GO ARES I-X!! NASA photo

On the seventh anniversary of the Columbia disaster, President Obama unveiled a sweeping change of course for the nation’s space program Monday, putting an end to NASA’s post-Columbia moon program and shifting development and operation of new rockets and capsules from the government to private industry.

Requesting some $19 billion for NASA in fiscal 2011, the administration announced plans to pump an additional $6 billion into NASA’s budget over the next five years to kick-start development of a new commercial manned spaceflight capability, including some $500 million in 2011.

A launch tower being built for the Ares I rocket, part of NASA’s now-canceled Constellation program, stands at the Kennedy Space Center with the program’s target–the moon–visible in the remote distance.
(Credit: CBS News)

Over that same five years, some $7.8 billion will be earmarked for new technology development, including autonomous rendezvous, orbital fuel transfer systems, and closed-loop life support systems. Another $3.1 billion will support development of new propulsion technologies needed by future heavy-lift rockets. And $3 billion will go to pay for a series of robotic missions to the moon and beyond to test systems needed for eventual manned flights.

“Imagine trips to Mars that take weeks instead of nearly a year, people fanning out across the inner solar system, exploring the moon, asteroids, and Mars nearly simultaneously in a steady stream of firsts,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told reporters. “And imagine all of this being done collaboratively with nations around the world. That is what the president’s plan for NASA will enable, once we develop the new capabilities to make it a reality.”

No timetables were established for human flights beyond low-Earth orbit, with deputies saying the focus instead will be on enabling technology development and innovation.

As for commercial flights to and from the International Space Station, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said she hoped a new private-sector launch system, possibly including modified versions of technology developed for the canceled moon program, could be available by around 2016 if not earlier.

“We will try to accelerate and use the great minds of industry to get a competition going, and I’m sure they’ll want to beat that,” she said.

Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, chief architect of the now-canceled moon program, told CBS News the shift to commercial space operations was a profound mistake.

“I’m one of the biggest proponents of commercial spaceflight that there is, but it doesn’t yet exist,” he said. “I would like an enlightened government policy to help bring it about, but I don’t believe you get there by destroying all your government capability so there’s no option but for the government to do whatever necessary to get the ‘commercial operators’ to succeed. That’s not the way to do it.

“Basically, you’re burning the bridge behind you. Even if it’s successful, now what you’ve done is you’ve created not a space program for the United States, you’ve created a capability to get to low-Earth orbit but there’s nothing to do there because there’s no government program,” Griffin said. “Where’s the market?”

Griffin said, “For the U.S. government to deliberately give up its lead in something that is fundamentally an enterprise of governments…for the United States to give up something that’s an important part of our national identity in favor of outsourcing it to commercial enterprises when and as they come into being is bizarre.”

George Bush’s post-Columbia initiative to finish the International Space Station and retire the shuttle by the end of 2010 remains intact, with just five more missions planned for NASA’s iconic winged spaceships. Funding is available to support operations through the end of the year–or early 2011 if necessary.
NASA dims lights for Constellation program (photos)

The new budget also extends operation of the space station through at least 2020 and increases funding for science and utilization.

But as expected, it halts development of the Ares family of rockets and the Orion crew capsules NASA was designing to carry astronauts to the station and back to the moon by the early 2020s as part of the Bush administration’s Constellation program.

The cancellation of Constellation and the near-term shift to commercial launch operations is a “more radical (plan) than I expected,” said John Logsdon, a space policy analyst at George Washington University.

“It represents a fundamental shift in the way NASA goes about doing business, from being the direct designer of our space capabilities and then having industry build NASA designs to being the customer of what industry builds,” he said. “Even NASA people use the analogy to the air mail contracts the government signed in the ’30s. It’s going to be a very different way of doing business.”

The Obama administration concluded the Constellation program, which has cost taxpayers more than $9 billion so far, “was over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation due to a failure to invest in critical new technologies,” according to a budget summary.

“Using a broad range of criteria, an independent review panel determined that even if fully funded, NASA’s program to repeat many of the achievements of the Apollo era…was the least attractive approach to space exploration as compared to potential alternatives.”

The independent review, chaired by aerospace executive Norman Augustine, concluded last fall that the Constellation program, hobbled by previous budget reductions under the Bush and Obama administrations, was not workable without an additional $3 billion a year in restored funding.

The panel outlined a variety of alternatives and favored a so-called “flexible path” approach that called for relying on private industry for manned flights to and from low-Earth orbit while NASA focused on development of a new heavy-lift rocket and eventual flights to a variety of possible deep space targets, including the moon, asteroids, and even the moons of Mars.

The budget unveiled Monday said the Constellation program took money away from other NASA programs, “including robotic space exploration, science, and Earth observations.”

The new budget cancels Constellation and replaces it with a focus on preparing a more capable approach to space exploration, including:

*

Research and development to support future heavy-lift rocket systems that will increase the capability of future exploration and lower operations costs.
*

A technology development and test program that aims to increase the capabilities and reduce the cost of future exploration activities. NASA, working with industry, will build, fly, and test in orbit key technologies such as automated, autonomous rendezvous and docking, closed-loop life support systems, in-orbit propellant transfer, and advanced in-space propulsion so that our future human and robotic exploration missions are both highly capable and affordable.
*

A series of robotic exploration missions to scout locations and demonstrate technologies to increase the safety and capability of future human missions and provide scientific dividends.

In a statement, Augustine said, “By allocating the technology resources highlighted in our report as being necessary, it will be possible to lay the foundation for travel beyond low-Earth-orbit…NASA will be able to focus on this true frontier and to regain its position as a cutting-edge research and development organization.

“This is obviously a demanding period from a budgetary standpoint. Importantly, the president’s proposed program seems to match means to ends, and should therefore be executable,” he said.

In a startling break with the past, the Obama administration ordered NASA to focus on a new initiative that would effectively outsource manned flight, turning to private industry to design and develop the rockets and spacecraft needed to carry U.S. astronauts to and from the space station.

Between the shuttle’s retirement and the emergence of a new manned rocket system, U.S., European, Japanese, and Canadian astronauts will be forced to hitch rides on Russian Soyuz rockets at more than $50 million a ticket.

“The budget funds NASA to contract with industry to provide astronaut transportation to the International Space Station as soon as possible, reducing the risk of relying solely on foreign crew transports for years to come,” the budget summary stated.

“A strengthened U.S. commercial space launch industry will bring needed competition, act as a catalyst for the development of other new businesses capitalizing on affordable access to space, help create thousands of new jobs, and help reduce the cost of human access to space.”

The only U.S. rockets currently flying that are powerful enough to step into the roll of crew transport in the near term are the Boeing-built Delta 4 and Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 boosters used to launch military, scientific, and commercial satellites. Neither family of rockets is certified to carry humans.

Other companies are in the process of developing new spacecraft to carry supplies to the space station after the shuttle’s retirement. But it remains to be seen how long it might take any of the commercial interests to develop, test, and deploy a manned rocket system.

It also is not yet clear what sort of control and oversight NASA will have in the new commercial arena, whether astronauts will remain government employees or private contractors, or how the agency’s decades of operational experience might be leveraged by commercial operators.

“I think the primary way it translates over is for the winners in this commercial competition to hire the people that have the institutional memory,” Logsdon said. “Second, we’re going to be an operating station until at least 2020. So there’s a core of operational folks inside NASA that will still be very much involved.”

Contractors already occupy key positions in mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and at other NASA facilities, but it’s not yet known how commercial manned space flights will be managed; who will have responsibility for mission design, safety, and execution; or how government facilities might be utilized.

Bolden and Garver provided no details into how the new program will be executed, but Bolden insisted safety will remain a top priority.

“NASA will set standards and processes to ensure that these commercially built and operated crew vehicles are safe,” he said. “No one cares about safety more than I. I flew on the space shuttle four times. I lost friends in the two space shuttle tragedies. So I give you my word these vehicles will be safe.”
William Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He has covered more than 115 shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune, and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of “Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.” You can follow his frequent status updates at the CBSNews.com Space Place, where this story was first published.

Fromhttp://news.cnet.com/8301-19514_3-10445227-239.html

Celestial reference systems

The VLBI is a special network of radio telescopes from all over the world that together have the resolving power of a telescope thousands of miles in diameter. (Though quasars burn intensely brightly, their enormous distance makes them too faint to locate accurately with a conventional optical telescope.)

The new quasar observations were able to reduce the uncertainties in the quasar positions to angles as small as 40 microarcseconds — about the thickness of a 0.7-millimeter mechanical pencil lead in Los Angeles as viewed from Washington, D.C. This uncertainty is five times better than the original ICRF.
http://www.livescience.com/space/091103-st-gps-quasars.html

First Flight. NASA ARES I-X. Nasa Photo.

Today NASA’s ARES I rocket was successfully launched down range from Cape Canaveral. No pictures yet.  Given the shadows hanging over NASA’s plans this shot simply had to be perfect, and it was. The US manned space program should now go ahead. More tomorrow, a bit late from my coordinates !…..

GO ARES I-X!! NASA photo

The NASA Constellation program is a manned spaceflight project continuing that tradition as the Shuttle program comes to an end. The program includes two boosters, the ARES 1 and the ARES V. The ARES I will be used to get the astronauts into orbit, the ARES V is the heavy lifter to get all the equipment for assembly in orbit for the manned missions to the moon and beyond. That is space shuttle ATLANTIS in the background.

ARES-V ARES-I Nasa Photo

Here is a picture to give you the idea.

The ARES-IX booster is the first major asset to be flight tested, launch scheduled  for Tuesday October 27. That was the date for the Saturn V first flight in 1961. Maybe there is something symbolic in this choice, but there is more, the White House could conceivably curtail or even cancel the whole project, depending on Obama’s expert Augustine commitee report, delivered last week. See the Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee releases its Final Report NASA press release. This report is a serious effort 18 months in preparation by a star-studded team. Ominously, the executive summary starts with these words…

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. Space operations are among the most demanding and unforgiving pursuits ever undertaken by humans. It really is rocket science. Space operations become all the more difficult when means do not match aspirations. Such is the case today.

The committee have invited comments on the Nasa website, just follow the links to FaceBook and Twitter and the rest set out on that page. If the faux rocket scientists of Wall Street can be bailed out, why not the true scientists. Please have your say.

SPR Emdive

What Shawyer had in mind was a replacement for the small thrusters conventional satellites use to stay in orbit. The fuel they need makes up about half their launch weight, and also limits a satellite’s life: once it runs out, the vehicle drifts out of position and must be replaced. Shawyer’s engine, by contrast, would be propelled by microwaves generated from solar energy. The photovoltaic cells would eliminate the fuel, and with the launch weight halved, satellite manufacturers could send up two craft for the price of one, so you would only need half as many launches.

So why the problem? Shawyer argues that for companies investing billions in rockets and launch sites, a new technology that leads to fewer launches and longer-lasting satellites has little commercial appeal. By the same token, a company that offers more for less usually wins in the end, so Shawyer’s idea may have been seen as too speculative. Whatever the reason, in 2000, he resigned to go it alone.

Surprisingly, Shawyer’s disruptive technology rests on an idea that goes back more than a century. In 1871 the physicist James Clerk Maxwell worked out that light should exert a force on any surface it hits, like the wind on a sail. This so-called radiation pressure is extremely weak, though. Last year, a group called The Planetary Society attempted to launch a solar sail called Cosmos 1 into orbit. The sail had a surface area of about 600 square metres. Despite this large area, about the size of two tennis courts, its developers calculated that sunlight striking it would produce a force of 3 millinewtons, barely enough to lift a feather on the surface of the Earth. Still, it would be enough to accelerate a craft in the weightlessness of space. Unfortunately the sail was lost after launch. NASA is also interested in solar sails, but has never launched one. Perhaps that shouldn’t be a surprise, as a few millinewtons isn’t enough for serious work in space.

For more go to http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125681.400 and also www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/09/chinese-buildin/

LCROSS

In April 2006, NASA selected the LCROSS proposal for a low-cost, fast-track companion mission to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The main LCROSS mission objective is to confirm the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater near a lunar polar region.

LCROSS launched with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on June 18, 2009 at 2:32 p.m. PDT. The LCROSS shepherding spacecraft and the Atlas V’s Centaur upper stage rocket executed a fly-by of the moon on June 23, 2009 (LCROSS lunar swingby video stream coverage) and entered into an elongated Earth orbit to position LCROSS for impact on a lunar pole. On final approach, the shepherding spacecraft and Centaur will separate. The Centaur will act as a heavy impactor to create a debris plume that will rise above the lunar surface. Projected impact at the lunar South Pole is currently: Oct 9, 2009 at 4:30 a.m. PDT. Following four minutes behind, the shepherding spacecraft will fly through the debris plume, collecting and relaying data back to Earth before impacting the lunar surface and creating a second debris plume.

The debris plumes are expected to be visible from Earth- and space-based telescopes 10-to-12 inches and larger.

The LCROSS science payload consists of two near-infrared spectrometers, a visible light spectrometer, two mid-infrared cameras, two near-infrared cameras, a visible camera and a visible radiometer. The LCROSS instruments were selected to provide mission scientists with multiple complimentary views of the debris plume created by the Centaur impact.

As the ejecta rises above the target crater’s rim and is exposed to sunlight, any water-ice, hydrocarbons or organics will vaporize and break down into their basic components. These components primarily will be monitored by the visible and infrared spectrometers. The near-infrared and mid-infrared cameras will determine the total amount and distribution of water in the debris plume. The spacecraft’s visible camera will track the impact location and the behavior of the debris plume while the visible radiometer will measure the flash created by the Centaur impact.

NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., is overseeing the development of the LCROSS mission with its spacecraft and integration partner, Northrop Grumman, Redondo Beach, Calif. LCROSS is a fast-paced, low-cost, mission that will leverage some existing NASA systems, commercial-off-the-shelf components, the spacecraft expertise of Northrop Grumman and experience gained during the Lunar Prospector Mission in 1999. Ames is managing the mission, conducting mission operations, and developing the payload instruments, while Northrop Grumman designed and is building the spacecraft for this innovative mission. Ames mission scientists will spearhead the data analysis.

Loop launch diagram

Current mega structures such as the Oresund bridge which connects Sweden to Denmark and is about 18 miles long, the Viaduc de Millau Bridge in the South of France 8000 ft and the Rion Antirion cable bridge in Greece is over 7000 ft long are dwarfed by the proposed structures. In the case of the orbital loop launcher, for optimal functioning the loop is to be 5000 km long and move at about 14 km/sec. It is hard to imaging that anything so immense could be planned and built but then there is also the tendency for whatever is possible to come to pass.

One of the hard to answer questions is why would any one bother? Two answers come to mind. Money and Prestige. If there is money in it the capitalists will do it. If there is prestige in it maybe as the century moves on some of the superpowers will see it as the war equivalent which will establish their premier place. Perhaps the first example of this is the plan announced by Shuichi Ono, chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association in Sept 2008 to built an orbital tower.

More theoretically if humanity is tied to earth forever it is more or less certainly doomed by Asteroid impact or solar evolution and so if society is to survive and humanity is to persist such structures must sooner or later be built. There is also the fact that it would be such fun.

Japanese Space Tower base station

Sabre air breathing rocket hybrid

The design of SABRE evolved from liquid-air cycle engines (LACE) which have a single rocket combustion chamber with associated pumps, pre-burner and nozzle which are utilised in both modes. LACE engines employ the cooling capacity of the cryogenic liquid hydrogen fuel to liquefy incoming air prior to pumping. Unfortunately, this type of cycle necessitates very high fuel flow.

These faults are avoided in the SABRE engine, which only cools down the air to the vapour boundary and avoids liquefaction. This allows the use of a relatively conventional turbo compressor and avoids the requirement for an air condenser.

The SABRE engine is essentially a closed cycle rocket engine with an additional pre-cooled turbo-compressor to provide a high pressure air supply to the combustion chamber. This allows operation from zero forward speed on the runway and up to Mach 5.5 in air-breathing mode during ascent. As the air density falls with altitude the engine eventually switches to a pure rocket propelling SKYLON to orbital velocity (around Mach 25).

Air collection is via a simple conical two shock inlet with a translating centrebody to maintain shock-on-lip conditions. The centrebody moves forward to close the inlet for re-entry. A bypass system is used to match the variable captured air flow to the engine demand. This bypass flow is reheated in order to recover the momentum lost through the capture shock system.

The thrust during air-breathing ascent is variable but around 200 tonnes. During rocket ascent this rises to 300 tonnes but is then throttled down towards the end of the ascent to limit the longitudinal acceleration to 3.0g.
Space.co.uk have a video of Richard Varvill, Technical Director of Reaction Engines Limited, discussing the SABRE engine. Richard discusses the remarkable technology being developed to support a single stage to orbit spacecraft.
See http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/sabre.html

Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft is scheduled to arrive at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture gathering in Oshkosh on Monday.

WhiteKnightTwo is designed to carry a spaceship into the upper atmosphere. The spacecraft would then launch from the plane at 50,000 feet and soar into space.

Virgin Group’s billionaire chairman, Sir Richard Branson, hopes to use the system to offer private space rides. Each trip will cost a traveler $200,000.

Company officials say 300 seats have already been sold. Each spaceflight — up and back down without circling the Earth — will include about five minutes of weightlessness.
from http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gLL4Pcu9xZVrUwUKfXpl1UenWKJgD99MTIQ82

Boeing IIF GPS satellite

The Air Force’s Southern California space acquisition center on Tuesday announced that a Global Positioning System satellite, manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corp. and launched in March, is experiencing performance problems in orbit. It hasn’t become part of the “operational constellation” of more than two dozen other GPS satellites, and is slated to undergo a battery of tests expected to stretch through October to try to resolve the problems, according to an Air Force news release.

The GPS system, which serves both military and civilian users, provides precise time and location coordinates for everything from military missile launches and “smart” bombs to automated bank-teller machines to aircraft, ships and everyday vehicles. The Lockheed satellite is the first to include a new civilian frequency — dubbed L5 — designed for, among other things, use by future nationwide air-traffic control systems. But that signal, part of a test package, is apparently interfering with other signals from the satellite and reducing their accuracy, according to industry and Air Force officials. The degraded signals are accurate only to about 20 feet, versus about two feet for typical GPS signals, industry officials said.

The issue is significant, according to these officials, because it could complicate deployment of a new family of Boeing GPS satellites currently being built that also feature the L5 signal. Already years behind schedule and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget, the 12 satellites, which are scheduled to replace satellites currently in orbit, could face further testing and delays to ensure that they are free of interference problems. The Boeing satellites have a history of quality-control and manufacturing problems unrelated to the latest concerns.

While the Air Force said it has “high confidence there is no related concern” with other Lockheed satellites in orbit or waiting for launch, Air Force brass have begun examining whether Boeing versions of GPS satellites require additional tests and analysis to eliminate concerns, according to industry officials familiar with the details. A spokeswoman for Boeing declined to comment. A Lockheed Martin spokesman said the company is working with the Air Force “to fully evaluate the issue and to ensure the satellite meets GPS requirements.”

In its release, the Air Force said the routine in-orbit checkout of the suspect Lockheed satellite revealed that some signals “were inconsistent” with comparable GPS satellites. The Air Force also said upcoming tests will include simulations and “testing of real-life GPS receiver equipment to the greatest extent possible” to prevent “inadvertent impacts to GPS users.”

The first of Boeing’s GPS IIF satellites, incorporating the new civilian signal, is slated to launch late this year or early 2010, delayed from the summer.

In May 2008, Lockheed bested Boeing to win a contract worth at least $1.8 billion to build the most-advanced navigation satellites yet, dubbed GPS III, scheduled to go into operation around the middle of the next decade.

Concerns over signal quality come barely weeks after a Congressionally-ordered study raised a red flag about potential erosion of GPS accuracy in the next few years due to launch delays and other challenges. If certain launches get delayed up to two years, the General Accountability Office report predicted, the Pentagon could have trouble maintaining the desired fleet of 24 fully-functional GPS satellites in operation.

The Pentagon responded by minimizing the potential risk, arguing that significant spare capacity remains on orbit and on the ground to handle unexpected problems. Gen. Robert Kehler, head of Air Force Space Command, said in an interview earlier this month that the GAO conclusions were overly pessimistic partly because they failed to take into account strategies the Air Force could use to extend the life of existing satellites. For example, Gen Kehler said, managing power output could give solar arrays longer life.

Despite some continuing quality-control issues with Boeing’s IIF versions, Gen. Kehler said, “we’re not going to have an issue” maintaining the current robust constellation.
From http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124520702464422059.html?mod=dist_smartbrief