The Space Review: Everybody wants to rule the world

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2999/1


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Shutting down manned space program!

• Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham, in an op-ed in the Feb. 27, 2010 Houston Chronicle, wrote: "Except in wartime, there has never been another government program that produced as much technological innovation as the U.S. space program, and there likely never will be...." Cunninghman juxtaposed the ending of Constellation to the proposed "increased spending on the discredited global warming hypocrisy."

"Have we really degenerated as a country to the point where we can no longer fund our own exploration? Did we spend $460 billion becoming pre-eminent in space, only to stupidly surrender it?"

• On April 12, 2010, nineteen astronauts, whose service spanned from the early 1960s Mercury program to the Space Shuttle, joined by former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, legendary flight director Gene Kranz, and Apollo-era director of the Johnson Space Center Chris Kraft, sent a letter to President Obama, expressing their outrage at the attempt to shut down manned space exploration, as the nation's space program is "reduced to mediocrity."

"For those of us who have accepted the risk and dedicated a portion of our lives to the exploration of outer space, this is a terrible decision. America's greatness lies in her people: she will always have men and women willing to ride rockets into the heavens.

"Too many men and women have worked too hard and sacrificed too much to achieve America's preeminence in space, only to see that effort needlessly thrown away.... This is not the time to abandon the promise of the space frontier for a lack of will or an unwillingness to pay the price."

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Killing the Future: When Obama Attacked NASA, He Violated His Oath

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2011/3814obama_kills_future_nasa.html


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Inadequate for the USA!

ZERO progress towards RE Acquiring Critical Shuttle Capabilities--- IN FACT Going wrong WAY! Impacts National Security!
Moving SLOWLY towards a under funded capsule program with minimum capabilities. Inadequate for the USA!

Fwd: Delta 4-Heavy launch back on track after payload-related delay

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: June 3, 2016 at 7:52:19 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Delta 4-Heavy launch back on track after payload-related delay

 

Spaceflight Now

 

Upcoming Delta 4-Heavy launch back on track after payload-related delay

June 2, 2016 Justin Ray

 

http://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/full06.jpg

Delta 4-Heavy file photo. Credit: Walter Scriptunas II / Scriptunas Images

 

CAPE CANAVERAL — A new launch date has been established — June 9 — for the Delta 4-Heavy rocket to carry a classified satellite into space for U.S. national security needs.

 

Liftoff of the United Launch Alliance rocket will be possible during a five-hour period stretching from 1:30 to 6:30 p.m. EDT (1730-2230 GMT). The actual launch window is hidden within that unclassified period.

 

Readiness of the payload delayed the flight from its earlier target of June 4. But given the secretive nature of the spacecraft, no details were publicly revealed about what specifically triggered the slip.

 

The satellite and rocket are stacked atop Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for the mission.

 

"The spacecraft, launch vehicle and support systems are ready to support launch," United Launch Alliance said in a statement to the press today.

 

The launch is being performed for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office, the agency responsible for the country's spy satellite fleet. The NRO is a joint organization between the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community.

 

The identity of the satellite launching aboard the Delta 4-Heavy is top-secret. The launch is known as NROL-37.

 

It is the first of five national security space launches scheduled over the next four months, three aboard Delta 4 rockets and two on Atlas 5.

 

After the Heavy, the Navy's MUOS 5 communications satellite and the NROL-61 mission are planned on back-to-back Atlas 5 launches, then a pair of Delta 4s will launch the second set of Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program, or GSSAP, satellites for U.S. Strategic Command followed by the Air Force's Wideband Global SATCOM 8 communications spacecraft.

 

© 1999-2016 Spaceflight Now Inc.

 

Fwd: Elon Musk hopes SpaceX will send humans to Mars in 2024

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: June 3, 2016 at 7:56:09 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Elon Musk hopes SpaceX will send humans to Mars in 2024

spaceflightnow.com

 

Elon Musk hopes SpaceX will send humans to Mars in 2024

 

http://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/21236949258_b9b916f54f_k-2.jpg

Artist's concept of SpaceX's Red Dragon capsule on Mars. Credit: SpaceX

 

SpaceX's plan to send a Dragon capsule to Mars in 2018 will be the first in a sequence of unmanned commercial missions to the rust-colored world before the first voyage with humans as soon as 2024, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Wednesday.

 

The company announced in April its intention to dispatch a next-generation Dragon spacecraft, an uncrewed derivative of the vehicle SpaceX is developing to send astronauts to the International Space Station, to Mars on an interplanetary test flight in 2018.

 

Speaking at Code Conference 2016, a tech industry conclave sponsored by Recode and Vox Media held this week near Los Angeles, Musk said SpaceX will send a mission to Mars every two years beginning in 2018, when the positions of the planets allow spacecraft to make a direct trip from Earth.

 

Known for announcing ambitious schedules, Musk acknowledged the timetable is ambitious and rife with uncertainties, but the plan is a stepping stone toward eventually sending large numbers of people to Mars, along with millions of pounds of support equipment.

 

"The basic game plan is we're going to send a mission to Mars with every Mars opportunity from 2018 onwards," Musk said Wednesday night. "They occur approximately every 26 months. We're establishing cargo flights to Mars that people can count on for cargo."

 

"That's what's necessary to create a self-sustaining, or a growing, city on Mars," he said.

 

SpaceX has not revealed what the "Red Dragon" mission in 2018 will carry, but NASA has signed on to provide deep space navigation and communications support, along with a suite of sensors.

 

The launch opportunity to Mars in 2018 occurs in May, followed by another window in July and August of 2020.

 

"I think, if things go according to plan, we should be able to launch people probably in 2024, with arrival in 2025," Musk said.

 

"When I cite a schedule, it's actually a schedule I think is true," Musk said in a response to a question at Code Conference. "It's not some fake schedule I don't think is true. I may be delusional. That is entirely possible, and maybe it's happened from time to time, but it's never some knowingly fake deadline ever."

 

He did not specify whether the mission would land on Mars or just orbit the planet.

 

Travelers will not go to Mars aboard the upgraded "Crew Dragon" vehicle SpaceX intends to launch to the red planet in 2018. Its internal volume is roughly equivalent to an SUV, making for an uncomfortable ride, and it will not have the ability to return to Earth.

 

Musk plans to unveil his architecture for colonizing Mars, a prime mission of SpaceX when he established the company in 2002, in September at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.

 

"That's the game plan — approximately 2024 to launch the first of the Mars colonial transport systems with people," Musk said Wednesday.

 

SpaceX will have to develop a giant rocket, larger than the Saturn 5 moon rocket or the Space Launch System currently pursued by NASA, to make Musk's objective a reality. The design of the new rocket, and the location of its factory and launch base, have not been announced.

 

The cost of Musk's Mars dream is also unquantified, at least publicly, but he said SpaceX needs "a lot of money" for the project from revenues earned through lucrative contracts with NASA, the U.S. military, and commercial communications customers.

 

In parallel, NASA is working on its own Mars program, aiming to launch astronauts aboard the Space Launch System and Orion crew capsule on a mission to the vicinity of the red planet in the 2030s. The cost of that government-backed program is also unclear, and it still lacks technical and schedule detail.

 

NASA plans to launch a series of crewed flights to cis-lunar space, a region near the moon, beginning as soon as 2021 to test out deep space operations, life support systems, solar-electric thrusters, and habitats for the round-trip voyage to Mars.

 

The space agency's plan for robotic Mars missions is more defined, with a stationary lander named InSight due for departure in May 2018 to detect quakes and study the planet's deep interior.

 

A rover based on the Curiosity vehicle currently exploring Mars will follow with a launch in 2020, carrying with it a set of scientific instruments to help search for evidence of past life and hardware to demonstrate the ability to generate oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. That is key to future human expeditions, which will need to make their own breathable air, water and propellants.

 

The rover launching in 2020 will also collect rock specimens for retrieval by a later probe to return them to Earth.

 

In 2022, NASA tentatively plans to send an orbiter to Mars in the second phase of a program to robotically return samples from the surface of Mars to Earth. The craft could be powered by an efficient solar-electric propulsion system, allowing the orbiter to move more freely around Mars and test the ability to rendezvous with another object in Mars orbit.

 

A lander to actually pick up the rock samples could follow later in the 2020s.

 

The European Space Agency's ExoMars rover is also scheduled for launch in 2020. It will burrow up to 2 meters, or 6 feet, into the Martian crust to gather core samples that have been shielded from ionizing radiation that scientists believe damage or destroy the organic signatures of past life at the surface.

 

China is developing its own rover to launch to Mars in 2020, and the United Arab Emirates is funding a planned Martian atmospheric research orbiter to lift off from Earth the same year.

 

 

 

SpaceNews.com

 

Musk plans human Mars missions as soon as 2024

by Jeff Foust — June 2, 2016

 

http://spacenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Elon-Musk-at-CASIS-2015-07-07-879x485.png

Elon Musk, seen here speaking at a 2015 conference, said June 1 his upcoming Mars mission plan would allow for the first human Mars mission as soon as 2024. Credit: CASIS video still

 

BROOMFIELD, Colo. — A Mars mission architecture SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk will unveil in September will call for a series of missions starting in 2018 leading up to the first crewed mission to the planet in 2024, Musk said June 1.

 

In an on-stage interview at the Code Conference, run by the technology publication Recode in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, Musk repeated earlier comments that he would announce his architecture for human missions to Mars in September at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.

 

That plan would start with the uncrewed launch of a Dragon spacecraft in 2018 on a Mars landing mission dubbed Red Dragon. SpaceX announced April 27 it would fly that mission working in cooperation with NASA, who will provide technical expertise but no funding in exchange for data from the spacecraft's Mars landing attempt.

 

"The basic game plan is that we're going to send a mission to Mars with every Mars opportunity from 2018 onwards," he said. Launch windows for Mars missions open every 26 months, with the next opening in the spring of 2018.

 

"We're establishing cargo flights to Mars that people can count on," he said. "I think if things go according to plan, we should be able to launch people probably in 2024, with arrival in 2025."

 

Musk declined to give additional details about the plan, including the "very big rocket" that would launch the crewed vehicles. "In September I'll tell you," he said.

 

Earlier in the interview, Musk said that SpaceX would attempt to refly a recovered Falcon 9 first stage within the next three months. "We plan to refly one of the landed rocket boosters hopefully in about two or three months," he said. "We want to start reflying them before the end of the summer."

 

Musk didn't disclose who the customer would be for the first launch of a Falcon 9 with a reused first stage, although company officials recently said a couple of potential customers had expressed interest. SpaceX has now landed four Falcon 9 first stages, although some will be used for ground tests and the one from the first landing, in December 2015, will be put on display outside the company's Hawthorne, California headquarters.

 

Musk also said the first Falcon Heavy launch was still scheduled before the end of the year. That launch, he said, would not carry a payload, despite earlier reports that where was some interest from customers in flying on that vehicle.

 

He also addressed the lengthy development delays of the Falcon Heavy, whose first launch was originally scheduled to take place several years ago. "It's not like we had a lot of pressing customers who wanted us to launch this," he said. In fact, at least one company, ViaSat, decided to purchase a launch on an Ariane 5 because of Falcon Heavy delays, reserving its Falcon Heavy contract for a later mission.

 

Musk also said that SpaceX, which has launched three Falcon 9 missions in less than two months, would maintain a high launch rate. "We're sort of backlogged on our launches and we're trying to get them out as quickly as we can," he said, referring to the June 2015 Falcon 9 launch vehicle that halted launches for nearly six months.

 

"The launches will take place every two to four weeks. That's quite a high launch cadence," he said of the company's upcoming schedule.

 

Next year will also see the debut of the Dragon v2, also known as Crew Dragon, that SpaceX is developing for NASA's commercial crew program. That vehicle will be used for transporting NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and a version of it will also fly Mars missions.

 

Musk suggested he might fly on a Dragon vehicle in several years. "I think I will at some point," he said when asked if he planned to fly in space. "I'll probably go to orbit in four or five years, something like that."

 

 

2016 Spacenews, Inc. All Rights Reserved

 

Fwd: SpaceX’s latest booster back home as company mulls pricing, proof tests

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: June 4, 2016 at 4:30:36 PM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: SpaceX's latest booster back home as company mulls pricing, proof tests

 

SpaceX's latest booster back home as company mulls pricing, proof tests – Spaceflight Now

A Falcon 9 first stage booster returned to Port Canaveral aboard SpaceX's landing barge Thursday, six days after touching down following liftoff with the Thaicom 8 telecom satellite. Credit: SpaceX

A Falcon 9 rocket core recovered after last week's launch of a Thai communications satellite returned to port in Florida on Thursday as SpaceX preps a separate rocket structure for tests to prove it can withstand multiple missions and mulls pricing of a previously-flown rocket, targeting a re-flight of a used booster by the end of the summer.

Standing with a slight tilt after a hard landing at sea, the 15-story booster arrived at Port Canaveral for inspection and potential reuse.

It will join three other recovered Falcon 9 first stages in SpaceX's inventory.

The first Falcon 9 booster landed by SpaceX in December at Cape Canaveral will go on vertical display later this year outside the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, California. A rocket core that achieved the first landing at sea in April is tagged to be the first previously-flown booster to launch a second time.

Speaking at Code Conference 2016, a tech industry meeting held this week near Los Angeles, SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk the company plans to re-fly the used rocket again in two or three months.

"Something like that," Musk said. "It will be an important milestone. So far, the stages are looking quite good, even though they are coming through a really difficult re-entry situation, but they're looking in good shape. We now have four of them, so we want to start re-flying them towards the end of the summer."

A rocket that touched down on SpaceX's landing barge shortly after a launch with the Japanese JCSAT 14 communications satellite May 6 survived extreme conditions on re-entry, withstanding high speeds and scorching temperatures at the outer edge of the rocket's operating envelope. While SpaceX founder Elon Musk says that rocket could conceivably fly again, SpaceX engineers intend to transport it to the company's facility in McGregor, Texas, to use it as a ground test article.

The fate of the first stage that launched the Thaicom 8 communications satellite Friday has not been announced by SpaceX.

A camera aboard SpaceX's drone ship captured this view of the Falcon 9 booster descending to landing May 27. Credit: SpaceX

The latest booster touched down on SpaceX's drone ship, dubbed "Of Course I Still Love You" after a sentient starship in author Iain Banks' sci-fi universe, about 420 miles (680 kilometers) east of Cape Canaveral less than 9 minutes after liftoff Friday.

The purpose of the the reusability program is to reduce the cost of SpaceX's launches, which are already less expensive than any of its major competitors.

The last two Falcon 9 missions deployed telecom spacecraft into geostationary transfer orbit, a type of orbit where a satellite takes an oval-shaped path around Earth, with a low point just above the atmosphere and a high point tens of thousands of miles above Earth.

The Falcon 9 placed the Thaicom 8 satellite, which weighed less than 6,700 pounds (about 3,025 kilograms) at launch, into an exceptionally high "supersynchronous" orbit with its most distant point more than 56,000 miles (90,000 kilometers) above Earth.

Lofting satellites to such high altitudes requires more speed than putting a payload into low Earth orbit — with the first stage reaching speeds as high as 5,000 mph (8,000 kilometers per hour — meaning the Falcon 9's booster comes back to Earth with more velocity, subjecting the vehicle to higher aerodynamic and thermal stresses.

The extra velocity needed by such missions eliminates any possibility of the rocket reversing course and returning to a landing at the launch base, as a Falcon 9 carrying 11 small Orbcomm satellites to a low-altitude orbit did in December.

The Falcon 9 first stage, standing 15 stories tall, returned to Port Canaveral on Thursday after launching the Thaicom 8 communications satellite. Credit: James Murati/Bionetics

After detaching from the Falcon 9's upper stage about two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff, the descending rocket stage that sent Thaicom 8 toward space last week sailed hundreds of thousands of feet over cloud tops in a dramatic time lapse video released by SpaceX. Three of the rocket's nine Merlin engines ignited to slow down for re-entry, then aerodynamic grid fins maneuvered the rocket over the drone ship, when the booster conducted a propulsive landing burn for a vertical on-target touchdown.

The landing speed was close to the Falcon 9's design limit, but a crushable aluminum honeycomb core embedded inside the booster's four carbon-fiber landing legs absorbed the impact, causing the rocket to settle on to the barge with a noticeable lean.

Musk said the "crush core" is inside the landing legs to take the force of rough landings. It will be replaced if first stage ends up flying again.

"The crush core in the Falcon legs is reusable after soft landings, but needs to be replaced after hard (landings)," Musk wrote on Twitter.

In the meantime, SpaceX engineers in Texas will put the rocket stage recovered after the May 6 launch of JCSAT 14, which went through the Falcon 9's most stressing descent yet, through a stringent series of tests to confirm other vehicles can reliably fly again.

Called delta qualification tests, the checks on the ground will help SpaceX prove to itself, customers and the insurance community that a rocket flying for the second time is as reliable as a vehicle just out of the factory.

"That's probably more the long pole in getting to flight than doing anything to the vehicle itself," said Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, in an April interview with Spaceflight Now.

File photo of Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and chief operating officer. Credit: NASA/Jay Westcott

She said SpaceX does not want to tinker much with the rocket slated to fly again, so officials selected a separate booster to put through ground testing. Musk initially suggested the Falcon 9 rocket slated for the first reuse mission would be fired on the ground at Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39A, a facility SpaceX is readying for flights later this year, but it is now unclear if that is still the plan.

"What we would like to do is demonstrate life margin as well as amplitude margin," Shotwell said in April. "I don't think we're going to pull components off and vibrate them — shake them and bake them — although we may. If we feel like we have to do that, we will go do that."

Burning a mixture of super-chilled RP-1 kerosene and liquid oxygen, the Falcon 9's Merlin 1D engines are already qualified to fly more than once. The entire first stage structure, including tanks and avionics systems, may still need extra testing.

"I think there's enough margin built into our qualification program that we could at least fly another time on the boxes and such, and our engines have already been qualified for more than one flight," Shotwell said.

In parallel with the engineering tests, SpaceX's management and sales team is working behind the scenes to assuage insurance underwriters on the risks of reusing Falcon 9 boosters.

Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX's vice president of commercial sales, said earlier this week that the launch company is meeting with insurance firms in the next couple of weeks, according to a report in Space News.

Hofeller made his remarks at the CASBAA Satellite Industry Forum in Singapore. The meetings with insurance providers will help "make sure they understand our process for certifying these (previously-flown boosters) and getting them ready for flight," Hofeller said in the Space News report.

A close-up of restraints installed at the base of the Falcon 9 booster for stabilization as the rocket returned to Port Canaveral on Thursday. Credit: James Murati/Bionetics

Shotwell told Spaceflight Now in April that it will take some time to satisfy concerns in the insurance community. In the Space News report, an unnamed insurer said the risk management community is more than willing to underwrite Falcon 9 launches, presumably with used components, but wants more information.

"But we would like to know exactly what we are insuring," the official said, according to Space News. "They have move rather quickly through design modifications for the rocket and it's not always clear what new elements have been introduced."

Shotwell outlined SpaceX's relationship with the insurance industry in April.

"They've already gotten the qualification of the Merlin engine (for multiple missions), which tends to drive the insurance community," Shotwell told Spaceflight Now. "Structures is a little more definitive analytically. You can kind of get through that. I think it's the engines, and they already know that they've been qualified for more than one flight. I don't think it's going to be a big lift with the insurance community, but it's certainly going to take work."

SpaceX has not identified a mission for the first flight of a reused rocket, but Hofeller said it will probably be a commercial mission. Shotwell said in April the top two candidates will likely be missions with enough excess capacity to allow the rocket to return to a landing on land, implying they might be destined for relatively low orbits.

The company has also not confirmed whether the launch will originate from Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

The price of a launch with a reused booster, at least initially, is also an open question, SpaceX officials said.

Shotwell said she hopes SpaceX can realize a 30 percent cost reduction when flying Falcon 9 missions with a first stage out of the company's inventory, and not fresh off the assembly line. SpaceX currently offers Falcon 9 missions for about $62 million on the commercial market.

SpaceX launched the Thaicom 8 communications satellite from Cape Canaveral on May 27, marking the 25th flight of a Falcon 9. Credit: SpaceX

"The ultimate goal is just the cost of re-fueling and re-launching, which is way more than 30 percent," Shotwell told Spaceflight Now in April when asked to clarify the pricing strategy. "Near-term, I hope I don't have refurbishment, but I certainly have inspection, and I have to recover the investment that I made in that rocket, so we won't see the 30 percent (reduction) right away.

"Over time, I think we will probably get there, and then ultimately I'd like to be substantially less, but we'll have to see," she said earlier this year.

The second stage of the Falcon 9, powered by a single Merlin engine, will continue to be expendable on each mission. SpaceX is working on a scheme to recover the clamshell-like payload fairing mounted on the nose of the rocket in a bid to reuse that part along with the first stage.

And what about a discount for the first customer to fly on a used Falcon 9 booster?

"My guess is we'll have to do something for them, but I don't know," Shotwell said.

 

© 2016 Spaceflight Now Inc.

 

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