Rocket Science for the Rest of Us

Dear friends, I've been in a love-hate relationship with blogging for several months now. I actually started this blog as a hope to rekindle my interest, and while I am still very interested in the subject of commercial space, every week I dread the pressure of writing about it. It's time for me to admit that I'm burned out and need to walk away from this for awhile. I'm not sure when I'll pick up the blog again, but I'll announce it on Facebook and Twitter. in the meantime, my newszine, Fabians'a Space news, will continue, so please subscribe there if interested. Blessings, Karina Fabian http://fabianspace.com

Tuesday, I talked a little about the Saturn V and touched briefly on the latest replacement, the imaginatively named SLS (Space Launch System).

One of the things I wondered about was why, if we've already built something nearly as powerful, can't we do it again quickly?  I came up with a few reasons:  technology has advanced; safety standards have increased; and politics/government.  The Oct 22 Space News offered up another point:  budgets.

Okay, budgets are part of politics, but what I found interesting is that it's not just budget cuts that are affecting the SLS program, but the fact that the budget does not have room to increase when they need more. 

"If you are a project manager, you know that the development curve wants to be a curve...So if you stack a development curve on top of a developement curve, you get a very acute rise in cost.  One of the things (the SLS program managers) came to very quickly is we could probably afford one development at a time."  --Todd May, manager of the SLS program office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, quoted in Space News

Because of this, they have to move more slowly, going a piece at a time.  That's one reason why they won't make their first flight until 2017 and the first crewed flight until 2021--and they will be using a different booster by that time, too.

On the bright side, budget cuts are resulting in NASA cutting down on contractor oversight, which, according to Space News, means they'll lean more on industry standards as opposed to NASA tradition.  That could be a good thing, and in fact, some companies (like ATK) say that will let them speed up production in some areas (reducing cost in the process.)

There is so much interesting stuff in John Lewis' MINING THE SKY that I may never touch on it all.  However, he brought up the Saturn V, and since now and then, I hear people bemoaning the loss of the Saturn rockets, I want to address that.

The Saturn V took the Apollo capsules to the moon, but when the program died in 1973, the program was scrapped.  In fact, a set of the plans were given to the Scouts for recycling (go OPSEC!) and two flight-ready rockets were relegated to lawn ornaments.  (The last three Saturn 5 boosters, already build and paid for, were put out as lawn ornaments at Cape Canaveral, Marshall Space Flight Center, and Johnson Space Center, to rust into ruin..."  pg 4, Mining the Sky)

Well, not quite a lawn ornament, but you get the picture.

With the scrapping of the Saturn rockets, we scrapped our abilities to get to the Moon and beyond.  This article in the New York Times notes some of the ways the Saturn V could have helped even unmanned space exploration.

The termination of the Saturn V program also had a stifling effect on the robotic exploration of other planets. In essence, we lost the ability to deliver larger, and in some cases faster, payloads elsewhere in the solar system.

Take, as an example, the 5,600-kilogram Cassini spacecraft, which was launched in 1997 and is now in orbit around Saturn. Its launching was timed so that after spending two years looping around the inner solar system to pick up speed, it could rendezvous with massive Jupiter for an additional boost that would send it to Saturn. All told, its flight time took seven years.

Had the Saturn V, modified with an appropriate fourth upper stage, been used to launch Cassini directly to Jupiter first, its flight time to Saturn could have been cut by more than half. In space, as on Earth, time is money, and the money saved could have been spent elsewhere.

Alternatively, for the same flight time, a vehicle of greater launching capacity can deliver a heavier payload. Take as an example the 480-kilogram New Horizons spacecraft, launched over a year ago to fly by Pluto in 2015 and eventually to explore the Kuiper Belt of icy debris that lies beyond it. Had it been launched on a modified Saturn V rocket, New Horizons could have carried a payload that was 15 times heavier and far more scientifically capable.

At this point, bringing back the Saturn V is not a good idea.  In addition to being technologically old, it wasn't build to be cost-effective.  According to NASA, the cost of one Saturn V, including launch, would be $1.17 billion (SP-4221 The Space Shuttle Decision, adjusted to inflation in an article in Wikipedia).  We no longer have the "Just git 'er done" attitude of the Space Race of the 60s.  Now, we have a stronger focus on expenses and safety.

More important than the rocket itself, however, is the attitude that the scrapping of the Saturn V represents.

As Lewis notes, this marks a significant turning point in the space program.  Most importantly, it shows how little interest we as a nation had in continuing our space-based endeavors once we'd "won" the Space Race.  (Russia, incidentally, dropped out once they saw the Saturn V program was outpacing their G-class rockets.  It's pretty obvious men walking in space was more about men posturing on Earth.)

NASA at the time had some plans for a Moon colony, but overall, people did not have a drive for space exploration, and we've never had a long-term plan--or even long-term aspirations, just some nebulous dreams.  We depended on the government to fulfill that dream, but when other voter-directed or politically expedient priorities arise, the long-term focus drops.  The Shuttle and the ISS were restarts on that track, but just like the station, we ended up going in circles for thirty years.  I don't think the powers that be of the time really thought about what the station could accomplish in the bigger manned space mission--or if they did, they lost it fast.  We started to take a step outward with the Ares rockets and a moon-based mission, but it was scrapped.  The SLS is in preliminary design phase, with the alleged mission of Mars, but who knows if that will survive an election?

Fortunately now, we are seeing a growing civilian interest, and not just as spectators or NASA supporters.  From bloggers to businessmen, we are looking to space as more than bragging rights or national pride, and as a result, we'll have more communities upholding the long-term goal of manned space.  The attitude that made the Saturn V is gone, and I hope the era of a post Saturn V world is ending as well.  We're ready, technologically and in some ways, economically, to embark on a new era--a little slower, perhaps, but hopefully a more sure era of getting man beyond the Earth and into the exciting new frontier.

If anyone is still following Space Studies Tuesday, you'll notice I've skipped a couple of weeks.  I can claim sickness then the MuseOnline Writers Conference, but the fact of the matter is, as valuable as the JPL course information is, it's not especially interesting to blog about, and lately, it's become a drudgery.  I plan on finishing the course, and I invite you to do the same--on your own.

However, I like the idea of Space Studies Tuesdays, and still want to study the NSS papers with you.  I think there will be more room for discussion and exploration.  In the meantime, however, I picked up Mining the Sky by John S Lewis.  This was actually written in 1996, and I'm sure some things have changed since them, not the least of which is the founding of Planetary Resources.  Nonetheless, I'm only three pages into it--the Preface!--and it makes me want to blog! 

Mr. Lewis beings with a discussion of American industry and the conflict between pure research and end-of-quarter ledgers.  Essentially, pure research doesn't pay off in the short term, and is thus easily cut by industries looking at improving short-term profits by cutting expenses.  Of course this is like counting beans without thinking about where future beans will be planted, as Lewis puts it.  This, of course, feeds into my personal stance that we cannot depend on government programs to get us into space on any long-term basis.  After all, with a trillions-dollar debt and a government that changes every two years (because of congressional elections), long term thinking is fiscally and politically difficult. Ah, but here's the sentence that made me put down the book to blog to you:

"In a very real sense, scientifically and technically literate MBAs could save American Industry."

I don't think we have to take "MBA" literally, but think about the people who are starting up many of the space industry companies today:  entrepreneurs who sometimes made billions in some other industry (Paypal, Google, Microsoft...) who have turned their attention and their finances toward a longer-term goal, manned space.

But, Karina, they're not out there for pure research either; they're looking for profit.  Absolutely true, but one feeds the other, which is another point Lewis makes: we need "a judicious balance between long-term basic research, short-term applied research, engineering development of products, and commercialization of new products."  As I return to looking at space companies, I'll be looking for those elements.

In the meantime, back to the book!  If you want to read along with me, you can find it on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Mining-Sky-Untold-Asteroids-Planets/dp/0201328194 or B&N http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mining-the-sky-john-s-lewis/1111983588.

I'm at MuseCon this week, talking writing with other fantastic people at all skill levels. Got this nifty graphic for you, courtesy of space.com



Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

Please pardon me as I take a small detour into the religious realm.  I'm not asking you to believe as I do, and I won't entertain a religious argument in the comments section.  However, this was too lovely a coincidence, and I want to share it.

Most of you know I'm Catholic  (C'mon--I write about nuns in space!), and this year, I agreed to teach 4th grade religious education.  (God help the children!)  Last weekend, we read this psalm:

Praise the LORD from the heavens;

praise him in the heights.

Praise him, all you his angels;

give praise, all you his hosts. 

Praise him, sun and moon;

praise him, all shining stars.

Praise him, highest heavens,

you waters above the heavens.

Let them all praise the LORD’s name;

for he commanded and they were created

I tried to explain to the kids how all creation praises God, even if not in voices--the stars burn and the birds sing.  This led to praising God in our actions by living according to His will.  However, on the 27th, Space.com printed an article about the sounds of the magnetosphere, and how they sound like birds:



So, it seems in its own way, even the magnetosphere sings praises to God.

This has given me a great idea for a short Rescue Sisters story.  Three of my favorite characters are Sister Rita, an Earth-born woman who joins the Sisters, and Sisters Thomas and Ann, who were born in space.  Ann is a very literal person.  Rita's parents send her a recordingof the birds around her their home, and she listens to them when she's homesick.  Ann will comment that they sound "off."  She'll start listening to the recording, then tweaking it, then analyzing it...  She'll insist it's not from Earth, but it's not until one of the other sisters sees her equations that she realizes Sister Ann thinks it's the magnetosphere of a planet. 

As commercial manned space flight moves toward becoming a reality and customers start lining up for their turn at history, an important issue rises--If something terrible happens and people are injured or die, who's liable?

Oddly enough, the Federal Laws do not require liability waivers for passengers against the company--only against the US government.  I other words (as I understand it) if the flight of your life becomes the last flight of your life, your family can sue the rocket company, but not Uncle Sam.

Neither the CSLA nor the regulations promulgated thereunder require space flight participants to execute waivers in favor of the licensee or permittee or its contractors and subcontractors.[105] Space flight participants are, however, required to execute a valid and mutual waiver with the United States government.[106] Licensees and permittees are required to provide disclosures regarding the safety history and risks associated with space travel to participants,[107] and they must receive training on safety issues, including how to respond to emergency situations while in flight.[108]
Because the CSLA does not require space flight participants to waive liability for any entity other than the United States government, companies participating in manned space flights will still need to look to other means of limiting claims by space flight participants.[109] (From the law review article on Commercial Space Launch Act, http://lawreview.richmond.edu/exploring-the-commercial-space-launch-act/)

Considering how potentially dangerous space is, this sounds like a real hindrance to businesses, and considering there are liability waivers for everything from airplane flights to website tools, I'm kind of surprised there wasn't one required for commercial space flight.  However, many states (New Mexico, Texas, Virginia, Florida, California, to name a few) are jumping in with state-mandated waivers.  Here's California's, which was approved by the governor on Sept 12:

“WARNING AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT: I understand and acknowledge that, under California law, there is limited civil liability for bodily injury, including death, emotional injury, or property damage, sustained by a participant as a result of the inherent risks associated with space flight activities provided by a space flight entity. I have given my informed consent to participate in space flight activities after receiving a description of the inherent risks associated with space flight activities, as required by federal law pursuant to Section 50905 of Title 51 of the United States Code and Section 460.45 of Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations. The consent that I have given acknowledges that the inherent risks associated with space flight activities include, but are not limited to, risk of bodily injury, including death, emotional injury, and property damage. I understand and acknowledge that I am participating in space flight activities at my own risk. I have been given the opportunity to consult with an attorney before signing this statement.”

So when you're about to strap yourself onto a 70-meter explosive device and get yourself shot out of the atmosphere--remember: Space is dangerous.  You want to ride?  Accept the risks, adn sign the waiver.

Lesson link here:  http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf11-2.php

This lesson looks at systems that control the spacecraft's position in space, and it's ability to communicate with earth.  I think the thing to take away from this is that it takes constant work to keep the spacecraft properly oriented.  If you're like me and have a hard time visualizing how some of these systems work, I'm found a couple of videos:

Simple attiude control demonstrated here:

Here's an interesting one demonstrating gyroscope control. 

For the communications, the thing to remember is high gain=more power, more focus; low gain=low power, wider focus.

3D printing technology has been around for only a few years, but the possibilities are fantastic!  NASA has been experimenting with 3D printers to make spare parts in the ISS, and now they've funded a project to build spacecraft in space out of materials from space.



"The "SpiderFab" project received $100,000 from NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program to hammer out a design and figure out whether spacecraft self-construction makes business sense. Practical planning and additional funding could lead to the launch of a 3D-printing test mission within several years," according to Space News.

Photo from Space News.  Credit Unlimited Tethers.

It could prove to be a significant cost cutter and a major step toward pushing us further into the solar system and eventually out of it.  The biggest expense and manufacturing problem with spacecraft is escaping Earth's orbit.  See The "Tyranny of the Rocket Equation" by astronaut Don Pettit in the Fall 2012 issue of Ad Astra for more details.  Not only do we end up using most of the rocket's mass for fuel to get it into space, we also have to manufacture our craft to be able to withstand Earth's gravity and the stress of leaving our atmosphere, which means sturdier and heavier than it made need for its space mission.  Build it in space, and you can build lighter--plus you need only send the building bot up, which experts say may not need to be larger than a cubesat, smaller than one of the standard $15 mailing box you get at the post office.

In theory, if you have intricate enough plans and a good enough printer with access to the correct materials, you will be able to make the entire ship from scratch.  We're a long way from that, but imagine building the structure of the ship, then astronauts finishing the job with components sent up from Earth.  It's an exciting first start.

Speaking of 3D technologies, there is a company, RocketCrafters, that is working on using 3D printers to print solid rocket fuel.  It allows for better control of the shape of the fuel, which can mean better control of the spacecraft.  More on that another time.

Find the lesson here: http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf11-1.php

I haven't gotten any comments on the lessons.  Keep in mind that you don't have to comment on what I post, but also if you have questions on the lesson itself.  I will get an answer for you.  However, I don't intend to rewrite the lesson if I can help it.  Perhaps I'm simply talking to myself every Tuesday?  If so, I'm still going to keep doing this, as I committed to the class, but I'll try to include something fun as well.

Looks like Chapter 11 is one for the engineers, as we start discussing the systems and subsystems of spacecraft--and like the chapter said, the definitions of system and subsystem seem to be used loosely.  We'll just go with it.  Today, we learned about the structure subsystem which includes the bus and he magnometer boom.  I'd heard the word "bus" used when discussing computers, but never really understood what it meant.  I guess you could say that like a regular bus, it carries the subsystems that "people" the spaceship. 

The data handling systems are of course, extremely important, and pretty self-explanatory.  I was especially interested in the failsafes.  It's ironic that despite our care in programming, so much can still go wrong with a spacecraft, and not even because of outside factors.  I think that as we get closer to artificial intelligence, it will become a major factor in space travel--but I suppose that's a no-brainer.  I remember reading an excellent short story about a man who was going to lose all control of his body.  The scientists wanted to make him a regular human body as a replacement, and he was furious.  He wanted them to make him an artificial body that could withstand the rigors of space and send him up so he could do something useful and incredible.  When I read it as a college Freshman, I didn't really get the point of the story, but I see it now.  Just think of how much a human mind in spacecraft body could accomplish.  (This also goes along with The Ship Who Sang, and excellent series of books by Anne McCaffery).

Something fun now--a video on folding an origami spaceship, so you can make your own.  No subsystems, though.

NASA has removed ATK Liberty Launch from the shortlist of potential carriers of crew to the ISS because of concern over the technical matters.  According to William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, the problem was that they didn't provide enough details to reassure NASA of the safety of their planned vehicle.  ATK did not commetn to Space News about this, and there's nothing about it on their website that I could find.  I hope that they will be able to recover from this and re-propose their plans.  If not...that's one good thing about this kind of contract system--instead of the government being stuck helping fund a program to make it work, it can choose the ones that are effective.  Right now, SpaceX and Boeing are forging ahead.  read more here: http://spacenews.com/civil/120904-nasa-dropped-atk-comm-crew.html

Good news for Florida workers in teh space industry: XCOR plans to manufacture and launch its suborbital ships our of Kennedy Space Center.  They're taking over some of the old Space Shuttle facilities for its Lynx vehicle.  The Lynx willfly tourists, researchers adn payloads into suborbital space (about 100 kilometers, although they intend to later move on to orbital vehicles.  They'll be doing test flights of the Lynx Mark 1 in 2012, and plan to build and fly the Linx Mark 2 from Florida in 2014.  Right now, the company is stationed in the Mohave, CA, but are moving research to Texas and building and flight to Florida.  the comany said they might leave some operations and test flight activities in California.  Why the move?  Money--the other states provided better incentives and better business conditions.  Read more here:  http://www.universetoday.com/96987/xcor-to-move-operations-near-kennedy-space-center/

Read the lesson here:  http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf10-1.php

Once again, a big lesson with a lot of terms.  A good one to bookmark for when you're reading an article or something. Here's a 7-minute summary and history of the Deep Space Network.

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I'm very excited about Planetary Resources' mission for mining asteroids.  It has the potential for so much benefit for us on Earth as well as in space.  The August 2012 issue of Popular mechanics has an awesome article outlining their plan.  I'm going to hit some highlights here, but I definitely recommend reading the entire article.

Step One: Find a likely asteroid.  PR intends to use a small fleet of orbiting telescopes.  Because they have a more local mission--the solar system as opposed to say, Hubble's Deep Space mission, they are smaller and cheaper to make. In addition, they intend to rent time on them for other researchers to recoup their expenses.

Step Two: Assess the rock:  Once they have a likely rock, they need a closer look at its composition.  Since the most likely candidates are going to be small and have negligible gravity (PopMech says they will dock more than land), they ar taking a different approach. Instead of a penetrator craft (remember Tuesday's lesson?) they are using a LIBS, or laser-induced breakdown spectorscopy system.  Essentailly, they vaporize part of the rock with a laser and and study the light emitted by the plasma, which tells them what elements it contains.  Cool, huh?

The craft that does this will also likely place a radio transmitter on the asteroid, a way of staking PR's claim.  Honestly, I think the politics of commercial interests claiming space "real estate" and the profits thereof are going to be at least as challenging as the technological aspects of the mission.  However, they have to be addressed if we are to progress.

Step Three: Dig 'er Up!:  To mine water, which will be vital in space not only for survival but also fuel, they'll need to mine carbonaceous chondrite asteroids.  These are generally crumbly, so a fleet of mining bots will swarm the asteroid, clamp on and basically scrape and slurp, with vacuum bots to suck up any dust or debris kicked up by the process.  Mining for metals is harder, and they are still working out the details on how to do this and be cost-effective.

Step Four:  Sell It!  This, too is a rub, as the best clients would be people in space, especially for the water.  However, there are enough possible uses for asteroid-mined metals that PR sees a future.  As PopMech states: "A 500-ton asteroid with a .0015 percent platinum metals--a common percentage--would have three times the richest concentration found on Earth.  Platinum is used in everything form computers to cars to medical equipment, and with a greater and cheaper supply, there are bound to be more uses. 

Ambitious?  Sure!  Doable?  The scientists and entrepreneurs at Planetary Resources think so--and if they are right, they'll be making one of the many small steps that lead to the next Big Leap for Mankind.

Find the lesson here: http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf9-1.php

Robotic spacecraft are divided into eight categories, which are explained in the lesson. I thought I'd post about a current mission in each category:

Flyby spacecraft:   EPOXI, which finished its mission in 2010, flew by the Hartley 2 comet, checking out the differences between it and another comet it observed, Temple 1.  It also took reading of five distant stars to find other planets. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/details.cfm?id=5872

Orbiter spacecraft:  The Dawn spacecraft is an orbiter, with the mission of studying two protoplanets, "baby planets whose formation was interrupted by the formation of Jupiter," according the the JPL website..  Dawn has been studying Vesta  and is moving on this week to Ceres. It uses an ion engine that generates a small but continuous amount of thrust. http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/

Atmospheric spacecraft:  Huygens, which is mentioned in the lesson, is the latest example I found.  http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/huygens.php.  There are other craft that are studying the atmosphere, like the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), which will study Mars' atmosphere to determine how had changed over time.  http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/news/maven_20080915.html


Lander spacecraft: The next lander planned by NASA is InSight, which in a sense is also a penetrator, as it will drill into the surface of Mars to gain insight into its makeup and evolution.  http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/details.cfm?id=5928

Of course, the goal on the commercial side is to send some really awesome landers that will serve as habitats for humans, such as in the Mars-One mission: http://mars-one.com/en/

Penetrator spacecraft:  There haven't been any actual penetrator spacecraft missions in several years.  The latest one on the NASA site is Deep Impact, which studied the comet Tempel 1: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/deepimpact/index.cfm


Rover spacecraft: Obviously, the spacecraft of the day, Mars Curiosity, is a rover. What I didn't realize is how slow the rover moves. On last Tuesday, it traveled 52 feet, and the goal, apparently, is a football field length a day. Check out the article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/29/mars-rover-drive-curiosity-glenelg_n_1841698.html? Did you know you can follow Curiosity on Twitter?  http://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity

Observatory spacecraft:  Hubble is an obvious example.  However, I'm going to mention Planetary Resources' ARKYD LEO spacecraft, which will be several orbiting telescopes thatwill search out asteroids for mining.  http://www.planetaryresources.com/technology/leo-space-telescope/

Communications & Navigation spacecraft:  By far, the most familiar of spacecraft, we depend on these kinds of craft daily.

Last week, Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, died at the age of 82. 

Neil was one of the few select men to take part in the Apollo missions, and as the first man to set foot on the moon, he became an icon for the space program, and an inspiration to people around the world.  How many of us dreamed to follow, literally or figuratively, in his footsteps?  How many who are active in the space program now were inspired by his accomplishments?

Neil Armstrong will be in the history books for ages to come--and for doing something the whole world can feel proud about.  How amazing is that?  Plus, he lived to see the revitalization of the space program, but in the commercial arena, which I believe is more robust and promising than the if the government continued its monopoly.  His legacy will not die.

Some people say he's left a "hole" in the world, but (aside from the impact on his friends and family), I disagree--his life fired the imagination of two generations, at least, and the promise of his great accomplishment will be carried on by others.  The world is richer for his having been in it.  He has earned his eternal rest.



You can view his official bio on the NASA website. My prayers go to his friends and family.

OK, so the lesson reads kind of dry--science vs. engineering data, front and back end processing...  However, here's the exciting culmination of all of that:

It's interesting to see how simply studying the changes in radio waves sent from a probe to Earth can tell us about the make-up of the celestial bodies it passes by.  However, the biggest payoff of this section for the amateur space enthusiast is the list of resources in the last paragraph--magazines to check out and links to get educational materials from NASA.  I had a lot of these as a homeschooler, and they are detailed and great for self-learning or teaching.

I'm a little behind the curve on this one, but in April, Planetary Resources announced its creation and its mission to start a mining operation on asteroids in near Earth orbit.  (Near Earth objects are .98 to 1.3 AUs from the Sun; and AU being the distance between the earth and the sun.)  They intend to mine these asteroids for precious metals--primarily platinum and palladium, which will give the best return on investment--and for water, which is one of the most useful resources for earth and space.

This is going to be a long-term project running, no doubt, into the billions of dollars before it bears fruit.  Good thing there are some extremely rich people with vision to set it in motion:  director James Cameron (net worth approx $700 million) and Google co-founder Larry Page (net worth 16.7 billion).  Say what you want about the "one percent," but it's the one percent with vision and ambition that will fund what we aspire to--and when they succeed, we will all benefit in things like cheaper medical equipment and automobile fuel cells.  How?  "A single platinum-rich space rock 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide contains the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever mined throughout human history," company officials said in an article in Space News.  (Learn more about platinum applications here: http://www.platinum.matthey.com/applications/)

In the meantime, they have several steps to take, many of which will mark firsts in commercial space, like the launch of the first private space telescope in low earth orbit to seek out potential asteroids.  They will also need to develop inexpensive robotic probes to check out the asteroids, and then of course, mining robots.  You can read about their process here.  http://www.planetaryresources.com/technology/

I love what they say in the beginning:  "With technological advances that are coming out of exponential technologies and investors willing to bear the risk, small teams are now able to do what only governments and large corporations can do before."  That's what makes this centruy so exciting to live in.

I am definitely a fan of Planetary Resource's vision and mission.  I'll be watching to see how well they can make it a reality.

As we start moving toward the privatization of space exploration, it's probably only natural that someone would think about crowdsourcing space studies.  Uwingo, a start-up company with the goal of funding space experiments and programs, is taking the leap:

Uwingu, which means “sky” in Swahili, is a small start-up company, a for profit LLC, consisting of astronomers, planetary scientists, former space program executives, and educators who passionately want to create new ways for space exploration, research, and education to be funded.  They are looking for start-up capitol of $75,000 to build and market products in order to generate funds for grants for space and astronomy research.  I wish they'd tell us a little more about this product they are developing, but I am definitely for the overall goal.

Their target date is less than a month away, and they are falling far short of their goal.  They have donation levels starting at $10.  If you are interested in being a small part of the space race, this might be a place to put in your two cents (times 500).  I contributed last week--my first-ever step into crowdsourcing.

. 

Saw this article in Space News:  San Quentin Inmates Building Satellite Hardware for NASA.    In a nutshell NASA's Ames Research Center has contracted with San Quentin to produce Poly Picosatellite Orbial Deployers (PPODs), whcihc are used to mount cubesats on several kinds of launch vehicles and then fling them into orbit at programmed times.  Cubesats are small satellites that are used by government, commercial, and educational organizations for smaller experiments in space.

I think it's a great idea as it gives these people skills they can use when they are released--which indeed was the idea that led to the start of the program.  The article did not say whether this was cheaper labor for NASA, or at least competitive.  I'd hope so.  While I appreciate the humanitarian aspects of the program, we really should be putting space dollars to space.  As long as we're doing both, it's win-win.

Links to the lessons: http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf7-1.php and http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf7-2.php

These lessons are pretty straightforward and administrative in nature, so I grouped them. 

I'm not sure I learned a lot from these lessons, as the planning stage is similar to ones I'd seen before.  However, I was hit again by how much pre-planning takes place.  Of course, as you'll read in Phase E, all that planning can get overcome by budget and political requirements of the day.  (Not like we've ever seen that before, right?)  I've said it more than once, but I'll say it again--that's one way I think Commercial Space has an advantage: they aren't tied to the whims of a Congress that changes every 2 years, or a President that can change every four.  Commercial interests, of course, can change as well, but usually, companies are not so willing to dump their investments.

I was surprised, however, about how much mission planning goes into when they can get the best DSN coverage.  (DSN=Deep Space Network).  This makes sense because what good is a mission if we can't receive the data--but I hadn't given much through to how the system gets taxed.  This makes me wonder--if we are going to increase our space presence--do we need more receiving stations on Earth, and is this another potential area for Commercial Space?

BTW, thanks to those who send condolences on the loss of our dog, Layla.  She will always be a big part of us, but she was such a great dog, we just could not be without canine love.  Saturday, we adopted a shepherd/hound mix, Toby.  He's setting in nicely, and we all adore him.

I know everyone's excited about the Mars Rover, but in the manned space arena, NASA has announced the selection of Boeing Space Exploration and SpaceX for final phase developing funding of the Commercial Crew Program.  Sierra Nevada received a smaller award, but it's still in the running.  ATK's Liberty Launch didn't get an award this time.

You can read all about it at Space News.  In the meantime, congrats to these three for completing one more step toward commercial manned space! 

Thanks, everyone, for your patience.  What a summer it has been!  I think I'm back on my feet now, so let's catch up on our space studies.  If you've been following the lessons in the sidebar--congrats!  Hope you get a little refresher on those things we missed.

Doppler Effect. Lesson 6.4 here:  http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf6-4.php

I have to admit, I always have a hard time wrapping my head around this one, and the little pulse graphics don't help me.  I prefer to visualize it as a wave--like a slinky, for example.  If you hold one end still and move the other in an even up-and-down pattern, you get a wave of a certain length and frequency.  Now move one end away from the other, but don't change the rhythm of the up-and-down motion.  Your frequency stays the same, but the wavelengths are longer.  The difference in the wavelengths is your Doppler shift.

Paul Hewitt explains it very well--and he's funny, too.

We hear Doppler shifts all the time--the most common example is in how a train whistle or a siren sounds higher when approaching and lower when moving away.

Doppler shifts are great for telling position and distance--or how fast you are speeding down the highway.  Come back tomorrow, and I'll tell you a funny story involving Doppler shift, my father, and my husband.  For now, let's move on. 

Reflection of Radio Waves: Lesson 6.5 here:  http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf6-5.php

This is a pretty basic lesson, and a phenomenon we are all familiar with, although I didn't know about the skipping phenomenon with x-rays. What the lesson doesn't tell you, either, is how x-ray astronomy is giving us a whole new look at the universe.



Refraction:  Lesson 6.6 here:  http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf6-6.php

Again, this is a common phenomenon on earth, but it's cool to see how it's being used in space exploration.  I wonder if that's how tricorders are supposed to work when analyzing atmosphere, etc?  (I'll need to check out The Physics of Star Trek, if I can find it in my husband's library.)

We had to put our beloved dog to sleep today.  Please excuse me for not blogging.  I'll be back soon.

Sounds like a literary SF novel, doesn't it?  In fact, it's an actual blog by space station astronaut Don Pettit, who returned to earth this month.  It's life on the space station as told by a zuccini plant that is growing on the station as an experiment on aeroponics to see how microgravity affects plant growth.

Zuc blogs about what's going on in his life and the life of the astronauts who are studying him.  Sometimes, things are a little silly

Great news; I have a baby brother sprout! Gardener just showed me baby Zuc. He is strong and healthy and ready to move from the sprouter into his own aeroponic bag. While Broccoli and Sunflower are great companions, there is nothing quite like having a zucchini to zucchini conversation.

 Other times, however, zuc talks about the experiments going on in the station, both on himself and in other fields.

Sunflower has brown patch.  His leaves are covered with dry, dark blotches.  He is not happy.  Gardener says it looks like a fungus.  I am afraid that if something is not done we are going to lose Sunflower.  The crew medical kit is designed for animals not plants so there are no medications for this disease.  Gardener is treating Sunflower with a disinfectant wipe that has an antibacterial agent called BZK (Benzalkonium chloride).  We do not know if this is going to work.  Our spacecraft is designed for animals so life can be a struggle for plants.  On the frontier, the answers are not found in the back of the book and sometimes you have to venture into the unknown and improvise.

 Sometimes, Zuc talks about current events.  he's a bit of a Renaissance plant, as you'll see:

We released Dragon today. The treasures he brought were traded for some of our goods and then he went on his way. I like this concept; Dragon brings us things we can use in exchange for things we have made on orbit. The things we make on orbit are samples from our scientific experiments. They have great value to the Big Gardener on Earth. Explorers use to bring back silk and spices. Now we bring back scientific samples, crystals, blood, and urine. Within these goods lay spoils more valuable that plundered gold for they are the key to advancing our knowledge. Sometimes we give Dragon broken spacecraft parts that he will repair and bring back on his next visit. Before we closed the hatch, we placed a picture of our crew on the bulkhead. Dragon seemed anxious to go. I guess when a Dragon visits, they do not stay long.

Sometimes, the astronauts add to the blog as well, so you get human and plant perspective.  It's a fun way to keep up on activities in the ISS.  I recommend it for some light but interesting reading.

I happened across this doing research for another blog, and I'm glad I did.

Photo courtesy of NASA website.

I was just a kid when Pioneer 10 and 11 were launched to explore our solar system.  Now, I have children older than I was back in '73, and these probes have flown the asteroid belt, checked out Jupiter and Saturn, and are on their way out of the solar system.  However, they've been slowing down, and that's a mystery that has taken nearly a decade to solve.

NASA scientists first noticed the slowdown in the 80s, but passed it off as "a transient phenomenon resulting from dribbles of propellant left in the probe's lines, according to researchers." (Space News, July 23, 2012).  However, the craft kept on slowing, albeit slightly, and in 1998, they no longer expected the problem to stop.  Certainly, they couldn't do anything about it, but it did leave a question:  What was slowing them down?

They dubbed it the "Pioneer Anomaly" and went to far as to suggest that they were dealing with a new type of physics that contradicted Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.  how exciting would that be?

In 2004, Slava Turyshev of Jet Propulsion Laboratory decided to study the phenomenon.  He and his colleagues searched through the Pioneer probes' telemetry--43 gigabytes of information, much of it on on magnetic tapes that had to be converted as well as digitized files.  Eight years later, they published their discovery in Physical Review Letters.

It was heat.

Yep, that little bit of heat caused by electricity running through the systems of the Pioneer probes actually pushed back on the probes, causing them to slow.  Space News quotes Turyshev with saying it was like the photons of your car's headlights pushing back on your car. Apparently, however, when dealing with the speeds of the spacecraft and the distances and environment of space, that can have a noticeable, albeit very subtle, effect.

How mundane is this--and yet so awesome!  First, there's the simple idea that something so basic can have such a profound effect that we might even doubt General Relativity.  How much we don't know about the practicalities of space travel!

Secondly, think about all the work, all the minutia, data crunching, file conversion, etc. that went into figuring out something that in hindsight seems so ordinary.  Eight years!  I don't know about you, but I can get tired and bored just trying to find a coding problem on my website, and these guys went through 53 years' worth of data between the two probes.

My hat's off to you, Dr. Turyshev, and to all who worked so diligently on this mystery.  Next time I turn on my headlights, I'll think of you.

For more reading:

About the discovery:  http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-209
About Pioneer 10 and 11:  http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/missions/archive/pioneer10-11.html

**BTW, my apologies for not posting last Tuesday's space studies.  I'll discuss Doppler effects with the next lesson on Tuesday.

I don't know about you, but sometimes, I wonder why, when we've already proven we an get people to the moon and regularly into space, it seems to hard to do it again.  After all--why should adapting the ideas of the past to the technologies of the present be so difficult and take so much time?

I'm actually going to be asking this of several new space agencies, but for now, I leave you with this video of an up-and-coming company in the commercial space industry--Liberty Launch.  Liberty is using current rocket technologies, adapting them to the greater mission of taking men into space.  What I hope you'll get out of this video is how even adding a quarter of an inch thickness to a panel means careful testing.  After all, if a weld fails, people die.

Ariane 5 is, as a part of Ariane rocket family, an expendable launch system used to deliver payloads into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) or low Earth orbit (LEO). Ariane 5 rockets are manufactured under the authority of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). Astrium, an EADS company, is the prime contractor for the vehicles, leading a consortium of sub-contractors. Ariane 5 is operated and marketed by Arianespace as part of the Ariane programme.

The lesson is here: http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf6-3.php

Another straightforward lesson about the spectrum, how it's categorized and why its useful to study it.  In short, certain elements can absorb specific frequencies, so by getting a spectral reading, we can determine the composition of the planet.  It's also an important science for asteroid mining.  (This is an old article, but explains why.  This month's Popular Mechanics has a terrific article on asteroid mining.  I'll review it later.)

Link to Lesson:  http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf6-2.php

Once again, we're getting some basic concepts that are used in engineering and astrophysics.  It's been interesting, though, because I learned a couple of things.  I'd heard that light is the only thing that is described both as a wave and a particle.  When I'd not realized is that anything on the electromagnetic spectrum (like radio signals) can be described the same ways.  It's just that the particle idea is better used when you start getting into the spectrum of light.

I didn't really know what decibels were, so this lesson was good for that.  However, it's been a long time since I've worked with logarithms, so I did some looking on YouTube.  Here are two to share with you. 

Decibels explained on an engineering level: This one is good for showing why decibels are useful as well as what they are.

Decibels explained on a more elementary level:  This one gives a little history.

Found a couple more videos of Uncle John, lest you think he's all jokes and funny stories:

From one of his missions:

2007, talking about the challenges of the Mars mission and spaceflight.

Lesson: http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf6-1.php

Just one thought on this one--relief.  For some reason, I had it in my head that all the music, TV, YouTube vids, etc that we've been broadcasting were going to be heard by some alien race, but thanks to the inverse-square law, they are probably too faint to hear outside the "local" area.

Of course, that removed the argument that there is life out there, they have seen Jersey Shore*, and they have no intention of contacting us. Ever.


* My daughter picked this show.  I had Gilligan's Island, but that's too old.  My next thought was Parks and Rec, although I'm sure there are many worse than either of these.  Like I said, relief.

So, last week, I mentioned Rob's Uncle John, who was a mission specialist on a couple of shuttle missions, and I suggested he had quite a sense of humor.  (It runs in the family.)  On a whim, I looked him up on YouTube, and wouldn't you know...