Thursday, June 30, 2016

Destruction of NASA------ All Americans should work to reverse this!

Organization Trends, June 2016

By Art Harman

Summary: American leadership in space exploration helped create and fuel the high-tech boom that led U.S. global competitiveness since the early 1960s. NASA returned to our national prosperity and national security far more than the investments we made in the agency. We beat the Soviets to the Moon and pioneered the way for many commercial ventures. NASA was preparing to take Americans back to the Moon and on to Mars—until President Obama took office and had a very different objective in mind.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration used to be on the cutting edge of science, leading the way in space exploration and having an outsized impact on technological progress worldwide in the process. But today NASA is a shadow of its former self. President Obama isn't interested in anything unless it advances his so-called social justice agenda. For example, left-wingers in general don't like U.S. soldiers fighting wars; they prefer the armed forces performing social work on humanitarian missions. Sending Americans to Mars or beyond doesn't move the leftist ball forward.

So NASA's costly manned space exploration programs were low-hanging fruit for an administration whose primary interest is in making government bigger and more centralized. The more NASA is cut, the more the Obama administration can spend on welfare programs to buy more votes by expanding the ranks of the government-dependent.

But instead of baldly stating his objectives, President Obama has simply put NASA on the back burner, turning it increasingly into an agency disseminating left-wing political propaganda for mass consumption.

Remember NASA's glorious past 

The world held its collective breath on July 20, 1969 as Neil Armstrong took the first step on the Moon and proclaimed, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Generations since benefitted from American-led advances in technology, medicine, and manufacturing, as humanity entered the space age. The space program is "American exceptionalism" defined, and NASA has continued to benefit America by carrying out its official mission: "To pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research."

President Obama subverted this mission to concentrate on global warming extremism, Muslim outreach, missions to nowhere, and a future almost devoid of the giant leaps and planetary probes that rightly awed us for decades and advanced America's competitiveness in high technology. (For a riveting history of the lunar program and the way it overcame immense technological and managerial challenges, see Apollo by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox.)

The Hijacking

Here's how it went down: In early 2010, Obama cancelled the Constellation program (already a reported $10 billion and seven years in progress) and its Ares I and Ares V rockets, the Orion spacecraft, the Altair lunar lander, and even America's plans to return to the Moon and go on to Mars.

With that, space exploration was dead, and it may remain so for a decade or longer.

To create the appearance that America still has a space program, a project was invented to spend the next 10 to 15 years planning one single mission to a fragment of an asteroid.

A bipartisan majority in Congress united against Obama's destruction—partially. While Congress didn't have the courage to force NASA to restore the plans and hardware required to return to the Moon, lawmakers did save the two most critical elements of the program, the Orion spacecraft and the Ares V rocket, and approved funding for commercial crew launches. The Ares V Moon-Mars rocket was renamed the "Space Launch System" (SLS) and was somewhat improved. Congress's apparent goal was to proceed with the core elements of the program to allow the next president to restore NASA's mission of space exploration.

While this was happening, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former astronaut, U.S. Marine Corps flag officer, and test pilot, was making diversionary excuses for the cancellation of manned space exploration and carrying out President Obama's orders. In July 2010, Bolden explained to Al-Jazeera:

When I became the NASA administrator, [President Obama] charged me with three things. One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.

Michael Griffin, who ran NASA in President George W. Bush's second term, responded to this astonishing notion by describing the Muslim outreach initiative as a "perversion" of the agency's mission:

"NASA was chartered by the 1958 Space Act to develop the arts and sciences of flight in the atmosphere and in space and to go where those technologies will allow us to go," Griffin said. "That's what NASA does for the country. It is a perversion of NASA's purpose to conduct activities in order to make the Muslim world feel good about its contributions to science and mathematics" (Truth Revolt, Feb. 20, 2015, http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/flashback-obama-turns-nasa-muslim-outreach-program).

Nowhere on Bolden's list was advancing NASA's mission of space exploration and remaining the world leader in technological innovation.

From the Moon to Global Warming 

So if NASA isn't taking Americans to the Moon or Mars, where is NASA headed? Unlike welfare and entitlement programs, NASA's overall budget has been relatively flat in the Obama years. It was $17.78 billion in 2009 and fell to $16.86 billion in 2013. For the current fiscal year the figure is $19.3 billion, but the total is projected to fall to $18.8 billion in 2017.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) provided numerical proof that NASA's mission was hijacked to push radical global warming theories, "In the last 6 years…we've seen earth sciences increase 41 percent, and we've seen exploration and space operations—what should be the core mission, what NASA exists to do—decrease 7.6 percent." Earth Sciences is the primary NASA department for global warming activities.

In 2012, 49 former NASA astronauts and distinguished scientists wrote a letter asking Administrator Bolden to stop using NASA to push radical global warming theories. They warned that NASA's "advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study" puts at risk "the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA's current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself."

Who's behind this?

Who's behind this change of goals for NASA? Certainly President Obama, who promised in 2007 to dramatically cut funds for NASA's Constellation rockets. That money would have helped finance his proposed $18 billion "Lifetime Success Through Education" plan which included a scary "Pre-School Agenda that Begins at Birth," and would require "all students in grant recipient districts…to engage in some form of community service"—that is, in forced volunteer work.

Once elected, Obama kept his campaign promise to cancel long-existing plans to return to the Moon and go on to Mars. This decision may derive from his "post-American world" ideology, which manifested itself when he exhibited a pained reluctance even to say the words, "American exceptionalism."

How better to demonstrate that the U.S. is no longer a superpower than to kill American leadership in space, or to give other nations a decade's head start in space?

Meet "Dr. Death," Obama's Science Advisor, John Holdren

Dr. John P. Holdren is Obama's Science Advisor and the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Science policy includes space policy, of course.

Holdren was an odd choice for the post. He is co-author, along with oft-discredited doomsayer Paul Ehrlich, of Human Ecology: Problems & Solutions, a book that looks favorably on reducing Americans to North Korean-style poverty; implementing Chinese-style forced abortion and sterilization laws; and even putting sterilizing poisons in water and food. He argued in the book that a newborn baby is merely a potential human being. Holdren contemplates enforcing his misanthropic proposals with a United Nations-style global army.

Excerpts from Holdren's shocking book include:

  • "The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being."
  • "Human values and institutions have set mankind on a collision course with the laws of nature. Human beings cling jealously to their prerogative to reproduce as they please—and they please to make each new generation larger than the last—yet endless multiplication on a finite planet is impossible. Most humans aspire to greater material prosperity, but the number of people that can be supported on Earth if everyone is rich is even smaller than if everyone is poor."
  • "A massive campaign must be launched to … de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation. Resources and energy must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries."
  • "[A] comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources. The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region … the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits."
  • "The third approach to population limitation is that of involuntary fertility control. Several coercive proposals deserve discussion.… Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control."

So what does a totalitarian global warmist have to do with NASA and the president's agenda?

Perhaps everything. Tearing down NASA's bold plans for American space exploration may fit into both Holdren's and Obama's shared anti-American and anti-science ideology, and together the two men have made serious progress towards their apparent goal of hijacking NASA's mission.

Poverty, Hunger, World Peace—and China: Lori Garver, NASA's Deputy Administrator

Lori Garver was Obama's space policy advisor on his 2008 campaign and then led the Presidential Transition Agency Review Team for NASA. After the election, she was rewarded with the position of Deputy NASA Administrator.

While four-time shuttle astronaut Charles Bolden became NASA's Administrator, many saw Garver as the ideological and policy leader who implemented the president's extreme global warming and "post-American world" visions at NASA, with Administrator Bolden serving more as the manager and public face of the space agency. Indeed at least one candidate for Administrator reportedly refused the position because the candidate didn't want to work with Garver.

Garver revealed NASA's hijacked destination when she outlined the administration's vision for NASA's transformation in a March 2010 speech to the American Astronautical Society. The president's plans "will enable NASA to align with the priorities of the nation and to more optimally contribute to our Nation's future. These key national priorities that I am referring to are: Economic development—poverty, hunger, jobs. International leadership/geo-politics—world peace. Education—societal advancement. Environment—future of planet and humanity."

In a congressional hearing later the same month, Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) took Garver's agenda to task:

[Garver said that] NASA's priorities are to 'fight poverty, promote world peace and societal advancement, and protect the environment'; I'd suggest to you that Ms. Garver has completely lost sight of the core mission of NASA, which is to preserve and protect America's leadership in manned space, manned and robotic space exploration; to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research.

Garver left NASA in September 2013, but continued her ideological battle against the space program by attacking the Space Launch System rocket and the next Mars rover. She belittled the rocket program by asking "where is it going to go?" After more than four years at NASA, she knew but perhaps disagreed: SLS will take Americans to the Moon and Mars.

In a briefing I attended in 2012, Garver spoke dreamily of NASA working closely with China's military-led space program. Because of Garver's and Bolden's initial efforts towards cooperation with China, Congress was forced to outlaw any cooperation to prevent China from plundering our highest technology and using it against us in their military and undercutting American commercial space enterprises like Space X.

In 2011 Congress approved legislation forbidding NASA from working with Communist China. According to an official summary, Public Law 112-55, Title V, section 539, "prohibits the use of any NASA or [White House Office of Science and Technology Policy] funds to participate in any way in any program with China or any Chinese-owned company, unless specifically authorized by law."

"We know that China is an active, aggressive espionage threat," now-retired Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) has said. "I suspect that this focus on stealing space and flight-based technology explains at least some of the major advances that the Chinese space program has made over the past few years."

The ideological war against NASA would resume if Garver were brought back under a new Democrat administration.

The Anti-Civilization Global Warming "Godfather"—with an Arrest Record

James Hansen was the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies until 2013. He became known as a taxpayer-funded activist for radical global warming theories and carbon taxes. Rather than use scientific methodology to prove his case, he used alarmist predictions of dramatic and unsubstantiated temperature and sea level increases to try to scare opponents into silence.

For example, Hansen told the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming in 2008: "CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature."

In an op-ed in the Guardian on Feb. 14, 2009, he ranted that "The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death."

Hansen used his stature as a NASA scientist to gain media attention by getting arrested at global warming demonstrations, a misuse of his position of trust. He wrote a supportive statement for the book Time's Up!, saying author Keith Farnish "has it right: time has practically run out, and the 'system' is the problem. Governments are under the thumb of fossil fuel special interests—they will not look after our and the planet's well-being until we force them to do so, and that is going to require enormous effort –Professor James Hansen, GISS, NASA[.]"

The book Hansen endorsed calls for terrorist-type actions to destroy sea walls and dams, "razing cities to the ground," and ending civilization. Not just ending the radical Left's hated "western civilization" or even creating a North Korean-style prison society where only the elite receive the benefits of modern comforts, but ending the entirety of what the author calls "industrial civilization" itself.

Hansen's predictions of massive sea-level rises over the next 50 years were too radical even for the notorious Global Warming advocate Michael Mann, who said they were "prone to a very large 'extrapolation error.'" Mann is the taxpayer-funded so-called climate scientist who invented the discredited "hockey stick" measure of temperature, and who was accused of altering temperature data in the "Climategate" scandal. One propaganda technique employed by global warming activists is to scare people by issuing apocalyptically exaggerated predictions.

While there are no memos or confessions by these ideological warriors that they intended to hijack NASA for their own radical ideological purposes, the results and budgets speak for themselves.

Alarmist James Hansen's replacement, Gavin Schmidt

Gavin Schmidt is James Hansen's replacement as head of the Goddard Institute. A self-described "liberal Jewish atheist from New York City," he shares Hansen's warming alarmism, though he uses more careful language. For example, he predicts a 3-6 meter sea-level rise in this century, vastly higher than the 7.5 inches per century predicted in the 2014 paper, "Global Sea Level Behavior of the Past Two Centuries," by Jevrejeva, Moore, Grinsted, Matthews, and Spada.

In 2009, a commenter on Schmidt's website, realclimate.org, asked: "Gavin, In your opinion, what percentage of global warming is due to human causes vs. natural causes?"

The response: "Over the last 40 or so years, natural drivers would have caused cooling, and so the warming there has been (and some) is caused by a combination of human drivers and some degree of internal variability. I would judge the maximum amplitude of the internal variability to be roughly 0.1 deg C over that time period, and so given the warming of ~0.5 deg C, I'd say somewhere between 80 to 120% of the warming. Slightly larger range if you want a large range for the internal stuff. – gavin." (available at http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=1853)

Michael Mann lauded the selection of Schmidt to replace Hansen. "Gavin is an ideal successor to James Hansen, one of the few individuals I know who can rightfully fill those shoes. NASA can be confident that in Gavin they have found a director who can lead the Goddard Institute for Space Sciences forward in the years and decades ahead as we continue to grapple with the scientific and societal issue of human-caused climate change."

Manned space exploration was indeed halted. Congress saved the rocket, but Obama killed plans to use it for the Moon or Mars. Extreme global warming theories robbed increasing amounts of NASA's time and budget, and NASA's focus was further directed away from the advancement of American science, technology, and space exploration.

Where do your NASA tax dollars go? 

Most would hope and expect they would be invested in rovers on Mars, astronauts on the space station, Hubble Telescope photos, and preparing to send Americans to the Moon and Mars. Due to the efforts of NASA's global warming extremists like James Hansen, some of NASA's funds get wasted on false science, such as: "A Minimal Model for Human and Nature Interaction," which is a 2012 partially NASA-funded study, published in the journal Ecological Economics, that strayed light years beyond space exploration. The anti-free market, pro-class warfare study tried to prove that western society would collapse because of the "elites."

The authors admitted the study was a "thought experiment" and acknowledged that "this work was partially funded through NASA/GSFC [Goddard Space Flight Center] grant NNX12AD03A." They pitted against each other "commoners," "wealth," "elites," "nature" and "population." Then they employed a "Predator-Prey Model" that measured in "Eco $," to make the case—using only four equations—that "optimal equilibrium [occurs] when Elite population equals zero." The authors invented a "Human and Nature DYnamical model (HANDY)," which "was inspired by the Predator and Prey model," and used the model to predict the collapse of Western civilization.

After the 2012 study was exposed in the media, the authors removed the original study from the Internet and released a more sanitized version. I was able to find a copy of the original.

The authors' conclusions are eerily similar to Time's Up! and Holdren's book, Global Ecology, both of which advocated ending Western civilization.

The Left did not miss the significance of the pro-socialist study, which Derrick O'Keefe, a contributor to the "Ecosocialism Canada" website, promoted in a Tweet: "This NASA-funded study makes case that future is socialism or extinction."

Part of the "HANDY" theory was that "collapse is difficult to avoid…. Elites grow and consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society." This rings bizarrely hollow in today's world where obesity, not starvation, afflict increasing percentages of the "commoners" around the world. Indeed, famines outside of natural disasters and wars are mostly limited to dictatorships that use food as a weapon and nationalize or regulate to death the production of food. For example, Venezuela is a lush and fertile jungle, yet the Communist regime has destroyed farming to the extent that even bread and beer are all but memories on the empty grocery store shelves. Free enterprise, not eradicating "elites," is the antidote for famine and societal collapse.

After a flood of criticism, NASA disavowed the study, yet its theme that society is about to collapse without socialism fits with the anti-civilization beliefs of Holdren and Hansen. Socialism or bust.

The International Committee of the Fourth International lauded the study on its World Socialist Web Site, which is affiliated with the pro-Communist Socialist Equality Party: "The HANDY model is notable in that it explicitly recognizes the central importance of class differentiation and inequality in social dynamics, and identifies growing inequality as a major destabilizing factor. Indeed, the model examines scenarios in which social inequality alone can lead to catastrophic societal collapse."

William "Matt" Briggs, an adjunct professor of statistical science at Cornell University and author of Breaking the Law of Averages: Real Life Probability and Statistics in Plain English, debunked the study in a CNS News report:

"Using a predator-prey model, the "Human and Nature Dynamics" (HANDY) study "swaps the wolves for human beings and the deer for 'Nature.' Since "nothing empirical went into these equations," the study's doomsday conclusions "have no applicability whatsoever to humans," Briggs told CNSNews.com.

"All of the flaws—when they give interpretations to all of those letters, the x's, the c's, the Greek letters that they have sprinkled throughout—those interpretations are just pulled out of the sky, and have nothing to do with any real human society. The problem is, all those symbols, they don't mean anything. History also shows that socialist societies whose main goal is egalitarianism are actually more likely to collapse than their capitalistic counterparts."

The next president must shut down global warming advocacy at NASA, including doling out scarce research money for useless and propagandistic studies like this one.

How the Left Profits from NASA

NASA has entered into an almost incestuous relationship with left-wing pro-global-warming organizations—many of them are tax-exempt nonprofits. NASA's respected name on a report, regardless of its merit, conveys the 'gold standard' on even the most alarmist warming report, only because of the high regard the public places in the agency which landed Americans on the Moon and rovers on Mars.

NASA's biased global warming studies have therefore become the respectable "go to" source of material for many radical organizations, used to justify and lend credibility to their theories, to cite in papers and conferences, and to use to raise money for their radical agenda.

NASA produces reports and data by James Hansen and his acolytes, and funds research like the "Socialism or extinction" study, which the nonprofits promote as gospel to justify their radical demands. They give greater exposure to NASA's studies, which creates more demand for new NASA studies, and the cycle continues.

For example, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, uses NASA information in its Global Warming 101 primer (available at www.nrdc.org/stories/global-warming-101), and it uses a Hansen op-ed to fight the Keystone XL Pipeline. NRDC even used an alarmist NASA cartoon video (available at www.nrdc.org/onearth/were-hot-water) that predicts catastrophic flooding of cities based on James Hansen's sea-level rise theories to argue for greater action and to scare kids. The anti-energy activist organization 350.org is yet another 501(c)(3) that promotes Hansen's papers and data, as well as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's  works based on NASA data.

The Environmental Defense Fund has 223 pages of NASA information on its website, using America's space agency to enhance its credibility and fundraising. Greenpeace's website has 52 pages, and Al Gore's Climate Reality Project has nine.

Friends of the Earth has 30 pages of NASA materials on its website and used a quote by Hansen to advocate for a carbon tax: "A price on emissions that cause harm is essential."

Skimming the list of other radical environmental groups' websites, the Earth Island Institute has 60 pages of NASA information, and the Sierra Club boasts 554 pages. Even the prestigious National Geographic Society has promoted Hansen's overwrought theories on its website, where Hansen wrote that "recent heat waves that have triggered wildfires, droughts, and heat-related deaths in the United States and around the globe almost certainly would not have occurred without global warming—and will become more routine in coming years."

The Center for American Progress (CAP) was founded by Obama ally John Podesta and is one of the major left-wing think tanks that provides policy support for the president's agenda. CAP has supported the transmogrification of NASA. For example, CAP's lobbying arm, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, promoted an alarmist report by Gavin Schmidt, Hansen's replacement as Goddard Institute director. Schmidt claimed that "2015 will be a scorcher relative to all other years in the record."

NASA Administrator Bolden chose CAP as the venue for an October 2015 speech in which he attacked anyone in the next administration and Congress who may try to restore NASA's focus back to landing American astronauts on the Moon and Mars: "If we change our minds at any time in the next three or four years, which always is a risk when you go through a government transition, my belief is that we're doomed. This is not a time that we can start over." In reality, it was Obama who "started over" by cancelling the plans and rockets to take Americans to the Moon and Mars, and setting an accelerated course towards global warming advocacy.

NASA data is also used as "proof" in the UN's IPCC reports which aim to cripple the economies of western democracies but not those of China and the Third World. NASA then returned the favor by promoting IPCC reports that use NASA data.

In short, NASA's fanciful global warming theories have been used to bestow unearned legitimacy on left-wing advocacy organizations. Their ability to raise funds is enhanced by simply being able to quote a "NASA scientist" and by filling their websites and perhaps fundraising letters with global warming theories from NASA. When the public reads "NASA scientist," they think of astronauts and rocket scientists, not radical professors advocating for the end of civilization.

How do you kill the space program without anyone noticing?

Use the "Emperor's New Clothes" strategy.

If the president proclaims America is on a "Journey to Mars," but kills the plans to get there, no one in the liberal media would dare shout the obvious: "America has no space program!" To assist in this deception, Obama took the step politicians often take to buy cover for unpopular actions: he established a commission to declare that space exploration was "unsustainable."

The "Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee," or more commonly, the "Augustine Commission," produced its report in 2010 at a cost of $3,000,000 to taxpayers.

The report, misleadingly titled, "Seeking a Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation," stated that "the U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. It is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources." (The report is online at http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/396093main_HSF_Cmte_FinalReport.pdf.) In this writer's opinion, the commission should have concluded that space exploration was a national priority and that the U.S. could certainly afford the required 15 percent in additional NASA spending to make it succeed.

Obama seized upon the conclusion of the commission to cancel programs against the wishes of NASA and astronauts, depriving us of the rockets and spacecraft that would have taken us to the Moon and on to Mars starting about 2020. Unfortunately, many in Congress, the public, and even supporters of the space program were fooled by the Emperor's New Clothes strategy.

The report used to kill space exploration exploited the image and words of President John F. Kennedy from his famous 1961 Rice University speech, where he set America on a course for both the Moon and for generations of American leadership in high technology:

"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills."

Just eight years after President Kennedy's inspirational speech, NASA landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon.

By contrast, in the nearly eight years of the Obama presidency, all plans and the rockets for exploring the Moon and Mars were scuttled, the space shuttles were grounded before replacements were ready, and American astronauts are still forced to fly to the International Space Station on Russian rockets. NASA was burdened with an essentially impossible-to-accomplish asteroid mission to replace the return-to-the-Moon mission and real plans for Mars. President Kennedy's legacy was betrayed by President Obama.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) was among many in Congress who blasted Obama for killing space exploration. In February 2010 he said:

The President's proposed NASA budget begins the death march for the future of U.S. human space flight. The cancelation of the Constellation program and the end of human space flight does represent change—but it is certainly not the change I believe in. Congress cannot and will not sit back and watch the reckless abandonment of sound principles, a proven track record, a steady path to success, and the destruction of our human space flight program.

Administrator Bolden repeatedly ruled out any missions to the Moon. Why?

Perhaps Obama's worldview is the problem. In 2008, he posed for a photograph holding a book, The Post-American World, by left-wing serial plagiarist Fareed Zakaria. The title sent a signal to America's enemies and adversaries that as president, Obama would reduce our superpower status and cede power and leadership to the tyrannies.

By contrast, space exploration is the ultimate confirmation of "American exceptionalism" and superpower accomplishment.

Bowing to China

Communist China understands the hard- and soft-power benefits of becoming the leader in space exploration and is taking full advantage of the decade's head start afforded by Obama's actions.

To date, China has launched five manned missions to earth orbit, including two to its mini-space station. Many Americans active in space policy seem lulled to sleep by China's apparently slow pace and believe the Chinese will continue moving slowly. But this view stems from a failure to understand the brutal totalitarian regime's strategies of deception and secrecy. Chinese dictators Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin followed such a strategy while quietly building their military strength on the principle of "hide our capacities and bide our time."

The People's Republic is quietly building an Apollo-scale infrastructure and the world's largest rocket factory. This, coupled with their Moon rocket now in design stage, may allow China to conquer the Moon unless the U.S. can quickly recover from Obama's damage.

Chinese officials recently unveiled both a bold timetable to send a rover to Mars by 2021 and also plans for a manned lunar base to mine lunar minerals and Helium-3, a nuclear fusion fuel. If China wants the world to believe it will not lay claim to the Moon, it is setting a poor example by trying to seize the South China Sea, in violation of 400 years of international law and practice.

If President Obama deliberately wanted to give China a head start of a decade or more, or to allow the Chinese to claim the Moon, it is hard to imagine he would have done anything differently during his administration.

Divide and conquer

Beyond killing space exploration, converting NASA into a propaganda agency, and giving our adversaries a decade's head start, Obama killed something perhaps even more important: Unity.

As Obama killed the Constellation program, he made a false statement at the Kennedy Space Center on April 15, 2010, calculated to destroy unity among space experts and advocates:

"I understand that some believe that we should return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned, but I just have to say pretty bluntly here, we've been there before! There's a lot more of space to explore and a lot more to learn when we do."

The "been there, done that" line is a case of the "big lie." American astronauts spent only about 12 days on the Moon over three years, so we know essentially nothing about the physiological effects of living in low gravity on Mars for months or years, nor the requirements for conducting life and operations on the surface.

Ever since Wernher von Braun engineered America's course to the Moon, the scientist-devised plan was always to use the Moon to learn how to live on another world, before proceeding to Mars. Once Obama torpedoed the Moon-then-Mars agreement as official policy, various minor but competing ideas spread fast: Go to Mars immediately. Go to asteroids for a decade or longer, then look at Mars. Build a space station in deep space, perhaps to support Lunar and Martian expeditions in decades to come. Spend the next decade doing a few short missions in the vicinity of the Moon. Don't land on Mars but just send astronauts to orbit Mars and run rovers from there.

Some plans were unworkable, while others would not inspire support from Congress or the public. By killing unity, Obama caused advocates of each different idea to fight each other. This alone could prevent the next president from assembling the unity required to re-start space exploration.

There are many compelling reasons for von Braun's Moon-then-Mars "stepping stones" approach. The Moon is far closer and easier to reach. Spacecraft can go to the Moon in 4 days, and be launched or returned at any time. Mars, by comparison is a 6 to 9 month journey and launches can only take place every 26 months. In the event of an emergency on the Moon, astronauts can immediately evacuate and be home in 3 days. This is impossible on Mars because it could be many months until the next launch window allows a return.

Mars has a deadly naturally occurring poison in its soil. Perchlorates make up about 1 percent of the soil in measured areas. If "Mark Watney," the stranded astronaut in last year's movie, The Martian, had used perchlorate-laden soil to grow his potatoes, they would have made him very sick or killed him. These factors don't mean that Mars is uninhabitable, just that we have a lot to learn before sending anyone there, and making the leap to the red planet without an intermediate step would be too great a "giant leap."

Far better to develop and validate all the technology, habitats, and human factors on the Moon, rather than set course for an un-tested 1,000-day mission to Mars—with no early return possibility. Deaths on early missions to Mars could cause humanity to shun Mars for generations. Do it right and America can build a research base on the Moon in the 2020s, and with lessons learned, successfully land on Mars in the 2030s.

Space is a Conservative Priority

America's space program serves the nation in a number of ways. These include supporting national security and the projection of soft power, building international respect, and advancing high technology and basic research fundamental to long-term, worldwide economic competitiveness. Medical inventions derived from space research help people live longer, and your cellular telephone has its roots in the drive to miniaturize electronics for space.

Abandoning space to the tyrannies would endanger U.S. commercial and military satellites, and space so dominated would be hostile to commercial space ventures such as Space X—imagine U.N. restrictions on commercial space, forced profit-sharing with foreign governments, and outright threats such as China currently issues in the South China Sea. Spending on NASA yields far more in technology and inventions for the economy, and it may be the only federal agency that produces a large net benefit to the economy.

Conclusion 

President Obama, John Holdren, Lori Garver, and James Hansen have succeeded in their apparent mission to convert NASA's bold exploration and scientific mission into yet another left-wing propaganda-spewing agency. As House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) observed at a 2014 hearing, "there are 13 other agencies involved in climate-change research, but only one that is responsible for space exploration."

The next president must halt the ideological war at NASA and work with Congress to provide the funding to unleash the engineers and astronauts who will rebuild America's leadership in space and high technology for the next generation. The goal should be an "American exceptionalism"-style space program that would truly earn the name given in the Augustine Commission's report: "a human spaceflight program worthy of a great nation."

 

Art Harman is a Capitol Hill veteran, with over three decades experience directing lobbying, media, and grassroots campaigns, including with the Conservative Caucus. He served as Legislative Director for Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) in the 113th Congress, where he directed legislative priorities, drafted legislation, and advised the congressman on foreign affairs, border security, space and other key issues. A frequent analyst and commentator on the radio, Harman studied foreign policy at the Institute of World Politics.

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Fwd: Google Alert - Save the space shuttle



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From: Google Alerts <googlealerts-noreply@google.com>
Date: June 30, 2016 at 12:00:42 PM CDT
To: bobbygmartin1938@gmail.com
Subject: Google Alert - Save the space shuttle

Google
Save the space shuttle
Daily update June 30, 2016
WEB
A Space Shuttle Launch Seen From A Plane Is Awe-Inspiring
A man flying at approximately 28000 feet caught a view of this shuttle that was about 13 miles away. And boy is that thing hoofing it away from Earth.
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Fwd: The Write Stuff-- Lack of risk strategy ---Haha--- re Shuttle retirement

So, not first time!

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From: "Space & NASA - Orlando Sentinel" <noreply+feedproxy@google.com>
Date: June 30, 2016 at 8:00:21 AM CDT
To: bobbygmartin1938@gmail.com
Subject: The Write Stuff
Reply-To: "Space & NASA - Orlando Sentinel" <online@orlandosentinel.com>

Space &amp; NASA - Orlando Sentinel

The Write Stuff


NASA Inspector: SpaceX explosion showed lack of risk strategy

Posted: 28 Jun 2016 12:05 PM PDT

A new report about the 2015 explosion of a SpaceX rocket over Florida takes NASA to task for a lack of risk assessment in its commercial resupply missions for the International Space Station.

The explosion last June destroyed a docking adapter crucial to converting the International Space Station...

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Fwd: Space Launch System Booster Passes Major Milestone on Journey to Mars



Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: June 29, 2016 at 9:25:11 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Space Launch System Booster Passes Major Milestone on Journey to Mars

 

 

 June 28, 2016

RELEASE 16-069

 

NASA's Space Launch System Booster Passes Major Milestone on Journey to Mars

The second and final qualification motor (QM-2) test for the Space Launch System's booster

The second and final qualification motor (QM-2) test for the Space Launch System's booster is seen, Tuesday, June 28, 2016, at Orbital ATK Propulsion System's (SLS) test facilities in Promontory, Utah. During the SLS flight the boosters will provide more than 75 percent of the thrust needed to escape the gravitational pull of the Earth, the first step on NASA's Journey to Mars.

Credits: NASA/Bill Ingalls

A booster for the most powerful rocket in the world, NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), successfully fired up Tuesday for its second qualification ground test at Orbital ATK's test facilities in Promontory, Utah. This was the last full-scale test for the booster before SLS's first uncrewed test flight with NASA's Orion spacecraft in late 2018, a key milestone on the agency's Journey to Mars.

"This final qualification test of the booster system shows real progress in the development of the Space Launch System," said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Seeing this test today, and experiencing the sound and feel of approximately 3.6 million pounds of thrust, helps us appreciate the progress we're making to advance human exploration and open new frontiers for science and technology missions in deep space."

The booster was tested at a cold motor conditioning target of 40 degrees Fahrenheit –the colder end of its accepted propellant temperature range. When ignited, temperatures inside the booster reached nearly 6,000 degrees. The two-minute, full-duration ground qualification test provided NASA with critical data on 82 qualification objectives that will support certification of the booster for flight. Engineers now will evaluate these data, captured by more than 530 instrumentation channels on the booster.

When completed, two five-segment boosters and four RS-25 main engines will power SLS on deep space missions. The solid rocket boosters, built by NASA contractor Orbital ATK, operate in parallel with SLS's main engines for the first two minutes of flight. They will provide more than 75 percent of the thrust needed for the rocket and Orion spacecraft to escape Earth's gravitational pull.

"Today's test is the pinnacle of years of hard work by the NASA team, Orbital ATK and commercial partners across the country," said John Honeycutt, SLS Program manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "SLS hardware is currently in production for every part of the rocket. NASA also is making progress every day on Orion and the ground systems to support a launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. We're on track to launch SLS on its first flight test with Orion and pave the way for a human presence in deep space."

The first full-scale booster qualification ground test was successfully completed in March 2015 and demonstrated acceptable performance of the booster design at 90 degrees Fahrenheit – the highest end of the booster's accepted propellant temperature range. Testing at the thermal extremes experienced by the booster on the launch pad is important to understand the effect of temperature on how the propellant burns.

The initial SLS configuration will have a minimum 70-metric-ton (77-ton) lift capability. The next planned upgrade of SLS will use a powerful exploration upper stage for more ambitious missions, with a 105-metric-ton (115-ton) lift capacity. In each configuration, SLS will continue to use the same core stage and four RS-25 engines.

For more information about NASA's Journey to Mars, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/journeytomars

For more information on SLS, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/sls

-end-

Cheryl Warner
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
cheryl.m.warner@nasa.gov

Kim Henry
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-0034
kimberly.h.henry@nasa.gov

Kay Anderson
Orbital ATK
435-230-2787
kay.anderson@orbitalatk.com

Last Updated: June 28, 2016

Editor: Karen Northon

 


 

Space Launch System booster fired in final preflight qualification test

June 28, 2016 Stephen Clark

The 154-foot-long solid rocket motor ignited at 11:05 a.m. EDT (1505 GMT) in Promontory, Utah. Credit: Gene Blevins/LA Daily NewsThe 154-foot-long solid rocket motor ignited at 11:05 a.m. EDT (1505 GMT) in Promontory, Utah. Credit: Gene Blevins/LA Daily News

A solid-fueled rocket motor mounted horizontally on a Utah hillside ignited and powered up to more than 3 million pounds of thrust Tuesday in a final full-up test-firing before a similar booster helps propel NASA's huge Space Launch System away from Earth on a demonstration flight in 2018.

The 154-foot-long (47-meter) rocket lit at 11:05 a.m. EDT (1505 GMT) Tuesday, an hour later than planned after test technicians ran into trouble with a ground computer controlling the booster's countdown sequence.

Engineers resolved the problem after a short delay, and the rocket motor fired with a spectacular golden plume of nearly 6,000-degree Fahrenheit (3,300-degree Celsius) exhaust, launching a vast plume of smoke thousands of feet over the hillside at the booster's test site in Promontory, Utah.

Manufactured by Orbital ATK, the rocket consumed 5.5 tons of its pre-packed propellant per second, burning through 1.4 million pounds of powdered aluminum fuel, oxidizer and binding agent in a two-minute, six-second firing. Pressures inside the steel propellant casings reached 900 psi, or 62 times Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level.

Engineers expected the booster — the most powerful solid rocket motor in existence — to generate approximately 3.3 million pounds of thrust, equivalent to more than 10 four-engine jumbo jets, said Kent Rominger, Orbital ATK's vice president of propulsion systems strategy and business development, before Tuesday's test.

Technicians chilled the solid propellant inside the 12-foot-diameter (3.6-meter) to about 41 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) to test the booster's performance at cold temperatures, according to Alex Priskos, manager of the SLS boosters office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Orbital ATK conducted a similar test-firing last year with the fuel heated to 93 degrees (34 degrees Celsius).

The cooler temperatures were predicted to diminish the booster's thrust from the 3.6 million force-pounds produced in warmer conditions. Such a change is within the booster's operating specifications, but engineers needed to quantify the difference to adjust the rocket's trajectory on a real flight.

The boosters are a critical part of the Space Launch System, a rocket under development by NASA since 2011 to dispatch astronauts on missions beyond low Earth orbit for the first time since 1972.

A first glance at data collected on Tuesday's test showed the firing met all objectives, officials said.

"We've had a chance to look at just some very, very preliminary data … and everything looks great so far," Priskos told reporters after Tuesday's test firing. "We're going to be digging into the data a lot more as we go forward."

Tuesday's test was the fifth and final ground firing planned on the SLS booster before the heavy-lifter's first launch in 2018.

"What an absolutely amazing day today," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator of human exploration and operations. "Just a great chance to be here and actually witness this test-firing.

"It's not just a test-firing," Gerstenmaier said. "It's really a qualification motor test-firing, which fits in a sequence. That essentially says this design is ready to go fly, and ready to go do the mission which it's designed to go do."

Two SLS boosters will fly on each SLS launch, delivering more than 75 percent of the rocket's total thrust in the first two minutes of flight. Counting the power produced by four RS-25 liquid-fueled main engines on the SLS core stage, the huge rocket will climb away from Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39B on 8.4 million pounds of thrust, more than any U.S. launch vehicle in history.

When fully assembled with an aft skirt and nose cone, the strap-on boosters will stand 177 feet (54 meters) tall. For SLS missions, engineers added a fifth segment to the space shuttle's existing four-section boosters, raising the rocket motor's total impulse by 25 percent and thrust output by 20 percent, Priskos said.

"The outside of the car looks the same," Priskos said of the modifications. "When you look under the hood of the vehicle, almost everything else has changed."

VIPs and news media representatives observe Tuesday's firing from a nearby viewing site. Credit: Gene Blevins/LA Daily NewsVIPs and news media representatives observe Tuesday's firing from a nearby viewing site. Credit: Gene Blevins/LA Daily News

The boosters burn the same solid fuel as the shuttle motors, but engineers changed the shape of the propellant grains to meet SLS requirements. Orbital ATK also removed the parachute recovery system flown on the reusable shuttle boosters because the motors will be discarded after SLS launches, saving about 10,000 pounds (nearly 5 metric tons) in weight, Kriskos said.

The attach points between the boosters and the core stage were also moved from their locations on the space shuttle, and engineers strengthened the booster's forward skirt with stiffeners to take the extra load from the motor's higher thrust.

Other changes included modifications to the nozzle's heat shield and throat, along with upgrades to computer controllers on the rocket motor.

"The avionics system that flew on shuttle was all analog," Kriskos said. "This is a state-of-the-art digital avionics (system) in separate boxes. The other one was all consolidated in one package."

With ground testing complete, NASA and Orbital ATK managers now turn their attention to data analysis and preparation of the solid rocket boosters destined to fly on the first SLS launch, called Exploration Mission-1, in late 2018.

Three of the 10 booster segments for the EM-1 launch have been filled with propellant at Orbital ATK's solid rocket propulsion plant in northern Utah. Technicians will cast the remaining seven sections with propellant over the coming months.

The booster parts will be transported from Utah to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida via train in the fall of 2017, according to Charlie Precourt, vice president and general manager of Orbital ATK's propulsion systems division.

The boosters will be stacked vertically on a mobile launch platform inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at KSC, then joined with the SLS core stage currently under manufacture by Boeing at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.

NASA's Orion spacecraft, with crew and service modules made by Lockheed Martin and Airbus Defense and Space, will be hoisted atop the SLS upper stage provided by United Launch Alliance before rollout to launch pad 39B.

Gerstenmaier said Tuesday that EM-1, a test flight without astronauts, is on track to launch in late 2018.

"We're still kind of targeting for September (2018), but we're trending more towards maybe October or November timeframe," Gerstenmaier said. "This is a continual process. We go look and see what hardware is available — what systems are available when — and we go look at the schedule, and we optimize the schedule based on what we get."

The EM-1 mission will last about three weeks, with the Orion spacecraft traveling beyond the moon on a shakedown cruise before NASA proceeds with a crewed flight some time between 2021 and 2023.

Gerstenmaier touted NASA's plan for renewed human expeditions into deep space with the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft. With a presidential election looming, he said he is hopeful the program retains the largely-bipartisan political backing it has received from Congress and the Obama administration since they agreed on a space exploration vision in 2011.

"If we can keep our focus and keep delivering, and deliver to the schedules, the budgets and the promise of what we've got, I think we've got a very capable vision that actually moves the nation very far forward in moving human presence into space," Gerstenmaier said. "This is a very capable system. It's not built for just one or two flights. It is actually built for multiple decades of use that will enable us to eventually allow humans to go to Mars.

"If you look at the continuum of this program, it may not be optimum from anyone's particular standpoint if you want it optimized for a particular aspect," Gerstenmaier said. "But if you want a robust program that can keep this nation as a leader in spaceflight, this is a human spaceflight program that I think any country would be lucky to have, and we're really blessed that we have this program in his country."

 

 

© 2016 Spaceflight Now Inc.

 


 

 

Inline image 2

 

By William Harwood CBS News June 28, 2016, 2:27 PM

"Amazing" test of booster to power NASA super rocket

 

A five-segment solid-fuel booster needed by NASA's new Space Launch System rocket was successfully test fired Tuesday in Utah, generating 3.6 million pounds of thrust during a two-minute six-second firing.NASA

 

A massive solid-fuel booster designed to help lift NASA's Space Launch System super rocket out of the lower atmosphere was test fired Tuesday in Utah, generating a spectacular torrent of fiery exhaust and nearly 3.6 million pounds of thrust, enough energy to power more than 46,000 homes during the two-minute six-second burn.

Mounted horizontally on a massive concrete test stand at Orbital ATK's Promontory, Utah, test facility, the 154-foot-long motor ignited with a torrent of fire 11:05 a.m. EDT (GMT-4), one hour late because of problems with a ground systems computer.

Made up of five fuel segments bolted together -- one more than the boosters used by NASA's space shuttles -- the giant rocket consumed 5.5 tons of propellant per second at some 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit before burning out, generating the equivalent of 1.15 million kilowatts of power.

Hundreds of spectators watched the firing from a viewing site more than a mile away, cheering and applauding as the rocket ignited with a ground-shaking roar, sending a towering plume of churning exhaust high into the sky.

As the propellant burned out, the horizontal jet of exhaust turned into a billowing cloud of orange flame before a swing arm rotated into the nozzle, flushing the interior of the booster with carbon dioxide to quickly quench any residual flame.

"We've had a chance to look at just some very, very preliminary data (and) everything looks great so far," said Alex Priskos, manager SLS booster office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

 

Spectators a bit more than a mile away look on as qualification motor No. 2, or QM-2, was fired at Orbital ATK's Promontory, Utah, test site. NASA

During a test firing in March 2015, the 1.5 million pounds of propellant packed into qualification motor No. 1, or QM-1, was heated up to around 90 degrees Fahrenheit to test the booster's performance at the upper end of its operating range.

For Tuesday test, the booster's propellant was cooled to 41 degrees, a process that took more than a month using 25-degree air pumped into a roll-off hangar from multiple refrigeration units. The goal was to collect performance data at the lower end of the allowable temperature range.

Other major objectives included tests of a new insulation and a redesigned nozzle, along with SLS computer commanding for motor ignition and steering. Some 530 channels of telemetry were recorded.

"What an absolutely amazing day today!" said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's director of space operations. "It's not just a test firing, it's a qualification motor test firing, which fits in a sequence that essentially says this design is ready to go fly."

Engineers will "get a lot of data, there are over 500 channels of data on this rocket," he said. "They'll be poring over that data to make sure it performed exactly the way we intended it to perform at these cold conditions. And that data will be really important to go ahead and say things are certified."

Assuming no major problems surface during data analysis, the next time an SLS solid-fuel booster fires will be during launch of Exploration Mission 1 in the Fall of 2018, the first full-up flight test of the gargantuan 322-foot-tall SLS booster.

Using two five-segment SRB's and four upgraded shuttle-vintage main engines at the base of the rocket's first stage, the initial version of the SLS will generate a combined 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, 15 percent more than NASA's fabled Saturn 5 moon rocket.

For the EM-1 fight, an interim second stage engine and uncrewed Orion capsule also will be put through their paces. All told, the Block 1 version of the SLS will tip the scales at 5.75 million pounds at launch and be capable of putting 77 tons of payload into space.

062816srmgraphic.jpg

The Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket will use two five-segment shuttle-heritage solid-fuel boosters to power the huge rocket out of the lower atmosphere.  NASA

Three of the 10 segments needed to make up the two EM-1 solid-fuel boosters are already loaded with propellant and all 10 are expected to be shipped by rail from Utah to the Kennedy Space Center by the Fall of next year. NASA has enough shuttle-vintage booster segments to support eight SLS launches.

The first crewed flight of an Orion capsule atop an SLS rocket -- EM-2 -- is tentatively planned for 2023. During that flight, four astronauts will venture beyond the orbit of the moon for a critical shakedown mission.

NASA plans to develop an upgraded version of the SLS rocket in the 2020s that could generate 9.2 million pounds of thrust to launch large spacecraft into deep space and, eventually, Mars.

"If you look at the continuum of this program, it may not be optimum from anyone's particular standpoint ... but if you want a robust program that camn keep this nation as a leader in spaceflight, this is a human spaceflight program that I think any country would be lucky to have," Gerstenmaier said. "Hopefully, the political (establishment) will see that and recognize what we have."

 

© 2016 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 


 

 

 

Sick Burn! NASA Fires Off Test of Next-Generation Rocket Engine

By Calla Cofield, Space.com Staff Writer | June 28, 2016 12:47pm ET

 

Thousands of onlookers gawked as a column of flame exploded across the desert floor outside Promontory, Utah, today (June 28) during a test of the engine that will help power NASA's next-generation rocket. 

Lying horizontally, the engine for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket booster released a massive blast of flame and a wall of black smoke for two solid minutes during today's Qualification Motor-2 (QM-2) test (see photos of the test here). This is the last engine test before NASA's Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1) in 2018, in which SLS will send an uncrewed Orion capsule on a flight beyond the orbit of the moon and back to Earth. Eventually, NASA aims to use Orion and SLS to send humans to Mars.

Today's test was delayed by about an hour due to a problem with the computer that controls the sequence of events during the test, NASA representatives said during the pretest broadcast on NASA TV. [Watch the Space Launch System Booster Test]

Fire sprays out the end of NASA's SLS rocket booster engine during a qualifying test on June 28, 2016.

Fire sprays out the end of NASA's SLS rocket booster engine during a qualifying test on June 28, 2016.

Credit: NASA TV

 

A massive crowd of spectators gathered in a viewing area, located about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) away from the engine, to watch the 2-minute burn. Former NASA astronaut Don Thomas, who spoke with NASA TV during a live, prelaunch webcast, estimated that 5,000 to 10,000 people were present in the viewing area. Once the engine fired up, spectators saw the resulting bright light, but the explosive sound from the engine didn't reach the crowd until about 6 seconds later.

Today's QM-2 test of the SLS booster engine took place at facilities owned and operated by the private spaceflight company Orbital ATK. The company has been contracted by NASA to build the solid rocket booster that will "operate in parallel with SLS's main engines for the first two minutes of flight," according to the same NASA statement. (When it's complete, SLS will consist of a core stage with four main engines, along with two solid rocket boosters like the one that was tested today.)

The QM-2 test was preceded by a similar engine test in March 2015. The test today was a "cool" test, meaning the engine propellant was chilled to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius), which helps scientists "understand the effects of temperature on how the propellant burns," according to NASA's website.

SLS engineers also tested the engine's thrust vector control system, according to Bruce Tiller, the SLS booster manager at NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. That means that viewers who watched today's event on NASA TV may have seen the engine nozzle moving slightly during the test.

"But the big thing is what you don't see," Tiller said. "And that's all the data we're going to gather and [the data] that the engineers are going to review carefully to confirm and prove that our motor is ready for flight."

A view from the spectator viewing area of the second engine test of the SLS rocket booster, on June 28, 2016.

A view from the spectator viewing area of the second engine test of the SLS rocket booster, on June 28, 2016.

Credit: NASA TV

 

"This final qualification test of the booster system shows real progress in the development of the Space Launch System," William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA, said in a statement. "Seeing this test today, and experiencing the sound and feel of approximately 3.6 million pounds of thrust, helps us appreciate the progress we're making to advance human exploration and open new frontiers for science and technology missions in deep space."

NASA's SLS rocket is designed to send spacecraft to deep-space destinations such as Mars. NASA has scheduled EM-1 for 2018; the mission will send the Orion capsule on a journey past the moon, more than a quarter million miles (400,000 km) from the Earth, according to Mike Sarafin, the mission manager for EM-1 at NASA. The Orion capsule underwent a low-orbit test flight in December 2014, but EM-1 will be the SLS' maiden voyage, Sarafin said.

"We're going to fly it and test it out in that new environment, where we're outside Earth's magnetic field and we see the environment of deep-space radiation," Sarafin said during the NASA TV pretest broadcast today. "We're trying to understand how the system performs in that environment, and we'll get all that valuable data back before we put our astronauts on the very next mission, Exploration Mission 2."  

That second test of the SLS and Orion system is officially targeted for August 2021, but recently, NASA said that date may slip to 2023.

 

 

 

2nd Firing Test of NASA's Next-Generation Rocket Engine (Photos)

Tuesday, June 28, 2016 09:27

Check out these photos from the second test firing of the engine for NASA's next-generation rocket booster, the Space Launch System (SLS). NASA plans to use SLS to send astronauts to mars and other deep-space locations.

 

 

 

Huge Space Launch System Booster Test Fired In Utah | Video

Tuesday, June 28, 2016 08:13

The congressionally-mandated NASA Space Launch System rocket continues it testing with a firing of its Orbital ATK-built booster in Promontory, Utah on June 28, 2016.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2016 TechMediaNetwork.com All rights reserved. 

 


 

 

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NASA completes final test of SLS boosters before first launch

by Jeff Foust — June 28, 2016

QM-2 testA five-segment solid rocket booster fires during the Qualification Motor 2 test in Utah June 28. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

WASHINGTON — A successful two-minute test of a five-segment solid rocket booster June 28 is the final development milestone for the shuttle-derived boosters before their use on the first flight of the Space Launch System.

The test, known as Qualification Motor 2 (QM-2), demonstrated the booster's performance when cooled to approximately 5 degrees Celsius, the lower end of its range of operating temperatures. NASA swiftly declared that the booster firing, conducted at an Orbital ATK test site near Promontory, Utah, was a success.

"It's not just a test firing, it's really a qualification motor test firing, which fits into a sequence that essentially says this design is ready to go fly," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, in a media teleconference an hour after the test.

Analysis of data collected during the test, which was delayed by an hour to replace a failed hard drive in ground support equipment, is still in its initial phases. Agency officials, though, appeared pleased. "We've had a chance to look at just some very, very preliminary data," said Alex Priskos, manager of the SLS Boosters Office at the Marshall Space Flight center, "and everything looks great so far."

The QM-2 test, and the QM-1 test in 2015 that verified the booster's performance at the upper end of its temperature range, are the final tests of the solid rocket booster. Two of the five-segment boosters will be used on the SLS, along with four RS-25 engines previously used on the space shuttle.

The data collected from QM-2 and other tests will feed into a design certification review for the booster in the summer of 2017. "For those of us worried about delivery schedules and that, it's just around the corner," Priskos said.

The first launch of the SLS, on a flight known as Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1), is currently scheduled for late 2018. Three of the ten solid motor segments needed for that launch have already been produced at the Orbital ATK facility near the test site. All ten of the motors should be completed by next fall, said Charlie Precourt, vice president and general manager of Orbital ATK's Propulsion Systems Division.

Gerstenmaier said that the official target date for EM-1 is September 2018, but that date is likely to slip slightly. "We're trending more towards maybe the October-November timeframe," he said, not singling out any particular component of that mission as the cause of that slip. "Really almost all of our components are on the critical path to some extent."

He said that work should not be affected by the uncertainty NASA's overall exploration program faces by the upcoming presidential election, which brings with it the potential for significant changes by the next administration.

"I think if we can show with our evidence, by just direct work of our folks of steady progress moving forward, I think that helps build support for our program," he said. "I think the best thing we can do is just kind of stay focused on what we're doing" and not overreact to outside developments.

Orbital ATK, in addition to its work developing and testing the solid rocket boosters, is also in the initial phases of a U.S. Air Force-funded study of a large launch vehicle that would use similar booster motors in its lower stages.

"All of these developments feed upon each other," Precourt said when asked how the SLS works aids that vehicle design study. That includes improvements in manufacturing capabilities and the speed at which the company can assemble booster components. "Whatever we do with a given concept or a given motor system, we will use the best of that on the next design."

 

 

 © 2016 SpaceNews, Inc. All rights reserved.

 


 

NASA Completes Awesome Test Firing of World's Most Powerful Booster for Human Mission to Mars - Gallery - Universe Today

Ken Kremer

 

Ignition of the qualification motor (QM-2) booster during test firing for NASA's Space Launch System as seen on Tuesday, June 28, 2016, at Orbital ATK Propulsion System's (SLS) test facilities in Promontory, Utah.  Credit: Julian Leek

Ignition of the qualification motor (QM-2) booster during test firing for NASA's Space Launch System as seen on Tuesday, June 28, 2016, at Orbital ATK Propulsion System's (SLS) test facilities in Promontory, Utah. Credit: Julian Leek

The world's most powerful booster that will one day propel NASA astronauts on exciting missions of exploration to deep space destinations including the Moon and Mars was successfully ignited this morning, June 28, during an awesome ground test firing on a remote mountainside in Utah, that qualifies it for an inaugural blastoff in late 2018.

The two-minute-long, full-duration static test for NASA's mammoth Space Launch System (SLS) rocket involved firing the new five-segment solid rocket booster for its second and final qualification ground test as it sat restrained in a horizontal configuration at Orbital ATK's test facilities at a desert site in Promontory, Utah.

The purpose was to provide NASA and prime contractor Orbital ATK with critical data on 82 qualification objectives. Engineers will use the data gathered by more than 530 instrumentation channels on the booster to certify the booster for flight.

The 154-foot-long (47-meter) booster was fired up on the test stand by the Orbital ATK operations team at 11:05 a.m. EDT (9:05 a.m. MT) for what is called the Qualification Motor-2 (QM-2) test.

"We have ignition of NASA's Space Launch System motor powering us on our Journey to Mars," said NASA commentator Kim Henry at ignition!

A gigantic plume of black smoke and intense yellow fire erupted at ignition spewing a withering cloud of ash into the Utah air and barren mountainside while consuming propellant at a rate of 5.5 tons per second.

It also sent out a shock wave reverberating back to excited company, NASA and media spectators witnessing the event from about a mile away as well as to another 10,000 or so space enthusiasts and members of the general public gathered to watch from about 2 miles away.

Ignition of the qualification motor (QM-2) booster during test firing for NASA's Space Launch System as seen on Tuesday, June 28, 2016, at Orbital ATK Propulsion System's (SLS) test facilities in Promontory, Utah.  Credit: Julian Leek

Ignition of the qualification motor (QM-2) booster during test firing for NASA's Space Launch System as seen on Tuesday, June 28, 2016, at Orbital ATK Propulsion System's (SLS) test facilities in Promontory, Utah. Credit: Julian Leek

"What an absolutely amazing day today for all of us here to witness this test firing. And it's not just a test firing. It's really a qualification motor test firing that says this design is ready to go fly and ready to go do the mission which it's designed to go do," said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, during the post QM-2 test media briefing today.

Thrilled spectators witness the Qualification Motor-2 (QM-2) test firing on June 28, 2016 at Orbital ATK test facilities in Promontory, Utah.  Credit: Jean Leek

Thrilled spectators witness the Qualification Motor-2 (QM-2) test firing on June 28, 2016 at Orbital ATK test facilities in Promontory, Utah. Credit: Jean Leek

The critically important test marks a major milestone clearing the path to the first SLS launch that could happen as soon as September 2018, noted Gerstenmaier

"The team did a tremendous professional job to get all this ready for the firing. We will get over 500 channels of data on this rocket. They will pour over the data to ensure it will perform exactly the way we intended it to at these cold conditions."

Qualification motor (QM-2) booster fires up erupting massive smoke cloud during test of NASA's Space Launch System on Tuesday, June 28, 2016, at Orbital ATK test facilities in Promontory, Utah.  Credit: Dawn Taylor

Qualification motor (QM-2) booster fires up erupting massive smoke cloud during test of NASA's Space Launch System on Tuesday, June 28, 2016, at Orbital ATK test facilities in Promontory, Utah. Credit: Dawn Taylor

The QM-2 booster had been pre-chilled for several weeks inside a huge test storage shed to conduct this so called 'cold motor test' at approximately 40 degrees Fahrenheit (5 C) – corresponding to the colder end of its accepted propellant temperature range.

NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with lift off using two of the five segment solid rocket motors and four RS-25 engines to power the maiden launch of SLS and NASA's Orion deep space manned spacecraft in late 2018.

The SLS boosters are derived from the four segment solid rocket boosters (SRBs) originally delevoped for NASA's space shuttle program and used for 3 decades.

"This final qualification test of the booster system shows real progress in the development of the Space Launch System," said NASA associate administrator Gerstenmaier.

"Seeing this test today, and experiencing the sound and feel of approximately 3.6 million pounds of thrust, helps us appreciate the progress we're making to advance human exploration and open new frontiers for science and technology missions in deep space."

Despite being cooled to 41 F (5 C) for the cold motor test the flames emitted by the 12-foot-diameter (3.6-meter) booster are actually hot enough at some 6000 degrees Fahrenheit to boil steel.

The internal pressure reaches about 900 psi.

NASA's Space Launch System Solid Rocket Booster infographic

NASA's Space Launch System Solid Rocket Booster infographic

The first ground test called QM-1 was conducted at 90 degrees Fahrenheit, at the upper end of the operating range, in March 2015 as I reported earlier here.

This second ground test firing took place about 1 hour later than originally planned due to a technical issue with the ground sequencing computer control system.

The next time one of these solid rocket boosters fire will be for the combined SLS-1/Orion EM-1 test flight in late 2018.

Each booster generates approximately 3.6 million pounds of thrust. Overall they will provide more than 75 percent of the thrust needed for the rocket and Orion spacecraft to escape Earth's gravitational pull, says NASA.

"It was awesome to say the least," space photographer and friend Julian Leek who witnessed the test first hand told Universe Today.

"Massive fire power released over the Utah mountains. There was about a five second delay before you could hear the sound – that really got everyone's attention!"

"It was absolutely magnificent," space photographer friend Dawn Taylor told me. "Can't wait to see it at the Cape when it goes vertical."

To date Orbital ATK has cast 3 of the 10 booster segments required for the 2018 launch, said Charlie Precourt, vice president and general manager of Orbital ATK's Propulsion Systems Division in Promontory, Utah.

I asked Precourt about the production timing for the remaining segments.

"All of the segments will be delivered to NASA at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida by next fall," Precourt replied during the media briefing.

"They will be produced at a rate of roughly one a month. We also have to build the nozzles up and so forth."

When will booster stacking begin inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at KSC?

Booster shipments start shipping from Utah this fall. Booster stacking in the VAB starts in the spring of 2018," Alex Priskos, manager of the NASA SLS Boosters Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, told me.

Furthermore a preliminary look at the data indicates that all went well.

"What an outstanding test. After a look at some very preliminary data everything looks great so far," Priskos said at the briefing. "We're going to be digging into the data a lot more as we go forward."

The five-segment Qualification Motor-2 (QM-2) test booster for NASA's SLS just prior to full duration firing at Orbital ATK test facility in Promontory, Utah, on June 28, 2016.  Credit: Julian Leek

The spent five-segment Qualification Motor-2 (QM-2) test booster for NASA's SLS soon after the full duration firing at Orbital ATK test facility in Promontory, Utah, on June 28, 2016. Credit: Julian Leek

Meanwhile the buildup of US flight hardware continues at NASA and contractor centers around the US, as well as the Orion service module from ESA.

The maiden test flight of the SLS/Orion is targeted for no later than November 2018 and will be configured in its initial 70-metric-ton (77-ton) version with a liftoff thrust of 8.4 million pounds.

In February 2016 the welded skeletal backbone for the Orion EM-1 mission arrived at the Kennedy Space Center for outfitting with all the systems and subsystems necessary for flight.

The core stage fuel tank holding the cryogenic liquid oxygen and hydrogen propellants is being welded together at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, LA.

Orion crew module pressure vessel for NASA's Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) is unveiled for the first time on Feb. 3, 2016 after arrival at the agency's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. It is secured for processing in a test stand called the birdcage in the high bay inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building at KSC. Launch to the Moon is slated in 2018 atop the SLS rocket.  Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

Orion crew module pressure vessel for NASA's Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) is unveiled for the first time on Feb. 3, 2016 after arrival at the agency's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. It is secured for processing in a test stand called the birdcage in the high bay inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building at KSC. Launch to the Moon is slated in 2018 atop the SLS rocket. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

Although the SLS-1 flight in 2018 will be uncrewed, NASA plans to launch astronauts on the SLS-2/EM-2 mission slated for the 2021 to 2023 timeframe.

It all depends on the budget NASA receives from Congress and who is elected President in the election in November 2016.

"If we can keep our focus and keep delivering, and deliver to the schedules, the budgets and the promise of what we've got, I think we've got a very capable vision that actually moves the nation very far forward in moving human presence into space," Gerstenmaier explained at the briefing.

"This is a very capable system. It's not built for just one or two flights. It is actually built for multiple decades of use that will enable us to eventually allow humans to go to Mars in the 2030s.

One forerunner to the Mars mission could be a habitation module around the Moon perhaps five years from now.

Stay tuned here for Ken's continuing Earth and Planetary science and human spaceflight news.

Ken Kremer

An Orbital ATK technician inspects hardware and instrumentation on a full-scale, test version booster for NASA's new rocket, the Space Launch System. The booster is being cooled to approximately 40 degrees Fahrenheit ahead of its second qualification ground test June 28 at Orbital ATK's test facilities in Promontory, Utah. Testing at the thermal extremes experienced by the booster on the launch pad is important to understanding the effects of temperature on the performance of how the propellant burns.   Credits: Orbital ATK

An Orbital ATK technician inspects hardware and instrumentation on a full-scale, test version booster for NASA's new rocket, the Space Launch System. The booster is being cooled to approximately 40 degrees Fahrenheit ahead of its second qualification ground test June 28 at Orbital ATK's test facilities in Promontory, Utah. Testing at the thermal extremes experienced by the booster on the launch pad is important to understanding the effects of temperature on the performance of how the propellant burns. Credits: Orbital ATK

The second and final qualification motor (QM-2) test for the Space Launch System's booster is seen, Tuesday, June 28, 2016, at Orbital ATK Propulsion Systems test facilities in Promontory, Utah. During the Space Launch System flight the boosters will provide more than 75 percent of the thrust needed to escape the gravitational pull of the Earth, the first step on NASA's Journey to Mars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

The second and final qualification motor (QM-2) test for the Space Launch System's booster is seen, Tuesday, June 28, 2016, at Orbital ATK Propulsion Systems test facilities in Promontory, Utah. During the Space Launch System flight the boosters will provide more than 75 percent of the thrust needed to escape the gravitational pull of the Earth, the first step on NASA's Journey to Mars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Mountainside test location for the Qualification motor-2 (QM-2) test of the 5-segment solid rocket motor designed for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) at Orbital ATK test facility in Promontory, Utah, on June 28, 2016.  Credit: Julian Leek

Mountainside test location for the Qualification motor-2 (QM-2) test of the 5-segment solid rocket motor designed for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) at Orbital ATK test facility in Promontory, Utah, on June 28, 2016. Credit: Julian Leek

The five-segment Qualification motor-2 (QM-2) test booster for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) being readied for full duration firing at Orbital ATK test facility in Promontory, Utah, on June 28, 2016.  Credit: NASA

The five-segment Qualification motor-2 (QM-2) test booster for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) being readied for full duration firing at Orbital ATK test facility in Promontory, Utah, on June 28, 2016. Credit: NASA

 

 

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