Hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving with your family and friends.
Please join your extended NASA retiree family this Thursday at Hibachi Grill at 11:30 for our final monthly NASA Retirees luncheon of 2014.
| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Get Your Orion Launch Viewing Tickets Today
- Volunteers Still Needed for EFT-1 Launch Events
- Change to Mail Services Effective Dec. 1
- Watch for Deer on the Road - Organizations/Social
- Time to Celebrate - That's #JSCelebrates!
- Need a Ride to the Orion EFT-1 Launch?
- Orion EFT-1 Launch Party on Pier
- Book Fair in Building 3 Café This Week
- Chill Like a Toastmaster
- JSC Contractor Safety and Health Forum
- Johnny B. Goode - Human Spaceflight and Music - Jobs and Training
- Russian Phase One Language Course - for Beginners
- Job Opportunities
- AutoCAR to NAMS Training
- NASA Virtual PM Challenge Live Webcast- December 2 |  |
| Headlines - Get Your Orion Launch Viewing Tickets Today
Orion EFT-1 Launch is Thursday! The Space Center Houston event is FREE and open to the public, so bring your family and friends to watch the mission. There will be giveaways, an astronaut on hand, fun activities for the kids and a cool light show! Doors open at 5am. That's right 5 a.m. You will need tickets to get in, so pick up your free admission tickets today at Starport Gift shops in Building 11 or 3. Need breakfast? You can purchase a discount ticket for $8, special price for JSC civil servant/contractors and their families. Don't miss out! If you plan to extend your visit at SCH past 11 a.m., please purchase discount admission to Space Center Houston. - Volunteers Still Needed for EFT-1 Launch Events
It's not too late to sign up to help out at the EFT-1 Launch Viewing Party at Space Center Houston on December 4. Volunteers will assist visitors with one of five fun hands-on Orion activities for kids. Volunteers will need to be available for at least an hour between 6:45 am - 10:45am. Training will be provided for volunteers to attend on Dec 1 or Dec 2. To volunteer, please visit V-CORPs or contact Ashlé Harris at 281-792-7457 or via email. - Change to Mail Services Effective Dec. 1
Beginning Dec. 1, the courier for mail services, the Printing and Mail Support Services contract, will no longer provide morning and afternoon courier pick-up and delivery to the following on-site ITAMS locations: - Building 227, door 1 (Graphics) and door 6 (Data Conversion - Scanning)
- Building 4S Library
- Building 8 Customer Service Desk
- Building 37 Library
- Building 45 second floor EDCC area
- Building 30 Library
- Building 424 Library
Internal JSC mail should be placed in the outgoing mailbox located in your building. For additional details, click on "Mail Services," then choose the "Service Schedules" link on the left. For any questions, please contact Joeva Ross Scott at x34009. - Watch for Deer on the Road
Deer-breeding season continues through December, and the risk of deer-vehicle collisions remains high throughout the month. Deer are far more active during this period and less attentive to vehicles. Consequently, the risk of dangerous deer-vehicle collisions increases drastically. Deer are most active around sunrise and sunset, which now coincides with periods of high traffic. Practice safe driving: Watch for deer, maintain a safe speed and following distance, avoid using cell phones while driving and be especially alert when arriving in the morning and leaving in the evenings. Some deer may also be more aggressive during this period—so, as always, never feed or approach a wild animal. Organizations/Social - Time to Celebrate - That's #JSCelebrates!
#JSCelebrates tickets are now available at all Starport locations, as well as online. It's a celebration for the JSC team and their families. There will be lots to do and see, lots to eat and drink, lots of fun and friendship, and music and laughter, too. Join us Dec. 12 in Building 9 to celebrate YOUR accomplishments this year! Tickets are only $5 and include family-friendly beverages, popcorn and door prizes. - Need a Ride to the Orion EFT-1 Launch?
Starport will be offering bus rides to and from the Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) launch for NASA and contractor employees and their guests, who drove or flew to Florida, for just $25. Bus rides will be leaving the Days Inn in Cocoa Beach at 5 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 4. Snacks and drinks will be provided. All NASA and contractor employees and their guests are welcome. - Orion EFT-1 Launch Party on Pier
Going to see the Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) launch in Florida? Join us for a pre-launch party on the world-famous Cocoa Beach Pier Wednesday, Dec. 3, at 7 p.m. It's free admission, and there will be live music and drink specials. Come on out and celebrate with some dinner and drinks with your fellow co-workers and extended NASA family as wish the Orion EFT-1 a successful launch and mission. - Book Fair in Building 3 Café This Week
Books are Fun will be in the Building 3 café from Dec. 2 to 4 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., just in time for your holiday shopping. Choose from more than 250 great titles in children's books, cookbooks, general-interest books, New York Times bestsellers, stationery and scrapbooking, music collections and more—all at unbelievable prices. Give the gift of entertainment and adventure! - Chill Like a Toastmaster
Don't freeze up when speaking at meetings and executing presentations. Visit Space Explorers Toastmasters meetings to participate and polish your presentations so you can learn to relax and chill like a Toastmaster. - Thursday, Dec. 4
- Friday, Dec. 12
- Thursday, Dec. 18
- Friday, Jan. 9
- JSC Contractor Safety and Health Forum
Our next JSC Contractor Safety and Health Forum will be held Tuesday, Dec. 9, in the Gilruth Center Alamo Ballroom from 9 to 10:30 a.m. Our guest speaker for this event will be Dr. Robert Emery, vice president for Safety, Health, Environment and Risk Management at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. His presentation topic will be "What Every Safety Professional Needs to Know About Global Health Security." In addition, David Loyd, chief of the Safety and Test Operations Division (JSC-NS), will be presenting the "JSC Safety Metrics Snapshot for 2014." Hope to see everyone there! Event Date: Tuesday, December 9, 2014 Event Start Time:9:00 AM Event End Time:10:30 AM
Event Location: Gilruth Alamo Ballroom
Add to Calendar
Patricia Farrell 281-335-2012
[top] - Johnny B. Goode - Human Spaceflight and Music
The SAIC/Safety and Mission Assurance (S&MA) technical speaker forum presents: The History of the Space Program Through Music This event is free and open to the public. Bring the family! Wednesday, Dec. 3 7 to 9 p.m. Gilruth Center Alamo Ballroom From Mercury to the International Space Station, music has been used to wake up astronauts. As they travel to space, music continues to keep astronauts connected to their family, friends and faith. Hear selections of songs played for astronauts: - Norma Williams and her flute ensemble will perform music from the Gemini Program
- Sparky Koerner's (College of the Mainland) jazz combo will perform standards heard from Gemini through the Space Shuttle Program
- Janie Macchiaroli's Sweet Adeline Quartet will perform patriotic and holiday songs
- The S&MA Choir will perform Christmas and other songs played in each program
- Juan Manuel & Friends will perform popular songs from each decade of the space program
Jobs and Training - Russian Phase One Language Course - for Beginners
Russian Phase One is an introductory course designed to acquaint the novice student with certain elementary aspects of the Russian language and provide a brief outline of Russian history and culture. Our goal is to introduce students to skills and strategies necessary for successful foreign language study that they can apply immediately in the classroom. The linguistic component of this class consists of learning the Cyrillic alphabet and a very limited number of simple words and phrases, which will serve as a foundation for further language study. Dates: Jan. 12 to Feb. 12 When: Monday through Thursday, 8 to 9 a.m. Where: Building 12, Room 158Q Please register via SATERN. The registration deadline is Jan. 6. - Job Opportunities
Where do I find job opportunities? To help you navigate to JSC vacancies, use the filter drop-down menu and select "JSC HR." The "Jobs" link will direct you to the USAJOBS website for the complete announcement and the ability to apply online. Lateral reassignment and rotation opportunities are posted in the Workforce Transition Tool. To access, click: HR Portal > Employees > Workforce Transition > Workforce Transition Tool. These opportunities do not possess known promotion potential; therefore, employees can only see positions at or below their current grade level. If you have questions about any JSC job vacancies or reassignment opportunities, please call your HR representative. - AutoCAR to NAMS Training
These User and Approver training sessions are open to all AutoCAR users. This training will provide support for AutoCAR users who are new to the NAMS 7.0 system, an overview of the AutoCAR transition project, and the differences between AutoCAR and NAMS for requesting and approving access to Mission Resources. Approvers include Managers, Group Admins, and Data Owners. User Training Sessions: December 3rd 8:30am-9:30am December 4th 1:00pm-2:00pm December 5th 8:30am-9:30am December 8th 1:30pm-2:30pm December 10th 10:00am-11:00am December 11th 1:00pm-2:00pm Approver Training Session: December 3rd 9:30am-10:30am December 4th 2:00pm-3:00pm December 5th 9:30am-10:30am December 8th 10:00am-11:00am December 10th 1:00pm-2:00pm Please contact Elena C. Buhay if you have any questions. - NASA Virtual PM Challenge Live Webcast- December 2
APPEL - Developing the Technical Workforce The technical workforce—those involved with project management and systems engineering—is an integral part of NASA's efforts and achievements. But who helps members of the technical workforce achieve their professional development goals? The Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership (APPEL) is NASA's internal resource for technical workforce development. APPEL supports NASA's mission by promoting learning on three levels: individual, team, and organizational. Join us for a Virtual Project Management Challenge to learn more about what APPEL offers the technical workforce and how the Academy facilitates professional development through its world-class training curriculum, development programs, and strategic communications. Presenters will discuss what APPEL does to help ensure NASA's project management and systems engineering communities have the skills and knowledge they need to advance mission success at NASA. Please RSVP to attend this live webcast session by clicking on the RSVP link below. | |
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| JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters. |
NASA and Human Spaceflight News
Monday – December 1, 2014
HEADLINES AND LEADS
NASA's Orion capsule set for critical test flight
NASA's Orion test flight: The planned Dec. 4 test flight of NASA's Orion will evaluate the system's launch and re-entry capabilities. The flight will reach more than 3,600 miles above the Earth.
James Dean – Florida Today
Threatened with cancellation four years ago, NASA's Orion capsule survived the political heat.
Dec. 4 Orion space capsule flight test is critical to NASA's human spaceflight program
Lee Roop – Huntsville Times
When NASA's Orion capsule lifts off on its first test flight here in early December, more than 4,000 Alabama aerospace workers will be watching closely. They know a lot is riding on a test that was always big and got even bigger when two commercial U.S. space companies suffered explosive flight failures this fall.
Orion gives NASA and Houston a means to fly, a cause for hope
Eric Berger – Houston Chronicle
There it stood, so white and shiny and tall.
Milestone Orion Flight One Step In Larger Test Program
Jeff Foust – Space News
While the upcoming test flight of NASA's Orion spacecraft is being hailed as a major milestone in its development, agency officials emphasize that the test is just one of many before the spacecraft is ready to carry a crew.
KSC's Countdown Clock: A new look – for a new era
Jason Rhian - Spaceflight Insider
Well in advanced of the Dec. 4 first flight of NASA's new Orion spacecraft, the space agency has installed its brand new Countdown Clock. The new timepiece is less "clock" and more flat screen TV and made its appearance the week prior to the launch of Orion on Exploration Flight Test 1.
Why we should mine the moon
Ian Crawford – The Conversation
To date, all human economic activity has depended on the material and energy resources of a single planet; understandably, perhaps. It is conceivable though that future advances in space exploration could change this by opening our closed planetary economy to essentially unlimited external resources of energy and raw materials.
OPINION: NASA Needs to add some 'weight' to spaceflight
It has long been known that microgravity takes a toll on the human body. Muscles atrophy, the eyes are subjected to increased intracranial pressure, bones lose mass. A prolonged period in weightlessness may result in permanent bone loss and make it difficult to survive in Earth's gravity. Yet although a number of plans have been proposed for artificial gravity in deep space missions, NASA, at present, does not appear to have plans to use artificial gravity on a mission to Mars.
NASA Webb Telescope's Mammoth Mirror Tripod Gets Tested in Action
Ken Kremer - AmericaSpace
The mammoth mirror tripod assembly that is a key structural element of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is undergoing critical action-packed testing at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and AmericaSpace was onsite recently for a first-hand look to observe some of the work in progress.
Japan Readies Hayabusa2 Asteroid Sample Return Mission for Launch - RESCHEDULED
UPDATE: The launch has been postponed a second time because of weather. The new launch date is December 3, 1:22:04 pm JST (December 2, 11:22:04 pm EST). This article is updated accordingly.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is getting ready to launch its second asteroid sample return mission, Hayabusa2, on December 2, 2014 Eastern Standard Time (EST), following a second weather delay. Launch time is 11:22 pm EST, which is 1:22 pm December 3 Japan Standard Time (JST). JAXA plans to provide live coverage of the launch on its website.
Russia Plans Massive Productivity and Wage Hike for Space Industry Workforce
Matthew Bodner – The Moscow Times
In a bid to tackle the low productivity hobbling Russia's space industry, the state-owned conglomerate that spans the sector has proposed doubling wages and implementing incentive systems to triple the efficiency of its workforce.
What's Happening in Space Policy December 1-5, 2014
Here is our list of space policy-related events coming up in the next week, December 1-5, 2014, and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.
COMPLETE STORIES
NASA's Orion capsule set for critical test flight
NASA's Orion test flight: The planned Dec. 4 test flight of NASA's Orion will evaluate the system's launch and re-entry capabilities. The flight will reach more than 3,600 miles above the Earth.
James Dean – Florida Today
Threatened with cancellation four years ago, NASA's Orion capsule survived the political heat.
This week, NASA will see if the spacecraft it is designing to one day fly astronauts to Mars can handle a searing, 20,000-mph re-entry through Earth's atmosphere during its first test flight.
At 7:05 a.m. ET Thursday, an unmanned test capsule is scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket to begin a two-orbit, four-and-a-half hour mission called Exploration Flight Test-1.
"EFT-1 is absolutely the biggest thing that this agency is going to do this year," said Bill Hill, NASA's deputy associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development. "This is really our first step on our journey to Mars."
That is the hope for the spacecraft NASA has already spent eight years and more than $9 billion developing, with at least seven more years to go before astronauts climb on board.
A successful test flight will boost the agency's morale three years after the last shuttle launch, and show progress that could help solidify Orion's long-term future.
But even if it successfully soars 3,600 miles up — higher than any craft intended to carry humans in more than 40 years — and splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, Orion will continue to grapple with tight funding, technical challenges, bureaucracy and political uncertainty that have slowed its progress so far.
Orion today is overweight and still searching for missions. There is no funding yet for a habitat module that could extend its missions beyond a few weeks, or for a lander to place astronauts on another surface.
After this flight, Orion will depend for rides on the huge Space Launch System rocket NASA is developing. Its first test launch from Kennedy Space Center has been delayed a year, to 2018, with a first manned flight possible by 2021 and no confirmed flights after that.
The head of NASA's Orion spacecraft project says they've always known the risks associated with space travel. The recent explosion of Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket hasn't changed plans for Orion's December launch.
Without increases to the flat budgets anticipated in the coming years, an independent review this year concluded there's no chance astronauts in Orion will reach Mars by the 2030s.
"Obviously this launch is a stepping stone forward to whatever might happen beyond low Earth orbit," said Jonathan Lunine, a Cornell University professor who co-chaired the National Research Council's "Pathways to Exploration" study.
However, he added, the study concluded that "the current program as it's constituted will, if nothing changes, reach a dead end."
Here's an overview of Orion's journey so far, and where it might be going.
Q. What is Orion?
After 30 years circling in low Earth orbit with the space shuttle, Orion represents NASA's attempt to return astronauts to deep space, with the moon, an asteroid and eventually Mars as potential destinations.
After the Columbia shuttle disaster in 2003, President George W. Bush unveiled a new strategy to retire the shuttle and return astronauts to the moon. The Apollo-like Orion capsule and two Ares rockets emerged as the centerpieces of NASA's Constellation program.
Orion consists of a crew module, service module and launch abort tower, assembled at Kennedy Space Center.
Q. Why was Orion nearly canceled?
By 2009, a White House panel found that Orion's Ares I rocket was years behind schedule, as was any moon mission. It said NASA needed billions more annually to sustain a viable human exploration program.
The Obama administration called for a reboot, canceling Constellation. NASA would focus on developing low-cost private spacecraft to taxi astronauts to the International Space Station, and on technologies that could make deep space missions safer and more affordable.
Until new exploration missions were set, there was little point in keeping Orion except for the jobs it created, said Lori Garver, then NASA's deputy administrator and now head of the Air Line Pilots Association.
"What's it going to do? What's its mission?" she said. "Setting a design and a technology at a point in time when you don't know where you're going or when does not make a lot of sense."
Q. What happened?
Congress was angered by the administration's proposal, and Constellation contractors lobbied furiously against it.
A compromise deal preserved Orion and directed NASA to build a Saturn V-class rocket to launch it, called the Space Launch System, or SLS.
If astronauts ever do explore beyond low Earth orbit again, they'll need a spacecraft like Orion that can handle higher-speed re-entries through the atmosphere.
"Orion is a linchpin in our approach to become deep space explorers," said Bobby Braun, a Georgia Tech professor and former NASA chief technologist. "There have been bumps along the road."
Q. When will Orion fly a crew, and where to?
Be patient. After another unmanned test in 2018, the first launch of up to four astronauts from Kennedy Space Center is planned no sooner than 2021 atop NASA's 321-foot Space Launch System rocket.
The first crew might circle around the moon, but no decision has been made. By the mid-'20s, NASA hopes to launch a crew to an asteroid that has been robotically captured and tugged to an orbit near the moon where Orion can reach it.
NASA says the Asteroid Redirect Mission will test systems and procedures needed to get to Mars, but there is skepticism in Congress and among scientists about its value and the extent to which it prepares for Mars.
The National Research Council report said NASA must establish more specific milestones on the path to Mars to develop technologies, show progress and keep teams sharp.
Q. Why is it taking so long?
From the start Orion was a complex design that had to support two very different missions: the ultimate goal of Mars, plus getting crews to the space station (no longer part of the plans).
Orion could have been finished sooner. But after a lull during the cancellation debate, its progress was tied to the Space Launch System rocket targeting launches in 2018 and 2021.
NASA arranged for the European Space Agency to provide Orion's next service module, which provides propulsion, power and life support systems. The deal made the program an international partnership, but ceded control over a major system.
As with any major new space vehicle, there are technical challenges to overcome.
"We have not had a human-rated re-entry system that could handle the speeds of anything beyond low Earth orbit since the Apollo days," said Georgia Tech's Braun. "The technical challenge of Orion should not be underestimated."
Orion is a large, heavy spacecraft that needs to shed up to 2,800 pounds by its next test flight in 2018, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Engineers have tracked a concern that the heat shield could form cracks. This week's test flight will provide data on the heat shield's performance, but not at the speeds and heating crews will experience.
Also slowing Orion's pace is flat annual funding. That spreads out the work, increasing the chance that issues will be discovered late in the development process and take more time and money to fix.
Cornell's Lunine said NASA's human exploration budget must grow slightly more than inflation.
"With flat funding, you just never make it to Mars," he said. "Very soon, the nation has got to make a decision about its ambitions with respect to human spaceflight."
Q. How much will Orion cost taxpayers?
NASA estimates it will cost between $8.5 billion and $10.3 billion to get Orion ready for its first flight with astronauts in 2021. That estimate, however, excludes nearly $6 billion spent before the Constellation program was canceled.
NASA is spending roughly $1 billion a year on Orion, which adds up. At least 15 years will pass from Orion's contract award in 2006 to the first crew launch.
Nearly 3,300 people work on Orion, including 625 civil servants and 2,650 contractors. That's in the same ballpark as the entire staffs at SpaceX, United Launch Alliance or Orbital Sciences.
Orion's cost stands in stark contrast to the commercial vehicles developed to launch cargo to the ISS and now being readied to fly astronauts as soon as 2017.
NASA spent $396 million to help SpaceX ready Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules that have completed four station resupply missions. This week's test flight alone will cost $375 million.
NASA projects spending a total of about $5 billion to develop multiple commercial crew vehicles from start to finish, or a little more than half Orion's cost to reach its first test flight.
"What we have is a clash of cultures," said Garver. "It's OK, it's what we've got, but it is hard to understand the vast differences in money."
Q. Why not use the commercial capsules for exploration?
NASA's Commercial Crew Program recently selected Boeing and SpaceX capsules to fly astronauts to the ISS by 2017. But they aren't designed to fly beyond low Earth orbit, so can't be compared to Orion, engineers say.
"Orion is a very different capsule for a very different job," said Braun, calling Orion's engineering challenges "exceedingly more complicated."
A spacecraft returning from the moon must dissipate roughly twice as much energy as one returning from low Earth orbit, he said, requiring a heat shield designed for much higher speeds. The capsules also must fly in much tighter corridors, and their mass must be managed even more carefully.
Q. Is Orion the same as an Apollo capsule?
Orion shares a "blunt body" shape with Apollo capsules, but is significantly larger to carry four astronauts instead of three.
"It gives NASA a lot more flexibility in how we explore," said Mark Geyer, NASA's Orion program manager.
At 16.5 feet in diameter, Orion's heat shield is the largest ever built, more than 25% wider than an Apollo capsule's. Lead contractor Lockheed Martin says the capsule has the volume of two minivans.
"The shape looks old," said Mike Hawes, Lockheed's Orion program manager. "Everything about it is new."
Q. Why fly this test flight?
Exploration Flight Test-1 is primarily a test of Orion's crew module, specifically its heat shield, as it re-enters the atmosphere at 20,000 mph, or about 85% of the speed of a return from the moon, generating heating up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The flight will test separations of components including fairings and the launch abort system, and flight computers, parachutes and recovery operations, the latter led by Kennedy Space Center crews.
Aside from producing useful data, program managers fought for the test as a way to demonstrate progress and give teams operational experience and something to look forward to years before a crew flies.
Q. Can Orion continue to survive budget pressure and political changes?
NASA's Geyer said he expects the program to be reviewed during changes in political leadership.
The International Space Station overcame a cancellation threat early in its development and is now the centerpiece of NASA's human space program. More recently, Orion felt the heat.
"It survived that, and now we are here about to fly," said Geyer. "It's good design, it's a good team, it's a good mission, and now it's time to fly it."
Mission: NASA's Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1)
Rocket: United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy
Spacecraft: First Orion capsule
Launch time: 7:05 a.m. ET Thursday
Launch window: Two hours, 39 minutes
Launch complex: 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Flight duration: Four hours, 24 minutes
Splashdown time: 11:29 a.m.
Dec. 4 Orion space capsule flight test is critical to NASA's human spaceflight program
Lee Roop – Huntsville Times
When NASA's Orion capsule lifts off on its first test flight here in early December, more than 4,000 Alabama aerospace workers will be watching closely. They know a lot is riding on a test that was always big and got even bigger when two commercial U.S. space companies suffered explosive flight failures this fall.
On the surface, the $370 million Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) seems simple enough. A Delta IV Heavy rocket built by United Launch Alliance in Decatur will boost an un-crewed Orion into space on Dec. 4.
Stuffed with sensors and cameras instead of astronauts, it will orbit the Earth twice reaching a height of 3,600 miles -- 15 times higher than the International Space Station -- before parachutes drop the capsule gently into the Pacific Ocean. It sounds like something America did routinely in the Apollo Program of 1960s.
But this will be the first flight of an NASA crew capsule beyond low-Earth orbit in decades and the first space test of key systems needed to carry astronauts to asteroids, the moon and Mars.
There are only two flight tests planned for Orion, and the next one -- called Exploration Mission-1 -- will circle the moon most likely in 2018. If something goes wrong in December, NASA will have to find money to fix it in a budget that is about as flat as a Walmart parking lot. NASA's Inspector General's Office talked about that in a report this month. "The Orion program anticipates receiving a flat budget of $1 billion a year through 2021," the OIG report said. "Given this budget profile, NASA is using an incremental development approach under which it allocates funding to the most critical systems necessary to achieve the next development milestone, rather than developing multiple systems simultaneously as is common in major spacecraft programs."
Translation: A problem requiring changes in Orion would not only cost money to fix, it could delay everything that's already waiting now on the test flight.
"Obviously, it could depend on how big a change we're talking about," Orion program spokeswoman Brandi Dean said this month, "but I think that we're flying Exploration Flight Test-1 knowing that we could learn things that lead us to adjust the design of the systems for Exploration Mission-1. That's one of its purposes."
People will be watching, but how many?
Technicalities, schedules and budgets aside, most people will be watching to see if NASA can make a high-profile launch and test on the first try. Others will be watching to see just how much excitement the test generates.
"The mission will provide NASA managers and members of Congress with their best gauge yet of the public's willingness to support human spaceflight as a national priority for the 21st century," Ben Ianotta, editor of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' magazine "Aerospace America," wrote in an October editorial.
NASA understands the stakes. The flight has been called a "BF deal" by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and "the most important thing this agency will do this year" by a top NASA manager.
Bolden stressed the symbolism when he spoke to aerospace leaders in Huntsville in October. "It is the first time this nation has produced a vehicle intended to carry humans beyond Earth orbit, into deep space, in more than 40 years," he said. "More than 40 years! That's a B.F.D., OK?"
Testing important flight systems
Technically, the flight will test several important capsule systems: the launch abort system, the radiation shields protecting computers and other electronics, and the heat shield that will protect Orion on re-entry. None of those components was built in Alabama, but Alabama companies and workers have key roles in the test. They include:
- ULA, which employs about 900 people in Decatur, will provide the Delta IV Heavy booster that gets Orion off the launch pad. ULA's launch record is impressive for NASA space probes and military satellites, but Orion is a new level of attention for the company.
- NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, which employees some 3,000 civil service and contractor employees, designed and built the adapter ring that joins the capsule to the rocket, which are two different diameters.
- Huntsville-area companies such as Arcata Associates Inc., InfoPro Corp., Teledyne Brown Engineering and General Products contributed more than 1,000 pieces of Orion flight and ground test hardware.
Standing behind those companies is the team at Marshall developing the Space Launch System booster rocket that will ultimately carry Orion and its crew to the moon and Mars. That team needs Orion to work to keep its booster's main reason for existing alive.
Orion gives NASA and Houston a means to fly, a cause for hope
Eric Berger – Houston Chronicle
There it stood, so white and shiny and tall.
Cameras flashed, and Julie Kramer lost herself in the moment.
"Oh man, that's awesome," she gushed. "Me and my 3,000 closest friends did that."
As the Orion spacecraft began rolling away from its hangar toward the launch pad, Kramer whipped out her iPhone and took a selfie. She sent it to her 11-year-old daughter, in Houston.
Orion is Kramer's other baby.
"Nothing's like seeing it for real, outside, in the evening, with all these people here," she said. "It's kind of like sending your kid down the aisle."
On Thursday, NASA plans to blast Orion 3,600 miles into space. It will then make a fiery fall back to Earth at 20,000 mph before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.
It's just a test flight. No astronauts will be on board, and none will climb into Orion any time soon. But this mission offers NASA and engineers like Kramer an achievement they desperately need.
The last dozen years have been especially cruel for Johnson Space Center. The loss of the shuttle Columbia in 2003 shook the nation's faith in human spaceflight. Seven years later, President Obama canceled Constellation, NASA's troubled exploration program. Finally, in 2011, the shuttles stopped flying entirely.
NASA found itself with no way to reach orbit, and America's space program faced an uncertain future.
Orion could ignite NASA's effort to reach for Mars, with humans on board.
But right now, NASA can't afford to send Julie Kramer's baby anywhere of consequence. Even if it could, no one seems to agree on where it should go.
Kramer's engineers couldn't dwell on the debates. They put money and politics aside and just got to work.
They designed.
They calculated.
And now, after a decade, they're ready to fly.
Orion was born from tragedy.
Early on a February morning in 2003, as Columbia flew back to Earth, its heat shield failed, and the space shuttle disintegrated above East Texas.
Kramer was in the field the next day, driving around the back roads near Lufkin. She had spent most of the previous two decades working in the shuttle program, so she could easily identify the debris. It was agonizing work, picking up pieces of a spacecraft that had been carrying seven people.
"We all felt like we had failed," she said.
This was the spacecraft that had inspired her to join NASA.
She was 14, in the spring of 1981, when Columbia made its first flight. Before that, the girl from Indiana had thought about being a veterinarian, but her teachers had prodded her to consider engineering, thanks to an aptitude for math and science. The only engineer she knew was fictional, Scotty from "Star Trek."
But engineering, Kramer decided, would be fine if she could build something like a space shuttle.
Five years later, as a freshman at Purdue University, she was accepted to NASA's famed co-op program.
Kramer arrived at Johnson Space Center that summer, naively associating Texas with two things, deserts and cowboys.
The teenager shared an office with the old guys who had worked on Apollo. She keeps a picture of herself from that summer in her office. Kramer appears eager and earnest, and, in a sign of the times, sports a Flock of Seagulls hairdo.
On that first day, one of the Apollo vets dropped a stack of advanced calculus books on her desk. Brush up, he ordered.
Brush up? Kramer had taken a single introductory calculus course at Purdue. Overwhelmed, she went home that night and cried. She called her mom, lamenting her dying dreams of working at NASA.
It turned out that was just a joke on the rookie. The Apollo engineers took her in. After several more co-ops, she hired on at NASA in 1990.
She learned the shuttle inside and out. She also got married, and in early 2003, found out she was pregnant. Kramer was battling morning sickness when her husband called with the news about Columbia.
After collecting wreckage for two weeks, Kramer followed the debris to Florida's Kennedy Space Center. Parts of the shuttle were laid out in a hangar, corresponding to where they were on the orbiter, to aid the accident investigation. Her job was to take a piece of charred or melted shuttle and, through various tests, find what story it had to tell.
"From an academic and a career standpoint, it was one of the most satisfying things you could ever do," Kramer said. "But the circumstances were terribly tragic."
Kramer spent five months in Florida, but hadn't told her supervisor about the pregnancy.
When she returned to Houston, "He was like, 'Do you need to tell me something?' " Kramer recalled. "Then he made the mistake of saying, 'If I'd have known you were pregnant, I wouldn't have assigned you to debris collection.' And I said, 'That's why I didn't tell you.' "
In the spring of 2004, after a leave for her baby and family issues, Kramer returned to NASA. Columbia's loss had prompted new questions about the safety of flying the shuttle, and how long the aging fleet could continue in service.
Moreover, many asked, what exactly should NASA be doing in space?
President George W. Bush decided late that year that NASA should return to the moon by 2020. The goal was to live there for an extended period, use its resources and establish a staging point for human missions out into the solar system.
For the first time since Apollo, NASA had a clear mandate to push back into deep space, and it set about figuring out the best way to implement Bush's goal. Many rocket scientists thought NASA should buy smaller boosters off the shelf from private companies.
But Mike Griffin, an aerospace engineer from Johns Hopkins University who became NASA's administrator the next year, had a plan, which he later dubbed "Apollo on steroids."
Forget small rockets, Griffin had argued, NASA would build a big one.
Eventually, a team of 400 engineers settled on a plan to build a small Ares I rocket, which could get astronauts into orbit, and a much larger one to push them out to the moon and beyond, the Ares V rocket. NASA also would need a new spacecraft for them to fly in -- Orion.
Kramer was among those watching Griffin unveil the Constellation plan, and she liked what she saw.
But would the ideas stick?
Spacecraft designs had come and gone in Kramer's time, victims to new presidents and new agendas. She'd worked on one, the X-38, that had been cut off after a few test flights. Whenever a new program came along, she said, there was always a palpable tension among NASA's engineers. If you hesitated too long to jump on board, you wouldn't get the best job. If you jumped too soon, you gave up your current position for a potential loser.
So Kramer waited, and then, in April 2006, she jumped.
Kramer became chief engineer of NASA's next spacecraft. As she and hundreds of others began working on Constellation, they had the full support of Congress, even after it changed hands, from one party to another.
Then the bills came due.
President Bush, increasingly distracted by costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, never gave NASA the money it was promised. Congress didn't step up, either.
Constellation managers were forced to delay projects. All work stopped on the larger Ares V rocket. The lunar rover prototypes were mothballed.
In Houston, Kramer and her engineers pressed on. They didn't believe Barack Obama would cancel the program after taking office, not with billions invested. They were just far enough below senior management to miss the handwriting on the wall.
"I thought, we signed a contract," Kramer said. "We were going to the moon. It was going to be great."
On Feb. 1, 2010, a frigid, gray morning, reality struck. Orion's engineering team walked into their offices in Building 17 on Johnson Space Center's campus, where the elevator is painted to look like its carrying passengers to the lunar surface. They learned that the president's new budget had killed Constellation and any chance they'd had to return to the moon. Shell-shocked, the engineers went home, or to bars in Clear Lake.
It was a rude awakening in Congress, too.
The Senate, notably Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, led opposition to the president's plan. Over the course of several months, they fashioned a compromise. Orion would continue, and NASA would build a heavy-lift rocket called the Space Launch System, or SLS, which looked a lot like Ares V.
The compromise preserved jobs in Houston, but the big winners were elsewhere in the south.
When Constellation ended, the Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi was in the middle of building a 300-foot tower to test a special engine for the Ares V rocket. Without the rocket, the stand wasn't needed. Sen. Roger Wicker demanded the tower being built in his state be completed anyway, at a cost of $57 million. NASA's still paying $1 million in annual maintenance fees.
Less than an hour down the freeway, the Michoud Assembly Facility looms along the Louisiana coast.
Every U.S. rocket that's taken humans into space since the 1960s was built at the 43-acre building. Thirty football fields could fit inside.
After the Constellation decision, the lights were turned off. Tarps covered the tools. About the only tenants were occasional film crews, for "Ender's Game" and "GI Joe 2."
Hundreds of jobs have now returned. Orion contractor Lockheed Martin built its frame at Michoud. Boeing also is building the SLS rocket here.
NASA's rank-and-file believe America wants a space program pushing outward, and upward.
"We don't think of our jobs here as white-collar welfare," Kramer said. "We have a real passion for what we do."
Although Orion ultimately survived, the program had to make substantial cuts, and its workforce fell from 5,000 to 3,300.
A deputy manager for Constellation, Mark Geyer, weathered its end to become Orion's program manager. He oversees a budget of $1 billion annually.
"We have learned to persevere," Geyer says in his understated manner, a contrast with Kramer's ebullience.
This spring in Houston, Geyer climbed inside a mock-up of the Orion capsule and stretched out his long arms. He sought to demonstrate the capsule's size. U.S. astronauts currently ride to the space station in a Russian Soyuz capsule that is 7 feet wide. The Apollo capsule was 12 feet across. Orion is a roomy 16 feet.
And while it looks a lot like an Apollo capsule on the outside -- it turns out the Apollo guys pretty much optimized the design for surviving reentry to Earth's atmosphere -- Orion's guts are all 21st century.
Orion can support astronauts for up to 21 days, and they can go out of the airlock to do spacewalks. It can dock with a living quarters module for long-duration missions. And with its heat shield, Orion should be able to bring astronauts safely back to Earth from almost anywhere in the solar system.
Geyer and Kramer, like parents of a newborn, are trying to give their child every advantage to succeed in an at-times indifferent world.
"The way the country is today," Geyer said, "It wouldn't surprise me if the destination changes every once in a while."
After NASA tests Orion this week, it intends to place another unpiloted version of the vehicle on top of the SLS rocket in 2018. The first test flight with a crew could come in 2021 or 2022.
And after that?
NASA has announced plans to send a robotic craft, as yet unbuilt, into space to lasso an asteroid about the size of the Orion capsule and return it to the vicinity of the moon. Then, perhaps in 2025, an Orion would carry four astronauts out to poke around the rock.
The expedition -- the Asteroid Retrieval Mission -- has inspired little excitement.
Clayton Anderson, a veteran of two spaceflights, recalled an astronauts-only meeting before he left NASA in January 2013.
Lori Garver, who had advised Obama and then become NASA's deputy administrator, was visiting Johnson Space Center. After "rah-rah" remarks, Garver polled the roughly four dozen astronauts in attendance where they wanted to go. An asteroid? No hands. Mars? Three hands. The moon? All the rest of the hands.
But the harsh reality of NASA's budget really leaves the agency no choice. There's no money for moon landings, let alone Mars.
Critics of the post-Constellation direction think NASA is being set up to fail, because Congress kept some of the program alive without providing funds to take full advantage of what the rockets and spacecraft are capable of. It's the same situation they were in 10 years ago, when NASA was asked to do big things without a big budget.
The decision over Constellation shattered the agency's confidence.
It could happen again, everyone knows that.
But engineers like Kramer look to the upcoming launch as an opportunity to regain some swagger.
"I'm ready to show the world what Orion can do," she said.
NASA originally planned to roll Orion out of its hangar on Nov. 10, but leaden skies dropped a cold rain throughout the afternoon.
The next evening, as the skies cleared a bit, a brilliant rainbow arched over the launch pads.
Doubters could have looked to the rainbow's end and thought of NASA as forever chasing a mythical pot of gold.
But for the believers, the Julie Kramer's, who spent years designing and building a way off this Earth, the rainbow might have signified something different. The storm clouds were breaking, and sunnier days lay ahead.
That night, Orion made its slow and stately trek to the pad.
Overhead, the stars beckoned.
Milestone Orion Flight One Step In Larger Test Program
Jeff Foust – Space News
While the upcoming test flight of NASA's Orion spacecraft is being hailed as a major milestone in its development, agency officials emphasize that the test is just one of many before the spacecraft is ready to carry a crew.
NASA and Lockheed Martin completed a flight readiness review Nov. 20 for the Exploration Flight Test (EFT)-1 mission and gave approval to proceed with preparations for the launch, scheduled for 7:05 a.m. EST on Dec. 4 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
A United Launch Alliance Delta 4 Heavy rocket will place the Orion spacecraft into an elliptical low Earth orbit of 185 by 888 kilometers. After completing one orbit, the Delta 4's upper stage, still attached to Orion, will fire again, inserting Orion onto an elliptical trajectory with an apogee of 5,800 kilometers.
Orion will then separate from the upper stage and re-enter, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California, Mexico.
EFT-1 has a launch window lasting two-and-a-half hours, driven by launch and recovery operations, Bryan Austin, Lockheed Martin EFT-1 mission manager, said at a Nov. 6 briefing at the Kennedy Space Center. Launch is scheduled for a few minutes after sunrise to provide lighting on ascent, as well as to maximize the daylight available to recover the capsule after splashdown four and a half hours later.
The flight will mark the first time Orion, whose origins date back to the mid-2000s as part of the now-canceled Constellation program, has flown in space. NASA is promoting the flight as a major milestone in Orion's development.
"EFT-1 is absolutely the biggest thing that this agency is going to do this year," William Hill, NASA deputy associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development, said at the Nov. 6 briefing.
However, Garth Henning, Orion program executive at NASA headquarters, emphasized that this flight is part of a much larger set of tests needed to demonstrate the vehicle's ability to safely carry crew beyond Earth orbit.
"Everybody loves the flight tests. They're very exciting things," he said in a Nov. 12 speech at a Space Transportation Association luncheon here. "EFT-1 is just one flight test, one piece of that puzzle. What we can't test on the ground we have to do in space."
Among those elements of Orion that cannot be tested on the ground, but will be on EFT-1, is the spacecraft's heat shield. The spacecraft's elliptical trajectory means it will re-enter at 32,000 kilometers per hour, faster than a normal re-entry from Earth orbit and about 80 percent of the velocity of a lunar return. "You can't do a test like that on the ground," Henning said.
EFT-1 also will test exposure of Orion's electronics to radiation as it passes through the lower Van Allen radiation belts. Other components EFT-1 will test are the separation of various components, like Orion's launch abort system, during flight, and the spacecraft's parachutes.
"EFT-1 is basically a compilation of the riskiest events we're going to see when we fly people," Mark Geyer, NASA Orion program manager, said Nov. 6 at KSC. "Some of these events are difficult or impossible to test on the ground."
If the EFT-1 flight goes well, the capsule will return to KSC the week of Dec. 22 for study by engineers, and then preparation for a second life as part of an abort test.
"One of the most stressing cases in an abort case is when the rocket is going through the maximum dynamic pressure" during launch, Geyer said. The Ascent Abort 2 test, scheduled for 2018, will launch the refurbished EFT-1 Orion capsule on a surplus Peacekeeper missile stage from Cape Canaveral to allow for an in-flight test of the abort system.
"It's a great test for us and a great way to reuse this capsule," he said.
KSC's Countdown Clock: A new look – for a new era
Jason Rhian - Spaceflight Insider
Well in advanced of the Dec. 4 first flight of NASA's new Orion spacecraft, the space agency has installed its brand new Countdown Clock. The new timepiece is less "clock" and more flat screen TV and made its appearance the week prior to the launch of Orion on Exploration Flight Test 1.
The new clock is similar in design to a sign mounted on the side of the adjacent Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and is able to do much more than just count down to launch or the elapsed time of the space agency's missions.
As noted, EFT-1, is the first flight of NASA's new Orion crew-rated spacecraft. Orion will be launched on a two-orbit mission which will test out the spacecraft's key systems some 3,600 miles (5,794 km) above the Earth. Poised ready for flight atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy booster, the spacecraft will carry out these orbits and then return to Earth at a speed of some 20,000 miles (32,187 km) per hour.
In terms of the now-retired Countdown Clock, its history goes back to when the agency still sent crews to the surface of the Moon – 1969. The timepiece was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places as part of a Multiple Property Submission on Jan. 21, 2000.
This new clock will join a number of other's located at Kennedy that provide accurate times for pre-launch procedures as well as to record the amount of time that crewed missions have been underway.
NASA has a team that handles these clocks, the Imaging Technical Support Group. They ensure that exact times are dispersed during the various missions to those groups that need precise, synchronized times to coordinate their efforts when delivering crews, cargo and spacecraft to orbit. In terms of the agency's various missions – exact timing is critical.
"We double and triple check our times. We target launch times down to the second, and things happen quickly as we approach T-0. These numbers are critical to us and they must be correct," said the Group's Steve Payne during an Oct. 2010 interview.
Why we should mine the moon
Ian Crawford – The Conversation
To date, all human economic activity has depended on the material and energy resources of a single planet; understandably, perhaps. It is conceivable though that future advances in space exploration could change this by opening our closed planetary economy to essentially unlimited external resources of energy and raw materials.
Look up at the Moon this evening, and you might be gazing at a solution. The Earth's closest celestial neighbour seems likely to play a major role and already a number of private companies have been created to explore the possibilities.
It is important to stress that even now, 40 years after the Apollo missions, we still don't have a complete picture of the Moon's economic potential, and obtaining one will require a more rigorous programme of lunar exploration than has been undertaken to-date. In part, this is why proposed future lunar exploration missions (such as the recently announced Lunar Mission One) are so important.
Nevertheless, as a result of work over the past four decades, we do now know enough to make a first-order assessment of lunar resource potential. In doing so it is useful to distinguish between three possible future applications of such resources.
Digging deep
- We have the option of using lunar materials to facilitate continued exploration, and future economic development, of the Moon itself. The concept is usually referred to as In Situ Resource Utilisation, or ISRU.
- We could make use of lunar resources to facilitate scientific and economic activity in the vicinity of both Earth and Moon (so-called cis-lunar space) as well as future exploration deeper into the Solar System
- We can consider the importation of lunar resources to the Earth's surface where they would contribute directly to the global economy.
Recent work – which I have summarised here – has shown that the Moon does possess materials suitable for ISRU. Most important in this respect is evidence for deposits of water ice and other volatiles trapped in cold (less than 100 Kelvin or minus 173 degrees Celsius) and permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles. In addition to being required for human life support, water is also a ready source of oxygen (required for both life support and rocket fuel oxidiser) and hydrogen (a valuable rocket fuel).
In addition to possible ice deposits, it has been known since the early studies of the Apollo samples that the lunar soil contains volatiles, substances derived ultimately from the solar wind (e.g. hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, and at high latitudes, hydroxide and perhaps water), and these may also be exploitable for ISRU activities.
Although ISRU will undoubtedly benefit future scientific exploration, it is true that such activities will only make wider economic sense if further lunar exploration and development is able to yield net benefits to the global economy. It is here that the second of those three potential applications of lunar resources comes into play.
Fuel's gold
Our global civilisation is already highly dependent on Earth-orbiting satellites for communications, navigation, weather forecasting and resource management, and this reliance is likely to increase. The high costs of these activities are largely dictated by high launch costs, and by the fact that failed satellites cannot currently be repaired or replenished in orbit. The availability of resources obtained from the weaker gravity conditions of the Moon would help mitigate these obstacles to further economic development in Earth orbit. Near-term lunar exports to a cis-lunar infrastructure could include the supply of hydrogen and oxygen as rocket fuel/oxidiser.
In addition, lunar surface rocks and soils are rich in potentially useful but heavy (and thus expensive to launch from Earth) raw materials such as magnesium, aluminium, silicon, iron and titanium. Therefore, if a lunar industrial infrastructure is gradually built up, the Moon may be able to provide more sophisticated products to Earth-orbiting facilities. Examples might include titanium and aluminium alloys for structural components, and silicon-based photovoltaic cells for solar power. The key business case for sourcing these materials on the Moon is simple. It takes about 20 times less energy to launch a given mass from the surface of the Moon into Earth orbit compared to launching it from the Earth's surface to Earth orbit.
Down to earth
This all seems pretty encouraging for any company or country considering drilling on the Moon, but opportunities for lunar resources to make a more direct contribution to the world economy by being imported to the Earth's surface are limited. This is because the Earth already contains the same basic mix of chemical elements as does the Moon, many of them in higher localised concentrations (i.e. ores), and we have a well-developed infrastructure for extracting and refining terrestrial raw materials.
The light isotope of helium (helium-3), which is implanted into lunar soils by the solar wind is often cited as an exception because it is perceived by some to be a potential fuel for future nuclear fusion reactors on Earth. However, sustainable nuclear fusion using helium-3 has yet to be shown to be practical, and even if it is, the concentration of helium-3 in lunar soils is so low (about ten parts-per-billion by mass) that strip mining and processing hundreds of square kilometres of the lunar surface would be required each year in order to make a significant contribution to Earth's future energy needs.
Other possible lunar materials which might conceivably be economically imported to the Earth include platinum group elements (currently valued at between $20,000 and $50,000 per kilo) extracted from iron meteorites that may have survived impact with the lunar surface, and materials (for example, economically valuable rare-earth elements which are known to be concentrated in some regions of the Moon) for which the environmental costs of terrestrial mining may one day make lunar sources more attractive.
Booster stages
When we pull together the evidence, it remains difficult to identify any single lunar resource that will be sufficiently valuable to drive a mining industry on its own. There is no simple solution. However, the Moon does possess abundant raw materials that are of potential economic interest.
We need to think of a hierarchy of future applications. This begins with the use of lunar materials to facilitate human activities on the Moon itself. We can then progress to the use of lunar resources to underpin a future industrial capability within the Earth-Moon system. In this way, gradually increasing access to lunar resources may help "bootstrap" a self-sustaining space-based economy from which the global economy will ultimately benefit.
This article is based on an invited review paper on lunar resources that will be published by the journal Progress in Physical Geography in the New Year. A preprint of that paper, which contains references to the primary literature on which this essay is based, can be found here
OPINION: NASA Needs to add some 'weight' to spaceflight
It has long been known that microgravity takes a toll on the human body. Muscles atrophy, the eyes are subjected to increased intracranial pressure, bones lose mass. A prolonged period in weightlessness may result in permanent bone loss and make it difficult to survive in Earth's gravity. Yet although a number of plans have been proposed for artificial gravity in deep space missions, NASA, at present, does not appear to have plans to use artificial gravity on a mission to Mars.
On May 14, 1973, long before the era of the International Space Station (ISS), the United States launched its first space station, Skylab, into orbit on the last Saturn V rocket to be sent aloft. Between May and November of that year, three crews visited the station. Although Skylab was significantly smaller than the ISS, the volume of its interior was colossal, a staggering 1,190 feet in volume.
Unlike the Russian Mir or the ISS, Skylab was not a huge assemblage of small modules; it was a single unit, a giant tank converted from the S-IV-B upper stage of the Saturn V booster.
The lockers on Skylab formed a ring around its giant interior. On each of the three Skylab expeditions, astronauts "ran" around that ring by kicking off from one locker and propelling themselves into motion. Their inertia allowed them to run in a big circle and to experience a sensation of 0.5 gee. Astronaut Jack Lousma, Command Module Pilot on the second Skylab expedition, said the experience felt much like normal gravity. There was no dizziness or disorientation.
There's nothing new about the concept of using spinning wheels to produce artificial gravity through centrifugal force. As early as 1903, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wrote about using rotation to produce artificial gravity in space. In the 1950s, Werner von Braun and Willy Ley proposed using artificial gravity during a trip to Mars. Even NASA proposed the idea of the Stanford Torus, a gigantic wheel-shaped space station. The International Space Station was originally designed to accommodate JAXA's Centrifuge Accommodations Module (CAM), which would have tested artificial gravity on small biological specimens, but the CAM was canceled due to budget overruns.
The reason most of these proposals never saw the light of day was that they would have been too big and too expensive. But it's not necessary to build a giant space station that could hold an entire city. Andy Weir, author of the recent best-seller The Martian, explained how simple artificial gravity could be:
"Artificial gravity is easily within reach right now. It would not require a giant wheel-in-space that looks like the cover of a 1950′s sci-fi novel. A viable design could be something as simple as a crew compartment attached to a counterweight compartment by a long cable that is initially coiled in a spindle. Attitude thrusters on the compartments could start the ship spinning while the cable uncoiled to its desired length. The centripetal force would keep the cable straight as it lengthened. The compartments would have to withstand one g of force, but humanity has 5,000 years of experience building things that withstand one g of force."
Although no spinning environment has been built in space to provide astronauts with artificial gravity, there has been some experimentation. In September of 1966, Gemini XI attached a tether to an Agena target vehicle and the two spacecraft wheeled around each other. A similar technique has been proposed by The Mars Society's Robert Zubrin as part of the Mars Direct Plan to generate artificial gravity aboard a Mars-bound ship by tethering the hab module to the spent booster and rotating them around each other.
In 2012, Josh Hopkins, Lockheed Martin's space exploration architect, discussed a similar concept for the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.
"We've been looking at an artificial gravity test where you put an Orion in a tether with a mass and spin them up and Orion is not designed to be spun up and so we're working on that, we're interested in it."
NASA is in a bit of a tight spot, though, and it's easy to see why artificial gravity is not the agency's biggest priority right now. The United States has spent more than $75 billion on the International Space Station. One of the stated functions of the ISS is to test the effects of long-term exposure to weightlessness on the human body in preparation for flights to Mars.
That being the case, there is potentially less incentive to provide artificial gravity to Mars-bound crews; it would invalidate one of the ISS's reasons for being. And with a mission to Mars little more than a vague promise for a rather undefined future time, there is no urgency to perfect a safe and efficient means of transporting astronauts to the Red Planet.
The ISS is a major investment and an incredible technological and political accomplishment. It will provide important scientific and medical breakthroughs—whether they justify its price tag will be debated for many years.
In other words, NASA is more in the game of politics than spaceflight. It's more important not to look foolish for constructing a space station that may prove of little real scientific value than to experiment with and design a system that will take astronauts to Mars in a healthy environment.
The health benefits of artificial gravity on a long space mission are obvious, but then it's worth considering that if we're going to spread out into the cosmos, we should adapt ourselves to the space environment rather than taking pockets of Earth with us everywhere we go.
Either way, NASA must have the courage and the foresight to look beyond today's politics and plan for the future. The ISS is up there now, and we must use it to its maximum potential, but without compromising the best methods of going to the planets—and perhaps, one day, the stars.
NASA Webb Telescope's Mammoth Mirror Tripod Gets Tested in Action
Ken Kremer - AmericaSpace
The mammoth mirror tripod assembly that is a key structural element of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is undergoing critical action-packed testing at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and AmericaSpace was onsite recently for a first-hand look to observe some of the work in progress.
JWST is NASA's top-priority science mission launching in this decade and is the most powerful telescope ever built.
It will have the capability to "look back toward the very first objects that formed after the Big Bang," said Dr. John Mather, NASA's Nobel Prize Winning scientist, in a prior exclusive interview with AmericaSpace at NASA Goddard.
The telescope is currently in the midst of a multi-year testing and construction phase inside the world's largest cleanroom at NASA Goddard.
The lengthy tripod will hold Webb's secondary mirror firmly in place above the honeycomb-like backplane assembly that holds the telescope's segmented primary mirror.
The round secondary mirror reflects light gathered by the primary mirror into the telescopes state-of-the-art science instruments.
But like just about everything else involved with the unbelievably complicated Webb telescope, the legs comprising the tripod's secondary mirror support structure will have to unfurl in space after the spacecraft is launched and deployed.
The huge telescope is now well on track to launch in October 2018 atop an ESA Ariane V ECA rocket from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, following a series of delays and cost overruns earlier in the decade.
But before Webb is launched, all the hardware is being thoroughly tested to assure it meets specifications and will work as planned when in its orbit a million miles (1.5 million Km) from Earth at a position called L2—the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point.
Webb must deploy and function as planned because it can't be fixed by astronaut crews.
"JWST is not designed to be serviced," Mather stated. "Our job is to make sure it works. We have two of everything. So it's Practice, Practice, Practice."
To get ready for the tripod unfurling test, Goddard technicians first assembled and tested an engineering version of the hardware to test procedures and gain experience before working with the actual flight units.
During a recent visit to Goddard, this writer observed as technicians were intricately carrying out the delicate installation of primary mirror flight spares onto the primary mirror backplane engineering unit to carry out a more realistic test.
The secondary mirror support tripod extends to about 8 meters (26.2 feet) long once it is fully deployed.
Goddard engineers recently completed a successful test run deployment of the tripod in Goddard's giant clean room using Webb's "Pathfinder" backplane, or test "backbone" structural hardware first.
Watch this video to see the unfurling test: (see below)
"This is the first time we have performed a deployment with a mirror on it and is an important next step in proving the system will work in space as planned," said Lee Feinberg NASA's Optical Telescope Element manager at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Once in space, Webb's solar array will be deployed immediately, followed by the high-gain antenna two hours later. Thrusters will fire to start the journey to place it into orbit around the Sun at L2.
During the journey to L2, the mirrors, sunshield, and everything else about JWST will then be unfolded in a carefully choreographed and highly complex sequence lasting about six months. The four science instruments will also be calibrated.
Engineers did a test run using the Webb's "Pathfinder" backplane, or test "backbone" structure, to ensure that one of the secondary mirrors would set up properly in its orbit a million miles from Earth.
"The deployment of the tripod that holds the secondary mirror has a tipping point, and this is controlled by the yellow gravity off-loading device," said Ray Lundquist, the Webb telescope ISIM Lead Systems Engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
The tripod consists of three supports and hinges that fold out from the telescope's backplane. The tripod was constructed from composite tubes built by ATK. The hinges were built by Northrop Grumman.
Both the round secondary and hexagonal-shaped primary mirrors are made of beryllium, which was selected for its stiffness, light weight, and stability at cryogenic temperatures.
Webb is outfitted with a segmented 6.5 meter (21 ft 4 in) diameter aperture primary mirror. It's the largest mirror ever placed in space and weighs 705 kg.
The primary mirror is comprised of 18 individual hexagonal segments and configured into a nearly circular arrangement.
Each of the primary mirrors are gold coated. They measure 1.3 meters (4.3 feet) in diameter and weigh about 20 kg (46 pounds).
NASA has overall responsibility for JWST, which is a joint international collaborative project between NASA, ESA (European Space Agency), and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) comprising more than 17 countries.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center provides overall management, systems engineering, and the ISIM science module. Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor.
Stay tuned here for continuing developments.
Japan Readies Hayabusa2 Asteroid Sample Return Mission for Launch - RESCHEDULED
UPDATE: The launch has been postponed a second time because of weather. The new launch date is December 3, 1:22:04 pm JST (December 2, 11:22:04 pm EST). This article is updated accordingly.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is getting ready to launch its second asteroid sample return mission, Hayabusa2, on December 2, 2014 Eastern Standard Time (EST), following a second weather delay. Launch time is 11:22 pm EST, which is 1:22 pm December 3 Japan Standard Time (JST). JAXA plans to provide live coverage of the launch on its website.
The original launch date was November 30 JST (November 29 EST). That slipped to December 1 JST (November 30 EST) due to weather, and now has been rescheduled again due to weather. JAXA currently plans to launch it on December 3 JST (December 2 EST).
Hayabusa2 is the successor to Hayabusa (also called MUSES-C), which successfully returned a small amount of material from the asteroid Itokawa in 2010. Hayabusa overcame a number of technical challenges, including the loss of all four of its ion engines. Japanese engineers were able to interconnect working components of different engines to create one that worked. The landing of its sample return canister in Australia on June 14, 2010 Eastern Daylight Time generated considerable excitement around the world. At that time it was unclear as to whether the sample mechanism had actually captured any material from Itokawa, but after they opened the canister, scientists determined it contained about 1,500 grains, which have been the subject of scientific analysis since that time.
Japan quickly decided to mount a second mission, Hayabusa2, with a number of improvements, including to the ion engines and the sample collection mechanism. If launch takes place as scheduled, it will reach its target, asteroid 1999JU3, in mid-2018, remain there for 18 months orbiting the asteroid at a distance of about 20 kilometers (12.5 miles), and return to Earth at the end of 2020.
Among the science instruments on the 600 kilogram (1,322 pound) spacecraft is a small impactor made of pure copper (to distinguish it from other materials on the asteroid). Called Liner, it will be dropped to the surface at a velocity of 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) per second to create an artificial crater by colliding with the asteroid. That will expose fresh material below the asteroid's surface to be collected by the sample return mechanism. Hayabusa2 will also study the asteroid using a near infrared spectrometer (NIRS3) and a thermal infrared imager (TIR), deploy three small rovers (MINERVA) that can move several times by hopping, and a small lander (MASCOT) that can move once by hopping. MASCOT was built by the German space agency, DLR, and the French space agency, CNES, who also teamed on the Philae lander that just landed on Comet 67P on November 12. MASCOT has four observation devices (MicrOmega, MAG, CAM and MARA).
Asteroids are categorized into several different types. Two of the most prevalent are C (carbonaceous) and S (stony). Asteroid 1999JU3 is a C-type, while Hayabusa's target, Itokawa, was an S-type. Thus, Hayabusa2 is not only bringing back additional asteroid samples, but from a different type of asteroid, broadening scientific knowledge about these objects left over from the formation of the solar system.
Launch will be on a Mithsibishi Heavy Industries (MHI) H-IIA rocket from Japan's Tanagashima Space Center. JAXA indicated it would provide live coverage of the launch and of spacecraft separation, but the times for that coverage are not posted on JAXA's website yet.
(For those who are curious, we have published an article providing a brief explanation of the difference between a comet and an asteroid and a list of other robotic comet and asteroid missions flown in the past or planned for the future.) Russia Plans Massive Productivity and Wage Hike for Space Industry Workforce
Matthew Bodner – The Moscow Times
In a bid to tackle the low productivity hobbling Russia's space industry, the state-owned conglomerate that spans the sector has proposed doubling wages and implementing incentive systems to triple the efficiency of its workforce.
The Soviet space program at its height in 1989 employed over a million people and accounted for 1.5 percent of Soviet gross domestic product. To work in the space sector was considered a plumb assignment.
But after years of industrial decay, low wages and brain drain, the industry is struggling to recruit fresh talent and move forward with new projects.
The space sector now has a reputation for being geriatric and, at times, incompetent — many scoffed last year, when a Proton-M rocket crashed shortly after launch because its guidance computer's sensors were installed upside down.
United Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC) was created by presidential decree earlier this year in response to that crash. It has been tasked with reforming and consolidating most of the industry under its auspices. Reforms are expected to begin next year, and by 2016 the numerous companies that make up Russia's space sector will employ 196,000 people, the corporation said in a statement on Friday.
"By 2025 plans are to increase productivity threefold, while real wages will double," the statement said.
According to the corporation, which bills itself as "a socially responsible employer," the planned productivity improvements hinge on the development of "a motivation system based on key performance indicators," as well as housing and pension programs.
Although a single space industry employee brings his employer on average 1.6 million rubles ($32,000) in revenue, monthly salaries are around 44,500 rubles a month ($900), or just over $10,000 a year, the corporation said. The average Russian salary is just over 30,000 rubles a month.
URSC is also pledging to take recruitment of young talent seriously by creating special programs to attract young talent to work on challenging and interesting projects, increasing spending on training threefold by 2016.
"Young people are a necessary component of any high-tech industry," the corporation said.
The average age of an employee in the Russian space industry is currently 45.4 years, the corporation said. In comparison, at the California-based space startup Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) — considered by many to be the world's most exciting and innovative space firm — the average age of an engineer is reported to be between 26 and 30.
It should be said, however, that average age in the entire U.S. aerospace industry — which includes both aviation and space production — is 47. The average salary meanwhile is over $117,000, Fortune magazine reported last year.
If the U.S. space industry is taken alone, the average age is higher, with 43 percent of the workforce over the age of 50, according to a report issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce in May.
What's Happening in Space Policy December 1-5, 2014
Here is our list of space policy-related events coming up in the next week, December 1-5, 2014, and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.
During the Week
First, it is important to note that two meetings we mentioned in our last edition have been postponed: the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) Science Committee and the NAC Human Exploration and Operations Committee. Both were supposed to take place this week, leading up to the meeting of the full NAC next week, but that also has been postponed. NASA said in its Federal Register notice that senior agency officials were tied up with other activities, including the Orion Exploration Flight Test (EFT-1) launch on December 4. (Two other NAC committee meetings this week--Aeronautics, and Technology, Innovation and Engineering--are still on track as far as we know.)
The Orion EFT-1 launch certainly will be one of the highlights this week. It is scheduled for Thursday, December 4, at 7:05 am EST from Cape Canaveral. NASA is pulling out all the stops in terms of media activities and even has Sesame Street characters involved. Elmo, Cookie Monster, Grover and Slimey are sharing what item they would pack to go to Mars, describing what the journey to Mars would be like as a crew member, and using their ABCs to better understand the Orion spacecraft. Elmo will be present at the launch, NASA says. The EFT-1 mission lasts only about 4.5 hours from liftoff to splashdown in the Pacific. The launch window is 2 hours 40 minutes long, dictated by the need to have daylight to observe various events during the launch and for recovery operations in the ocean. December 5 and 6 are backup dates if needed.
Before that, however, another significant launch is expected -- Japan's Hayabusa2 is currently scheduled for launch on Tuesday, December 2, at 11:22 pm EST (Wednesday, December 3, 1:22 pm local time in Japan). The launch has been postponed twice in recent days due to weather, and could slip again, but whenever it occurs, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to provide live video coverage. This is Japan's second asteroid sample return mission and will reach its target, asteroid 1999JU3, in mid-2018, returning the sample at the end of 2020. The European Space Agency (ESA) will hold a critical "ministerial meeting" on Tuesday in Luxembourg. The meeting brings together the ministers of each of ESA's 20 member countries who oversee their country's participation in ESA. Ministerial meetings typically are held every three years, but this one is taking place just two years after the last one. The ministers will make formal decisions on three resolutions regarding: - access to space (the future of Ariane and Vega);
- space exploration strategy for ESA's "three destinations (low-Earth orbit (LEO), Moon and Mars" including, for LEO, extending ISS operations though 2020 (NASA proposed extending ISS to 2020 a couple of years ago and several ISS partners are still trying to obtain approval for that, never mind the more recent proposal to extend it to 2024); and
- evolution of ESA itself.
A press conference is expected after the meeting concludes about 16:30 Central European Time (CET), which would be about 10:30 am EST. It will be streamed live on ESA's website.
Those are just a few of the many activities on tap this week. Here is what we know about as of Sunday afternoon.
Monday, December 1
Tuesday, December 2
- ESA Ministerial Meeting, Luxembourg, press conference at end of meeting, approximately 10:30 am EST (16:30 CET)
- NASA "Journey to Mars" panel discussion, Kennedy Space Center, FL and NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 12:00 noon EST, watch on NASA TV
- Orion EFT-1 Status and Overview Briefing, 1:00 pm EST, watch on NASA TV
- Past Life? Present Life? The Future of Solar System Exploration (Planetary Society), 562 Dirksen Senate Office Building, 2:00-3:30 pm EST (doors open at 1:30)
- Media Briefing on "New Faces of Exploration" (Coalition for Space Exploration), Kennedy Space Center, FL, 3:00 pm EST
- Launch of Japan's Hayabusa2 asteroid sample return mission,Tanegashima, Japan, 11:22 pm EST (1:22 pm Wednesday, Dec. 3, local time in Japan)
Tuesday-Wednesday, December 2-3
Wednesday, December 3
Thursday, December 4
- Orion EFT-1 Launch, 7:05 am EST (with 2 hour 40 minute launch window), and splashdown (~4.5 hours after launch), post-flight briefing approximately 2 hours after splashdown, watch on NASA TV
- NASA Advisory Council (NAC) Technology, Innovation and Engineering Committee, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 8:00 am - 5:00 pm EST
- NAC Aeronautics Committee, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, 9:00 am - 3:45 pm PST
Friday, December 5
END
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