From Florida Today "NASA is weighing what it would take to keep the shuttle flying until 2015, but not because the agency actually intends to do so, officials said today.
But in advance of a presidential election that will yield a new administration next January, NASA is developing answers to questions the agency expects to to field questions from Congress and the next president on the matter."
From Wired.com "Aug 29, 1965: An astronaut in space holds a conversation with an aquanaut underwater, marking another milestone in human communication.
Astronaut Gordon Cooper, orbiting the Earth with Pete Conrad in Gemini 5, hooked up by radiotelephone with an old pal, astronaut-turned-aquanaut Scott Carpenter, who was living and working 205 feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean near La Jolla, California, aboard Sealab II.
The two men had known each other since 1959, when they were among the seven pilots chosen by NASA to be America's first Project Mercury astronauts. Carpenter, a former Navy pilot, had already been in space, the solo astronaut on a mistake-plagued, three-orbit flight aboard Aurora 7 that resulted in his being effectively grounded.
He was on leave from the space agency when he joined the Navy's Sealab II project as training officer. Carpenter eventually resigned from NASA in 1967. He retired from the Navy in 1969.
Cooper and Conrad, meanwhile, were nearing the end of an eight-day orbital mission to test human endurance in space. Eight days was recognized as the time needed to travel to the moon and back. (Five days was the longest Soviet space flight before then, and the American record was four days. By years' end, American astronauts would complete a 14-day mission in space.)" Click here for more
Work on the first "purpose-built" commercial spaceport is underway in New Mexico, a large stretch of remote landscape to be the launching site for rockets as well as passenger-carrying spaceships.
If all continues on track, licensed operations of vertical launches from Spaceport America will occur in early 2009. Horizontal flight of space hardware is scheduled for late 2010.
Spaceport America, to be built near Las Cruces, New Mexico, is to be the home operations for Virgin Galactic. That spaceline firm has been established by British billionaire, Sir Richard Branson. Paying customers -- at $200,000 a seat -- have already signed on the dotted line for future suborbital passenger flight.
Meanwhile, work is progressing in Mojave, California at Scaled Composites. That's the home for constructing the huge White Knight Two carrier plane - the mothership that will haul the passenger-carrying SpaceShipTwo to drop altitude. From there, the sky's not the limit for space travelers that will rocket to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere - then glide back to terra firma.
A key step, however, in establishing Spaceport America is completion of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). A draft EIS has already been sent to the Federal Aviation Administration. That's a major step toward obtaining a spaceport operation license.
From MSNBC "For the first time in five years, the international space station changed course on Wednesday to avoid a piece of space junk — in this case, satellite debris that the Russians have insisted wasn't there.
The five-minute maneuver made use of the engines aboard the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle, or ATV, which is docked at the Russian end of the station. As a result of the thruster firing, the space station's 18,000-mph progress around Earth was slowed by about 2 mph, lowering the average height of its orbit by about a mile.
The ATV was already being prepared to separate early next month after a highly successful resupply and reboost mission over the past six months. Controllers had planned to put the craft through a variety of tests during three weeks of solo flight before safely plunging it into the atmosphere over the south Pacific. "
I was trying to get my head around Garrett Finney's work. He's an architect, but until recently he spent most of his time as a NASA contractor. He designed "habitation modules" for astronauts: things like a tent that could be erected on the moon and a table for the International Space Station.
But even without the NASA projects, Finney's résumé defies expectations. Educated at Yale, he's also seriously studied blacksmithing. Lately, he's focused on travel trailers, of all things. He doesn't yet have a travel-trailer client. It's just that travel trailers interest him.
He could have a normal architectural career if he wanted one. Last year, House & Garden magazine labeled him "The Thinker" and lavished eight pages on a Kentucky guesthouse that he designed for friends. Finney himself fashioned the Donald Judd-like furniture out of wood salvaged from the property's ruined tobacco barn, and he used that wood to build much of the guesthouse itself. Publicity like that can make a career — if, of course, you're interested in a career designing houses.
But Finney likes designing other things, too. At his office on Houston Avenue, he showed me a booklet of his almost comically broad-ranging work.
He paused at a photo of more of his furniture: a Z-shaped night table next to a cherry-and-iron bed. "That's Malcolm Gladwell's bed," he said offhandedly.
And finally, I could make a little sense of Garrett Finney.
The connector
Malcolm Gladwell, the big-idea guy who wrote Blink and The Tipping Point, loves surprising linkages. He is, Finney says, a friend of a friend.
Gladwell hasn't written directly about Finney. But in The Tipping Point, he described "connectors" who link wildly different subcultures, people with "a gift for bringing the world together." Connectors are rare, he claimed, but are crucial to the spread of all sorts of new ideas.
More recently, Gladwell wrote a New Yorker article about the firm Intellectual Ventures, which very deliberately (and very successfully) manufactures new ideas. To brainstorm, Intellectual Ventures brings together smart people from different fields. At the same conference table, you might find a neurosurgeon, a computer engineer, a chemist, a paleontologist and a quantum physicist. The company files an astonishing 500 patents a year.
Breakthrough ideas, Gladwell wrote, are surprisingly easy to generate. You don't need a genius. You just need people to mix it up, to stretch outside the worlds they usually think about.
Finney, always lurching from subculture to subculture, seems like a natural-born connector, as well as a natural generator of new ideas.
And he made Gladwell's bed. How perfect is that?
The space table
Finney, flipping through the book of his projects, gets especially excited describing a table he designed for the International Space Station. Zero gravity turns "table" into a very strange concept.
The space station's floating astronauts could Velcro their laptops or lunches to any surface, anywhere in the habitation module, and engineers argued that that would be an efficient way to go about things. But the astronauts — especially the ones who'd been on the space station for months on end — wanted a table. It wasn't a physical need as much as a psychological one. Outer space is profoundly disorienting, and they needed a place to gather, a place to work, a place to feel ... well, grounded.
Finney designed a table that didn't require chairs. Astronauts would hook their toes between skinny bars that ran parallel to the table's "top," a few inches from the "floor," then bend their knees so that they'd float in a seated position. It's like a lot of things in zero G, he says: really weird at first, but comfortable after two weeks.
NASA, strapped for cash, will probably never build the table. In models and drawings, it looks elegant but a little strange, like sleek high-concept furniture designed by an artist. Showing one of those drawings, Finney grins as if he got away with something. As an institution, NASA is all about function; form is suspect. "Working around engineers," he says, "you learn never to talk about aesthetics. You talk about efficiency. I don't sound like an architect anymore."
The habitation module
Last year, as Finney's NASA-related work was winding down, he began thinking about a different kind of habitation module: the RV. He's not a fan of the enormous houses-on-wheels he sees rolling down highways. They're gas guzzlers. They're expensive to buy and expensive to operate. Even Airstream trailers, beloved by design fans, strike him as oversized and clumsy — tolerable, maybe, for the Greatest Generation but nothing that eco-conscious twentysomethings would stand for.
Right now Finney's Faro Design office holds a full-size cardboard model for the pop-top "Cricket" trailer he's working on. The office coffee pot sits in the cardboard Cricket's kitchen — a guarantee that Finney and his young employees will be in and out of the model all day, thinking consciously and unconsciously about how it could be better.
Sometime in the next few months, Finney plans to build a prototype of the Cricket and take it on a NASA-like "shakedown cruise": which is to say, a camping trip. He'll find out the hard way whether a regular car, with a four-cylinder engine, can tow the trailer. He'll see whether the fold-down wings on the outside can hold bikes or kayaks. He'll eat at the little table, sleep in one of the fold-down beds. When he showers, he'll see whether the water flows out the drain in the middle of the Cricket's floor.
He says, happily, that he expects lots of little mishaps. He loves prototypes, loves the shakedown system he learned at NASA. Usually, when architects design a building, they're stuck with problems they couldn't predict.
Finney hopes that, post-shakedown, the Cricket prototype will help him snare a venture capitalist. He doesn't have anyone in mind yet, but that doesn't worry him.
NASA technology of the 21st century is being used to help decipher faded sections of the Dead Sea Scrolls that are some 2,000 years old.
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) unveiled a project this week that makes use of infrared imaging technology and computer image-processing techniques developed by retired NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientist, Greg Bearman.
Innovative technologies are to be applied in monitoring scroll fragments on an ongoing basis for conservation purposes.
The project will involve the documentation of all of the thousands of Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as fragments belonging to about 900 manuscripts - placing them in an Internet data bank that will be made available to the public.
Two thousand years ago, hundreds of scrolls -- which include the oldest written record of the Old Testament ever found -- were buried in the caves of the Judean Desert. Now, 60 years after the discovery of the first scrolls by Bedouin shepherds, the IAA has established a pilot effort to provide researchers and the public around the globe access to the historical scrolls.
The NASA-developed technology will image the scrolls in color and infrared, making it possible to read scores of scroll fragments that were blackened or faded over time and made unreadable to the naked eye.
From MSNBC "A study of small galaxies circling around the Milky Way found that while they range dramatically in brightness, they all surprisingly pack about the same mass. The work suggests there is a minimum size for galaxies, and it could shed light on mysterious dark matter.
Spinning around the Milky Way are at least 23 pint-sized galaxies, each shining with the light of anywhere from a thousand to a billion suns. Though each of these galaxies is very dim compared to large galaxies like our own, they span a large range in brightness.
Astronomers led by Louis Strigari of the University of California-Irvine studied the movements of individual stars in these satellite galaxies to determine the mass of each galaxy." Click here for more
Sen. John McCain -- joined by Republican colleagues Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and David Vitter of New Orleans -- sent a letter to President Bush this week, regarding the tensions with Russia.
"We believe it is imperative, as NASA continues the transition from the Space Shuttle to the successor vehicles, that the means for producing additional flight hardware and obtaining additional flight engineering and support services, not be completely and irretrievably lost though destruction or deterioration, at least until a clear path to alternative launch capabilities is in hand," the letter said.
From MSNBC "Some of the gullies that cut the sides of Martian craters were likely formed by meltwater from glaciers that existed a few million years ago, when Mars was wetter than it is now, a new study suggests.
The gully features are similar to ones seen in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica, say the authors of the study, which is detailed in the Aug. 25 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. So this polar region of Earth can act as an analog for Mars' past.
The gullies, young features geologically speaking, were discovered in 2000 by NASA's orbiting Mars Global Surveyor, which is now out of commission. The discovery came as a surprise because scientists had thought that Mars was too dry in the past few million years to host liquid water at its surface, as it is today."
From Space-Travel.com "The chill left on US-Russian relations by Moscow's military incursion into Georgia could spell problems for future US access to the International Space Station, US experts said.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will become dependent on flights to the ISS by Russia's Soyuz spacecraft when it retires the shuttle fleet that has long ferried US astronauts into space in 2010.
NASA will only get its successor space vehicle, Orion, planned for a revival of trips to the moon, ready for flight in 2015 at the earliest.
That leaves the needs of US astronauts visiting the ISS vulnerable to the possibility of a new Cold War between Washington and Moscow after Russia's powerful military overran much of Georgia two weeks ago in the dispute over South Ossetia.
"If recent Russian actions are any indicator, a technical excuse to completely block US access to the ISS for geopolitical reasons would fit nicely into the Kremlin toolkit," Vincent Sabathier, an expert on human space exploration at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told AFP.
Sabathier noted that not only was the short Georgia war a serious thorn in relations, but also the US determination to set up in Poland and the Czech Republic its missile defense system, which Russia calls a threat to its military."
From BBC news "Astronomers looking through the data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the world's largest survey of galaxies, have found a new haul of objects closer to home - including one with a potentially exotic origin.
By searching through a survey region known as Stripe 82, a team led by Dr Andrew Becker of the University of Washington, has discovered almost 50 new asteroid-sized bodies in the outer regions of our Solar System.
As part of a search for supernovae - exploding stars in distant galaxies - the robotic Sloan telescope in New Mexico revisited this area of the southern sky every three days.
By comparing images taken on different nights, the Washington team was able to detect the asteroids as they moved across the sky.
As team member Dr Lynne Jones pointed out: "If you can find things that explode, you can also find things that move, but you need different tools to look for them."
While most of the newly discovered objects are normal members of the Kuiper belt, a large band of icy bodies stretching beyond the orbit of Neptune, there were also surprises. "
"CHICAGO -- A "minor planet" with the prosaic name 2006 SQ372 is just over two billion miles from Earth, a bit closer than the planet Neptune. But this lump of ice and rock is beginning the return leg of a 22,500-year journey that will take it to a distance of 150 billion miles, nearly 1,600 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun, according to a team of researchers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II).
The discovery of this remarkable object was reported today in Chicago, at an international symposium titled "The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Asteroids to Cosmology." A paper describing the discovery technique and the properties of 2006 SQ372 is being prepared for submission to The Astrophysical Journal.
The orbital paths of the major planets are nearly circular, but the orbit of 2006 SQ372 is an ellipse that is four times longer than it is wide, said University of Washington astronomer Andrew Becker, who led the discovery team. The only known object with a comparable orbit is Sedna -- a distant, Pluto-like dwarf planet discovered in 2003 -- but 2006 SQ372's orbit takes it more than one-and-a-half times further from the Sun, and its orbital period is nearly twice as long.
The new object is much smaller than Sedna, Becker said, probably 30-60 miles across instead of nearly 1,000. "It's basically a comet, but it never gets close enough to the Sun to develop a long, bright tail of evaporated gas and dust."
Becker's team found 2006 SQ372 by applying a specialized computer searching algorithm to data taken for a completely different purpose: finding supernova explosions billions of light years away to measure the expansion of the universe. The SDSS-II supernova survey scanned the same long stripe of sky, an area 1,000 times larger than the full moon, every clear night in the fall of 2005, 2006, and 2007.
"If you can find things that explode, you can also find things that move, but you need different tools to look for them," said team member Lynne Jones, also of the University of Washington. The only objects close enough to change position noticeably from one night to the next are in our own solar system, Jones explained. "
"Clouds of water ice drifting above the Martian surface eat up some of the ozone in Mars' atmosphere, a new study suggests, giving scientists new clues about the chemical environment and climate of Earth's nearest neighbor.
Mars has a relatively stable atmosphere that is 95 percent carbon dioxide (Earth's atmosphere is only 0.04 percent carbon dioxide).
Scientists have had a difficult time modeling certain aspects of Mars' atmosphere and some suspected that reactions between atmospheric gases and ice cloud particles could account for the differences between their models and satellite observations, particularly of ozone concentrations."
If you could put your finger on a personal payback from exploring space, it is to be involved in helping discover the unknown. Doing so is exciting and very fulfilling.
That’s the view of Kerrie Miller, a 23-yeard old systems engineer for Honeywell Defense & Space. Her age puts her in that “Gen Y” classification, although she admits that such a nomenclature is too general.
“I don’t use it…I think it’s too general a classification to really capture that this is a very diverse group of people,” Miller says, although the Gen Y term, she adds, denotes the first generation to have available at their finger tips a suite of technological tools - like computers, the Internet, and a range of personal communication equipment and software.
Miller’s current job at Honeywell is helping to track mass and power numbers for all of the firm’s subsystems. Also, she helps maintain the company’s requirements documents and traceability to customer requirements.
Passion for space
In terms of her own personal trajectory that aligned her passion for space and working at a high-tech aerospace firm, Miller can point to early pursuits.
“I first became interested in space in the fifth grade while doing a school project on the solar system,” she explains. Her interest increased after attending Space Camp prior to entering seventh grade.
“All through school, math and science were my best subjects and the ones I enjoyed the most. Early in high school I leaned about aerospace engineering from a cadet at the Air Force Academy. I decided that it was the right degree for me,” she points out.
When Miller was a junior in high school, her physics professor noted the unique qualities of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University – where she received her degree.
“The summer before my senior year in college I had an internship at Honeywell. When I started applying for jobs, Honeywell was one of the top places I was looking at and eventually accepted a position,” Miller says.
Next wave
Fast forward to the present, Miller is eager to share her views about space and working on high-tech projects. “Space is mostly unexplored…and I think it is human nature to want to explore it,” with the space industry an active ingredient in doing just that.
For those Gen Y young people interested in taking part in space exploration, Miller offers several suggestions. “My advice would be to find a project that truly interests you. Even if the work you are doing isn’t your ideal job, knowing that ultimately you are helping to achieve something you really want to see achieved will make your job that much more enjoyable.”
In a very real sense, there is a “passing of the baton” between those people that led the early shaping of the space program and a new generation of 21st century movers and shakers.
“I think the next wave of space program workers will be bolder and more ambitious,” Miller suggests. “We’ve grown up seeing science fiction become a reality, so our mindset is much more open to trying to achieve the ‘impossible’”.
Miller says she fell in love with space early in her life. Looking into the future, what is her vision of the tomorrow’s to come?
“I am ready to see the space program expand and achieve things we never thought possible. In the next 25 years I see us sending humans back to the Moon for extended stays and eventually putting a man or woman on the surface of Mars,” Miller concludes.
-- Premieres Wednesday, August 27 at 9PM ET/PT on Discovery Channel -
In July 1969 the world watched, wondered and worried as three brave astronauts headed for the moon. The extraordinary moment when Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon filled earthbound audiences with pride and confidence in scientific endeavor -- but did we really leap into the future, or did NASA pull off the greatest cover-up in human history?
On Wednesday, August 27 at 9PM ET/PT,MYTHBUSTERS takes on one of their biggest, most controversial myths ever: Could the moon landing have been an elaborate hoax?
First, Adam and Jamie focus on photos, testing the theory that two of NASA's most famous images were shot in a studio. Then, they investigate the myth about walking on the moon, including how the government shot the footage in a studio and then simply slowed it down for that famous "low-lunar gravity look." Grant, Tory and Kari take on hoax theories involving a vacuum chamber - specifically, the claims that footage of astronaut footprints and the American flag were physically impossible and had to have been faked. Without water in a vacuum, how could the moon footprints have been so defined? In the absence of wind, can a flag flutter as if caught in a breeze? Finally, Adam and Jamie travel to a New Mexico observatory to see if they can catch a reflection of a man-made object using a laser aimed at the moon.
Currently in its sixth season and airing Wednesdays at 9PM ET/PT on Discovery Channel, MYTHBUSTERS uses science to determine the truth behind urban legends. New MYTHBUSTERS episodes continue on Wednesday, September 3 (Viral Hour), September 10 (Phone Book Friction) and September 17 (Water Stun Gun).
Posted by spacecoalition at 11:05 AM | Link | 0 comments
Fifteen years ago on August 18th, the Delta Clipper experimental (DC-X) rocket took its first test flight at White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico - just two years after receiving its funding go-ahead. The DC-X team proved that a small group of talented aerospace engineers and managers, without a burdensome bureaucracy hanging over them, could show that space transportation vehicles could operate with the safety, reliability and reusability of military and commercial aircraft.
The 15th anniversary reunion event and conference, held in Alamogordo, NM from August 17-19, 2008, brought together not only the talented engineers and managers who made it happen. The 120 attendees also included some of the "new space" smaller aerospace companies who are on the forefront and working hard to produce rockets and space vehicles for space tourists, and to carry satellites and cargo into space.
They came to hear about lessons learned from the DC-X team and to work together on issues related to Cheaper Assess to Space (CATS). Among the five workshops held on August 19th, two of them focused on "Private Sector Views on Commercial Sub-orbital Flight Markets" and "Private Sector and NASA Views on Development Needs".
Two currently prominent former DC-Xers who gave speeches at the conference were NASA Administrator Mike Griffin and NASA Ames Research Center Director Pete Worden. Many DC-X heroes - both living and those who have passed on - took their the DC-X expertise and went on to work on other rockets and aerospace projects. One of the men honored at the event was the late Apollo XII and Skylab II astronaut Pete Conrad. After retiring from NASA, he went to work for McDonnell Douglas and was actually the one to control the huge DC-X rocket during test flights with just a computer mouse.
Attendees of the DC-X Team reunion event in Alamogordo gather in front of what's left of the Delta Clipper (DC-X) rocket housed at the New Mexico Museum of Space History's Rocket Restoration Center on August 17th. The Museum plans to refurbish the rocket and put it on display at their famous Museum.
Dr. Bill Gaubatz speaks at the DC-X reunion event. He originated and managed the development of the Delta Clipper (DC-X and DC-XA) reusable spaceplane concept when he was at McDonnell Douglas. He and his team's experimental programs proved through flight, that aircraft like operations could be routinely achieved for spaceplanes.
What's left of the DC-X and DC-XA rocket innards after its final of 12 test flights at White Sands Missile Range. On that fatal flight, one of its four legs did not deploy and gravity brought down the DC-X in flames destroying the outer composite shell and charring its insides.
A view inside the DC-X when it was under construction in the early 1990's at McDonnell Douglas in Huntington Beach, CA, with engineer Frank Simmons.
For more information...
Local Alamogordo editor Elva Osterreich and writer Laura London were hard at work covering the DC-X events and conference. Here's the link to the August 19th issue of the Alamogordo Daily News article about NASA Administrator Mike Griffin's speech and Q&A at the DC-X reunion and conference. The article is entitled "Head of NASA Talks Future": http://www.alamogordonews.com/news/ci_10240355
"Fleets of miniature spacecraft may now be closer to liftoff.
To bring this sci-fi vision of 50-pound "micro-spacecraft" and 10-pound "nano-spacecraft" to reality, scientists have now invented a razor-thin skin that can protect craft against the extreme heat and intense cold found in outer space and withstand micrometeoroids hurtling at thousands of miles per hour.
Since launching just 1 pound of anything into orbit costs roughly $5,000, researchers are now developing miniature lightweight spacecraft to send more probes and satellites up at lower cost. The U.S. military and NASA have already sent a number of test micro-satellites into space. NASA aims to get the first communications micro-spacecraft prototypes operational by 2013."
"Alexandria, VA - Challenger Center for Space Science Education is pleased to announce a new space robotics blog for students interested in science, technology and engineering. Madi Sengupta, a NASA Engineer from the Johnson Spaceflight Center Center in Houston, Texas is a former Challenger Learning Center student now working at NASA.
Ms. Sengupta, a self-proclaimed, NASA Gen-Y employee writes about her new job as an engineer working in NASA's robotics branch at the Johnson Space Center and how interactive experiences including her flight at a Challenger Center space science simulator helped her decide to study engineering. To check out the student blog and leave a comment or question for Ms. Sengupta about what it is like to be an engineer and to work at NASA, please visit www.challenger.org. "
"Eclipses of the sun and moon usually come in pairs. A solar eclipse is almost always accompanied by a lunar eclipse two weeks before or after it, since in two weeks the moon travels halfway around its orbit and is likely to form another almost-straight line with the Earth and sun.
This month will be no exception. Just over two weeks after casting its shadow across the Arctic, Russia, Mongolia and China, the moon will swing around to slide deep through the northern edge of the Earth's own shadow on the night of Aug. 16-17.
This partial lunar eclipse will favor much of Europe, Africa and Asia. The moon will pass through the northern part of the Earth's dark umbral shadow between 3:36 p.m. and 6:44 p.m. EDT (19:36 and 22:44 GMT) on Aug. 16."
"Let us now embark upon this great journey into the stars to find whatever may await us. For the past 50 years, space activities have contributed greatly to US scientific discovery, national security, economic development, and national innovation, pride and power (the ultimate example of which was the U.S. victory over the Soviets in the race to the moon). Spurred on by the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, the world's first satellite, and the concern that the U.S was falling behind in science and technology, U.S. policymakers enacted several policy actions to firmly establish the U.S. dominance in science and technology. Among them were the establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the national Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), increased research funding, and a reformulation of the nation's science and technology education system."
"When I was growing up, NASA united Americans to a common purpose and inspired the world with accomplishments we are still proud of. Today, NASA is an organization that impacts many facets of American life. I believe NASA needs an inspirational vision for the 21st Century. My vision will build on the great goals set forth in recent years, to maintain a robust program of human space exploration and ensure the fulfillment of NASA's mission. Together, we can ensure that NASA again reflects all that is best about our country and continue our nation's preeminence in space."
BOULDER, Colorado -- U.S. space exploration policy was the topic of debate by representatives of American Presidential hopefuls, Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama.
The deliberation took place August 14 as part of The Mars Society’s 11th Annual International Mars Society Convention being convened here at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
The airing of views from both political camps brought together Apollo 7 Astronaut Walter Cunningham representing Senator John McCain -- as well as drawing on his own opinions -- and Lori Garver, a former NASA Associate Administrator for policy and plans that represented Senator Barack Obama. “I think we all benefit by having space be bi-partisan,” Garver said.
“It’s not about manned versus unmanned…military versus civilian…government versus private sector. It is overall space policy,” Cunningham suggested, underscoring the need for a “robust space policy.”
A variety of views on space issues were thrashed out, but one central topic was the overall health of NASA’s Orion program – an element of the Constellation system of human-carrying spacecraft and Ares boosters – that can sustain exploratory space travel beyond low Earth orbit.
Both representatives voiced concern about reliance on Russia to gain access to the International Space Station once the space shuttle is decommissioned. Also, attention was paid to the gap between closing down the shuttle program and the start of human spaceflight via the Orion program.
Cross-cutting issues
Obama’s recent statements in Florida, indicating strong support for NASA, served as a lightning rod for conversation.
Cunningham argued that Obama had become a “born again believer” in Orion and Ares, but emphasized that he had not committed to a $2 billion increase to NASA’s budget.
“I maintain that Obama has no real commitment to space,” Cunningham said, flagging the fact that in late 2007 Obama was declaring a delay in NASA’s Constellation program for five years to help pay for education initiatives.
“Does he now understand that you can spend all the money in the world on education…but unless you can do something to inspire the students to learn, it is not going to go very far,” Cunningham suggested.
In full rebuttal mode, Garver stressed that Obama is the only candidate who has specifically committed to increasing NASA’s budget and to flying at least an additional shuttle flight. In addition, Obama has committed to restarting the National Aeronautics and Space Council, Garver pointed out, a way to address key and broad challenges for space that deserve high-level looks in the White House, not just by NASA.
There are cross-cutting issues in commercial, defense, international relations and civilian space that can be reviewed by such a Council, Garver said.
Stay tuned
Concerning Obama’s shift in support for NASA as pronounced recently in Florida, Garver was adamant. “They started hearing from more people within the space community and education community….they really thought it through and they recognize the importance of space.”
Garver stressed that candidates are allowed to evolve their positions. Obama has heard the message, she continued, that Constellation is exploring with humans and robots beyond low Earth orbit.
“He recognizes this is something that is a leadership position that this country needs to take….and he truly believes in that,” Garver said. “I look forward to having him as a Commander-in-Chief to carry us onward, back to the Moon and on to Mars,” she stated.
Garver also took a “stay-tuned” posture by suggesting that additional space policy direction from the Obama camp is in the offing.
Space exploration: progressively starved
Cunningham said, in his view, space exploration has been “progressively starved” since the glory days of Apollo. “McCain has always been a strong supporter of NASA and the space program,” and that the Senator believes that “curiosity and the drive to explore have always been a quintessential American treasure.” Reemphasizing that Obama has shown himself to be “singularly not interested in the nuts and bolts of policy,” Cunningham said that McCain will support the vision for space exploration, “but he will also hold NASA’s feet to the fire on program costs.”
“John McCain was sponsoring space legislation when Obama was still organizing neighborhoods,” Cunningham said. “When I hear that Obama is going to increase the NASA budget -- when up until two weeks ago he was going to take $5 billion out of it and delay the Orion by five years -- it boggles my mind.”
In a closing statement, Cunningham said that “it doesn’t really boil down to what they [the candidates] say. It boils down to what they do, what they believe in, and what kind of commitment they put behind it.”
"Swimmers from around the world are setting world and Olympic records in Beijing this month and most are doing it wearing a swimsuit made of fabric tested at NASA.
Among the Olympic gold medalists wearing Speedo's LZR Racer are Americans Michael Phelps and Natalie Coughlin.
Both had a hand in developing the skintight body suit.
So did aerospace engineer Steve Wilkinson from NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.
Wilkinson, who says he's not much of a swimmer himself, is watching this summer's Olympics with enthusiasm.
"I'm paying very close attention to the swimmers' times," said Wilkinson. "I'm amazed that so many athletes are wearing a fabric I tested in a laboratory in Hampton, Virginia."
Researcher Wilkinson has tested dozens of swimsuit fabrics in NASA Langley's 7- by 11-Inch Low Speed Wind Tunnel.
"This is a fundamental research facility," said Wilkinson. "What we look at are concepts for reducing drag on otherwise smooth surfaces. This is more directed toward fundamental physics ... the interactions between the flow AND THE SURFACE." The fabric that made it through Wilkinson's wind tunnel analysis has already caused a big splash since the LZR Racer swimsuit was introduced in February. Even before the Olympics swimmers wearing the skin-tight body suit set 48 world records. "
"The moon is once again a popular destination, as several space-faring nations are talking about setting up bases there. One reason would be to mine fuel for future fusion reactors.
The fuel in this case is helium-3, a lighter isotope of the helium used in balloons. In high energy collisions, helium-3 fuses with other nuclei to release more energy and less waste than the reactions in traditional nuclear reactors.
"If we can show that we can burn helium-3, it is a much cleaner and safer energy source than other nuclear fuels," said Gerald Kulcinski, director of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "
NASA hosted a media teleconference Monday, Aug. 11 to brief reporters about ongoing assessments regarding the budget and schedule for the Constellation Program.
NASA managers discussed evaluations being made as part of an annual budget planning cycle that considers program design and development activities in relation to available funds.
Teleconference participants included: - Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator, Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington - Jeff Hanley, Constellation program manager, NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston
Replays of the call will be available until Sept. 1 by dialing 888-568-0902. The passcode is "Constellation."
For more information regarding the Constellation program, click here.
Posted by spacecoalition at 12:00 AM | Link | 0 comments
"Students from OSU's Radiation Physics Laboratory built and successfully launched a cosmic radiation detector this summer that reached the edge of outer space. Carried by a helium-filled balloon 12 inches in diameter, the detector flew for more than two hours and reached 104,000 feet in altitude.
The device recorded radiation levels at the varying altitudes - information that will be used by NASA to develop instrumentation for space flight.
"This is really amazing," said Carl Johnson, a physics graduate student who designed andconstructed the device. "Our detector actually flew to the edge of outer space and then back to ground, and the whole time it workedperfectly."
In addition to the radiation sensor, the balloon carried a high-resolution camera, sensors for temperature, pressure and humidity, and a GPS module to determine altitude and geographic position. The balloon and instrumentation launched from the Stillwater campus and landed about 10 miles away in Perry. OSU engineering graduate and undergraduate students Joe Conner, Xander Buck and Ryan Paul conducted the launch.
Funded through a NASA EPSCoR grant, this project was overseen by Drs. Eric Benton and Eduardo Yuihara of the OSU physics department and Dr. Andy Arena of OSU department of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Art Lucas of Lucas Newman Science and Technologies also assisted on the design and development of the radiation detector."
Fly Me to the Moon is hitting the movie screens August 15 - a space adventure of the third kind. That is, it’s in 3D.
Fly me to the Moon combines the Apollo 11 mission with a whimsical twist involving three flies who hop aboard the spacecraft for their own giant leap for the insect world.
This is a G-rated family film that will take the viewer back to the history-making mission of Apollo 11 and planting the first footprints on another world.
Plus, there's a live action/animation cameo by Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin, a member of the Coalition's Board of Advisors.
"U.S. scientists say they've developed a theory that would allow a spacecraft to travel faster than the speed of light without breaking the laws of physics.
Baylor University Associate Professor Gerald Cleaver and graduate student Richard Obousy theorize that by manipulating the extra spatial dimensions of string theory around a spaceship with an extremely large amount of energy, it would create a "bubble" that could cause the ship to travel faster than the speed of light.
"Think of it like a surfer riding a wave," said Cleaver. "The ship would be pushed by the spatial bubble and the bubble would be traveling faster than the speed of light.""
"Spend a night stargazing, and chances are that at least one “star” will appear to suddenly shoot across the sky. Shooting stars occur when tiny flecks of dust and debris – shed by comets during their trips through the inner solar system – burn up in Earth's atmosphere, causing a streak of light. When Earth passes through a particularly dense debris trail, we're treated to a meteor shower. The showers are usually named after the area of the sky from which they appear to originate. For example, August’s Perseids seem to emanate from the constellation Perseus."
NASA has little prospect, even with additional funding, of narrowing a five-year gap between the space shuttle's 2010 retirement and the first missions of its replacement, top space agency officials said Monday.
"The window of opportunity for us to accelerate (the moonship) is closing. In fact, this summer with the re-alignment of our schedule it's closed," said Jeff Hanley, the program manager for the Constellation program, NASA's effort to develop the Orion moonship and Aries rocket that will send it aloft.
"If the money is not there," he said, "it's not there."
With that acknowledgment, the space agency said it was shifting an internal target date for the earliest possible launch of the new spacecraft to September 2014, a one-year delay from a previous target.
The first mission of Orion to the international space station with a half-dozen astronauts will remain set for March 2015, a date NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has told Congress could be advanced if additional millions are appropriated.
In Monday's conference call, Hanley and NASA's Doug Cooke, the agency's deputy exploration chief, said work now would be slowed to match anticipated resources.
If Congress and the White House have a change of heart, they said, NASA will be prepared to respond. But the two officials admitted there is a greater likelihood the financial picture may grow worse.
With the fall election looming, Congress could choose to reject President Bush's 2009 budget proposal for the federal government. Lawmakers could agree to hold spending at 2008 levels until a new administration presents a spending plan well into next year.
In a separate development Monday, NASA's independent Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel issued a report raising concerns over the lunar development effort.
The panel was troubled that NASA was not establishing firm criteria for crew-safety systems. In some some cases, the nine-member panel said, safety systems are being compromised to keep the spacecraft within the weight that can be launched by the Aries rocket.
Hanley defended the design process, which he said was in its early stages.
NASA’s return to the Moon is filled with scientific promise – to address key questions about our solar system, the universe, and our place in them. But there is far more at stake in the replanting of robotic landers and human footprints on the Moon’s aged and cratered landscape.
If you could put your finger on a personal payback from exploring space, it is to be involved in helping discover the unknown. Doing so is exciting and very fulfilling. 
BOULDER, Colorado -- U.S. space exploration policy was the topic of debate by representatives of American Presidential hopefuls, Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama.
NASA’s return to the Moon is filled with scientific promise – to address key questions about our solar system, the universe, and our place in them. But there is far more at stake in the replanting of robotic landers and human footprints on the Moon’s aged and cratered landscape.