Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - October 29, 2013 and JSC Today

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: October 29, 2013 7:31:18 AM CDT
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - October 29, 2013  and JSC Today

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

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JSC TODAY CATEGORIES Headlines -  Orion: One Year from Launch -  Morpheus Hot Fire Test Today -  IT Labs Announces Dates for the FY14 Project Call Organizations/Social -  Early Space Shuttle Programmatic Decisions Panel -  The JSC Safety and Health Action Team (JSAT) Says -  Family Violence Awareness -  Walkers Wanted: JSC Wellness Walks Starting Soon -  NASA 55th Anniversary T-Shirt Distribution -  Non-Traditional Cooking Class -  Youth Basketball Clinic Community -  Oct. 31 is NASA Night at Veterans Memorial Stadium -  Volunteer Opportunity to be COSMO on Oct. 31 -  Quilt Fest. Volunteers Needed Saturday, 2:30-7 -  JSC Blood Drive Thank You

Sunlit Side of the Planet Mercury

 

Headlines Orion: One Year from Launch Orion's first mission, Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), is just a year away! Scheduled for fall 2014, EFT-1 is a two-orbit flight that will take Orion farther into space than any human spacecraft has gone in more than 40 years. Orion will travel to 3,600 miles above the Earth, enduring temperatures up to 4,000 degrees as it re-enters the atmosphere at over 20,000 mph. EFT-1 will provide data that will allow NASA astronauts to explore deeper and farther into space than ever before. With just months left before liftoff, the Orion capsule was powered on for the first time last week at Kennedy Space Center. Read more about this and other milestones at JSC Features. Keep up with the latest progress by following us on Twitter at @NASA_Orion. "Like" us on Facebook at NASA's Orion Spacecraft and check out the "I am Building Orion" employee profiles. http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/mpcv/#.Umf2ePnkt8E [top] Morpheus Hot Fire Test Today Morpheus is planning a ground hot fire test of its "Bravo" prototype lander today. This will be a series of short ignition tests in the ground launch configuration to verify engine ignition stability before stepping back into dynamic testing. The test will not be streamed to the public, but may be viewed on-site. As a safety reminder, on-site viewers should stay back by Buildings 14 or 18 and not enter the field during operations. Test firing is planned for approximately 1 to 2 p.m. Morpheus is a vertical test bed vehicle being used to mature new, non-toxic propulsion systems and autonomous landing and hazard detection technologies. Note: Testing operations are dynamic; actual firing time may vary and tests may be postponed or rescheduled with little notice. Follow Morpheus on Twitter: @MorpheusLander For more information and live updates sent via our Twitter feed, visit: http://morpheuslander.jsc.nasa.gov http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/exploration/morpheus/ Wendy Watkins http://morpheuslander.jsc.nasa.gov [top] IT Labs Announces Dates for the FY14 Project Call You can make NASA Information Technology (IT) better. IT Labs supports project ideas from NASA's own internal talent and develops these ideas into agency services. Both civil servants and contractors are invited to submit ideas. Every year, IT Labs solicits applications for innovative NASA IT project ideas. The Fiscal Year 2014 (FY14) Project Call will run from Nov. 4 through Dec. 12. Learn more at NASA IT Labs website (NDC credentials required). If you have an idea, coordinate with the JSC Chief Technology Officer for IT. IT Labs' agencywide review panel will evaluate all submissions and fund a select number of projects. Support: Four Q&A sessions are scheduled Nov. 6 through Dec. 9 (See "Upcoming Events" at bottom). Please attend one of the Q&A sessions for information about the project call and application process. Send comments and/or questions to NASA IT Labs. Follow IT Labs activities on the IT Labs Blog. JSC-IRD-Outreach x45678 https://labs.nasa.gov/SitePages/Project%20Call.aspx [top]    Organizations/Social Early Space Shuttle Programmatic Decisions Panel Come join us Nov. 20 at 10 a.m. in the Teague Auditorium, where the NASA Alumni League, in conjunction with the JSC Chief Knowledge Officer, is sponsoring a storytelling event focusing on "Early Space Shuttle Programmatic Decisions." The program will focus on the Phase A and B concepts that were studied and how NASA arrived at the conceptual baseline that was developed during the subsequent design and development phases; the management/organizational approach used during the development phase; and the effectiveness of that management approach. Panel Moderator: Wayne Hale, flight director and Space Shuttle Program (SSP) manager Panelists: Robert F. Thompson - initial SSP manager Owen Morris - manager, Level 2 Systems Engineering and Integration activity Richard Kohrs - subsequent SSP manager Dr. Hum Mandell - SSP Cost Estimation manager Each panelist will speak about an aspect of the shuttle history and design evolution. All are welcome. Brent J. Fontenot x36456 [top] The JSC Safety and Health Action Team (JSAT) Says "Getting sick and losing time is not a goal of yours or mine. Give the flu some earnest thought, then come on down and get the shot." Congratulations to Steve Hulka with Boeing for submitting the winning slogan for November 2013. Any JSAT member (all JSC contractor and civil servant employees) may submit a slogan for consideration to JSAT Secretary Reese Squires. Submissions for December are due by Friday, Nov. 8. Keep those great submissions coming - you may be the next "JSAT Says ..." winner! Reese Squires x37776 http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/ja/apps/news/newsfiles/3336.pptx [top] Family Violence Awareness Did you know that seven percent of all Texans indicate that they, a family member and/or a friend or co-worker have experienced some form of domestic violence (physical, sexual or verbal) in their lifetime? You might also be surprised to learn that abusive partners harass 74 percent of employed, battered partners at work. Because of this fact, we will learn the signs of battering and what to do if you suspect a co-worker is being battered. It is important to highlight the need not to place the responsibility or blame on the abused. In recognition of Domestic Violence Awareness month, we will explore ways to support, identify and discuss the importance of family violence. Please join Anika Isaac MS, LPC, LMFT, NCC, CEAP, of the JSC Employee Assistance Program, in the Building 30 Auditorium on Oct. 29 at 12 noon for a presentation on Family Violence Awareness. Event Date: Tuesday, October 29, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM Event Location: Building 30 Auditorium Add to Calendar Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Occupational Health Branch x36130 [top] Walkers Wanted: JSC Wellness Walks Starting Soon Grab your walking shoes and meet at the Building 3 café for some fitness fun! When: Each Tuesday and Thursday at 11 a.m. starting Nov. 5 Meeting Place: Outside Building 3 café Intensity: Easy to moderate - just get moving! Duration: 30 minutes Suitable for: Everyone! All fitness levels, men and women How to join: No reservations are required. Simply show up ready to get fit and have fun. Walks will be led by a member of the Starport Wellness team. Joseph Callahan x42769 https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/en/programs/wellness [top] NASA 55th Anniversary T-Shirt Distribution Starport will be distributing the online orders of the NASA 55th Anniversary T-Shirt per the following schedule. Please bring your NASA badge to pick up your shirts. If you are picking up shirts for another employee, bring an email from that employee stating such. Your receipt may be helpful, but is not required. Thank you for choosing Starport! Building 3: Monday, Oct. 28, and Tuesday, Oct. 29, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Building 11: Wednesday, Oct. 30, and Thursday, Oct. 31, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Gilruth Center: Friday, Nov. 1, from 2 to 5 p.m. Cyndi Kibby x35352 https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/ [top] Non-Traditional Cooking Class Tired of cooking the same old turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and green-bean casserole? Sign up for a "non-traditional holiday cooking class" and learn how to make a holiday sushi tree. The class is Tuesday, Nov. 12, at the Gilruth Center from 5 p.m. until we get finished. Class cost is $49.95 and includes: wine, a sushi roller, course book and serving plate. Please call Danial Hornbuckle at x30240 for reservations. Reservations are required and must be made by Tuesday, Nov. 5. Event Date: Tuesday, November 12, 2013   Event Start Time:5:00 PM   Event End Time:7:00 PM Event Location: Gilruth Center Add to Calendar Danial Hornbuckle x30240 https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/ [top] Youth Basketball Clinic The Gilruth Center is now offering a CO-ED youth basketball clinic for ages 8 to 12. The clinic runs for six weeks (excluding Thanksgiving week) on Wednesdays from 5 to 6 p.m. Sign up at the Gilruth front desk or online. Robert Vaughn x38049 https://apm.activecommunities.com/starport/Activity_Search/youth-basketb... [top]    Community Oct. 31 is NASA Night at Veterans Memorial Stadium Clear Creek Independent School District invites all NASA JSC and contractor team members out to the Clear Falls vs. Clear Lake varsity football game on Thursday, Oct. 31, at 7 p.m. NASA JSC and contractor team members, as well as a guest, will be admitted to the game for FREE with their employee badge. There will be a special half-time tribute celebrating the 15th anniversary of the International Space Station, the spirit of exploration and ingenuity of the NASA community. Be sure to wear your NASA gear or red, white and blue to the game! Jeannie Aquino x36270 [top] Volunteer Opportunity to be COSMO on Oct. 31 Still planning your Halloween costume? How about dressing up as our beloved Cosmo - the giant-sized inflatable astronaut - to welcome the Clear Creek Independent School District (ISD) football players and fans Thursday, Oct. 31, from 5:45 to 7:45 p.m. at Veterans Memorial Stadium in League City? We also need a couple of "handlers" -- people to help Cosmo navigate. Questions? Ask your V-CORPs administrators at JSC-V-CORPs in global or call x25859. To register, please go to our V-CORPs website and select NASA Night at Clear Creek ISD on Oct. 31. V-CORPS x25859 [top] Quilt Fest. Volunteers Needed Saturday, 2:30-7 Yes, we are still requesting support for the International Quilt Festival and have two openings for Saturday afternoon from 2:30 to 7 p.m. Please register on the V-CORPs website and select Nov. 2. Travel and parking are on your own; however, if you arrive early and pick up your exhibitor badge, you can see the International Quilt Festival at your leisure in the morning! Susan H. Anderson x38630 [top] JSC Blood Drive Thank You Thank you to all those who took the time to donate at last week's blood drive. St. Luke's collected a total of 210 units of blood. Each donation can help as many as three people -- that's 630 lives. Mark your calendar for the next blood drive from Dec. 18 to 19. For additional information, check out our website or contact Teresa Gomez at 281-483-9588. Teresa Gomez x39588 http://jscpeople.jsc.nasa.gov/blooddrv/blooddrv.htm [top]

 

JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters.

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Human Spaceflight News

Tuesday – October 29, 2013

 

Orion EFT-1 first power up at KSC

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

SNC: Mission accomplished in Dream Chaser test, despite crash landing

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

Despite a crash landing, a full-scale model of Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Dreamchaser — one of three spacecraft vying to take the space shuttle's place as NASA's means of flying astronauts to the international space station — may actually have performed well enough in an Oct. 26 test flight to clear a $15 million development milestone, according to a Sierra Nevada executive. "The milestone was all about the flight worthiness of the vehicle and the data from the flight and the ability for us to autonomously control the flight in the air," Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president for Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) and chairman of Sierra Nevada Space Systems, told SpaceNews in an Oct. 28 phone interview. "The fact that the landing gear didn't go down once we hit the ground ... was not actually part of the test." SNC has not yet decided whether to repair the Dream Chaser test craft, which does not use the same landing gear the orbital vehicle would use.

 

It's alive! Orion capsule powered up for first time

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

The first space-bound version of NASA's Orion exploration crew capsule was powered up for the first time last week at Kennedy Space Center, about a year before its planned launch on a test flight from Cape Canaveral. NASA and spacecraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corp. said tests of the Orion crew module's main control computers went well, and marked the start of six months of testing as more electronics are added. Orion is being prepared to launch without a crew next fall atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket. The mission called Exploration Flight Test-1, or EFT-1, will test the spacecraft's heat shield as the vehicle reenters the atmosphere at 20,000 mph. NASA is targeting another uncrewed flight in 2017, on the maiden launch of the Space Launch System rocket, and a first crewed flight in 2021, possibly to an asteroid.

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Orion spacecraft powered on ahead of 2014 test flight

 

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

 

The first Orion spacecraft to fly in space was powered up inside a cavernous assembly hall at the Kennedy Space Center last week, one year before it is scheduled to launch on an unmanned orbital test flight, NASA and Lockheed Martin Corp. announced Monday. Technicians working for Lockheed Martin Corp., prime contractor for the Orion crew capsule, activated the spacecraft's main control computers for systems tests inside the Operations and Checkout Building at KSC. "Preliminary data indicate Orion's vehicle management computer, as well as its innovative power and data distribution system - which use state-of-the-art networking capabilities - performed as expected," NASA said in a statement.

 

Debut test flight looms for Orion, NASA's next manned spaceship

 

Leonard David - Space.com

 

NASA is gearing up for the inaugural flight of its next manned spacecraft, which is now less than a year away. NASA's Orion capsule is slated to launch atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in September 2014. The unpiloted mission, known as Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), features a high-altitude, high-speed plunge into Earth's atmosphere to assess the craft's heat shield and ends with a parachute-aided splashdown into the Pacific Ocean. "We're on track," said Larry Price, Orion deputy program manager at Lockheed Martin, the aerospace firm that is building Orion for NASA. Final checks, testing of the avionics and software, structural testing of the craft and myriad other risk mitigation appraisals means "you're at the end of the road," he said.

 

Advanced booster for NASA's Space Launch System completes milestone

 

Jason Rhian - SpaceflightInsider.com

 

Boosters planned for use on NASA's next heavy-lift launch vehicle, the Space Launch System or "SLS" have completed what is known as filament winding. This is an important milestone toward having these solid-fuel rockets used on SLS as well as part of NASA's Research Announcement (NRA) Advanced Booster risk-reduction program. The filament winding was conducted on a pathfinder Advanced Booster composite case, a very different version of this booster element than those produced in the past. NASA and the manufacturer of the booster, ATK, hope that these efforts will produce a stronger case design that is more affordable than traditional steel versions. The solid rocket booster (SRB)

 

A last chance to tell NRC *YOUR* ideas for human spaceflight - via Twitter

 

Marcia Smith - SpacePolicyOnline.com

 

The National Research Council's (NRC's) Committee on Human Spaceflight is offering everyone a last chance to provide their ideas on the future of the human spaceflight program via a Twitter chat tomorrow, October 29, 2013. This is the first time the NRC is using social media to obtain input from the public. Anyone who wants to participate should tweet their ideas using the hashtag #humansinspace.

 

Asteroid fighters, unite: UN votes to create global force

 

Deborah Netburn - Los Angeles Times

 

Even the United Nations is taking the threat of asteroids hitting our planet seriously. Last week, the U.N. General Assembly approved measures to coordinate detection and response to asteroid strikes that could level cities and possibly destroy our civilization. Specifically, the agency voted to create an International Asteroid Warning Network made up of scientists, observatories and space agencies around the planet to share information about newly discovered asteroids and how likely they are to impact Earth. The group will also work with disaster relief organizations to help them determine the best response to an asteroid impact like the one that rattled the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February. The U.N. will also set up a space mission planning advisory group to look into how humans might deflect an asteroid heading our way -- the best options, the costs and the technologies needed. The results of that study will be shared with space agencies throughout the world.

 

Detecting and Deflecting a Killer Asteroid

 

Will Dietrich-Egensteiner - Popular Mechanics

 

The explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia this past February made the danger of asteroids loud and clear. Although it is only 17 meters (56 feet) in diameter, the asteroid's explosion injured 1000 people and shattered nearly every window in the Russian city. And humans know of merely one percent of dangerous near-Earth objects, so there are many more asteroids out there that could potentially strike the planet. Last week, the United Nations adopted measures to create an international decision-making mechanism for planetary asteroid defense. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium, moderated a panel today with several of the experts who have been studying potential asteroid impacts and helping to form the recommendations for the U.N.

 

Launch indemnification extension déjà vu

 

Jeff Foust – SpacePolitics.com

 

It's starting to become an annual occurrence: around this time of year, people in the commercial launch industry start to wonder when—or even if—Congress will extend the existing third-party commercial launch indemnification regime. That system requires commercial launch operators in the US to demonstrate financial responsibility, usually in the form of insurance, up to a "maximum probable loss", or MPL, to uninvolved parties as calculated by the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) when licensing that launch. Losses above the MPL level would then be indemnified by the government up to an extremely high level (about $2.8 billion in 2013 dollars.) The indemnification regime needs to be periodically renewed by Congress; it last did so at the very end of the last Congress in January, but by only one year.

 

Spaceport wars: More states joining NM in space industry quest

 

Lauren Villagran - Albuquerque Journal

 

As Spaceport America gets its finishing touches, awaiting the day that Virgin Galactic launches passengers beyond the stratosphere, more states are looking at entering the space industry, with a spaceport at the cornerstone of their plans. "It almost looks like wildflowers growing across the U.S., if you look at all the ones talking about it," said Christine Anderson, executive director of Spaceport America. Hawaii, Georgia, Alabama and Puerto Rico are mulling spaceports. Two spaceport projects are in the works in Texas, in Midland and Houston. Spaceport Colorado expects to apply for a Federal Aviation Administration commercial license by year end.

 

Space club to honor communicators with award

 

Wayne Price - Florida Today

 

The National Space Club Florida Committee will honor Andrea Farmer of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex and John Zarrella of CNN with the 2013 Harry Kolcum Memorial News and Communications Award during its monthly luncheon meeting on Nov. 12. The event will be held at the Radisson Resort at the Port Convention Center in Cape Canaveral at 11:30 am. The Kolcum award recognizes the contributions of professional Florida-based journalists and communicators who inform the public about our nation's space program with an emphasis on launch and mission operations in Florida.

 

Apollo 13's Jim Lovell: Houston, we have a real problem

The hero of Apollo 13 thinks that space exploration has lost direction, and it's time for an international effort to get a man to Mars

 

Roger Highfield - London Telegraph

 

It took the Cold War to put the first man on the Moon, but it's going to take cooperation between the world's spacefaring nations if we are going to venture on to Mars. That is the verdict of Jim Lovell, one of the greatest space heroes of the Apollo adventure – itself a feat of exploration that seems more extraordinary and difficult today than it did four decades ago. It was a poignant moment when Lovell visited the Science Museum last week to accept the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators' premier award, its Guild Award of Honour for Aviation Heroism and Professionalism. As he stood before the museum's Apollo 10 Command Module, he took questions from schoolchildren who were crowding around to get a close look at the space veteran, who was played by Tom Hanks in the film Apollo 13. But later Lovell admitted that if he was offered the opportunity to go into space today, "I would think twice about it", because it could be "a half-assed programme that might die".

 

To boldly go where no social media fan has gone before

(and then post selfies about it)

 

Molly McHugh - Digital Trends

 

To the untrained eye, the press members who fill the auditorium at NASA's flight facility in Wallops Island, Virginia, all seem more or less the same. And we do have some things in common. For example, we're all here for the same reason: to watch the Antares rocket deliver the Cygnus space craft to orbit, where it will go on to resupply the International Space Station. There are probably a few more similarities, but as the press conference featuring executives from Cygnus manufacturer Orbital and NASA engineers progresses, it becomes increasingly obvious that we're not the same. Half this group are employed by places like Reuters, The Washington Post, and Space.com. These reporters focus on space travel and technology; they publish spec-filled news pieces and thorough, politically-inclined editorials about the increasingly commercialized space industry for major news media and other traditional outlets. The other half of us… don't. At least not professionally. Rather, we're Twitter-obsessed, Facebook-checking, Instagram-dependent slaves to social media, here at the behest of NASA Social, the space agency's social media division. We're all properly credentialed and "official," but then the questions start.

 

'I Hope That Flight Works Out For You'

15 Years Since John Glenn's Return to Space

 

Ben Evans – AmericaSpace.com

 

Fifteen years ago today (29 October), John Glenn became the oldest human ever to venture beyond the thin veil of Earth and into space. He was 77 years and three months old at the time of his flight aboard Shuttle Discovery on STS-95, and it is a remarkable record which he retains to this day. With the recent passing of Scott Carpenter, Glenn—now 92—is the sole surviving member of the "Original Seven" Mercury astronauts, chosen by NASA way back in April 1959. Although the arrival of commercial crew transportation capabilities and private ventures, including Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, offer a measure of hope that septuagenarians, or even octogenarians, may someday fly into the heavens, Glenn's achievement seems secure and unassailable for the foreseeable future.

 

Cuts Could Hurt Technical Performance in Space

 

Paul Dykewicz - Space News (Opinion)

 

(Dykewicz is a journalist who has covered the development of satellite television, satellite radio, satellite broadband, hosted payloads and space situational awareness)

 

The unfortunate reality of cuts to space programs and the loss of workers in the field is a heightened risk for technical malfunctions and even catastrophic failures. The phenomenon has been exhibited in the past when senior engineers and managers left their posts and anomalies ensued thereafter. Indeed, the latest round of U.S. federal cuts is raising quality control concerns. It is uncertain whether the sequester and other federal reductions in spending on civilian and military space programs will lead to disasters, but history indicates that a dearth of opportunities to keep technical skills honed offers reason for worry. At the very least, U.S. government budget cuts may disrupt the supply chain and production lines by reducing spending on new spacecraft, ground equipment and satellite systems.

__________

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

SNC: Mission accomplished in Dream Chaser test, despite crash landing

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

Despite a crash landing, a full-scale model of Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Dreamchaser — one of three spacecraft vying to take the space shuttle's place as NASA's means of flying astronauts to the international space station — may actually have performed well enough in an Oct. 26 test flight to clear a $15 million development milestone, according to a Sierra Nevada executive.

 

"The milestone was all about the flight worthiness of the vehicle and the data from the flight and the ability for us to autonomously control the flight in the air," Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president for Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) and chairman of Sierra Nevada Space Systems, told SpaceNews in an Oct. 28 phone interview. "The fact that the landing gear didn't go down once we hit the ground ... was not actually part of the test."

 

SNC has not yet decided whether to repair the Dream Chaser test craft, which does not use the same landing gear the orbital vehicle would use. Investigating what went wrong will take "a couple of weeks," Sirangelo estimated. He said the vehicle, which is now in a  hangar in Mojave, Calif., was "fully intact" after the crash.

 

"The pressure vessel was completely pristine, the computers are still working, there was no damage to the crew cabin or flight systems," Sirangelo said. "I went inside it myself and it was perfectly fine. There was some damage from skidding.

 

"We learned everything we wanted to on this test, and learned more than we expected to learn," Sirangelo said. "We believe we've got most of the data we need [but] I can't honestly say, I just don't know yet. It's not going to affect our schedule in the long term [but] It might affect whether we do another free flight test this year or next year. We're still assessing that."

 

SNC's $227.5 million Commercial Crew Integrated Capability Space Act Agreement with NASA, awarded in August 2012, calls for a minimum of one drop test. It will ultimately be up to NASA to decide whether the flawed landing — caused when the test vehicle's left landing gear failed to deploy — necessitates a do-over of the Oct. 26 flight.

 

NASA spokesman Trent Perrotto, reached by email Oct. 28, had no immediate comment about the test.

 

If more test flights are required, "we think the Engineering Test Article is flyable again," Sirangelo said. However, If SNC elects not to repair the craft, which took several months to build, it could construct an "interim aeroshell" at the Michoud Space Assembly Facility near New Orleans for more test flights, Sirangelo told SpaceNews.

 

The orbital version of Dream Chaser, meanwhile, has been under construction for "several months," Sirangelo said.

 

At about 2:10 p.m. Eastern time on Oct. 26, the so-called Dreamchaser Engineering Test Article was dropped from an altitude of about 4 kilometers by a helicopter. The craft then autonomously descended to the runway at the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Conditions were spot-on for the flight, which clocked in at just over one minute, until touchdown. After Dreamchaser hit the runway at about 300 kilometers per hour, its left-side landing gear failed to deploy, sending the craft on a skid, Sirangelo said.

 

Sierra Nevada is developing Dream Chaser, which would launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5, with the smallest of three awards given out last year in the $1.1 billion third round of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The program's objective is to produce one commercially designed spacecraft to take astronauts to and from the international space station from U.S. launch sites starting in late 2017.

 

Boeing Space Exploration of Houston got $480 million to develop its CST-100 space capsule, also to be launched on Atlas 5, and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. got $440 million to work on its crew-rated Dragon capsule, which would launch atop the company's Falcon 9 1.1 rocket.

 

NASA now plans to solicit proposals for the fourth round of the Commercial Crew Program — which will be funded through a contract that permits NASA to issue task orders for routine crew flights — on Nov. 19. A draft solicitation has been circulating since July. Proposals are due Jan. 22, and awards are expected in September 2014, according to a NASA document posted online Oct. 25.

 

Orion spacecraft powered on ahead of 2014 test flight

 

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

 

The first Orion spacecraft to fly in space was powered up inside a cavernous assembly hall at the Kennedy Space Center last week, one year before it is scheduled to launch on an unmanned orbital test flight, NASA and Lockheed Martin Corp. announced Monday.

 

Technicians working for Lockheed Martin Corp., prime contractor for the Orion crew capsule, activated the spacecraft's main control computers for systems tests inside the Operations and Checkout Building at KSC.

 

"Preliminary data indicate Orion's vehicle management computer, as well as its innovative power and data distribution system - which use state-of-the-art networking capabilities - performed as expected," NASA said in a statement.

 

Lockheed Martin is readying the Orion spacecraft for its first spaceflight, called Exploration Flight Test-1, currently scheduled to launch on a United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket between Sept. 18 and Oct. 18, 2014, according to a NASA spokesperson.

 

The Delta 4 rocket will boost Orion approximately 3,600 miles above Earth on a four-hour unmanned test flight. The spacecraft will plunge back into the atmosphere at more than 20,000, and its heat shield will endure temperatures up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

The power-up last week was the first time an Orion avionics suite was switched on inside a flight worthy spacecraft. Orion's vehicle management computer, designed and manufactured by Honeywell Aerospace, is responsible for managing all software commands that control the spacecraft's flight, communications and navigation systems, according to NASA.

 

The computer contains two modules to execute flight software and other control functions, a high-density flash memory module, and an Internet protocol network router module with hardline interfaces to the vehicle's communications and tracking equipment, Honeywell said in a press release.

 

"The main computers received commands from the ground, knew where to send them, read the data from different channels, and successfully relayed electrical responses back to the [Test Launch and Control Center]," Lockheed Martin said in a statement.

 

The aerospace contractor said further avionics testing is planned over the next six months as more systems are installed in the cone-shaped spacecraft, which measures nearly 11 feet tall and 16.5 feet in diameter at its base.

 

"It's been an exciting ride so far, but we're really getting to the good part now," said Mark Geyer, Orion program manager, in a NASA press release. "This is where we start to see the finish line. Our team across the country has been working hard to build the hardware that goes into Orion, and now the vehicle and all our plans are coming to life."

 

In the next few months, technicians will affix Orion's heat shield to the base of the crew capsule and finish assembly of the spacecraft's service module, a dummy version of the propulsion section planned to fly with Orion on a second unmanned test flight to launch aboard NASA's Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket in 2017.

 

The first crewed Orion mission is scheduled to launch on the second SLS flight in 2021.

 

Debut test flight looms for Orion, NASA's next manned spaceship

 

Leonard David - Space.com

 

NASA is gearing up for the inaugural flight of its next manned spacecraft, which is now less than a year away.

 

NASA's Orion capsule is slated to launch atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in September 2014. The unpiloted mission, known as Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), features a high-altitude, high-speed plunge into Earth's atmosphere to assess the craft's heat shield and ends with a parachute-aided splashdown into the Pacific Ocean.

 

"We're on track," said Larry Price, Orion deputy program manager at Lockheed Martin, the aerospace firm that is building Orion for NASA. Final checks, testing of the avionics and software, structural testing of the craft and myriad other risk mitigation appraisals means "you're at the end of the road," he said.

 

Space.com sat down last month with Price at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) SPACE 2013 conference here to discuss Orion's upcoming maiden voyage.

 

Not your father's Apollo

 

Despite the early description of Orion as "Apollo on steroids," it's clear that the 21st-century spacecraft is not simply a retread of the capsule that took astronauts to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

 

"Apollo on steroids is challenging. It sure looks like it because of its shape," Price said. That shape was chosen, he added, because it minimized the risk associated with Orion's aerothermal environment, the heating induced by the very high speeds of re-entry.

 

"We had all the data on full-scale Apollo. Sizing that up a little bit, by 30 percent, was straightforward. That's why the outer mold line (Orion's outer surface) is the way it is. But then after that, it really is all different," Price said.

 

For one, Orion's computer systems and the built-in redundancy are far different than they were on spacecraft 50 years ago, Price said. "We've got a million lines of software code. And when we go to the moon, we'll have another million."

 

The Orion spacecraft is imbued with autonomy, failure detection systems and the ability to reroute things — say, a balky thruster that's automatically rebalanced by redundant thrusters, Price said.

 

"It's a lot more complexity," Price said, "so that it can be safer and more reliable. It makes for an amazing machine."

 

Trial by fire

 

The upcoming EFT-1 — which will take Orion about 3,600 miles (6,000 kilometers) away from Earth — is focused primarily on checking a dozen or so issues. Evaluating Orion's heat shield is "a big one," Price said. "We haven't returned at this speed since Apollo, and it's faster than (the space) shuttle came back."

 

That heat shield needs to withstand a true trial by fire — the 20,000-mph (32,000 km/h) plunge through Earth's atmosphere.

 

Orion's heat shield incorporates a different formulation of Apollo-era "Avcoat," a material designed to ablate as it heats up to safeguard the inside of the spacecraft from the severe temperatures of re-entry. Avcoat ablator material fills up some 330,000 cells of a honeycomb matrix that constitutes the heat shield.

 

Price said that Avcoat's provider, Textron Defense Systems in Wilmington, Mass., is fabricating Orion's heat shield — the world's largest, measuring some 17 feet (5.2 meters) in diameter.

 

"They haven't made Avcoat for 40 years," Price said, adding that NASA persuaded the company to restart production of the material.

 

Building a space transportation system

 

Another challenge faced in the Orion program was building the electrical systems, including the computers and processors, Price said.

 

"We're going through the Van Allen radiation belts. So we've done a lot of testing to assure they survive the radiation environments," he said. "We aggressively tried to put as much as we could on this first flight. But as funding was reduced ... we moved some things around. Most of the crew systems that we don't need for this flight, we deferred until the 2017 flight."

 

Also an unpiloted mission, that 2017 flight would fling Orion on a circumlunar trajectory — with details still being evaluated — using NASA's Space Launch System mega-rocket, which is also in development. Early Orion missions will be lighter than later flights, similar to what was experienced in building and flying the space shuttle fleet, Price said.

 

Next year's EFT-1 flight should be a booster shot in the arm for NASA's deep-space mission plans, he added.

 

"Building Orion is building a capability," Price said. "As science and politics drive us in a different direction, we can do different things with the same system. We can use this system with kit modifications to do the durations we need. It's a tool beyond Apollo that was a point design to go to the moon."

 

Over the next several months, the march toward Exploration Flight Test-1 is loaded with calendar milestones to ready Orion, Price said.

 

"And then we're on the range in September. We've got the range date. There's a lot of exciting things going on," he said.

 

Government shutdown should have no impact

 

The recent government shutdown, which forced NASA to stop most work from Oct. 1-16, should not alter the timeline for EFT-1, Lockheed Martin officials said.

 

During the shutdown, all Orion contractor personnel located at NASA centers were redirected to alternate work locations so they could continue making progress on the Orion spacecraft, Allison Rakes, a spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin Space Systems, told Space.com via email on Oct 7.

 

Orion's heat shield is continuing final assembly at Textron Defense Systems in Massachusetts, and fairings are being tested at Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale, Calif. In addition, the attitude control system is being tested at Aerojet in Sacramento, Calif., and the Delta launch system is being assembled at United Launch Alliance's facility in Decatur, Ala.

 

"Right now, we do not anticipate an impact to the EFT-1 launch date," Rakes told Space.com.

 

Advanced booster for NASA's Space Launch System completes milestone

 

Jason Rhian - SpaceflightInsider.com

 

Boosters planned for use on NASA's next heavy-lift launch vehicle, the Space Launch System or "SLS" have completed what is known as filament winding. This is an important milestone toward having these solid-fuel rockets used on SLS as well as part of NASA's Research Announcement (NRA) Advanced Booster risk-reduction program. The filament winding was conducted on a pathfinder Advanced Booster composite case, a very different version of this booster element than those produced in the past.

 

NASA and the manufacturer of the booster, ATK, hope that these efforts will produce a stronger case design that is more affordable than traditional steel versions. The solid rocket booster (SRB) design currently being developed can trace its lineage directly back to those used on NASA's space shuttle. The advanced booster should increase the amount of payload delivered to orbit on SLS.

 

A statement issued by ATK detailed the positive aspects of this new type of booster.

 

"ATK's risk-reduction efforts on this NRA will help NASA with technological development and performance upgrades in the future," said Charlie Precourt, vice president and general manager of ATK's Space Launch division. "It also ties to cost reductions we have made on the existing SLS boosters and advances in our commercial business."

 

Precourt knows these boosters very well, having depended on similar boosters during his four trips to orbit on shuttles, Columbia, Atlantis and Discovery.

 

The "pathfinder" version of the booster has a 92-inch diameter and is some 27 feet long. The task of constructing the case involved the use of a modern fiber-placement tool and is described as the result of many individuals using their extensive experience to accomplish the objective.

 

"Creating a composite case and developing advanced propellant for NASA's advanced booster coincides with technological advances in our commercial rocket programs at ATK," Precourt added.

 

The next step for the Advanced Booster NRA program will be the development of propellants which are more affordable, yet still operate at the high standards required by NASA. Through ATK's Value Stream Mapping (VSM) process, employees identify issues which improve the quality of the products produced by the Utah-based firm. According to the company, ATK employees made some 400 changes to the booster – which NASA approved. ATK has stated that these improvements have reduced assembly time by about 46 percent, which the company says has saved millions of dollars in projected costs for SLS.

 

ATK has built more than 1,600 commercial solid rocket motors so far. The company is involved with NASA's Commercial Resupply Services program (ATK provides the Castor solid rocket motor for the upper stage of Orbital Sciences Corporation's Antares launch vehicle) and with SLS.

 

ATK provides boosters for the Delta II and IV Medium family of launch vehicles which are produced by United Launch Alliance as well as Orbital Sciences Corporation's Pegasus, Minotaur and Taurus families of rockets. Given that the company has produced solid rocket motors since 1987, NASA is leveraging their experience and legacy systems to develop more efficient, modern versions of their designs.

 

"The work ATK is doing on NASA's NRA advanced booster assures a path for affordable upgrades that provide higher performance," Precourt said. "We have a tremendous amount of experience with solid rocket boosters that enables us to take advantage of existing technology, while developing new technology to improve future products."

 

A last chance to tell NRC *YOUR* ideas for human spaceflight - via Twitter

 

Marcia Smith - SpacePolicyOnline.com

 

The National Research Council's (NRC's) Committee on Human Spaceflight is offering everyone a last chance to provide their ideas on the future of the human spaceflight program via a Twitter chat tomorrow, October 29, 2013.

 

This is the first time the NRC is using social media to obtain input from the public. Anyone who wants to participate should tweet their ideas using the hashtag #humansinspace.

 

Input will be accepted during a 27 hour period on October 29 -- from midnight Eastern Daylight Time through the next midnight Pacific Daylight Time.

 

The NRC solicited ideas from the public this summer; they are available on the NRC's website. This is a final opportunity for the public to participate as the committee nears the end of its deliberations.

 

This time the NRC is asking for responses to the question:  What are your best ideas for creating a NASA human spaceflight program that is sustainable over the next several decades.

 

The NRC is hoping to stimulate "a rapid exchange of ideas" among participants.   Be sure to use the #humansinspace hashtag.

 

Asteroid fighters, unite: UN votes to create global force

 

Deborah Netburn - Los Angeles Times

 

Even the United Nations is taking the threat of asteroids hitting our planet seriously.

 

Last week, the U.N. General Assembly approved measures to coordinate detection and response to asteroid strikes that could level cities and possibly destroy our civilization.

 

Specifically, the agency voted to create an International Asteroid Warning Network made up of scientists, observatories and space agencies around the planet to share information about newly discovered asteroids and how likely they are to impact Earth. The group will also work with disaster relief organizations to help them determine the best response to an asteroid impact like the one that rattled the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February.

 

The U.N. will also set up a space mission planning advisory group to look into how humans might deflect an asteroid heading our way -- the best options, the costs and the technologies needed. The results of that study will be shared with space agencies throughout the world.

 

The General Assembly also agreed that the  existing U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space would monitor threats from asteroids and help plan and authorize a deflection campaign if necessary.

 

These measures were based in part on recommendations from the Association of Space Explorers, a  professional society of astronauts and cosmonauts. The group, made up entirely of people who have flown in the space, submitted a report to the U.N. in 2009 titled "Asteroid Threats: A Call for Global Response." The report outlined steps for how the U.N. could help prevent a dangerous asteroid strike. 

 

Speaking at a news conference on Friday, Apollo 9 Astronaut Rusty Schweickart said the group believes  decisions on how to respond to an asteroid threat must be handled by an international body.

 

As of now, the only way to deflect a dangerous asteroid is to detect it 10 to 15 years in advance, and then alter its orbit slightly so it would miss Earth, Schweickart said.

 

"The question is, which way do you move it?" he said. "And if something goes wrong in the middle of the deflection, you have now caused havoc in some other nation that was not at risk. Therefore, this decision of what to do and how to do it, what systems to use, and all the rest of it has to be coordinated internationally."

 

Schweickart described the measures recently adopted by the U.N. as a skeleton of a decision-making process that will help guide the international community on how to handle a threat if one arises.

 

"I say a skeleton because it has no meat or muscle on it yet, " he said. "That is the challenge as we go forward."

 

The members of the space explorers group have already outlined the next steps that they would like to see implemented in a global asteroid defense plan.

 

They want to see national governments include asteroid impacts in their disaster response plans and budgets, and they want policy makers to direct national space agencies to launch an international asteroid deflection demonstration in the next 10 years.

 

They also want to find the nearly 1 million near-Earth objects that could potentially strike our planet.

 

"One-hundred years ago, if the Earth is hit by an asteroid ... that is bad luck," said Ed Lu, an member of the group who spent seven months on the International Space Station and is now chief executive of the B612 Foundation. "If 20 years from now we get hit again, that is not bad luck, that is stupidity. We can do better as a race."

 

Detecting and Deflecting a Killer Asteroid

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and other space experts gather to discuss how to meet the threat of a killer space rock headed for Earth

 

Will Dietrich-Egensteiner - Popular Mechanics

 

The explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia this past February made the danger of asteroids loud and clear. Although it is only 17 meters (56 feet) in diameter, the asteroid's explosion injured 1000 people and shattered nearly every window in the Russian city. And humans know of merely one percent of dangerous near-Earth objects, so there are many more asteroids out there that could potentially strike the planet.

 

Last week, the United Nations adopted measures to create an international decision-making mechanism for planetary asteroid defense. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium, moderated a panel today with several of the experts who have been studying potential asteroid impacts and helping to form the recommendations for the U.N.

 

Detection

 

"[The Chelyabinsk explosion] was the ideal shot across the bow," Tyson said, because while the incident helped galvanize interest in asteroid defense, no one was killed.

 

Edward Lu, a former NASA astronaut and member of the ASE committee, stressed the need for better detection methods. After all, the scientific community originally found out about the asteroid via Twitter and YouTube. "Is that unacceptable? I think yes," he said. "Our challenge is to find these asteroids before they find us."

 

Tom Jones—former NASA astronaut, committee member of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE), and PopMech contributor—said that ASE and the U.N.'s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space have been working on the plan for dealing with asteroids for six years. The first step is for space agencies to set up an International Asteroid Warning Network. This network will generate impact warnings, and an Impact Disaster Planning Advisory group will share the information about the hazards of an NEO impact.

 

The panel members stressed that asteroids the size of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs shouldn't be our main concern—those only happen once every 100 million years. The asteroids we should be concerned about, they said, are the ones like the asteroid that caused the Tunguska event more than a hundred years ago. That one blew up in the atmosphere, unleashing an explosion equivalent to five megatons of TNT and flattening 2000 square kilometers of forest in Siberia.

 

There are approximately one million NEOs capable of threatening Earth, and the ASE committee wants to urge policy makers to commit the funds necessary to building and launching an asteroid-hunting telescope by 2020. Russell Schweickart, a former astronaut and ASE co-founder, said that building such a telescope and maintaining the asteroid initiative would not require any undue expense by space agencies. The whole thing would cost about one percent of NASA's budget. "Money is hardly an issue," he said. "It's organizational."

 

With the launch of a space-bound telescope looking for asteroids, humans would have advance enough warning, likely decades, to mount a deflection mission.

 

Deflection

 

No matter what the movie Armageddon would like us to believe, blowing an asteroid out of the sky would not be an effective method of preventing it from hitting the Earth. Destroying an asteroid with a bomb or missile would create more projectiles and trajectories to track, even if those chunks are smaller, the experts said. The best way to save ourselves would be simply to redirect the asteroid—using a spacecraft to nudge the asteroid off of its collision course with the planet, Lu said. The ASE recommends that the world's space agencies stage an international deflection demonstration of this "kinetic impact" strategy be carried out within 10 years to prove that it can be done.

 

Trust will be a big factor in all this. Schweickart used the example of an asteroid heading for the northern Atlantic Ocean, and humanity deciding to speed it up or slow it down so that misses an impact with Earth. If scientists were to speed the asteroid up so that it passed in front of Earth, its path would first move across the U.K., northern Europe and Russia. If we were to slow it down so it passed behind the Earth, its path would cross Canada and the U.S. "Which way do you move it?" he said. "And if something goes wrong in the middle, you've now put nations at risk that were not initially." Getting nations to cooperate under these situations could prove to be a big hurdle.

 

Tyson added that we should choose wisely which asteroids to deflect. "You don't want to deflect a harmless asteroid into an impact path," he said.

 

Even with NASA engaged in sending rovers to Mars and eventually planning to send humans there, the panel sees the asteroid initiative as the most pressing issue. "It's the culmination of all of our space knowledge," Lu said. "I can't think of anything more important than this."

 

Launch indemnification extension déjà vu

 

Jeff Foust – SpacePolitics.com

 

It's starting to become an annual occurrence: around this time of year, people in the commercial launch industry start to wonder when—or even if—Congress will extend the existing third-party commercial launch indemnification regime. That system requires commercial launch operators in the US to demonstrate financial responsibility, usually in the form of insurance, up to a "maximum probable loss", or MPL, to uninvolved parties as calculated by the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) when licensing that launch.

 

Losses above the MPL level would then be indemnified by the government up to an extremely high level (about $2.8 billion in 2013 dollars.) The indemnification regime needs to be periodically renewed by Congress; it last did so at the very end of the last Congress in January, but by only one year.

 

The problem for the industry is that, so far, Congress has taken almost no action on another extension. While there were hopes early this year that Congress would take up possibly a long-term extension as part of a broader reauthorization of FAA/AST, such a reauthorization has gone nowhere. The NASA authorization bill approved by the House Science Committee this summer does include a five-year extension, but that bill has not been taken up by the full House, and the Senate is strongly opposed to the overall bill. The Senate's version of a NASA authorization bill includes a three-year extension, but it, too, has yet to be taken up by the full chamber.

 

"In the partisan environment we're in, I don't think it's at the top of anyone's agenda," said Chris Kunstadter, Senior Vice President Aerospace Insurance at XL Group, during a panel session at last week's International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) in Las Cruces, New Mexico. "It's clearly important for fostering the US space industry. It's crucial." He described the last-minute, short-term extensions of the regime, as was the case at the end of last year, as "frustrating," and noted that the FAA's Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee, or COMSTAC, has long advocated for a long-term, or even permanent, extension of the indemnification system.

 

Kunstadter said he expects the indemnification system to be extended, but warned "there may be some issues that cause it not to be extended right away" in the current political environment. If there is a delay in an extension, he said, there is sufficient capacity in the insurance market to allow companies to purchase larger amounts of third-party coverage in lieu of government indemnification (which has never been invoked since the regime was established in the late 1980s.) "In the unlikely event that it is not extended, there will be insurance available up to a very high limit," he said. "We hope it gets extended, it's very important to the industry, but if it isn't, I believe the insurance community, the insurance market, can absorb some of that."

 

Spaceport wars: More states joining NM in space industry quest

 

Lauren Villagran - Albuquerque Journal

 

As Spaceport America gets its finishing touches, awaiting the day that Virgin Galactic launches passengers beyond the stratosphere, more states are looking at entering the space industry, with a spaceport at the cornerstone of their plans.

 

"It almost looks like wildflowers growing across the U.S., if you look at all the ones talking about it," said Christine Anderson, executive director of Spaceport America.

 

Hawaii, Georgia, Alabama and Puerto Rico are mulling spaceports. Two spaceport projects are in the works in Texas, in Midland and Houston. Spaceport Colorado expects to apply for a Federal Aviation Administration commercial license by year end.

 

The motivation driving these projects is the chance to get an early edge in an emerging commercial space flight industry that – beyond space tourism for the few who can afford it – could have sweeping commercial, civil and military applications. But the risks are big, too: Of the eight U.S. locations that currently hold commercial licenses to fly into space, only a few are active, while others have languished as the industry makes its slow march toward successfully flying people to space and back.

 

"I think they're seeing a nascent industry, and they want to get in on the ground floor and be there for the growth," said Art Waite, who directs the aerospace division of BRPH Architects-Engineers Inc., which builds spaceport facilities.

 

Unlike modern airports, no spaceport is one-size-fits-all, as every launch vehicle is unique. But with the commercial space industry in its early stages, and so few spaceflight companies at the forefront, will new spaceports oversaturate the market?

 

Andrew Aldrin, astronaut Buzz Aldrin's son and director of business development at United Launch Alliance, summed up the hopes and limitations of the emerging commercial space industry at a recent symposium in Las Cruces: "Many of us in this room believe there is a passenger space flight market out there," he said. "But we don't know until someone goes up."

 

"The criticism that I have heard is that there is too much capacity already," said Michael López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut and current president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. "By and large, there is not a ton of commercial traffic and zero human commercial space traffic."

 

Virgin Galactic had expected to be flying passengers by Christmas but is still in the testing phase. Owner Richard Branson said in September he hoped to have his spaceship in space "within the next handful of months," although not this year.

 

Eight markets

 

A study funded by the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation forecasts demand in eight markets: space tourism; basic and applied research; education; aerospace technology testing; media, including advertising, film and television; satellite development; earth imagery for commercial, civil and military applications; and point-to-point global travel.

 

Right now, Virgin Galactic's $250,000 tickets essentially secure a place in line for a future trip to a view: a glimpse of earth from sub-orbital space. The FAA study estimates that only about 8,000 very wealthy people across the globe have the kind of spending patterns that suggest they would drop a quarter of a million dollars on a short trip to space.

 

But the business model Branson and other players envision doesn't begin and end at passenger journeys to space and back. The industry wants commercial launches of satellites into orbit and the sub-orbital point-to-point travel that would make long journeys, from Spaceport America to Tokyo or Dubai, for instance, incredibly fast.

 

"We may never pull it off," Branson said of point-to-point travel in a September interview. "But we're going to go for it."

 

Companies like Virgin Galactic, XCOR and SpaceX are testing the reusable vehicles that would open these markets, but timelines have been frequently pushed back. No one wants to rush passengers into space and risk their safety.

 

"If we have a failure early on in this program," said Aldrin – referring to commercial passenger spaceflight generally – "it will be really difficult. We'll be down for a long time."

 

Unpredictable

 

The unpredictability of the emerging commercial space industry complicates the spaceport business. Each location is trying to find its own niche, and some are better positioned for success than others.

 

Florida's Kennedy Space Center has multiple facilities, a legacy of NASA's heyday, and is trying to figure out how to rent its launch pad to commercial spacelines.

 

Houston's Ellington Field hopes to obtain a spaceport license "to be able to operate at any given time if and when … an operator decides they need to be flying out of Houston," said Arturo Machuca, manager of business development for the Houston Airport System, which runs Ellington Field.

 

Others haven't quite lived up to their promise. Oklahoma's Burns Flat spaceport – – conceived in 1999 as a way to attract commercial space business to the region – is marred by blighted buildings and derided by town officials. Last year, elected officials in Alaska had threatened to shutter the state's struggling Kodiak Spaceport until it secured a contract with Lockheed Martin for rocket launches.

 

Spaceport America's Anderson said New Mexico is competitively positioned to capture business in the markets that commercial space flight will ostensibly open up. She has fielded calls from other states that want to learn about New Mexico's model, in which $209 million in taxpayer money funded a spaceport tailored to anchor tenant Virgin Galactic's specifications, and liability protections make the state more attractive to manufacturers and suppliers.

 

Spaceport America's goal is to draw "terrestrial space tourists," Anderson says, as well as additional tenants like SpaceX, which is poised to launch high-altitude test rockets from the site before the end of the year.

 

The spaceport is now paying about 75 percent of its $1.85 million operating budget with revenue, Anderson said. A state appropriation of $459,000 each of the past three years has covered the remaining 25 percent.

 

"All the money can't come from commercial space," Anderson said. "Airports don't make all their money through airlines; they make it through concessions and other things. Ours is the tourism side."

 

Spaceport America has advantages compared with some of the other locations that may come online, said James Peach, economics professor at New Mexico State University. A higher altitude, restricted airspace nearby and the state's long history with space flight are among them.

 

Another advantage is that "ours is built," he said. "A lot of the others are simply proposals."

 

But there are still many unknowns, including how soon commercial launches of passengers into space will begin.

 

Peach added, "Bottom line is ours could be very successful, or it could be a flop."

 

Space club to honor communicators with award

 

Wayne Price - Florida Today

 

The National Space Club Florida Committee will honor Andrea Farmer of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex and John Zarrella of CNN with the 2013 Harry Kolcum Memorial News and Communications Award during its monthly luncheon meeting on Nov. 12.

 

The event will be held at the Radisson Resort at the Port Convention Center in Cape Canaveral at 11:30 am.

 

The Kolcum award recognizes the contributions of professional Florida-based journalists and communicators who inform the public about our nation's space program with an emphasis on launch and mission operations in Florida. It is named for the late, veteran aerospace writer who worked for Aviation Week & Space Technology and was a founding member of the NSC-FL.

 

"Through their professional dedication and excellence, Andrea and John have helped tell the U.S. space story at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and the Kennedy Space Center," said Jim McCarthy, NSC-FL chairman said in a statement. "Their efforts to energize and inform the public help maintain support for an industry that is vital to both Central Florida and the nation. The Space Club is proud to acknowledge their achievements."

 

Farmer, is senior public relations manager of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, which is operated by Delaware North Companies Parks & Resorts on behalf of NASA.

 

Zarrella is CNN's Miami correspondent, named to this position when the Miami bureau was established in December 1983. He is responsible for CNN's coverage of news in Florida, Central and South America and the Caribbean.

 

Apollo 13's Jim Lovell: Houston, we have a real problem

The hero of Apollo 13 thinks that space exploration has lost direction, and it's time for an international effort to get a man to Mars

 

Roger Highfield - London Telegraph

 

It took the Cold War to put the first man on the Moon, but it's going to take cooperation between the world's spacefaring nations if we are going to venture on to Mars. That is the verdict of Jim Lovell, one of the greatest space heroes of the Apollo adventure – itself a feat of exploration that seems more extraordinary and difficult today than it did four decades ago.

 

It was a poignant moment when Lovell visited the Science Museum last week to accept the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators' premier award, its Guild Award of Honour for Aviation Heroism and Professionalism.

 

As he stood before the museum's Apollo 10 Command Module, he took questions from schoolchildren who were crowding around to get a close look at the space veteran, who was played by Tom Hanks in the film Apollo 13.

 

But later Lovell admitted that if he was offered the opportunity to go into space today, "I would think twice about it", because it could be "a half-assed programme that might die".

 

The contrast could not be more stark with what happened after he was blasted into space on 11 April 1970, on his second Moon mission.

 

Nasa marshalled all of its extraordinary resources, and the ingenuity of Lovell and his crew, to bring Apollo 13 safely home after an explosion ruptured two oxygen tanks 200,000 miles away from Earth.

 

Although the Apollo 13 radio message saying "failure is not an option" is as mythical as "Houston, we have a problem" (changed in the film from "Houston, we've had a problem"), it perfectly captures the spirit of the age of Apollo, when astronauts with the right stuff remained calm in a time of great danger, and almost anything seemed possible.

 

Skip forward to 2004, when a great venture to the Moon and Mars was announced by President Bush. But the subsequent Constellation Program did not really get off the launch pad and was cancelled by President Obama.

 

"I was unhappy about that," said Lovell. Now Nasa is working on the prosaically named Space Launch System, or SLS. This "big rocket", as Lovell describes it, will be capable of lifting astronauts and hardware to asteroids, the Moon and Mars. But Nasa, he declared, is like a ship without a rudder.

 

Today it is fashionable to say the real future lies in commercial space ventures: the Cygnus spacecraft of Orbital Sciences, and Dragon of SpaceX, founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk, have docked with the International Space Station. Boeing and the Sierra Nevada Corporation are working on space taxis. Lovell himself is involved with Golden Spike, a private spacefaring venture that relies on existing technology to return to the moon.

 

The original Apollo 13 crew. From left to right are: Commander, James A Lovell, Command Module pilot, Thomas K Mattingly and Lunar Module pilot, Fred W Haise. (Photo: Rex)

 

But Lovell points out that many of these private ventures depend heavily on Nasa subsidies, and are hardly commercial in the sense that he understands but a "government-funded programme without the oversight a government programme would normally have". Yes, this set-up can be more nimble and efficient but, leaving aside the little suborbital hops planned by Virgin Galactic, it is a long way from launching cargo to the risky business of 'man rated' technology capable of both lofting humans into space and then taking them somewhere like Mars. No wonder that ambitious targets for manned missions set by commercial ventures are slipping.

 

Even Nasa is currently dependent on the Soyuz capsules of their former rivals Russia. The US forks out $71 million (£46 million) per seat to reach the International Space Station. Meanwhile, Lovell remarks, the Chinese programme "is coming along very well" and it is obvious – at least to him – that, they should join forces with Japan, Russia, European Space Agency and Nasa, as with the space station, so that humankind can take the next great step. "It depends on how serious we are, and how cooperative we are going to get."

 

To him, the reason world governments should work together is obvious: the Apollo programme was a virtuoso demonstration of how manned space exploration not only provides a boost to science and technology but has vast intangible benefits, notably in education. Standing next to him in the museum last week, before a sea of children with upturned faces, it was hard to not to agree.

 

To boldly go where no social media fan has gone before

(and then post selfies about it)

 

Molly McHugh - Digital Trends

 

To the untrained eye, the press members who fill the auditorium at NASA's flight facility in Wallops Island, Virginia, all seem more or less the same. And we do have some things in common. For example, we're all here for the same reason: to watch the Antares rocket deliver the Cygnus space craft to orbit, where it will go on to resupply the International Space Station. There are probably a few more similarities, but as the press conference featuring executives from Cygnus manufacturer Orbital and NASA engineers progresses, it becomes increasingly obvious that we're not the same.

 

Half this group are employed by places like Reuters, The Washington Post, and Space.com. These reporters focus on space travel and technology; they publish spec-filled news pieces and thorough, politically-inclined editorials about the increasingly commercialized space industry for major news media and other traditional outlets.

 

The other half of us… don't. At least not professionally. Rather, we're Twitter-obsessed, Facebook-checking, Instagram-dependent slaves to social media, here at the behest of NASA Social, the space agency's social media division. We're all properly credentialed and "official," but then the questions start.

 

"Can you go through how long Cygnus can stay in orbit on battery power?"

 

"What does NASA consider mission success for this? I understand this is a 2.5 million dollar partnership and in the scheme of things that's not a lot but is that money contingent on a certain outcome of the mission?"

 

"What are your weather rules for low level clouds in terms of ceiling thickness?"

 

"If there's a problem with this flight would NASA be OK with going ahead with the resupply?"

 

Needless to say, none of these came from the social media side of the room. But finally, one of us bravely vibrates her vocal chords.

 

"As the space program moves forward, my question is what is your message to young people?"

 

The question comes from JoAnn Delaney, a sixth grade teacher from Hershey, Pennsylvania. It's not a bad question or a dumb one, but the way it differs so clearly from the ones that came before draws a few polite snickers from the crowd and some mild amusement on the panel members' faces. For the past 45 minutes, they've fielded questions about cargo supplies, grappling techniques, and the financial intricacies of the multi-billion dollar private space exploration business. Delaney's question feels completely out of left field.

 

"My message to young people is that I hope it's as inspiring to you now as it was to me when I was younger," says Alan Lindenmoyer, NASA's Commercial Crew Program Manager. "Watching these amazing achievements certainly captured my interest and I hope what you're seeing today is something that will stick with you and encourage you to keep studying and working on your math and science and all the skills that are necessary to keep the space program in motion."

 

A good, honest, simple answer: Straight, to the point, and easy to understand. It's exactly the kind of message NASA Social hopes my fellow reporters and I will deliver to our audiences.

 

NASA first pushed into social media in 2008 with the @marsphoenix account. Social media manager for NASA Veronica McGregor was the "voice" behind the robotic account, tweeting faux messages from the exploratory unit roving the planet. The account quickly accumulated tens of thousands of followers, and went on to win a Shorty Award. It was the first time NASA had connected with the social Internet, and to say it went well is a vast understatement.

 

In 2009, NASA started hosting "tweetups," where people were invited to come out and get behind the scenes access to what NASA was doing – and in turn, they would tweet out all of the exclusive things they were seeing. To date, there have been more than 60 tweetups held at places like the National Air and Space Museum and the Jet Propulsion Labatory. At the Juno tweetup, NASA found participants sent out nearly 11,000 tweets.

 

These tweetups eventually evolved into what we now know as NASA Social, and NASA started targeting new platforms along the way: Facebook of course, a gorgeous Flickr page, significant Google+ outreach, and most recently Instagram. This past year, NASA held its first Social event at SXSW.

 

Today, NASA Social consists of 467 social media accounts across various platforms, two full time social media managers, 10 NASA centers that each have their own heads of social, and more than 100 account managers contributing to social media efforts. The main Twitter account has over five million followers, the primary Facebook page boasts 2.2 million fans, and even the Google+ page – host to many extremely popular hangouts – is one million strong.

 

These aren't some just-out-of-college tweeters in their first media jobs; this is a massive operation maintaining a bigger social footprint than plenty of major brands. But, beyond the actual social channels, the events remain central to everything NASA Social is about. There two types of events; the first is a lottery open to anyone who follows NASA and the second requires a more formal process of accreditation that allows NASA to target more specific audiences. The Antares launch is the latter.

 

"We read through everything and we look to create a group that is picked based on our criteria," says NASA Social's Jason Townsend. "And that criteria basically is that you're bringing a unique angle to the table, you have a large following … you know, we really want to make it a diverse group. At the end of the day, we want to reach out to non-traditional audiences, audiences we're not going to reach on our own."

 

It's an ambitious program, and one that's proving effective – but it's not without the occasional awkwardness that comes with the social meetup territory. If there's one thing that social media and its pervasiveness into "real life" has proven, it's that sometimes, those of us who are good at Internet are better behind a keyboard.

 

The first morning of the two-day event, the Social group mills around the visitor center, mostly avoiding eye-contact with each other until we're herded into a small conference to play a round of "introduce yourself to the group." We go around the room, telling everyone our names, our jobs, and naturally, our Twitter handles.

 

The Antares launch group is nothing if not diverse. Along with Delaney, there's a young adult sci-fi and fantasy writer named Beth Revis; David Weiner, who is Digg's editorial director, as well as Digg's social media director, Veronica DeSouza, Emiko Shinozaki, who works for a company called Lone Signal that's attempting to establish communication with extraterrestrials (yes really, and yes it does sound awesome), and Jameson Brown, who's with Social Media Today.

 

You get the idea: It's a group comprised of students, writers, NASA fanboys, aerial photographers, teachers, and armchair space experts. We run the gamut, as does our knowledge of space exploration.

 

Eventually, little cliques end up forming, and then I start hearing a few whispers that let me know despite our very different backgrounds, there's a reason we were all chosen.

 

"I was like, 'I think I have more followers than you anyway, soooo…"

 

"I just queued up all my tweets for like, the next four days."

 

"Are you Verified? How'd that happened? They've been giving me the run-around."

 

"Probably mostly Instagram and Twitter; I don't want to annoy my Facebook friends."

 

The usual. While I definitely don't know as much about aeronautics as many of them, I have a (relatively) healthy Twitter following, so I must not be completely out of my element.

 

As we finish up the early morning meet and greet, we briefly come into contact with the Media group. It's definitely a little strange – picture your high school clique encountering one from a rival school unexpectedly; the passing acknowledgement of similarities with laser focus on the differences – but then they're shuffled into the visitors center and we're ushered out to the buses. We're off to see the rocket.

 

Even before Antares comes into view, we see the giant, white warehouse that is home to Cygnus. An unmanned resupply spacecraft developed by Orbital, Cygnus is the latest commercial offering in the International Space Station supply business, after SpaceX's Dragon. Needless to say, when Cygnus isn't ferrying food, tools, science experiments, and other sundry goods to the ISS (which, as the Antares launch is its maiden voyage, means for its whole life up to this point), it requires pretty roomy environs.

 

I want to say the warehouse would fill most of a city block, but that's the thing: we're surrounded on all sides by pastoral nothingness, so it's difficult to tell. Hard against the southern tip of the Chincoteague Bay, near the Maryland border, Wallops Island is all beach, scrub, dirt, and grass, with a huge white cube in the middle. Then we turn around the cube's corner and there she is: Antares, standing 133-feet tall and so ramrod straight that, even dormant, it looks like it's lifting off.

 

We're on the Horizontal Integration Pad (NASA-speak for "the launch pad and stuff"), and executives and engineers from NASA and Orbital tell us more about their partnership as well as the construction of what we're looking at. We're also introduced to astronaut Carl Walz, who lived on the International Space Station for six months. Then we're asked if we have any questions. That horrible silence follows – you know, the one where you're very aware that the fact that you have no questions says more about you than any question could? How could we not have questions for an astronaut?

 

Finally a few of us venture questions, mostly focused on the construction of Antares, and later someone asks Walz more personal details about living on the ISS (he once tried on a Russian astronaut's uniform to see what it was like; they loved it when people sent up candy). But of course, eventually, we end up doing what we do best: Take selfies with the rocket. There's the Leaning Tower of Pisa Antares selfie; the thumbs-up selfie; and just the simple here-I-am-with-a-rocket selfie, all of which roll simultaneously onto Twitter and Instagram.

 

I say this, by the way, with no shame. A rocket is no simple thing, and the Cygnus mission is a technically (and economically) complicated one. But communicating the gist of the whole thing – we're sending stuff to space, people! Because people are up there, living on a real life space station! – doesn't have to be.

 

The Social Web is the media of the masses, and no federal agency is doing a better job of leveraging it than NASA. This makes sense, considering that NASA, until our recent government-loathing era, was the federal agency with the most citizen appeal.

 

"Back in the Apollo era, none of this [social media] existed; you had to rely on newspapers, radio, and television," says a NASA TV exec I briefly spoke with after one of the press conferences. "And the social aspect was that people would actually get in their family station wagon and drive down there, park out there on the beach … so it was a very family-centric type of thing."

 

"Now, we're bringing it back into the modern living room, because a lot of people's TVs are Wi-Fi enabled, hooked into YouTube and Google, and people are relying on that now as their social aspect. It's a way to reach out to this generation."

 

And this generation is hooked into more than Smart TVs and YouTube. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+; these apps are all our "living rooms," where we go to kill time and consume entertainment and information.

 

Various studies in recent years have shown that, while the public has generally positive feelings about NASA (particularly compared to other federal agencies), we're not particularly interested in what the agency is up to or learning more about it. And in 2012, studies showed support for reducing its budget. In March, 2013, NASA was forced to suspend its public and education programs as a result of across the board government cuts.

 

Clearly, NASA needs a way to convert the public's positive feelings into stronger public support. In the face of massive federal cuts, this is a challenge.

 

But you know what are free? Tweets.

 

"We feel that NASA Socials, and social media in general, provide a low cost engagement with the public to share NASA's story of exploration and discovery," NASA Social Media Manager John Yembrick tells me. "Most NASA Social events require very little additional overhead, yet allow the public to speak directly with our scientists, engineers, and managers, go behind-the-scenes and take a peek inside their space program, and then communicate this experience to their friends and followers."

 

A significant turning point in NASA's social media strategy was the Mars Rover launch – an iconic moment where an audience that otherwise may have seen a headline and skipped along tuned in. Really tuned in: Townsend said the night was "epic," that NASA could barely keep up with the social engagement the launch created.

 

It was the first multi-center NASA Social event, with festivities happening at six different centers across the country. The Twitter handle created to send updates about the event, @MarsCuriosity – quickly accrued more than 100,000 followers. Various sites embedding NASA's YouTube account streaming the launch, and the truest measure of internet success – a meme – was born.

 

"But not everything is Mars," Townsend admits. Antares might not be going to Mars, but it is going to space, and that's still a story worth telling.

 

And it's a story that can be told in both long-form journalism and hashtags. To wit, the Reuters reporters here contributed a series of articles exploring the significance of the Antares launch (all totally worth reading); meanwhile, as we get closer to launch, Delaney, the school teacher, Skypes with her six grade classroom back in Pennsylvania and live tweets to her 6,000 or so followers.

 

The lead up to launch, by the way, feels endless. The social group has been reunited with the "real media," and we all mill about the Wallops Island Visitor Center, where we originally met Day One, nervously wondering if the launch will be scotched by a weather or technical delay. Finally, we're loaded into (again, separate – but equal!) buses and shipped out to the viewing area.

 

As we disembark, the traditional media folk swarm white tents that contain tables where a reporter might bang away on a laptop, free from the sun's glare. The social group, meanwhile, makes a bee line for the bleachers that have been set up, undeterred by the already scorching sun directly overhead. We scramble to get to the highest, best spot.

 

And that, in a nutshell is all you need to know about how NASA's two media groups covered the Antares launch. You have your professionals, who are here to work, to learn, to research, to gather data, analyze it, make it comprehensible, and then write interesting, informative articles. And you have your social media mavens, who are here to take in the whole spectacle and then produce Tumblr posts, snappy tweets, beautiful Instagrams, hashtagged Facebook photo galleries, and maybe the odd Vine video.

 

Their content makes the dauntingly complex accessible; ours makes the awe-inspiring sharable. They're spreading vital knowledge; we're shrinking the world. Also, we get more sunburns.

 

Finally, the countdown starts, and as we – everyone – shout the last five numbers in unison, I have to remind myself that light travels faster than sound. I see the plumes of thick smoke uncoiling before I hear anything. And then it sounds like the sky is ripping in half.

 

Antares, which just the other day seemed to be lifting off even while stuck to the launch pad, floats off the ground and soars for real, skyward like some fire-breathing angel. I stare up and into the sun for as long as I can.

 

NASA told us that if this was our first launch, we should put the smartphones and cameras down, that photographers are there to capture it for us. Even still, I'd readied my camera and smartphone – I wanted that Instagram video of the launch, and I wanted it to be perfect. But once the moment actually comes, I forget entirely about my phone (I've got a great 15 seconds of the ground, if you're interested).

 

After Antares disappears from site, and I stand on the bleachers and look at the reporters under the tent, many already back to work and fixated on their laptops. I'm still stunned by what I've just seen, and overwhelmed at how quickly it's all over. Usually after (or more accurately, during) something like this, I have that irrepressible urge to get up something about it – a blog post, a slideshow, a tweet even. And some of us here are doing that, but this time I've decided to just take it all in. I'll tweet or Instagram something from the bus later, when the awe has subsided a little.

 

In the end, I don't feel too bad about my missed shot at an epic Instagram. That's what the professionals are there for, anyway.

 

'I Hope That Flight Works Out For You'

15 Years Since John Glenn's Return to Space

 

Ben Evans – AmericaSpace.com

 

Fifteen years ago today (29 October), John Glenn became the oldest human ever to venture beyond the thin veil of Earth and into space. He was 77 years and three months old at the time of his flight aboard Shuttle Discovery on STS-95, and it is a remarkable record which he retains to this day. With the recent passing of Scott Carpenter, Glenn—now 92—is the sole surviving member of the "Original Seven" Mercury astronauts, chosen by NASA way back in April 1959.

 

Although the arrival of commercial crew transportation capabilities and private ventures, including Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, offer a measure of hope that septuagenarians, or even octogenarians, may someday fly into the heavens, Glenn's achievement seems secure and unassailable for the foreseeable future.

 

Over the past 50 years of human spaceflight, records for age in space have been established and broken at regular intervals and offer a window into our growing maturity and understanding of how to live and work on the final frontier.

 

When one looks back to the first two men who ventured into space—Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union and Al Shepard of the United States—it is hard not to be struck by the broad difference in their ages and experience; Gagarin was a 27-year-old former reconnaissance pilot, with barely a few hundred hours of flight time in his logbook, whilst Shepard was a 37-year-old engineering test pilot and instructor and a veteran of some of the world's most cutting-edge aircraft. The astronaut and cosmonaut selection campaigns by both nations were not accidental.

 

The Soviets anticipated that their fliers would be embarking on lengthy careers as cosmonauts and set the age limit for their first group of candidates, selected in March 1960, at between 25-30 years old. On the other hand, NASA opted for much higher ages and levels of engineering expertise. According to Neal Thompson in Light This Candle, his 2004 biography of Shepard, the agency chose "steely, technology-savvy test pilots," who were "mature, who'd been around, been tested and stuck it out," rather than youngbloods for whom the fascination of space exploration might lose its luster when faced with the prospect of long hours and extremely hard work. NASA's stipulations for its April 1959 astronaut selection campaign were that the candidates should be 25-40 years old and should hold degrees—and preferably advanced degrees at master's level—in medicine, physical science, or engineering, together with at least 1,500 hours in their flight logbooks.

 

To a great extent, the respective choices of the two nations paid off. Soon after their arrival, the Mercury Seven were advised that, far from being "hired guns" on loan from their respective military services, their engineering and test piloting expertise would be actively tapped in the design and development of the Mercury spacecraft. The Soviet cosmonauts, on the other hand, had considerably less direct involvement in the engineering aspects of their spacecraft's design and development, deferring instead to the decisions of their corps commander, General Nikolai Kamanin, and to Sergei Korolev, the Chief Designer of the OKB-1 design bureau. Only later in their careers did Gagarin and several of his contemporaries enter the prestigious Zhukovsky Air Force Academy to study for their Candidate of Technical Sciences credentials.

 

With this in mind, it is perhaps unsurprising that the United States held the record for the oldest human space traveler, virtually from the outset. Gagarin held it for 23 days from his flight on 12 April 1961 until Shepard's launch on 5 May, after which John Glenn flew the orbital Friendship 7 mission in February 1962, aged 40 years and seven months. He held the record until December 1965, when 42-year-old Wally Schirra commanded the ambitious Gemini VI-A rendezvous mission with Gemini VII. Three years later, in October 1968, Schirra cemented his credentials yet further, commanding Apollo 7 at the age of 45. His oldest-man-in-space lead would not last much longer, for on 26 October 1968—just four days after Apollo 7's return to Earth—Soviet cosmonaut Georgi Beregovoi rocketed into orbit aboard Soyuz 3. Aged 47 at the time of his flight, Beregovoi had been a particularly harsh critic of the youth of several of his cosmonaut comrades.

 

A senior officer in the Soviet Air Force, Beregovoi was a Second World War combat veteran and decorated test pilot. In his eyes, Yuri Gagarin was "an upstart" and a bit-of-a-lad who was "too young to be a proper Hero of the Soviet Union." The relationship between the two men grew so stormy that Gagarin is said to have shouted that Beregovoi would never fly into space. After Soyuz 3, Beregovoi entered management, eventually rising to command the cosmonaut corps, and he remained the oldest man in space until July 1975, when 51-year-old Deke Slayton served aboard the U.S. half of the joint Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) mission. Yet Slayton's spot on ASTP only came about through an unfortunate set of circumstances, which had caused him to be dropped from his 1962 Mercury mission and grounded for more than a decade due to a minor heart murmur.

 

Following his flight, Slayton held onto his crown for more than seven years, until Vance Brand slightly eclipsed it in November 1982, commanding the STS-5 shuttle mission, also at the age of 51. Brand's accomplishment was slim—he was 51 years and six months old at the time of STS-5, compared to Slayton's 51 years and four months at the time of ASTP—but what is little known is the Soviets came close to breaking both records, two years earlier.

 

In November 1980, Soyuz T-3 rocketed toward the Salyut 6 space station, carrying cosmonauts Leonid Kizim, Oleg Makarov, and Gennadi Strekalov. However, this crew complement was not the one originally envisaged. More than a year earlier, in October 1979, veteran cosmonaut Vasili Lazarev was named as the prime crew's commander. He was eventually removed on medical grounds, but had he flown Lazarev (born in 1928) would have been 52 years old, neatly surpassing Slayton's record. The Soyuz T-3 plot thickened, however, when another veteran cosmonaut, Konstantin Feoktistov, was also considered for a position on the crew. In June 1980—less than six months before launch—the 54-year-old Feoktistov was named to the prime crew, alongside Kizim and Makarov. It seemed a long shot, for Feoktistov's health had been criticized in the prelude to his 1964 Voskhod 1 mission. Eventually, in October 1980, only weeks before Soyuz T-3 was due to launch, Feoktistov was dropped from the crew roster on medical grounds and replaced by Strekalov. Had either Lazarev or Feoktistov flown, it is possible that the Soviets engineered the assignment, purely for the propaganda value of seizing the oldest-man-in-space record.

 

As the 1980s dawned, NASA's astronaut corps burgeoned with a new, young breed of test pilots and scientists and engineers … but there remained a few of the "Old Guard" from the earlier Apollo era, too, several of whom went on to fly the shuttle. Vance Brand did not enjoy his record for long; Bill Thornton flew aboard STS-8 in August 1983, aged 54, then broke his own record aboard STS-51B in April 1985, aged 56. Three months later, in July 1985, Karl Henize rode aboard STS-51F at the age of 58 years and nine months. Henize is an interesting case in the steady relaxation of early rules surrounding age limits of astronaut candidates. For as much as NASA desired age and experience, its uppermost limit in the early 1960s was a maximum of 40 years old, and Henize was rejected as a candidate for NASA's first group of scientist-astronauts in 1965, partly because he was near the upper end of this age bracket. Two years later, the age limit was changed and, aged almost 41, he was selected. During initial flight instruction at Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Okla., he not only passed with flying colors, but earned the distinction of being the oldest man ever to complete the grueling 18-month military course.

 

Others who had been similarly affected by NASA's age limit included Bill Thornton himself and, like Henize, he had also been rejected as a contender for the 1965 scientist-astronaut class. A year later, Thornton contacted Deke Slayton—then serving as head of Flight Crew Operations—and was encouraged to hold out for another selection cycle in 1967, in which previously disqualifying factors, including height and age, would be relaxed "in exceptional cases." Clearly, both Henize and Thornton were considered as exceptional cases and were recognized experts in their respective fields of astronomy and aerospace medicine, and both made NASA's exacting cut.

 

Karl Henize's record endured through the traumatic years which followed the Challenger tragedy … and, but for one unforeseen event, might have endured well into the 1990s. Then, in May 1989, astronaut Jon McBride unexpectedly resigned from NASA, having already been named to command shuttle mission STS-35. To replace him, the agency selected one of its most experienced active-duty astronauts, and for the second time in his long career, Vance Brand became the oldest man in space. Launching on 2 December 1990, aged 59 years and seven months, Brand soundly exceeded Henize's achievement. Six years later, in November 1996, Story Musgrave became the first sexagenarian spacefarer, launching aboard STS-80 at the age of 61. It was his sixth shuttle mission and, in private correspondence with this author early the following year, Musgrave had hoped to remain on active status for yet another flight, but it was not to be. He resigned from NASA in August 1997.

 

And there, it might be thought, the story would have ended. By the latter half of the 1990s, there were no astronauts available on active flight status who exceeded Musgrave in terms of age, and the casual observer would be forgiven for supposing that the 61-year-old record would endure for some considerable time. Then something unusual happened. Late in the summer of 1997, the rumor mill became rife with speculation that John Glenn—more than three decades since Friendship 7 and by now the Democratic Senator for Ohio—might fly aboard the shuttle as part of efforts to understand the process of aging in the strange microgravity environment. In January 1998, amid much fanfare, Glenn was formally named as a payload specialist for STS-95, scheduled for October of that same year. In flying the mission, the 77-year-old Glenn would become history's first septuagenarian astronaut. However, some saw the flight as little more than a publicity stunt, and others argued that risking the life of Glenn, a U.S. national hero, was inexcusably rash.

 

In his 1999 autobiography, John Glenn: A Memoir, Glenn described the process by which he came to be considered for STS-95. "In early 1995," he wrote, "I prepared for debate on [NASA's] budget by reviewing the latest NASA materials, including Space Physiology and Medicine, a book written by three NASA doctors. As I read, a chart jumped out at me." The chart described the physical effects upon astronauts in space, including muscular changes, osteoporosis, disturbed sleep patterns, balance disorders, a less responsive immune system, cardiovascular changes, loss of co-ordination, a decline in drug and nutrient absorption, and differences in blood distribution patterns.

 

After several years working on the Special Committee on Aging, Glenn pondered the possibility of an older person venturing into space to evaluate these effects. In his mind, such research carried potentially great implications for future International Space Station (ISS) crews, who would spend many months in orbit. Late in 1995, he approached NASA Administrator Dan Goldin for the first time with the possibility and was received with warm enthusiasm, but it would appear that Glenn's support for President Bill Clinton in his effort to secure re-election in 1996 aided his campaign immeasurably. After discussing the idea with the president, Glenn described a flight with Clinton in Ohio, whilst on the campaign trail. "We were returning to the airport," Glenn wrote, "when he [Clinton] brought the subject up again. He grinned, leaned over and slapped me on the knee. 'I hope that flight works out for you,' he said."

 

Of course, it was not enough to have the backing of the president. To convince the nation and the world that this was not simply an old senator and U.S. hero getting a free joy ride into space required Glenn to ensure that his mission pulled its own weight in terms of its scientific gain. And that "gain" has been repeatedly questioned over the years, with critics and supporters on both sides of the fence.

 

"My campaign for a shuttle flight had taken me to Dr. John Eisold, the U.S. Navy admiral who was the attending physician for Congress," wrote Glenn, "and had an office in the Capitol." At the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Md., he was put through heart exams, liver, kidney and pancreatic scans, a whole-body MRI scan, and a head scan. At the end of the grueling tests, Eisold told Glenn that he saw no physical problem which prevented the former astronaut from flying again. At a follow-up meeting with Dan Goldin—and carrying his medical results in hand—Glenn reiterated his interest. This time, Goldin took serious notice of his words and gave Glenn two conditions: first, that his mission should be scientifically valuable, and second, that he should be able to pass all of the exams required by active-duty astronauts, many of whom were half his age. In John Glenn: A Memoir, Glenn stressed that his wife, Annie, and grown children were unhappy with the notion of him venturing into the cosmos again. (Annie's initial response was "Over my dead body!") However, it was turning inexorably from a dream into a reality. "Back in Washington, on 15 January 1998," Glenn wrote, "and aide interrupted a meeting with the word that I had a phone call." It was Dan Goldin. "You're the most persistent man I've ever met," said the NASA Administrator. "You've passed all your physicals, the science is good and we've called a news conference tomorrow to announce that John Glenn's going back into space!"

 

That year, 1998, is remembered by many space enthusiasts as the time at which construction of the International Space Station got underway, but Glenn's flight on STS-95 in October provided another enormous shot in the arm for America's space ambitions. Opinion was divided, with some seeing Glenn as using his political contacts and (well-deserved) status as a U.S. national hero to curry favor with President Clinton and NASA. Others saw his flight as providing useful scientific data to understand how the human body changes and is affected by microgravity. For others, however, it was easy to see both sides of the argument … and another perspective, too.

 

For whatever reasons Glenn flew again, his daring and risky mission—and it was daring and risky, coming as it did betwixt the Challenger and Columbia disasters—it opened a door for older people to fly into space. Several individuals, including space tourists Dennis Tito, Greg Olsen, Charles Simonyi (on his second flight), and last year's Expedition 36 Commander Pavel Vinogradov, have since flown in their early 60s, without apparent difficulties. Their contribution to the fields of space medicine, along with that of Glenn himself, have helped to establish the necessary baseline data by which others will follow.

 

Cuts Could Hurt Technical Performance in Space

 

Paul Dykewicz - Space News (Opinion)

 

(Dykewicz is a journalist who has covered the development of satellite television, satellite radio, satellite broadband, hosted payloads and space situational awareness)

 

The unfortunate reality of cuts to space programs and the loss of workers in the field is a heightened risk for technical malfunctions and even catastrophic failures.

 

The phenomenon has been exhibited in the past when senior engineers and managers left their posts and anomalies ensued thereafter. Indeed, the latest round of U.S. federal cuts is raising quality control concerns.

 

It is uncertain whether the sequester and other federal reductions in spending on civilian and military space programs will lead to disasters, but history indicates that a dearth of opportunities to keep technical skills honed offers reason for worry. At the very least, U.S. government budget cuts may disrupt the supply chain and production lines by reducing spending on new spacecraft, ground equipment and satellite systems.

 

"In keeping with the Willie Sutton school of management, companies will put their efforts where the money is," William Schuster, former chief operating officer for GeoEye Inc., recently explained. "If there is a cutback in satellite funding, then companies' investment in this area will be curtailed. Further, the fewer satellites that get built, the more expensive each new one will be because there are certain fixed costs that need to be covered. It should also be pointed out that fewer satellites and rockets, as we've experienced over the past decade, results in problems with the supply chain."

 

In 2007-2008, quality control problems occurred when funding cuts affected a number of space programs, recalled Schuster, who started consulting after the Jan. 31 merger of GeoEye with Digital Globe following U.S. government spending cuts for remote sensing services. Aside from Schuster's private-sector experience, he spent nearly 22 years working with the CIA and helped the National Reconnaissance Office in the development, engineering and operations of advanced reconnaissance and surveillance systems.

 

Quality control problems can stem from flawed parts or the loss of experienced manufacturing and engineering workers, and result in reduced reliability of satellite systems and launch vehicles.

 

The cuts affect virtually all segments of the supply chain, from parts suppliers to the plating shops and others who support them. Also affected by the federal funding squeeze are subsystem developers and system integrators.

 

When steady funding exists, there is a constant flow of parts, subsystems and space systems that allow technical bugs to be worked out and experience to be gained by the operators. At such times, the management teams at space companies can justify investing to improve the quality of satellites, launch vehicles and the parts that they use.

 

In the absence of such a consistent work flow, intermittent production occurs. Such irregular production can result in teams either forgetting what they have done previously or losing seasoned workers who may be replaced by greenhorns. The loss of experienced employees also can be accompanied by reduced competency.

 

Successful business practices might erode amid the cuts and upheaval. A supply chain that once was dependable when sufficient work flow existed can be disrupted with disastrous results.

 

Thus, integrators need to increase their vigilance of suppliers and parts or risk ending up with defective components in the systems that they are building.

 

One example is that the use of tin in electronic components, which is commonplace on the ground, must be avoided for space applications. Tin is much less expensive than silver, but the latter material is best suited for the hazards of operating in orbit.

 

When suppliers maintain a constant production line of products for space, tin readily can be avoided without problem. But risk rises if production lines turn out products for space applications intermittently or just as a small percentage of what they do, rather than using dedicated production lines for space components.

 

Integrators consequently need to test incoming components more frequently and thoroughly, since they cannot simply rely on their specification and certification from the supplier.

 

Along with quality control concerns, government cuts to civil and military space programs leave the industry less appealing to the best and brightest job seekers.

 

A prominent space industry consultant and educator who is voicing concern about the government's funding cuts is Marshall Kaplan, a visiting professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Maryland. The sequester and direct government cuts to civil space could contribute to "more failures" in general, he warned.

 

The end of a government-funded manned space program and the U.S. space shuttle are high-profile examples of why low morale and waning excitement seem to be taking root in the industry, Kaplan cautioned. As senior engineers and industry leaders retire, an experience gap occurs, and the brain drain is complicated by the loss of other talented people who pursue new opportunities and leave their less-capable counterparts susceptible to quality control problems, he said.

 

"The government has done a poor job of sustaining funding and maintaining continuity for civil space and military space," Kaplan said.

 

If government and industry officials do not learn from the lessons of the past, they are vulnerable to creating conditions that can have calamitous consequences.

 

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