28 February 2007
+ 1 - 5 | § ¶Ares Schedule
collectSPACE has a proposed
schedule for Ares I, Ares V and Orion launches. Obviously, this is very much subject to change, but it's still kind of neat.
Keywords: ares,collectspace,constellation,launch_schedule,nasa,orion,space
+ 2 - 3 | § ¶STS-117 Update
Atlantis should
begin rollback on Sunday morning.
"This constitutes, in our evaluation, the worst damage that we have ever seen from hail on the external tank foam," shuttle Program Manager Wayne Hale told reporters today.
Shuttle officials believe the damage to the tank can be repaired at KSC.
The next shuttle window will open around April 21.
27 February 2007
+ 4 - 0 | § ¶STS-117 Update
KSC officials are currently investigating the
the extent of damage to the shuttle caused by a hail storm yesterday afternoon. Cameras at pad 339A show signs of hail damage to Atlantis' external tank. Depending on the extent of the damage, Atlantis may have to roll back to the VAB, in which case the NET March 15 launch date would slip to late April at the earliest.
+ 2 - 2 | § ¶Sacrifice
OK, here's the sacrifice I'm willing to make for the Vision for Space Exploration.
The Vision, you see, is requiring a lot of reprioritizing, with so much funding being tied up in retiring the shuttle, completing the station, readying Ares and Orion and carrying out robotic precursor missions to the moon and Mars (more or less in that order).
While all of that is going on, other things are having to be put on the backburner. So here's the sacrifice I'm willing to make -- as cool as I think it would be to
send a mission to Europa, I'm willling to wait until the shuttle's retired.
26 February 2007
+ 3 - 2 | § ¶Astronaut Farmer
We did, indeed, watch Astronaut Farmer this weekend. Nicole liked it a lot. I, who of course could have nitpicked it ad nauseum, nevertheless found it rather enjoyable. I was disappointed to see it debuted rather poorly this weekend, though.
23 February 2007
+ 2 - 4 | § ¶"Astronaut" Launches
"Astronaut Farmer" is in theaters today. I was curious to see how wide a release it would get -- if it was really something that was of mass interest, or only to me personally. Anyway, it's pretty much everywhere, and you can read
a review at collectSPACE.
Keywords: collectspace,movies,space
+ 6 - 0 | § ¶Dropping Hotels On The Moon
It's no secret to ATW readers that I find Bigelow Aerospace to be one of the most fascinating of the current New Space endeavours. Their ideas could seem pretty out there, but they have three factors going for them that combine to make them really interesting to me. They have interesting ideas; those ideas are rooted in achievable technology; and they're actually working on them. There are companies that have interesting ideas that are utterly unrealistic; there are companies that are pursuing ideas that, while practical, are less cool; and there are companies that have realistic ideas that are waiting for somebody else to pay for them. So when someone does all three, it's worthy of notice.
Anyway, here's
a fascinating Cosmic Log article on the latest Bigelow plans:
Even as Bigelow Aerospace gears up for launching its second prototype space station into orbit, the company has set its sights on something much, much bigger: a project to assemble full-blown space villages at a work site between Earth and the moon, then drop them to the lunar surface, ready for immediate move-in.
In an exclusive interview this week, Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow confirmed that his company has been talking about the concept with NASA – and that the first earthly tests of the techniques involved would take place later this year. The scenario he sketched out would essentially make Bigelow a general contractor for the final frontier.
+ 0 - 7 | § ¶You're Welcome
When an asteroid comes hurling toward Earth, and the planet doesn't get blown back to the stone age,
you can thank the good folks here in Huntsville:
It sounds like science fiction, but Fork, who has a doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and more than 40 years of experience working with lasers, said someday it could be possible to locate a laser in space or on the moon to look at the properties of asteroids and perhaps alter their trajectories away from Earth.
That's right, folks -- Huntsville's gonna save your collective planetary butts with our space lasers. Check it.
22 February 2007
+ 3 - 0 | § ¶On The Shoulders Of Atlas
It's one of the ironies of space tourism that the technology for an orbital destination has apparently been further ahead than the means to get there.
With the inflatable Genesis spacecraft, Bigelow Aerospace has demonstrated that it is well on the way toward being able to create an inhabitable module, which could serve, among other things, as a sort of space hotel. The only catch was, despite all the work being done by Virgin Galactic and others on developing suborbital private spacecraft, the only existing or in-development orbital vehicle that could be used is the Russian Soyuz.
Bigelow has been working with ULA on human-rating one of its boosters, but that still leaves the issue of needing a place on top of it for people to sit.
Apparently, now, ULA is not only proposing use of the Atlas V for commerical human spaceflight, but has
ideas for the capsule to sit on top of it. Granted, the ideas aren't all that new, but this time they're pitching to a different market, and in a changed industry.
21 February 2007
+ 4 - 0 | § ¶Liking Virgin
Per NASA:
NASA officials signed a memorandum of understanding Tuesday with a U.S. company, Virgin Galactic, LLC, to explore the potential for collaborations on the development of space suits, heat shields for spaceships, hybrid rocket motors and hypersonic vehicles capable of traveling five or more times the speed of sound.
Under the terms of the memorandum, NASA Ames Research Center, located in California’s Silicon Valley, and Virgin Galactic LLC, a U.S.-based subsidiary of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, will explore possible collaborations in several technical areas employing capabilities and facilities of NASA’s Ames Research Center.
“As we constantly seek to build upon the advances made by explorers who have come before us, we now embark upon an exciting time in space exploration history that realizes the unlimited opportunities presented by a commercial space economy,” said Shana Dale, NASA’s deputy administrator. “By encouraging such potential collaborations, NASA supports the development of greater commercial collaboration and applications that will serve to strengthen and enhance the future benefits of space exploration for all of mankind.”
Who woulda thunk? Apparently, albeit unsurprisingly, Branson is more open-minded than his SpaceShipTwo development partner Burt Rutan.
20 February 2007
+ 2 - 2 | § ¶Shuttle Retirement Home
From The Huntsville Times:
Could Space Camp be the retirement home for an aging orbiter?
NASA is working to retire its space shuttles by 2010, and the U.S. Space & Rocket Center is working to get one of them parked here.
CEO Larry Capps said Monday that there is already a lot of competition for the three remaining orbiters that have flown missions - Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. The Smithsonian Institution and the states of Florida, Texas, Ohio and California have already begun lobbying, but Huntsville has something they don't:
A space shuttle garage.
In the late 1980s, a pre-fab building was designed by Sprung Instant Structures in Marietta, Ga., that could, within a matter of hours, be flown to and erected over a shuttle to protect it and shield it from prying eyes if it was ever forced to land outside the U.S. while carrying classified cargo. The Orbiter Protective Enclosure was never used, and there is only one in existence.
...
But having the one-of-a-kind garage open would give the Space Center more than just a unique piece of the shuttle program's history. It would make Huntsville the only place vying for one of the retired orbiters that already has a place to put it.
There is room for the OPE east of the Marriott hotel near the center's Aviation Challenge area, Capps said. But he would prefer to see it in the Rocket Park near the new visitors center and exhibition hall for the refurbished Saturn V rocket, set to open this fall.
The Space Center already has a near-actual-size space shuttle model, Pathfinder, that was built in 1977 to test cranes and other shuttle-handling equipment and procedures. But having one of the ships that has actually been in orbit would be the perfect addition to a museum that already includes "flown" capsules and artifacts from Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab - all the manned U.S. space programs.
"It would kind of complete the continuum ?to have a real orbiter that has flown in space," Capps said.
It'll be interesting to see where the three orbiters end up, but, to me, since the Smithsonian already has Enterprise, the logical thing would be to give the three remaining orbiters to the museums at Marshall, Kennedy and Johnson.
12 February 2007
+ 1 - 4 | § ¶STS-117 Update
Atlantis has been
mated with the ET and SRBs, in preparation for roll-out to Launch Pad 39A on Wednesday. Launch is now within 31 days away.
+ 4 - 2 | § ¶Tracks On Mars
Opportunity has reached another milestone in its mission -- the
Mars rover's odometer has reached 10 kilometers. For a bit of perspective, the original 90-day mission goal was for the rover to travel 600 meters, and the rover's design requirement was to be able to travel 1 kilometer. After three years on Mars, the rover's still going the distance.
I feel obligated, though, to note that while this is an incredible achievement for the robotic explorer, it's also a testament to the value of human exploration. In over three years on the Red Planet, Opportunity has traveled about 6.2 miles. In a total of 22 hours of EVAs on the lunar surface, the Apollo 17 crew put about 18 miles on their rover. Opportunity and Spirit have sent back an incredible amount of information from Mars, but when we finally have humans getting red dirt on their boots, results like that will be all in a day's work.
11 February 2007
+ 0 - 5 | § ¶Lisa Nowak Post
Jason's comment the other day was not the first time someone's asked me why I haven't posted about Lisa Nowak's problems.
First off, in answer to the request for "just one link to a story about the NASA love triangle, please," here's your
one link. If you're still having trouble finding enough stories about the incident, you may want to
try here.
Obviously, my professional affiliations have discouraged me from posting about it; ATW is important to me, but my day job, and some of my other "hobbies," come first.
Second, I really don't have much to say about it. It's obviously a very tragic incident for all involved. I've never met Lisa; she was part of a crew appearance I attended after the flight, but that's it.
As NASA has acknowledged, the incident raises some questions as to whether there was anything the agency could have done differently to help prevent something like this from happening. However, there's not really anything to say about that until more is known about what exactly happened and why.
I'm not going to speculate as to what may have led Lisa Nowak to reach that point in her life, but certainly there has been speculation that the stresses involved in her her job may have contributed. If, in fact, it turns out that this stems, even to the tiniest degree, from her service to her country, then she deserves better, in my opinion, than to be mocked by the public for whom she has sacrificed.
08 February 2007
+ 5 - 0 | § ¶STS-117 Update
As shocking as it may be to the media, the work of human spaceflight continues.
Atlantis rolled over to the VAB yesterday for stacking with the ET and the SRBs. Roll-out to the pad is scheduled for next Wednesday, and will be the first time a shuttle has sat on 39A in four years. (And will mark another step in the transitioning of Pad 39B to the Ares program.)
06 February 2007
+ 3 - 1 | § ¶Lighting The Fire
To be honest, because Nicole got called out to her second job in the middle of the night last night, I'm too tired to read
this behemoth of an article about NASA's problems in attempting to engage the public in spaceflight, but in a cursory read-through of the first section, it looks like there's some really interesting stuff in there.
