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NASA Mars rover "Curiosity" launched Nov 26!

As I'm sure most of you know, NASA had a successful launch of the Mars Rover, Curiosity, and it is on its way to the Red Planet.  It's a bit of bright news in light of the troubled launch of the Russian probe, Phobos-Grunt, which was supposed to check out one of the moons.  (They were able to briefly contact the probe from an Australia station last week, though, and have hopes of getting it moving again.  Incidentally, Russia is now thinking that maybe they could hitch a ride with us or Europe next time.  Let's hope we'd give them good luck and not get their bad.)

Curiosity will land on August 5 or 6, 2012, and have a Martian-year-long mission, about 98 Earth weeks.  It's main purpose is the look for life or the possibility of life--either indigenous or supporting human colonization.  It has 10 instruments to study the land and the atmosphere, with four objectives (taken from the NASA press package):

The mission has four primary science objectives to meet NASA’s overall habitability assessment goal:
• Assess the biological potential of at least one target environment by determining the nature and inventory of organic carbon compounds, searching for the chemical building blocks of life and identifying features that may record the actions of biologically
relevant processes.

• Characterize the geology of the rover’s field site at all appropriate spatial scales by investigating the chemical, isotopic and mineralogical composition of surface and near-surface materials and interpreting the processes that have formed rocks and soils.

• Investigate planetary processes of relevance to past habitability (including the role of water) by assessing the long timescale atmospheric evolution and determining the present state, distribution and cycling of water and carbon dioxide.
• Characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation, including galactic cosmic radiation, solar proton events and secondary neutrons.
Curiosity will not be looking for life itself.  It's not equipped to detect biological processes or to analyze (or recognize) fossils.  (Though I imagine that if it were to photograph some, there'll be some people screaming about it at NASA/JPL!)

Curiosity will be tooling around the Gale Crater, which was chosen after looking at over 30 different sites and years of debate.  This video gives the reasons why they selected it.

Congratulations, NASA and good luck, Curiosity!

For more reading:  http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press_kits/MSLLaunch.pdf
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/fact_sheets/mars-science-laboratory.pdf

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Watching the Space Race: A Pratfall to the Stars

by Walter Staples
This is tagged as Vanguard 2.  Couldn't find Vanguard 1 photo. --Karina

The scene on the little Admiral portable TV was a graded mixture of grays punctuated by details of black and grayish white given a greenish cast by the sunglasses I wore. The bedroom itself was dim with the shades drawn that Friday forenoon. Why sunglasses in a darken room? I was down with a case of the German measles and Dr. Greer at the clinic said it was the only way I could watch TV.

It had been a lousy fall so far. In the Shenandoah Valley, it seemed to be raining constantly, even when it wasn't. There was no iron work for my father. According to him, it was President Eisenhower’s fault somehow—being six, going on seven, the reasons were kind of beyond me—something to do with Stevenson losing the year before. My birthday a few days before Thanksgiving had been okay, but this year my father failed to get a deer. But the very worst happened in the early parts of October and November—the Soviets had put not one, but two Sputniks into orbit! The second even carried a dog named Laika (the adults were careful not to mention to us kids that hers was a one-way trip). But today it was all going to turn around. About noon, Eastern time, America was launching her first satellite!

The Vanguard rocket on the screen looked more like a #2 pencil than a proper rocket like those flown by Rocky Jones: Space Ranger and Tom Corbett: Space Cadet. It lacked the streamlined bullet shape and flaring tail fins ending in landing shocks that anyone who'd watched “Destination Moon” knew were required for a true spaceship. But Vanguard was going work in spite of its lack. We knew it would. Best of all, it wasn't a war rocket like the Reds had used—it was civilian through and through (at that age, it didn't really occur to us kids to wonder why the Navy was building and launching a civilian rocket).

The TV broadcast cut into the countdown. I called to my mother, in the other room, that they were going to launch the rocket. In return, I received a, “That's nice, dear.” I shrugged. The ways of adults are many and strange. The countdown progressed, “...T-minus ten-nine-eight-seven-six-five-four-three-two-one-zero-Fire.” And fire it did. A great boiling ball of flame engulfed the lower half of the rocket, which fell over as its nose cone came off, and totally disappeared in a larger fireball. Time stopped. Apparently, the TV announcer was frozen just as was I. His silence stretched.

I don't remember what came next that soggy 6th of December in 1957. It didn't really matter anymore.

*

Project Vanguard was one of three programs in the running to loft the first American satellite. The Army was pushing its Explorer program to launch using a modified Redstone ballistic missile. The Air Force was pitching a program using their as then unbuilt Atlas missile. The Navy's Vanguard used an outgrowth of an atmospheric sounding rocket, the Viking. As the White House was unsure just how the Soviets were going to react to an American satellite passing overhead every 90-some minutes, it was decided to go for a launch system without the merest hint of military development in its linage. Vanguard got the nod as the least warlike.

The mission of Vanguard TV3 (or, as we knew it at the time, Vanguard I) was three-fold officially: Put a satellite in orbit for the International Geophysical Year, do at least one experiment while in orbit, and be successfully tracked from the ground while in orbit. Its unofficial mission was to ameliorate our looking like fools before the world.

The reaction of the American public, once it got over its collective cringe at Vanguard's failure live on TV within the 48 U.S. states (our ability to make fools of ourselves live on TV broadcast all over the world would come later with Telstar—a event five years in the future), was a combination of wry humor and a determination to get it right next time.

The gallows humor took the form of jokes such as:

            “How does a Cape Canaveral countdown go?”
            “...5-4-3-2-1-oh, hell!”

Even in the 1961 movie comedy “One, Two, Three,” an East German character when asked why he wants to build rockets for the Russians answers, “Because with Russian rocket, Mars! Venus! Jupiter! With American rocket, Miami Beach!”

The determination to succeed was signaled when concerns about the launch vehicle's bloodlines were cast to the winds and Wernher von Braun and the Army came up to bat.

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Thoughts on Manned Space: #1 Follow the Money

Human exploration has sometimes had lofty goals: spreading the Word of God, forging a better life for oneself or others.  But when it comes down to it, the biggest drive for getting on a ship and sailing into the great unknown, where there may be dragons, is the thought that there might be some treasure along with the dragons.

Me indica el dinero!
Most of us living in the New World today are here because the gamble paid off.  The Spanish found gold.  The English, tobacco and other crops.  There was money in the New World, not easy to get, but enough to make it worth the time, hassle and expense.  Governments, then individuals, followed the money and were rewarded for their efforts.

That's been one of the reasons the exploration and colonization of space has been so frustratingly slow.  We're not finding the money.

The thrilling space race of the '50s and '60s was in many ways fueled by fear and national pride, as Walt notes in his Saturday blog about Sputnik.  However, once, we achieved our goal of making it to the moon first, and finding nothing of great economic value, American interest turned back to itself.  Imagine if Columbus had only come back with a few interesting rocks and the promise of nothing more.

We've gotten a lot of terrific spin off technologies from the space program--from drink powder to water purification, airplane de-icing to artificial limbs.  However, these are the result of our quest for space, not what we've found there.  In Colonial terms, it's like justifying New World exploration because we're building better ships.  Looked this way, it's probably not a big surprise the NASA can't seem to hold onto a coherent plan of action for manned space for more than a few years.  The government wants them to encourage technologies and provide jobs as much (or more) than actually getting us outside the atmosphere.

Parliament has canceled construction on the Elenor-class ships, which critics say, is not only fraught with cost overruns, but  uses technology from not later than the 1630s...

 Here's the conundrum, though: unlike colonization on earth, even if we find some gold/tobacco equivalent in space, it could end up costing more to bring home that we'd get in profit.  So what do we do?

* Seek alternate means of financing our efforts. One of those is Space Tourism.  Virgin Galactic is already tapping into this market and has 400 customers signed up and waiting for their suborbital rides on Spaceship Two--$200,000 for a week of training and FOUR MINUTES at zero gravity.  Even the government has made use of tourists: in 2001, millionaire Dennis Tito paid $20 million to be the first space tourist on the International Space Station, and there have been several others since.  Much as the OWS people hate it, the people in the world with gobs of cash to burn on "frivolous" pursuits are often the ones that support programs that further mankind.

* Make space cheaper.  That's one of the driving reasons for encouraging private space industry, IMHO.  Companies that are not government dependent need to learn to do things effectively and inexpensively in order to stay afloat.  SpaceX, for example, says their Falcon Heavy will launch packages 30 times cheaper than the Delta IV, and an independent study by NASA and the Air Force said that if NASA were to have built the Falcon 9, it would have cost three times what it cost SpaceX.

*  Find the Money! Asteroid mining.  Space real estate. Biomedical engineering might be a source...but not if we get rid of privatized medicine, alas.  Even spinoffs, but they can't be the main focus.  Columbus discovered the New World on three little ships, not the top of the line.  The Space Shuttle ran for 30 years, until NASA was finding spare parts on ebay.  Perhaps if we hadn't kept scrapping the programs for its replacement in order to update the technology, we might not be depending on Soyuz right now.

Sometimes, people romanticize the exploration of space as the next colonization move for man.  However, if it's going to work, we have to follow a lesson of the past and follow the money.

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...and speaking of shortsighted governments

The new budget for NASA has significantly cut commercial space...and our chance to spend American dollars on American space industries and get our-ownselves into space.

No, I'm not frustrated. Why do you ask?
According to reports, Congress is still funding $5 billion to its new heavy launch space program, with the goal of Mars, but has cut the commercial flight program to get us to the ISS to $406 million, less than half of what was asked.  That's going to put a serious crimp in the progress of companies like SpaceX and Orbital, who are well into developing craft to get us to the ISS and beyond.  In fact, one report says this will push these programs back years.  Isn't that the equivalent of denying a man with injured legs crutches he needs to walk because you want to buy him expensive running shoes?
You don't want these!

Trust me: These are going to do you good later.
While I personally feel they will eventually need to get away from depending on government funding, the simple fact of the matter is, the ISS is the only game in town...unless we want to market to the Chinese, and I think they're feeling pretty happy about doing it themselves.  (Their re-entry capsule landed safely Nov 17 after a successful docking.)
The re-entry capsule of Shenzhou-. Congrats to the Chinese.  祝贺


But looking beyond that, let's consider what it will cost the US to keep sending astronauts to the ISS on the Soyuz:  just $47 million a seat.   Remember SpaceX believes they can do it for $20 million.  Even if they have cost overruns, they'll be cheaper.  But not if we don't get there.

So, the question is, will NASA delay programs in hopes of getting better budgets later, cut out some of the competition and concentrate on the companies that are closest to success, or do a "peanut-butter spread" cut and make all the programs suffer.  Or maybe Congress will make a bill to give special funding later.  I've not found anything yet, so stay tuned.

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Watching the Space Race: A Light in the October Sky

by Walt Staples

(Note from Karina:  Hooray!  Walt Staples is joining me in this blog.  He'll be posting on Saturday.  his first contributions will be about the history of the space race through the eyes of someone who grew up in it.  (I was born in '67, but my family was not into space much.))

The chill wind rattled dry leaves in the dark. The slightly darker shadow that was my father pointed into the blue-black Virginia sky, “There. See it?” I sighted up his arm as I did when he pointed out deer and other game when up on the Blue Ridge. A tiny white star crawled across the starfield much slower than the aircraft I was used to watching at night. “That's that Russian Sputnik thing,” his voice sounded  slightly disgusted, as when the problem with the TV was down to two tubes and neither looked burnt out.
“What's it doing, daddy?”
“Going over us, boy. And there's not a thing we can do about that.” He spat in the dark. We watched the light pass out of sight over Bent Mountain. He fumbled in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. His frown showed as the Zippo flared. It wasn't his angry frown; rather, it was the one he wore while working something out in his mind.
The end of his Lucky Strike brightened a couple of times before I asked, “What are we going to do about it, daddy?”
I heard him sigh. Then the starlight glinted on his false tooth as he tipped his head to the side and grinned. “Well, boy, I guess we're going to pull up our socks and get to work on it.”
*
People today have no idea what a shock it was to those of us Americans living in 1957, when we were mugged by the space age courtesy of the Soviet Union and their 184 pound (83.6 kg) satellite, Sputnik I. I was six, going on seven (at that age, it's important), when it was launched at 19:28 GMT (22:28 local time at the launching site, Tyuratam in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic—present day Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan) on 4 October 1957. We civilians had no warning that anything of the sort was in the wind--especially not from someone like the Russians. Embarrassing to say, at that time a lot of Americans looked upon them as backward low-tech farmers. The fact that they'd dumbfounded us with the Mig 15 and tanks that our troops' antitank rockets bounced off of seven years before in Korea was ignored. The White House, however, was quite cognizant of the Soviets' progress thanks to reconnaissance overflights by CIA piloted U2s.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower had been happy to keep the knowledge of the Soviets' launch ability close to his chest as he watched them. A problem that he and his advisers wrestled with was how the Soviets would view overflights of their territory by non-Soviet satellites. Their reaction to aircraft overflights was violent. A number reconnaissance planes such as A-26s and RB-29s flying offshore over the Barents Sea and off the eastern U.S.S.R. had been shot down in the years since 1946, and the Soviets were trying their best to shoot down the U2s (something they would finally manage in 1960). That the Soviets launched the first artificial satellite solved Eisenhower's problem. Unfortunately, it also gave him a new one.
As the light moved across America's skies and the ham radio hobbyists listened to its beeps the few minutes it was above the horizons, the populace for the most part went ape. After the shock wore off, spaceflight, for Americans, went from old Buster Crabb “Flash Gordon” serials the kids spent a half hour watching on TV Saturday afternoons to very serious business indeed. Hour-long “white papers” were broadcast by the three television networks (something quite striking in an era of 30 minute shows), newspapers carried any number articles and editorials about America's slide to second place in the world (both the Roanoke Times and the Roanoke World-News managed at least one front section story per day and four or five editorials per week), and satellites popped up constantly on the radio during breakfast.
All was not lost though; the American people were promised an early Christmas present when Project Vanguard would launch its satellite on 6 December 1957 and put us back in the newly begun Space Race.

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Will tomorrows astronauts need to learn Chinese?



On Monday, the Chinese announced another successful docking maneuvers with their own space station, which they launched in October.  They have two spacecraft in orbit right now, and are working on docking them.  They had their first successful dock on Nov 2 and another on Nov. 14.  This is important since they not only need to perfect docking in order to supply and man the station (both ships are unmanned right now), but also to build the station itself.

This is big news, and a potential game changer in the space race.  After all, the ISS was the combined effort of five nations and is only supposed to operate until 2015, although it's been extended to 2020. That doesn't mean the station is falling part, necessarily, but it is getting older; meanwhile, the Chinese have a brand-spanking new one, built on the lessons we've been learning.  Also, while we have to work with upwards of fifteen other nations who all have a stake in what goes on, China is going solo.  That's gotta cut the bureaucracy between wanting to do something and actually doing it.  Of course, that also means that if something fails, they are on their own.

We have a fairly strict policy about sharing technology with China, but there's a move within the Obama Administration to loosen that up.   On the one side are those who say we can get some useful scientific information, including orbital debris telemetry, according to NASA.  (Of course, while having China's help in might be nice, we have agreements with Australia for tracking, but nothing is build yet.  On the third hand, while other nations have tracking radars, we don't use their data, either, even that of our allies.  Why, then, trust China's?)  On the other side is the reminder that China is a Communist nation with a history of human rights violations.  Do we really want to do anything to help that nation continue if we don't have to?

What would happen if we did increase our technological exchange--will we support their station, purposefully or inadvertently?  Will we coax them into a second ISS?  (Must say, sounds like they are pretty proud of going on their own.)

Regardless, low earth orbit looks to get a little more interesting.  It's a big orbit out there, but imagine if their efforts start a new space race?  Will our astronauts need to start learning Chinese?

If so, I'd like to recommend episodes of Firefly as a start. And here's a handy Mandarin phrase guide from the Firefly Wiki.

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Russia's Phobos-Grunt mission still in the air, figuratively speaking

Reader Walt Staples likes to send me articles he gets on his phone.  Got to LOVE having well-read friends!  Anyway, when he sent this one about Russia sending a probe to Phobos, I decided to write on it, especially since I discovered Sunday night that I actually have people in Russia reading this blog.  (Also Croatia, Brazil, the Netherlands, Canada, the UK, Germany, France and Italy.  So...приветствовать, dobrodošli, Welkom, Welcome, begrüßen, accueillir, and Benvenuto, and I hope those are all correct because I'm using an online translator.)

Big Dreams:  A Zenit rocket with Phobos-Grunt awaits its historic liftoff shortly after its rollout to the launch pad Sunday. photo from RussianSpaceWeb.com.
Well, I promised an update on the Russian Phobos-Grunt Mars probe.  Looks like it might be a few weeks before the final verdict is in, so here's the scoop so far.

Russia has had a real love-hate relationship with Mars.  It seems to be mostly hate on Mars part, and frankly, the way it "eats" Russian missions, I'd have to wonder about any love on Russia's part.  All of the probes Russia has sent to Mars have failed, from blowing up on the pad to mysteriously disappearing miles form the Red Planet's surface. 
Here's a list of interplanetary flights from all (?) countries up to 2007, which I found on the Russian Space Web.


Then, well, the end of the Soviet Union put a bit of a kink in any deep space plans.  Whent eh Societ Union fell apart politically and economically, it split the Soviet Space industry infrastructure (which, according to this 1995 analysis by James Olberg) was never all that together anyway.  (Launch facilities are in Kazakistan, which was very nice when it was part of the USSR.)  Financially, the nation(s) have been on thin ice for a long time.  Governments had to well, FORM, then negotiate their cooperation with Russia, and much as we love deep space, I think they've had other priorities.  Ironically, Russian Space Web also blames "brain drain" and a downsizing of the nation's scientific institutions. 

Granted, that was 20 years ago.  (The USSR fell apart in 1991.)  But think of how technology has changed in that time.  Perhaps this is what they meant by "brain drain"?  At any rate, it has posed challenges:

"This is really a very difficult project, if not the most difficult interplanetary one to date," lead scientist Alexander Zakharov said from behind a mess of papers and a brain-sized model of pockmarked Phobos at Moscow's Space Research Institute.

"We haven't had a successful interplanetary expedition for over 15 years. In that time, the people, the technology, everything has changed. It's all new for us, in many ways we are working from scratch," he said.
Quotes from http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/russia-back-in-space-race-mars-moon-lander-4509919Russia back in the 'Space Race' with Mars Moon Lander.


This is a big mission for Russia, but the Mars "curse" struck again.  Phobos-Grunt (Grunt means "earth, btw) launched successfully and made it into transfer orbit, but the main engines didn't fire to send it on its way to Mars.

from Russian Space Web's page on the  Phobos-Grunt mission
They are hoping the problem is one of software, but even that poses problems.  According to the Russian Space Web, the ground control and tracking antennas are not up to the task of talking to the satellite when it's in such a low, fast orbit.  (I'm not sure why they can't ask other tracking stations to send the commands for them.  There's also apparently some problems with the right people getting the information they need to point the antennas in the correct direction, if you can believe that.
Bozhe moi! Just give me coordinates!
Anyway, they haven't given up hope yet.  MSNBC said Monday evening:

"We estimate that the Phobos-Grunt will fly until January, and to make it perform its mission we still have time until the beginning of December," Ria Novosti quoted Vladimir Popovkin, head of Russia's Federal Space Agency (known as Roscosmos), as saying.

If the launch and landing go well, the Phobos-Grunt mission will do a few things:
  • Carry China's first interplanetary spacecraft, the Yinghou-1 which will orbit Mars to study its atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetic field, as well as the surface of the Red Planet.
  • Carry vials of bacteria suited for extreme environments to see how they react to space.  This is the first years-long study of microbes in space, according to Reuters.
  • Collect soil samples from Phobos to study here on Earth.

Dust from Phobos, they say, will hold clues to the genesis of the solar system's planets and help clarify Mars' enduring mysteries, including whether it is or ever was suited for life, according to the TVNZ article.
Now I must admit, I'm not sure how that works.  Perhaps they are looking for signs of water or something that would support organic life?  But I wonder--did the dust from the moon give indications of what life on Earth would be like--or that Earth would have life at all?  If not, then why would Phobos be different? A quick Google search revealed nothing to explain this thought.  Any ideas?

Anyway, I'm rooting for them--and they did have one victory this week.  The Soyuz craft with the next ISS crew successfully launched from Kazakistan last night.  Good luck and Godspeed!

Check out the video to see who came with them.


BTW, I'm asking Walt to join me in posting on this blog.  I can't keep up with his e-mails!

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Just some cool stuff today

I spent about an hour crafting a thoughtful blog about the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission...only to receive the rotten news that some of the engines failed and they have three days to fix the problem (two as of this posting) or it will be Mars Probe-Eating Goul: 17  Russia: 0.  I'm grumpy about losing all that work, disappointed for Russia and none-too-happy with Mars.  So today, I'm posting some fun space stuff courtesy of my Facebook friend, Roger Weiss, who is a great guy to follow if you like space stuff.

This awesome picture comes from Hubble, and is of two interacting galaxies, with a possible third on the upper right (where you can see the bluish clusters.)  Read more here

You know how some motivational experts tell you to map out your dreams, use pictures, etc?  Well, NASA has done this.  However, I can't find a graphic that isn't interactive, but the interactive is tres cool, so check it out here:  http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/globalexplorationroadmap/  If you are interested in something more detailed and less playful, there's a PDF of the roadmap developed with 12 other space agencies.


So the Orion is in the news this week.  This was part of the Bush program scrapped by Obama, which is now being repurposed to the Obama mission of going beyond low earth orbit.  So, the Orion needs to be moon-Mars ready.  (Though with their track record for Mars, let's not let the Russians help with this one.  Just in case.)


Here's the lastest test drop, to make sure that after traversing the farther reaches of space, it can actually land in water.


Here's a video of the imagined flight path for 2014. 




Enjoy the fun!  I'll write about the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission when we know better if it's a success of Russian technology and the ability to adapt or yet another episode in the Mars Hates Russian Science saga.

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Infinite Space, Infinite God II Wins an award!

Hope you don't mind, but I'm pretty excited about this:

Just got the cool news from Jan Verhoeff that Infinite Space, Infinite God II made the ACE Best Seller of the Month! Their award is based on reader reaction to the nominations, so I'm tickled since I didn't even know about it.

For those who don't know about the book, it's an anthology of 12 science fiction stories with Catholic characters or themes.  However, it's about exploring how faith helps someone become a hero rather than pushing the doctrine.  It's gotten a lot of terrific reviews from Catholics and non-Catholics, and is a great book for folks who like clean science fiction with a unique angle.

Why am I telling you about this on my commercial space blog?  The ISIG anthologies started because Rob and I had written some stories about the near-future of human space exploration.  If you check out the Rescue Sisters Universe page, you'll see the whole story about how we created a religious order dedicated to space search and rescue. One of those stories is in this anthology.


Learn more at http://isigsf.com  and order from Amazon.

Congratulations to all the contributors, and a big thanks to the readers of ACE Writers!

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Slow downs for Orbital's Taurus 2 and Cygnus Debuts

Well, it looks like Orbital is going to have to push off their planned launches of the Taurus 2 rocket carrying their Cygnus capsule until late February or early March.  The problem, they say, is not with the rocket or capsule, but the fact that the new launch facilities are not ready.  Here's the full article from Space news.

Wallops Island, photo courtesy of NASA

Wallops Island has been a launch base for NASA since 1959.  NASA tested the Mercury space capsules from Wallops Island before taking them to Cape Canaveral and putting astronauts in them.  However, it's mission has been suborbital and small spacecraft missions.  In 1998, the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority created the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in order to support commercial space flights with two medium-to-heavy lift launch pads.  In order to support Taurus 2, some improvements needed to be made.  The Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority was doing those, and (as seems to happen with everything involving a government or construction operation) they ran behind schedule.  Apparently, the big problems were some rework on the launch mount and the cleaning of propellant and pressurization tanks that were not properly maintained throughout the year.  The work was to have been done by October 24, but it looks like final certification and handoff to Orbital will be in January instead.
Orbital's launch site on Wallops Island, from the Orbital website


Support structures are very important for the space industry, and they have to have the same level of perfection that the rockets and capsules do.  Unlike planes that in a pinch can take off and land on any reasonable surface, rockets need a lot more support in order to not only launch safely, but to also meet their objective in orbit.  So it's frustrating to again see delays, but with so many cogs in the machine, you have to expect some.  Orbital is already doing work on the Taurus to prepare for the eventual launch, so they aren't in a holding pattern.  They also have a lot of other missions to accomplish, and are getting more contracts for launching satellites for national military and commercial interests and international telecommunications.

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Industry Profile: Orbital Sciences Corporation, 2



Got to love YouTube videos.  Here's the company hype video on Orbital Sciences Corporation, also known as Orbital.

here's another fun one from the employees POV--obviously a recruiting video, but it does sound like a fun place to work--and possibly a frustrating one if you aren't into getting tossed into the water and told to swim.  (They give their employees a LOT of individual responsibility, it seems.)  Of course, they are a small company, so they can pick the best and give them more freedom to run. 


Something I didn't realize is that Orbital is subcontracting the manufacture of the Cygnus cargo module they are developing to supply the International Space Station.  (Remember, they have an agreement to run 8 missions between 2012 and 2016.  Thales Alenia Space does a lot of module work for the ISS--their banner says they created 50 percent of the habitable volume of the ISS.  That's actually very in keeping with the Orbital philosophy, I think.  They take existing technologies and adapt them to new purposes.  Check out Thales Alenia Space here.

Unless anyone has questions, that's it for the profile of Orbital. They have a very different approach from SpaceX, but I think they will be as successful.  I certainly think it's advantageous for the US to have more than one means to access space.

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Please, Mr. Cain--Don't Kill Commerical Space

NOTE:  This blog is about SPACE, not about politics, but sometimes politics affects space, as we all know.  Today, I'm venturing into politics.  Anyone who comments outside the topic of this blog, especially if it is inflammatory, will have their comment deleted.  We're all intelligent, reasoning adults here, so please don't let politics turn you into something else.


In 2010, Obama announced that he was going to scrap NASA's near-space missions and leave them to commercial interests while setting NASA's goals toward longer distance and space research.  Now, as candidates campaign, we're seeing some pushback on that policy.  Last week, Herman Cain, who is running for the Republican candidacy, said that President Obama “has cut our space program to the point that we now have to bum a ride with the Russians in order to get to outer space." I have to admit, I'm disappointed and concerned about his approach for a couple of reasons:
  • The Shuttle was way beyond its life and needed to be retired.
  • The space program was already on the decline as a result of several administrations (back to Clinton, really) when we didn't start working consistently on a replacement for the shuttle.
  • Each administration (especially if it's the opposite party from the one before) changes the goals, programs, etc., at least in part because it was the other guy's program and they can do better.
So blaming Obama is really typical political grandstanding, and while I'm not surprised, especially in a speech in Huntsville, AL, home for NASA, I'm concerned about what Cain--or any candidate--will do about government or commercial space once in office.

Now, Cain has not given any specifics on what exactly he would do to "relaunch our space program," but he did say, "It's not just about getting to the moon and outer space. The space program inspires other technological advances to business and the economy. In the Cain presidency, it will be reversed back to where it should be."  (Huntsville Times)  Does that mean back to NASA making trucks for the ISS or back to making the US a major space power?



Granted, space is a low political priority, although I agree that it is a point of national pride, a growing industry and a vital step to our future.  However, as Cain said in his same speech, governments don't grow the economy; businesses do.  So, by extension, if we want to have a growing space industry (a manned space industry in this case), we need to get the commercial space businesses involved.  Supplying the ISS is a good start.  Just because we don't want to "bum a ride" with the Russians, doesn't mean we need to turn NASA into a taxi service again.

Loved ya, Shuttle, but it's time to move on.

I'll be watching with interest to see what other potential candidates say about the space issue.  If you see an article, please send it my way!

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