Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - August 15, 2013 and JSC Today

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: August 15, 2013 6:07:28 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - August 15, 2013 and JSC Today

Happy FFE (Flex Friday Eve)  - which also means no JSC Today tomorrow ---that sounds odd!

 

Thursday, August 15, 2013

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Dropping in on a James Webb Space Telescope Clean Room Test

 

Headlines Joint Leadership Team Web Poll Sixty-eight percent of respondents to last week's question one said they would most likely work at JSC again if they had to do it all over. It's a little disturbing that about 30 percent aren't sure. You overwhelmingly chose to be smart instead of rich, famous, thin or attractive. What a bunch of nerds we are. I would just settle for tall. This week I was wondering whether you've ever been to another NASA center. I've been to all of them over the course of 30 years, and have worked at three. How many have you visited at least once? Only JSC? Three? All? I like puns, and I know that's kinda weird. I found a bunch and picked five of my favorite ones in question two. Help me select the best one. Double your Entendre on over to get this week's poll. Joel Walker x30541 http://jlt.jsc.nasa.gov/ [top] NASA TV to Air Space Station Spacewalk Tomorrow NASA Television will provide live coverage as two Russian cosmonauts venture outside the International Space Station on spacewalks tomorrow, Friday, Aug. 16, and Thursday, Aug. 22. NASA TV coverage will begin at 9 a.m. tomorrow and 6 a.m. on Aug. 22. Flight Engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin will install equipment for the arrival of a new Russian module and begin preparations for the installation later this year of an optical telescope. The two cosmonauts will exit the Pirs airlock at about 9:40 a.m. tomorrow for a spacewalk scheduled to last about 6 1/2 hours. They plan to continue routing power and Ethernet cables for the future arrival of the Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module, which will be launched aboard a Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. They also will install on the Poisk module a panel of experiments designed to collect data on the effects of the microgravity environment in low-Earth orbit. Tomorrow's spacewalk will be the 172nd in support of space station assembly and maintenance, the seventh of Yurchikhin's career and the second for Misurkin. Yurchikhin will wear a Russian Orlan suit bearing red stripes, and Misurkin will wear a suit with blue stripes. Misurkin's suit also will be equipped with a U.S. helmet camera to provide close up views of the work he will be performing outside the station. JSC, Ellington Field, Sonny Carter Training Facility and White Sands Test Facility team members with wired computer network connections can view NASA TV using the JSC EZTV IP Network TV System on channels 404 (standard definition) or 4541 (HD). Please note: EZTV currently requires using Internet Explorer on a Windows PC connected to the JSC computer network with a wired connection. Mobile devices, Wi-Fi connections and newer MAC computers are currently not supported by EZTV. If you are having problems viewing the video using these systems, contact the Information Resources Directorate Customer Support Center at x46367. Event Date: Thursday, August 15, 2013   Event Start Time:9:00 AM   Event End Time:4:10 PM Event Location: http://iptv.jsc.nasa.gov/eztv/ Add to Calendar JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111 [top] Morpheus Test Today The Morpheus team plans another tether test of its "Bravo" prototype lander today. The test will be streamed live on JSC's UStream channel. View the live stream, along with progress updates sent via Twitter. Morpheus is a vertical test bed vehicle being used to mature new, non-toxic propulsion systems and autonomous landing and hazard detection technologies. Designed, manufactured and operated in-house by engineers at JSC, Morpheus represents not only a vehicle to advance technologies, but also an opportunity to pursue "lean development" engineering practices. The test firing is planned for approximately 1 to 2 p.m. Streaming will begin approximately 45 minutes prior. *Note: Testing operations are very dynamic, and the actual firing time may vary. Follow Morpheus on Twitter for the latest information and updates: @MorpheusLander For more information, click here or contact Wendy Watkins. Wendy Watkins x38316 http://morpheuslander.jsc.nasa.gov [top] The New JSC Features Surely by now you've seen the newly revamped JSC Features site (also found on Inside JSC under "JSC News"), which has grown in leaps and bounds with JSC 2.0. We've got new articles for you to see, so check it out today. See our newest "star," Abigail Ryan, who has a passion for volunteerism and sharing NASA's story. Then, read about how astronaut Karen Nyberg is bringing space closer to home than ever before. Maybe you aren't an astronaut—yet—but you can get pretty close to seeing what life is like aboard the International Space Station. Read on! JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x33317 [top] JSC Today Deadlines and Flex Friday JSC Today is no longer being distributed ON Flex Fridays, since so many of you are now taking advantage of this alternative work schedule and aren't here to read it. We'll continue to send JSC Today out on normal working days, excluding holidays and Flex Fridays. As before, submissions for the following Monday after Flex Friday will be due by noon on Thursday.  If you have an announcement you'd like to run for Monday, Aug. 19, please submit it to JSC Today by noon today, Aug. 15. Any announcements submitted for Flex Fridays will be rescheduled. JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111 [top] Recent JSC Announcement Please visit the JSC Announcements (JSCA) Web page to view the newly posted announcement: JSCA 13-031: 2013 NASA Honor Awards Ceremony Archived announcements are also available on the JSCA Web page. Linda Turnbough x36246 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/DocumentManagement/announcements/default.aspx [top] Check Out Active NASA@work Challenges Active challenges on the NASA@work platform need your inputs. Be sure to check them out: Creating Presentation Quality Gantt Charts from MS Project (deadline: Aug. 30); and Seeking Hands-On Tutorial - Reed Solomon Encoding Method (deadline: Sept. 13). And, don't forget to vote and have a say in the design of the NASA@work award system. Are you new to NASA@work? NASA@work is an agencywide, collaborative problem-solving platform that connects the collective knowledge of experts (like YOU) from all centers across NASA. Challenge owners post problems, and members of the NASA@work community participate by responding with their solutions to posted problems. Anyone can participate! Kathryn Keeton 281-204-1519 http://nasa.innocentive.com [top]    Organizations/Social Starport Drops Ticket Prices The Starport Gift Shops have reduced Space Center Houston tickets prices to $13.75, AMC movie tickets to $7.75 and Kemah Boardwalk tickets to $18. Save more when you buy tickets for all your summer fun at Starport. Cyndi Kibby x35352 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/ [top] Parenting Series: Children's Emotional Health Do you know the one essential gift required to promote your child's emotional development? Did you know a child's emotional development lays the foundation for academic performance? A child's emotional health also impacts their mental health and ability to establish successful relationships. Emotional health is one of the most critical predictors in shaping a child's overall success. We will learn how to cultivate your child's emotional health, and also what not to do. We will be providing you resources for learning more about yourself as a parent and how vital your impact is to your child's ongoing emotional growth. Please join JSC Employee Assistance Program counselor Anika Isaac, LPC, LMFT, NCC, LCDC, CEAP, as she presents "Children's Emotional Health," the fourth topic in the monthly parenting series, on Aug. 20 from 12 noon to 1 p.m. in the Building 30 Auditorium. Event Date: Tuesday, August 20, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM Event Location: Building 30 Auditorium Add to Calendar Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Occupational Health Branch x36130 [top] Work/Life Balance Have you ever found yourself thinking, Why did I volunteer for this activity? Do you say yes because you think no one else will do it? Do you overcommit yourself or your family? If you think you or a loved one would answer yes, then you are probably impacted by work/life balance. Work/life balance is not about a "perfect" balance of work and home needs. We will be discussing the myths, realities and application involved finding "your" balance. We will explore key areas that each person needs to examine for their person and/or family to best prioritize their time and energy. Please join Anika Isaac, LPC, LMFT, NCC, LCDC, CEAP, with the JSC Employee Assistance Program, for a self-evaluation and implementation of essential concepts of balance today, Aug. 15, at 12:30 p.m. in Building 17, Room 2026. ViTS (#97668) WebEx and telephone : 1-888-370-7263, pass code 8811760# Meeting number: 399 650 180 Meeting password: Balance8-15 Event Date: Thursday, August 15, 2013   Event Start Time:12:30 PM   Event End Time:1:30 PM Event Location: Building 17, Room 2026 Add to Calendar Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Occupational Health Branch x36130 [top] League Sports - Starport's Fall Season Registration is opening for Starport's popular league sports! Registration NOW OPEN: - Flag Football (Co-ed) | Tuesdays | Registration ends Sept. 4 | Leagues start Sept. 10 - Soccer (Co-ed) | Saturdays | Registration ends Sept. 3| League starts Sept. 7 Registration Opening Soon: - Dodgeball (Coted) | Thursdays | Registration Sept. 9 to 30 | League starts Oct. 3 - Softball (Co-ed) | Thursdays | Registration Sept. 9 to 30 | League starts Oct. 3 - Softball (Men's D, DD, E) | Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays | Registration Aug. 26 to Sept. 18 | Leagues start Sept. 23 - Volleyball (Rev 4s and Co-ed) | Mondays and Tuesdays | Registration Sept. 9 to Oct. 2 | Leagues start Oct. 7 Free-agent registration is now open for all leagues. All participants must register at IMLeagues. For more information, please contact the Gilruth information desk at 281-483-0304. Steve Schade x30304 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/Sports/ [top] JSC Planning/Scheduling Community of Practice Please join the JSC Planning/Scheduling Community of Practice in person or virtually for our next meeting. This month, Program Analyst and architect of the Joint Confidence Level model of the Orion Program AM/Mike Stelly will be introducing the community to "Schedule Risk Analysis and Joint Confidence Level." Please come to learn what schedule analysis is, who's using it and what it can do for you and your PM. Mark your calendar for next week. See you then!   Event Date: Friday, August 23, 2013   Event Start Time:2:00 PM   Event End Time:3:30 PM Event Location: 1/620 and via telecon/webex Add to Calendar Nancy Fleming x47205 https://pmi.jsc.nasa.gov/schedules/SitePages/Home.aspx [top]    Jobs and Training JSC Imagery Online Training - Aug. 21 Need to find mission pictures or videos? Learn how during a webinar on Wednesday, Aug. 21, from 1 to 2:15 p.m. CDT. Mary Wilkerson, Still Imagery lead, will show users how to find and NASA mission images in Imagery Online (IO) and the Digital Imagery Management System (DIMS). Leslie Richards, Video Imagery lead, will show employees the video functionality in IO. This training is open to any JSC/White Sands Test Facility employee. To register for the WebEx, go to this link. This training is provided by the Information Resources Directorate. Event Date: Wednesday, August 21, 2013   Event Start Time:1:00 PM   Event End Time:2:15 PM Event Location: WebEx Add to Calendar Scientific & Technical Information Center x34245 http://library.jsc.nasa.gov [top]    Community Do You Have a Telescope You Don't Know How to Use? Do you have a telescope you don't know how to use? Take a class at the George Observatory. We will be offering two classes on Aug. 24. The first class will be how to use a refracting or reflecting telescope, and starts at 4 p.m. ($30). The second class will be how to use a go-to telescope, and starts at 6 p.m. ($35). For more information about these classes and to purchase tickets for the class, visit this website. Note: Park entrance fees apply at $7 per person for everyone over 12 years old. Megan Hashier 281-226-4179 http://www.hmns.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=612&Ite... [top]

 

JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters.

 

 

 

NASA TV:

·         10:30 am – 1:30 pm Central (11:30-2:30 EDT) – Orion stationary recovery test live coverage

·         12:40 pm Central (1:40 EDT) – Expedition 36 with Riverside Prep High in Oro Grande, CA

 

Human Spaceflight News

Thursday – August 15, 2013

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

NASA, Navy to test space capsule recovery in Va.

 

Brock Vergakis - Associated Press

 

The Navy and NASA are testing out how they'll recover astronauts once they splash down in the ocean following future missions to deep space, something a Navy crew hasn't had to do in nearly 40 years. On Thursday, a team of Navy divers and the crew of the USS Arlington planned to practice retrieving a mock-up of the Orion space capsule from the waters at Naval Station Norfolk in southeastern Virginia.

 

Companies to get off ground in private space race

 

Dirk Lorenzen - Deutsche Welle

 

International corporations vie to build the next generation of capsules that will ferry people and material to space. One of them could hold up to seven people - and not all of them will necessarily be astronauts. There's little chance Serena Aunon, Randolph "Randy" Bresnik and the rest of NASA's roughly 50 astronauts will be blasting off into space in the near future. Since scrapping its space shuttle fleet two years ago, the US's National Aeronautics and Space Administration only gets a select few astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on Russian Soyuz capsules. That made Aunon and Bresnik happy to be able to test out the inside of Boeing's new CST-100 capsule. The pair sat right down in the pilot seats and checked out the communications systems. It will be a few years before the capsule will ever launch.

 

Legislation seeks to "streamline" commercial spaceflight regulations

 

Jeff Foust - SpacePolitics.com

 

Just before Congress adjourned earlier this month for summer recess, two members of Congress introduced a bill that they argue will help streamline commercial spaceflight regulations. Congressmen Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Bill Posey (R-FL) introduced HR 3038, the Suborbital and Orbital Advancement and Regulatory Streamlining (SOARS) Act. "I have seen firsthand how the talented people of East Kern County have grown this industry through technological advancement, and this legislation will help ensure they are not hindered in creating jobs here locally," said McCarthy, the House Majority Whip whose district includes the Mojave Air and Space Port, in a press release announcing the bill. "Our bill is a big step in streamlining FAA regulations and establishes demonstration projects for space companies supporting launch activities to safely move forward," added Posey in the same statement.

 

Florida Seeks New Lift-Off for Its Space Coast

State Plans to Build Launch Pad for Private Firms

 

Meredith Rutland - Wall Street Journal

 

Two years after NASA grounded the space shuttle, Florida is trying to help reignite the fortunes of its Space Coast. The state's aerospace economic development agency aims to build a launchpad on a 200-acre plot here, in a rocket buffer zone just north of the Kennedy Space Center, site of many space-shuttle launches. The agency, Space Florida, hopes to lease the pad to commercial space companies such as Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Blue Origin LLC. The agency plans to spend up to $2.3 million on the project, which it said would help the state compete with Texas, Georgia and Puerto Rico, all of which are trying to lure commercial space business with new launchpads.

 

Astronaut shares tips on zero-gravity hair care

 

NBC "Today Show"

 

Dr. Karen Nyberg, who recently posted a video of herself shampooing aboard the International Space Station, answers questions about zero-gravity hair maintenance directly from orbit. Though her routine is fairly similar to using dry shampoo on land, it's what she has to say about the water after she finishes her shower that may seem out of this world. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

 

Pinterest In Space: NASA Astronaut 'Pins' Cosmic Photos from Orbit

 

Miriam Kramer – Space.com

 

A NASA astronaut has taken the social media service Pinterest into the final frontier, where she pins her favorite space photos while soaring around Earth on the International Space Station. Since launching into space in May, astronaut Karen Nyberg has been "pinning" away on the photo sharing social media website Pinterest, documenting her months-long space voyage. Nyberg, who is also chronicling her space exploits on Twitter as @AstroKarenN, had more than 6,300 followers on Pinterest as of Tuesday.

 

SpaceX's Grasshopper test rocket flies sideways successfully

 

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com

 

SpaceX's Grasshopper rocket demonstrates in a new video how future launch vehicles may well lift off, do their job and then maneuver themselves for a precision landing. During Tuesday's test, the modified Falcon 9 test rig blasted off from its Texas launch pad and rose to a height of 250 meters (820 feet) with a 100-meter (330-foot) lateral maneuver. The rocket hovered for some moments, then swung back and made a rapid, controlled descent onto the pad.

 

SpaceX Flies Most Complicated Grasshopper Test Yet

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) on Aug. 13 successfully staged the most complicated flight yet of its Grasshopper test vehicle, sending the vertical-takeoff-and-landing rocket 250 meters into the air and steering it 100 meters laterally before bringing it in for a landing. The test took place at SpaceX's rocket test facility near McGregor, Texas, where the company has conducted all Grasshopper flights to date. The Hawthorne, Calif., rocket maker is also making preparations to fly Grasshopper at Spaceport America in New Mexico, where it would be possible to send the vehicle to higher altitudes.

 

Private Space Race Heats Up With Some Key Breakthroughs

 

Jason Paur - Wired.com

 

Even as Elon Musk got everyone's attention with the Hyperloop, his wild idea to remake mass transit, his engineers at SpaceX did something far cooler: They proved their reusable rocket can go sideways. Almost immediately after Tuesday's lift off, the 10-story-tall Grasshopper rocket made a "hard lateral deviation," as Musk put it, of 100 meters during its ascent to 250 meters. It then returned to the center of the launch pad at touchdown. That is rocket science. Literally. The really cool kind of rocket science.

 

Manned Missions to Mars: Is the Moon Really a Stepping Stone?

 

Mike Wall - Space.com

 

The moon may be more of a stumbling block than a stepping stone on humanity's path to the Red Planet, one prominent researcher says. The perceived need to develop lunar infrastructure and resources first could push a manned Mars mission far off into the future, said Harley Thronson, senior scientist for advanced concepts in the Astrophysics Science Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. And if putting boots on the Red Planet in the next few decades is indeed the top priority of the international human spaceflight community, then making a prolonged stopover on the moon beforehand runs counter to the spirit and history of exploration, he added.

 

Florida to Secret Military Space Project: Fly From Here!

 

Irene Klotz - Discovery News

 

Space Florida, a state-backed economic development agency, doubled its budget to refurbish two old space shuttle hangers in an effort to lure a secretive military project to the Kennedy Space Center. Space Florida board members agreed to add $4 million to the project, with is aimed at relocating the Air Force's X-37B Orbital Test Vehicles to Florida from California. The 29-foot-long robotic spaceships, which resemble miniature space shuttles, are experimental vehicles the military has been flying since April 2010. The program's third mission, launched on Dec. 11, 2012, remains under way.

 

Firm gets capital for space proposal

 

Kevin Robinson-Avila - Albuquerque Journal

 

A new Albuquerque company, Masterson Industries LLC, won venture capital backing this week to produce industrial materials in space. The company, formed last year, received a seven-figure investment from Cottonwood Technology Fund in New Mexico and Pangaea Ventures Fund III LP, which specializes in advanced-materials financing. The money will allow Masterson to begin producing "microgravity-enabled materials," starting with a first flight to space in early fall.

 

Menu on Mars could include sushi, borscht

Six researchers have emerged from a small dome in Hawaii after spending the past four months preparing dishes that future astronauts might eat on Mars

 

Elizabeth Barber - Christian Science Monitor

 

Four months ago, six men and women holed themselves up in a small, white dome on a remote Hawaiian lava field. The people didn't go out much, and when they did, it was in spacesuits. For the most part, they lived a restrained existence, circulating between the sleeping room and the exercise room – and the kitchen. The kitchen: that was where all the excitement was happening. This was a NASA-funded experiment to assess what Earthlings might eat if they were to plant a colony on Mars. Out there on the Red Planet, where the mind has little on which to feed besides an expanse of red-tinged rock that meets the horizon, how would astronauts make meals that are not just nutritionally satisfying, but also emotionally so?

 

International Space Station's viability beyond 2020 doubtful

It may not be the space program we want, but it's the space program we deserve.

 

Lee Hutchinson - Ars Technica (Editorial)

 

There's a flagpole atop the roof of Building 30 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, proudly streaming Old Glory in the sultry Texas summer wind. On the very first closed-door tour I got of the restored Apollo Mission Operations Control room more than a decade ago, my tour guide pointed out the flag as we entered the building's lobby. "That flag," he said, smiling, "flies whenever there is an American in space. Thanks to the International Space Station (ISS), NASA has had a flag up there continuously since 1998. I hope it'll be up there forever."

__________

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

NASA, Navy to test space capsule recovery in Va.

 

Brock Vergakis - Associated Press

 

The Navy and NASA are testing out how they'll recover astronauts once they splash down in the ocean following future missions to deep space, something a Navy crew hasn't had to do in nearly 40 years.

 

On Thursday, a team of Navy divers and the crew of the USS Arlington planned to practice retrieving a mock-up of the Orion space capsule from the waters at Naval Station Norfolk in southeastern Virginia.

 

While commonplace in the early years of manned space flight, the Navy hasn't been used to recover astronauts since 1975, when the USS New Orleans recovered the Apollo spacecraft. That mission was the first time a U.S. and Russian spacecraft docked together in space and marked the final flight of the Apollo program. From 1961 to 1975, teams of Navy ships tracked and recovered Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft after they re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and splashed down in oceans.

 

After that, astronauts began flying and returning to Earth via the space shuttle.

 

Once the space shuttle program was shuttered, U.S. astronauts began hitching rides from Russia aboard its Soyuz rocket, whose spacecraft lands in a Kazakhstan desert. The U.S. wants to turn to private companies to begin ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station and back, but NASA intends to use its Orion spacecraft, still under development, for deep space exploration. Ultimately, NASA plans to use Orion to get to an asteroid and then Mars.

 

"Of course, Arlington's crew of sailors and Marines and I are thrilled to be a part of this," Cmdr. Darren Nelson, the Arlington's commanding officer, said in a statement.

 

"As the captain of a Navy warship, and for virtually every member of my crew, this opportunity to work with NASA is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

 

A test flight of the capsule is planned for September 2014. It will fly 3,600 miles away and then return to the Pacific Ocean. But first, the Navy and NASA have to dust off the cobwebs from their old recovery playbook and update several parts of it.

 

Unlike past spacecraft recovery efforts, the Navy doesn't plan to use helicopters to retrieve Orion and place them on the flight deck of a ship. Instead, small boat teams will attach a winch line to Orion and tow it into an amphibious ship's well deck. The Arlington is an amphibious transport dock that carries Marines and their equipment, and its well deck can intentionally be flooded. Once inside the ship, the well deck will be drained and the crew module will be placed into a positioning stand known as a cradle that will eventually allow astronauts to step out of the spacecraft and into the ship.

 

In practice, it will be several more years before an astronaut steps onto a ship following a mission.

 

Orion's first trip is an unmanned mission in 2017. The first manned mission of Orion is planned for 2021.

 

A more detailed recovery test will occur in open waters off the coast of California in January.

 

For years, the splashdown in the water was a familiar ending to U.S. space missions. Photos on NASA's website show astronauts Neil Armstrong and David R. Scott sitting with their spacecraft hatches open after the Gemini VIII mission in 1966, as the craft is stabilized against choppy seas by a yellow flotation collar. Others photos show astronaut L. Gordon Cooper being hoisted by a recovery helicopter after the Gemini V mission in 1965, and the Apollo 17 spacecraft carrying three astronauts being gilded to a safe splashdown in 1972. The astronauts were then flown by recovery helicopter to a Navy vessel after the completion of NASA's sixth and last manned lunar landing in the Apollo program.

 

"The Navy is excited to support NASA's continuing mission of space exploration," Adm. Bill Gortney, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, said in a statement. "Our unique capabilities make us an ideal partner for NASA in the safe recovery of our astronauts in the 21st century - just as we did nearly a half century ago in support of America's quest to put a man on the moon."

 

Companies to get off ground in private space race

 

Dirk Lorenzen - Deutsche Welle

 

International corporations vie to build the next generation of capsules that will ferry people and material to space. One of them could hold up to seven people - and not all of them will necessarily be astronauts.

 

There's little chance Serena Aunon, Randolph "Randy" Bresnik and the rest of NASA's roughly 50 astronauts will be blasting off into space in the near future. Since scrapping its space shuttle fleet two years ago, the US's National Aeronautics and Space Administration only gets a select few astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on Russian Soyuz capsules.

 

That made Aunon and Bresnik happy to be able to test out the inside of Boeing's new CST-100 capsule. The pair sat right down in the pilot seats and checked out the communications systems. It will be a few years before the capsule will ever launch.

 

"Our astronauts are always really happy to get out and see the new spaceships and exchange their experiences with engineers and technicians from the private companies," said Kathy Lueders, deputy manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP), which coordinates spaceship development through private companies.

 

Three candidates for the new space taxis

 

CST stands for Crew Space Transportation - meaning getting the astronauts up into space. Boeing is competing with SpaceX and the Sierra Nevada Corporation in the race to build spaceships that follow the legendary, yet notorious Space Shuttles.

 

NASA has supported Boeing, SpaceX and the Sierra Nevada Corporation with a total of $1.1 billion dollars (830 million euros) up to now. Under NASA supervision, these companies develop new spaceships that are supposed to be "safe, reliable and affordable" - according to official policy. Cynics have quipped that the new spaceships, then, are supposed to be the opposite of NASA's old ones.

 

As simple as possible

 

Two of the three companies have developed capsules again - just as in the age of the Apollo. Only the Sierra Nevada Corporation team has built a ship with stump wings that, at first glance, make it resemble a scaled-down Shuttle. Yet all three new designs boast a different way of transporting humans and materials into space.

 

While the Space Shuttle was like a freight truck that could transport both crew and entire modules to the ISS, the CST-100 is more like a small car for space. Generally, the cone-shaped capsule - which is three meters (10 feet) high and has a diameter of 4.5 meters - is supposed to seat five astronauts.

 

But if everyone squeezes together and cuts back on the carry-on luggage, seven people should be able to fit into the spaceship that is fitted with tablet computers, indirect lighting and designer seats.

 

"We haven't put thousands of buttons into this thing," said Boeing project director Christopher Ferguson, who has been in space three times for NASA, including as commander of the final Shuttle mission in July 2011.

 

"When the astronauts launch this, the primary goal is not flying the capsule. It's about being at the Space Station for six months," he added. "We're building the CST-100 in such a way that it can be flown intuitively, without a lot of training."

 

CST-100 could pick up the slack after Shuttle program

 

If all goes well, the CST-100 could start taking people to the ISS beginning in 2017. The capsule is supposed to launch on the tip of an Atlas V rocket which has, up to now, only taken satellites up into space.

 

Boeing, which has experience building spaceships stretching back into the Apollo days, may have a good chance at getting its capsule built for launch. But it's not entirely certain that CST-100 will go beyond the model phase.

 

NASA will not actually give out the contracts until mid-2014 for building capsules for real test flights in space. At least one of the three competing companies will lose out, perhaps even two, should the US Congress slash funds for the NASA program. Still, the US space agency has deliberately relied on the laws of competition to keep prices down.

 

There is hope that the capsules built by private companies will take not only professional astronauts up into space but wealthy individuals as well. They are not yet permitted to fly to the ISS, but the American company Bigelow Aerospace intends to build its own small, private space station by the time of the maiden flight of the CST-100 or others. That station is to consist mainly of inflatable modules.

 

Europe helps out in building Moon spaceship

 

While the private companies are competing for the contracts for building the spaceships that launch to the ISS, NASA is developing its Orion spaceship that is to fly to the moon and beyond. The European Space Agency (ESA) and companies such as Astrium in Germany are also involved in the project. For Orion, NASA is using technology that ESA developed for its unmanned materials transporter ATV.

 

Former German astronaut Thomas Reiter, who is now ESA's director for human space flight, said he was pleased. "It's a great form of cooperation," he said. "It's the first time that Europe has been asked to be involved in the critical phase of the development of such a transport system." Until now, NASA has always maintained that it or other American companies would build all indispensable components. But times have changed.

 

Private spaceships are supposed to replace the Russian Soyuz capsules for flying to ISS four years from now at the latest - and the US aims to rely on Europe for other expeditions further out into space.

 

But for all of these projects, one thing is certain: it's much easier building a model that merely sits in a hanger workshop, in which astronauts can just climb in and play around. It's much more difficult to turn that model into a capsule that can successfully launch into space.

 

Legislation seeks to "streamline" commercial spaceflight regulations

 

Jeff Foust - SpacePolitics.com

 

Just before Congress adjourned earlier this month for summer recess, two members of Congress introduced a bill that they argue will help streamline commercial spaceflight regulations. Congressmen Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Bill Posey (R-FL) introduced HR 3038, the Suborbital and Orbital Advancement and Regulatory Streamlining (SOARS) Act.

 

"I have seen firsthand how the talented people of East Kern County have grown this industry through technological advancement, and this legislation will help ensure they are not hindered in creating jobs here locally," said McCarthy, the House Majority Whip whose district includes the Mojave Air and Space Port, in a press release announcing the bill. "Our bill is a big step in streamlining FAA regulations and establishes demonstration projects for space companies supporting launch activities to safely move forward," added Posey in the same statement.

 

One element of the bill would allow an experimental permit for a suborbital vehicle to remain valid even after a launch license is issued for that particular vehicle design. Under current law, the permit becomes invalid when a license for the vehicle is issued. That prevents one copy of a vehicle to perform test flights under a permit if another vehicle of the same design is operating under a license.

 

Another element of the bill would require the FAA to create a "demonstration project" for using experimental aircraft for "the direct and indirect support of commercial space launch and reentry activities." The FAA would bring into this project no fewer than eight companies, with one at each currently licensed commercial spaceport. (The bill would allow the FAA to redistribute that allocation of companies if there are spaceports looking for more companies and others with none, a likely event as some spaceports are focused on vertical launch.) The demonstration period would run for two years, and the FAA would have the ability to extend it after that for two years at a time.

 

What would these companies would do with experimental aircraft? The "indirect support" is defined as training, testing, and other preparations for pilots, spaceflight participants, and payloads. The "direct support" element, though, could allow aircraft to support air launches of commercial vehicles—like Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo, the air-launch platform for SpaceShipTwo—under an experimental aircraft designation, rather than as a certified aircraft.

 

Florida Seeks New Lift-Off for Its Space Coast

State Plans to Build Launch Pad for Private Firms

 

Meredith Rutland - Wall Street Journal

 

Two years after NASA grounded the space shuttle, Florida is trying to help reignite the fortunes of its Space Coast.

 

The state's aerospace economic development agency aims to build a launchpad on a 200-acre plot here, in a rocket buffer zone just north of the Kennedy Space Center, site of many space-shuttle launches. The agency, Space Florida, hopes to lease the pad to commercial space companies such as Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Blue Origin LLC.

 

The agency plans to spend up to $2.3 million on the project, which it said would help the state compete with Texas, Georgia and Puerto Rico, all of which are trying to lure commercial space business with new launchpads.

 

Before proceeding, though, it has to overcome a few hurdles—for one thing, Space Florida still needs to obtain the land from NASA, to which Florida Gov. Rick Scott has conveyed his backing of the project.

 

More problematic may be the resistance from local environmentalists, historic preservationists and some businesses. The area the agency covets is home to the oldest intact British plantation ruins in the country—with remnants of a slave village, a sugar mill and a rum distillery—a prehistoric garbage pile with discarded shells and pottery, and ancient Indian burial grounds.

 

It is also in the middle of a 140,000-acre wildlife refuge teeming with threatened species such as scrub jays—blueberry-colored birds that settle down near their parents—eastern indigo snakes and thousands of gopher tortoises, rare burrowers that live as long as 60 years.

 

Opponents are concerned that acres of wildlife habitat would be destroyed or damaged, potential rocket-fuel leaks could harm the refuge and that the historical ruins could be bulldozed. Even if the ruins aren't razed, powerful launch vibrations could knock down precarious walls of shells and earth, they say.

 

"We absolutely need it for economic purposes, but we absolutely don't want to destroy the national wildlife refuge," said Roz Foster, president of the North Brevard Heritage Foundation, a local organization that aims to protect historical sites. "I don't see how they could protect it or how they could ensure, with their plans, how it would be secure and protected."

 

"If they do locate there, and those historical resources are lost…that piece of American history is gone," said Daniel Schafer, a University of North Florida professor emeritus of history who helped excavate the plantation site. "How could it possibly be replaced?"

 

A launchpad in the refuge could also mean curbs or a ban on burning overgrown scrub around the site, which is essential for keeping the world's second-largest population of scrub jays healthy, said Audubon Florida Director of Advocacy Charles Lee. "You probably couldn't find a worse site than they picked," he said.

 

Scott Tripp, who runs a fishing charter company, said he is worried the launches could close Mosquito Lagoon and part of the Intracoastal Waterway near the proposed launchpad site for days at a time, upsetting hundreds of fishing, crabbing and sightseeing businesses that rely on access to the lagoon, as well as commercial barges that use the waterway.

 

"You think they're going to hire local people to be there? How many rocket scientists do you have living in Oak Hill and New Smyrna?" Mr. Tripp asked. "You have a limited amount of jobs that might come from that, but it's not worth the displaced humans and the displaced jobs that are going to be related to the environment."

 

Space Florida said the new pad, which it plans to build within four years, would help the struggling Space Coast. This region around Cape Canaveral lost about 9,000 jobs when NASA's shuttle program ended, according to Brevard Workforce, the region's workforce agency.

 

Space Florida also said it ordered an environmental study to assess the potential impact of the planned launchpad, part of the required process to build. Environmental concerns helped scuttle proposals in 1989 and 2007 to build launchpads in the same area.

 

The agency said it aims to pick a spot for the launchpad that is far enough away from ruins and animal populations to minimize the impact, said agency spokeswoman Tina Lange. "The site alternatives to be proposed by Space Florida are based on preliminary surveys to avoid known areas of ruins or cultural resources, and limit impact on species habitat and sensitive areas such as wetlands," she said.

 

Space Exploration Technologies, a Hawthorne, Calif., company headed by billionaire Elon Musk, is looking most seriously at Texas, which is considering building a launchpad in Cameron County, said SpaceX spokeswoman Christina Ra. The company has a contract with NASA to deliver supplies to the international space station and plans to launch a satellite for Turkmenistan in late 2014 or early 2015.

 

A spokeswoman for Blue Origin, a Kent, Wash., company run by Amazon.com founder and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, said the company is "considering various sites for our orbital launch operations, to complement our continuing suborbital launch operations in West Texas." Blue Origin has completed test rocket flights and is developing a shuttle capsule for human passengers.

 

Pinterest In Space: NASA Astronaut 'Pins' Cosmic Photos from Orbit

 

Miriam Kramer – Space.com

 

A NASA astronaut has taken the social media service Pinterest into the final frontier, where she pins her favorite space photos while soaring around Earth on the International Space Station.

 

Since launching into space in May, astronaut Karen Nyberg has been "pinning" away on the photo sharing social media website Pinterest, documenting her months-long space voyage. Nyberg, who is also chronicling her space exploits on Twitter as @AstroKarenN, had more than 6,300 followers on Pinterest as of Tuesday.

 

"I've been using Pinterest for a couple of years and absolutely love it because of my other hobbies," Nyberg said before launching into space in May. "Definitely, we're going to do as much as we can to share what we're doing with the world while we're up there."

 

Social media has been a ubiquitous tool for astronauts living in space since 2009, when NASA astronaut Mike Massimino sent the first Twitter message from space during a mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield became a social media star thanks to his regular Twitter, Facebook and YouTube updates, and some astronaut profiles on NASA's website prominently feature social media links and handles ripe for following.

 

"Astronaut by day," Nyberg's Pinterest bio reads. "Aspiring quilter, crafter, artist, runner by night. Wife and Mommy 24/7. Currently living & working on the International Space Station."

 

Nyberg's diverse areas of interests — including quilting, crafting and running — take center stage on Pinterest. While some of Nyberg's 23 pin boards are still devoted to those other interests, the astronaut uses about seven boards to bring photos and information about spaceflight and the science of it to her followers.

 

"When girls see pictures of ponytails, don't you think it stirs something inside them that says, that could be ME up there!" Nyberg wrote introducing her "hair in space" board.

 

Nyberg also pins photos of Earth from space and has devoted one board to "simple joys on Earth" — a hashtag she used on Twitter to share parts of her life on the planet before launching to the International Space Station.

 

Nyberg has also posted photos documenting her preparation for spaceflight as well as photos of other astronauts on either shuttle missions or onboard the International Space Station.

 

"Astronaut Suni Williams on the ARED (Advanced Resistive Exercise Device) on the International Space Station," Nyberg wrote in an image description for one of the photos on her International Space Station board. "Weight (resistance) training in microgravity to stay fit and keep bones strong!"

 

Nyberg is currently a flight engineer with the International Space Station's Expedition 36 crew. But this isn't her first time in space. In 2008, she visited the International Space Station on the space shuttle Discovery, but it was a quick trip at only 14 days.

 

Nyberg launched to the orbiting laboratory on May 28 with Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano. They are now living and working with NASA's Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin onboard the $100 billion outpost.

 

SpaceX's Grasshopper test rocket flies sideways successfully

 

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com

 

SpaceX's Grasshopper rocket demonstrates in a new video how future launch vehicles may well lift off, do their job and then maneuver themselves for a precision landing.

 

During Tuesday's test, the modified Falcon 9 test rig blasted off from its Texas launch pad and rose to a height of 250 meters (820 feet) with a 100-meter (330-foot) lateral maneuver.

 

The rocket hovered for some moments, then swung back and made a rapid, controlled descent onto the pad.

 

"The test demonstrated the vehicle's ability to perform more aggressive steering maneuvers than have been attempted in previous flights," California-based SpaceX said in an advisory accompanying the YouTube video. "Grasshopper is taller than a 10-story building, which makes the control problem particularly challenging. Diverts like this are an important part of the trajectory in order to land the rocket precisely back at the launch site after re-entering from space at hypersonic velocity."

 

In a Twitter update, SpaceX founder Elon Musk called attention to the test, which took place just a day after the billionaire revealed his Hyperloop concept for high-speed transit in California.

 

The single-engine Grasshopper prototype is aimed at blazing a trail for fully reusable rockets that would fly themselves back home after they've done their work. It's gone through almost a year's worth of test flights at SpaceX's rocket development facility near McGregor, Texas. Last month, the Grasshopper took its highest leap to date, to an altitude of 325 meters (1,066 feet).

 

SpaceX's next mission is due to use a Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket with upgraded Merlin 1D engines to put the Canadian Space Agency's Cassiope satellite into orbit on Sept. 5. The next SpaceX cargo mission to the International Space Station has just been rescheduled to take place no earlier than Jan. 17.

 

SpaceX Flies Most Complicated Grasshopper Test Yet

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) on Aug. 13 successfully staged the most complicated flight yet of its Grasshopper test vehicle, sending the vertical-takeoff-and-landing rocket 250 meters into the air and steering it 100 meters laterally before bringing it in for a landing.

 

The test took place at SpaceX's rocket test facility near McGregor, Texas, where the company has conducted all Grasshopper flights to date. The Hawthorne, Calif., rocket maker is also making preparations to fly Grasshopper at Spaceport America in New Mexico, where it would be possible to send the vehicle to higher altitudes.

 

Grasshopper flights out of McGregor have a ceiling of 760 meters. Flights out of Spaceport America, located near the White Sands Missile Range, could go up to 100 kilometers under the commercial spaceport license the latter site has with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation.

 

Grasshopper is a part of SpaceX's campaign, first announced in 2011, to develop an orbital rocket with a reusable first stage. The test vehicle is based closely on the first stage of SpaceX's operational Falcon 9 rocket but has landing landing legs and is powered by a single kerosene-fueled Merlin 1-D engine.

 

Credit: SpaceXThe Grasshopper tests are only able to demonstrate the final phase of a reusable first stage's mission. SpaceX has other tests planned that would test the maneuvers a reusable first stage would have to make at altitude, after separation of the second stage.

 

Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of SpaceX, has said the company would attempt such a test this year on a mission of the company's new Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket. He said the vehicle's first stage would be maneuvered prior to coming back down in the ocean.

 

The Falcon 9 v1.1., an upgraded vehicle featuring more powerful engines than those on the Falcon 9 rockets flown to date, along with a new payload fairing, is tentatively scheduled to debut in early September. That mission is slated to loft the Canadian Space Agency's Cassiope space weather satellite to low Earth orbit from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

 

Private Space Race Heats Up With Some Key Breakthroughs

 

Jason Paur - Wired.com

 

Even as Elon Musk got everyone's attention with the Hyperloop, his wild idea to remake mass transit, his engineers at SpaceX did something far cooler: They proved their reusable rocket can go sideways.

 

Almost immediately after Tuesday's lift off, the 10-story-tall Grasshopper rocket made a "hard lateral deviation," as Musk put it, of 100 meters during its ascent to 250 meters. It then returned to the center of the launch pad at touchdown.

 

That is rocket science. Literally. The really cool kind of rocket science.

 

Grasshopper already has made a few short hops and a few higher-altitude flights, and the flight, announced Wednesday, greatly expands the maneuvering envelope of the vertical take-off/vertical landing vehicle. It's a major milestone in Musk's plan to reboot the space sector. And it was but one milestone we've hit this week in the private space race. Sierra Nevada completed important — if pedestrian — testing of its new lifting body spacecraft, and Virgin Galactic signed up still more customers for flights it plans next year.

 

For all the debate among pseudo rocket scientists arguing whether carrying the fuel needed to return to Earth is a worthwhile proposition, those signing the checks still need to develop the technology to make it work. Musk is doing just that. He's made it clear that reusing the first stage of a rocket will greatly improve the economics of delivering payloads to space, and his engineers continue making some impressive flights even as his critics continue piling on doubt.

 

The Grasshopper test is a big deal because there aren't, at the moment, any rockets in use capable of the kind of lateral maneuvers SpaceX showed off Tuesday. Some smaller rockets have done it, but none of them even approaches Grasshopper's size. The ability to make significant corrections to the trajectory is a key part of developing a reusable rocket, as the first stage will return to Earth at hypersonic speed. The only way to decrease its lateral speed, and guide it to a landing site, is through such moves.

 

"The test demonstrated the vehicle's ability to perform more aggressive steering maneuvers than have been attempted in previous flights," the company said in announcing the news. "Grasshopper is taller than a 10-story building, which makes the control problem particularly challenging."

 

The braking and steering tests performed by Sierra Nevada Corporation are far less dramatic, though they are crucial to preparing its lifting body spacecraft for the company's first glide flights in the coming months. After all, before you can fly to space, first you have to be sure you can come to a complete stop before unbuckling your seat belt.

 

The Dream Chaser is Sierra Nevada's entry into the NASA competition for delivering astronauts to the International Space Station (and elsewhere in low Earth orbit). Unlike the entries from SpaceX and Boeing, the Dream Chaser is not a classic capsule. Instead, it's a flying vehicle that would land like the space shuttle orbiters, rather than falling back to Earth under parachute.

 

The recent tests took place at Edwards Air Force Base in southern California, where the space shuttle orbiters were initially tested and landed several times after returning from space. The first four tests on the runway effectively looked at the final moments of the rollout after landing. Performed at just 10, 20, 40 and 60 miles per hour, the vehicles' braking and steering were verified and several other on-board systems were tested while in motion.

 

This fall Sierra Nevada will be carrying the Dream Chaser to altitude and performing unmanned approach and landing tests at Edwards as it expands the flight envelope of the vehicle.

 

Virgin Galactic completed another glide flight of SpaceShipTwo this month as the company announced it now has 625 people who have signed up for its suborbital spaceflights. The price has gone up $50,000 since the company first starting selling rides, with a ticket now costing $250,000 for a view of the black sky and a few minutes of weightlessness.

 

If the current flight testing continues going well, Virgin Galactic hopes to perform its first flights with SpaceShipTwo later this year, and begin commercial flights some time in 2014.

 

Manned Missions to Mars: Is the Moon Really a Stepping Stone?

 

Mike Wall - Space.com

 

The moon may be more of a stumbling block than a stepping stone on humanity's path to the Red Planet, one prominent researcher says.

 

The perceived need to develop lunar infrastructure and resources first could push a manned Mars mission far off into the future, said Harley Thronson, senior scientist for advanced concepts in the Astrophysics Science Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

 

And if putting boots on the Red Planet in the next few decades is indeed the top priority of the international human spaceflight community, then making a prolonged stopover on the moon beforehand runs counter to the spirit and history of exploration, he added.

 

"In the 19th century, the American West was explored for decades by trappers, frontiersmen and occasional minimal expeditions sent by the central government," Thronson wrote in an essay in The Space Review, which was published online Aug. 5.

 

"Only later was the elaborate national infrastructure established to support sustained development of the West," Thronson continued. "In contrast, widely popular 'moon first, then Mars' architectures are a reverse of the historical experience of human exploration on Earth."

 

Discussions about how to send astronauts to Mars often center on "stepping stones" — for example, whether to go to a near-Earth asteroid or the moon first. But mission architects must keep in mind that focusing too much on intermediate destinations could significantly delay or doom a manned Mars effort, especially in this era of tight budgets, Thronson said.

 

Indeed, the best approach may be to work toward heading straight to the Red Planet with a bare-bones mission.

 

"Let's just go — prove that it is doable, prove that it is feasible and then examine how you do it on a regular basis that's affordable," Thronson told SPACE.com.

 

The success of that first mission, however stripped-down it may be, would generate a great deal of excitement and momentum that would pave the way for future, more sustained Red Planet efforts, he added.

 

The exploitation of lunar or asteroid resources could eventually play a large role in humanity's Red Planet plan, but it may be unwise to wait for this step. It could take hundreds of billions of dollars and many decades to build up enough infrastructure to make a difference, Thronson said.

 

Thronson said his thinking on this issue has been influenced by Inspiration Mars, a private mission that aims to launch two astronauts on a Red Planet flyby in 2018.

 

"They have obviously adopted the philosophy of, 'Let's just do it,'" he said.

 

The Space Review piece is meant to stimulate productive discussion and debate about the future of human spaceflight, Thronson said. And it may also help scientists, engineers and policymakers view the term "stepping stone" in a new light.

 

"Stepping stones don't have to be measured by distance; they could be measured by capabilities," Thronson said.

 

"The successful space station program is stepping stone number one," he added. "Going to Mars in a minimal or reduced-capabilities mission is stepping stone two. And then setting up the support system for subsequent missions to Mars — say, on the moon — is stepping stone three."

 

Humans haven't been on the moon, or anywhere else in deep space, since NASA's Apollo 17 mission returned to Earth in 1972. NASA is currently working to get astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s, as directed by President Barack Obama in 2010.

 

Florida to Secret Military Space Project: Fly From Here!

 

Irene Klotz - Discovery News

 

Space Florida, a state-backed economic development agency, doubled its budget to refurbish two old space shuttle hangers in an effort to lure a secretive military project to the Kennedy Space Center.

 

Space Florida board members agreed to add $4 million to the project, with is aimed at relocating the Air Force's X-37B Orbital Test Vehicles to Florida from California.

 

The 29-foot-long robotic spaceships, which resemble miniature space shuttles, are experimental vehicles the military has been flying since April 2010. The program's third mission, launched on Dec. 11, 2012, remains under way.

 

The Air Force has not disclosed what the X-37B is doing in orbit, nor when or where it will land. Two prior X-37B missions lasted 224 days and 469 days respectively, and landed autonomously at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The program currently consists of two vehicles.

 

The military has said it is considering relocating the program to Florida to save money on operations. The vehicles are launched on unmanned Atlas 5 rockets from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, located just south of NASA's Kennedy Space Center. They could land on the shuttle's no-longer-needed runway.

 

Space Florida last year agreed to spend $5 million to prepare two mothballed space shuttle processing hangars at the Kennedy Space Center for its prospective new tenant. Boeing contributed another $2.5 million for the project.

 

Space Florida will now add add $4 million more for the project, which is code-named "Coyote," to outfit the hangars for spacecraft assembly, refurbishment and testing. Boeing  will add another  $2 million.

 

Under a similar partnership arrangement with Space Florida, another Boeing project already is using a third space shuttle processing hangar. The company is developing a seven-person commercial space capsule called the CST-100, one of three potential space taxis NASA is considering using to fly its crew to and from the International Space Station.

 

Firm gets capital for space proposal

 

Kevin Robinson-Avila - Albuquerque Journal

 

A new Albuquerque company, Masterson Industries LLC, won venture capital backing this week to produce industrial materials in space.

 

The company, formed last year, received a seven-figure investment from Cottonwood Technology Fund in New Mexico and Pangaea Ventures Fund III LP, which specializes in advanced-materials financing.

 

The money will allow Masterson to begin producing "microgravity-enabled materials," starting with a first flight to space in early fall.

 

"We're providing enough capital for them to prove their process and deliver initial products to customers," said Cottonwood managing partner David Blivin.

 

The company has a partnership with an unnamed out-of-state firm for space flights, said Masterson co-founder and President Rich Glover.

 

"This can't be done on the ground, so we have a strategic partner who will provide recurring flights," Glover said. "Our initial flight in September or October won't be in New Mexico, but future flights could be."

 

The goal is to regularly produce advanced materials in the microgravity of space, such as gallium nitride used in the semiconductor industry.

 

"If you produce the materials on Earth, it's subject to the forces of gravity, which often creates defects and anomalies," Blivin said. "By eliminating those forces, you get perfect or near-perfect materials."

 

Glover said it can't be done on the International Space Station, nor aboard tourist flights like Virgin Galactic plans at Spaceport America.

 

"It's not only eliminating gravity, but also the vibrations, jitters and people bumping into things that would occur on the space station or on tourism flights," he said. "We need dedicated flights that are completely isolated."

 

Zero-defect materials would be of high value in the semiconductor and other industries, said Pangaea general partner Chris Erickson.

 

"We are genuinely excited about the opportunity to work with Cottonwood to turn Masterson's truly disruptive technology into a major force across multiple markets," Erickson said in a statement.

 

Menu on Mars could include sushi, borscht

Six researchers have emerged from a small dome in Hawaii after spending the past four months preparing dishes that future astronauts might eat on Mars

 

Elizabeth Barber - Christian Science Monitor

 

Four months ago, six men and women holed themselves up in a small, white dome on a remote Hawaiian lava field. The people didn't go out much, and when they did, it was in spacesuits. For the most part, they lived a restrained existence, circulating between the sleeping room and the exercise room – and the kitchen.

 

The kitchen: that was where all the excitement was happening. This was a NASA-funded experiment to assess what Earthlings might eat if they were to plant a colony on Mars. Out there on the Red Planet, where the mind has little on which to feed besides an expanse of red-tinged rock that meets the horizon, how would astronauts make meals that are not just nutritionally satisfying, but also emotionally so?

 

Now, the six researchers who stepped out of the kitchen and back into the world on Tuesday have some answers to that question.

 

Called the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation – HI-SEAS – the project was designed to analyze the difference between pre-packaged astronaut food and "home" cooking: is the expense and time-commitment of cooking in space worth the emotional benefit of meals that the astronauts make themselves? The results are expected to help NASA determine where to spend its money in planning a future expedition to Mars.

 

The project began in December 2012, when the University of Hawaii and Cornell University put out a call for participants who would give up a third of an Earth calendar year – and all the good summer eating expected to come with it – in the name of science. Candidates had to have science degrees but did not need to be chefs. They did, however, "need to at least be eager to eat," said Kim Binsted, a University of Hawaii at Manoa professor who was involved in overseeing the research.

 

In April, the crew was moved into their new 993-square-foot home on the black-brown slopes of Mauna Loa, an environment that would replicate the lack of sensory stimulation on Mars, where ecological nothingness might compound an astronauts' craving for something interesting to eat.

 

"It's a very barren mountain field," said Dr. Binsted. "There's no vegetation in sight."

 

The experiment was organized to have the crew trade off between cooking and non-cooking days every two days. On non-cooking days, the crew ate pre-prepared meals. Some were good, others were not, said Binsted. All the while, the team recorded their assessments of the food, rating such factors as taste and texture.

 

And then, there were cooking days. For those, the team was provided with non-perishable, preserved, and dehydrated ingredients – the sort that could be ferried all the way to Mars without spoiling. In other words, the researchers were handed a lot of Spam, plus: freeze dried meats and fish; grains like rice and oatmeal; dried fruits and vegetables; lots of nuts and beans and chips; powdered dairy products; baking ingredients; and an impressive roster of spices and condiments.

 

International Space Station's viability beyond 2020 doubtful

It may not be the space program we want, but it's the space program we deserve.

 

Lee Hutchinson - Ars Technica (Editorial)

 

There's a flagpole atop the roof of Building 30 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, proudly streaming Old Glory in the sultry Texas summer wind. On the very first closed-door tour I got of the restored Apollo Mission Operations Control room more than a decade ago, my tour guide pointed out the flag as we entered the building's lobby. "That flag," he said, smiling, "flies whenever there is an American in space. Thanks to the International Space Station (ISS), NASA has had a flag up there continuously since 1998. I hope it'll be up there forever."

 

Forever is a long time, but it seemed possible—after so many fits and starts, construction on the ISS was barreling forward. Columbia was still a member of the orbiter fleet. It felt like NASA had actual for-real momentum—a big project with a goal to work toward. We were building the world's highest-flying laboratory, and it was going to teach us everything we needed to know to send humans elsewhere in the solar system.

 

It's 2013, and the international partnership that helped fund the ISS is starting to crumble. NASA's manned space program, the only program ever to put human beings on another world, now lacks even a single rocket that can get people off of the Earth's surface. The six-person crew of the ISS rides up into low Earth orbit courtesy of Russia, while in America the government allocates an increasingly smaller percentage of the overall federal budget to NASA.

 

The current plan is for the ISS to be de-crewed in 2020—and then de-orbited. The crew will taper down the experiments; what valuable materials and components that can be removed will be ferried back to Earth. At some point in 2020, a final group of astronauts and cosmonauts will climb into a Soyuz, swing shut the hatch, and undock. The $100 billion laboratory will fall silent, and then some time later it will flare brightly as all of its laboriously crafted and carefully assembled 400 tons of hardware burns through re-entry and splashes into the ocean.

 

After 22 years, that flag will come down. There will be no more Americans in space.

 

A longer mission?

 

Plans change, though. The ISS was once scheduled for shutdown in 2016, but it had that deadline extended to 2020. And further extensions are definitely under consideration.

 

Space.com has an informative write-up of the ISS' future, which touches on the possibility of keeping the station crewed and operational past the current 2020 deadline. From a purely technical standpoint, there's no problem at all; according to William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, the ISS itself is exhibiting a lower component failure rate than anticipated, and the station is in fine condition. "The hardware is looking pretty good overall," he said at the July 29 meeting of the NASA Advisory Council Human Exploration and Operations Committee.

 

But as the article notes, the continued operation of the ISS relies on money, a significant fraction of which comes from outside the United States—the "international partners" that put the "I" in "ISS." Russia, Japan, Canada, and a multitude of European nations (via ESA, the European Space Agency) all have a part to play and a cost to pay, and extending the ISS' life beyond the current 2020 deadline would require the extension of a long list of partnerships between nations with wildly varying political goals and budgetary issues. Sam Scimemi, the director of the ISS for NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, noted in the same July 29 meeting that serious talks with the international partners on ISS extensions haven't yet occurred. "We're in a unique situation with each of the other partners," he noted. "The Canadians, the Japanese, and the Europeans are in a different place... It goes to politics in their own countries."

 

NASA's Scimemi laments it's unlikely that the confluence of events that brought about the ISS international partnership will ever occur again; that partnership enabled the ISS' design and construction, and that partnership keeps it crewed. Scimemi points out that the Russians would likely be willing to continue participating in the ISS effort post-2020, but the true value of the ISS partner program is the partners themselves.

 

Further, NASA feels that flights to Mars and perhaps other places in the solar system will require the ISS—not as a staging ground or launch platform, but rather as a research and test facility to solve medical and life-support issues. Testing humans and equipment on the ISS is the only viable method for truly simulating long-duration interplanetary space flight and the long-term exposure to microgravity and radiation that comes with it. The current ISS mission time frame doesn't provide room for any such Mars-focused experimentation to be carried out until at least 2026; pulling those experiments forward means disrupting a massively complex timeline of other medical and scientific experiments already in process and approved to fly.

 

Out of time and in the woods

 

So what do we do? The situation isn't much changed from my last sad editorial in December; NASA still lacks a coherent vision that the public buys into, and it also lacks sufficient funding to execute a flagship manned mission in a timely fashion.

 

Luminaries like Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson bang the drum for more money for NASA; that's definitely something the agency could use, but the problem is deeper than that. NASA needs more than just money. NASA's manned space flight program needs to be left alone to do what it's repeatedly proven it does best and what commercial space won't be able to do: take risks and send highly trained people to other worlds to plant flags and make footprints. It won't be profitable, but it's vitally important—and only a government-funded agency can afford to do it.

 

The commercial space arena, with its sexy new entrants like SpaceX, has an undeniable and huge role to play in the future of manned and unmanned space flight. But commercial space must be profitable; even with visionaries like Elon Musk directing the rockets, commercial space eventually needs some reward to offset the risk. Commercial space won't put the first humans on an asteroid or on Mars—or on Europa, Titan, or anywhere else in the solar system.

 

Those kinds of missions, involving humans going boldly where no one has gone before, should be the domain of government-funded agencies—agencies that can carry the burden of long-term risk without requiring it to be balanced by a quantified financial reward. NASA's manned space program should be given a mission that should make our jaws drop, and it should be given the freedom to accomplish that mission without politicians poking their fingers into the works. And the private sector should be able to reap the benefits of NASA's trail blazing.

 

The situation with the ISS is heartbreaking, and I say that as someone who worked for several years helping to build some of the ISS hardware currently whizzing by in orbit above our heads. De-crewing the station in 2020 would be a repeat of ending the lunar missions in 1972—we'll be abandoning the ship just when we're really starting to figure out how to fly it well. The ISS has taught us a lot of things—it's the biggest microgravity construction effort ever, and we've learned a tremendous amount about how to build things in space, for example—but it has plenty of things left to teach us, too. We're just reaching the point where manned commercial transport to the ISS will become a reality within the next few years, which will give those commercial space companies a temporary destination to reach while they figure out how (or even if) to build their own orbiting way stations.

 

The public's interest is fickle, and a successful space program cannot be beholden fully to political tides. For all the cost overruns of the ISS' design and construction, NASA needs it orbiting up there to do greater things, and the cost of keeping it orbiting is one that we should be more than willing to pay.

 

The flag needs to keep flying.

 

END