Roger Handberg has a useful history of NASA and its budgets for those who still fantasize that we can (or should) resurrect Apollo.
Category Archives: Space
CSI: Suborbit
Dwayne Day has an amusing review of what seems to have been a particularly stupid episode of CSI: Miami. I’ve never actually sat through an entire show (the only reason I’ve ever been able to see for watching it is Emily Procter, and that’s not enough, particularly since she doesn’t have anywhere near the southern accent that much of the hype about her would lead you to believe). Are they all this dumb?
Robert McCall
…has died.
For me his most impressive work remains the mural at the Air and Space Museum. But it was just a scratch at the surface of his work. He was a leading chronicler of the first space age. May the new one bring forth new artists as great as it will be, as he was to it.
Walt, Walt, Walt…
I admire Walt Cunningham as a hero of Apollo, but it’s hard to do so as a policy analyst. The very title of his opinion piece is nonsense:
We must not discard greatest innovator in history
Presumably he’s talking about NASA, and specifically the human spaceflight program. But in fact, due to risk aversion, it is probably the least innovative technology program going, with “Apollo on Steroids” the most prominent and recent example. I’d wager that we get more innovation out of Silicon Valley in a month than we have from the entire history of the human spaceflight program. He expands in the first paragraph:
Prospects For Constellation Resurrection
Clark Lindsey has some realistic perspective:
After the noise dies away from the hearings on the NASA budget, the harsh reality of NASA’s limited budget is going to sink in with Congress just as it did for the Augustine panel when they started to look at the numbers. Constellation just won’t fit. You can’t fly the ISS, keep all those Shuttle workers employed and proceed with Ares/Orion. Shelby et al will try to save Constellation but the vast majority of the appropriators have much, much higher priorities than NASA and they are not going to boost the agency’s budget just to preserve a $100B+ billion dollar program that the NASA administrator, a blue-ribbon panel, the President and common sense all say is not viable.
He also points to a useful recent precedent:
Despite all that noise and anger and legislative maneuvers, by the end of July the plan was accepted: The F-22: Senate Votes to End Production – TIME – July.22.09. Congress as a whole decided that the negatives were not nearly as bad as claimed and the positives were too good to reject.
If Bolden and the administration push in a similar vigorous and sustained manner for their NASA plan, they will also win. As I’ve noted before, President Obama would no doubt love to battle Congressional members who want to force him to spend tens of billions of dollars on a failed Moon program, especially when most of that opposition consists of supposedly small-government, pro-business, anti-deficit Republicans. (Could just see him in a public forum saying that continuing the Moon program would be “an inexcusable waste of money”.)
I hope that the days of NASA as pork, as opposed to progress, are at least coming to a middle, if not an end. And the ironies continue to abound.
Suborbital Safety
I have some thoughts over at Popular Mechanics, that arose from last week’s suborbital researchers’ conference in Boulder.
[Update a few minutes later]
Wayne Hale (who I was privileged to finally meet in person last week in Boulder) has some thoughts on “human rating.” I like his last quote. It reminds me of another one: “Every time they performed an investigation of the accident, all of the paperwork was found to be in order.”
To The Moon, Alice!
Not. Some very useful thoughts from Miles O’Brien.
It is a shame how atrociously this has been reported, with all of the nonsensical talk about “ending human spaceflight.” Of course, it’s partly the administration’s fault, by springing it at the last minute. As Miles notes, anyone with their head in the sunlight could see that Constellation (or at least Ares — killing Orion as well was a legitimate surprise) couldn’t survive in the current (or really, any) environment, but it still came as a shock, with an inadequate description of what is to replace it. I hope that this will be rectified in the coming weeks and months.
“Suborbital Taxi Cabs…?
One wonders if Representative Olson, or his staff, even know what the word “suborbital” means.
These are the people running your space program. And your country.
CRuSR
Charles Miller, Senior Advisor on Commercialization at NASA HQ, is leading a panel talking about applications for not only the suborbitals but also things like weightless aircraft. Purpose of panel is to discuss program and identify issues. Makes the point that the fifteen-million bucks in the budget is going to be leveraged to the hilt, and they also want to use it to maximize “disruption.” Turning it over now to Doug Comstock (his boss) to talk about parabolic flight.
Doing things because NASA needs the services. Larger budget for technology within the agency means that NASA will need more technology testbed flights in the environments, so greater need for programs like this. FAST was set up to do this for parabolic flights, and CRuSR (suborbital flights) grew out of it. Idea was for NASA to provide ride for free, but source of technology would pay for experiment. Flew nineteen last year, third from industry, third from government (mostly NASA), third from academia. Call will go out next week for technologies to fly this year. Looking for portfolio of demo capabilities to get technologies out of the lab and into missions. Will also include things like drop towers and thermal-vacuum chambers.
Next up Marine Colonel Paul Damphousse, from National Space Security Organization (NSSO). Currently detailed away from NSSO, but speaking for that office and not current job. Has three customers/partners — DoD, DCI, and NASA. Do architecting and studies, including things over the horizon. Some of this interest grew out of SUSTAIN back in 2002, in which it was conceptually proposed to put Marines on the ground anywhere quickly. Doesn’t expect it to come any time soon. They recognize it as a future need, that needs enabling technologies to provide spiraling path to that capability. Saw a lot of interesting potential in the private sector, and held series of workshops and technology fora to see how people would meet missions. Immediate application of vehicles being discussed here are to have one in a forward area, lob it up and take pictures. Other apps, high-speed logistics supploy, delivery of unmanned reconaissance, etc. Goal is to leverage capabilities coming on line, and figure out how to catalyze useful things. Sees a whole host of synergies with what’s happening today.
Michelle Brekke (sp?) from JSC. She is here to ask what industry needs to be innovative and successful. Already partnering with several companies along these lines, but unrelated to CRuSR. “Making space for business.” Leverage example: loaned an ISS payload rack that wanted to build its own interfaces and be compatible. Another: providing S-Band frequency that they don’t need right now for their comm needs. Could provide real-time telemetry for these new vehicles. Her experience is payload integration for Shuttle/ISS. Interested not just in low-cost access to space, but low-cost utilization. Five discussion points: 1) Suborbital is potential quality assurance and risk mitigation for orbital 2) Low-cost utilization needs KISS for integration process, better is the enemy of the good 3) Provide a payload integration service, don’t make experimenters learn all of that — payload integrator becomes advocate for the user 4) Industry should establish common form and interfaces — need USB-like standards for standard services 5) Readily-available integration hardware –keeps users from having to build or procure it themselves.
Head of CRuSR (didn’t catch name) talking now. Team consists of Bruce Pittman, Richard Mains (from Ames), Yvonne Cagle and a couple other names I didn’t catch. Need to be responsive to STEM/education. Concerned with safety, which is in no way associated with COTS, ISS or orbital human safety standards. CRuSR safety will be overseen by Dryden, and it will be a while before they will be flying NASA-sponsored humans. In the past NASA owned all responsibility/liability for safety. In the new environment, they are going to buy space for payloads. If they’re sharing a ride with ESA, Malaysia, a university payload, they’ll have to be assured that not just the vehicle, but the accompanying payloads are safe for their own. Need for organizations that can support not just safety, but FAA regulations and licensing (which NASA has no role in), including payloads. Need to be able to provide customer not only with environment, but the process of getting a ride. Repeating need for standardized interfaces. Most launch providers would prefer that payloads not be integrated in any way other than structurally (less services the better). Wants to stimulate discussion about all these issues. Putting up a long chart of them.
The discussion kicks off with a long discussion of payload integration issues. I point out something that I realized tonight, and had never thought about before. The FAA is responsible for third-party safety, but not second-party. In other words, the launch licensing process not only doesn’t address passenger safety currently, but it also doesn’t address payload safety. As long as the payload doesn’t blow up the vehicle, and squash an endangered species or foreign national on the ground, they don’t care whether it works or not. So payload integrators are going to have to worry about interactions with other payloads, because no one else will.
[Update a while later]
I got caught in a side discussion outside, and now my battery is dying, so probably no more blogging until I get back to my room (twenty miles away in snow) or in the morning.
Too Busy To Blog
I’ve been talking to a lot of people at the conference, and not capturing much of it, but Clark Lindsey has been monitoring the blogs and twitter feeds.