Friday, October 26, 2012
10/26/12 news
Happy Friday everyone. Have a great, cool weekend.
Mark your calendars to join us next Thursday for our monthly NASA retirees luncheon at Hibachi Grill.
Friday, October 26, 2012
JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1. Breakfast Boo-ffet at the Starport Cafés Next Week
2. Paying for College Without Going Broke
3. Employee Discount Days with Appreciation Events and Starport
4. Want to Develop Your Speaking and Leadership Skills and Ignite Your Career?
5. Fire Warden Orientation Course (4 Hours)
________________________________________ QUOTE OF THE DAY
“ We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”
-- T. S. Eliot
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1. Breakfast Boo-ffet at the Starport Cafés Next Week
Stop by the cafes from Oct. 29 to 31 for a Halloween breakfast buffet. Enjoy green eggs, ghost pancakes, corn-beef hash, tater tots, fresh fruit and 12-ounce coffee or teas -- all for $4.25. (No refills.) It's so good, it's scary!
Y. Marquis Edwards x30240 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
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2. Paying for College Without Going Broke
The Employee Assistance Program is happy to present Kris Lloyd with The College Money Guys. Lloyd will provide information on paying for college without going broke. If you're the parent of a high school student who plans to attend college, you MUST attend this FREE workshop on Tuesday, Oct. 30, at 12 noon in the Building 30 Auditorium.
Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Clinical Services Branch x36130
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3. Employee Discount Days with Appreciation Events and Starport
Appreciation Events representatives will be in the Buildings 3 and 11 cafés from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Oct. 30 and 31 to offer employee savings of up to 90 percent on local activities and services. Cards are available in a vast array of categories, including local sports events, restaurants, day spas, golf courses, bed and breakfasts, boat cruises, theme parks and more! Go here for more information, or email for a full list of promotions.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
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4. Want to Develop Your Speaking and Leadership Skills and Ignite Your Career?
A Toastmasters meeting is a learn-by-doing workshop where participants hone their speaking and leadership skills in a no-pressure atmosphere. There is no instructor in a Toastmasters meeting. Instead, members evaluate one another's presentations. This feedback process is a key part of the program's success. Come visit us anytime and bring a friend! The Space Explorers Toastmasters Club meets every Friday from 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. in Building 30A, Conference Room 1010.
Carolyn Jarrett x37594
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5. Fire Warden Orientation Course (4 Hours)
This four-hour course will satisfy the JSC training requirement for newly assigned Fire Wardens from JSC, Sonny Carter Training Facility and Ellington Field. This course must be completed before assuming these duties.
Topics covered include: duties and responsibilities of a Fire Warden; building evacuation techniques; recognizing and correcting fire hazards; and types and uses of portable fire extinguishers.
Fire Wardens who have previously attended this four-hour orientation course and need to satisfy the three-year training requirements may attend the two-hour Fire Warden Refresher Course now available in SATERN for registration.
Date/Time: Nov. 28 from 8 a.m. to noon
Where: Safety Learning Center, Building 226N, Room 174
Registration via SATERN required:
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Aundrail Hill x36369
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JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.
NASA TV:
1 pm Central (2 EDT) – Expedition 33 EVA preview press briefing (EVA scheduled for Nov. 1)
6 am Central SUNDAY (7 EDT) – SpaceX Dragon departure coverage…
· Unberth at ~6 am Central
· Release at ~8:26 am Central
· Splashdown at ~2:20 pm Central
· NOTE: deorbit/splashdown will NOT be on NASA TV
NEWS DISTRIBUTION: Mon-Wed next week my colleague Dan Huot will be sending out the news summary. I’ll be back Thursday.
Human Spaceflight News
Friday – October 26, 2012
HEADLINES AND LEADS
COMPLETE STORIES
Charlie Bolden intends to press Pres. Obama on Mars mission mandate for NASA
Keith Cowing - NASAWatch.com
On 17 October 2012, a meeting was held inside of NASA. This was not an agency-wide meeting, but rather one of a number of meetings focused on NASA's future strategic directions. Some participants joined in via telephone. The topic focused on the future of the International Space Station (ISS). The HEOMD (Human Exploration Operations Mission Directorate) team made their presentation which included a plan to run the ISS through 2028. This long term ISS operations plan did not sit well will NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden. Bolden said that he needed to know directly from President Obama whether or not missions to Mars starting in the 2030s was to be NASA's ultimate goal. If this is not the President's goal for NASA, then Bolden wondered why NASA should be expected to continue funding the ISS for another decade and a half.
Soyuz TMA-06M, carrying three-man crew, docks with space station
William Harwood - CBS News
Wrapping up a two-day orbital chase, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut glided to a smooth docking with the International Space Station Thursday, boosting the lab's crew back to six. With commander Oleg Novitskiy, flight engineer Evgeny Tarelkin and shuttle veteran Kevin Ford monitoring the automated approach from the Soyuz TMA-06M descent module, the compact spacecraft's docking system engaged its counterpart at the end of the Russian Poisk module at 8:29 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) as the station sailed 250 miles above southern Ukraine.
Soyuz with astronauts docks with space station
Peter Leonard - Associated Press
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying three astronauts and a consignment of fish successfully docked Thursday with the International Space Station after a two-day voyage. The arrival of NASA astronaut Kevin Ford and Russians Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin on Thursday brings the crew at the orbiting outpost to six. Novitsky gently slotted the Soyuz craft into the Russian Poisk research module around 410 kilometers (255 miles) above southern Ukraine around six minutes ahead of the scheduled 1235 GMT (8:35 a.m. EDT) arrival.
Three new crew arrive at space station with fish
Irene Klotz - Reuters
A pair of rookie Russian cosmonauts and a veteran U.S. astronaut arrived at the International Space Station on Thursday, boosting the crew back to full strength and bringing along 32 Japanese medaka fish. Soyuz spacecraft commander Oleg Novitskiy, flight engineer Evgeny Tarelkin and NASA's Kevin Ford ended a two-day journey with an 8:29 a.m. EDT (1229 GMT) docking at the orbital outpost as the ships sailed 254 miles above the planet.
Soyuz successfully docks with International Space Station
Todd Halvorson - Florida Today
An American and two Russians arrived at the International Space Station today after a two-day trip from a central Asian spaceport. NASA astronaut Kevin Ford and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin docked at the Poisk module on the Russian side of the station at 8:29 a.m. EDT.
Russian, U.S. Soyuz Crew Docks with Space Station
Mark Carreau - Aviation Week
Russia’s Soyuz TMA-06M, 32S spacecraft successfully docked with the International Space Station early Thursday, delivering two cosmonauts, a U.S. astronaut and 32 Medaka fish for an aquatic skeletal development experiment. The same day launch and docking of a Russian Progress resupply craft is set for next Wednesday. One day later, Williams and Hoshide are scheduled for a six to seven hour spacewalk to deal with a cooling system leak on the P-6 solar power system segment radiator. The newcomers were greeted by Expedition 33 station commander Sunita Williams of NASA, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.
Soyuz Spacecraft Docks at Space Station with New US-Russian Crew
Tariq Malik - Space.com
A Russian Soyuz space capsule linked up with the International Space Station Thursday to deliver three new residents to the orbiting laboratory. The Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft docked at the space station's rooftop Poisk module at 8:29 a.m. EDT (1229 GMT) after a two-day orbital chase. Riding on the Soyuz were American astronaut Kevin Ford of NASA and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, who are beginning a five-month mission to the space station.
European Science Foundation Questions ExoMars, Space Station Funding
Peter de Selding - Space News
A leading European space science organization on Oct. 25 urged the European Space Agency (ESA) to think twice before diverting scarce science monies to support optional ESA programs like the ExoMars mission and the international space station.
Atlantis' moving day one week from today
Dave Berman - Florida Today
With space shuttle Atlantis’ 9.8-mile journey to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex only a week away, those coordinating the move concede to feeling a bit jittery. “It’s only a priceless artifact,” said Tim Macy, director of project development and construction for Delaware North Companies Parks & Resorts, which operates the Visitor Complex. “It’s the most complicated piece of equipment ever built. Of course, we feel pressure.” Macy said he expects about 8,000 people to buy tickets to watch the move next Friday, including about 4,000 who will buy the higher-priced tickets offering access to Space Florida’s Exploration Park for a three-hour up-close view of Atlantis. Tickets remain available.
How shuttle Atlantis will roll (and rise) into NASA display
Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com
The last of NASA's space shuttles to move into a museum will roll over to its Florida retirement home in one week's time. Next Friday (Nov. 2), space shuttle Atlantis will leave the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), where it launched to space 33 times, to land at the KSC Visitor Complex located just down the road. It won't be the longest trip the shuttle has made, or even the most memorable, but as the last trip of its kind, it will be making history. "It's only a priceless artifact driving 9.8 miles and weighing about 154,000 pounds," Tim Macy, the director of project development and construction for Delaware North Parks & Resorts, which operates the visitor complex for NASA, said on Thursday. "We've been planning for this a long, long time."
NASA Testing a Space Capsule/Helicopter Hybrid
Jason Paur - Wired.com
NASA engineers are testing out a new version of an old idea: fitting rotary wings to a space capsule for a helicopter-like re-entry method. The result could be a spacecraft that would be more maneuverable than the current capsules that return to Earth under parachute, though not as maneuverable as the space shuttle orbiters. With the retirement of the only fixed winged spacecraft last year, the current crop of capsules all rely on a ballistic re-entry – a nice way of describing the act of falling through the atmosphere at very high speeds and intense heat, but without a lot of control – followed by a parachute ride to the surface. The NASA team is testing the possibility of putting rotary wings on a capsule that could be deployed once the spacecraft has returned to the atmosphere.
Interview
‘Space hotel a reality within 10 years’
Russia Today
Space tourism and precious metal mines on asteroids are not as far off as you might think, Space Adventures’ Eric Anderson told RT. He says within ten years there will be the first hotel in orbit, and eventually, people will live in space.
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COMPLETE STORIES
Charlie Bolden intends to press Pres. Obama on Mars mission mandate for NASA
Keith Cowing - NASAWatch.com
On 17 October 2012, a meeting was held inside of NASA. This was not an agency-wide meeting, but rather one of a number of meetings focused on NASA's future strategic directions. Some participants joined in via telephone. The topic focused on the future of the International Space Station (ISS). The HEOMD (Human Exploration Operations Mission Directorate) team made their presentation which included a plan to run the ISS through 2028.
This long term ISS operations plan did not sit well will NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden. Bolden said that he needed to know directly from President Obama whether or not missions to Mars starting in the 2030s was to be NASA's ultimate goal. If this is not the President's goal for NASA, then Bolden wondered why NASA should be expected to continue funding the ISS for another decade and a half.
At one point, Bolden teared up and said that "Mars is the Goal". Bolden claimed that he was intent upon going to the White House, "pounding his shoe on the table", and demanding a commitment from President Obama to direct NASA to send humans to Mars. Bolden said that he needs that commitment to allow him to decide what to do (not do) with regard to extending the ISS.
Given that the Administration is focused on re-election, it is rather unlikely that Bolden is going to be pounding his shoe inside the Obama White House any time soon. Given uncertain congressional elections and looming sequestration, it is beyond unlikely that any formal multi-year commitment to Mars is going to happen for some time under President Obama. Bolden's influence on the Obama Administration presumes, of course, that he remains as the agency's Administrator for a second Obama Administration. I am not certain that "shoe pounding" would help in this regard.
As for the effect Bolden's shoe pounding for Mars will have with the Romney folks (should they win), their space policy etch-a sketch is a little vague right now. But they have been rather clear that there won't be any budget increases for NASA. Also, it is rather improbable that Charlie Bolden will pull a Dan Goldin maneuver and serve as Administrator under a Romney Administration.
What is a bit baffling about Bolden's latest concerns behind closed doors about Mars and the President is that the President has been rather chatty about the topic. The following is a random collection of search results from the White House website for "Mars NASA". It would seem that President Obama makes a point of mentioning human missions to Mars almost every time he talks about NASA. As such, adapting the agency's efforts along those lines would seem to be what the President exepeects Charlie Bolden to be doing, yes?
NASA is looking at doing one year stays on ISS and there is talk of a crewed station in lunar space - possibly constructed using ISS components and/or technology - just the sort of things you'd expect the ISS to be used for as a more expansive human infrastructure was being contemplated.
If Charlie Bolden wants an immediate presidential space policy pronouncement ala Kennedy, Bush, etc. I'd advise him to turn on TV. With the economy and the world being what it is, that just is not going to happen any time soon.
Soyuz TMA-06M, carrying three-man crew, docks with space station
William Harwood - CBS News
Wrapping up a two-day orbital chase, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut glided to a smooth docking with the International Space Station Thursday, boosting the lab's crew back to six.
With commander Oleg Novitskiy, flight engineer Evgeny Tarelkin and shuttle veteran Kevin Ford monitoring the automated approach from the Soyuz TMA-06M descent module, the compact spacecraft's docking system engaged its counterpart at the end of the Russian Poisk module at 8:29 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) as the station sailed 250 miles above southern Ukraine.
"Docking confirmed, contact and capture confirmed," said NASA mission control commentator Rob Navias. "A flawless approach, a flawless docking for the Soyuz TMA-06M."
Hooks and latches then engaged, pulling the Soyuz snugly into place. After extensive leak checks to verify a tight seal, the station's crew -- Expedition 33 commander Sunita Williams, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko -- planned to welcome their new crewmates aboard for a traditional post-docking chat with mission managers and family members in Moscow.
One of the first items on the crew's agenda was to transfer 32 Asian medaka fish from the Soyuz to a high-tech aquarium in the Japanese Kibo lab module for research on how space radiation and the absence of gravity affects growth and development.
Novitskiy, Tarelkin, Ford and their aquatic passengers were launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday. The two cosmonauts are making their first space flights while Ford piloted a space shuttle during a 2009 space station visit. All three plan to spend 143 days in space before returning to Earth in mid March.
The new crew members face an unusually busy first week aboard the station.
On Sunday, Williams and Hoshide will use the station's robot arm to unberth a commercial cargo ship from the forward Harmony module, releasing it into open space for a fiery plunge back to Earth and a splashdown off the coast of California.
The Dragon cargo capsule, built, launched and operated by Space Exploration Technologies -- SpaceX -- as part of a $1.6 billion commercial resupply contract, will bring about a ton of equipment, experiment samples and other gear back to waiting scientists and engineers, restoring a capability that was lost with the shuttle's retirement last year.
Three days after Dragon's departure, the unmanned Progress M-17M supply ship is scheduled for launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Flying a single-day rendezvous, the spacecraft is scheduled to dock at the Zvezda module's aft port around 9:40 a.m. that morning. Its cargo includes 2,050 pounds of propellant, 926 pounds of water and 2,738 pounds of spare parts and other equipment.
The day after the Progress launch, on Nov. 1, Williams and Hoshide plan to carry out a complex six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk to bypass an ammonia leak in the coolant system of the station's far left-side set of solar arrays. The system circulates ammonia through a large radiator to dissipate heat, and if the leak isn't resolved soon, the station could lose one of its power channels.
As it turns out, the port-six set of solar arrays includes spare radiators that were used during the early stages of station construction. Williams and Hoshide plan to install jumpers that will route ammonia to one of the currently stowed spare radiators, bypassing components that may be responsible for the leak. The radiator then will be redeployed to restore normal cooling.
Williams, Hoshide and Malenchenko plan to return to Earth aboard the Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft on Nov. 12, closing out Expedition 33. Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin then will form the nucleus of the Expedition 34 crew, with Ford taking over as commander.
They will have the station to themselves until Dec. 21 when second-generation cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and NASA shuttle veteran Thomas Marshburn arrive aboard the Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft.
"We hope to have a little bit of (Christmas) festivities on board," Ford said in a NASA interview. "I’ve tried to plan ahead to have some things up there to make it seem like the holidays, and when New Year’s rolls around I’m going to do my best to be well rested and try to see some fireworks as we pass through those midnight time zones around the planet and see if we can pick up any of that from space."
Soyuz with astronauts docks with space station
Peter Leonard - Associated Press
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying three astronauts and a consignment of fish successfully docked Thursday with the International Space Station after a two-day voyage.
The arrival of NASA astronaut Kevin Ford and Russians Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin on Thursday brings the crew at the orbiting outpost to six.
Novitsky gently slotted the Soyuz craft into the Russian Poisk research module around 410 kilometers (255 miles) above southern Ukraine around six minutes ahead of the scheduled 1235 GMT (8:35 a.m. EDT) arrival.
The trio blasted off Tuesday from a Russian-leased facility in the southern Kazakhstan town of Baikonur.
Incoming cargo includes 32 guppy-like fish that will be used to test how conditions in space impact on living organisms.
Akihiko Hoshide, an astronaut with Japan's JAXA space agency, spent early Thursday morning preparing an aquarium on the Japanese experiment module called "Kibo," or Hope.
"The importance of these very small fishes is that they have bones and muscles just like human beings," Hoshide told NASA TV earlier this year before the start of his mission. "What we're trying to do is have them stay in space for a longer duration and then bring them down to look at their bone structure and muscles."
The hardy Medaka fish, which can grow up to four centimeters (1.6 inches), are considered particularly suitable for the study as they have transparent bodies that enable scrutiny of their internal organs.
A spacewalk by Hoshide and U.S. astronaut Suni Williams to repair an ammonia leak from the station's temperature control system is planned for next Thursday.
NASA says ammonia is pumped through the station's system to keep electronics and other equipment cool.
Another task in the frenetic workload over the incoming crew's first week in orbit will be the unberthing Sunday of a commercial Dragon cargo vehicle.
The capsule loaded with completed scientific experiments will splash down in the afternoon in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Baja California.
The growing capabilities of private space vehicle companies have boosted hopes that NASA will be able to focus increasingly on more ambitious exploration projects.
Earlier this month, California-based SpaceX successfully delivered supplies to the space station on Dragon, the first official shipment under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA. It calls for 12 such shipments.
Cygnus, the first cargo vehicle to the station from Orbital Sciences Corp., of Dulles, Virginia, is scheduled for December.
Three new crew arrive at space station with fish
Irene Klotz - Reuters
A pair of rookie Russian cosmonauts and a veteran U.S. astronaut arrived at the International Space Station on Thursday, boosting the crew back to full strength and bringing along 32 Japanese medaka fish.
Soyuz spacecraft commander Oleg Novitskiy, flight engineer Evgeny Tarelkin and NASA's Kevin Ford ended a two-day journey with an 8:29 a.m. EDT (1229 GMT) docking at the orbital outpost as the ships sailed 254 miles above the planet.
After making sure seals between the two spacecraft were airtight, the men joined space station commander Sunita Williams, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko to return the station to its full, six-member crew.
The $100 billion station, a project of 15 nations, had had a crew of three onboard since September 16 because of normal rotation schedules.
"It is so great to see all six of you on orbit and to see your smiling faces," William Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for spaceflight, radioed to the crew from the Russian mission control near Moscow.
The 33rd space station crew blasted off on Tuesday aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Ford, who flew as the pilot on a 2009 space shuttle mission, said he noticed different noises and vibrations riding on the Soyuz, but he found the trip just as enjoyable.
"The two days went really quickly," Ford told family and friends gathered at the Russian mission control during a televised welcoming ceremony. "It was an incredible ride."
Ford's Russian colleagues, both of whom are flying for the first time, had a bit of struggle adjusting to the weightless environment of space.
"I have to admit it was a little bit difficult the first day, but then it got better and easier," one of the cosmonauts said through a translator.
"It got tolerable," the other added. "Today, we're feeling great."
One of the first orders of business was transferring 32 Japanese medaka fish from special containers aboard the Soyuz into Japan's Kibo laboratory, where aquariums have been set up for a variety of experiments.
"The fish are still alive. Aki already has checked on them. He was very worried that they make it here," one of the cosmonauts said, referring to Hoshide.
The crew will have a busy schedule in the coming days. On Sunday, the privately owned Dragon cargo ship, which arrived at the station on October 10, is due to depart.
The Space Exploration Technologies' freighter, making the first of 12 supply runs under a $1.6 billion NASA contract, will be returning with more than one ton (907 kg) of science experiments and gear from the orbital outpost, the first big load of cargo to come back to Earth since the space shuttles stopped flying more than a year ago.
The astronauts also are preparing for the arrival of a Russian cargo ship on Wednesday and a spacewalk the following day by Williams and Hoshide to try to repair a leak in a station cooling system.
Williams, Hoshide and Malenchenko are scheduled to return to Earth on November 12, leaving the three newcomers on their own until replacements arrive on December 21.
Soyuz successfully docks with International Space Station
Todd Halvorson - Florida Today
An American and two Russians arrived at the International Space Station today after a two-day trip from a central Asian spaceport.
NASA astronaut Kevin Ford and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin docked at the Poisk module on the Russian side of the station at 8:29 a.m. EDT.
“A flawless approach. A flawless docking,” NASA mission commentator Rob Navias said. “Three new residents have arrived at the International Space Station.”
Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin blasted off Tuesday from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
They join three others on the outpost: U.S. astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Akihiro Hoshide of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
The six face a busy week. On Sunday, a SpaceX Dragon commercial cargo carrier will depart the station with 744 pounds of science experiment samples and other gear.
The carrier is the only vehicle capable of returning significant amounts of cargo to Earth. It will splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California a few hours after its departure.
Next Wednesday, a robotic Russian Progress space freighter is scheduled to launch and arrive at the station six hours later.
And on Nov. 1 – a day that marks 12 years of continuous human presence on the outpost – Williams and Hoshide will perform a spacewalk to fix an ammonia coolant leak outside the complex.
Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin plan to perform almost 200 science experiments during their stay at the station. They are due back on Earth on March 19.
Russian, U.S. Soyuz Crew Docks with Space Station
Mark Carreau - Aviation Week
Russia’s Soyuz TMA-06M, 32S spacecraft successfully docked with the International Space Station early Thursday, delivering two cosmonauts, a U.S. astronaut and 32 Medaka fish for an aquatic skeletal development experiment.
The same day launch and docking of a Russian Progress resupply craft is set for next Wednesday. One day later, Williams and Hoshide are scheduled for a six to seven hour spacewalk to deal with a cooling system leak on the P-6 solar power system segment radiator.
The newcomers were greeted by Expedition 33 station commander Sunita Williams of NASA, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.
The Soyuz 32 spacecraft, the ISS program designation, lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday at 6:51 a.m., EDT.
The container with the Medaka, a small transparent fish, will be transferred to the station’s new aquatic habitat.
The habitat was launched in July aboard Japan’s third H-II Transfer Vehicle re-supply craft. Medaka, which thrive in a natural neutrally buoyant environment on Earth, will be studied for changes in skeletal and muscle development that can be attributed to weightlessness.
Thursday’s docking initiates a busy week for the station, which has not had a full complement of six crew since mid-September.
On Sunday, the SpaceX Dragon commercial resupply craft departs the station after an 18-day stay, restoring a U.S. down mass capability lost with the retirement of NASA’s space shuttle program in July 2011.
Novitskiy, Tarelkin and Ford are scheduled to live and work aboard the orbiting science lab until mid-March.
Soyuz Spacecraft Docks at Space Station with New US-Russian Crew
Tariq Malik - Space.com
A Russian Soyuz space capsule linked up with the International Space Station Thursday to deliver three new residents to the orbiting laboratory.
The Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft docked at the space station's rooftop Poisk module at 8:29 a.m. EDT (1229 GMT) after a two-day orbital chase. Riding on the Soyuz were American astronaut Kevin Ford of NASA and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, who are beginning a five-month mission to the space station.
"We can see you, everything looks fine," Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, who was already onboard the station, told the approaching crew before the two spacecraft docked about 230 miles (370 km) over southern Ukraine.
The Soyuz crew will float inside the space station at about 11:15 a.m. EDT (1415 GMT) during a cosmic welcome ceremony.You can watch the Soyuz crew's welcome ceremony live on SPACE.com here via a NASA TV feed. The NASA broadcast will begin at 10:45 a.m. EDT (1445 GMT).
"We’ll stay until March," Ford said in a NASA interview before launch. "We’ve got some space station maintenance activities planned, some kind of periodic maintenance that we’ve trained for, but really the emphasis will be on getting the science rolling and getting as much utilization out of the flight as we can."
Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin launched into space on Tuesday (Oct. 23) atop a Soyuz rocket that blasted off from the Central Asian spaceport of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. They are the second half of the space station's six-person Expedition 33 crew, which is commanded by NASA astronaut Sunita Williams. Malenchenko and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide round out the crew.
The Soyuz spacecraft is bringing some fishy friends to the space station in addition to its human crew. The spacecraft is ferrying 32 small medaka fish to the space station so they can be placed inside a tank, called the Aquatic Habitat, for an experiment to study how fish adapt to weightlessness.
Thursday's Soyuz docking at the space station kicks off a flurry of arrivals and departures at the International Space Station.
A robotic Dragon space capsule built by the private spaceflight company SpaceX will depart the space station on Sunday (Oct. 28) and splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California. The Dragon capsule will return nearly 2,000 pounds (907 kilograms) of science experiment hardware and other gear back to Earth.
On Wednesday (Oct. 31), an unmanned Russian Progress spacecraft will launch toward the space station and arrive six hours later to make a Halloween delivery of food, equipment and other Halloween treats.
One day later, on Thursday (Nov. 1), Williams and Hoshide will don bulky spacesuits and float outside the space station on a spacewalk to fix an ammonia leak in the orbiting lab's cooling system.
Williams, Hoshide and Malenchenko are in the final weeks of their mission to the space station, and will return to Earth Nov. 12. At that time, Ford will take command of the space station crew to begin the Expedition 34 mission.
European Science Foundation Questions ExoMars, Space Station Funding
Peter de Selding - Space News
A leading European space science organization on Oct. 25 urged the European Space Agency (ESA) to think twice before diverting scarce science monies to support optional ESA programs like the ExoMars mission and the international space station.
The group also expressed doubt as to whether ESA’s science budget, which limits large-class missions to some 700 million euros ($910 million), is sufficient to fund the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission with NASA.
Big science, the group says, occasionally needs missions in the multibillion-dollar category such as the James Webb Space Telescope under construction for NASA.
In recommendations addressed to ESA’s upcoming ministerial conference, scheduled for Nov. 20-21 in Naples, Italy, the European Science Foundation (ESF) distributes praise to just about every science and Earth observation program now operating or being planned at the 20-nation ESA.
The praise extends to ExoMars and to the international space station, both of which ESF says fill valuable roles in support of European research and technology.
But the ESF says raiding the science budge — funded by mandatory contributions from ESA governments — to fund optional programs like ExoMars and the space station is not good policy.
The foundation says it is “concerned that these precedents could lead ESA to direct funding from the mandatory program to support optional programs whenever these would be facing budget problems.”
ExoMars has budget problems to spare. Backers of the two-launch mission to Mars, planned for 2016 and 2018, are asking ESA’s Science Program Committee for around 50 million euros to help fill ExoMars’ funding gap. ExoMars backers, including ESA Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain, want ExoMars classed as an ESA science “mission of opportunity” and thereby become eligible for science funding.
In addition, Dordain is asking the science program for about 150 million euros in the near term for ExoMars, on condition that the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, agree to launch ESA’s Juice mission to Jupiter later this decade. The 150-million-euro figure is the approximate amount that ESA’s science program would spend to launch Juice on a European Ariane 5 rocket.
Managers of ESA’s space station program have similarly reached into the space science coffers for station-utilization efforts when those ESA governments backing the station have been unable to meet program financial requirements.
The ESF does not explicitly say it opposes helping finance ExoMars from the science budget, especially since the ExoMars mission is so highly valued by ESF members. The document leaves unresolved what it calls “the dilemma of ExoMars” by stopping short of an opinion on either side of the issue.
ESA’s science program budget is set in five-year chunks, and then renewed every three or four years, at the agency’s ministerial conferences. Once a consensus on funding is reached, all ESA members contribute a fixed level based on each nation’s gross domestic product.
The ESF does not limit its recommendations to science policy. It urges ESA to fund technology development to render Europe independent of the United States for certain technologies deemed critical to space science and exploration efforts.
Such technologies, the ESF says, include detectors used in astronomy missions, and radioisotope-based energy sources for missions too far from the sun for solar power.
The group says that despite the long-established habit of scientists to collaborate across disciplines, such is not the case for funding agencies. The result, the document says, is that ground-based astronomy facilities and spaceborne platforms each appear to be developed without regard for what the other is doing.
ESF is not the first to criticize the fact that ESA’s convention prohibits the agency from funding data analysis and exploitation of science data. That job is left to individual nations, whose work is “fragmented” and “inadequate,” the ESF says.
The document says that on European programs in which NASA is collaborating as a junior partner, U.S. scientists often have easier access to data than their European counterparts because it is collected and stored by NASA.
ESF proposes that ESA and the commission of the 27-nation European Union, who are already sharing responsibility for space funding in Europe, address the issue so that a central data-storage capability is created.
Atlantis' moving day one week from today
Dave Berman - Florida Today
With space shuttle Atlantis’ 9.8-mile journey to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex only a week away, those coordinating the move concede to feeling a bit jittery.
“It’s only a priceless artifact,” said Tim Macy, director of project development and construction for Delaware North Companies Parks & Resorts, which operates the Visitor Complex. “It’s the most complicated piece of equipment ever built. Of course, we feel pressure.”
Macy said he expects about 8,000 people to buy tickets to watch the move next Friday, including about 4,000 who will buy the higher-priced tickets offering access to Space Florida’s Exploration Park for a three-hour up-close view of Atlantis. Tickets remain available.
Planning Atlantis’ move aboard an Orbiter Transporter System vehicle involved a logistic dance that included temporarily moving 120 light poles, 23 traffic signals, 56 traffic signs and one high-voltage power line along the route.
The trip is scheduled to start at 6 a.m. at the KSC Vehicle Assembly Building and end at 5:30 p.m. at the new Atlantis home inside the Visitor Complex, where a 150-yard-long road extension was built for the final stretch of the orbiter’s journey. The event will culminate in a fireworks show at dusk.
Macy said most of the route was tested early on a Sunday morning about 11/2 months ago, when the 167,000-pound, 76-wheeled Orbiter Transporter System made the trip with sticks and poles attached, mimicking the height and wingspan of Atlantis. The goal: make sure all the clearances will be as expected.
“We’ve done a lot of tape-measuring,” Macy said during a media teleconference Thursday.
Among the dignitaries expected at Exploration Park for the move will be NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, KSC Director Bob Cabana and Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll.
All tickets for admission to the KSC Visitor Complex that day will be sold in advance, with an entry pass and arrival time instructions being sent to ticket buyers. Call 877-313-2610. To purchase tickets, go to www.KennedySpaceCenter.com/Atlantis
How shuttle Atlantis will roll (and rise) into NASA display
Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com
The last of NASA's space shuttles to move into a museum will roll over to its Florida retirement home in one week's time.
Next Friday (Nov. 2), space shuttle Atlantis will leave the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), where it launched to space 33 times, to land at the KSC Visitor Complex located just down the road. It won't be the longest trip the shuttle has made, or even the most memorable, but as the last trip of its kind, it will be making history.
"It's only a priceless artifact driving 9.8 miles and weighing about 154,000 pounds," Tim Macy, the director of project development and construction for Delaware North Parks & Resorts, which operates the visitor complex for NASA, said on Thursday. "We've been planning for this a long, long time."
That planning, which will result in about 350 people being needed on the day of the move, has included scouting the roundabout route that Atlantis will follow, building a full scale mock-up of the rig that will raise the shuttle almost 40 feet into the air and then tilt it 40 degrees to one side, and scheduling stops where both space program workers and several thousand ticketed public spectators will get a chance to see the orbiter along the way.
The move will come just three days after Atlantis' sister shuttle, Endeavour, will open on display at the California Science Center on Oct. 30. Atlantis' delivery will be much more straight forward than Endeavour's 12-mile, three day roll through the streets of Los Angeles earlier this month.
"We do not have any topographical regions going up and down," Macy said. "We have one small exit ramp to go up and we don't have to clear anything. We do not have the security concerns that they had driving through downtown streets."
From VAB to visitor complex
Atlantis' final journey will begin at about 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT) on Nov. 2 when it backs out of its current parking spot inside Kennedy Space Center's 52-story tall Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).
This last launch, although not to space, still carries some weather constraints, which will need to be cleared before Atlantis hits the road for the visitor complex.
"Because it is such a long window, once we commit at 7 a.m. in the morning, and are going south... we are go for the day," Macy explained during a call with reporters. "So we're working closely with the 45th Air Wing and the same meteorologists who worked on the launches who will help us with the criteria."
"If it's not squally or intense rain, then we're in pretty good shape to move," he said.
Assuming good weather, Atlantis will leave the VAB riding atop a 76-wheel vehicle that was designed specifically for moving the space shuttles between facilities. It previously carried the orbiters between their processing hangars and the VAB as the shuttles moved closer to lifting off.
"The orbiter rides on what we call the OTS — the Orbiter Transporter System — which is the 'Ferrari' of the OTS family. It moves at the breakneck speed of about 2 miles per hour, so we have to cover the 9.8 miles in that time," Macy said.
The trip might be shorter if Atlantis could make a beeline for the visitor center, but the most direct route has a rather large guard house in the way. The next most direct path is also blocked by a different security shack.
Not that there aren't benefits to being on government land.
"We're going to take it down a route that most of it, I'd say 70 percent of it, will be behind the fences as it were, in terms of it won't be on public grounds but it will be on the KSC property," said Macy. "The good news is that it is on KSC property, the roads are wide and the property is an industrial kind of area, so it is really set for this kind of movement."
The clearest, and therefore chosen, route will first take Atlantis away from its destination before looping around to avoid any structures along the way. As a bonus, it will take the orbiter past KSC's headquarters building, where a morning ceremony for space program workers is planned. It will also deliver Atlantis to a still under construction light industrial park called Exploration Park, where the bused-in public will get a chance to walk around the shuttle.
Even the roundabout route however, wasn't without some obstacles. Along the 9.8 miles Atlantis will travel, 120 light poles, 23 traffic signals, 66 traffic signs and a power line needed to be temporarily removed.
"We have some logistics we're handling, but actually it's really manageable," Macy said. "There are a couple of tight turns right as we get into Exploration Park and we have had to trim back some Scrub Pines [trees] but that's about it."
Macy bases his confidence in the route on a trial run with the transporter, with poles standing in for Atlantis' 78-foot (24 meter) wingspan.
"We have run the route, actually taken the OTS along the whole route except for the last mile or so, so we are comfortable that it works and there are no real issues," Macy said. "We took it around the route with 80 foot poles — 40 feet on each side — so we're pretty comfortable with it."
Should all go as Macy and his team have planned, Atlantis will pull up to the visitor complex by 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT), where a celebratory fireworks display will await its arrival. But even though its journey is over, the work to display Atlantis will be just beginning.
Next move: up
Arriving at its $100 million new home, Atlantis, still atop of the OTS, will roll right inside.
"It's more like a carport right now. It's like a garage without the door," Macy described. "As soon as we get it in, we start filling in behind it. We work that simultaneously with getting Atlantis ready to be lifted in place."
That's right, Atlantis' next motion will be up. The six-story display facility was designed to showcase the shuttle as only the astronauts have had a chance to see it.
"If you were in the International Space Station and looked out the window, what would the orbiter look like when it was about 150 yards away from you?" Macy said, citing the original idea that helped shape Atlantis' display plan. "The [payload bay] doors are still open, the [high-gain, S-band] antenna is out, and in this case, we'll have the Canadarm [robotic arm] out as well."
To achieve the intended appearance, Atlantis needs to be lifted 36 feet (11 meters) into the air and then tilted 43.21 degrees.
"When the guests come to see the orbiter, their feet will be basically at the same height as the open payload bay doors," Macy explained. "So they'll be able to look into the open bay on the orbiter. And then further, they'll go down a ramp and be able to walk around the orbiter and see the tiles up close."
"Except for the structure that holds it up, there will be no impedance to seeing the orbiter from top to bottom," said Macy.
While the work to erect the fourth wall to seal Atlantis in the building will take until mid-December to complete, the shuttle's lift will get underway by Nov. 11 and take a few days to accomplish.
First, Atlantis' landing gear will be lowered and the OTS will be driven out. After about a week on its wheels, steel support beams and jacks will be used to hoist the shuttle about 12 feet high (3.7 meters) so its gear can be stowed again and a loose shrink wrap of sorts can be applied to protect the orbiter from dust.
Then, larger jacks will be used to raise Atlantis the rest of the way, before one side is slowly lowered to achieve the desired angle.
To make sure that setup would work, Macy and his team practiced first with a 155,000 pound (70,300 kg) stand-in.
"We have actually built a full-scale mockup of how we are going to lift the orbiter and put it in place," he said. "It took us about five weeks to set it up and get it going. But we lifted it the full 36 feet in the air and turned the payload mock-up 43.21 degrees. So, we are happy with how that works."
Once resting on its pedestals, Atlantis will remain shrink wrapped until March or April of next year, as work to finish the building is completed. Then it will be carefully exposed and set up for display.
"Opening the payload bay doors from an engineering point of view, is just about as complicated as raising [Atlantis] up," said Macy, adding the process involves roof-mounted dollies and cables but is difficult to describe.
Ultimately, some 60 other related exhibits will be moved in to surround Atlantis, so when the building opens to the public in July 2013 there will be something for everyone. Among the displays will be a full size Hubble Telescope model, space shuttle landing simulators and an interactive wall where mission details can be retrieved at the touch of a finger.
But before any of that can happen, Atlantis first needs to complete its final journey, set for next Friday.
"I think there'll be a huge sigh of relief," Macy said. "when it gets in Friday night and lands where it is supposed to and we turn the key [to the OTS] off. I think that is going to be a huge emotional kind of 'phew' moment."
NASA Testing a Space Capsule/Helicopter Hybrid
Jason Paur - Wired.com
NASA engineers are testing out a new version of an old idea: fitting rotary wings to a space capsule for a helicopter-like re-entry method. The result could be a spacecraft that would be more maneuverable than the current capsules that return to Earth under parachute, though not as maneuverable as the space shuttle orbiters.
With the retirement of the only fixed winged spacecraft last year, the current crop of capsules all rely on a ballistic re-entry – a nice way of describing the act of falling through the atmosphere at very high speeds and intense heat, but without a lot of control – followed by a parachute ride to the surface. The NASA team is testing the possibility of putting rotary wings on a capsule that could be deployed once the spacecraft has returned to the atmosphere.
The rotor blades would not be powered as they are in a helicopter, but instead would turn thanks to the air passing over them as the capsule drops. This method would be similar to an autorotation, which is how helicopter pilots control their descent if they lose an engine. And after tens of hours of practice, a helicopter pilot can make a very soft, pinpoint landing, sans power using this same technique. The hope is that the autorotation technique would provide much more capability to maneuver than the parachutes.
The team from NASA recently tested their idea inside the massive Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The tall building has housed everything from the Saturn V that pushed Apollo astronauts to the moon, to the shuttle launches that ended last year. Now empty, the engineers were able to set up a 480-foot drop in the VAB for their remote control model and let it fall.
“The purpose of the testing … is to study how to get the rotor starting to spin,” said NASA’s Jeff Hagen about the project.
The researchers hope that the controlled descent of an autorotation would give astronauts the ability to land just about anywhere in the world.
“You can land gently and you can land where you want; you don’t have to land out in the ocean,” Meehan said. “Compared to a parachute, you get a soft landing and you get a targeted landing.”
The new space race spurred on by the commercial opportunities for orbital delivery has brought about a handful of new ideas for how spacecraft would return to Earth. Several companies including Blue Origin, SpaceX and Masten Space Systems are working toward a spacecraft that could return to a specific landing spot using rocket thrust to control and direct the descent. SpaceX also wants to develop a reusable launch vehicle that could land at the original pad. The NASA team says the rotor blades could also be attached to the launch vehicles or boosters as well.
Using rotor blades on spacecraft isn’t entirely new. During the early years of NASA, the idea was tossed around for use on the Apollo capsules. But with time in short supply during the 1960s, the engineers opted for the simpler parachute re-entry in order to avoid delays in getting to the moon.
Rotary wings have even been proposed for landing spacecraft on other bodies of rock in the solar system, including Saturn’s moon Titan.
The idea of a rotary wing spacecraft also took flight, albeit briefly, back in the late 1990s. The Rotary Rocket company planned on building a spacecraft that would be carried to altitude using a set of rotor blades powered by small rockets in the tips. The Roton spacecraft would also use the blades for the descent back to Earth.
The company raised $33 million during the heydays of the late 1990s, but only three short, low-altitude flights were made before the company went belly up in 2001. Today the flying prototype of the Roton can be seen near the control tower at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California.
The NASA team working on their own rotary winged capsule is planning more demanding tests outside the controlled environment of the VAB in the future, including possible drops from a high-altitude balloon. The engineers hope to develop the idea to where it could eventually bring back cargo from the space station, and one day astronauts. First they will have to analyze the data from these first drop tests to demonstrate the idea has merit to pursue the ever tighter budgets at the space agency.
Interview
‘Space hotel a reality within 10 years’
Russia Today
Space tourism and precious metal mines on asteroids are not as far off as you might think, Space Adventures’ Eric Anderson told RT. He says within ten years there will be the first hotel in orbit, and eventually, people will live in space.
RT: Your Company [Space Adventures] has been taking people up to space since the 2000s. I remember when I heard recently about the idea of a space hotel – I made a bet with one of my colleagues that there would be no such thing in my lifetime. Now, aside from the fact that I would never live to see the money if I did win, that was the confidence I had – that there would be no such thing. Was it foolish to make such a bet?
Eric Anderson: Unfortunately, I think you probably were. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that there will be a space hotel within the next ten years, in orbit around the Earth.
RT: Why?
EA: Because there is an incredibly good business plan behind it, because millions of people want to go to space, and because the technology to provide such a hotel is getting closer and closer every day in terms of it cost effectiveness.
RT: So, there is in theory an impetus there, but at the moment the principle impetus is just the fact of, ‘Oh, let’s go and see what is out there, let’s be a tourist in space.’ Is that really enough incentive?
EA: All the market studies that have ever been done will show you that 40 per cent of the general public wants to go to space in their lifetime. It just has to reach a point where they can afford it and it is safe enough for them to feel that they are not risking their lives excessively do it. But I do think the tourism market is a catalyst. It is not by any stretch the only reason we would go to space. We will go to space for resources: we will mine the asteroids, will get precious metals like platinum-group metals from asteroids. People will live in space, will do pharmaceutical research, will develop new drugs. Space will become part of our economic sphere of influence, but tourism is a fantastic catalyst for that.
RT: The ISS at the moment, being the only platform capable of holding people in orbit, is a working scientific platform. Are you planning, perhaps, to try and make space tourists useful up there?
EA: First of all, space tourism, honestly, is not a great word for what these people do when they participate as private citizens going to the space station. Every single one of them who is flown with space adventurists to the space station has ended in that scientific program, whether it was material science or biological experiments or whatever it was, they have participated, they have paved their own way of course, they have used themselves as a part of the scientific community. Many of them have gone to space with less-than-perfect health and have been great examples of how, for example, laser surgery on their eyes is affected by space flight. They all want to participate in this. They are participating. And the fact of the matter is, quite honestly, when private citizens go to the space station, a lot more people hear about the space station than otherwise. This is just one of those things that capture the public’s attention. Part of NASA’s mission is to encourage to the maximum extent possible the commercial use of space. And in fact showing that there is a market, showing that there are people willing to do this and showing that you don’t have to be career – military, fighter pilot – the right stuff kind of person, that plays a huge role and I think that’s exactly the sort of thing that ends up helping the space agencies of the world as well.
RT: We have just seen the Dragon spacecraft go up to take supplies to the ISS – that was a significant moment. However, it was a small part of what is otherwise a vast state enterprise without state capital. It seems that at the moment no private enterprise could exist.
EA: You can point to companies like SpaceX. SpaceX has a contract for services to deliver cargo to the space station, but the capital that it was started with has come from its founder, Elon Musk, and, so this is an inflection point – this was not always the case. You are absolutely correct that for the first 30 years of space it all was controlled by the government, but we are reaching a point now – in fact I think the flipping point was in the mid-nineties – when private commercial expenditures in space finally exceeded government. And that was of course driven by the satellite, telecommunications markets and things like that. No one would argue that those are successful businesses. But we are reaching a point where commercial enterprise is creating its own space program, and it will stand on its own.
RT: It has been well noted that in the past year and a half there have been a number of worrying mistakes with Russian space programs: a supply rocket up to the ISS fell back to Earth, a mission to one of the Martian moons never got out of orbit and it has cost some high-profile resignations, and will likely lead to a lot of restructuring in the Russian space agency. Serious concerns: Is the technology that is going to take people up there good enough?
EA: The fact of the matter is that despite recent hiccups that may have occurred on different types of launch vehicles, the Soyuz spacecraft and rocket have the best safety record, the best history of being the approved technology for reliably taking people to and from space. In human history there is no other vehicle that comes close. NASA uses this vehicle itself to get to space. So, we have this, and I’m sure and highly confident that the Russian space industry is going to great lengths to make sure those things don’t happen again. Space flight is inherently an activity that is risky, and so the risk is managed, but it is never going to be perfect. At the end of the day I think there are not many people in the world who would want to go to space, who would not feel comfortably flying on the Soyuz. The key technological breakthrough that we need is rapid and cost effective reusability, like flying an airplane. When you land at Moscow airport, when you land at New York airport, they can turn the plane around in a couple of hours and leave.
RT:This is the problem. What you are saying to me – the immediate thing I think of is a shuttle. There is no shuttle, you can’t reuse a Soyuz. We are going the wrong way.
EA: The shuttle was a vehicle that was incredibly high-performing. It was an amazing feat of human engineering, but it really wasn’t reusable. I like to call it rebuildable. Certainly parts of it were rebuildable, certainly some of this was reusable, but there was an incredible number of man-hours that had to go into certifying that vehicle for flight every time, and it ended up being far more expensive and far less reliable in terms of its reusability. That is why I use the word rapidly reusable. So, the shuttle was not a great example of that. However, many of the vehicles that are being built now, including for example the Falcon and the Dragon by SpaceX, are designed… and the CST-100 by Boeing, to be reusable ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times. And those kinds of advances will be the ones, and it’s going to take time. That will yield those price decreases that will eventually enable millions of people to go to space every year.
RT: There is one other cost that perhaps hasn’t been looked at enough at the moment. There is already a lot of criticism leveled at people flying all over the world for the holidays about emissions, about pollution. Not many rockets are being launched at the moment – but they certainly aren’t environmentally-friendly, the ones that have been launched. If that program is going to be expanded, then Earth could bear the environmental cost of such space tourism.
EA: So, when we calculated the carbon emissions of a Soyuz launch, it ended up being something like a fraction of a transatlantic air flight. So it is actually not as much as you think. The fuel on the space shuttle is liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and the exhaust is water. So these are not the kind of things that are really going to affect our carbon emissions and our environment as a whole, even when we get to the point that there are literally tens of thousands of launches per year, it is a drop in the bucket compared to all the other forms of emissions and pollution.
RT: Sure that is an issue that will take shape in time, and we will see how that one will pans out. The tourism is not the only idea that you have got on the books. You also mentioned earlier mining for asteroids. This seems like a lot more hard-nosed commercial idea. Just try and paint a little picture for us – a lot of people can’t really envisage this. Perhaps from pictures, from animations they have seen asteroid belts. But I don’t think they know any asteroids that close to Earth, because that is the kind of thing people get scared about destroying Earth. So, what kind of distances we are talking about? How would this actually look – a fully running asteroid mining operation?
EA: That’s a wonderful question. So, in the sources, we have literally hundreds of millions of asteroids. The vast majority of those asteroids lay in the asteroid belt. The asteroid belt is between Mars and Jupiter, a hundred million miles away or more. However, there is a small but not insignificant population of what are called near-Earth asteroids. Anywhere between 10 and 20 per cent of the material on them is what we call volatiles – what that means is most of it is water, water-ice. And water is great because when you break down water into its constituent parts you get hydrogen and oxygen, not coincidentally, the same fuel the space shuttle uses to go to and from orbit. And so, we first want to use the asteroids to build propellant depots in space – that is, gas stations. We want to be able to reduce the cost of space exploration by allowing spacecrafts and spaceships to fuel up no matter where they go, and by doing that we will enable a space economy for all different kinds of businesses. This is the second half of the equation of how to reduce the cost of space travel. Once we have the capability of propellant depots in space, moving asteroids around becomes much easier. And then we can go to the more valuable materials, the higher cost per ounce materials, for example the platinum group metals. Now for $1,500 an ounce on average you have platinum, palladium, radium, osmium, iridium – and the asteroids are chock full of these materials. They appear in concentrations in orders of magnitude – better than the best platinum mines on Earth – in the asteroids.
RT: I am sorry to seem like a skeptic. But I think I'm not alone here. The image of us sending out teams to try move asteroids, to try and land on them, is really starting to seem like the realms of science fiction. I mean they managed to recently to land a lander on Mars. But that’s really the very limits of our capabilities at the moment. Is it really a serious proposition? How on Earth would you go about doing something like that?
EA: So, let me be the first to admit, there is a long list of technical challenges and it is going to be very hard. This is something that we don’t know the answers to yet, but we do know is that there is no law of physics that prevents it, that these are pieces of rock out there that, for example, something the size of the International Space Station could be worth $200 billion. So, where there is a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow there will be a way. People 30 years ago thought drilling the hole down into the bottom of the ocean and pulling fossil fuels under the North Sea was impossible, and now that is what we do as a matter of daily practice.
END
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