Fwd: Spaceport America: Space Tourism Launch Site

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: March 22, 2016 at 8:05:27 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Spaceport America: Space Tourism Launch Site

 

Spaceport America: Space Tourism Launch Site

By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor | March 21, 2016 10:57pm ET

Spaceport America is a launching facility for numerous private space companies. Several observers have called it the first spaceport dedicated to commercial spaceflight.

Virgin Galactic's high-flying WhiteKnightTwo mothership cradles SpaceShipTwo over New Mexico's Spaceport America.

Credit: Virgin Galactic: Mark Greenberg

The spaceport broke ground in 2009 in New Mexico and saw its first flights go from a completed launch pad in 2006. 

Virgin Galactic is considered the anchor tenant of Spaceport America; public money contributed at least $209 million to attract Virgin founderRichard Branson and others to establish facilities there. The company has undergone numerous delays in its plans to operate commercial spaceflights. This has led some critics to say that a lot of money has been spent on what is now an only partially operational spaceport.

Luring Virgin to the state

The age of space tourism officially launched when SpaceShipOne – financed jointly by Scaled Composites and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen – successfully flew into space twice in 2004.

By making the trip, SpaceShipOne secured the Ansari X-Prize and $10 million. Its technology impressed Branson, who announced in 2004 that Virgin would fund the development of a successor spacecraft called SpaceShipTwo. He also announced he was taking reservations for commercial tickets to space for an estimated $200,000 apiece.

The X-Prize also spurred interest in Spaceport America. In 2004, New Mexico won a bid to host the X-Prize Cup, which was intended to be an exhibition to showcase the technologies available for space tourism. The first event occurred in October 2005, drawing 20,000 people to Las Cruces.

Two months later, Branson and then-New Mexico governor Bill Richardson announced a deal to bring the Virgin headquarters to the state. The state would build a facility to host several companies, but Virgin would be the chief tenant.

"We're going where no one has gone before. There's no model to follow, nothing to copy. That is what makes this so exciting," Branson said at the announcement that December. "We might even be able to allow those aliens who landed at Roswell 50 years ago in a UFO a chance to go home."

At the time, officials estimated that construction would begin as early as 2007, with the facility opening in 2009 or 2010 for business. Virgin also planned to fly its first commercial spaceflight by the end of the decade.

However, both sides experienced development delays that pushed back their estimates by several years. The target date.for Virgin Galactic flights now appears to be fall 2017, according to Forbes. Reported issues affecting Spaceport America include environmental assessment findings and problems with the design of the headquarters interior. 

An artist's concept of Spaceport America, a suborbital spaceport under construction in New Mexico.

Credit: Spaceport America Conceptual Images URS/Foster + Partners

Building the facility

Spaceport America is fairly isolated from large population centers, with the largest nearby city being Las Cruces – 55 miles away. Government officials spent several months negotiating with landowners for the space that the facility would require to run commercial spaceflights.

On Dec. 11, 2006, an agreement was brokered allowing for 18,000 acres of state trust land. Participants in the pact included the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, the State Land Office, Sierra County and two ranch owners.

Design concepts for the spaceport rolled out in 2007 as two counties agreed to contribute tax money for the construction. Then in 2008, Virgin signed a 20-year lease agreement with the state of New Mexico to put its headquarters and operations at Spaceport America.

Although some flights were already running from launch pads, the official groundbreaking of the facility didn't take place until 2009. Virgin's "Eve" carrier spacecraft – designed to hoist the first SpaceShipTwo above the ground for suborbital runs – made a flypast during the ceremony.

But officials emphasized that they were not relying on Virgin to make their money. Small satellites for military and research purposes were some of the other client types sought.

"We can't have a spaceport that just has a one-sided mission. Because if that mission has a hiccup, then we and this investment are going to have a very bad day," said Steve Landeene, then-executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, in 2009. "The key is a diverse portfolio."

Waiting for business

In 2014, Virgin Galactic experienced a fatal test flight that killed one pilot and also pushed back its plans again for a commercial spaceflight. 

In December, the Wall Street Journal wrote that the spaceport still is "largely vacant, with little benefit to surrounding communities" -- and locals were worrying about the future given the crash. At the time, spaceport officials said they were looking for other tenants to complement Virgin (SpaceX is also a tenant.)

In early 2015, a bill moved by New Mexico Senator George K. Muñoz suggested selling Spaceport America, citing problems with waiting for operations to begin. The bill was stranded in finance committee in March 2015, with officials saying there wasn't a lot of widespread support for the idea.

"There was a lot of hoopla before that if 'we build it … they will come,' but it has been several years now and nobody's shown up yet," Muñoz said in a debate cited on Space.com. "New Mexican taxpayers are continuing to foot the bill for a $250 million empty facility that is providing the Legislature shaky operational information at best."

The spaceport also generates money through space work (such as an UP Aerospace launch in mid-2016) and tourism-related activities: "we also host special events, photo-shoots, filming and air-related activities," the facility says on its website. Anderson also emphasizes that the facility is a "long-term investment" that will require help from the state legislature, although Virgin remains committed to the facility.

 

Copyright © 2016 TechMediaNetwork.com All rights reserved. 

 

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Fwd: Challenger Engineer Who Warned Of Shuttle Disaster Dies

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: March 22, 2016 at 7:57:58 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Challenger Engineer Who Warned Of Shuttle Disaster Dies

Challenger Engineer Who Warned Of Shuttle Disaster Dies

Updated March 21, 201611:41 PM ET
Published March 21, 20169:13 PM ET

Howard Berkes

 

 

Bob Ebeling with his daughter Kathy (center) and his wife, Darlene.

Howard Berkes/NPR

Bob Ebeling spent a third of his life consumed with guilt about the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. But at the end of his life, his family says, he was finally able to find peace.

"It was as if he got permission from the world," says his daughter Leslie Ebeling Serna. "He was able to let that part of his life go."

Ebeling died Monday at age 89 at in Brigham City, Utah, after a long illness, according to his daughter Kathy Ebeling.

Hundreds of NPR readers and listeners helped Ebeling overcome persistent guilt in the weeks before his death. They sent supportive e-mails and letters after our January story marking the 30^th anniversary of the Challenger tragedy.

Ebeling was one of five booster rocket engineers at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol who tried to stop the 1986 Challenger launch. They worried that cold temperatures overnight — the forecast said 18 degrees — would stiffen the rubber o-ring seals that prevent burning rocket fuel from leaking out of booster joints.

"We all knew if the seals failed, the shuttle would blow up," said engineer Roger Boisjoly in a 1986 interview with NPR's Daniel Zwerdling.

Ebeling was the first to sound the alarm the morning before the Challenger launch. He called his boss, Allan McDonald, who was Thiokol's representative at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

McDonald phoned Ebeling recently after hearing the NPR story.

"If you hadn't called me," McDonald told Ebeling, "they were in such a 'go' mode, we'd have never been able to stop it."

Three decades ago, McDonald organized a teleconference with NASA officials, Thiokol executives and the worried engineers.

Ebeling helped assemble the data that demonstrated the risk. Boisjoly argued for a launch delay. At first, the Thiokol executives agreed and said they wouldn't approve the launch.

"My God, Thiokol," responded Lawrence Mulloy of NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center. "When do you want me to launch? Next April?"

Despite hours of argument and reams of data, the Thiokol executives relented. McDonald says the data was absolutely clear but politics and pressure interfered.

Ebeling blamed himself for failing to convince Thiokol executives and NASA to wait for warmer weather.

"I think that was one of the mistakes God made," Ebeling told me in January. "He shouldn't have picked me for that job."

The morning of the launch, a distraught Ebeling drove to Thiokol's remote Utah complex with his daughter.

"He said, 'The Challenger's going to blow up. Everyone's going to die,'" Serna recalls. "And he was beating his fist on the dashboard. He was frantic."

Serna, Ebeling and Boisjoly sat together in a crowded conference room as live video of the launch appeared on a large projection screen. When Challenger exploded, Serna says, "I could feel [Ebeling] trembling. And then he wept — loudly. And then Roger started crying."

Three weeks later, I sat with Ebeling at his kitchen table, tears and anger punctuating his words. He didn't want to be recorded or named at the time. Both he and Boisjoly, who died in 2012, became NPR's anonymous sources in the first detailed account of the effort to keep Challenger grounded.

"That's my engineering background coming out," Ebeling explained three decades later. "Somebody should tell ... the truth."

Ebeling retired soon after the Challenger disaster. He used his engineering expertise and what he proudly called his love of ducks to help restore a bird refuge near his home, which was damaged by floodwater from the Great Salt Lake. In 1990, President George H. W. Bush presented Ebeling with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Award.

Ebeling continued to volunteer at the refuge for 22 years and was named the Volunteer of the Year for the National Wildlife Refuge system in 2013.

But that work didn't diminish lingering pain and guilt. God "picked a loser," Ebeling said in January, thinking back to his role in the Challenger launch.

Then Ebeling heard from hundreds of NPR readers and listeners, who responded to our January story.

"God didn't pick a loser. He picked Bob Ebeling," said Jim Sides, a utilities engineer in North Carolina.

"Bob Ebeling did his job that night," Sides continued. "He did the right thing and that does not make him a loser. That makes him a winner."

Ebeling also heard from two of the people who had overruled the engineers back in 1986. Former Thiokol executive Robert Lund and former NASA official George Hardy told him that Challenger was not his burden to bear.

And NASA sent a statement, saying that the deaths of the seven Challenger astronauts served to remind the space agency "to remain vigilant and to listen to those like Mr. Ebeling who have the courage to speak up..."

The burden began to lift even as Ebeling's health declined. A few weeks before his death, he thanked those who reached out to him.

"You helped bring my worrisome mind to ease," Ebeling said. "You have to have an end to everything."

Bob Ebeling is survived by his wife Darlene and 35 descendants spanning four generations, including a grandson studying engineering and granddaughter Ivy Lippard. Lippard joined NPR readers and listeners in posting a message about her grandfather on our website.

Lippard described Ebeling as a man "full of integrity" with a "legacy of compassion."

"It's an honor," she wrote, "to be able to pass down his legacy."

 

Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved.

 

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Fwd: This Week in The Space Review - 2016 March 21

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Begin forwarded message:

From: Jeff Foust <jeff@thespacereview.com>
Date: March 21, 2016 at 2:35:33 PM CDT
To: <bobbygmartin1938@gmail.com>
Subject: This Week in The Space Review - 2016 March 21
Reply-To: Jeff Foust <jeff@thespacereview.com>

This Week in The Space Review View this email in your browser This Week in The Space Review March 21, 2016 Welcome to The Space Review's weekly newsletter! A look inside Blue Origin Earlier this month, Blue Origin opened the doors of its headquarters for the first time to the media, showing off their work on suborbital vehicles and rocket engines. Jeff Foust reports on the tour and the vision for the future of humanity in space that company founder Jeff Bezos wants to enable.   A vision ahead Next year will bring a new President and Congress, and perhaps another reexamination of NASA's human spaceflight plans. Eric Hedman proposes that any such effort focus on developing infrastructure in cislunar space to make voyages to Mars and beyond more affordable.   Desolate magnificence Originally developed as an initial step in NASA's Vision for Space Exploration, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has become a valuable mission for planetary scientists in understanding the Moon. Dwayne Day describes how its images, some of which are on display in a museum, are also works of art.   Planetary defense to avert global economic crisis There's been a heightened awareness in recent years of the threat posed by near Earth objects and the importance to take steps to protect the Earth from that threat. Vid Beldavs argues that such investments can have a positive influence on the global economy as well.   Review: Moon Shot The Google Lunar X PRIZE is entering a critical time, with the prize deadline at the end of next year. Jeff Foust reviews a new documentary that provides brief profiles of some the teams remaining in the competition.   We appreciate any feedback you may have about these articles as well as any other questions, comments, or suggestions about The Space Review. We're also actively soliciting articles to publish in future issues, so if you have an article or article idea that you think would be of interest, please email me. Until next week, Jeff Foust Editor, The Space Review jeff@thespacereview.com Copyright © 2016 The Space Review, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you previously signed up to receive these weekly newsletters from The Space Review. Our mailing address is: The Space Review 12205 Village Square Ter Suite 101 Rockville, MD 20852 Add us to your address book unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences

US Air Force will defend civilian space assets, official says

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/2016/03/17/us-air-force-defend-civilian-space-assets-official-says/81916264/


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DARPA & the shuttle

DARPA can have a shuttle and a heavy launch system for all of our future space vehicle needs... A refined design that repurposes the external fuel tank for a module of a new stations to orbit various locations and a flexible design that can accommodate a shuttle orbiter or other type of spacecraft or module into orbit would be a practical design.. We have all kinds of data from over 130 shuttle missions to space and there has been many studies on improvements to the shuttle.. Now is the time to move forward with proven technologies with a versatile design.. One such launch of a launch system would give us in orbit laboratory volume equaling the International Space Station... 
Space Shuttle STS-122 Atlantis Space Station Assembly ISS-1E Columbus Lab 2008 NASA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8akgPBjkL-Y

Thought provoking video, 1 minute... Demonstrating space shuttle hardware being repurposed for a new flexible heavy lift launch system.... 
DARPA and other space agencies understanding the value of a reusable space plane could do well to think about a flexible architecture system that provides for a myriad of uses.. All the hardware and equipment is still available to build a heavy launch system like the one depicted in the video to accommodate a shuttle orbiter or other type of large space module.. Also worth looking at is the repurpose of the external fuel tank in orbit for the multitude of spaceflight and space exploration aspirations.. These large hermetic vessels could provide valuable internal volume to future spacecraft and orbital platforms.. If designed right from the beginning to be repurposed in space for a secondary role the design and build should be straight forward.. Significant launch cost savings can be made by making better use of the payload that we launch...If it goes up, it stays up! There are so many worthy space missions that will require hardware in orbit.. Space mining, space based solar power, A large spacecraft like the NAUTILUS design, orbital platforms above the Earth, Moon, Mars, Europa, Venus, Titan, all great concept missions to better mankind and all requiring hardware and equipment in space.. DARPA is designing a space plane.. NASA is designing a deep space habitat to orbit the moon.. Lets think more broadly, addressing more needs with one system... Lets design a heavy launch system that can interchange it's payload between a space shuttle orbiter and a space module.. A system designed from the start to have it's components like the external fuel tank repurposed to build the necessary space infrastructure for a bright future of scientific and technological triumphs...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68v_IrZz3NA

A better way to develop DARPA's space plane would be to look at the proven design of the shuttle's and bring into account many of the design augmentations of the system that were proposed over the years.. 
The Space Island concept study proposed re-purposing the external fuel tank in orbit for various other secondary uses.. 
Various other studies proposed that the space shuttle launch system also be able to accommodate a large module type payload in-place of the space shuttle orbiter.. 
Now is our chance to get it right.. 
One of the major concepts of design within NASA is Mission Forward Architecture.. Which means developments today will find more uses tomorrow. So if DARPA designs a shuttle system based on the proven design we will have a shuttle and a heavy launch system!.. The ability to launch a shuttle or a large space module as the need arises will serve the space community well.. When launched the external fuel tanks can be kept in orbit to serve a secondary purpose.. 
If it goes up, it stays up!
The components are still all in production!.. The J2X shuttle main engines are still available. The external fuel tank is available.. It just morphed it's self into the first stage of the SLS.. The solid rocket boosters are in production.. We can make a far better design today.. 
The space shuttle was a heavy launch system!.. People seem to forget to take into account the mass of the shuttle orbiter it's self when talking about payload capacity... All the pieces are in place.. Lets make a flexible multipurpose system that incorporates all of the best design principals we have devised over the years.. 
http://spacenews.com/reusable-space-plane-tops-darpas-budg…/

We are going to require more assets in space to achieve our goals. A Lunar orbiting platform has been suggested to be one such structure. It has been proposed that a construction methodology like that of the skylab would be an excellent choice.. We have seen the space shuttle with it's external fuel tank reach orbit.. The Space Launch System is built from space shuttle legacy designs and components.. There has been much speculation about using the shuttles external fuel tanks for various structures in space.. So I'm curious about what size of a module can we get to orbit. I propose a design from the SLS that would make use of the exhausted fuel tank of perhaps the second stage if not the first stage.. One launch would give us a hermetic structure in space with adequate internal volume to house the necessary equipment for an orbiting station for the Moon, Earth, Mars, Venus, Europa... If the goal of the design was to put the largest module in orbit.. One that would provide enough volume for crew and equipment which would follow on successive launches.. We could design the rocket in a way that we could access the exhausted fuel tanks and make use of that internal volume for working space for the station.. In a way I'm proposing a flying gas tank.. Then once it reaches orbit we make use of the empty tank for accommodating the required crew and equipment.. How large of a craft could we get to space? I would infer a very large vessel.. It would not surprise me if there are already dozens of concept designs for this kind of thing floating around out there.. Pun intended.. What are your thoughts people?.. 
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/index.html

The Space Island Group Homepage...

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Reusable spaceplane tops DARPA's budget request, again - SpaceNews.com

http://spacenews.com/reusable-space-plane-tops-darpas-budget-request-again/


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Military Space Leaders Alarmed by Growing Russian and Chinese Anti-Satellite Threats « AmericaSpace

http://www.americaspace.com/?p=92424


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