No JSC Today yet
NASA TV:
· 11 am Central (Noon EDT) – ISS Program and Science Overview Briefing
· 1 pm Central (2 EDT) – Expedition 33/34 Crew News Conference (Ford, Novitskiy, Tarelkin)
· 6 am Central FRIDAY (7 EDT) – Coverage of HTV-3 grapple & berthing
(grapple at 7:05 CT; berthing to Harmony nadir at ~9:45 CT)
Human Spaceflight News
Thursday – July 26, 2012
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Space station retains vital role as research tool, astronaut says
Sonali Kohli - Gannett News Service
The most exciting part of conducting research at the International Space Station is not knowing what's going to be exciting, astronaut Donald Pettit testified at a Senate hearing Wednesday. "One of the most exciting parts of going into a frontier are the pages of the book that don't have any writing on them yet, because you don't even know enough to know 'Should this be the exciting part, should this be the significant part?'" Pettit said. He donned a space-themed tie to address the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee about his work and why it's important.
Lack of crew time is biggest roadblock to research on ISS, astronaut says
Dan Leone - Space News
An astronaut told U.S. lawmakers July 25 that the greatest impediment to research and science aboard the international space station (ISS) is the limited amount of time crew members can devote to these pursuits. “Currently, I believe the great limiting resource for doing scientific research on station is the availability of crew time,” astronaut Donald Pettit said at a hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation science and space subcommittee. “We have more scientific apparatus on space station, more equipment waiting to be used, more science experiments in the queue than we have crew time in the [U.S. segment] with three crew members that we can spend working on this.”
SLS passes major agency review, moves on to preliminary design
Mike Kelley - Huntsville Times
The Space Launch System (SLS) Program is moving ahead, and has just completed a combined System Requirements Review and System Definition Review, which set requirements technical, cost, performance and schedule requirements of the overall launch vehicle system,according to a release from NASA headquarters. With this milestone, SLS now moves ahead to its preliminary design phase, the release said. The SLS program is managed by Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. As part of the process, an independent review board comprised of technical experts from across NASA evaluated SLS Program documents describing vehicle specifications, budget and schedule. The board confirmed SLS is ready to move from concept development to preliminary design.
Space Launch System formally enters design phase
Zach Rosenberg - FlightInternational.com
The Space Launch System (SLS), the super-heavy lift launch vehicle designed to launch crewed missions beyond low Earth orbit (LEO), has passed a combination system definition review/system requirements review, allowing engineers to start finalizing the design. The rocket, scheduled for first flight in 2017, has now been formally moved into the preliminary design phase. Given the extensive use of off-the-shelf components built for other spacecraft and previously-done design work, the preliminary design phase is not expected to take long, though NASA officials were unavailable to answer schedule questions.
NASA will explore F-1 upgrade for heavy lifter
Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week
The powerful rocket engine developed in the 1960s to launch the first men to the Moon could be reprised in the 2020s as the powerplant for strap-on boosters that NASA hopes to use in heavy-lift human missions to Mars. Under a new NASA risk-reduction project, Dynetics Inc., a relative newcomer to space launch, will explore the idea for the U.S. agency in partnership with Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. Rocketdyne built the 1.5-million-lb.-thrust F-1 engine for NASA, which mounted five of the kerosene-fueled behemoths in the Saturn V first stage to propel the massive Saturn/Apollo stack off the launch pad. The F-1—19 ft. tall, with a nozzle 12.5 ft. across—epitomized the scale of the flight hardware and ground infrastructure NASA used to beat the Soviet Union to the Moon. If NASA decides to fly it again, it probably will be tested in the same stands built for the F-1 at the agency's Marshall and Stennis field centers, stacked in the same 40-story Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center used for Apollo and the space shuttle, and launched from one of the pads built for the Moon program.
Rocket companies hope to repurpose Saturn 5 engines
Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com
Dynetics and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne announced Wednesday they are teaming up to resurrect the Saturn 5 rocket's mighty F-1 engine to power NASA's planned heavy-lift launch vehicle, saying the Apollo-era engine will offer significantly more performance than solid-fueled boosters currently under development. "The ability to come back and offer NASA a resurrection of probably one of the most venerated successful engines ever, the F-1, is very neat," said Steve Cook, director of space technologies at Dynetics Inc. "The cool factor on this is very high."
Anti-matter universe sought by space-based detector
Robert Evans - Reuters
A seven metric ton particle detector parked for over a year on the International Space Station (ISS) aims to establish whether there is an unseen "dark universe" woven into the cosmos, the scientist leading the project said on Wednesday. And the detector, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer or AMS, has already broken all records in registering some 17 billion cosmic rays and storing data on them for analysis, Nobel physics laureate Samuel Ting told a news conference.
Astronauts Ring In Antimatter-Hunting Space Experiment's 1st Birthday
Clara Moskowitz - Space.com
A team of astronauts, including retired spaceman Mark Kelly and his wife, former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, toured a European physics lab Wednesday to mark the first birthday of the International Space Station's most expensive, ambitious science experiment. Kelly and the rest of the astronaut crew that helped launch the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer into space last year paid a visit to the physics lab overseeing the experiment — the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.
Gabrielle Giffords tours European physics lab
John Heilprin - Associated Press
Former U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords toured the European particle physics laboratory Wednesday, cheerfully facing reporters but saying little during her first trip abroad since being shot in the head last year. Giffords was accompanying her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, on a visit to the European Center for Nuclear Research, two days after she rode a cable car up into the French Alps. The lab, known as CERN, had assembled a $2 billion cosmic ray detector that Kelly and his team carried to the International Space Station in May 2011.
International Space Station – The Most Amazing Flying Machines Ever
Space.com
The International Space Station (ISS) is the most complex international scientific and engineering project in history and the largest structure humans have ever put into space. This high-flying satellite is a laboratory for new technologies and an observation platform for astronomical, environmental and geological research. As a permanently occupied outpost in outer space, it serves as a stepping stone for further space exploration. The station flies at an average altitude of 248 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth. It circles the globe every 90 minutes at a speed of about 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kph). In one day, the station travels about the distance it would take to go from Earth to the moon and back.
Mars Rover Curiosity to Double as Martian Weather Station
Elizabeth Howell - Space.com
When NASA's next Mars rover, Curiosity, arrives at the Red Planet next month, it will help pave the way for the humans that might one day follow. In addition to looking for signs of current and past habitability to extraterrestrial life, the rover, due to land Aug. 6, will learn more about whether Mars could be habitable for humans — particularly in terms of its weather. The continuous record of Martian weather and radiation Curiosity plans to collect will help future forecasters tell humans — should we choose to go — how best to protect themselves in the harsh environment, experts say. That's why NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate paid to include a radiation detector onboard the car-size Curiosity, the centerpiece of the Mars Science Laboratory mission, which is run by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The Astronaut Bride
Amy Davidson - New Yorker Magazine
Five months after Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in outer space, she put on a white dress, with a puffy skirt and a veil, and married Andrian Nikolayev. The wedding was in November, 1963, in Moscow, and Nikita Khruschev was there; by some accounts, he had also pushed for marriage. As it happens, that was almost exactly the same interval as that between Tereshkova’s journey and that of Sally Ride, the first American woman (and third overall) in space, who died on Monday, at the age of sixty-one. Ride travelled on a space-shuttle mission in June, 1983. A few months earlier, about the same time as Tereshkova’s divorce, she, too, married a fellow astronaut, Steve Hawley, without any world leaders present.
Sally Ride never stopped opening doors for women
Houston Chronicle (Editorial)
Sally Ride. What a perfect name. What a soaring spirit. What an inspiration to a generation of women dreaming of playing a role in space exploration and other traditionally male-dominated fields. Ride, the first American woman in space, died Monday at 61. Much too soon, as others have commented. We concur, while offering thanks for the time she had among us, using it to pack several lifetimes worth of adventure, encouragement, advocacy - and even nationally ranked tennis - into her allotted years.
Space Walk of Fame Museum squeezed for space
Museum lacks room for growing NASA collection
Scott Gunnerson - Florida Today
Outer space may be limitless, but display space in Titusville is a different story. With the end of the space shuttle program, the U.S. Space Walk of Hall of Fame Foundation is collecting more memorabilia from 30-plus years of shuttle flights. But museum President Charlie Mars can’t fit all the space memorabilia and relics into his museum. Some items dating back to the 1950s are stuffed into the 2,400-square-foot U.S. Space Walk of Fame Museum on Main Street. Others are part of remote displays or warehoused. More still sit in attics, closets and garages of current and former space workers along the Space Coast.
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COMPLETE STORIES
Space station retains vital role as research tool, astronaut says
Sonali Kohli - Gannett News Service
The most exciting part of conducting research at the International Space Station is not knowing what's going to be exciting, astronaut Donald Pettit testified at a Senate hearing Wednesday.
"One of the most exciting parts of going into a frontier are the pages of the book that don't have any writing on them yet, because you don't even know enough to know 'Should this be the exciting part, should this be the significant part?'" Pettit said. He donned a space-themed tie to address the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee about his work and why it's important.
Committee members called the hearing to discuss the space station's future through 2020 and beyond, now that its assembly is complete and it is focusing on research. The station will get funding until 2020, but Congress hasn't decided whether it will survive beyond that.
The station is in good physical shape and could continue operating until at least 2028, said William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator of human exploration and operations. "(We) wanted to have this hearing today so that the American people know what's going on in space -- that there is this extraordinary contraption that is about 240 miles above the Earth," said Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Science and Space.
Pettit, 57, referred to space as his "home," and peppered his testimony with metaphors to highlight the importance of the space station. He compared maintaining the station to surviving in Antarctica, and learning about bone loss in space to the accidental cure for scurvy centuries ago.
Pettit recently returned from a six-month voyage aboard the station, where he worked 14-hour days to keep the station running and conduct experiments that took advantage of zero gravity and other conditions unique to space. One issue clouding the space station's future is the troubled start to the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS).
NASA established the Florida-based nonprofit center last year to manage and promote the part of the space station known as the U.S. National Laboratory, which functions as a research facility for U.S. companies. The center's CEO stepped down in February, and a final board of directors has yet to be approved.
A new board of directors "that includes some of America's brightest minds from business and science" will be announced soon, CASIS interim executive director James Royston said during Wednesday's hearing. "We are anxiously awaiting the appointment of the board so that we can see ... CASIS get up and go and really start showing results," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, the committee's top-ranking Republican.
Pettit said the space station's greatest need is more researchers to conduct experiments in the national lab. During his time on the station, he was one of three crew members conducting research at the lab for about six hours a day.
Witnesses at Wednesday's hearing cited ongoing research and their own personal experiences to promote the space station's importance as a research tool, since the station has produced few definitive results so far. ^"@We cannot predict what results will come from the ISS in long-duration space-based research," Gerstenmaier said.
"True advances come from discovery, and ISS is a platform for discovery." Researchers' goal is to begin 259 investigations between last October and September. Topics range from the search for dark matter to examining the nature of flames and developing more effective vaccines, Gerstenmaier said.
Space station crewmembers can use their own experiences in space to conduct research, Pettit said. For example, crewmembers observed their own bone density loss, a space-related condition that on Earth is associated with old age, he said.
Pettit was joined by astronaut Thomas Reiter with the European Space Agency, who focused on continuing collaboration between the five countries that teamed up to build the space station. One of the space station's most important roles is to foster interest in science, math and space research among students, witnesses at Wednesday's hearing agreed.
When Gerstenmaier mentioned a student-proposed investigation into how jumping spiders adjust to a zero-gravity environment, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said he's anxious to know the results. "Let us know about the spider when that happens," he told Gerstenmaier.
"Now we need to know." Pettit said it would break his heart to tell students they can't conduct the same space-based research he does. "I think you could say that there are more students that want to become an astronaut and fly in space than want to become President of the United States," Pettit said. "And I think that's a good thing."
Lack of crew time is biggest roadblock to research on ISS, astronaut says
Dan Leone - Space News
An astronaut told U.S. lawmakers July 25 that the greatest impediment to research and science aboard the international space station (ISS) is the limited amount of time crew members can devote to these pursuits.
“Currently, I believe the great limiting resource for doing scientific research on station is the availability of crew time,” astronaut Donald Pettit said at a hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation science and space subcommittee. “We have more scientific apparatus on space station, more equipment waiting to be used, more science experiments in the queue than we have crew time in the [U.S. segment] with three crew members that we can spend working on this.”
Pettit, who returned July 1 from a six-month expedition to ISS, said that crew members typically work 13- or 14-hour days on orbit. They can spare about six-and-a-half of those hours for “mission programs,” which might include either government or nongovernment research. The rest of the time, the crew is doing maintenance work “just to keep the machinery going and keep it possible for human beings to be there,” Pettit said.
ISS can support a six-person crew. With the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet, crew members arrive three at a time aboard Russian Soyuz capsules and typically stay for six months. If there are logistical constraints, as there were last year when a Russian cargo freighter bound for ISS crashed due to a launch vehicle failure, the station operates with a three-person skeleton crew. NASA’s top human spaceflight official, William Gerstenmaier, has said ISS could expand to seven-person crews if the agency’s plan to spur development of privately operated space taxis is successful. NASA’s Commercial Crew Program targets a 2017 start date for private flights, but the agency says insufficient funding threatens that date.
Moreover, the total time available for ISS research depends upon how long the outpost stays in space. The official end-of-life is 2020, but Congress could approve an extension. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), a longtime advocate for space station research, asked Gerstenmaier whether that could be done safely.
“We’re looking technically to make sure that there’s not any problems extending space station,” Gerstenmaier replied. “We think from a physical standpoint, station could be operable probably to 2028.”
Gerstenmaier urged a continued focus on station utilization, suggesting there might be more interest in continuing ISS operations if NASA can demonstrate a return on the government’s investment so far.
“I think it’s important at this point to focus … on utilizing the station and showing some benefit and return back,” Gerstenmaier said. “If we can do that, in the next couple of years, then I think the discussion about ‘Do we continue beyond 2020?’ becomes a little bit of an easier discussion.”
NASA estimates it will end up pitching in about half of the station’s estimated $100 billion lifecycle cost. To justify the great expense for the only human presence in space, lawmakers have pushed NASA to utilize the space station as a research platform for improving life on Earth. In 2005, through legislation introduced by Hutchinson, Congress designated the U.S. segment of ISS a National Laboratory. In 2010, again at Hutchison’s insistence, Congress ordered NASA to set aside half the ISS National Lab’s capacity for nonagency science. It further ordered NASA to pick a nonprofit organization to manage these projects.
A Florida-based organization, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), was selected for that role in 2011. The group is planning to send its first payload into space in 2013 and, in the meantime, is trying to get the private sector interested in ISS-based research.
CASIS is particularly interested in biomedical experiments, specifically those targeting osteoporosis, a degenerative bone disease, and the human immune system. The station’s microgravity environment makes ISS well suited for such research, said James Royston, interim executive director of CASIS.
“We can be the organization that allows [potential users] to think of the [ISS] lab as just another lab,” Royston told lawmakers at the July 25 hearing. “You don’t have to worry about rockets, and all kinds of different paperwork and science advisory panels, and everything else. We’re there to do that for you.”
CASIS has not identified which companies want to do ISS-based research, but it says several have expressed interest.
Meanwhile, CASIS is still trying to patch up a lingering controversy that in March led the group’s first executive director, space scientist Jeanne Becker, to resign.
The proposal that led to the establishment of CASIS was sponsored by, among others, Boeing Co.; Space Florida, that state’s aerospace economic development corporation; and a Malvern, Pa., company called ProOrbis. Prior to the competition to select an ISS National Lab manager, ProOrbis provided NASA with a blueprint for a “national lab management entity.” ProOrbis and others then used this blueprint as the basis for CASIS, which ProOrbis planned to serve as a consultant.
CASIS’ interim board of directors, led by Space Florida President Frank DiBello, maintain that there is nothing improper about ProOrbis’ helping to craft the CASIS proposal, or collecting revenue as a consultant for the nonprofit.
In written testimony published July 25, Royston said, “[T]he Interim Board has identified the first group of permanent Board of Directors candidates, all of whom represent the best American minds in the fields of scientific research and management from academia, government, and industry.” Royston did not say when the permanent board will be established, or how long it will take to appoint an executive director.
It cannot be soon enough for Hutchison, who told Royston she is “anxiously awaiting the appointment of the board so we can see CASIS get up and go and start showing results.”
SLS passes major agency review, moves on to preliminary design
Mike Kelley - Huntsville Times
The Space Launch System (SLS) Program is moving ahead, and has just completed a combined System Requirements Review and System Definition Review, which set requirements technical, cost, performance and schedule requirements of the overall launch vehicle system,according to a release from NASA headquarters.
With this milestone, SLS now moves ahead to its preliminary design phase, the release said. The SLS program is managed by Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.
As part of the process, an independent review board comprised of technical experts from across NASA evaluated SLS Program documents describing vehicle specifications, budget and schedule. The board confirmed SLS is ready to move from concept development to preliminary design.
"The in-depth assessment confirmed the basic vehicle concepts of the SLS, allowing the team to move forward and start more detailed engineering design," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.
The reviews also confirmed the SLS system architecture and integration with the Orion spacecraft, managed by NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, and the Ground Systems Development and Operations Program, which manage the operations and launch facilities at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
"This is a pivotal moment for this program and for NASA," said SLS Program Manager Todd May. "This has been a whirlwind experience from a design standpoint. Reaching this key development point in such a short period of time, while following the strict protocol and design standards set by NASA for human spaceflight is a testament to the team's commitment to delivering the nation's next heavy-lift launch vehicle."
The combination of the two assessments represents a fundamentally different way of conducting NASA program reviews, allowing the SLS program to reach this milestone less than ten months after the program was announced in September 2011. The next major program milestone is the preliminary design review, targeted for late next year.
The first test flight of NASA's Space Launch System, which will feature a configuration for a 70-metric-ton (77-ton) lift capacity, is scheduled for 2017. As SLS evolves, a three-stage launch vehicle configuration will provide a lift capability of 130 metric tons (143 tons) to enable missions beyond low Earth orbit and support deep space exploration.
Space Launch System formally enters design phase
Zach Rosenberg - FlightInternational.com
The Space Launch System (SLS), the super-heavy lift launch vehicle designed to launch crewed missions beyond low Earth orbit (LEO), has passed a combination system definition review/system requirements review, allowing engineers to start finalizing the design.
The rocket, scheduled for first flight in 2017, has now been formally moved into the preliminary design phase. Given the extensive use of off-the-shelf components built for other spacecraft and previously-done design work, the preliminary design phase is not expected to take long, though NASA officials were unavailable to answer schedule questions.
The SLS will be the most powerful launch vehicle ever built, capable of lifting 130mt to LEO in its planned final form. The first flight, in 2017, will be an interim model using an upper stage adapted from the United Launch Alliance Delta IV, and solid rocket boosters from the Space Shuttle programme. The first flight of the complete version will be in 2021 or later.
The rocket is designed specifically to launch a crewed Lockheed Martin Orion capsule on missions outside LEO. While no missions beyond initial test flights have been confirmed, possible destinations include a return to the moon, or trips to Mars or a nearby asteroid.
NASA will explore F-1 upgrade for heavy lifter
Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week
The powerful rocket engine developed in the 1960s to launch the first men to the Moon could be reprised in the 2020s as the powerplant for strap-on boosters that NASA hopes to use in heavy-lift human missions to Mars. Under a new NASA risk-reduction project, Dynetics Inc., a relative newcomer to space launch, will explore the idea for the U.S. agency in partnership with Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.
Rocketdyne built the 1.5-million-lb.-thrust F-1 engine for NASA, which mounted five of the kerosene-fueled behemoths in the Saturn V first stage to propel the massive Saturn/Apollo stack off the launch pad. The F-1—19 ft. tall, with a nozzle 12.5 ft. across—epitomized the scale of the flight hardware and ground infrastructure NASA used to beat the Soviet Union to the Moon.
If NASA decides to fly it again, it probably will be tested in the same stands built for the F-1 at the agency's Marshall and Stennis field centers, stacked in the same 40-story Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center used for Apollo and the space shuttle, and launched from one of the pads built for the Moon program.
Dynetics scored big in a $200 million NASA effort to reduce the risk on advanced boosters for the planned Space Launch System (SLS) that Congress ordered as a government-owned deep-space alternative to the commercial vehicles the agency wants to use for transport to the International Space Station. Last week NASA selected the company to negotiate for three of six 30-month study contracts designed to reduce risk on the twin boosters that will be needed to raise the SLS capability from an initial 70 metric tons to the 130 metric tons the agency believes will be needed for human missions beyond low Earth orbit.
“With an F-1-based approach, we get significant performance enhancement beyond the 130 [tons], on the order of 20 metric tons,” Steve Cook, Dynetics' director of space technologies and NASA's former Ares program manager, tells Aviation Week's Jefferson Morris.
Headquartered in Huntsville, Ala., near the World War II-vintage U.S. Army arsenal where Wernher von Braun's team developed the Saturn V and its engines, Dynetics was selected for its risk-reduction proposals covering the F-1 engine itself, the main propulsion system for a strap-on booster and the booster structure. For the F-1, Cook says, risk-reduction tasks would include gas generator and powerpack evaluations. The company's main propulsion system proposal would involve cryogenic valve and line-in valve demonstrations, and the structures proposal would demonstrate low-cost cryogenic tank-manufacturing approaches.
“Those risk reductions are focused heavily around affordability . . . because a big deal on the Space Launch System is affordability, while also giving NASA additional performance margin above their 130-metric-ton requirement,” says Cook.
NASA also selected a booster-tank proposal offered by Northrop Grumman's Aerospace Systems unit, which would build a subscale composite tank. Aerojet General Corp. has been working on a larger version of the surplus Soviet NK-33 kerosene-fueled rocket engine it modified for the new Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares, and NASA selected its proposal for a full-scale combustion-stability demonstration. NASA chose ATK Launch Systems—which built the four-segment solid-fuel motors used on the space shuttle and a five-segment version for the defunct Ares I crew launcher—to run an integrated booster static test.
NASA plans to use the five-segment solids with the first version of the SLS, a 70-metric-ton vehicle with a Delta IV upper stage. Later it will add a more powerful upper stage and whatever strap-ons it chooses to begin sending astronauts beyond low Earth orbit.
“We want to build a system that will be upgradable and used for decades,” says William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for human exploration operations.
If the Dynetics proposal to use the F-1 in the boosters is accepted, all of the engines on the SLS will have heritage in earlier human spaceflight missions, and all will already have been used for decades when deep-space human missions begin. The F-1 ran a full 2.5-min. test at Edwards AFB, Calif., in 1960, before the A-1 and A-2 test stands at Stennis were built for it. NASA and Rocketdyne are testing the uprated J-2X variant of the Saturn V J-2 engine to power the SLS upper stage. And the main SLS engine will be a throw-away version of the reusable RS-25D space shuttle main engine, also built by Rocketdyne, once the 15 surplus shuttle engines are used up. Developed in the 1970s, it will be the newest basic engine design for what may one day be NASA's newest human launchers.
Rocket companies hope to repurpose Saturn 5 engines
Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com
Dynetics and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne announced Wednesday they are teaming up to resurrect the Saturn 5 rocket's mighty F-1 engine to power NASA's planned heavy-lift launch vehicle, saying the Apollo-era engine will offer significantly more performance than solid-fueled boosters currently under development.
"The ability to come back and offer NASA a resurrection of probably one of the most venerated successful engines ever, the F-1, is very neat," said Steve Cook, director of space technologies at Dynetics Inc. "The cool factor on this is very high."
NASA plans to award $200 million to multiple companies later this year for 30 months of design and risk reduction work on advanced booster concepts for the agency's Space Launch System, a powerful heavy-lifting rocket designed to dispatch astronaut crews to deep space destinations, including asteroids, Mars, and the moon.
The 30-month performance period is expected to begin Oct. 1 and run through early 2015. The first two flights of the Space Launch System will be boosted off the launch pad by five-segment solid rocket motors built by ATK and derived from the space shuttle program.
NASA hopes a bigger booster will be ready by the third SLS flight in the early 2020s.
Dynetics of Huntsville, Ala., is leading the contractor team proposing the F-1 engine design. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is the bid's propulsion partner and engine builder.
Cook, NASA's former manager of the scrapped Ares rocket program, said each of the two Dynetics boosters on an SLS mission would be propelled by a pair of kerosene-fueled F-1 engines.
"Each of those engines can get up to 1.8 million pounds of thrust," Cook said in an interview Wednesday. "This booster is a very simple, very standard booster. It's 18 feet in diameter. It uses the same attach points as the current five-segment solid rocket booster."
Pratt & Whitney is the prime contractor for the Space Launch System's core propulsion system, initially comprised of up to four hydrogen-fueled RS-25D/E engines. The cryogenic upper stage's J-2X engine, another redesigned engine from the Apollo moon program, is under development by NASA and Pratt & Whitney for SLS flights beginning in the 2020s.
The first two SLS missions, scheduled for 2017 and 2021, will be powered by an interim cryogenic upper stage, a four-engine core, and twin five-segment solid rocket boosters. The 2021 mission, planned to loop around the moon, will be the mammoth rocket's first crewed launch.
The earliest version of the Space Launch System will stand 30 stories tall and lift at least 70 metric tons, or 154,000 pounds, into low Earth orbit.
Subsequent long-duration missions to further destinations, such as asteroids or Mars, will require a more robust version of the Space Launch System using the J-2X engine and advanced boosters.
Along with the Dynetics and Pratt & Whitney team, ATK and other industrial contractors also submitted proposals for the advanced booster risk reduction awards.
"We're essentially flying out assets we have while we try to evolve to a more affordable and capable booster for the future," said Todd May, NASA's Space Launch System program manager, in an interview in February.
NASA plans a design and development contract for the advanced booster after the risk reduction phase ends in 2015.
Cook said the F-1 engine-powered advanced booster will provide about 20 metric tons, or 44,000 pounds, more lift capacity into low Earth orbit over the heavy-lift launcher's baseline solid rocket boosters.
"We offer a domestic booster design that takes advantage of the flight-proven Apollo-Saturn F-1, still the most powerful U.S. liquid rocket engine ever flown," said Ron Ramos, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne's vice president for exploration and missile defense. "PWR is the only company to have returned a Saturn-era engine, the J-2X, to production. We bring unique lessons to the advanced booster cost and performance trades."
Five F-1 engines flew on the first stage of each Saturn 5 rocket's upper stage. The Saturn 5 flew 13 times, launching astronauts to the moon and lofting NASA's Skylab space station into Earth orbit.
"That makes it one of the most reliable engines ever," Cook said. "You don't want to tinker with a design that you know works and has been successful."
Cook said the F-1 engine activities planned for the next 30 months, assuming Dynetics wins an award from NASA, include full-scale systems demonstrations and some hotfire testing.
The amount of progress depends on the level of funding provided by NASA, Cook said, adding the contractor team is already refurbishing some equipment with private capital.
"The risks associated with that [engine] were retired 40 years ago," Cook said. "What that allowed us to do was to focus our modifications and our changes around manufacturability, affordability and reliability. You take that engine and incorporate the lessons learned over the last 40 years of human, commercial and [military] spaceflight in propulsion systems, we think we can bring a very affordable package to the game. Largely, the design we're bringing is very similar or the same, and we've focused on manufacturability, bringing new processes and techniques that have been proven out."
"Cost wasn't a factor in the '60s," Cook said. "Cost is a huge factor today."
Anti-matter universe sought by space-based detector
Robert Evans - Reuters
A seven metric ton particle detector parked for over a year on the International Space Station (ISS) aims to establish whether there is an unseen "dark universe" woven into the cosmos, the scientist leading the project said on Wednesday.
And the detector, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer or AMS, has already broken all records in registering some 17 billion cosmic rays and storing data on them for analysis, Nobel physics laureate Samuel Ting told a news conference.
"The question is: where is the universe made from anti-matter?" said Ting. "It could be out there somewhere far away producing particles that we could detect with the AMS."
Physicists say that the event 13.7 billion years ago that brought the known universe into existence and has been dubbed the "Big Bang" must have created equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. But then anti-matter largely disappeared.
Why that happened is one of the great mysteries of the cosmos which are being investigated through the AMS and scientific analysts back on the ground at CERN, the European particle physics research center where Ting spoke.
The purpose of the AMS program, he said, "is to search for phenomena that so far we have not had the imagination or the technology to discover".
Some researchers have suggested that the invisible "dark matter" estimated to make up about 25 percent of the known universe could be linked to anti-matter, but others say that is highly unlikely.
Wafting veil
These scientists argue that anti-matter could not survive in the close proximity to parts of the visible cosmos that latest observations suggest dark matter occupies - sometimes like a wafting veil between planets and stars.
Matter and anti-matter are almost identical, with the same mass but opposite spin and energy charges. They can form separate parts of some elementary particles but if they are mixed together they are both destroyed instantaneously.
Ting was speaking at a news conference with a team of U.S. astronauts who took the detector, which was developed and built at CERN, up to the ISS in May last year on the last mission of the U.S. space shuttle Endeavour.
He said that so far the $2 billion detector, with its powerful magnets that bend particles with positive and negative charges in different directions, had functioned perfectly and not one of its multiple backup systems had been needed so far.
Ting, a 75-year-old professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, supervises the research on the material gathered from the AMS from CERN, guiding a team of some 500 scientists in many countries, including Russia and China.
He is however cautious about how long it will take for real discoveries to compare with the sighting announced this month of a totally new particle, believed to be the long-sought Higgs Boson, in CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
The boson is part of a force called the Higgs Field that turned the minute pieces of flying debris after the Big Bang into solid matter, bringing them together to form galaxies, stars and planets, and later life.
Asked when he expected to be able to report the first indications of dark matter or of an anti-matter mirror universe, Ting replied: "As late as possible," explaining that the analysis had to be done scrupulously and "step by step".
It would be at least 50 years "before anyone would be foolish enough to launch an experiment like this again" now that the U.S. space program was shut down and current Chinese and Russian spacecraft could not take a load like the AMS, he said.
Astronauts Ring In Antimatter-Hunting Space Experiment's 1st Birthday
Clara Moskowitz - Space.com
A team of astronauts, including retired spaceman Mark Kelly and his wife, former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, toured a European physics lab Wednesday to mark the first birthday of the International Space Station's most expensive, ambitious science experiment.
Kelly and the rest of the astronaut crew that helped launch the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer into space last year paid a visit to the physics lab overseeing the experiment — the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, or AMS as it is called, collects cosmic ray particles from space high above the atmosphere of Earth, which blocks most of these rays from reaching the ground. The $2 billion machine aims to probe the nature of the particles that make up the universe, especially the weirdest sides of it, like dark matter and antimatter.
The particle detector was launched on the space shuttle Endeavour's STS-134 mission, the second-to-last flight of the 30-year shuttle program. It was installed on the International Space Station on May 19, 2011 and began operations a short time later.
"The AMS detector has so far achieved everything we expected of it," Nobel laureate and AMS principal investigator Samuel Ting said in a statement. "That's a great credit to the team that put the detector together, and the team that installed it on the ISS. We're honored to have them here today to celebrate AMS's fist year in space."
The lauded experiment almost never made it to space, after the space shuttle Columbia, which was supposed to transport it, was destroyed with its crew in 2003. It took a Congressional vote to add an extra shuttle mission before the fleet was retired in 2011 to revive the AMS project.
Today (July 25), the six astronauts that flew on STS-134 made an appearance at CERN, where AMS' data is analyzed. The crew includes commander Kelly, pilot Gregory H. Johnson and mission specialists Michael Fincke, Greg Chamitoff, Andrew Feustel, all of NASA, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Roberto Vittori.
The astronaut crew helped plant a tree to commemorate the launch of AMS, and spoke to more than 200 undergraduate students from around the world studying at CERN for the summer.
"It's a real privilege to visit CERN today, and we're proud to have played a part in launching the AMS experiment's fascinating research program," Kelly said. "Meeting some of the young summer students who represent the future of science and engineering was a highlight."
Kelly was accompanied on the visit by his wife, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, the Associated Press reported. Giffords is making her first trip abroad after suffering a gunshot wound to the head in a mass shooting last year. Giffords did not speak publicly, but Kelly told the Associated Press, "She's doing great, she's doing great. She's just here to support me."
During AMS' first year in space, physicists have been using its initial data to calibrate the detector and better understand the extreme space environment in which it functions on the exterior of the space station. The machine has already detected hordes of particles, including some types never seen in nature before.
"Among AMS's achievements is that for the first time, we've been able to identify electrons with energies exceeding 1 TeV before they enter the atmosphere," Ting said. "This holds out great promise for the AMS research program that's now getting underway."
Gabrielle Giffords tours European physics lab
John Heilprin - Associated Press
Former U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords toured the European particle physics laboratory Wednesday, cheerfully facing reporters but saying little during her first trip abroad since being shot in the head last year.
Giffords was accompanying her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, on a visit to the European Center for Nuclear Research, two days after she rode a cable car up into the French Alps. The lab, known as CERN, had assembled a $2 billion cosmic ray detector that Kelly and his team carried to the International Space Station in May 2011.
That mission came just months after Giffords, a lawmaker from Arizona, was shot by a gunman in a Jan. 8, 2011, rampage that killed six and wounded 13 outside a Tucson supermarket. Since then, Giffords has undergone intensive therapy and made dramatic progress, but she also decided to leave her seat in Congress to focus on her recovery.
During a press conference Wednesday, Kelly joined CERN officials and four other astronauts in recalling the delicate task of installing the 7-ton Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the space station so that it can scan the universe for signs of dark matter and antimatter. Kelly commanded the mission, which was the final flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Nobel Laureate Samuel Ting, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the principal investigator for the CERN-based project, said the detector is functioning "perfectly" and an international team of 600 scientists has now collected data from 18 billion cosmic rays.
Giffords, a Democrat, served on the House Science and Technology Committee, and took on NASA affairs while heading the space subcommittee. Ting singled her out for praise because of her support for the U.S. space program.
"Thank you," she quickly replied, beaming.
The 42-year-old former lawmaker said nothing else publicly, but sat during most of the half-hour press conference with her left hand clasping the hand of Ting's wife, Susan, a psychologist who is assisting her husband's project outside Geneva and who said she found Giffords to be caring and sweet.
Quiet but alert, Giffords walked slowly, with the help of aides, and was dressed casually in sneakers and slacks with her right hand in a brace and her right arm in a sling. The bullet wound in the left side of her brain has affected the use of her right arm and leg.
On Monday, Giffords and Kelly rode a cable car up the Aiguille du Midi outside Chamonix, France, where Kelly and other astronauts installed a plaque on the Refuge des Cosmiques, a high-altitude French lab for studying cosmic rays. She also ventured a few meters onto the snow, accompanied by Kelly and a mountain guide, for a photo op.
During the press conference, Kelly touched on the months between the shooting and the space mission. "As a family, we had a very difficult time between January 2011 up until I came back from space, on June 1. It was quite a challenge," he said.
He turned to acknowledge his daughters Claire and Claudia, and explained that the space shuttle had a little-known rearview mirror in which he could see the rooftop from where they and his wife were watching his launch — two days before Giffords underwent surgery to repair her skull.
"That was very helpful, just to know they were there supporting me, especially after such a difficult time in our lives," he said.
Kelly said his wife would not grant interviews until sometime later in Arizona. "She's doing great, she's doing great," Kelly told The Associated Press. "She's just here to support me."
Kelly also declined to comment on the Aurora, Colorado, movie massacre last Friday that killed 12 and wounded dozens of others. But soon after the killings he tweeted: "Gabby and I were horrified to hear of the tragedy in Colorado last night. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families."
Jared Loughner, a college dropout, was charged with first-degree murder in the attempted assassination of Giffords and other alleged crimes stemming from the shooting. He pleaded not guilty and was found mentally unfit to stand trial.
Democrat Ron Barber, Giffords' former aide who also was injured in the shooting that nearly took her life, won a June 12 special election to replace her in the U.S. House of Representatives, a victory she celebrated by hugging and kissing him on his forehead.
International Space Station – The Most Amazing Flying Machines Ever
Space.com
The International Space Station (ISS) is the most complex international scientific and engineering project in history and the largest structure humans have ever put into space. This high-flying satellite is a laboratory for new technologies and an observation platform for astronomical, environmental and geological research. As a permanently occupied outpost in outer space, it serves as a stepping stone for further space exploration.
The station flies at an average altitude of 248 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth. It circles the globe every 90 minutes at a speed of about 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kph). In one day, the station travels about the distance it would take to go from Earth to the moon and back.
Five different space agencies representing 15 countries built the $100 billion International Space Station and continue to operate it today. NASA, Russia's Federal Space Agency, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency are the primary space agency partners on the project.
Structure
The International Space Station was taken into space piece-by-piece and gradually built in orbit. It consists of modules and connecting nodes that contain living quarters and laboratories, as well as exterior trusses that provide structural support, and solar panels that provide power. The first module, Russia's Zarya module, launched in 1998. The station has been continuously occupied since Nov. 2, 2000. The space station is planned to be operated through at least 2020.
During the space station's major construction phase, some Russian modules and docking ports were launched directly to the orbiting lab, while other NASA and international components (including Russian hardware) were delivered on U.S. space shuttles.
The space station, including its large solar arrays, spans the area of a U.S. football field, including the end zones, and weighs 861,804 pounds (391,000 kilograms), not including visiting vehicles. The complex now has more livable room than a conventional five-bedroom house, and has two bathrooms, a gymnasium and a 360-degree bay window. Astronauts have also compared the space station's living space to the cabin of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet.
The space station is so large that it can be seen from Earth without the use of a telescope by night sky observers who know when and where to look. The space station can rival the brilliant planet Venus in brightness and appears as a bright moving light across the night sky.
Crew size
A six-person expedition crew typically stays four to six months aboard the ISS. The first space station crews were three-person teams, though after the tragic Columbia shuttle disaster the crew size temporarily dropped to two-person teams. The space station reached its full six-person crew size in 2009 as new modules, laboratories and facilities were brought online.
If the crew needs to evacuate the station, they can return to Earth aboard two Russian Soyuz vehicles docked to the ISS. Additional crewmembers are transported to the ISS by Soyuz. Prior to the retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet in 2011, new space station crewmembers were also ferried to and from the station during shuttle missions.
Crews aboard the ISS are assisted by mission control centers in Houston and Moscow and a payload control center in Huntsville, Ala. Other international mission control centers support the space station from Japan, Canada and Europe. The ISS can be controlled from mission control centers in Houston or Moscow.
Facts about International Space Station
· The ISS solar array surface area could cover the U.S. Senate Chamber three times over.
· ISS eventually will be larger than a five-bedroom house.
· ISS will have an internal pressurized volume of 33,023 cubic feet, or equal that of a Boeing 747.
· The solar array wingspan (240 feet / 73 meters) is longer than that of a Boeing 777 200/300 model, which is 212 feet (64.6 m).
· Fifty-two computers will control the systems on the ISS.
· More than 115 space flights will have been conducted on five different types of launch vehicles over the course of the station’s construction.
· More than 100 telephone-booth sized rack facilities can be in the ISS for operating the spacecraft systems and research experiments
· The ISS is almost four times as large as the Russian space station Mir, and about five times as large as the U.S. Skylab.
· The ISS will weigh almost one million pounds (925,627 pounds / 419,857 kilograms). That’s the equivalent of more than 320 automobiles.
· The ISS measures 357 feet (108 meters) end-to-end. That’s nearly the length of a football field including the end zones.
· 3.3 million lines of software code on the ground supports 1.8 million lines of flight software code.
· 8 miles (12.8 kilometers) of wire connects the electrical power system.
· In the International Space Station’s U.S. segment alone, 1.5 million lines of flight software code will run on 44 computers communicating via 100 data networks transferring 400,000 signals (e.g. pressure or temperature measurements, valve positions, etc.).
· The ISS will manage 20 times as many signals as the Space Shuttle.
· Main U.S. control computers have 1.5 gigabytes of total main hard drive storage in U.S. segment compared to modern PCs, which have about 500-gigabyte hard drives.
· The entire 55-foot robot arm assembly is capable of lifting 220,000 pounds, which is the weight of a Space Shuttle orbiter.
· The 75 to 90 kilowatts of power for the ISS is supplied by an acre of solar panels.
Mars Rover Curiosity to Double as Martian Weather Station
Elizabeth Howell - Space.com
When NASA's next Mars rover, Curiosity, arrives at the Red Planet next month, it will help pave the way for the humans that might one day follow.
In addition to looking for signs of current and past habitability to extraterrestrial life, the rover, due to land Aug. 6, will learn more about whether Mars could be habitable for humans — particularly in terms of its weather. The continuous record of Martian weather and radiation Curiosity plans to collect will help future forecasters tell humans — should we choose to go — how best to protect themselves in the harsh environment, experts say.
That's why NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate paid to include a radiation detector onboard the car-size Curiosity, the centerpiece of the Mars Science Laboratory mission, which is run by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“When we were designing Curiosity, we were going to use it for our habitability investigations as well,” said Ashwin Vasavada, MSL's deputy project scientist. “But it really is paid for and intended to understand the environment humans will experience on Mars.”
The $2.5 billion rover launched Nov. 26, 2011. It is designed to work for at least two years on Mars.
Curiosity will sample the Martian environment every hour through two main instruments: a meteorology station and a radiation detector. The instruments will run even when the rover is sleeping, during the Martian night, to provide a continual stream of data.
The Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD), in fact, began running during Curiosity's eight-month journey to Mars. Radiation from the sun and galactic cosmic rays occur throughout the solar system, meaning that humans would be exposed to elevated radiation from the moment they leave Earth's cradling magnetic field. Understanding how much radiation would bombard the spacecraft is the first step to learning how we can shield humans against it.
When Curiosity begins work on the Red Planet, RAD's telescope detectors will run for 15 minutes every hour, measuring a broad range of high-energy radiation in the atmosphere and on the surface.
It's not fully known just how radiation behaves close to the surface. Although orbiting spacecraft such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter can measure it from above, it's harder for those spacecraft on high to see radiation close to the ground. Of most concern to scientists are rays that can splinter off from radiation hitting the Martian atmosphere.
“The high-energy particles can generate secondary, lower-energy particles when they interact with molecules of gas in the atmosphere,” Vasavada said.
Most particles in cosmic rays are protons, which can generate secondary gamma rays or neutrons, he added. This process also happens on Earth, but higher in the atmosphere and far away from the surface.
According to Vasavada, these energetic particles can ionize molecules inside humans, breaking the molecules apart and damaging cells. Essential complex organic molecules such as DNA could be affected.
“How much damage a particle does is not simply related to how energetic it is,” he said. “Heavier, less energetic particles produced as secondaries may be rarer than protons to an astronaut, but can do just as much total damage.”
Weather forecasting will also be needed for astronauts roaming on Mars. In a first since the Viking vanguard missions of the 1970s, MSL will feature a full meteorology package called the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station. The Spanish–built REMS will run for at least five minutes every hour, night and day.
To capture the speed and direction of the wind, and the air's temperature and humidity, REMS will use electronic sensors on two booms stretching out horizontally from a camera mast mounted on the rover.
Ultraviolet radiation will be measured using a sensor stuck on the rover's deck. Some of the wavelengths it will watch for are the same ones sensed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flying above, providing a more complete record of what's happening on Mars.
Inside the rover, an air pressure sensor will taste the air outside through a tube with a small opening to the atmosphere. Radiation-sensitive electronics controlling REMS will also stay inside Curiosity to protect them from the elements.
Through coordinating MSL's weather and radiation sensing with what is seen from above, NASA expects a better picture of what Mars looks and feels like, making it easier for humans to get there.
The Astronaut Bride
Amy Davidson - New Yorker Magazine
Five months after Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in outer space, she put on a white dress, with a puffy skirt and a veil, and married Andrian Nikolayev. The wedding was in November, 1963, in Moscow, and Nikita Khruschev was there; by some accounts, he had also pushed for marriage. Nikolayev was also a cosmonaut; to many people, it seemed romantic, and, more than that, like the logical destination for Tereshkova, a former factory worker who came to the space program by way of a parachuting club. Circle the world: land at the altar. She and Nikolayev had a daughter by the next summer, the first child on earth with two parents who’d left the planet. The marriage effectively fell apart soon afterward, although legally it lasted almost twenty years.
As it happens, that was almost exactly the same interval as that between Tereshkova’s journey and that of Sally Ride, the first American woman (and third overall) in space, who died on Monday, at the age of sixty-one. Ride travelled on a space-shuttle mission in June, 1983. A few months earlier, about the same time as Tereshkova’s divorce, she, too, married a fellow astronaut, Steve Hawley, without any world leaders present. A brief story in the August 15, 1982, Times (“TWO ASTRONAUTS TELL FRIENDS OF THEIR MARRIAGE LAST MONTH”) included this line: “ ‘We didn’t want to make a big deal of it,’ Mrs. Hawley said. ‘We only told a few friends.’ ” Luckily, by the time she went into space, the Times had figured out that “Mrs. Hawley” was still Sally Ride.
And that is when she truly became Sally Ride—not just a scientist and athlete (she’d considered being a professional tennis player) but an icon. That meant more discussion of her personal life. A June 19, 1983, “Woman in the News” story in the Times said Ride and Hawley “were quietly married, making them the first astronauts to do so”—meaning, perhaps, the first Americans (or the first to do so quietly)—and that their house was “laced with mementos of the space age,” including “shuttle dishware.” Ride’s 1982 marriage is mentioned in her Times obituary, as is her divorce, in 1987. (The space decor comes up, too.) Then, at the end, there’s this:
Dr. Ride is survived by her partner of 27 years, Tam O’Shaughnessy; her mother, Joyce; and her sister, Ms. Scott, who is known as Bear. (Dr. O’Shaughnessy is chief operating officer of Dr. Ride’s company.)
Bear Scott, Ride’s sister, and her company, Sally Ride Science, confirmed to reporters that no one should mistake “partner” for business partner: “We consider Tam a member of the family,” Bear Scott told BuzzFeed. She, too, is a lesbian (and a Presbyterian minister) but more open than her sister ever was. The listing of O’Shaughnessy as Ride’s partner was apparently the first time the relationship had been in the public record. Bear Ride talked about her sister’s “very fundamental sense of privacy.”
The reactions to what was referred to as a “posthumous coming out” were, on the whole, sympathetic, but rich with questions. USA Today referred to “the quiet, graceful way in which she revealed her love for another woman.” Would doing so, say, at a gay-rights rally, or by applying for a marriage license, or even just in an interview, have been loud and graceless? (The title of the article, which included understanding quotes from the Human Rights Campaign, was “FORMER ASTRONAUT SALLY RIDE CHOSE PRIVACY OVER GAY CAUSES.”) There was, as Bear Scott hoped there would be, happiness about having a new lesbian hero. Some commentators noted that, even if they had been married under state law, the Defense of Marriage Act would have kept O’Shaughnessy from receiving any of Ride’s federal benefits.
But the deep appreciation and respect that welled up for a woman who was not only brave enough to blast off on a rocket but devoted her life afterward to encouraging girls to go into science and math was tinged, in some quarters, by muffled disappointment—not about her identity, but about that very quiet. Andrew Sullivan called Ride an “absent heroine.”
And she was a heroine, especially to many girls. She openly acknowledged that the women’s movement had made her trip to space possible—that it didn’t just happen. She told reporters at the time of her flight, “It’s too bad our society isn’t further along.” Again, that was her work; she had a sense of what it meant to be a role model, to be Sally Ride. Perhaps she thought that parents would not buy the children’s science books that she co-wrote with O’Shaughnessy, who helped run Sally Ride Science and was described on its Web site as her “friend,” if they thought the authors were lesbians. The more troubling question there is not for Ride but for the rest of us: If that was her fear, was she right? Have we, as a nation, not been ready to let a lesbian inspire our daughters to fly, if they want to, to the moon, and back?
We may, at least, have reached a moment where being a “private person” is no longer a satisfying answer to the dilemma of the closet. Ride was sixty-one, and so there is talk of the mores of a certain “generation.” No one wants to make anyone’s life harder. But at some point the line between quiet, and silent, and withholding becomes unclear. It is significant that the generals and admirals who came around to ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which banned gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military, talked, above all, about not wanting to ask their troops to lie.
The dates in Ride’s obituary suggest a math problem. She was married in 1982, flew on the shuttle in 1983 and 1984, became O’Shaughnessy’s partner in 1985 (2012 minus the twenty-seven years mentioned in the obituary) when she was still intended to fly another mission, saw the shuttle program suspended in 1986 after the Challenger disaster (which she helped to investigate), divorced in 1987.
Are such calculations too personal, too intrusive, too loud? There is a valid historical question about what Ride’s romantic life meant to NASA. Did you need to be married to a man to be the first woman in space? A number of press reports mention, by way of explanation for Ride’s silence, that NASA would never have kept anyone openly gay in the space program. (Would it now?) Khrushchev may not have been standing behind the altar, but whatever pressure there was on Ride to marry to efface not only the image of an unattached space-girl but of a lesbian is worth contemplating. The Soviets exploited and corrupted something that is simply true and right: marriage—and the forming of meaningful partnerships—are social acts that create and reflect connections not only between two individuals but between them and their community. In this sense, marriage is also political.
This is not to dismiss the potential for real affection in Ride’s first marriage (or in Tereshkova’s). At a moment, though, when same-sex marriage is at the center of a legal and political debate—and likely to appear before the Supreme Court—with opponents invoking a plasticized image of “traditional” marriage, it is important to think about what those traditions entailed, demanded, and, at times, denied to people, in real lives. An astronaut should not only get to be a bride; she should be able to have a bride, too.
Sally Ride never stopped opening doors for women
Houston Chronicle (Editorial)
Sally Ride. What a perfect name. What a soaring spirit. What an inspiration to a generation of women dreaming of playing a role in space exploration and other traditionally male-dominated fields.
Ride, the first American woman in space, died Monday at 61. Much too soon, as others have commented. We concur, while offering thanks for the time she had among us, using it to pack several lifetimes worth of adventure, encouragement, advocacy - and even nationally ranked tennis - into her allotted years.
Sally Ride will be remembered as a particular champion for science and math education, along with space exploration - and for emphasizing the roles that women could play in these "no girls allowed" fields of endeavor.
The spotlight came to the fame-reluctant Ride nearly 30 years ago, on June 18, 1983, when she went aboard the space shuttle Challenger as a mission specialist.
Ride flew again aboard Challenger in 1984, before moving on to a career as a physicist and educator. Through her Sally Ride Science organization and authorship of six books on science, Ride touched millions of young lives.
One colleague said it best about Sally K. Ride when he commented that she never stopped opening doors for young women to walk through.
And so it seems the most fitting memorial the nation can offer to the life of this accomplished mathematician, scientist and teacher is to continue opening those doors for young women; indeed, for all our youth.
For now, thank you for your sterling example and godspeed, Sally Ride.
Space Walk of Fame Museum squeezed for space
Museum lacks room for growing NASA collection
Scott Gunnerson - Florida Today
Outer space may be limitless, but display space in Titusville is a different story.
With the end of the space shuttle program, the U.S. Space Walk of Hall of Fame Foundation is collecting more memorabilia from 30-plus years of shuttle flights.
But museum President Charlie Mars can’t fit all the space memorabilia and relics into his museum.
Some items dating back to the 1950s are stuffed into the 2,400-square-foot U.S. Space Walk of Fame Museum on Main Street.
Others are part of remote displays or warehoused. More still sit in attics, closets and garages of current and former space workers along the Space Coast.
Mars wants to bring it all together in one location for a fitting display of man’s achievement of space flight and reaching the moon.
“People can come here and see what those of us did back in those days making history, going to the moon and back, getting the shuttle up and back, getting the space station up and working,” said Mars, 76, who worked in the space industry from 1963 to 1997.
When the space museum was forced to move out of Searstown Mall in 2006 to its current location, it lost more than 5,000 square feet of display space. Some items were returned to the people who helped make that history.
“We gave a lot of stuff back when we moved out of Searstown Mall,” said Lee Starrick, museum administrator. “We probably gave a third of what we had back because it was on loan to us.”
Things such as launch consoles and a Titan 2 second-stage engine, images and documentation of space flight are packed away in storage, and the collection keeps growing.
“We have probably got 250 to 300 posters,” Starrick said. “We have no place for those. We just don’t have the room for big photographs, big maps.
“We have tons and tons of research books on the early space program. A lot of books and launch procedures from the early days. Most of that stuff (NASA) shredded. Luckily, some people saved some of it.”
The public can’t view the massive collection until the museum can find larger accommodations.
“I’d want at least 10,000 square feet,” Starrick said. “Give us 50,000 square feet, and I will fill it up.”
But foundation resources and fundraising are concentrated on completion of worker monuments at Space View Park.
“For the kind of space we are looking for, $5,000 to $10,000 a month is the cheapest we could probably get,” Mars said. “We just can’t afford that.”
The economic downturn and space industry layoffs in Brevard County also hamper the nonprofit U.S. Space Walk of Fame Foundation’s chances of local governments helping out.
Mars hopes the economy turns around in four or five years and then either the city or county would consider sponsoring the space museum.
“I’m looking at getting past the present economy,” Mars said.
City and county leaders support the idea of an expanded space museum but agree that it is not a top priority now.
County Commissioner Robin Fisher, who represents north Brevard, said he would like to help the space museum but declining county revenue creates difficult choices.
“There is so much history there, and it’s a priority to a lot of people,” Fisher said. “But when you start ranking your priorities, does it come above roads, bridges, sheriff, emergency management, parks, libraries, mosquito control?
Titusville faces the same revenue issues.
“That is the economic environment we are in now, everybody is suffering to some degree,” Titusville Vice Mayor Walt Johnson said. “We are trying to keep the taxes down, so we can’t do what we used to do.
“The federal government isn’t giving the grants they used to, the state, county and cities aren’t, so all nonprofits are suffering.”
Titusville City staff has recently explored using bonds to fund building a facility to accommodate the space museum, but the council declined to move forward
Titusville helps the U.S. Space Walk of Fame Foundation with the construction of downtown monuments. This year, the city gave the foundation a $50,000 grant for work on the shuttle monument under construction at Space View Park.
“They’ve done a lot for this community,” Johnson said. “It is extremely important. That is our heritage.”
Meanwhile, Mars explores more opportunities to display the collection of space history throughout the county.
He met this month with Haley Sharpe Design, a British-based design firm, and Baltimore-based architecture company GWWO Inc. to discuss a space museum display at Port Canaveral’s new welcome center scheduled to open next year.
“They wanted to take a look at the stuff we have and see whether it is compatible with what they are thinking about for display,” Mars said.
“Surely we will be able to put several articles and maybe a display case or two down there. We are not looking at a lot of stuff.”
Mars will continue to gather evidence of man’s work in space, display it where he can and store the rest until the economy improves.
He knows local governments are willing to help.
“If we had a building right now that the county owned free and clear that was vacant and we didn’t have any use for it, I would put them in it tomorrow,” Fisher said.
END
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