HSF news 9/21/12

Late news from Kyle,   Happy Friday everyone and have a great weekend.   ENDEAVOUR “LAST FLIGHT:” After an overnight at Dryden, the SCA delivers Endeavour to LAX following an approximate 4.5 hour flight that includes some spectacular low flybys of Sacramento, San Francisco (think Golden Gate Bridge) and Los Angeles (hello Hollywood). NASA TV covers departure at 10:15 am Central (8:15 am PDT / 11:15 EDT).   NASA TV: ·                     10 am Central (11 EDT / 8 PDT) – SCA/Endeavour departure from Dryden coverage ·                     10:15 am Central (11:15 EDT / 8:15 PDT) – SCA “wheels up” for Calif flyover; LAX landing ·                     11 am Central (Noon EDT)  - File of Exp 33/34 qualification training sim runs at Star City   Human Spaceflight News Friday – September 21, 2012   SCA/Endeavour Edwards & Dryden arrival Thursday   HEADLINES AND LEADS   SpaceX, NASA set launch date for first contracted cargo mission   W.J. Hennigan - Los Angeles Times   While all eyes are on the arrival of space shuttle Endeavour to Southern California, engineers at rocket maker SpaceX in Hawthorne are readying its spacecraft for the first NASA contracted cargo resupply flight to the International Space Station. On Thursday, NASA confirmed that the much-anticipated launch of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft aboard the 18-story Falcon 9 is scheduled for Oct. 7 at 8:34 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, Fla. The Dragon will be filled with about 1,000 pounds of supplies.   Private spacecraft to launch space station cargo on Oct. 7   Space.com   A private space capsule's first contracted cargo mission to the International Space Station is slated to launch Oct. 7, NASA officials announced Thursday. SpaceX's robotic Dragon spacecraft is set to blast off atop the company's Falcon 9 rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 8:34 p.m. EDT on Oct. 7 (0034 Oct. 8 GMT). A backup launch opportunity is available the following day, officials said. The mission will kick off Dragon's first-ever bona fide supply run to the station. California-based SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion NASA contract to make 12 such unmanned flights.   Legislation would change how NASA is led   Houston Chronicle   Disappointed with the direction of NASA's human spaceflight program over the past two decades, two Texas congressmen introduced legislation Thursday aimed at de-politicizing the agency. Rep. John Culberson, a Houston Republican, said the lawmakers were pushing the proposal "today to restore the NASA we know and love."   Posey aims to insulate NASA from DC politics Congressman joins call for agency's new path   Ledyard King - Florida Today   NASA could save billions and increase efficiency if it didn't have to pivot from one grand mission to the next each time the White House changes hands, some Republican House members said Thursday. This week, the five lawmakers, including Rep. Bill Posey of Rockledge, introduced legislation they said would insulate the space program from the changing winds of Washington politics and free up money to accomplish important projects. The Space Leadership Preservation Act would revamp NASA's leadership structure by creating a 10-year term for its administrator. Currently, administrators serve at the discretion of the president who nominates them for confirmation by the Senate.   New, Compact Body Scanner Ready for Space Station   Jeremy Hsu - Tech News Daily   Handheld "tricorders" from "Star Trek" remain just a science fiction fantasy for astronauts who need advanced medical care in space. But a new version of full-body scanning technology has the right size and power requirements to possibly fit aboard the International Space Station. The smaller, cheaper version of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine could provide "slice" images of astronauts' bodies to improve studies of human health in space — issues such as bone and muscle loss in low-gravity environments or the effects of deep-space radiation. Space explorers living on moon bases or traveling to Mars could also benefit from having such medical technology available during missions lasting for months or years.   Congress’ Misleading Human Spaceflight Development Chart   Douglas Messier - Parabolic Arc   The Congressmen who are calling for a radical reorganization of NASA believe shifting oversight to a board of directors co-appointed by the President and Congress, allowing the space agency’s administrator to serve a 10-year term, and altering the budget process would insulate NASA from political upheavals caused by changes in Administration and give it a more stable funding profile that would limit cost overruns and mismanagement. The Congressman released a chart showing canceled human spaceflight development programs over the past two decades that they say have wasted more than $20 billion.  The chart, and the politics behind the proposed reforms, deserve some closer scrutiny. We’ll look at the chart in this post.   NASA keeps plugging away in an election year   Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week   In the U.S., space exploration and just about everything else but the meat-and-potatoes issues of war, peace and the economy have been relegated to the back burner while the quadrennial flamefest known as the presidential election plays out on the national stage. Democrats and Republicans have space planks in their policy platforms, but they are not exactly front and center in what passes for debate in the fog of sound bites and tweets.   Museum of Flight lands trove of personal papers from NASA icon George Abbey   Todd Bishop - GeekWire.com   They arrived at Seattle’s Museum of Flight in more than 100 boxes — nearly four decades worth of personal papers from George Abbey, the Seattle native and former director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center who was a key figure behind the Apollo program, the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle program and many other landmark initiatives from the U.S. space agency. “I like to characterize him as the Wizard of Oz — the guy behind the curtain,” says Dan Hagedorn, curator at the Museum of Flight. “He was the one who was really making the decisions of a very central nature about the Space Shuttle program.”   ENDEAVOUR’S “LAST FLIGHT:” 50 MILES IN 4.5 HRS – DRYDEN TO LAX   NASA delays Endeavour takeoff because of Bay Area fog   Los Angeles Times   NASA officials are postponing the takeoff of the space shuttle Endeavour by one hour Friday morning because of fog in San Francisco. The delay will "give us a better chance of having the fog burn off," NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center said in a tweet. The new schedule calls for Endeavour to take off from Edwards Air Force Base in northern Los Angeles County at 8:15 a.m. instead of 7:15 a.m. That would mean Endeavour would fly over the Capitol in Sacramento at about 9:30 a.m. instead of 8:30 a.m., before flying over San Francisco and Monterey.   Shuttle to sightsee around Calif with low flyovers   Alicia Chang - Associated Press   Space shuttle Endeavour will spend its last flying day Friday not rocketing into space, but doing what most tourists do when visiting California: Taking in the state Capitol, Golden Gate Bridge and the Hollywood Sign. In what promises to be a crowd-rousing air show, Endeavour, strapped atop a 747 jumbo jet, will take off after sunrise from Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert and dip low over various landmarks in a 4 1/2-hour sightseeing flight before landing at the Los Angeles International Airport. It's Endeavour's last aerial hurrah before it spends its retirement years as a museum piece.   Space shuttle Endeavour lands piggyback in California   Steve Gorman & Tim Gaynor - Reuters   The space shuttle Endeavour, carried piggyback atop a jumbo jet, landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California on Thursday at the tail end of a cross-country trip to Los Angeles to begin its final mission as a museum exhibit. The specially modified Boeing 747 with the newly retired spaceship perched on its back touched down safely at 12:50 p.m. local time (3:50 p.m. EDT) at Edwards, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert.   Shuttle Endeavour makes final stop at Edwards AFB   William Harwood – CBS News   The shuttle Endeavour, on its way to retirement at a Los Angeles science museum, flew from Houston to California atop a 747 jumbo jet Thursday, dropping down for low-altitude passes over communities along the way, including Tucson, home of Gabrielle Giffords and husband Mark Kelly, Endeavour's last commander, before pressing on to a picture-perfect landing at Edwards Air Force Base. The specially modified 747 and its 78-ton payload made a low pass over the fabled flight test center, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles, to give Air Force personnel, families and tourists a chance to see the orbiter in flight before swooping to a tire-smoking touchdown at 3:51 p.m. EDT (GMT-4).   Space Shuttle Endeavour soars over California today: How to see it   Tariq Malik - Space.com   The space shuttle Endeavour takes to the skies above California for its last-ever flight Friday, giving observers from Sacramento to Los Angeles one last chance to see a NASA shuttle soar through the air atop a jumbo jet. Endeavour's historic California aerial tour will cap a three-day trip from its homeport at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Los Angeles, where the orbiter will ultimately become a museum showpiece at the California Science Center. The shuttle left Florida on Wednesday and made a stopover in Houston (home of NASA's Johnson Space Center, astronaut corps and mission control rooms) before completing its journey west.   Final space shuttle ferryflight to be completed Friday   Justin Ray - SpaceflightNow.com   An aviation marvel since 1977 and a spectacle seen on 107 treks, the modified Boeing 747 jumbojet is hauling the the decommissioned orbiter Endeavour across the country this week on space shuttle era's final ferryflight. "It is going to emotional and hit people in different ways. This is a one-of-a-kind machine and to see the orbiter and SCA, it's a beautiful sight. It is going to be sad to know this is it," said Shuttle Carrier Aircraft flight engineer Henry Taylor said.   Endeavour flies final ferry flight Shuttle makes final fly-over of White Sands Missile Range en route to California museum   Steve Ramirez, Las Cruces Sun-News   Space shuttle Endeavour graced the skies of southern New Mexico on Thursday, dazzling spectators in its wake as it made its final flight to a California museum. The shuttle, riding piggyback on a specially-outfitted 747, landed at Edwards Air Force Base outside Los Angeles after a cross-country trip that began in Florida, with stops in Houston and El Paso, before lazily zig-zagging its way across the New Mexico landscape.   Endeavour flies over Ariz. en route to Calif. home   Paul Davenport & Ramit Plushnick-Masti - Associated Press   Space shuttle Endeavour flew over Tucson on Thursday in honor of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her astronaut husband before continuing its trek west to retirement in a Los Angeles museum. Hundreds of people gathered on the grass mall at the University of Arizona campus to watch the Endeavour, atop a modified jumbo jet, as it flew in from the east and did a partial loop over the city.   What's it like to fly a plane with shuttle on top?   Alicia Chang - Associated Press   It's the ultimate piggyback ride: A space shuttle perched atop a Boeing 747 as the pair crisscrosses the country. For three decades, this was how NASA transported shuttles that landed in the California desert to their Florida home base. But it's coming to an end. This week, four pilots took turns flying a jumbo jet mounted with space shuttle Endeavour on a multi-leg journey bound for Los Angeles where it will go on display in a museum next month. With the shuttle fleet retired, it's the final ferry mission for a group of highly specialized aviators. The elite pilots over the years have included former astronauts, including famed pilot Gordon Fullerton.   Race to Save Space History As Endeavour heads to retirement home, its nearby birthplace is being razed   Andy Pasztor & Tamara Audi - Wall Street Journal   The space shuttle Endeavour is set for a glitzy welcome in Los Angeles Friday as it heads to final retirement at a local museum. But less than 20 miles away, its birthplace is being demolished without ceremony. From the 1960s to the end of the Cold War, a sprawling industrial campus in this suburb east of Los Angeles served as the crucible for U.S.-manned space efforts. Nearly 30,000 engineers and technicians built the Apollo modules that eventually helped astronauts land on the moon. After each flight, crews returned to Downey to be cheered as heroes and leave their handprints in a cement slab—the aerospace equivalent of Hollywood's Walk of Fame. __________   COMPLETE STORIES   SpaceX, NASA set launch date for first contracted cargo mission   W.J. Hennigan - Los Angeles Times   While all eyes are on the arrival of space shuttle Endeavour to Southern California, engineers at rocket maker SpaceX in Hawthorne are readying its spacecraft for the first NASA contracted cargo resupply flight to the International Space Station.   On Thursday, NASA confirmed that the much-anticipated launch of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft aboard the 18-story Falcon 9 is scheduled for Oct. 7 at 8:34 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, Fla. The Dragon will be filled with about 1,000 pounds of supplies.   The company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has a $1.6-billion contract to haul cargo in 12 flights to the space station for NASA. The upcoming launch will be the first flight to fulfill the contract.   In May, SpaceX carried out a successful demonstration mission to the station.   With the retirement of the space shuttle fleet, NASA is hoping to turn the job of carrying cargo and crews over to private industry at a lower cost. Meanwhile, the space agency will focus on deep-space missions to land probes on asteroids and Mars.   NASA has poured hundreds of millions of dollars in seed money into SpaceX in hopes that the company can one day complete routine missions to the space station. The space agency pays $63 million to the Russians each time it wants to send an astronaut to the station.   Critics, including some former astronauts, have voiced concerns about NASA's move toward private space missions. They said private space companies are risky ventures with unproven technology.   With its successful demonstration mission, SpaceX is a leading contender to carry astronauts for NASA one day. Company officials say cargo missions will yield valuable flight experience toward accomplishing this goal by 2015.   Founded in 2002, SpaceX makes the Dragon and Falcon 9 at a sprawling facility in Hawthorne that once was used to assemble fuselage sections for Boeing 747s. The hardware is put on a big rig and trucked to Cape Canaveral for launches.   Private spacecraft to launch space station cargo on Oct. 7   Space.com   A private space capsule's first contracted cargo mission to the International Space Station is slated to launch Oct. 7, NASA officials announced Thursday.   SpaceX's robotic Dragon spacecraft is set to blast off atop the company's Falcon 9 rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 8:34 p.m. EDT on Oct. 7 (0034 Oct. 8 GMT). A backup launch opportunity is available the following day, officials said.   The mission will kick off Dragon's first-ever bona fide supply run to the station. California-based SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion NASA contract to make 12 such unmanned flights.   When it leaves the pad Oct. 7, Dragon will be carrying about 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms) of supplies, officials said. Much of the gear will support the 166 different scientific investigations — including experiments in plant cell biology, human biotechnology and materials demonstrations — planned during the station's current Expedition 33.   If all goes according to plan, Dragon will rendezvous with the station on Oct. 10, at which point Expedition 33 commander Sunita Williams of NASA and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide will grapple it with the orbiting lab's robotic arm.   Dragon will stay attached to the Earth-facing port of the station's Harmony module for several weeks while the Expedition 33 crew unloads the capsule and then loads it back up again with cargo to return to Earth.   Dragon is scheduled to depart the station in late October. It will splash down in the Pacific Ocean, carrying 734 pounds (333 kg) of scientific materials and 504 pounds (229 kg) of space station hardware, officials said.   The Oct. 7 flight won't mark Dragon's maiden mission to the $100 billion orbiting complex. In May, Dragon became the first private vehicle ever to visit the station during a historic demonstration mission that sought to gauge SpaceX's readiness to begin its contracted flights.   NASA also inked a $1.9 billion deal with Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. to make eight unmanned supply runs to the station with its Cygnus spacecraft and Antares rocket. Orbital plans to fly a demonstration mission to the orbiting lab later this year.   Legislation would change how NASA is led   Houston Chronicle   Disappointed with the direction of NASA's human spaceflight program over the past two decades, two Texas congressmen introduced legislation Thursday aimed at de-politicizing the agency.   Rep. John Culberson, a Houston Republican, said the lawmakers were pushing the proposal "today to restore the NASA we know and love."   "The NASA that we know is capable of maintaining that world leadership in space exploration if we would just make them get the politics out of NASA to allow them do what they do best, to let the scientists, the engineers, the astronauts and the professional that have made that agency such an amazing place," he said at a news conference in front of the U.S. Capitol.   The proposal, called the Space Leadership Preservation Act of 2012, would create a 10-year term for the NASA administrator - inspired by the 10-year term of the nonpartisan FBI director - and the establishment of an 11-member board of directors.   Under the act, the president, speaker of the House and president pro tempore of the Senate would each appoint three members of the board and the Senate and House minority leaders would each select one. It is co-sponsored by Culberson, Sugar Land Rep. Pete Olson, Florida Rep. Bill Posey and Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf. The measure has no Democratic sponsors.   Culberson said NASA abandoned missions and wasted taxpayer money because of a lack of continuity in its leadership and an overabundance of influence from presidential administrations, citing 27 program cancellations in 20 years.   The congressmen also expressed concern that the U.S. is steadily falling behind other countries in space exploration and losing its standing as the leader in the new frontier. Olson accused NASA of settling to be "space hitchhikers with the Russians."   "After 40 years of unquestioned U.S. dominance in space, the 21st century has already seen competition from other countries, including those who do not share our democratic values," Wolf said, referring to the advancements in the Chinese space program.   The bill has virtually no chance of winning passage in the waning days of the current Congress. But GOP lawmakers were laying down a marker for debate over NASA's future in the next Congress.   Culberson and Olson said the proposal has the blessing of Rep. Lamar Smith, the San Antonio Republican expected to become chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee if Republicans retain control of the House.   Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, said despite his involvement in previous bipartisan successes with NASA legislation, he was not contacted during the drafting of the Space Leadership Preservation Act.   "It sounded like they just wanted Republicans on it; they didn't want it to be bipartisan," he said.   Green said he hopes Congress will pick up similar legislation in its next session because there have been some recent decisions from NASA headquarters that he has disagreed with, such as the increased push for commercialization of space flight.   "It is no secret that I have disagreed with NASA (headquarters) on many issues," Green said.   NASA administrator Charles Bolden took a swipe this week at critics who question whether the agency has a clear mission heading forward.   "Those who perpetuate that myth only hurt the space program," he said during a Tuesday appearance at the National Press Club.   Posey aims to insulate NASA from DC politics Congressman joins call for agency's new path   Ledyard King - Florida Today   NASA could save billions and increase efficiency if it didn't have to pivot from one grand mission to the next each time the White House changes hands, some Republican House members said Thursday.   This week, the five lawmakers, including Rep. Bill Posey of Rockledge, introduced legislation they said would insulate the space program from the changing winds of Washington politics and free up money to accomplish important projects.   The Space Leadership Preservation Act would revamp NASA's leadership structure by creating a 10-year term for its administrator. Currently, administrators serve at the discretion of the president who nominates them for confirmation by the Senate.   Under the GOP proposal, a board of directors at NASA made up of former astronauts and eminent scientists chosen by the president, the Senate and the House would propose budgets and develop long-term missions.   They also would recommend candidates for top NASA positions and could fire the administrator for cause.   Sponsors, including Frank Wolf of Virginia and Pete Olson and John Culberson of Texas, compare their proposed model to what's currently in place for the FBI.   If NASA had that kind of leadership stability, the $20 billion it spent over the past two decades on half-completed vehicles and poorly planned missions probably would have been used more wisely, Posey said at a news conference Thursday.   “It's not enough to have a dream and mission statement, and it's not enough to gather together some of the greatest engineers and scientists in the world,” said Posey, who worked on the Apollo program and whose district includes Kennedy Space Center. “There needs to be, A, a plan and B, there needs to be an ability to execute that plan.”   The bill stands little chance to pass this year. Today is the last day of the session before the Nov. 6 election. Lawmakers could take up the measure when they return for a lame-duck session after that, but their agenda will be crowded with tax and budget issues.   The GOP lawmakers said they introduced their proposal now to start a conversation that might lead to its passage later.   Posey and others at the news conference spoke about the billions “wasted” when the Constellation return-to-the-moon program advocated by former President George W. Bush was scrapped by President Barack Obama in 2009. Obama decided instead to focus on pushing the private sector to take over missions to the ISS and develop a heavy-lift rocket for an eventual mission to Mars.   NASA spokesman Michael Cabbage declined comment on the GOP lawmakers' proposal.   But NASA officials have said at congressional hearings that some work done on the Constellation program, notably development of the Orion crew vehicle, will be used for the Mars mission.   The GOP lawmakers said their bill should not be construed as a vote of no-confidence in NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr., who often has defended agency funding decisions to skeptical members of Congress.   “I think Charlie Bolden's a good guy and I think (he) would flourish under this bill,” said Wolf, who chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee in charge of funding NASA. He blamed the White House for NASA's problems.   The bill's sponsors said they talked to NASA engineers and other agency officials prior to introducing the bill. Their measure is backed by Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon.   “The space program has lacked long-term stability and focus because of the constantly changing political whims of the executive branch of government,” Cernan said in a statement. “This legislation is critical to providing the much-needed continuity for the future of NASA's far-reaching goals in space.”   Wolf said the bill wouldn't undermine the work of a panel of scientific experts created by Congress last year to examine NASA's strategic direction and recommend a course of action. Their report is due by year's end.   New, Compact Body Scanner Ready for Space Station   Jeremy Hsu - Tech News Daily   Handheld "tricorders" from "Star Trek" remain just a science fiction fantasy for astronauts who need advanced medical care in space. But a new version of full-body scanning technology has the right size and power requirements to possibly fit aboard the International Space Station.   The smaller, cheaper version of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine could provide "slice" images of astronauts' bodies to improve studies of human health in space — issues such as bone and muscle loss in low-gravity environments or the effects of deep-space radiation. Space explorers living on moon bases or traveling to Mars could also benefit from having such medical technology available during missions lasting for months or years.   "I would like to build a facility-class, whole-body-sized MRI," said Gordon Sarty, acting chairman of the biomedical engineering division at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. "Such a project would require an agreement between the ISS space agencies."   The compact MRI could weigh less than a ton — one-twentieth of a ton for a smaller version that scans arms and legs — and would require far less power than traditional MRI. Costs for the full-body MRI could drop from $2 million to as low as $200,000.   Sarty presented his team's compact MRI technology at AIAA Space 2012, a conference organized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, on Sept. 13. He hopes to win funding from the Canadian Space Agency to launch the machine to the space station around 2020.   MRI machines work by using radiofrequency coils to broadcast signals to the human body and receive return signals to build an image of the body's innards. Gradient coils control the machine's magnetic field to produce the precise "slice" images of certain parts of the body.   But MRI technology has limits that would make it both difficult and risky to operate on the space station. Typical MRI machines weigh about 11 tons or more because they rely upon heavy superconducting magnets cooled by liquid helium, and also create stray magnetic fields that could interfere with the space station's operations. Another problem comes from the MRI gradient coils' need to consume huge amounts of power in short bursts.   "These characteristics make it impractical and potentially dangerous to take a conventional MRI into space," Sarty told InnovationNewsDaily.   Compact MRI uses two different technologies to get around such problems. First, it uses a permanent Halbach magnet that is lighter than the superconducting magnet and does not create stray magnetic fields outside the magnet. Second, the compact MRI eliminates the power-hungry gradient coils by using Transmit Array Spatial Encoding (TRASE) that encodes images through the radiofrequency coil alone.   The smaller MRI technology has many uses far beyond space — it could improve overall medical care on Earth by making the cheaper machines available around the world. Its smaller size could also lead to easier use of MRIs in battlefield hospitals or distant parts of the world with limited space and power.   Many of the new technology's pieces have already fallen into place. Halbach magnets have shown they can create the required magnetic fields, and TRASE Coils have successfully created images inside a conventional MRI machine with the gradient coil fields switched off. Sarty's team has also created a full-size mock-up of the compact MRI.   Several of the space conference attendees urged Sarty to develop the Earth applications first before pushing use of the compact MRI in space. But Sarty hopes the Canadian Space Agency can take enough interest to fully fund the concept for testing in a space environment.   "Eventually someone will break a bone in space," Sarty said. "We have no idea if that bone will heal."   Congress’ Misleading Human Spaceflight Development Chart   Douglas Messier - Parabolic Arc   The Congressmen who are calling for a radical reorganization of NASA believe shifting oversight to a board of directors co-appointed by the President and Congress, allowing the space agency’s administrator to serve a 10-year term, and altering the budget process would insulate NASA from political upheavals caused by changes in Administration and give it a more stable funding profile that would limit cost overruns and mismanagement.   The Congressman released a chart showing canceled human spaceflight development programs over the past two decades that they say have wasted more than $20 billion.  The chart, and the politics behind the proposed reforms, deserve some closer scrutiny. We’ll look at the chart in this post.   Shuttle, ISS and Visiting Vehicle Development Programs   COTS   The chart incorrectly lists SpaceX’s program as incomplete. SpaceX has completed its COTS obligations and is moving forward with NASA’s blessing to fly commercial resupply missions beginning next month. The confusion is apparently caused by the out-of-date chart, which hasn’t been updated in two years.   Rocketplane Kistler’s COTS contract was canceled due to the company failing to come up with matching funding. NASA’s financial exposure there was fairly minimal. Given the way the program was structure, NASA had the power to cancel the agreement when it wasn’t working rather than to continue on. That is actually a good thing.   NASA awarded a new COTS agreement to Orbital Sciences Corporation, which will be testing its Antares rocket and Cygnus freighter in the coming months. Since Orbital started much later and could finish COTS only months after SpaceX, the effort seems to be coming along fairly well.   COTS also is an example of a program that was started during one administration (George W. Bush’s) and continued without disruption during a second (Barack Obama’s). The program seems to have been managed effectively by the space agency. Although NASA did end up spending more on the program than planned, the companies also had to put their own funding in. The government’s financial exposure was limited.   So, why are SpaceX’s and Orbital’s COTS efforts even shown on a chart full of canceled development programs? How are they part of the $20 billion that have been wasted?   Space Transportation and Exploration Development Programs   Ares I and Ares V   The Obama Administration did cancel Ares I and Ares V program. However, only the Ares I stayed dead. The Ares V was resurrected into the Space Launch System with a very similar design and most of the same contractors and NASA centers.  There were development disruptions, but the funds spent on Ares V were hardly thrown away because the work completed fed directly into SLS.   Now, there’s a larger debate to be had on whether Ares V and SLS have been a waste of money. Critics say the shuttle-derived vehicle architecture favored by Congress saddles NASA with a rocket that is too expensive to develop, build and operate. They also say that the selection of this approach is more designed to maintain high employment in key states and Congressional districts than it is about giving NASA the tools it needs to effectively explore deep space.   That was certainly the argument the Obama Administration made in cancelling the Ares I and V programs. Congress didn’t see it that way and forced the Administration to continue Ares V under a new name. That’s a normal political process that has gone on since the days of the early Republic.   The irony is that the proposed reforms, which would shift power to board of directors co-appointed by Congress with an administrator serving for 10 years, would do little to address that issue. In fact, the new structure would make it nearly impossible for a presidential administration to cancel a program even if it was failing. This is why the reform effort is likely to fail as well; no president would be inclined to approve such a shift of power.   Orion   I’m not really sure why Orion is even on the chart. The Obama Administration’s efforts to cancel it failed due to Congressional opposition. The program has been renamed as the Multi Purpose Crew Module (or Orion MPCV) and its mission has been strictly focused on beyond Earth orbit exploration.  Other than that, the program has continued on largely as before; the funding spent on it before the Obama Administration took office was not wasted.   X Vehicles   A number of X-vehicles are listed in this category. The X stands for experimental. By their very nature, one would expect that a number of these projects would be canceled or otherwise not come to fruition.   I share Congress’ frustrations that these projects weren’t completed, but I’m not sure the proposed reforms would necessarily prevent future cancellations resulting from mismanagement, cost overruns, limited NASA funding, and the need to fund other more important priorities (e.g., space station construction, deep space vehicles and heavy-lift rockets).   Research and Technology Programs   NASA Institute for Advance Concepts   NIAC was shut down toward the end of the Bush Administration. However, it did fund useful research, so the funding was not wasted. Further, it has since been replaced by the similarly-named NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, which has picked up where NIAC left off. In fact, research projects funded by NIAC are eligible for grants under the new program.   The new NIAC is part of a broader push by the Obama Administration to re-invigorate NASA’s technology research efforts. There is solid Congressional support for this effort, albeit not at the levels proposed by the Obama Administration.   The proposed reforms might result in a more stable long-term research effort. However, that depends upon the priorities of the administrator and the board of directors. If they’re not supportive of strong funding of these efforts, then vital research could be neglected for a decade.   NASA keeps plugging away in an election year   Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week   In the U.S., space exploration and just about everything else but the meat-and-potatoes issues of war, peace and the economy have been relegated to the back burner while the quadrennial flamefest known as the presidential election plays out on the national stage. Democrats and Republicans have space planks in their policy platforms, but they are not exactly front and center in what passes for debate in the fog of sound bites and tweets.   Over at NASA, the political appointees are overseeing the agency's message—under close oversight from their own White House masters—to ensure nothing embarrassing emerges from the civil-space sector before voters go to the polls in November. With the Mars Science Laboratory safely on the surface, the agency's top managers released another $8.5 billion to fund the spectacular work of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for five more years. Otherwise, it is a quiet time at headquarters.   That does not mean the worker bees who keep the engine of space exploration running regardless of who is in the White House haven't been busy. A couple of announcements in the past month show that NASA's permanent staff is fully engaged. Most reassuring was selection of another Mars landing for the 2016 planetary launch window. The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations (InSight) mission will drill down as deep as 16 ft. below the planet's surface to collect unprecedented data on the structure and history of Mars.   InSight will be a Discovery-class mission, capped at $425 million in 2010 dollars, and not a billion-dollar “flagship” mission. That marks a big setback for robotic Mars exploration. Last year NASA and the European Space Agency still were collaborating on a multi-launch joint program that would have used rovers to find and cache samples for later return to Earth. Returning samples for sophisticated analysis on Earth is the holy grail of robotic exploration of the red planet, and the top decadal priority of planetary scientists polled by the U.S. National Academies of Science. But the InSight mission is important, even if it doesn't support sample return. Along with the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution orbiter set for launch in 2014, InSight will expand our knowledge of Mars and provide a better idea of how the inner planets were formed and evolved.   InSight will not take advantage of the “sky crane” landing technique JPL demonstrated last month to get the big Curiosity rover down to the surface, but the payload is small enough that it doesn't need to. Instead, the mission will be a reprise of the 2008 Phoenix lander, transplanted from the planet's polar ice to the equatorial Elysium Planitia region. In that open, flat area it won't need the precision-landing capability that was required to place Curiosity inside Gale Crater. But it will maintain the perishable Mars-landing skills that JPL has nurtured, at least for a few more years. NASA Mars exploration chief Doug McQuistion said right after Curiosity landed that if JPL had to go beyond 2018 without another landing, he would worry that the engineering, simulation and testing experience that enabled the feat would start to fade.   While JPL's engineers prepare another robotic Mars lander, researchers in eight states and the District of Columbia will use relatively low-level NASA funding to study the effects of space radiation on tissues and cells. With present propulsion, shielding and other spacecraft technology, astronauts on a two-year mission to Mars would receive radiation doses higher than the lifetime dose permitted by radiation-health standards, and NASA is continuing to tackle that problem.   With space radiation long identified as the limiting factor on human space exploration beyond low Earth orbit, NASA has used a specialized facility at the Brookhaven National Laboratory—known as the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory—to simulate the ionizing radiation that floods space in the form of galactic cosmic rays and solar particles.   Under the latest round of grants for studies with the facility, researchers will bombard tissue samples and mice with high-energy particles from Brookhaven accelerators. Among the effects to be studied are links between reproductive hormones and chronic inflammation as a factor in estimating cancer risk from space radiation, and analysis of how stem cells modulate radiation-induced carcinogenesis.   Museum of Flight lands trove of personal papers from NASA icon George Abbey   Todd Bishop - GeekWire.com   They arrived at Seattle’s Museum of Flight in more than 100 boxes — nearly four decades worth of personal papers from George Abbey, the Seattle native and former director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center who was a key figure behind the Apollo program, the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle program and many other landmark initiatives from the U.S. space agency.   “I like to characterize him as the Wizard of Oz — the guy behind the curtain,” says Dan Hagedorn, curator at the Museum of Flight. “He was the one who was really making the decisions of a very central nature about the Space Shuttle program.”   Abbey has donated his archive of papers to the Museum of Flight, a substantial addition to the museum’s collection of historical documents.   On Friday afternoon, Abbey himself will visit the museum to make the donation official. His appearance kicks off a weekend full of space events at the museum — including a sneak peek Sunday of the Space Shuttle Trainer being assembled inside the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery, plus panels and lectures featuring astronauts including Buzz Aldrin, Gene Cernan, Dick Gordon and T.K. Mattingly, plus other legendary figures from NASA.   Abbey’s office files went to the National Archives, but the collection being received by the Museum of Flight represents his personal papers. The museum assigned two archivists to process the collection and create a thick binder that serves as finding aid.  Researchers will now be able to visit the museum to sift through the documents, and some of the papers will also be exhibited publicly.   Among the surprises in those boxes: Marginal notes and memo-routing slips that provide unexpected insights into what was going on in the minds of Abbey and others making key decisions during pivotal moments in NASA history.   “It’s just a wonderful collection. We’re delighted to have it,” said Hagedorn. “It adds substantially to other space-related collections that we have here, and certainly will be one of our crown jewels.”   ENDEAVOUR’S “LAST FLIGHT:” 50 MILES IN 4.5 HRS – DRYDEN TO LAX   NASA delays Endeavour takeoff because of Bay Area fog   Los Angeles Times   NASA officials are postponing the takeoff of the space shuttle Endeavour by one hour Friday morning because of fog in San Francisco.   The delay will "give us a better chance of having the fog burn off," NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center said in a tweet.   The new schedule calls for Endeavour to take off from Edwards Air Force Base in northern Los Angeles County at 8:15 a.m. instead of 7:15 a.m. That would mean Endeavour would fly over the Capitol in Sacramento at about 9:30 a.m. instead of 8:30 a.m., before flying over San Francisco and Monterey.   The delay would mean the space shuttle would re-enter Los Angeles airspace during lunchtime, entering the region around 11:30 a.m. and touching down about an hour later at Los Angeles International Airport.   The decision to delay the shuttle's path over California by one hour was jointly made by NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration and the California Science Center museum.   Californians have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Endeavour, which will be retired for display at the California Science Center. The space shuttle left Houston on Thursday morning, passed through Tucson, and landed Thursday afternoon at Edwards Air Force Base for an overnight fueling stop.   After it lands at LAX on Friday, the shuttle will be housed at a United Airlines hangar until Oct. 12, when it will begin a two-day celebratory trek through the city's streets to the museum's new Samuel Oschin display pavilion. Endeavour will fly over at least the following sites:   ·         •Los Angeles City Hall ·         •California Science Center ·         •Getty Center ·         •Griffith Observatory ·         •Queen Mary ·         •Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach ·         •Malibu, Venice and Huntington beaches ·         •Jet Propulsion Laboratory ·         •Universal Studios ·         •Disneyland   Shuttle to sightsee around Calif with low flyovers   Alicia Chang - Associated Press   Space shuttle Endeavour will spend its last flying day Friday not rocketing into space, but doing what most tourists do when visiting California: Taking in the state Capitol, Golden Gate Bridge and the Hollywood Sign.   In what promises to be a crowd-rousing air show, Endeavour, strapped atop a 747 jumbo jet, will take off after sunrise from Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert and dip low over various landmarks in a 4 1/2-hour sightseeing flight before landing at the Los Angeles International Airport.   It's Endeavour's last aerial hurrah before it spends its retirement years as a museum piece.   "We're so excited to be welcoming Endeavour home in grand style with these flyovers," said Jeffrey Rudolph, president of the California Science Center, where the shuttle will go on permanent display.   Since Endeavour will buzz by some of the Golden State's most iconic sights, law enforcement and transportation authorities warned motorists not to "gawk and drive."   "We want people to take in this majestic show," Los Angeles police Cmdr. Scott Kroeber said earlier this week. "But if you're driving, please drive and don't try to take in the show simultaneously."   Extra officers will be on duty along the freeways near LAX to make sure traffic flows smoothly as the shuttle zooms overhead.   Endeavour returned to its birthplace Thursday after an emotional cross-country ferry flight that made a special flyover of Tucson, Ariz., to honor its last commander, Mark Kelly and his wife, former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.   Giffords, who is recovering from a gunshot wound to the head, was "hooting and hollering" as Endeavour looped around her hometown, according to her former aide C.J. Karamargin.   NASA's shuttle fleet, which retired last year after three decades of flight, was assembled in Palmdale near Edwards Air Force Base. The military outpost 100 miles north of Los Angeles served as the original shuttle landing strip and remained a backup site in case of stormy weather at Cape Canaveral, Fla.   The youngest shuttle, Endeavour replaced Challenger, which blew up during liftoff in 1986. NASA lost another shuttle, Columbia, in 2003 when it disintegrated during re-entry. Fourteen astronauts were killed.   During 25 missions, Endeavour spent 299 days in space and orbited Earth nearly 4,700 times, racking up 123 million miles.   On its maiden flight in 1992, a trio of spacewalking astronauts grabbed a stranded communications satellite in for repair. It also flew the first repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to fix a faulty mirror. But most of its flights ferried cargo and equipment to the International Space Station, which is near completion.   Under White House orders to explore beyond low-Earth orbit, NASA is hitching rides on Russian rockets to the orbiting laboratory until private companies can provide regular service.   Endeavour is the second of three remaining shuttles to head to its retirement home. In April, Discovery arrived at the Smithsonian Institution's hangar in Virginia. Atlantis, which closed out the shuttle program, will stay in Florida where it will be towed a short distance to the Kennedy Space Center's visitor center in the fall.   Endeavour will remain at an airport hangar for several weeks as crews ready the shuttle for its own road trip. Unlike Atlantis, it will creep through city streets to the California Science Center near downtown.   Some 400 trees will be cleared along the 12-mile route to make room, a move that has riled some residents in affected neighborhoods. Museum officials have pledged to replant double the number of chopped trees.   Space shuttle Endeavour lands piggyback in California   Steve Gorman & Tim Gaynor - Reuters   The space shuttle Endeavour, carried piggyback atop a jumbo jet, landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California on Thursday at the tail end of a cross-country trip to Los Angeles to begin its final mission as a museum exhibit.   The specially modified Boeing 747 with the newly retired spaceship perched on its back touched down safely at 12:50 p.m. local time (3:50 p.m. EDT) at Edwards, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert.   NASA retired its shuttle fleet last year after completing the U.S. portion of the $100 billion International Space Station, a permanently staffed research complex that is owned by 15 nations and orbits about 250 miles above Earth.   Endeavour embarked on its last cross-county "ferry" journey on Wednesday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and made several low-altitude passes over NASA centers in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas before stopping for the night at Ellington Field near the Johnson Space Center in Houston.   The trip resumed early on Thursday, with Endeavour and its carrier jet making additional flyovers - one over Tucson, Arizona, in a salute to former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, the retired astronaut who commanded Endeavour's final flight on his last mission in late May 2011.   Giffords, still recuperating from a gunshot wound to the head suffered in an attempt on her life last year, watched the flyover from the roof of a Tucson parking garage with her husband and mother, according to former aide C.J. Karamargin, who joined them.   "When it came into view, Mark said, 'There's my spaceship!'" Karamargin recounted. "Gabby was just elated, hooting and hollering like the rest of us were."   From Arizona, Endeavour and its carrier jet flew on to California, where the spacecraft was built two decades ago, for the landing at Edwards Air Force Base.   The sprawling installation used to serve as the primary landing site for NASA's shuttle program before the space agency built a landing facility for the orbiters at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Edwards then became the principal backup landing spot for shuttles in case of bad weather at Cape Canaveral.   Endeavour made seven landings at Edwards during its active tenure at NASA, most recently in November 2008.   Final flight   The shuttle was scheduled to depart Edwards on Friday for its very last ferry flight, and the final airborne journey of the entire space shuttle fleet, headed for Los Angeles International Airport.   The 75-ton (68-tonne) winged spacecraft will then undergo preparations to be moved next month through city streets from the airport to its permanent home at the California Science Center in downtown Los Angeles, where the shuttle will be put on public display starting October 30.   To make way for the mammoth orbiter along its 12-mile route to the museum, crews are cutting down nearly 400 trees, raising overhead utility wires and temporarily removing hundreds of utility poles, street lights and traffic signals. The science center has agreed to plant 1,000 new trees to replace those slated for removal.   Endeavour was built as a replacement for Challenger, the shuttle lost in a 1986 launch accident that killed seven astronauts. It went on to fly 25 missions, including 12 to build and outfit the space station, and logged nearly 123 million miles (198 million km) in flight during 4,671 orbits.   Endeavour is the second of NASA's three surviving shuttles to be sent to a museum. Discovery, NASA's oldest surviving shuttle, is on display at the Smithsonian Institution's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center outside Washington.   Atlantis, which flew NASA's 135th and final shuttle mission in July 2011, will be towed down the road to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in November.   NASA lost a fourth shuttle, Columbia, in another fatal accident in 2003. That shuttle was not replaced. A shuttle test vehicle, Enterprise, which has never flown in space, was delivered to a New York City museum.   On its way from Edwards to the Los Angeles airport, Endeavour will soar atop its carrier jet on several last victory laps over California, including flyovers above San Francisco, Sacramento, Hollywood and even Disneyland at Anaheim.   NASA said on Thursday evening that the spacecraft's scheduled departure from Edwards had been delayed by one hour until 8:15 a.m. local time (11:15 a.m. EDT) on Friday due to forecasts of low clouds and fog in the San Francisco Bay Area. Its expected arrival time at LAX was updated to about 12:45 p.m. local time.   Shuttle Endeavour makes final stop at Edwards AFB   William Harwood – CBS News   The shuttle Endeavour, on its way to retirement at a Los Angeles science museum, flew from Houston to California atop a 747 jumbo jet Thursday, dropping down for low-altitude passes over communities along the way, including Tucson, home of Gabrielle Giffords and husband Mark Kelly, Endeavour's last commander, before pressing on to a picture-perfect landing at Edwards Air Force Base.   The specially modified 747 and its 78-ton payload made a low pass over the fabled flight test center, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles, to give Air Force personnel, families and tourists a chance to see the orbiter in flight before swooping to a tire-smoking touchdown at 3:51 p.m. EDT (GMT-4).   Early Friday, the shuttle will take to the air for the final time, carried north for low-altitude passes over San Francisco, NASA's Ames Research Center and Sacramento before heading south to Los Angeles. The orbiter will fly over NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, the iconic Griffith Observatory and the downtown area before landing at Los Angeles International Airport around 2 p.m. EDT (11 a.m. PDT).   Endeavour will be removed from its 747 carrier jet by two cranes and temporarily stored in a United Airlines Hangar at LAX. In mid October, the orbiter, mounted atop a specialized transporter, will be hauled 12 miles along city streets to the California Science Center near the Los Angeles Coliseum where it will go on display.   Endeavour's three-day cross-country valedictory tour began Wednesday at the Kennedy Space Center. After giving local residents and space workers a final chance to see the orbiter, the 747 flew west and made low-altitude passes over NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Miss., and Lockheed Martin's Michoud Assembly Facility on the east side of New Orleans, where the shuttle's external fuel tanks were built.   From there, the shuttle carrier aircraft flew on to Houston, flying over the city and then the Johnson Space Center before landing at Ellington Field, just a few miles from mission control. More than 200,000 spectators showed up over the course of the day to get a last glimpse of Endeavour.   Early Thursday, the 747 took off and continued its westerly tour, flying over Austin, Texas, and refueling in El Paso before flying on to the White Sands Test Facility near Las Cruces, N.M., and then over Tucson.   NASA did not originally announce a Tucson fly over, but during a NASA television broadcast Wednesday, Kelly half-jokingly told the interviewer in a phone call to "tell the pilots when they land it would be great if they could fly over Tucson so Gabby and I could see Endeavour. It's on the way to LA, I don't even think they have to go out of the way."   The retired astronaut, who commanded Endeavour on its final flight in May 2011, got his wish. The Associated Press reported that Kelly and Giffords watched the flyby from the roof of a University of Arizona parking garage and that the former Arizona representative was "elated" at the sight.   Friday's trip to Los Angeles will be the last time a space shuttle flies. The veteran shuttle Discovery was flown to Washington earlier this year, joining the Smithsonian Institution's collection at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport. The prototype shuttle Enterprise was flown to New York, where it is now on display at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.   NASA's lone remaining shuttle, the Atlantis, will stay at the Kennedy Space Center, housed in a $100 million facility now under construction at the privately operated Visitor Complex.   Space Shuttle Endeavour soars over California today: How to see it   Tariq Malik - Space.com   The space shuttle Endeavour takes to the skies above California for its last-ever flight Friday, giving observers from Sacramento to Los Angeles one last chance to see a NASA shuttle soar through the air atop a jumbo jet.   Endeavour's historic California aerial tour will cap a three-day trip from its homeport at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Los Angeles, where the orbiter will ultimately become a museum showpiece at the California Science Center. The shuttle left Florida on Wednesday and made a stopover in Houston (home of NASA's Johnson Space Center, astronaut corps and mission control rooms) before completing its journey west.   Today, Endeavour will begin its state-wide flyover with a takeoff from Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California at about 8:15 a.m. PDT (11:15 a.m. EDT/1515 GMT). The shuttle, riding piggyback on a modified Boeing 747 carrier aircraft, will make low flyovers over   Shuttle fans across the country and around the world can tune into NASA's broadcast to watch Endeavour's departure from Dryden and Edwards. The space agency will broadcast the shuttle's takeoff live on its NASA TV channel and via a webcast, which begins at 8 a.m. PDT (11 a.m. EDT/1500 GMT).   You can watch the shuttle's takeoff online here: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv   NASA is also encouraging the public to share their shuttle Endeavour viewing experiences by posting messages and photos on the social networking website Twitter using the hashtags #spottheshuttle and #OV105. The latter tag refers to Endeavour's vehicle number designation   After leaving Dryden and Edwards Air Force Base, Endeavour and its Shuttle Carrier Aircraft will head north to make early-morning flyovers of Sacramento, California's capitol city. Then the shuttle will head to the Bay Area.   "Any time after 9:30 a.m. PDT, watch for Endeavour from viewing locations that include the Bay Area Discovery Museum, Chabot Space and Science Center, the California State Capitol, Exploratorium, Lawrence Hall of Science and Monterey Bay Aquarium," NASA officials said in an announcement Thursday.   Next, Endeavour turns south to soar over NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, and later Vandenberg Air Force Base, which has long served as a launch site for NASA and Air Force satellites. Then, it will be time for Endeavour's grand Los Angeles arrival.   "Any time after 11:30 a.m., watch for flyovers of Endeavour passing regional landmarks such as its future home at the California Science Center, Columbia Memorial Space Center in Downey, Disneyland, The Getty Center, Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles City Hall, the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific, Malibu Beach, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, the Queen Mary, Universal Studios and Venice Beach, among others," NASA officials said.   NOTE: NASA officials warn that all times for Endeavour's ferry flight are weather dependent. So delays and possible changes to the plan are possible.   Endeavour is expected to land at Los Angeles International Airport at 12:45 p.m. PDT (3:45 p.m. EDT/1945 GMT), and will be greeted with an official arrival ceremony before the shuttle is hoisted off its 747 carrier plane. The shuttle will wait at LAX until October to be transported to the California Science Center.   On Oct. 12 and 13, Endeavour will parade up the streets of Los Angeles to make its final trek from LAX to the California Science Center. The public display of the shuttle at the center will open on Oct. 30.   Endeavour is NASA's youngest space shuttle and is the only orbiter to go on public display in California, the birthplace of the U.S. shuttle fleet. The orbiters were built at a facility in Palmdale, Calif., and occasionally returned for service overhauls during NASA's 30-year space shuttle program.   NASA built Endeavour as a replacement for the orbiter lost in the tragic Challenger shuttle disaster of January 1986, which killed seven astronauts. Endeavour made its first flight in 1992 and was retired in June 2011 after completing its final mission. In all, the shuttle launched 25 space missions and flew nearly 123 million miles during its spaceflight career.   Endeavour is the third of four space shuttles heading to museums this year. In April, the shuttle Discovery went on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center annex in Chantilly, Va.   In July, NASA's prototype shuttle Enterprise (which never flew in space, but was pivotal for early landing tests) went on public display in New York City's Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.   On Nov. 2, NASA's remaining space shuttle Atlantis will be towed from its hangar at the Kennedy Space Center to the nearby Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex, where its own museum display will open to the public in summer 2013.   NASA retired its space shuttle fleet after 30 years of spaceflight and 135 missions in July 2011. The space agency plans to use privately built space taxis to ferry astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit, while at the same time developing its own new spacecraft and rockets for deep-space manned missions to an asteroid and beyond.   Final space shuttle ferryflight to be completed Friday   Justin Ray - SpaceflightNow.com   An aviation marvel since 1977 and a spectacle seen on 107 treks, the modified Boeing 747 jumbojet is hauling the the decommissioned orbiter Endeavour across the country this week on space shuttle era's final ferryflight.   "It is going to emotional and hit people in different ways. This is a one-of-a-kind machine and to see the orbiter and SCA, it's a beautiful sight. It is going to be sad to know this is it," said Shuttle Carrier Aircraft flight engineer Henry Taylor said.   Headed from coast-to-coast piggyback-style, Endeavour left home at the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday and flew to Houston for an overnight stay, then resumed the journey at dawn Thursday to refuel in El Paso before arriving at Edwards Air Force Base just after noon for a second overnight stop of the voyage to Los Angeles.   The duo took off from KSC's three-mile-long runway purposely built for space shuttle landings to begin the three-day, four-leg ferryflight weighing a combined 705,000 pounds.   "It is sort of shocking on the first try," SCA pilot Jeff Moultrie said of getting the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft airborne. "The biggest thing is the length of runway required to get it off."   Moultrie, 50, was flying the aircraft for Wednesday's initial takeoff and will be at the controls for the LAX landing Thursday. The former military pilot and Boeing instructor started at NASA's Langley Research Center 9 years ago, and circumstances and happenstance brought to him to the Johnson Space Center and a member of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft crew. He says he was simply at the right place at the right time to get the role of flying the final shuttle ferryflight.   Despite the aircraft having a massive spaceship mounted on top, Moultrie says the flying qualities are not dramatically different than a normal 747.   "Once you are in the air, the handling characteristics are very similar to a 747 at those speeds, basically 250 knots," he said.   The plane does feel top heavy, the bank angles are limited to 20 degrees and the approach speeds are faster to compensate for the drag factor.   After getting to Los Angeles on Friday, technicians will go to work early Saturday to offload the shuttle onto an overland transporter.   This 747 will take its last flight on Sept. 26 for return to Edwards Air Force Base and its retirement from service, becoming a parts donor for NASA's SOFIA infrared observatory program that has a large telescope inside a 747.   "It is bittersweet. We are bringing Endeavour to a place where a lot of people will go see it, admire it and remember the good things we've done at NASA. But we're not done until we actually drop the shuttle off and then bring this plane back safely to Edwards," said Bill Rieke, another of the SCA pilots.   He has been a NASA pilot for 7 years and has flown several of the recent ferryflights.   "When they offered, I jumped at the chance. This is really special airplane to fly," he said.   The idea of transporting the space shuttles on the back of a 747 has been a critical element of the spaceplanes' reusability concept. Delivering the orbiters from the birthplace factory in California to the Kennedy Space Center, shipping them home after landing at alternate sites, moving them for maintenance and modification periods, even taking the vehicles to special events like the Paris Air Show and World's Fair in New Orleans and now the museum trips, there have been 107 ferryflights since 1977.   The prototype Enterprise was used in 1977 for approach and landing test flights at Edwards Air Force Base, making five free-flights off of the 747 to demonstrate a shuttle's ability to perform a powerless touchdown on a runway.   "It is a very clever concept for transporting the space shuttle on the 747," said SCA flight engineer Gary Ash.   NASA-provided statistics break down the 107 ferry flights by shuttles:   ·         Enterprise: 27 ·         Columbia: 24 ·         Challenger: 8 ·         Discovery: 19 ·         Atlantis: 18 ·         Endeavour: 11   Friday's flight plan calls for takeoff from Edwards at 8:15 a.m. local time and head northbound for low-altitude flybys of the State Capitol in Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Bay Area Discovery Museum, Chabot Space and Science Center, the Exploratorium, the Lawrence Hall of Science. Also on tap is the Monterey Bay Aquarium.   The path then heads south to pass over NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, America's western launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory before heading into the Los Angeles basin.   The LA flyovers are expected any time after 11:30 a.m. local time to soar above such locations as the California Science Center, Disneyland, The Getty Center, Griffith Observatory, Malibu, the Queen Mary, Universal Studios and Venice Beach, among others.   Touchdown at Los Angeles International Airport for ceremonial reception will occur around 12:45 p.m. to finish up the era for space shuttle ferryflights.   "This last flight is exciting because a lot of the nation will get to see it. It is sad to see the end of the program. I'm not sure when it is going to hit me the hardest, when we get to LA or when we take the airplane back to Edwards," said Taylor, who plans to retire at the end of the year.   Endeavour flies final ferry flight Shuttle makes final fly-over of White Sands Missile Range en route to California museum   Steve Ramirez, Las Cruces Sun-News   Space shuttle Endeavour graced the skies of southern New Mexico on Thursday, dazzling spectators in its wake as it made its final flight to a California museum.   The shuttle, riding piggyback on a specially-outfitted 747, landed at Edwards Air Force Base outside Los Angeles after a cross-country trip that began in Florida, with stops in Houston and El Paso, before lazily zig-zagging its way across the New Mexico landscape.   As the retired shuttle sailed across the skies, it raised a common question among many of the thousands of people who saw it.   "How cool is this?"   At an altitude of about 1,500 feet above ground, Endeavour and the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft it was mounted on flew over White Sands Missile Range and White Sands Test Facility before gliding across Las Cruces.   At WSMR, the shuttle flew low enough so people could see the markings on the spacecraft, and it and the SCA created a brief-but-interesting eclipse of the sun.   "Everybody was out. That made it an even more exciting event," said Kosha Serna-Perez, a pre-kindergarten program teacher at WSMR. "This is the kind of event you can tell your grandkids and great-grandkids about."   As a loudspeaker alerted people at WSMR of the shuttle's arrival, people poured out of buildings to catch a glimpse. Hundreds of WSMR employees rushed out of their offices just in time to see the shuttle pass over one last time.   "We were flooded with calls from people," said Ron Smith, a WSMR employee who has worked there since 1976. "It reminded me of (March) 1982 when we got the same kind of interest when Columbia landed out here."   It was an emotional, bittersweet day Thursday for Robert Mitchell, former director of the White Sands Space Harbor, where space shuttle Columbia landed on March 31, 1982.   "I went up to the (San Augustin) Pass to see it," Mitchell said. "That was a little far away from the (WSMR) main post, but I sure got a close look up its belly.   "Yes sir, it is a sweet and sour day to see the program go away. Part of the sorrow was seeing part of White Sands Space Harbor taken down."   Mitchell said he "lost it" several days ago as he watched on NASA TV as Endeavour was loaded onto the SCA and left the Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Facility in Florida.   "So many memories of those 30-plus years I was out there," said Mitchell, referring to White Sands Space Harbor. "I'm very proud of the shuttle program and all the achievements White Sands Space Harbor had. The credit for all of that goes to the 24 people who worked for the contractors out there, led by Frank Offutt. I owe those people, in particular, a lot of thanks for a job well done."   Endeavour's fly-over was a final tribute to the work and support NASA's shuttle program received from WSMR and the White Sands Test Facility. As the now-retired shuttle made its last pass over WSMR, there was a slight tip of the shuttle's wings, symbolizing one last wave of thanks.   "I saw that, too, and I'd like to believe that's what that was," said Gary Giebel, site director for laboratory operations at WSMR's Army Research Laboratory. "I thought it was impressive.   "To me, it put a closure on 2006, when we came so close then to having the shuttle land here again at White Sands. We were so close then, within seconds, of having it land here. But it also puts some closure on a successful project that had a lot of talented and gifted people here involved. It was a real morale booster for the employees to be afforded the opportunity to have one last look at the shuttle."   Endeavour left Florida on Wednesday and made a layover in Houston. En route to California, it flew over Tucson, Ariz., home of ex-Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. She's married to Mark Kelly, Endeavour's last commander.   "That's my spaceship," said Kelly as the couple watched the shuttle loop over Tucson.   Endeavour will be moved via city streets next month to the California Science Center.   Endeavour flies over Ariz. en route to Calif. home   Paul Davenport & Ramit Plushnick-Masti - Associated Press   Space shuttle Endeavour flew over Tucson on Thursday in honor of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her astronaut husband before continuing its trek west to retirement in a Los Angeles museum.   Hundreds of people gathered on the grass mall at the University of Arizona campus to watch the Endeavour, atop a modified jumbo jet, as it flew in from the east and did a partial loop over the city.   Robert Thomas, a veterans hospital X-ray tech, was there with his wife, Marsha Colbert.   Colbert stood on a bench along a campus street taking pictures as Thomas and others whooped with joy at seeing the shuttle.   "It's beautiful. Oh, my god," Thomas said as it flew over.   The retired shuttle took off from a Houston airport Thursday morning, and will end up in Los Angeles after spending the night at Edwards Air Force Base, 100 miles north of Los Angeles, then making one last low-flying pass around the state.   The stop in Tucson was requested by the last person to command an Endeavour mission, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, Giffords husband.   The couple recently moved back to Tucson from Houston, where Giffords was recovering from serious injuries she suffered in a 2011 attack in which a gunman killed six people and wounded Giffords and 12 others.   Thursday's flyover gives NASA a chance to honor Giffords' legacy as a longtime advocate for American human spaceflight, NASA spokeswoman Lisa Malone told The Associated Press in an email. She said no additional costs would be incurred by honoring Kelly's request.   Hundreds of people gathered Wednesday to watch the shuttle land in Houston for an overnight stay, an exciting but bittersweet moment for many residents who felt spurned that Space City wasn't chosen as the final home for one of the five retired shuttles.   "I think that it's the worst thing that they can do, rotten all the way," said 84-year-old Mary Weiss, clinging to her walker just before Endeavour landed after flying low over Gulf Coast towns, New Orleans and then downtown Houston and its airports.   Space City, partly made famous by Tom Hanks when he uttered the line "Houston, we have a problem" in the movie "Apollo 13," has long tied its fortune to a mix of oil and NASA. Astronauts train in the humid, mosquito-ridden city, and many call it home years after they retire. The Johnson Space Center and an adjacent museum hug Galveston Bay.   Houston's bid for a shuttle was rejected after the White House retired the fleet last summer to spend more time and money on reaching destinations, such as Mars and asteroids. Instead, Houston got a replica that used to be displayed at the Kennedy Space Center.   "The one we're getting is a toy. An important toy, but a toy nonetheless," said Scott Rush, 54, of Crystal Beach, Texas.   Still, people came out in droves Wednesday, waving American flags and toting space shuttle toys, cameras and cell phones.   Back-to-back delays in the ferry flight resulted in one day being cut from the Houston visit. After landing, the Endeavour rolled slowly in front of the cheering crowd. It circled and preened like a runway model, giving awed spectators an opportunity to take pictures from a variety of angles.   "I want to go on it," said 3-year-old Joshua Lee as he headed to the landing area with his mother and grandmother.   The shuttle took off after sunrise Thursday, riding piggyback on a jumbo jet. It stopped at Biggs Army Airfield in El Paso, Texas, before heading toward Tucson and then on to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Calif. After spending a night there, the shuttle will head to Los Angeles International Airport on Friday.   In mid-October, Endeavour will be transported down city streets to the California Science Center, its permanent home.   NASA still plays a large role in Houston, and astronaut Clayton Anderson, who lived on the International Space Station from June to November 2007, encouraged people to focus on a new era of space exploration.   "The shuttles are a wonderful legacy, a huge part of Houston, but now it's time to look to the future," said Anderson, who lives in the Houston suburb of League City.   This is the last flight for a space shuttle. Atlantis will remain at Kennedy for display, and Discovery already is at the Smithsonian Institution, parked at a hangar in Virginia since April.   Endeavour — the replacement for the destroyed Challenger shuttle — made its debut in 1992 and flew 25 times before it was retired. It logged 123 million miles in space and circled Earth nearly 4,700 times.   What's it like to fly a plane with shuttle on top?   Alicia Chang - Associated Press   It's the ultimate piggyback ride: A space shuttle perched atop a Boeing 747 as the pair crisscrosses the country.   For three decades, this was how NASA transported shuttles that landed in the California desert to their Florida home base. But it's coming to an end.   This week, four pilots took turns flying a jumbo jet mounted with space shuttle Endeavour on a multi-leg journey bound for Los Angeles where it will go on display in a museum next month.   With the shuttle fleet retired, it's the final ferry mission for a group of highly specialized aviators. The elite pilots over the years have included former astronauts, including famed pilot Gordon Fullerton.   Scores have asked what it's like to haul a 170,000-pound shuttle.   "That's a tough thing to answer," said pilot Jeff Moultrie, who will be in command when Endeavour performs an aerial tour over several California landmarks Friday. "What do you tell somebody? It's different. It's unique."   That's for sure.   For one thing, there's the noise. It is decibels louder inside the shuttle carrier aircraft compared with a commercial airliner because the interior is hollowed out to keep it as light as possible. Aside from a few seats, there are no galleys, overhead bins or even air conditioning.   In case pilots forget they're carrying precious national cargo, the constant vibrations from above jolt them back to reality.   Pilots have to be more careful when they make turns, but otherwise, the 747 handles like a regular plane. They also have to be hyper-vigilant about the weather because moisture can damage the shuttle's delicate tiles.   Built for American Airlines, NASA acquired the aircraft in 1974 and used it for test flights from Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert and ferry flights to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It obtained a second one in 1990, but it was retired earlier this year.   The four current NASA pilots who can operate the modified 747 are ex-military aviators who split their time flying other planes including zero-gravity aircraft and T-38 supersonic jets.   Even when the shuttles flew routinely, a cross-country lift wasn't always needed. To keep their skills polished, they flew practice flights every several weeks and trained in a simulator twice a year.   Moultrie, who served as a commercial pilot for a decade, said he looked forward most to soaring in close to the Hollywood Sign. Even Angelenos have to keep their distance from the famed sign, which is surrounded by a fence.   "It's bittersweet," he said of the final mission. "We definitely feel privileged to be a small part of history. But on the flip side, we're sad."   Race to Save Space History As Endeavour heads to retirement home, its nearby birthplace is being razed   Andy Pasztor & Tamara Audi - Wall Street Journal   The space shuttle Endeavour is set for a glitzy welcome in Los Angeles Friday as it heads to final retirement at a local museum. But less than 20 miles away, its birthplace is being demolished without ceremony.   From the 1960s to the end of the Cold War, a sprawling industrial campus in this suburb east of Los Angeles served as the crucible for U.S.-manned space efforts. Nearly 30,000 engineers and technicians built the Apollo modules that eventually helped astronauts land on the moon. After each flight, crews returned to Downey to be cheered as heroes and leave their handprints in a cement slab—the aerospace equivalent of Hollywood's Walk of Fame.   Later, a smaller army of engineers—self-described "space geeks"—designed and oversaw assembly of the entire shuttle fleet at the same complex. In its heyday, dignitaries such as President Ronald Reagan and Queen Elizabeth II came to tour a full-scale shuttle mockup and pay their respects to the workforce that gave Downey a central role in U.S. space accomplishments.   Now, however, abandoned buildings on what is left of the 160-acre facility once dubbed America's "Gateway to Space" are being leveled to make way for a mall whose name echoes the site's storied past: Tierra Luna Marketplace.   Some space aficionados are angered by what they see as a lack of respect for past glories. Many more worry the bulldozers are destroying not only structures, but also the best chance for future generations to appreciate Downey's significance.   "This is sacred ground," said Gerald Blackburn, a 67-year-old retired engineer who spent 35 years working at Downey. From an office on the site, he spends his days collecting and culling pieces of its history, even as bulldozers rumble outside. He fears that "the history of the aerospace industry here is being forgotten."   Mr. Blackburn said he hopes Endeavour, which landed at Edwards Air Force Base north of Los Angeles Thursday atop a Boeing 747 jet, will fly over Downey during its trip Friday.   City officials say the new development is expected to generate 2,740 permanent jobs and generate $3.5 million in annual tax revenue. Officials say they are also working to preserve the site's history through the nearby Columbia Memorial Space Center, a public education venue and museum the city is planning to expand to include a full-size shuttle mockup.   Officials say they spent years pursuing other options, such as solar-panel manufacturing, in an effort to preserve the buildings, but the plans fell through.   "I'm sad to see those buildings come down," said Mayor Roger Brossmer, but "dilapidated warehouses aren't the best way to respect what had gone on in this facility."   Dale Myers, who helped create both the Apollo and space-shuttle programs, has long fretted about the fate of the fleet's birthplace. He had a major role in shaping the shuttles' early design as a corporate executive and senior National Aeronautics and Space Administration official.   Even before the administration of President George W. Bush decided to ground the orbiters, "I knew the site was doomed" said Mr. Myers, 90. Without Downey, he asked, "how can the country still stimulate interest in big manned space programs?"   Downey's legacy stretches back to making World War II military aircraft and pioneering missiles in the 1950s. In the next two decades, it served as the hub for developing Apollo spacecraft.   With three shifts working round the clock, the center's operations resembled those of a small city. The site had its own newspaper and even clubs offering cha-cha lessons.   In the mid-1970s, focus shifted to the shuttles. Work dried up, however, after the last orbiter was delivered in 1992.   After Downey finally closed in 1999 as a space-program center, it served as a film studio. Posters for movies filmed there—including "Space Cowboys," about an aging group of astronauts—still hang on the walls.   The city bought and sold parts of the property starting in 1998, and some of the site has already been turned into a shopping and medical center. This year, Downey officials approved a plan to transform 77 more acres into another shopping center that will include a hotel and medical offices. Mr. Blackburn says he is working with developers to include elements in the design to acknowledge the site's history.   With the help of local government officials and former employees, Mr. Blackburn and his organization, the Aerospace Legacy Foundation, hope to create a museum and gathering place for former employees on the site.   Retired Rockwell International Corp. executive Patti Mancini, who worked at Downey for 30 years before leaving in 1991, said Downey is "a national treasure and so are the people who worked there." Overall, she added, "I would like to see them receive more credit."   For now, remnants of Downey's contribution are crammed into every corner of Mr. Blackburn's office: a drafting table, engineering tools and a cut-out of Snoopy dressed as an astronaut holding a sign saying, "Next Launch Date."   "What they created went way beyond Downey, Southern California or even the U.S.," recalled George Torres, who worked at Downey in the 1980s and later wrote books on the shuttle era. "It was a global achievement."   Howard McCurdy, an American University professor and NASA scholar, sees "the passing of an era that defined U.S. space ambitions" while the Soviet Union existed. "There's great symbolism in replacing the epitome of NASA's big manned programs" with a shopping center, he said.   But as the last few buildings disappear, many who loved the place struggle with bittersweet emotions. "We had confidence in what we did," Ms. Mancini recalled, adding the challenge and camaraderie often became "almost more important than your family." With stronger government support, she said, "we could have flown the shuttles for a long time."   But along with success, employees also experienced marathon work schedules, high divorce rates and health problems. Mr. Blackburn lost vision in his right eye in 1967 when glass on a pressure gauge he was using to test Apollo equipment exploded. "Was it worth it? You bet it was," he said.   For Mr. Blackburn, the biggest blow will be destruction of Building 290, the final "check-out" location for shuttles and Apollo space craft. There, engineers and designers could see the final result of their work before it was blasted into space.   During one of the last Apollo missions, Mr. Blackburn was leaving work late one night. He walked to his car through the main gate, and as he was reaching for his car keys, he turned and looked over his shoulder to see a full moon hanging over Building 290. "I said 'Oh my god, there are three men up there now and I had something to do with that. And I'm standing where it all started.'"   END