capsule off the McDonnell production line. (On later missions, each member of the Seven would suffix their own craft with the number as a good-luck charm.)
With launch set for 7:00 am Eastern Standard Time on the 2nd, preparations ramped into high gear. A full dress-rehearsal, with fellow astronaut Gordon Cooper standing in for Shepard, brought a measure of levity to the proceedings. As he rode the transport van out to Pad 5, he jokingly bawled: “I don’t wanna go! Please don’t send me!” Many journalists did not appreciate Cooper’s humour and some newspapers even went so far as to criticise NASA for such inappropriate horseplay at a tense time. In the meantime, Alan Shepard checkout of a Holiday Inn, where he had been staying with his wife, Louise, dropped her at the airport and drove to the astronaut quarters at the Cape. Although he had known since January that he would be the first American in space, the official announcement was that three astronauts were training for the mission, including Glenn and Virgil ‘Gus’ Grissom. To promulgate the fallacy that any of them might make the flight, the three men shared the same air-conditioned crew quarters.
Rain overshadowed the 2 May launch attempt, even as Shepard, Glenn and Grissom sat down to a breakfast of bacon-wrapped filet mignon and scrambled eggs, washed down with orange juice and coffee. Since defecation in the spacecraft was, at best, rather irksome, these ‘low-residue’ launch-day breakfasts had been enforced by NASA. Leo D’Orsey, the astronauts’ lawyer, was amazed when he learned from Shepard about the diets.
“No shit?” he exclaimed.
“Exactly,” grinned Shepard in response.
Some NASA officials wanted to bring all three men out of their quarters, wearing hoods, to keep the charade alive of which would be aboard the spacecraft…until one of them boarded the elevator at Pad 5. According to Shepard’s biographer, Neal Thompson, the astronauts opposed such lunacy. Shepard instead emerged from the quarters in his space suit and walked through a teeming crowd of journalists. It made little difference on 2 May, for the torrential rain scrubbed the launch attempt. In fact, even the second attempt on the 4th also fell foul of the weather. However, at 8:30 that night, the two-part, ten-hour-long countdown began in anticipation of a launch early on the 5th. The stunted countdown enabled technicians and launch pad engineers to be adequately rested and prepared. With the weather showing signs of improvement, it seemed that 5 May 1961 would prove to be America’s date with destiny and forever to be enshrined in history.
That historic day began with all the drama associated with events whose outcome could not be clearly predicted. NASA spokesman John ‘Shorty’ Powers had already prepared three statements for the press, to the effect that ‘Astronaut Shepard has perished today in the service of his country’, all tailored slightly to take into account the instant at which tragedy struck: during launch, whilst in space or during re-entry. President Kennedy himself had sought assurances from NASA Deputy Administrator Hugh Dryden that no unwarranted risks were being taken, but several senators, including John J. Williams of Delaware and J.W. Fulbright of Arkansas, wanted the flight postponed or carried out in secret to hedge against the negative publicity of a failure. NASA’s response? “Why postpone a success?” The attempts were vetoed by most members of Congress…for good reason. The Soviets had received much international criticism for staging Gagarin’s mission under such ridiculous secrecy (at first, some even doubted that he had flown at all) and America’s tradition dictated that the press should have free access to cover such a historic event. That event would begin with an uncomfortable, three-hour wait for launch and an untimely call of nature, but would end with Alan Shepard honoured as America’s newest hero.
“Light This Candle”
More than five decades ago, in the early hours of 5 May 1961, America prepared to launch its first man into space. Alan Shepard would fly a suborbital flight – rising from Cape Canaveral in the Mercury capsule he had named ‘Freedom 7’ and splashing down, just 15 minutes later, in the Atlantic Ocean, about 160 km north of the Bahamas – and it would be an understatement to say that the entire nation was holding its breath. Three weeks earlier, the Soviet Union had sent Yuri Gagarin on a fully orbital mission and although America was several months from repeating that achievement, the flight of Shepard would alleviate much pressure on the young administration of John Kennedy. Betwixt the launches of Gagarin and Shepard, the president’s ill-judged effort to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba had gone catastrophically wrong at the Bay of Pigs. The ‘peaceful’ achievement of the Soviets was being heavily compared to the ‘warmongering’ of the United States, but with Shepard a measure of success would finally be achieved…and a plot of the moral high ground secured.
At 1:30 on the morning of the 5th, Shepard and his backup, fellow astronaut John Glenn, met at breakfast in the Cape Canaveral crew quarters, Hangar S. Both were clad in bathrobes. They subsequently parted to dress. Glenn headed out to Pad 5 to check Freedom 7, whilst Shepard underwent his pre-flight examination, performed by Air Force physician Bill Douglas. Four electrocardiograph pads were attached to his chest, a respirometer to his neck and a rectal thermometer to gauge deep body temperatures. Next came a set of long underwear, complete with spongy ‘pads’ to help air circulation. Finally, he squeezed into his silver space suit, securing zips and connectors and checking his briefcase-like air-conditioning unit. The latter was essential. By the time he was ready, Time magazine later reported, he was sweating profusely and breathing hard.
One unusual feature of the suit was that the fingers of its gloves were deliberately ‘curved’, to permit the grasping of controls, and its middle finger was ‘straight’ to enable Shepard to push buttons and flip toggles. To precisely tailor the suits, engineers had taken body moulds of the astronauts – dressing them in long underwear, covering them with brown paper tape and cutting the resultant mould – and Wally Schirra joked to Life magazine that it demanded “more alterations than a bridal gown”. When inflated, it only took one shape and any change to this shape – for example, by walking or trying to sit – forced the astronaut to exert himself to overcome the increased pressure.
A few minutes before four in the morning, fellow astronaut Virgil ‘Gus’ Grissom accompanied Shepard in the transport van to a floodlit Pad 5, where technician Joe Schmitt fitted the gloves and Gordon Cooper briefed him on the countdown status. Meanwhile, at the top of the gantry, inside the cramped Freedom 7 capsule, John Glenn had spent almost two hours checking the readiness of each switch and instrument. At 5:15 am, Shepard ascended the elevator to reach a green-walled room at the 20 m level (nicknamed ‘The Greenhouse’), which surrounded the capsule’s hatch. After much huffing and puffing, the astronaut was inserted into his specially contoured couch. His first action was to chuckle aloud, for Glenn had put a girl pin-up and a placard, which read No Handball Playing in This Area. It was very unlike Glenn, who was normally considered a straight-arrow and not a prankster. He quickly pulled it down. Years later, Shepard’s biographer, Neal Thompson, would write that Glenn probably had second thoughts and did not want to risk having Freedom 7’s automatic cameras record his joke for dubious posterity.
Joe Schmitt, who suited and booted astronauts for more than two decades, remembered securing Shepard with straps across his shoulders, chest, lap, knees and even toes. Finally, Glenn reached in, shook his gloved hand and wished him luck. The hatch closed at 6:10 am and, by his own admission, Shepard’s heart rate quickened. Launch was scheduled for a little after 7:00 am, but this was soon delayed, as banks of clouds rolled over Florida’s south-eastern seaboard. Then, one of the power invertors to Freedom 7’s Redstone booster exhibited trouble. The countdown clock was recycled to T-35 minutes and, after an 86-minute wait, commenced counting again, once the invertor had been replaced. Next came an error with one of the computers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which was responsible for processing the mission data. By the time this problem had been overcome, Shepard had been lying on his back for over three hours. Finally, a more ‘personal’ problem arose.
Not only was it uncomfortable to be lying inside the cramped capsule, but combined with the orange juice and coffee from breakfast it required him to urinate.
“Man, I gotta pee,” he finally radioed to Gordon Cooper, stationed in the nearby control blockhouse. “Check and see if I can get out quickly and relieve myself.”
No one had planned for this eventuality; with only a 15-minute flight scheduled, it had not been anticipated that Shepard would be inside Freedom 7 for long enough to feel ‘the urge’. Still, Cooper passed the request up the chain of command, to Wernher von Braun, the head of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. The response was immediate and emphatic. In his thick German accent, von Braun retorted: “No! Ze astronaut shall stay in ze nosecone.” Exasperated – and in an exchange later removed from the official transcript – Shepard warned that he would urinate in his suit if he could not get outside. Managers wondered if the urine might short-circuit the medical wiring and electrical thermometers in his suit. Finally, Cooper confirmed that the power had been temporarily switched off and, shortly thereafter, a drawn-out “Ahhhhhh” emerged from the astronaut in the capsule. “I’m a wetback now,” Shepard added, as the warm fluid pooled in the small of his back.
In his post-flight debriefing, recorded an hour later aboard the USS Lake Champlain, Shepard acquiesced that his suit inlet temperature changed and may have affected one of his chest sensors, but his comfort was much improved. The urine was absorbed by his long cotton underwear and quickly evaporated in the 100-percent pure oxygen atmosphere of the cabin. Thankfully, the astronaut received no electric shocks and NASA, wrote Neal Thompson, was spared the humiliation of having to report that America’s first space traveller had been electrocuted by his own piss!
The clock was now marching rapidly towards 9:00 am. Two minutes remained on the countdown. Then, another halt was called. Pressures inside the Redstone’s liquid oxygen tank had climbed unacceptably high. NASA had two options. It could either reset the pressure valves – which would necessitate a launch scrub – or bleed off some of the pressure by remote control. An irritable Shepard, after almost four hours on his back and now lying in dried-up urine, obviously preferred the second option. “I’m cooler than you are!” he barked. “Why don’t you fix your little problem and light this candle?” Those final three words have since gained immortality and truly epitomise the ‘right stuff’ from which Shepard was cut. Finally, a little after 9:30 am, the clock resumed…and the television networks commenced their live coverage. By now, Cooper had been replaced by astronaut Deke Slayton, whose voice would crackle to and from Freedom 7 during the flight.
Thirty seconds to go. An umbilical cable, supplying electricity, communications and liquid oxygen, automatically separated from the Redstone, as planned.
Shepard’s pulse quickened from 80 to 126 beats per minute. His hand tightened on the capsule’s abort handle and in his mind he repeated, over and over, an early incarnation of ‘The Astronaut’s Prayer’: God help you if you screw up. He had been inside Freedom 7 for over four hours and the delays alone had cost three and a half hours – long enough to have flown his mission fourteen times over – but now it seemed that all was ready. The jolt of liftoff was not what he had expected. Rather than a harsh acceleration, he experienced something “extremely smooth…a subtle, gentle, gradual rise off the ground”.
At 9:34 am, with 45 million Americans watching or listening in person, on TV, on the radio or over loudspeakers, the Redstone roared aloft, prompting Shepard to activate the on-board timer and radio: “Roger…Liftoff…and the clock is started!” The nation could breathe an enormous, collective sigh of relief as their first astronaut speared for the heavens. Yet, as evidenced by a handful of disaster statements, prepared in advance by NASA’s public affairs officer, John ‘Shorty’ Powers, the mission could not be termed a success until Shepard was home, safe, and aboard the recovery ship, USS Lake Champlain. A tragedy, only the previous day, 4 May 1961, had already demonstrated how close the line came to triumph and tragedy in the exploration of the unknown. The 15 minutes and 28 seconds between launch and splashdown would prove heart-stopping.
“What a Beautiful View”
In the half-hour between 9:30 and 10:00 am Eastern Standard Time on 5 May 1961, the United States came, quite literally, to a standstill. A Philadelphia appeals court judge interrupted all proceedings to make an announcement, whilst free champagne – even at this hour – flowing freely in taverns, and traffic slowed in Californian freeways and people danced and sang in Times Square. Even the new President, John Kennedy, barely four months into his new job as one of the most powerful men in the world, could only watch, dumbstruck, as he beheld the view on a TV screen. Standing there in his secretary’s office, after having just broken up a meeting of the National Security Council, Kennedy’s hands were shoved deep into his pockets as he witnessed real history in the making. On the screen, the camera panned upwards to trace the trajectory of a rocket, heading into space, bearing the first American ever to break the bonds of Earth and venture into the ethereal blackness of space beyond.
More than five decades later, it is easy to consider John Glenn’s orbital mission, in February 1962, as having overshadowed the 15-minute ‘suborbital’ flight of Alan Shepard. After all, Shepard’s Redstone booster lacked the impulse to accomplish a full orbit and he essentially rose from Florida and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, 160 km north of the Bahamas. Yet for a relieved America – still smarting from an embarrassing failure to topple Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba and an equally humiliating loss in the space race to the Soviet Union – it was a timely and spectacular triumph. For the man inside the cramped Freedom 7 capsule, his world was the spacecraft. At 9:34 am, he heard the firing command, but he would subsequently admit that excitement quickly took over. When the countdown clock touched zero, Shepard’s gloved hand instinctively moved to start the mission timer. “The liftoff was a whole lot smooother than I expected,” he later recalled. “I really expected to have to use full volume control to be able to receive, but all my transmissions over UHF were immediately acknowledged, without any repeats being requested.”
Fifteen minutes seems too short a time for much of meaningful substance to be achieved. It was quite the reverse. Before launch, Shepard agreed with Walt Williams, the operations director for Project Mercury, that he would talk as much as possible, to keep everyone updated on the most arcane details. As the Redstone rose higher, his calls crackled over the radio, giving fuel readings, oxygen readings, G-meter readings and systems readings. The stresses of launch were surprisingly low – much lower than his training had prepared him for in the simulators and centrifuges – although it took a bumpier turn when the Redstone reached the transitional zone between the edge of the ‘sensible’ atmosphere and space. Eighty-eight seconds into the flight, Freedom 7 shuddered violently and, according to Shepard’s biographer, Neal Thompson, the astronaut’s head began “jackhammering so hard against the headrest that he could no longer see the dials and gauges clearly enough to read the data”. A few moments later, the vibrations calmed.
A minute later, at 141.8 seconds after launch, the rocket’s engine finally fell silent and the escape tower was jettisoned. (The latter should have been automatic, but it would appear that Shepard pulled the manual ‘JETT TOWER’ override.) Small explosive charges separated Freedom 7 from the rocket and thrusters pushed the pair gently apart. Now flying freely, Shepard’s mission was to prove that, unlike Yuri Gagarin, he could actively control his spacecraft. He switched from automatic to manual control about three minutes after launch and using his control stick, tilted the capsule through pitch, yaw and roll manoeuvres, all whilst travelling at a suborbital velocity of 8,200 km/h…nearly eight times the speed of sound and three times faster than any American in history. The craft responded crisply, although the spurt of its hydrogen peroxide thrusters was often drowned out by the crackling of the radio.
‘Weightlessness’ came as a peculiar surprise, as Shepard’s body gently floated from his couch and against his shoulder harnesses. Flecks of dust drifted past his face, together with a steel washer, which quickly vanished from view. Nearing the apex of his upward arc from Earth, he glanced through Freedom 7’s periscope to behold the splendour of Earth, spread out, map-like, ‘beneath’ him. Unfortunately, during the morning’s lengthy delays, to prevent sunlight from blinding him, he had flipped a switch to cover the lens with a grey filter and had forgotten to remove it. Now he could only see a grey-coloured blob on the screen. He tried to reach across the cabin to flick off the filter, but his wrist inadvertently touched the abort handle…and he thought it best to leave it well alone.
His words – “What a beautiful view!” – were doubtless sincere, but certainly were not accompanied by full colour. Still, he was able to see quite “remarkable” things, including Lake Okeechobee, on the northern edge of the Everglades, as well as Andros Island, shoals off Bimini and cloud cover over the Bahamas. Later, he would tell a journalist for Life magazine that he saw “brilliantly clear” colours, but admitted privately that the grey filter obliterated most of the colour. When questioned by fellow astronaut Wally Schirra, his response was simple. “Shit,” he said, “I had to say something for the people!”
Back on Earth, those ‘people’ were watching and listening and praying intently. At the top of his long arc over the Atlantic Ocean – reaching 188 km at his highest point – the periscope automatically retracted and Shepard strained to search for stars through Freedom 7’s awkwardly-placed port holes. Disappointly, he saw nothing. There was little time to ponder about it. Only a third of his 15-minute space voyage would be spent ‘in space’ and of those precious minutes, virtually all were devoted to scientific and technical tasks, lasting a minute here and two minutes there. At length, the capsule’s retrorockets fired and at 9:40 am, a little over six minutes since launch, Shepard began his descent toward the ocean.
The return to Earth, whose gravitational stresses peaked at 11 G, was physically demanding and “not one most people would want to try at an amusement park”. Within 30 seconds, Freedom 7 slowed from 8,200 km/h to less than 800 km/h. So high were the G forces that Shepard could barely manage more than a few guttural grunts to Deke Slayton, in the control centre. Inside the capsule, temperatures remained stable at 28 degrees Celsius – “like being in a closed van on a warm summer day,” he later noted – as the blistering extremes of re-entry, outside, reached 1,200 degrees Celsius.
It was 9:43 am. Nine minutes since launch.
Six and a half kilometres above the Atlantic, the drogue parachute popped out of Freedom 7’s nose, followed by the jettisoning of the antenna capsule and deployment of the 19.2 m orange and white main canopy. With “a reassuring kick in the butt”, the latter served to arrest the capsule’s descent and a snorkel valve equalised pressure with the outside air. Moving more slowly now, through the clouds, the capsule descended in a stately manner, at no more than 30 km/h, and splashed down beautifully. Shepard had landed 490 km east of Cape Canaveral and within sight of the recovery vessel, USS Lake Champlain.
It was 9:49 am.
Fifteen minutes and 28 seconds had elapsed since launch. Mission Complete.
After splashdown, Freedom 7 listed over to its right side, but quickly returned to a normal, heatshield-down orientation. The parachutes cast loose to prevent dragging the capsule and a large patch of green fluorescent marker dye quickly spread across the water. Within minutes, Wayne Koons, pilot of one of the five Marine Air Group 26 rescue helicopters from the Lake Champlain, was hovering overhead and his co-pilot, George Cox, had snagged the capsule with a hook and line.
At length, Shepard popped open the hatch and grabbed the padded harness (nicknamed ‘the horse’s collar’) that Cox had lowered, looping it over his head and under his arm. As he did so, he could not help but recall that Death’s foul breath was still on his face. Only hours earlier, he had read a worrying report about fellow aviators Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather. On 4 May, the pair had ascended 34.6 km above the Gulf of Mexico in a balloon gondola. It was part of the Navy’s Stratolab high-altitude research project. During their nine-hour ascent, the two pressure-suited men endured temperatures as low as minus 70 degrees Celsius and descended perfectly to the waters of the Gulf…whereupon tragedy struck in the most abrupt and shocking fashion. Mistakenly believing himself to be out of danger, Prather opened his helmet visor, but as he climbed a ladder to the rescue helicopter, he slipped, fell and drowned as his suit rapidly filled with water. Alan Shepard needed no reminder of the risks involved with what he was doing, but Prather’s death provided another sobering warning.
Less than 24 hours after Prather’s demise, it was, for Shepard and for America, “a beautiful day”. Twelve hundred sailors crowded the deck of the Lake Champlain, cheering the nation’s newest hero. Freedom 7 would be exhibited at 1961’s Paris Air Show and the astronaut himself set foot on the deck of the recovery ship as the clock struck ten. Across the nation, the euphoria was electrifying. Floridians cheered, John Glenn jokingly asked for another Redstone to be set up for him, New Hampshire’s governor visited Shepard’s hometown, schools were closed and military aircraft dropped confetti. The astronaut’s proud parents and sister rode in an open-topped convertible, his wife, Louise, chatted to journalists outside her Virginia Beach home and Navy jets spelled the letter ‘S’ in the sky.
For the hero, the first hour back on Earth was spent reliving the 15 minutes in mind-numbing detail for the physicians and psychologists. He was flown to Grand Bahama Island for several days of tests. His $400 million mission had cost each American taxpayer $2.25 and Shepard himself received an extra $14.38 in naval flight pay. Yet the financial figures are today insignificant. The flight of Freedom 7 was an enormous shot in the arm for the United States, at a time when the nation’s scientific and technological might was being held in check by the Soviet Union. Although Shepard had not surpassed Yuri Gagarin’s achievement, the fact that his mission was played out in the full glare of world publicity underscored the reality that America desired to adopt a stance of openness and transparency in its human space endeavours. Three weeks later, on 25 May 1961, the ultimate consequence of Shepard’s flight was enshrined in government policy by President Kennedy himself: by committing the nation to landing a man on the Moon…and granting barely eight years in which to do it.
How to Land the Mercury Capsule
Amy Teitel - AmericaSpace.org
When NASA introduced the Mercury astronauts to the country during a press conference in 1959, getting them to space wasn’t a problem. The Redstone and Atlas rockets were on their way to being man rated and the agency had settled on a blunt body capsule for the Mercury spacecraft over competing spaceplane designs. Landing the capsule was a different matter. How to bring the astronauts back from space alive was much less straightforward.
Rocket launches weren’t new. One of the earliest recorded uses of rocket technology making something fly is by the Greek Archytas. Sometime around 400 B.C., he was known to amuse citizen of his native Tarentum by using steam to propel a wooden pigeon suspended on wires. It was a very early proof that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In the modern era, American Robert Goddard pioneered the use of liquid fuels to send rockets to high altitudes. Hermann Oberth’s written accounts of rockets used for spaceflight inspired many young German engineers, among them Wernher von Braun who developed the V-2 and later the Jupiter, Redstone, and Saturn family of launch vehicles.
In 1959, nothing sent into space had landed back on Earth. Early rockets were launched to gather data on flight characteristics; how the rockets landed was less important. In 1948 the US Air Force had begun launching rodents and monkeys on low sub-orbital missions on recovered V-2s and Aerobee sounding rockets, but the parachutes designed to bring the capsules to a soft touchdown didn’t always work. An unfortunate number of rats and monkey lost their lives when parachutes failed and they slammed into the ground from an altitude of about 40 miles.
The only things that had been recovered from orbit were film canisters as part of the CIA’s Corona Program. The canisters were jettisoned from orbiting satellites and were slowed by small parachutes on their fall towards the ocean. To avoid the film falling into the wrong hands, USAF aircraft flew above the canisters and snagged the parachutes with hooks to collect them in mid air.
When it came time to choose a landing system for Mercury, this was all the experience NASA had to build on. In 1960 the Space Task Group – the group behind the Mercury program – entertained proposals for different landing methods.
Some ideas from within NASA reflected the agency’s experience with parachutes with simple proposals using a parachute to slow the capsule’s fall to a soft touchdown on land or on the ocean. More complicated proposals sought to turn the capsule into a controllable spacecraft. Replacing the parachute with a parasail would give the astronaut inside some directional control over the capsule as it fell. The US Air Force proposed a multistage progressive landing system program in this vein that would see parachute controlled touchdowns develop into controllable parasail landings. One proposal took pilot control to the extreme and advocated adding small wings to the side of the capsule.
Engineer Francis Rogallo from the Langley research centre proposed an inflatable triangular paraglider wing. It would inflate after the capsule passed through the fiery atmospheric reentry, giving the capsule some lift during its descent. By pulling the cables that attached the wing to the capsule, the astronaut inside could gain directional control and land on a preselected runway. The US Navy proposed a similar inflatable paraglider wing that would enable astronauts to make a controlled landing on the ocean.
Some ideas stood out as less practical than others. Adding wings to the capsule, for example, was an expensive modification that would make the capsule too heavy for the Atlas launch vehicle. Land landings by parachute or parasail were equally problematic, demanding the capsule be reinforced to protect the astronaut for the shock of a land landing.
The Rogallo wing was the most intriguing idea. It combined the ease of a parachute descent with moderate directional control but took away the hard land landing a straight parachute descent would entail. But it was complicated. At the time there weren’t any full scale models complete and using the landing system risked putting the Mercury program further behind schedule and that wasn’t an option. The race to the Moon hadn’t begun, but there was certainly a race underway to get a man in space first.
With speed a key factor, splashdowns emerged as the best choice in the short term; letting the capsule fall from orbit and land on the wide yielding target provided by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It wasn’t a universal favourite landing method – the astronaut in particular hated being passengers during their landing – but it did the trick. It gave NASA a simple way to bring its astronauts home safely while allowing the agency to focus on the more pressing questions, like how men would cope with the physical and mental stresses of spaceflight.
END
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