A group of French doctors using a specially modified Airbus A330 to simulate periods of zero gravity have successfully completed a weightless surgical procedure to remove a small cyst from a volunteer’s arm. This represents the first time that a human subject has been operated on in zero-g.
In the future when more and more people will be routinely working in space, a medical emergency requiring in surgery seems almost inevitable. (Astronauts half way to Mars, for instance, can’t turn around and come home if someone develops a medical condition that needs to be operated on). Although not long or particularly complex, this operation indicates that at least a basic level of weightless surgery is possible. In the future, medical textbooks for spaceborne surgeons will point to this fairly humble procedure as the one that started it all.
Looks like UP Aerospace’s inaugural launch from Spaceport America didn’t go as high as they had hoped.
Condolences from the OotC team to everyone who worked so hard on this launch. It’s always disappointing when something goes wrong, but I’m sure that they will learn from it and try again.
These are very early days indeed for commercial spaceflight, and just getting something built and flown is a real achievement. In the meantime, back to the drawing board, and don’t be too discouraged: look how many failures the early space program had to go through - and they had virtually unlimited budget and resources.
In this artist’s concept, the Orion CEV docked to a lunar lander,
is depicted orbiting the moon. Credit: Lockheed-Martian
Associated Press reporter recounts his experiences as he tries out Lockheed-Martian’s mock-up of their Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, (CEV). Fresh off of receiving an $8 billion contract to build it, Lockheed-Martian gave media a chance to look over a rough mock-up of the capsule, said to have been built to “get a feel of the geometry” involved with the craft.
The article is posted on MSNBC’s news site.
Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, an astronaut on the STS-115 mission, collapsed twice Friday, a day after she returned to Earth in the shuttle Atlantis, and officials attributed her wobbles to the adjustment from 12 days at zero gravity. Wobbly and light-headed, Stefanyshyn-Piper collapsed while speaking publicly at a welcome-home ceremony.
Fellow crew members caught her as her legs buckled under her, lowering her to the ground. She rested there for a few moments before rising back to her feet and attempted to centime.
Speaking again for less than a minute, gripping the podium tightly for support, she once again became dizzy and stopped speaking. Stefanyshyn-Piper was lowered to the floor. After resting a few moments again, she was helped to her feet and escorted out through a side door.
“She’s doing 100 percent well,” husband Glenn Piper said by phone from home later in the day. “Basically, she’s embarrassed.”
Smith Johnston, the crew’s flight surgeon, who was at Piper’s side when she fell, said astronauts typically lose 10 percent to 14 percent of their blood volume while in space, usually regaining it in a day or two. Hospitalization was not required and Stefanyshyn-Piper was allowed to go home a few hours later.
Piper, 43, of St. Paul, Minn., is a commander in the Navy and was a mission specialist and cosmic electrician aboard the shuttle. She carried out two of the spacewalks, joining an elite club of only six other U.S. women and a single Russian woman who have made spacewalks.
We wish her the best and a speedy recovery as she regains her “Land Legs”.
“The Survival Imperative: Using Space to Protect Earth” by Burrows, William E.
Published in 2006 by Forge Books (a Tom Doherty Associates press, like Tor Books), it weighs in at 350 pages of content plus several appendices. No errors noted.
Mr. Burrows, a professor of Journalism at NYU, is one of the better known chroniclers of the space age, and his book “This New Ocean” is a particularly well known title. In “The Survival Imperative”, Mr. Burrows picks up on the growing theme of “Space for the benefit of Earth”, and lays out a very compelling case for why our efforts to develop the space frontier are not merely a luxury, but rather a necessity if we value the continuity of our civilization into the indefinite future.
READ MORE…
 You really want to take the time to read this. It is an inexpressibly cool story, made even more so by the knowledge that a) it is true, and b) the author is writing it floating in zero gravity far above the Earth on the International Space Station.
As I read this I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had been transported back to being ten years old reading a Boys’ Own - sorry Anousheh - Girls’ Own Adventure story.
But this is real. How cool is that?
 Atlantis is home safely. Or, I should say, her crew is home safely. For the shuttle herself, I don’t think that being tucked up in a warm hangar at Kennedy Space Center counts as being ‘home’. If you’ll allow me a little poetic license, I believe that her home is ‘up there’ - and it’s sad that she gets to go there so infrequently.
The shuttle system is aging and expensive, and the decision to retire the fleet in 2010 is the right one. Today we need much more prosaic access to space: cheap, reliable, and regular - things that we all wanted the shuttle to be, but we were perhaps asking too much of her.
In her native environment of low Earth orbit, she’s nothing short of breathtakingly beautiful:
The shuttle is an amazing and capable machine, and it may be a while before we see her like again. As we watch her gracefully fly out the remaining flights leading to her retirement, I think it’s important that we take the time to recognise that what we are giving up is something very special indeed.
 Blogging from the AIAA Space conference, Rand Simberg of Transterrestrial Musings reports:
Bigelow announced at lunch that he will be putting up a three-person space station in late 2009 or early 2010, about fifty percent bigger than an ISS module. He is putting up a destination in hopes that the transportation will come along (and in order to spur the transportation providers). Station will last for several years. Will be executing contracts in 2008 for transportation contracts to Sundancer. Expects between four and eight trips (people and cargo) per year, after six-month shakedown. Then trips will commence whenever transportation becomes available. 2012 will see the launch of another module providing 500 cubic meters of habitable volume. Will support sixteen launches a year for full utilization (again, cargo and people).
Also, Bigelow is teaming with Lockheed Martin to investigate the feasibility of launching crew to Sundancer on the Atlas V-401. Read the full article at NasaSpaceFlight.com.
Wow! If Bigelow can pull this off, it will truly be a watershed moment in the new space age. I’ll post more when this has all sunk in.
[Update:] Space.com has more.
 Anousheh Ansari, X-Prize backer and private astronaut, has arrived at the ISS, along with the station’s new crew. In downlink video of the hatch opening, she could be seen smiling broadly, and wearing an X-Prize cap.
You can read about her adventures in near-real time: she is blogging from the ISS (via email I think) here.
National Research Council of the National Academies
Division on Engineering & Physical Sciences
Space Studies Board Committee on the Scientific Context for Exploration of the Moon
“The Scientific Context for Exploration of the Moon - Interim Report”
National Academies Press
09/19/2006
Publisher’s Website/On-line Text
[Registration req’d.]
Habitable Zone Space Sciences Commentary
CNN.com article
NewScientist Space article
Alan Boyle at Cosmic Log is reporting that Blue Origin has won an experimental permit to conduct flight tests from their Van Horn, Texas, launch site.
With permit in hand, Blue Origin can proceed with plans for unmanned testing at the West Texas site. The company said in its environmental assessment that up to 10 rocket tests could be conducted this year, using a remote-controlled vehicle that would rise no higher than 2,000 feet (610 meters) during flights lasting less than a minute.
Over the next couple of years, the tests would become increasingly ambitious, leading to piloted flights in the 2009-2010 time frame. Blue Origin’s environmental assessment calls for suborbital passenger service to begin in 2010, with roughly one flight per week.
 Space shuttle Atlantis’ landing has been delayed by at least a day, to give mission managers time to investigate an object seen floating close by that may have fallen off the shuttle. The object was spotted on footage from a payload bay camera, floating between the Shuttle and Earth in very nearly the same orbit, leading experts to speculate that it may be ice or something from the payload bay that has been shaken loose by thruster firings performed as part of pre-landing checkout operations.
There is also talk of an impact registering on one of the shuttle’s wing leading edges, but that may have simply been the sensors registering the same landing checkout thruster firings.
In the meantime, the delay will extend the time that there are three crewed spacecraft operating in LEO - Atlantis, the Soyuz carrying the Expedition 14 crew and fare-paying astronaut Anousheh Ansari, and the International Space Station itself. With the undocking and de-orbiting of an automated Progress supply freighter happening at the same time, it’s been really busy up there in low Earth orbit.
 There’s been a lot of whingeing from the science community that NASA’s plan to return humans to the Moon is stealing money from far more worthy pursuits, such as (insert whatever project the scientists in question are working on here). So it’s a real breath of fresh air to hear a panel of scientists heartily endorse NASA’s return to the moon plans.
Writing at the Planetary Society Blog, Mark Adler (who was mission manager for the Spirit Mars Exploration Rover), gives one of the most lucid and reality based rationales I have ever heard for returning to the Moon before engaging in human expeditions to Mars.
A new team has joined the Rocket Racing League. The new team, RRL’s second, was founded by Navy Lt. James Bridenstine.
The chief pilot for the first Rocket Racing League team, Leading Edge, has an Air Force background, flying F-15s and F-16s.
This looks like it’s heading for an entertaining Navy vs. Air Force showdown. The first competitive flights are expected in late 2007.
Congratulations to Anousheh Ansari, who has just realised her lifelong dream of travel into space. She has worked hard, trained hard, accepted real risk, and conducted herself professionally to get there.
And in the mainstream media, she’s the first ‘female space tourist’.
Anousheh is no more a ’space tourist’ than someone who summits Everest is a ‘mountain tourist’. If you were to tap a mountaineer on the shoulder and address him as such, you would get a frosty reception (and probably an ice axe handle shoved somewhere painful). Many people pay to be guided up mountains and that does not make them any less mountaineers.
So it irks me that someone who puts in the huge expense and months of training for spaceflight should be labelled a tourist, just because they paid to fly.
Anousheh Ansari is an astronaut. She may not be a professional astronaut like her crew-mates, but she’s an astronaut nonetheless. She should be referred to as such. Anything less is disrespectful.
Having said that, I look forward to the day when there are space tourists for real. When anyone with a couple of thousand dollars and a spare week can put on a Hawaiian shirt, sling a camera round their neck, and buy a ticket to the LEO Hilton with no training or real risk, spaceflight will have come a long way indeed.
Masten Space Systems announced today that it will be participating in a “Teachers In Space” (TIS) program, by offering a free sub-orbital ride to one of the winning educators. The ride on Masten’s vehicle, (still in development) is part of Space Frontier Foundation’s plan to fly around 100 teachers to space over the next few years.
“We want to democratize space,” stated Michael Mealling, Marketing VP of Masten Space Systems. “We want to encourage K-12 students to be in close proximity to the kind of science only NASA has been able to do until now. By flying their teachers we can create a direct connection to these kids in a way national space programs could never do. We can make it something they experience and can relate to in the form of someone they respect and work with everyday.”
Dallas-based Armadillo Aerospace, Oklahoma’s Rocketplane Limited, Inc. and California’s XCOR Aerospace, have already join the growing list of “New Space” companies involved with the TIS project.
Atlantis continues its orbital journey toward the International Space Station, and is scheduled to dock there at 10:46 GMT Monday (05:46 CDT at the control center in Houston). Flight day two inspections have revealed no damage of concern to the orbiter’s heat shield.
According to shuttle program manager Wayne Hale:
“The bottom line is we are looking at nits, nothing of remote consequence.”
(via Clark at HobbySpace RLV and Space Transport News)
Elon Musk has posted a new update at the SpaceX website.
There’s plenty to read, including some information about the company’s recent COTS win, pictures of the Falcon-9 with a Dragon crew capsule - showing, for the first time, a launch escape tower - and some very interesting words on SpaceX’s pricing policy. Well worth a read.
The update also mentions that SpaceX is in discussions with Bigelow Aerospace, about providing crew and cargo services to Bigelow’s planned commercial space complex. This is not at all surprising - if both companies can field their respective vehicles, it will be a match made in heaven. And if Bigelow gets anywhere near his current traffic projections (20 crew and cargo launches in the third year of operation) we might just start to see what a robust flight rate can do to lower launch costs.
None of this is a done deal, of course - there is a lot of water to flow under the bridge before we see a commercial crew fly to a commercial space station on a commercial rocket.
But despite the risk, the possibilities are pretty exciting.
Many of the titles in this section have been reviewed in the Out of the Cradle Spaceport Bookshop forum.
Stop by and learn more about our Moon in science fiction!
 Space shuttle Atlantis roared away from the launch pad today in an apparently flawless launch, having endured many days of technical and weather-related delays, and a three-year mission postponement brought about by the disastrous loss of her sister ship, Columbia.
Eight and a half minutes after liftoff, Atlantis and her crew of six astronauts safely reached orbit, beginning a two-day journey to rendezvous with the International Space Station. The shuttle is carrying a major new station component, the P3/P4 truss and solar array wing. Atlantis’ flight restarts the space station assembly sequence, which has been on hold since the loss on re-entry of Columbia in February 2003.
The new component, which will be installed with a series of three spacewalks over the next 10 days, will almost double the International Space Station’s power generation capability, and pave the way for further assembly flights, the next of which is scheduled for December.
 If you want to be an astronaut, patience could be a useful trait.
Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to lift off on the STS-115 construction mission to the International Space Station at 15:15 GMT (11:45am EDT), but today’s launch is far from the first attempt to get this mission off the ground.
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Kokh, Peter (ed.)
Moon Miner’s Manifesto #198
September 2006
On-Line Text (pdf)
Librarian’s Note: The Moon Society has made selected issues of the Moon Miner’s Manifesto available to the general public. Full access to the archives requires membership.
Foing, Bernard H.
“Smart 1: Europe at the Moon”
The Planetary Report
Sep/Oct 2006
Vol. XXVI, No. 5
Publisher’s Web Site
| Out of the Cradle is proud to introduce its newest feature, the Lunar Library v2.0!
This unique resource provides a wealth of information for those interested in learning more about our neighbor in space. From the issues facing Moonbases, to the science of the soil, to the role of the Moon in our culture and history and more.
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