Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Human Spaceflight News

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: February 19, 2013 7:23:23 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - February 19, 2013 and JSC Today

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            JSC Black History Month Observance Closing Event
2.            Protein Innovations Advance Drug Treatments, Skin Care
3.            Life is Always Greener With 'The Greener Side' Newsletter
4.            Are You a PC User Who Wants to Learn More About Teleworking?
5.            JSC Toastmasters Club Meets Wednesday Nights
6.            Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab Tomorrow, Feb. 20
7.            This Week at Starport
8.            NASA JSC Wedding Exhibit
9.            Calling All Thermal Engineers
10.          Society of Reliability Engineers (SRE) Luncheon Meeting
11.          IEEE Section Meeting: Go Steam for Green Transportation
12.          INCOSE TGCC Feb. 21 Event at Baker Hughes International -- RSVP Now
13.          Job Opportunities
14.          RLLS Translation, Telecon, and ISS Russia Travel Support WebEx Training
15.          System Safety Seminar ViTS: April 26, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. -- Building 17, Room 2026
16.          Professional Engineering Ethics Seminar
17.          Fire Extinguisher Training
18.          Fire Warden Refresher (Two Hours)
19.          Fire Warden Orientation Course (Four Hours)
20.          Facility Manager's Training
________________________________________     QUOTE OF THE DAY
" When life's problems seem overwhelming, look around and see what other people are coping with. You may consider yourself fortunate. "

-- Ann Landers
________________________________________
1.            JSC Black History Month Observance Closing Event
The African-American Employee Resource Group cordially invites the civil servant and contractor community to the closing activity that will feature Dr. Woodrow Whitlow Jr., associate administrator for the Mission Support Directorate at NASA Headquarters, on Tuesday, Feb. 26, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Teague Auditorium.
Event Date: Tuesday, February 26, 2013   Event Start Time:11:30 AM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Teague

Add to Calendar

Carla Burnett x41044

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2.            Protein Innovations Advance Drug Treatments, Skin Care
While at Marshall Space Flight Center, Dan Carter and colleagues mapped the atomic structure of albumin, an important blood protein, for the first time. Carter formed New Century Pharmaceuticals of Huntsville, Ala., to build on this achievement, resulting in new skin-care products and platforms for cancer treatment. Read the full story from the NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS).
Documents on albumin by Carter are also available in the NTRS.
NTRS is part of the NASA Scientific and Technical Information Program, which JSC's Information Resources Directorate helps manage. To learn more about the NASA Spinoff publication, click here.
JSC IRD Outreach x45257 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov

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3.            Life is Always Greener With 'The Greener Side' Newsletter
Check out the latest edition of "The Greener Side" newsletter, available on the JSC Environmental Office Web page. Read about the alternative fuels at JSC, the Logistics OSCAR program for flight hardware supplies, NASA's Freecycle@Work program and more! Find out about the latest sustainability efforts on-site and see how you can make a difference.
JSC Environmental Office x36207 http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/ja/ja13/index.cfm

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4.            Are You a PC User Who Wants to Learn More About Teleworking?
The Information Resources Directorate (IRD) will be holding a series of collaboration sessions on Feb. 28. Come over to the Building 3 Collaboration Center from 9 to 9:30 a.m. to join a helpful discussion on how to telework for PC users who are just getting started. Stay tuned to JSC Today for more information about IRD's upcoming collaboration sessions.
JSC IRD Outreach x41334 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/default.aspx

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5.            JSC Toastmasters Club Meets Wednesday Nights
Looking to develop speaking and leadership skills? Ignite your career? Want to increase your self-confidence, become a better speaker or leader and communicate more effectively? Then JSC Toastmasters is for you! Members attend meetings each Wednesday from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the Gilruth Center Rio Grande Room. JSC Toastmasters weekly meetings are learn-by-doing workshops in which participants hone their speaking and leadership skills in a pressure-free atmosphere. Membership is open to anyone.
Thomas Bryan x31721 http://3116.toastmastersclubs.org/

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6.            Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab Tomorrow, Feb. 20
Do you need some hands-on, personal help with FedTraveler.com? Join the Business Systems and Process Improvement Office for an Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab tomorrow, Feb. 20, any time between 9 a.m. and noon in Building 12, Room 142. Our help desk representatives will be available to help you work through Extended TDY travel processes and learn more about using FedTraveler during this informal workshop. Bring your current travel documents or specific questions that you have about the system and join us for some hands-on, in-person help with FedTraveler. If you'd like to sign up for this Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab, please log into SATERN and register. For additional information, please contact Judy Seier at x32771.
SATERN direct registration link: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Gina Clenney x39851

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7.            This Week at Starport
Sam's Club will be in the Buildings 3 and 11 cafés today and Thursday from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. to discuss membership options. Receive gift card on new memberships or renewals. Cash or check only for membership purchases.
Pre-sale orders in the Starport Gift Shops for tickets to:
SuperCross - April 6 at 7 p.m. Seats are $23 for section 110, Rows M-P (includes pit pass), or $12 for section 119, Rows X-DD.
Disney On Ice - All seats are $26. Saturday, April 20, at 3:30 p.m. Section 135, Rows P-R; Saturday, April 20, at 7:30 p.m. Section 135, Rows G-J; Sunday, April 21, Section 136, Rows F-H.
Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo concert tickets are still available at the Starport Gift Shop in Building 11. Call x47467 for availability. Carnival Packs are $51, adult Reliant admission tickets are $11 ($6 for children). The barbecue cook-off requires a Reliant admission ticket this year -- no separate ticket for the cook-off.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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8.            NASA JSC Wedding Exhibit
Are you planning a wedding and in need of some options and guidance? Gilruth Center Catering will be holding a wedding exhibit to help you plan the wedding of your dreams at an affordable price. You will be able to meet and connect with local photographers, cake decorators, florists and more. Plus, you can book your wedding at the Gilruth Center, where we will make your day unforgettable! Join us on March 2 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Gilruth Center. This event is free and open to the public.
Event Date: Saturday, March 2, 2013   Event Start Time:10:00 AM   Event End Time:2:00 PM
Event Location: Gilruth Center

Add to Calendar

Lorna Francis x45785 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/events

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9.            Calling All Thermal Engineers
The NESC Passive Thermal Technical Discipline Team NEN website hosts information of interest to passive thermal control and thermal protection engineers, including links to important standards, tutorials, conferences, material properties, thermal in the news and the NESC Academy. A new user subscribe feature has been added to allow you to receive updates via email. This is your "one-stop-shop" for thermal information. We are always seeking new content from across the user community. Please send your ideas to: steven.l.rickman@nasa.gov
Steven Rickman x38867

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10.          Society of Reliability Engineers (SRE) Luncheon Meeting
The Greater Houston Chapter of SRE will hold a general membership meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 20, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Anyone is welcome to come and hear a presentation by Loyd Hamilton of ThinkReliability on "Risk, Reliability and Root Cause Analysis." The meeting will be held at Perry's Steakhouse & Grille (487 Bay Area Blvd., Houston). Each attendee is responsible for his or her own meal.
For more information, contact one of the officers below:
President - Bob Graber, 281-335-2305, robert.r.graber@nasa.gov
Vice President - Lorenzo Calloway, 832-527-0086, lcallowayii@aol.com
Treasurer - Hung Nguyen, 281-483-3233, hung.x.nguyen@nasa.gov
Secretary - Troy Schwartz, 281-871-7512, troy.schwartz@halliburton.com
Robert Graber 281-335-2305

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11.          IEEE Section Meeting: Go Steam for Green Transportation
The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Galveston Bay Section presents Dr. Paul Frenger, who will explore advantages and disadvantages of internal combustion engines (gasoline, diesel) and external combustion engines (steam), and will propose improvements to steam using computerization and other techniques. The presentation also describes use of biocoal as an experimental, environmentally friendly fuel source in a piston-driven steam locomotive.
Frenger is a practicing physician with a diversified background in engineering. Until recently, he was a member of IEEE/Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Ethics and Professional Conduct Committee.
The presentation will run from noon to 12:40 p.m. on Feb. 28 in the Gilruth Center Discovery Room. We offer lunch at 11:30 a.m. for $8; there is no charge for the presentation. Please RSVP to Stew O'Dell by Tuesday, Feb. 19, specify whether you are ordering lunch. Lunch free for unemployed IEEE members; advise when reserving.
Event Date: Thursday, February 28, 2013   Event Start Time:11:30 AM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Discovery Room, Gilruth Center

Add to Calendar

Stew O'Dell x31855 http://ewh.ieee.org/r5/galveston_bay/events/events.html

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12.          INCOSE TGCC Feb. 21 Event at Baker Hughes International -- RSVP Now
Time is running out to RSVP for the next Texas Gulf Coast Chapter (TGCC) event at Baker Hughes International this Thursday, Feb. 21. Baker Hughes invites you to discover how systems engineering is being implemented in the oilfield services industry. The optional tour of the Baker's Houston Technology Center starts at 4:30 p.m. and requires pre-registration to enable the proper clearance. After the tour, Baker will host the networking portion of the evening with appetizers and non-alcoholic drinks. At 6:30 p.m., speakers will talk about the challenges of implementing the systems engineering process and how it was tailored to fit the Baker Hughes environment. Following the presentation, there will be time for questions.
Please send RSVPs to: Emily.Crose@bakerhughes.com
RSVPs are needed to ensure proper facility support and clearance. If you can't do the tour, you are welcome to attend the regular event starting at 6 p.m.
Larry Spratlin 281-461-5218

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13.          Job Opportunities
Where do I find job opportunities?
Both internal Competitive Placement Plan (CPPs) and external JSC job announcements are posted on both the Human Resources (HR) Portal and USAJOBS website. Through the HR portal, civil servants can view summaries of all the agency jobs that are currently open at: https://hr.nasa.gov/portal/server.pt/community/employees_home/239/job_opportu...
To help you navigate to JSC vacancies, use the filter drop-down menu and select "JSC HR." The "Jobs" link will direct you to the USAJOBS website for the complete announcement and the ability to apply online. If you have questions about any JSC job vacancies, please call your HR representative.
Lisa Pesak x30476

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14.          RLLS Translation, Telecon, and ISS Russia Travel Support WebEx Training
TechTrans International (TTI) will provide 30-minute WebEx training classes on Feb. 20, 21 and 22 for the RLLS Portal modules.
Translation Support Request WebEx Training - Wednesday, Feb. 20, at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Telecon Support Request WebEx Training - Thursday, Feb. 21, at 2 p.m.
International Space Station Russia Travel Request WebEx Training - Friday, Feb. 22, at 2 p.m.
o             Locating the desired support request module
o             Quick view summary page for support request
o             Create a new support request
o             Submittal requirements
o             Submitting on behalf of another individual
o             Adding an attachment (agenda, references)
o             Selecting special requirements (export control)
o             Submitting request
o             Status of request records
o             View a request record
o             Contact RLLS support for additional help
Please send an email to James.E.Welty@nasa.gov or call 281-335-8565 to sign-up for these RLLS Support WebEx Training courses. Classes are limited to the first 20 individuals registered per class.
James Welty 281-335-8565 https://www.tti-portal.com

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15.          System Safety Seminar ViTS: April 26, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. -- Building 17, Room 2026
This seminar serves to provide an overview of system safety origins, definitions, principles and practices. It includes a discussion of NASA requirements for both the engineering and management aspects of system safety and answers the questions: Why do we do system safety? What is system safety? How do we do system safety? What does it mean to me?
Engineering aspects will include a brief discussion of three typically used analytical techniques: Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA); Fault Tree Analysis (FTA); and Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA). This course will not prepare attendees to manage or perform system safety -- only to introduce them to the concepts. SATERN registration required. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Polly Caison x41279

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16.          Professional Engineering Ethics Seminar
Under the Texas Engineering Practice Act, each engineer licensed in the state must spend at least one professional development hour each year reviewing professional ethics and the roles and responsibilities for engineers.
The JSC Safety Learning Center invites JSC Engineers to attend this one-hour Professional Engineering Ethics Seminar.
In this seminar the student will
• Review portions of Chapter 137, "Compliance and Professionalism," and Chapter 139, "Enforcement," of the Texas Engineering Practice Act and Board Rules
• Review some of the recent disciplinary actions taken by the Texas Board of Professional Engineers to enforce the Practice Act
• Participate in class discussion of specific ethical questions
This seminar meets The Texas Engineering Practice Act yearly one-hour ethics requirement for continuing education.
Date/Time: March 6 from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.
Where: Safety Learning Center - Building 20, Room 205/206
Registration via SATERN required:
https://satern.nasa.gov/plateau/user/deeplink.do?linkId=SCHEDULED_OFFERING_DE...
Aundrail Hill x36369

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17.          Fire Extinguisher Training
Fire safety, at its most basic, is based upon the principle of keeping fuel sources and ignition sources separate.
The Safety Learning Center invites you to attend a one-hour Fire Extinguisher course that provides instructor-led training on the proper way to safely use fire extinguishers.
Students will learn:
o             Five classes of fires
o             Types of fire extinguishers and how to match the right extinguisher to different types of fires
o             How to inspect an extinguisher
o             How to use a fire extinguisher - P.A.S.S.
o             Understand the importance of knowing where extinguishers are at your location
o             Rules for fighting fires and the steps to take if a fire occurs
o             Hands-on (weather permitting)
Date/Time: March 6 from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.
Where: Safety Learning Center - Building 20, Room 205/206
Registration via SATERN required:
https://satern.nasa.gov/plateau/user/deeplink.do?linkId=SCHEDULED_OFFERING_DE...
Aundrail Hill x36369

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18.          Fire Warden Refresher (Two Hours)
This two-hour course is for previously trained Fire Wardens from JSC, Sonny Carter Training Facility and Ellington Field and will satisfy the JSC three-year refresher training requirement for building Fire Wardens who have previously completed the initial four-hour Fire Warden Orientation Training.
This course emphasizes a review of the duties and responsibilities of a Fire Warden during an emergency evacuation of their assigned building and the conduct of the required monthly walk-around inspection of the Fire Warden's assigned area.
Newly assigned Fire Wardens must attend the four-hour Initial Fire Warden Orientation course available in SATERN for registration.
Date/Time: March 1 from 1 to 3 p.m.
Where: Safety Learning Center - Building 20, Room 205/206
Registration via SATERN required:
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Aundrail Hill x36369

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19.          Fire Warden Orientation Course (Four 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: March 1 from 8 a.m. to noon
Where: Safety Learning Center - Building 20, Room 205/206
Registration via SATERN required:
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Aundrail Hill x36369

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20.          Facility Manager's Training
The Safety Learning Center invites you to attend an eight-hour Facility Manger's Training, which will:
o             Provide JSC Facility Managers with insight into the requirements for accomplishing their functions
o             Include training on facility management, safety, hazard identification and mitigation, legal, security, energy conservation, health and environmental aspects
Attendees of this course must also register in SATERN for a half-day Fire Warden Training. (*Others that need Fire Warden Training can register through the normal process.)
Date/Time: March 7 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: Safety Learning Center - Building 20, Room 205/206
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.

Human Spaceflight News
Tuesday, February 19, 2013

HEADLINES AND LEADS

New station may be built above lunar orbit when ISS project is over

Interfax

Leading space powers are eyeing the construction of an inhabited space station above the lunar orbit, a space industry representative told Interfax-AVN. "International Space Station (ISS) partners are elaborating a joint position on space exploration after the ISS project is over. The idea to deploy a manned station on the second Lagrange point is gaining the biggest support," he said. "The new project may begin within a decade," the source said, adding that the precise timeframe would depend on many factors, mostly on the possible decision of the ISS partners to extend the project from 2020 to 2028. A manned base above the lunar orbit will be the departure point for expeditions to the Moon, Mars and other solar system objects, the source said.
(NO FURTHER TEXT)

If cuts kick in, commercial space crew delays expected
Debt deal may slow plan

Ledyard King - Florida Today

NASA's development of a commercial rocket to bring astronauts to the International Space Station would be significantly delayed if automatic federal spending cuts take effect next month. The agency said that's one of several drastic measures it will have to take if Congress does nothing to prevent the cuts, known as sequestration, from kicking in March 1. Under the sequestration deal lawmakers agreed to in 2011, federal agencies would have to cut $1.2 trillion in discretionary spending over the next decade, with half coming from the Pentagon, unless Congress agrees to a deal that cuts the federal debt by the same amount.

Space Launch System, Orion wouldn't be affected by sequestration

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

NASA has decided to spare its Space Launch System and Orion crew capsule from any direct consequences of budget sequestration this year, according to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr. Taking the cuts instead in the "exploration" part of NASA's budget would be commercial space companies trying to build spaceships to get American astronauts to the International Space Station.

Commercial Crew Efforts To Be Hit Hard By Sequestration

Jefferson Morris - Aerospace Daily

NASA's topline budget for fiscal 2013 will be reduced by $726.7 million as compared to its budget request if sequestration takes effect March 1, with a significant portion of that cut being absorbed by the agency's efforts to nurture commercial systems for transporting crew and cargo to low Earth orbit. "Sequestration would reduce Commercial Space Flight funding by $441.6 million below the FY 2013 budget request," writes Administrator Charles Bolden in a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.).

Federal spending cuts could hurt Florida's Space Coast

Jerry Hume - Central Florida News 13

Florida space experts say sequestration, the automatic government cuts that could take effect next month, could cripple efforts to revitalize Brevard County's space economy. The rise of SpaceX and other commercial spaceflight companies brought new hope to Brevard County after the end of the space shuttle program. NASA says SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada all plan to base their launch operations on the Space Coast as they work to send astronauts to the International Space Station from the US, instead of Kazakhstan. But experts say automatic, across the board government spending would ground those efforts.

Is Kennedy Space Center ready for the future?

James Dean - Florida Today

Since before the shuttle's retirement, NASA has touted plans to transform Kennedy Space Center into a futuristic spaceport supporting launches of every kind of government or commercial mission. Concept images show multiple rockets being processed simultaneously inside the Vehicle Assembly Building and sharing a common launch pad, while more rockets blast off across the Cape and space planes zip in and out of the former shuttle runway. NASA established the "21st Century Space Launch Complex" program to help implement the vision, which promised to make Kennedy less dependent on a single government space program and attract jobs with more frequent launches.

Astronaut Hadfield beams down replies from space station in online Q&A

Canadian Press

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has beamed down responses to users of a popular social media website while circling Earth on the International Space Station. Hadfield used a laptop to field questions sent up Sunday from users of the website Reddit in the "Ask Me Anything" discussion, which drew more than 2,000 queries and comments. He says the scariest thing he's seen in space was a large meteorite burning up in front of him, sending a "shiver up my back" as he imagined the "lump of rock" hurtling towards the station instead.

Astronaut On Scariest Space Station Moment
Recalls a sight that sent a shiver up his spine as he peered out of a window on the International Space Station

Sky News

An astronaut on the International Space Station has revealed his scariest moment - watching a large meteorite burn up over Australia. Colonel Chris Hadfield, 53, a former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot, is on board the ISS as the leader of Expedition 35. Col Hadfield, who has also flown two space shuttle missions, blasted off for the ISS on December 19 on board a Russian Soyuz TMA-07M.

MIT physicist's experiment pulls dark matter into the spotlight

Ivan Semeniuk - Globe and Mail

With the Higgs boson all but confirmed, there's an opening for a new hard-to-understand but vitally-important subatomic particle that can jump into the gap and grab the media spotlight. Enter Sam Ting, the smiling but taciturn MIT physicist who has just become a person of interest to the particle paparazzi. Dr. Ting, who already has a Nobel prize to his name, happens to run the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a $1.5-billion piece of hardware currently whizzing around Earth on board the International Space Station.

Dark Matter Hunter Results Coming in March

Irene Klotz - Discovery News

Scientists are preparing to release the first round of results from a key experiment aboard the International Space Station that has been sampling a soup of high-energy particles in space. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer particle detector was installed on the station during the next-to-last space shuttle mission in May 2011. Since then, the $2 billion instrument, a collaboration of 60 research institutes in 16 countries, has been amassing a proverbial mountain of data, including a headcount of 7.7 billion electrons and positrons (the antimatter counterpart to electrons).

Has Dark Matter Finally Been Found? Big News Coming Soon

Clara Moskowitz - Space.com

Big news in the search for dark matter may be coming in about two weeks, the leader of a space-based particle physics experiment said Sunday here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. That's when the first paper of results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle collector mounted on the outside of the International Space Station, will be submitted to a scientific journal, said MIT physicist Samuel Ting, AMS principle investigator.

Space safety at sea: Nasa's training mission for offshore workers

Sarah Blackman - Offshore Technology (offshore-technology.com)

For more than a year, Nasa has been working with Petrofac to deliver a suite of safety courses to current and future offshore oil workers. Delegates are taught how to survive helicopter ditching and put out fires in simulated scenarios at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) in Houston, which is also used for spacewalk planning and training. In February, the Hi-Con Training Programme was reapproved to provide safety courses to the Offshore Petroleum Industry Training Organisation (OPITO) standard, demonstrating the need for high-quality training in the sector.

Private Moon Travel Startup Launches Crowdfunding Campaign

Clara Moskowitz - Space.com

A private startup aiming to launch manned lunar expeditions has started a crowdfunding campaign to get the public involved. The company, Golden Spike, aims to get its first mission off the ground by 2020. To help achieve that goal, the startup's leaders are reaching out via the crowdfunding site Indiegogo in hopes of raising $240,000 — "a dollar for every mile on the way to the moon," said Golden Spike's president and CEO, planetary scientist Alan Stern. "Ever since we launched [the company], we've been getting emails and tweets and Facebook posts about, 'How can I help?'" Stern told SPACE.com. "It just seems like there's a hunger out there to participate in grand exploration."

Shuttle boosters won't go out with a bang
Leftover motors will be detonated soon

Jim Waymer - Florida Today

Next week, the last gasps of the space shuttle program will vent from leftover small motors that once separated the spacecraft from its twin solid rocket boosters. Florida environmental regulators issued an emergency permit to Kennedy Space Center to detonate up to 33 booster separation motors this month. These final shuttle-related "ignitions" will remove what state environmental regulators called "an imminent hazard" to people and property nearby.

Russia Meteor: Former Astronaut Says 'Universe Is a Crowded Place'

Jeanna Bryner - LiveScience.com

Referring to the Russia meteor explosion, former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly reminded us this Sunday morning on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the "universe is a crowded place." "We have stuff entering the atmosphere all the time," Kelly told moderator David Gregory. "It's interesting when you're on the space station and you're looking at the shooting stars, the meteorites, entering the atmosphere. You're seeing those beneath you. It's a little bit disconcerting because they're all flying by you."

New look at Apollo moon rocks reveals signs of 'native' water

Amina Khan - Los Angeles Times

Scientists picking up signs of water on the moon's surface typically attribute them to deposits left by comets, asteroids and other heavenly objects. But a new analysis of lunar samples brought back to Earth by Apollo astronauts in the early 1970s indicates that the moon's interior may have been a little damp in its early days. The findings, published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, support mounting evidence that the moon once contained some "native" water — throwing a wrench into current beliefs about how Earth's companion formed.

Martinez and SpaceX founder discuss Brownsville project

Steve Clark – Brownsville Herald

On Valentine's Day, Brownsville Mayor Tony Martinez met with Elon Musk, billionaire founder of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation — SpaceX. Boca Chica beach, east of Brownsville on State Highway 4, is on the shortlist for a commercial rocket launch site the Hawthorne, Calif.-based aerospace cargo firm is looking to build. It would augment SpaceX's current launch site in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and another site nearing completion at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Georgia, Puerto Rico and another potential site in Florida are on the shortlist as well, though none of those sites came up during Martinez's half-hour meeting with Musk, the mayor said. Likewise, neither Musk nor his staff brought up any major obstacles to locating the launch site at Boca Chica, Martinez said.

Hire me for Kennedy Space Center upkeep
Costs for maintaining shuttle pad don't make sense

Matt Reed - Florida Today (Commentary)

I've never known what to make of the multibillion-dollar prices NASA pays for spacecraft. The missions are so unique and risky. But its costs for terrestrial things can make me break out the calculator and start asking questions. Take for instance, the $21.4 million per year NASA pays to maintain the mothballed former space shuttle launch pad and equipment at Kennedy Space Center, known as Pad 39A. It looks like a theme park ride with extra plumbing parked on a highway overpass.
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COMPLETE STORIES

If cuts kick in, commercial space crew delays expected
Debt deal may slow plan

Ledyard King - Florida Today

NASA's development of a commercial rocket to bring astronauts to the International Space Station would be significantly delayed if automatic federal spending cuts take effect next month.

The agency said that's one of several drastic measures it will have to take if Congress does nothing to prevent the cuts, known as sequestration, from kicking in March 1.

Under the sequestration deal lawmakers agreed to in 2011, federal agencies would have to cut $1.2 trillion in discretionary spending over the next decade, with half coming from the Pentagon, unless Congress agrees to a deal that cuts the federal debt by the same amount.

NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. said sequestration would force the agency to pare its budget to just less than $17 billion by the end of the 2013 fiscal year on Sept. 30.

That's a reduction of about $900 million — or about 9 percent — from the amount NASA expects to receive over the next seven months under the current spending plan, according to information Bolden provided Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. It would squeeze every major area of the agency, including exploration, science missions and space technology, he said.

The information, released by the committee Thursday, indicates that NASA would consider:

·         Delaying work on the Commercial Crew program that is helping the private sector develop a vehicle that would ferry crew to and from the space station.
·         In the letter, NASA officials said their goal of conducting a manned test flight by 2017 would be "significantly" pushed back by sequestration-imposed cuts, forcing them to continue relying on foreign space agencies for transport. Currently, NASA pays Russia about $60 million to take an American astronaut to the space station and back.
·         Canceling six technology development projects, including work in deep space optical communications, advanced radiation protection and nuclear systems.
·         Canceling several flight demonstration projects in development, including one involving the Deep Space Atomic Clock.
·         Pushing back modernization of key facilities integral to the development of NASA's deep-space manned mission to Mars. It would affect some of NASA's most important installations teaming up on the program, including Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Johnson Space Center in Texas and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

"Sequestration would cancel many institutional construction projects that would repair, refurbish, or replace critical infrastructure that supports NASA's mission," Bolden's letter said. "These projects are required to repair NASA's rapidly deteriorating infrastructure in order to protect NASA employees and meet Mission requirements."

Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who is arguably NASA's biggest champion on Capitol Hill, said he's optimistic lawmakers can avert sequestration.

He pointed to a Democratic proposal offered Thursday that would cut some farm subsidies and military spending, increase taxes on millionaires and eliminate tax breaks for oil companies. Republicans are not expected to support the plan.

"Look, the alternative is across-the-board cuts that would hurt not only NASA, but also the overall diversification of the space industry in Florida," he said Friday. "And that's something we need to avoid at all costs."

Rep. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, who represents Kennedy Space Center, said he voted against sequestration nearly two years ago because he wanted to avoid the very situation Congress now finds itself in.

"We are here today because rather than doing the hard work of going line by line through the federal budget, the president and congressional leaders chose sequestration," he said Friday. "I am very concerned about the impact that these across-the-board cuts will have on our nation's human space flight program, and that is why I voted against this plan."

Space Launch System, Orion wouldn't be affected by sequestration

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

NASA has decided to spare its Space Launch System and Orion crew capsule from any direct consequences of budget sequestration this year, according to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr. Taking the cuts instead in the "exploration" part of NASA's budget would be commercial space companies trying to build spaceships to get American astronauts to the International Space Station.

The Space Launch System (SLS) is NASA's name for a new booster being developed at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville for deep space missions and the Orion capsule that will ride on top of it.

Bolden detailed the agency's plans for life under sequestration cuts in letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md) dated Feb. 5. (Read Bolden's letter below). Mikulski released Bolden's letter Feb. 14, along with letters from other agency heads about the effects of of the mandatory budget cuts now scheduled to take effect March 1.

Bolden and NASA managers assume that NASA will continue operating the rest of this fiscal year under congressional Continuing Resolution (CR) spending levels now in place. Congress is funding NASA and other agencies under a CR, which freezes them at last year's spending levels, because it cannot agree on a new budget.

A 5 percent cut in CR spending for the entire fiscal year would translate to a 9 percent loss of money over the remaining seven months remaining in FY 2013.
The total loss to NASA from sequestration for the year, based on its CR funding level of $16.9 billion, would be $894 million.

NASA would not be able to provide fourth quarter funding for FY 2013 program milestones at SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, and Sierra Nevada, Bolden said. That includes the SpaceX Inflight Abort Test Review, the Boeing Orbital Maneuvering and Attitude Control Engine Development Test, and the Sierra Nevada Corporation Integrated System Safety Analysis Review #2.

What else would take hits under sequestration? Science and research missions and infrastructure work (including some for the Space Launch System) are at risk.

The idea of cutting commercial space funding will be controversial in Congress for a simple reason. "Overall availability of commercial crew transportation services would be significantly delayed, thereby extending our reliance on foreign providers for crew transportation to the International Space Station," Bolden said in his letter. Right now that means riding aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft at $65 million a seat.

Commercial Crew Efforts To Be Hit Hard By Sequestration

Jefferson Morris - Aerospace Daily

NASA's topline budget for fiscal 2013 will be reduced by $726.7 million as compared to its budget request if sequestration takes effect March 1, with a significant portion of that cut being absorbed by the agency's efforts to nurture commercial systems for transporting crew and cargo to low Earth orbit.

"Sequestration would reduce Commercial Space Flight funding by $441.6 million below the FY 2013 budget request," writes Administrator Charles Bolden in a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.).

As a result, NASA would not be able to make fourth-quarter milestone payments to the industry teams working on the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) program, including for SpaceX's Inflight Abort Test Review, Boeing's Orbital Maneuvering and Attitude Control Engine Development Test, and the Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Integrated System Safety Analysis Review #2, according to Bolden.

"Overall availability of commercial crew transportation services would be significantly delayed, thereby extending our reliance on foreign providers for crew transportation to the International Space Station," he says.

The overall Exploration budget would see a reduction of $332.2 million as compared to its $3.9 billion fiscal 2013 request.

The agency's Space Technology budget would see a steep reduction of $149.4 million, as compared to its $699 million fiscal 2013 request. As a result, NASA says it would have to consider options including canceling technology development projects; scrapping several flight demonstrations; eliminating or scaling back annual solicitations for Space Technology Research Grants, NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts and the Small Spacecraft Technology Program; reducing the number of Flight Opportunity program flights and payloads in fiscal 2013 and beyond; and eliminating the Centennial Challenges prize program.

The agency's science budget would take a relatively modest hit of $51.1 million, as compared to its $4.9 billion fiscal 2013 request. This would result in reducing funding for new Explorer and Earth Venture class missions by 10-15%, and reducing competed research and analysis funding by 2%.

Aeronautics would see a reduction of $7.3 million, as compared to its $551.5 million fiscal 2013 request. And the agency's construction programs would see a reduction of $251.7 million, as compared to their $619.2 million fiscal 2013 request.

Federal spending cuts could hurt Florida's Space Coast

Jerry Hume - Central Florida News 13

Florida space experts say sequestration, the automatic government cuts that could take effect next month, could cripple efforts to revitalize Brevard County's space economy.

The rise of SpaceX and other commercial spaceflight companies brought new hope to Brevard County after the end of the space shuttle program.

NASA says SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada all plan to base their launch operations on the Space Coast as they work to send astronauts to the International Space Station from the US, instead of Kazakhstan.

But experts say automatic, across the board government spending would ground those efforts.

"This is going to be a devastating blow to our efforts to reform Kennedy Space Center," said Dale Ketcham a University of Central Florida Space Expert. "This makes a difficult problem dramatically worse."

In a letter to the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden lays out how NASA would prioritize the hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to the space agency.

Much of that money would come from the commercial crew program, meaning no money to help continue development of SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada's crewed spaceships.

The big cuts to commercial spaceflight helps shield NASA's heavy-lift rocket program from cuts.

According to Ketcham, Florida bears the burden of NASA's proposed cuts, and any attempts to grow private spaceflight here.

"It appears as though NASA has chosen to break that balance and save the government program and throw the commercial program under the bus, and that's the worst decision to make," said Ketcham. "That is not good for Florida, that is not good for the interests of the Space Coast."

Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana warned late last month about these cuts.

"We know that this is a very tough fiscal time in our country and we don't have all the resources that we may or may not like to have to do what needs to get done," Cabana told reporters in January.

Is Kennedy Space Center ready for the future?

James Dean - Florida Today

Since before the shuttle's retirement, NASA has touted plans to transform Kennedy Space Center into a futuristic spaceport supporting launches of every kind of government or commercial mission.

Concept images show multiple rockets being processed simultaneously inside the Vehicle Assembly Building and sharing a common launch pad, while more rockets blast off across the Cape and space planes zip in and out of the former shuttle runway.

NASA established the "21st Century Space Launch Complex" program to help implement the vision, which promised to make Kennedy less dependent on a single government space program and attract jobs with more frequent launches.

That future may yet come, but a review of more than $1.3 billion committed to Kennedy's modernization since 2011 shows an overwhelming focus so far on one user: NASA's own Space Launch System rocket.

Three-quarters of the money has been directed exclusively at preparing for an unmanned first launch of NASA's heavy-lift SLS rocket and an Orion capsule in late 2017.

That includes this year's request for $454 million in SLS-related "exploration ground systems" at KSC, nearly 10 times the $45.7 million requested for "21st Century" improvements intended to benefit multiple users.

Of the $228 million in 21st Century funds obligated through last year, roughly half went to projects for which SLS is the only certain user.

For example, a crawler-transporter designed in 1962 to carry moon rockets and later adapted to carry shuttles is receiving a $35 million overhaul thanks to the 21st Century program. It could move any rocket, but is being upgraded primarily to haul the 321-foot, 5.5-million pound first version of the SLS.

Another $71 million helped modify launch pad 39B and the assembly building, which also are required for SLS missions.

Each of those assets is now said to have "multi-use" capability, but no company has committed to using them. Discussions with the major launch companies continue.

Kennedy officials say they are laying the foundation for their long-term vision of a multi-user spaceport, while making the most of limited funding for the agency's flagship human exploration program.

"That is our primary mission, there's no question about that. We have to get that off the ground," said Scott Colloredo, chief architect of KSC's Ground Systems Development and Operations program. "Can we make some modest investments to what we're already doing to allow (commercial users) to come along later? What we've learned is, yes, there are some cases where it's a very nice fit."

In the VAB high bay designated for SLS, for example, flexible platforms were installed that could fit around different rockets. Upgrades to cranes, vertical lift doors and other systems were broadened to cover more high bays than just the one SLS will use. Moveable flame deflectors were installed at pad 39B.

An assortment of less visible 21st Century projects, worth $122 million, has helped modernize outdated systems and plan for the future.

They include improvements to the Eastern Range, in cooperation with the Air Force, that benefit any launcher; a new center master plan and environmental studies; and upgrades to various utilities, a railroad bridge and a paging and warning system.

"Across the center, we're doing all kinds of projects that we think are a vast improvement," Colloredo said.

Still, the work hasn't yet spurred much enthusiasm among emerging commercial space firms that must add or expand operations at the Cape for the 21st Century vision to be realized.

"I'm not really sure how the money is being spent, except that it is not helping commercial space as far as we know," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in an e-mail.

SpaceX is one of several companies interested in a proposed state-run commercial launch complex located inside KSC's northern border but outside federal jurisdiction. United Launch Alliance is designing systems that would allow astronauts to fly from its existing Cape Canaveral pad.

Three years ago, the Obama Administration proposed spending $2 billion over five years to make Kennedy and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station more efficient, attractive launch sites.

The shuttle was nearing an end, and its successor exploration program, Constellation, was slated for cancellation.

Congress approved compromise legislation that requested the SLS rocket and made clear preparing for it should be the priority of a "NASA launch support and infrastructure modernization program" that also included "measures to provide multi-vehicle support."

Last month, while showing off a prototype of the Orion crew capsule that will fly atop the SLS, KSC Director Bob Cabana emphasized the center's broader transformation.

"Not many times in history do you have the opportunity to define your future and make it what you want it to be, and that's what we're doing right now at the Kennedy Space Center, in cooperation with the state of Florida, working to enable our commercial customers to be successful," he said. "We are turning the Kennedy Space Center into a true multi-user space complex of the future, supporting both commercial and government crew and cargo to space."

But Kennedy officials say there are limits to how much NASA can do to attract commercial customers.

There isn't enough money to overhaul a second set of shuttle infrastructure including launch pad 39A, another crawler-transporter and another assembly building high bay, all mothballed and available for commercial use.

Even if there was, Colloredo said, each launch provider has such different ways of processing and launching their vehicles that NASA can't make changes for one at the expense of another, especially without any commitments from companies.

"We don't want to predetermine what those commercial users are going to need. It's a moving target, essentially," he said. "It really boils down to which users materialize and which agreements are signed."

NASA says it's not allowed to modify or build new facilities for any single company, which could give it an advantage going after future contracts.

The agency did, however, invest nearly $50 million in a new integration hangar, launch pad and payload processing facility in Virginia that will help Orbital Sciences Corp. launch International Space Station cargo missions and possibly other payloads from Wallops Island.

NASA calls those facilities "multi-use," but Orbital, which had already won its station resupply contract, currently is their only user and was the anticipated tenant before they were built.

Where companies have committed to bring new work to KSC, it has largely been due to state incentives and financing to repurpose facilities NASA no longer wants.

Space Florida is helping The Boeing Co. renovate a shuttle hangar for manufacturing of a commercial crew capsule, and XCOR Aerospace plans to test and build a suborbital space plane at the shuttle runway.

Masten Space Systems wants to test a vertically launched and landed spacecraft from a state-owned pad on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

While NASA is charged with fostering commercial space activity, Space Florida President Frank DiBello said it's understandable that the agency must focus on its exploration "program of record," SLS and the Orion crew capsule.

"We're helping the state, including NASA, respond to market opportunities where there's immediate market need that generates jobs and revenue," said DiBello. "That's our goal and that's what you're seeing in terms of near-term modernization of facilities."

The concept of large rockets sharing either of Kennedy's two launch pads sounds simple but presents many challenges in practice.

Every rocket has varying technical specifications, from size to fuels.

For example, neither of Kennedy's pads is now set up to support the two rockets likely to fly most frequently in the coming years – SpaceX's Falcon 9 and United Launch Alliance's Atlas V – which use a different propellant than NASA's rockets. The 21st Century program, however, has funded a study about how to add that capability at Launch Complex 39.

From a business perspective, companies are wary of linking their schedules to NASA or other companies, since someone else's accident or technical problems could force costly delays.

It is also not well understood how much NASA intends to charge companies for limited use of the facilities it is making available, which historically are not seen as lean and low-cost.

"No commercial company is going to give up control of their future by sharing NASA infrastructure with a NASA rocket," said Charles Miller, a former NASA senior adviser for commercial space and president of NextGen Space. "It would have to be a unique NASA mission where NASA is saying you are critical to our mission and you need to be here and the vendor says, OK, we'll do that."

A possible example of that could be if the agency decides SpaceX or United Launch Alliance should fly commercial crew missions from Kennedy instead of modifying existing Cape pads for human launches.

Either way, it's not clear if future 21st Century funds will support preparations for commercial crew flights as they have for SLS. Those flights are expected sooner and should fly more often than SLS.

Apart from KSC's vertical launch pads, the shuttle runway is considered to have excellent potential to serve multiple companies like XCOR that launch or land spacecraft horizontally for suborbital or orbital flights.

But the 21st Century program has invested just $7 million in the Shuttle Landing Facility. The program, which reports to top human spaceflight officials at NASA Headquarters, has steered slightly more money to the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and four times as much to Johnson Space Center in Houston. (Ninety percent of the money has gone to KSC.)

Why so little for KSC's "multi-user" runway? No NASA mission needs it, and the agency's priority is to clear roughly $2 million in annual operations and maintenance costs from its books.

Kennedy is close to selecting a new operator for the facility that will pick up those costs and continue efforts to lure new tenants.

NASA's ability to develop a multi-user spaceport is important in part because the SLS and Orion will fly so infrequently, and their infrastructure is costly to maintain.

After a four-year gap between the first launches in 2017 and 2021, current plans call for missions every other year. Processing time in the VAB before launch is expected to last three months, leaving High Bay 3 vacant the rest of the time.

NASA will bear the entire cost of maintaining the little-used infrastructure unless more users materialize.

Those same factors contribute to a view held by some, including Miller, that NASA's heavy-lift rocket will prove so expensive that it is doomed to be canceled like its predecessor, Constellation.

In that context, Miller thinks Kennedy's modernization investments will only be useful to the extent they anticipate the rockets that might replace SLS, possibly heavy versions of ULA's Delta IV or Atlas V.

"To me, multi-use means you have a backup for a different launch vehicle if the first once doesn't work," he said. "KSC needs to understand there is a real risk of KSC getting out of the launch business and have a Plan B."

But Kennedy officials are confident that, in time, both pads 39A and 39B will support multiple users.

"With this 21st Century money, we are able to diversify our portfolio," Colloredo said. "SLS is not the only vehicle that will launch out of here in the future."

An increase in flight rates and the emergence of new, larger rockets like SpaceX's Falcon Heavy could increase demand for the pads.

Ultimately, KSC's transformation into a 21st Century spaceport that attracts more commercial operations may depend less on millions for infrastructure than on a willingness to change how NASA does business.

Space Florida's DiBello says billionaire entrepreneurs like Musk, Jeff Bezos and Paul Allen, who each are major investors in emerging space transportation ventures, are seeking a different, more competitive economic model.

"They see the future that is out there, but they want an environment that's very commercially friendly and has the ability to do business in an agile and fast-on-your-feet way," DiBello told his board recently. "They want a flexible business environment."

Astronaut Hadfield beams down replies from space station in online Q&A

Canadian Press

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has beamed down responses to users of a popular social media website while circling Earth on the International Space Station.

Hadfield used a laptop to field questions sent up Sunday from users of the website Reddit in the "Ask Me Anything" discussion, which drew more than 2,000 queries and comments.

He says the scariest thing he's seen in space was a large meteorite burning up in front of him, sending a "shiver up my back" as he imagined the "lump of rock" hurtling towards the station instead.

Hadfield told one user a space mutiny was not going to happen, since the shared scientific goals of the station crew "keeps mutinies to a minimum."

He says he often loses track of which way is "up" in the station, and told one terrestrial questioner that if his daughter wanted to be an astronaut she'd have to stay fit and smart by eating her greens and doing her homework.

Hadfield says his favourite thing to do in space is to "simply fly" from one end of the station to the other.

And the 53-year-old astronaut waxed poetic when asked to describe his view of space outside.

"It looks like a carpet of countless tiny perfect unblinking lights in endless velvet, with the Milky Way as a glowing area of paler texture," he replied.

Hadfield said that space privatization is "the right and natural way to go," noting that the privately developed SpaceX Dragon spacecraft was due to float up and dock with the station in two weeks.

"And we'll grab it with Canadarm2," he said.

Hadfield has made a big splash on the Internet during his mission to the stratosphere.

He files several updates a day to his 381,000 Twitter followers — including many space-shot photographs of Earth — and has even recorded a song in the station with the help of his acoustic guitar.

"So bright, jewel in the night, there in my window below," Hadfield sings in the song, which was posted to YouTube.

Astronaut On Scariest Space Station Moment
Recalls a sight that sent a shiver up his spine as he peered out of a window on the International Space Station

Sky News

An astronaut on the International Space Station has revealed his scariest moment - watching a large meteorite burn up over Australia.

Colonel Chris Hadfield, 53, a former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot, is on board the ISS as the leader of Expedition 35.

Col Hadfield, who has also flown two space shuttle missions, blasted off for the ISS on December 19 on board a Russian Soyuz TMA-07M.

He has been keeping in touch with followers on Earth using social news site Reddit to host a question-and-answer session.

Reddit user unfortunatelyhuman asked him: "Which part of the world looks the coolest from space?"

The astronaut, who has been tweeting pictures from space, replied: "Australia looks coolest - the colours and textures of the Outback are severely artistic.

"The most beautiful to me are the Bahamas, the vast glowing reefs of every shade of blue that exists."

But it was also while the space station was over Australia that he admitted he had had his most scary moment - the meteorite encounter.

He wrote: "I watched a large meteorite burn up between me and Australia.

"To think of that hypersonic dumb lump of rock randomly hurtling into us instead sent a shiver up my back."

Last Friday, a meteor exploded over the Ural Mountains in Russia, releasing a shockwave that shattered thousands of windows and left well over 1,000 people injured.

Col Hadfield answered some questions about day-to-day life on the ISS, explaining: "We live on Greenwich time, UTC, same as London England. We shut off most lights at bedtime - it feels right to do it."

He was asked whether the crew could ever get any privacy, and answered: "I'm typing now in my 'Sleep Station', a small padded room with a door, completely private, like a bedroom without the bed, and phone booth sized."

Col Hadfield - who sports facial hair - also showed he is maintaining his sense of humour in space.

Reddit user bigdubsy asked him: "If you discover intelligent life, who should play you in the movie?"

He replied: "Someone with a good moustache."

MIT physicist's experiment pulls dark matter into the spotlight

Ivan Semeniuk - Globe and Mail

With the Higgs boson all but confirmed, there's an opening for a new hard-to-understand but vitally-important subatomic particle that can jump into the gap and grab the media spotlight.

Enter Sam Ting, the smiling but taciturn MIT physicist who has just become a person of interest to the particle paparazzi.

Dr. Ting, who already has a Nobel prize to his name, happens to run the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a $1.5-billion piece of hardware currently whizzing around Earth on board the International Space Station.

Now Dr. Ting has let drop that his experiment has revealed something significant about dark matter, the invisible stuff that accounts for most of the mass in the universe. Exactly what he has found, he won't say, but today in a hushed room packed with journalists at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Ting promised to reveal all with the first publication of AMS results in the coming two or three weeks.

"There are many things you can learn... surprising things," from the space station data, Dr. Ting said, effectively resorting to zen-like responses after making it clear he was not yet ready to discuss his findings.

Keeping a lid on results until acceptance by a peer reviewed journal is par for the course in many areas of of science. But popular interest in the dark matter mystery will ensure Dr. Ting's experiment gets more than the usual amount of attention when the news is finally unveiled. The news may answer critics who say the experiment took too long and cost too much. What it will say about the nature of universe is far less certain.

"Finding out what dark matter is is at the top of the wish list for particle physicists and cosmologists," says Michael Turner a professor of theoretical cosmology at the University of Chicago.

Prof. Turner makes a compelling case. Dark matter is what holds our galaxy together and without it the universe would not likely be able to support life. Yet scientists can only guess at what it is, knowing that their theories of matter are incomplete without some better way of accounting for it.

Although dark matter is invisible to astronomers' telescopes its presence can be inferred because it exerts a gravitational pull. Current estimates suggest that the total mass of dark matter in the universe is five to six times greater than that of the ordinary matter that makes up all stars and galaxies. Previous studies have largely ruled out that dark matter is made of anything scientists have encountered so far in particle physics experiments like the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland.

"The tantalizing thing is that we have an airtight case that it's made of something new," Prof. Turner says.

Dr. Ting's experiment cannot detect dark matter directly. Instead, it uses a powerful magnet to measure and distinguish between whatever matter and antimatter come sailing through from deep space in the form of cosmic rays.

Since AMS was installed on the space station in 2011 it has registered some 25 billion cosmic ray particles, Dr. Ting says. Of those, some 7.7 million are electrons or positrons (the electron's antimatter counterpart). It is the ratio between the two that may ultimately reveal something about dark matter.

Other experiments have hinted that dark matter particles can occasionally interact to produce ordinary matter particles that conventional detectors can spot. AMS should be able to provide a stronger test of this idea, and possibly reveal whether a vast but unseen halo to dark matter thought to be centred on our Milky Way galaxy is actually giving off a faint signal. Alternatively, AMS may find that other sources of electrons and positrons can account for what it observes without having to resort to a dark matter explanation.

That case wouldn't rule out the existence of dark matter, but would suggest instead that it may be harder to find than many physicists hope. Either way, scientists are waiting to see what Dr. Ting and his colleagues have come up with.

As a measure of positrons, "AMS is going to just nail this completely," says Neal Weiner, a theoretical physicists at New York University, "They're going to see whatever's there."

But whether nailing it means that dark matter is finally about to step out of the shadows Dr. Weiner and others remain circumspect. There will likely be many ways to explain the AMS result, they say. The question is whether it will give more or less weight to existing ideas about dark matter.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ting keeps smiling. For the next couple of weeks, he knows a little something about the universe that the rest of us have yet to find out.

Dark Matter Hunter Results Coming in March

Irene Klotz - Discovery News

Scientists are preparing to release the first round of results from a key experiment aboard the International Space Station that has been sampling a soup of high-energy particles in space.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer particle detector was installed on the station during the next-to-last space shuttle mission in May 2011. Since then, the $2 billion instrument, a collaboration of 60 research institutes in 16 countries, has been amassing a proverbial mountain of data, including a headcount of 7.7 billion electrons and positrons (the antimatter counterpart to electrons).

In the overall numbers of particles interests scientists less than the ratio between the two. The idea is to determine if there are more antimatter particles than matter, and, if so, at exactly what energy level the disparity occurs.

"The smoking gun that we're looking for in the positron-to-electron ratio is a rise and then a dramatic fall. That's the key signature that would come from the dark matter annihilating the halo," said Michael Turner, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago.

The halo Turner is referring to is the halo of the Milky Way galaxy, the region beyond the central disk of stars and dust. If current theoretical models are correct, there's a massively massive pool of dark matter — perhaps as big as 1 million light-years across — that envelopes the visible galaxy, which is about 100,000 light-years in diameter.

Behind the AMS numbers is an 80-year-old mystery about why our galaxy — and the universe for that matter — hangs together because despite the apparent plethora of stars, galaxies and gas, there is simply far too little of it to gravitationally bind it together.

Physicists estimate that visible (i.e. detectable) matter accounts for a mere 4 percent of the universe's contents. Dark matter, which is not dark as in "black" but dark as in undetectable with electromagnetic radiation, comprises about another 24 percent. The rest is an even more exotic and less-known force called dark energy.

One idea about dark matter is that even though we can't, by definition, detect it directly, we can scout for its footprints.

"It's really not interacting a lot. The hope is it interacts a little bit," Lisa Randall, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University, said at the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences meeting in Boston.

The AMS is not the only instrument on the hunt for dark matter. The Large Hadron Collider, for example, has been trying to produce parent and grandparent particles of dark matter — so far to no avail — and will do so again at even higher energies following a two-year upgrade.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Samuel Ting, the Nobel prize laureate who oversees the AMS team, said that so far, about 10 percent of the data collected by AMS has been analyzed. Those results will be published in March.

Has Dark Matter Finally Been Found? Big News Coming Soon

Clara Moskowitz - Space.com

Big news in the search for dark matter may be coming in about two weeks, the leader of a space-based particle physics experiment said Sunday here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

That's when the first paper of results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle collector mounted on the outside of the International Space Station, will be submitted to a scientific journal, said MIT physicist Samuel Ting, AMS principle investigator.

Though Ting was coy about just what, exactly, the experiment has found, he said the results bear on the mystery of dark matter, the invisible stuff thought to outnumber regular matter in the universe by a factor of about six to one

"It will not be a minor paper," Ting said, hinting that the findings were important enough that the scientists rewrote the paper 30 times before they were satisfied with it. Still, he said, it represents a "small step" in figuring out what dark matter is, and perhaps not the final answer.

Some physics theories suggest that dark matter is made of WIMPS (weakly interacting massive particles), a class of particles that are their own antimatter partner particles. When matter and antimatter partners meet, they annihilate each other, so if two WIMPs collided, they would be destroyed, releasing a pair of daughter particles — an electron and its antimatter counterpart, the positron, in the process.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer has the potential to detect the positrons and electrons produced by dark matter annihilations in the Milky Way. The $2 billion machine was installed on the International Space Station in May 2011, and so far, it has detected 25 billion particle events, including about 8 billion electrons and positrons. This first science paper will report how many of each were found, and what their energies are, Ting said.

If the experiment detected an abundance of positrons peaking at a certain energy, that could indicate a detection of dark matter, because while electrons are abundant in the universe around us, there are fewer known processes that could give rise to positrons.

"The smoking gun signature is a rise and then a dramatic fall" in the number of positrons with respect to energy, because the positrons produced by dark matter annihilation would have a very specific energy, depending on the mass of the WIMPs making up dark matter, said Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago who is not involved in the AMS project. "That's the key signature that would arise."

Another telling sign will be the question of whether positrons appear to be coming from one direction in space, or from all around. If they're from dark matter, scientists expect them to be spread evenly through space, but if they're created by some normal astrophysical process, such as a star explosion, then they would originate in a single direction.

"There is a lot of stuff that can mimic dark matter," said theoretical physicist Lisa Randall of Harvard University, who is also not involved in the project but said she's eagerly awaiting the AMS results. "In these experiments the question is when do you have antimatter that could be explained by astrophysical sources, and when do you have something that really could be an indication that you have something new?"

Regardless of whether AMS has found dark matter yet, the scientists said they expected the question of dark matter's origin to become clearer soon. In addition to AMS, other experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, and underground dark matter detectors buried around the world, could also make a discovery in the near future.

"We believe we're on the threshold of discovery," Turner said. "We believe this will be the decade of the WIMP."

Space safety at sea: Nasa's training mission for offshore workers

Sarah Blackman - Offshore Technology (offshore-technology.com)

For more than a year, Nasa has been working with Petrofac to deliver a suite of safety courses to current and future offshore oil workers.

Delegates are taught how to survive helicopter ditching and put out fires in simulated scenarios at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) in Houston, which is also used for spacewalk planning and training.

In February, the Hi-Con Training Programme was reapproved to provide safety courses to the Offshore Petroleum Industry Training Organisation (OPITO) standard, demonstrating the need for high-quality training in the sector.

Here, Cindy Hendershot, programmes manager at Raytheon Technical Services, Nasa's contractor for operations at NBL, explains why the space and offshore industries make the perfect match when it comes to work safety training and Raytheon's plans to expand its course offering to those working on board floating production vessels.

Sarah Blackman: How successful has the Hi-Con Training Programme been since its launch in November 2011?

Cindy Hendershot: We have had, as of today, more than 600 delegates go through and we've had fantastic feedback on the facility and the instructors. What we've done is taken the same people who support astronaut diving in the NBL and Petrofac has trained them to be instructors for this training programme.

SB: What training courses do you offer?

CH: We have the three-day Basic Offshore Safety Induction and Emergency Training (BOSIET) which is required in many areas of the world, especially in the North Sea.

What it does is it teaches you skills for surviving a helicopter ditching - how you get into a life raft and how you protect yourself.

We also teach basic fire-fighting skills for if you are on a rig and you don't have fire-fighting help at the time. We teach you how to put the fire out and, essentially, self-rescue techniques. Then there is the first aid portion.

We also offer a one-day refresher course called the FOET (Further Offshore Emergency Training) because the certification for the BOSIET is four years, so after that time you need a renewal. Then there is the one-day Helicopter Underwater Egress Training (HUET) course and that's provided to people who don't require the BOSIET, because they are going to work in warm water.

We also offer half-day fire-fighting and half-day first aid courses. Some companies who work in the Gulf of Mexico also offer our Safe Gulf course, which is classroom-based.

SB: Are there plans in the pipeline to expand your course offering?

CH: We are currently looking at offering marine training for people who are going to work on or operate a vessel, such as a floating production vessel, or any kind of vessel that participates in drilling or well development. This training has to be coast-guard approved so there is a little bit more that's required of people on a vessel. We are looking at partnering with the Texas Marine Academy at Texas A&M University in Galveston to offer a complete vessel training course.

SB: How do your instructors simulate dangerous situations in the oil and gas industry?

CH: In the helicopter training portion, they tell you what will happen to you if a helicopter has to ditch. Then they have you go though six or seven scenarios, starting from getting into the helicopter in a dry environment on the deck of the pool, and working up to the more complex scenario of going under water in a submerged helicopter that is then capsized.

There's another a complex scenario where you are not only capsized and underwater but you have to escape out of a window on the opposite side of the cabin, instead of the one right next to you.

I've taken the HUET part of the course and it's the scariest course for all delegates, but the way that Petrofac works you up is comforting and it helps you build your confidence.

In the fire training portion, the instructors tell you how and where fires could start and how to put them out. Then they demonstrate how you use each kind of fire extinguisher. We are not teaching them to be professional fire fighters by any means, but we are teaching them a first level of basic fire fighting and self rescue.

SB: What was the reason behind Nasa's decision to train the oil and gas workforce?

CH: We at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory have a very strong safety culture and we chose to partner with Petrofac because of their strong safety culture.

Workers at Nasa and in the offshore industry do similar work in terms of diving, rigging and lifting, so we felt that the two cultures would mesh well.

Raytheon is on contract to provide not only the operations of the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory but to help Nasa bring in other users as Nasa-use has dropped off in the last year or so. So we felt like this was an excellent fit from a technical capability standpoint of our people.

SB: Do you think that work safety is lacking in the oil and gas industry?

CH: Well, I think that offshore is a very high risk environment and, to me, it's very similar to operating in space. We train people to operate in those high consequence environments. So I don't know if [the industry is] not safe, but safety training is very important in an environment like that.

SB: How has the safety programme altered since it was approved to deliver survival courses to the OPITO standard in April 2012?

CH: What we had to do to get that approval was to essentially implement all the capabilities that you need to provide OPITO training. Just last week we had OPITO in for a surveillance audit and they reapproved us.

There's always room for improvement in this area so they gave us a few pointers, mainly in the management of the infrastructure, but they thought the instructors were doing a great job and, for the most part, they thought that what we are doing is well within the standard.

Private Moon Travel Startup Launches Crowdfunding Campaign

Clara Moskowitz - Space.com

A private startup aiming to launch manned lunar expeditions has started a crowdfunding campaign to get the public involved.

The company, Golden Spike, aims to get its first mission off the ground by 2020. To help achieve that goal, the startup's leaders are reaching out via the crowdfunding site Indiegogo in hopes of raising $240,000 — "a dollar for every mile on the way to the moon," said Golden Spike's president and CEO, planetary scientist Alan Stern.

"Ever since we launched [the company], we've been getting emails and tweets and Facebook posts about, 'How can I help?'" Stern told SPACE.com. "It just seems like there's a hunger out there to participate in grand exploration."

Contributors during the 10-week campaign can secure rewards ranging from printed "thank you's" and subscriptions to Golden Spike's mailing list (for a $25 donation), to VIP trips to see the company's first moon launch (for a contribution of $50,000). Other options include nominating names for the lunar test vehicles, and having your name flown to the moon during Golden Spike's first lunar landing mission.

Stern said the money raised would be used to help Golden Spike get off the ground. But moreover, he added, it's a way for people excited about the idea of private moon travel to get involved, and a way to raise awareness about the venture.

"We hope that this campaign and all the projects it enables will generate a degree of participation in space exploration that has never existed before," Gerry Griffin, former Apollo flight director and the chairman of Golden Spike's board of directors, said in a statement.

Golden Spike plans to use existing or already-in-development rockets and space capsules to transport crews to and from the moon. The firm plans to build its own lunar lander, though, and has hired veteran aerospace firm Northrop Grumman, which built NASA's Apollo moon landers, to work on the design.

The missions will sell for around $1.5 billion and will be aimed at corporations, countries without their own space programs and even some wealthy individuals.

"I think people are really excited about the idea of sending human expeditions to the moon from countries all over the world," Stern said. "It could be all different kinds of people, for all different kinds of purposes. It's a very different, forward concept."

To help keep costs down, Golden Spike plans to sell branding opportunities and advertising time during live broadcasts of missions.

"We plan to make these lunar expeditions television extravaganzas, like the Olympics," Stern said. "We'll sell the advertising time like they do with the Super Bowl."

Shuttle boosters won't go out with a bang
Leftover motors will be detonated soon

Jim Waymer - Florida Today

Next week, the last gasps of the space shuttle program will vent from leftover small motors that once separated the spacecraft from its twin solid rocket boosters.

Florida environmental regulators issued an emergency permit to Kennedy Space Center to detonate up to 33 booster separation motors this month.

These final shuttle-related "ignitions" will remove what state environmental regulators called "an imminent hazard" to people and property nearby.

But there's no risk to the general public, NASA assures, nor will these final shuttle-related "blast offs" deliver much of a bang to local ears.

"They will not really be able to hear this," said Anthony Tripp, a professional engineer with the state Department of Environmental Protection. "It's not going to make a big boom, anyway."

The motors — each of which contain 78 pounds of explosives — performed a brief but key function, pushing the spent boosters away from the space shuttle orbiters. This allowed the boosters to tumble into the Atlantic Ocean, where they were recovered for reuse.

The final burns of the separation motors are quick and fairly clean.

"Just like a shuttle launch, all that's going to be left is some gases that are not hazardous. They burn off very quickly," Tripp said.

DEP received an application from KSC for the emergency permit on Dec. 20. According to the permit, perchlorate crystals have formed on the exposed portion of the propellant and inside the motors, making them "an imminent hazard" and unsafe for shipping off the space center.

"The perchlorate in its present state is reactive, and it can't be safely transported long distances," Tripp said.

But, "it's sort of a bit of a misnomer," Tripp said of the term "emergency permit." "If there was an actual emergency, they wouldn't have to go through this process."

The motors are stored in KSC's Ordnance Storage Facility. Other excess booster separation motors had previously been disposed of at the 45th Space Wing Explosive Ordnance Detachment Range at Canaveral Air Force Station.

NASA officials said a total of 28 motors will likely be detonated, with the remaining five still possibly saved to be used by another program.

"We have vented and burned over 50 of these (BSMs) over the last few years," Russell Romanella, KSC's director of safety and mission assurance, said via email. "The first set (32 of them) was disposed of about 6 years ago. All of those and the current set have been vented and burned in a safety controlled area."

The detonations are no threat to space center workers or the public, he added.

"This operation poses no risk to KSC personnel or property, nor has there been any risk to public safety," Romanella said.

United Technologies Chemical Systems Division built the motors, which carry the last remnants of shuttle-related propellants at KSC. The motors weigh 177 pounds when loaded with propellant. Each is 31 inches long and 13 inches in diameter.

Roughly two minutes into each shuttle launch, from about 28 miles up, 16 of the small, powerful motors fired simultaneously for about 1 second, with the precise thrust to safely separate the spent boosters from the shuttle's external tank and orbiter.

KSC had hoped to reuse the motors that remained after the last shuttle touched down in 2011. They were kept at the center's ordnance storage facility, as "test assets for future program development," NASA officials said.

But the Shuttle Program Transition and Retirement Program activities concluded this month, with no other owner to take all the motors, KSC officials said.

The hazardous waste gets detonated at KSC's landfill off Schwartz Road, southeast of the Vehicle Assembly Building.

According to the environmental permit, the 45th Space Wing Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit detonates them by placing shaped charge containers packed with a quarter pound of C-4 plastic explosives on either side of each motor.

When the C-4 is detonated, the pressure wave splits the case and ignites the propellant, which expels the nozzle a short distance from the motor case. Energy of the propellant vents through the cracked motor case within seconds.

It won't be like bomb going off , Tripp said.

"It's really more like a controlled burn," Tripp said. "That's the dangerous part, it only burns for like a second or two."

Russia Meteor: Former Astronaut Says 'Universe Is a Crowded Place'

Jeanna Bryner - LiveScience.com

Referring to the Russia meteor explosion, former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly reminded us this Sunday morning on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the "universe is a crowded place."

"We have stuff entering the atmosphere all the time," Kelly told moderator David Gregory. "It's interesting when you're on the space station and you're looking at the shooting stars, the meteorites, entering the atmosphere. You're seeing those beneath you. It's a little bit disconcerting because they're all flying by you."

The Russian meteor blast over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on Friday injured more than 1,000 people, mostly from the glass from shattered windows.

"It was a big rock," Kelly said. Indeed, NASA scientists estimated the space rock was about 55 feet (17 meters) in diameter and sent off a blast equivalent of 500 kilotons of energy.

The shock wave from the blast sent subsonic waves through the atmosphere halfway around the world, according to sensors in Greenland, Africa, Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula and other far-flung regions that detected the Russian meteor blast's infrasound, or low-frequency sound waves.

Kelly noted that with so many space rocks entering the atmosphere, "there is certainly a risk out there," adding that luckily the meteor didn't hit the ground in the middle of a town in Russia.

Kelly is a veteran of four space shuttle flights. He commanded two shuttle missions, including NASA's last flight of the space shuttle Endeavour in May 2011, before retiring from NASA's astronaut corps. Kelly's identical twin brother Scott Kelly is also a NASA astronaut and veteran of two shuttle flights and an International Space Station mission.

New look at Apollo moon rocks reveals signs of 'native' water

Amina Khan - Los Angeles Times

Scientists picking up signs of water on the moon's surface typically attribute them to deposits left by comets, asteroids and other heavenly objects. But a new analysis of lunar samples brought back to Earth by Apollo astronauts in the early 1970s indicates that the moon's interior may have been a little damp in its early days.

The findings, published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, support mounting evidence that the moon once contained some "native" water — throwing a wrench into current beliefs about how Earth's companion formed.

Prevailing theories hold that the moon was created when a Mars-sized body crashed into the young Earth and broke off debris that eventually coalesced into a new entity. In the process, much of the water would have evaporated into space, leaving Earth's new satellite quite arid.

"It's thought that the moon's formation involved the materials getting very hot," said Paul Warren, a UCLA cosmochemist who was not involved in the new study. "It's usually assumed that little water would have survived through that."

Indeed, the samples returned by the Apollo missions that visited the lunar highlands seemed to confirm that Earth's cold, rocky companion was bone-dry, said University of Notre Dame geologist Hejiu Hui, who led the new analysis.

But work in the last five years has challenged that notion, as scientists have used more advanced methods to look for increasingly tiny concentrations of water in glass beads that are thought to have been formed by volcanic eruptions in the moon's early days.

Some experts have argued that those glass beads could have been exposed to alien water sources after they had been ejected from the moon's interior. So Hui and his colleagues decided to look at a type of rock called plagioclase, which is thought to have formed in a magma ocean inside the moon. Although the rocks later floated to the surface to form the crust, they contain a chemical time capsule from inside the young moon.

To further rule out any outside source of water, Hui's team looked past the surface of these rocks and into their centers.

After examining the samples under a microscope equipped with a spectrometer, the researchers found that the rocks contained 6 parts per million of water. That's drier than an Earth desert, but far more than expected to survive in a rock from the moon's once-molten center.

The samples should have been bone-dry, Hui said, but "somehow we still detect this amount of water, so that makes things interesting."

Based on their measurements, the researchers estimated that the early moon's magma ocean could have contained up to 320 parts per million of water. Once that ocean mostly crystallized, the remaining residues could have had as much as 1.4% water. That could explain the measured water content in lunar rocks, Hui said.

The findings could have interesting implications for theories about how the moon came to be, Warren said.

"It's thought that the moon's formation involved the materials getting very hot, and it's usually assumed that little water would have survived through that," he said. If the new study is right, "It opens up quite a mystery as to how the moon came through what we think was a very hot genesis process with this much water."

The findings also have implications for the moon's geological evolution, Warren said. Researchers have reconstructed the history of the moon's crustal formation while assuming there were negligible amounts of water involved. Now scientists may need to reevaluate some of those ideas.

Knowing how much water there is could be handy for future explorers. "Someday, when we put men on the moon in a more permanent way, we might need that water," Warren said.

Martinez and SpaceX founder discuss Brownsville project

Steve Clark – Brownsville Herald

On Valentine's Day, Brownsville Mayor Tony Martinez met with Elon Musk, billionaire founder of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation — SpaceX.

Boca Chica beach, east of Brownsville on State Highway 4, is on the shortlist for a commercial rocket launch site the Hawthorne, Calif.-based aerospace cargo firm is looking to build.

It would augment SpaceX's current launch site in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and another site nearing completion at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Georgia, Puerto Rico and another potential site in Florida are on the shortlist as well, though none of those sites came up during Martinez's half-hour meeting with Musk, the mayor said. Likewise, neither Musk nor his staff brought up any major obstacles to locating the launch site at Boca Chica, Martinez said.

"He just said where are we on the project; what else needs to be done?" he said.

What else needs to be done: An Environmental Impact Statement has yet to be completed and a waiver granted, if possible, through the Legislature to the state's public beach access law. The waiver would be necessary to legally close the beach for a period of time before and after each launch.

Launches would take place no more than once a month after the site became fully operational, according to the company.

A second EIS hearing is set to take place in April, with the EIS itself expected to be completed this summer. SpaceX could make a decision on where to locate the new launch site in the third or fourth quarter of this year.

Musk said he liked what local officials have done to attract SpaceX and liked the Boca Chica site, Martinez said.

"We didn't talk about specific incentives or terms," Martinez added. "I think the governor's office has done a marvelous job on that."

He described the meeting with Musk and his staff as cordial and positive. Although a meeting had been agreed upon by both sides for some time, scheduling was difficult due to Musk's extremely busy schedule.

"It just so happened that Valentine's Day was the best day to meet," Martinez said. "I understand that's not unusual for this fellow. He went to Haiti on Christmas Day."

The mayor said the meeting was meant to "put a face to the project." Although Martinez had met several times with SpaceX officials, this was his first meeting with Musk himself.

Martinez also got to tour SpaceX's Hawthorne headquarters and manufacturing operations. The average age of SpaceX employees is 29, he noted, adding that some of the employees were wearing "Occupy Mars" T-shirts — a play on "Occupy Wall Street."

Last year, Musk's company became the world's first private aerospace firm to supply the International Space Station.

"The vision of Brownsville and the vision he has for his company are very much in tune," Martinez said. "We both feel like anything we work hard enough at we can get accomplished."

Hire me for Kennedy Space Center upkeep
Costs for maintaining shuttle pad don't make sense

Matt Reed - Florida Today (Commentary)

I've never known what to make of the multibillion-dollar prices NASA pays for spacecraft. The missions are so unique and risky.

But its costs for terrestrial things can make me break out the calculator and start asking questions.

Take for instance, the $21.4 million per year NASA pays to maintain the mothballed former space shuttle launch pad and equipment at Kennedy Space Center, known as Pad 39A. It looks like a theme park ride with extra plumbing parked on a highway overpass.

How much work could it need?

I'm no auditor, but the cost figure has a certain ring to it — as if it once was a line item based on a percentage of the blob of cash Washington sent for the shuttle program every year. It is nearly three times as much as Brevard Public Schools will spend to fix buildings and buses next year.

So I called KSC on Thursday to request a breakdown for spending on Pad 39A (I'll let you know what I learn).

And I while I was on the line, I made this offer:

I will personally maintain Pad 39A for one-10th the cost until NASA can sublease it to someone else in a year or so.

'Open bid' to KSC

I'm pretty sure I'd make money, too.

Here's what I jotted down on a sticky note next to the phone Thursday:

·         Pay 10 laid-off space center workers $100,000 each in annual salary & benefits for labor.
·         Spend $500,000 or so on a mower and weed-whacker, plus gas, a pallet of WD-40 and a truckload of gray "high heat" Rustoleum.
·         Pay another $100,000 for insurance and federal red tape.
·         Cost: $1.6 million.
·         Profit for me: $500,000.
·         Savings to taxpayers: $19.3 million.

"It's a noble thing to think about," said KSC public affairs director Lisa Malone.

But the center has other plans for Pad 39A, she said. Now that shuttle money has stopped, KSC managers must scrounge dollars from center operations to maintain it.

If the center can't lease the seaside complex to one of the companies competing for privatized launch business, it may demolish the gear as recommended last week by NASA's inspector general.

"We have a lot of commercial companies interested in using the pad — we're thinking it could be later this year," Malone said. "I don't think there's any government money to maintain it."

Crazy costs?

Sure, my pitch to maintain the old shuttle pad was meant as a joke, but my math wasn't all that crazy, records show.

And it turns out, managers at the Cape aren't the only ones struggling to maintain complicated structures no one needs, the inspector general's report says.

"In the absence of firm requirements stemming from a clear direction, NASA programs and centers often resort to a 'wait-and-see' or 'keep it in case you need it' approach to facilities management," it says.

For instance, NASA is still building a massive and complicated "test stand" for firing Ares 3 rocket engines at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi — even though President Barack Obama killed the Ares years ago.

The stand ultimately will cost $349 million and be retired as soon as it's done.

"In addition, the Agency will expend an additional $1.5 million to $1.75 million annually to maintain the test stand in its mothball state," the report says.

Wait … how much will it cost Stennis to maintain that tower?

Looks like my bid for Pad 39A isn't far from the mark, after all.

Seriously, NASA. I know some guys.

If not me, you could still pay much less.

END

Keep the shuttle flying

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - February 19, 2013 and JSC Today

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