Category Archives: Space

Space

First Vertical-Vertical Spaceport?

Alan Boyle reports that Blue Origin has gotten their environmental assessment approved, which was one of the last hurdles to getting their FAA license as a spaceport. It will be the first private spaceport, but it will also be the first spaceport to be licensed for vertical takeoff and landing (Mojave and Burns Flat are only licensed for horizontal operations). I wonder if Jeff Bezos will be open to allowing others to operate from it? I’ll bet that Armadillo and Masten would like to use it.

Space

RIP Space Pioneer

I hadn’t noticed earlier, but Rocco Petrone died last Friday. I worked for him in the eighties, when he was president of Rockwell’s Space Transportation Systems Division in Downey. He was a key member of the Apollo management team. On the morning of the Challenger disaster, he questioned the decision to launch when he saw icicles hanging from the gantry, but he wasn’t part of the MMT.

Space

No Launch Any Time Soon

They’ve started the rollback from the pad. Probably the best decision, since the consensus of the tracks is to put the storm right over the Cape when it exits the state, between Cocoa Beach and Daytona.

Well, at least I won’t have to be distracted by taking any trips up to the Cape to watch a launch for the next few weeks.

[Update at 10:30 AM EDT]

It’s starting to look like the storm is going to be a little further west than even the early morning predictions were:

Speaking of RECON, it good to have them back in the storm this morning. The Cuban Government did allow the Air Force reserve plane to fly into Cuban airspace this morning to get a good fix on the storm’s center. We thank them a great deal. Hopefully in the not-too-distant future, Cuban overflights can be acomplished to better warn their citizens as well as ours. The RECON data is so important, a few hours without it can mean big changes! Ok, back to the storm…The latest guidance is again tightly clustered thanks to the valuable data that the NOAA Gulfstream IV jet was able to add to the model suites. This has landfall in extreme southwest Florida and the upper Keys mid-morning on Wednesday as a moderate to strong tropical storm or minimal hurricane, although the odds of Ernesto topping 74mph is very small. The storm should then begin to re-curve to the north and northeast east of Tampa, over Orlando to just southeast of Jacksonville by late in the day on Wednesday into the overnight hours.

We’ll still get a lot of rain over here, but probably the winds will be barely tropical force. If that prediction is true, it also means that they probably didn’t need to roll back. Wonder if they’re thinking about putting the crawler in reverse?

[Update at 3:37 PM EDT]

From my mouth (so to speak) to NASA’s ears. As Mark Whittington notes in comments, they’ve decided to do exactly that.

Good crisis management by NASA. Everything they’ve done so far is exactly what I would have done (well, in the context of this particular mission), for what little it’s worth. The emphasis needs to be on flying this vehicle, early and often, despite the hand wringers.

Space

Overconstrained

Keith Cowing writes about the inflexibility and fragility of the Shuttle (a subject near and dear to my own heart).

NASA’s current launch dilemma began to develop much along the lines of the 70’s movie – based on the 60s novel “Marooned” where a hurricane threatened the launching of a rescue mission to an orbiting space station. When things got tough – the Russians helped out – at the last minute. Things are not as dire this time around, but the confluence of various facts would make for a good book someday.

Weather has always been an issue for launched from Florida – and it always will be. Russians will be as obstinate as they can get away with so long as they are in the equation for American human spaceflight aboard the ISS.

Given that NASA seeks to used “shuttle derived” architecture and hardware – and launch it from KSC – it has more or less guaranteed that such uncertainties will remain part of human spaceflight for decades to come.

I disagree with him though, that the lessons to be learned are from the Russians, who have developed only a slightly less expensive, and slightly more robust system.

Until we develop a truly robust and low-cost space transportation infrastructure (with full redundancy in vehicles and vehicle types), spaceflight will remain expensive, and rare.

Space

Killing Themselves With Safety

NASA needs to get on with the program and get rid of the daylight restriction:

NASA could reconsider restricting this flight to times when the shuttle and external tank, upon separation, are lit by the sun. That was a post-Columbia rule intended to provide good pictures of the tank and its insulating foam to make sure safety changes worked to eliminate dangerous debris. It was supposed to be in place for the first two post-Columbia launches. After the 2005 return to flight mission saw a large piece of foam debris, NASA decided this third post-Columbia flight also would be limited to daylit launch opportunities. If NASA sticks to the rule, there could be just three days the rest of 2006 meeting all safety requirements. Indeed, it could be February before another viable launch window exists that meets the daylight and other flight rules. NASA officials on Sunday were given the opportunity to rule out the possibility of simply eliminating the daylight launch restriction for this flight, the agency did not rule it out. That could open many more days in the latter half of the year to avoid a potential five-month delay in the resumption of space station construction.

Emphasis mine.

They know they have the capability to inspect at ISS now, and most of the major foam fears should be laid to rest. They need to fly as often as possible, particularly given that it’s hurricane season.