Rob Wilson / 11:22 am May 14th, 2010

Space Shuttle Atlantis is poised to launch to the International Space Station, and NASA is hosting a Twitter meet-up, or tweet-up, at the launch.

If you’re one of the 150 lucky invitees attending the shuttle launch as guests of NASA, I can tell you from personal experience that you are in for a huge treat. This is only the second time that NASA has opened the gates of Kennedy Space Center to space tweeps for a shuttle launch. By very good fortune, I was there for the first.

The confirmation email arrived while I was at work. I could hardly believe it; in fact I briefly entertained the thought that it was a prank on the part of some of my colleagues. But it was official: I was invited to attend the launch of STS-129. In no time at all I went from “hmmm, it’s a long way to go” (I live in Christchurch, New Zealand) to arranging leave and airline tickets. It was the chance of a lifetime, and as my very understanding partner explained it, “Don’t be an idiot, of course you have to go!”

100 New Friends

On the first day of the Tweet-Up we all met in the parking lot outside the Kennedy Space Center Visitor’s complex. I spotted the first of the other space tweeps while walking from my rental car to the registration table, and we quickly fell into conversation. One of the neatest things about the whole two day event was that whoever you talked to, you made a friend. The space tweeps were some of the most genuinely friendly people I have had occasion to meet. They came from all walks of life – teachers, IT people, an astrophysicist or two, a film-maker, even a couple of NASA employees. But no matter who you talked to, you had an instant common interest. By the end of the first day, when some 30 or 40 of us descended en masse on an unsuspecting Titusville restaurant, I felt like I had made 100 new friends.

One thing I didn’t do that I later regretted was to make up some contact detail cards to give out to the people I met. I had thought about it, but ran out of time before I traveled. Others had not only thought about it, but done it, and it proved to be a great way to swap contact details. Photographing people’s NASA-issued ID badges (with their permission, of course) was another good way of remembering faces, names and twitter handles.

Once we were registered on that first day, we had about half an hour to kill before the official kickoff at the Kurt H Debus Conference Facility. That was just as well, because the first thing you see as you walk toward the visitor complex is a tantalizing view of the rocket garden. After a quick reconnoiter of Titans and Atlases and a Saturn 1B, I discovered that the conference facility itself hosts the Early Space Exploration exhibit, which is well worth taking some time over. Not only does it have Neil Armstrong’s Apollo space-suit, but Gemini and Mercury capsules, and a lot more, including the original Mercury mission control consoles. Standing next to the space capsules, you really get an appreciation of how small and cramped they are. Frank Borman and Jim Lovell spent two weeks in orbit wedged shoulder to shoulder in a Gemini capsule, to prove that people could survive in space for the length of time it would take to get to the Moon and back. How they did it and stayed sane, I will never know. It’s a cliché to talk about the courage and endurance of astronauts, but it’s become a cliché because it’s the truth. I could have spent a lot longer looking through the exhibits (and did a couple of days later after the tweetup), but it was time for the day’s main event.

A piece of ‘frozen smoke’ - Part of the aerogel particle collector from the Stardust mission

We were all ushered into the conference room, which was set up with a number of round tables, so that we all sat in groups, and a small stage at the front for the speakers. Each table had an unusual object on it, some stranger than others, and we were invited to guess what they were. My table’s object was pretty easy – a Space Shuttle thermal protection tile. We all passed it round and felt how light it was. I’m still amazed at the thought that I got to hold a piece of the shuttle in my hand. Another table had one of the hold-down bolts that pins each shuttle solid rocket booster to the pad before lift-off. Probably the coolest one was a piece of aerogel, a small blue-ish cube of quite literally the lightest solid material imaginable. Aerogel is often referred to as ‘frozen smoke’, as it is 99 percent empty space. What made this particular sample so cool is that it was part of the particle collector from the Stardust space mission – it had traveled several million miles away from the Earth, collected samples of interstellar dust, and returned in its unmanned probe, and NASA was letting us hold a piece of it!

The ‘twitter-fall’ of of real-time tweets from #NASATweetUp

Next up was a series of talks from NASA officials, including astronaut Mike Massimino, and Wayne Hale, a former shuttle flight director, then shuttle program manager, now deputy associate administrator for strategic partnerships. When these guys spoke, everyone listened, and the stories they told were fascinating. Of course, this was a room full of twitter users, so the way everyone listened was heads down, keyboards out, and typing furiously. A twitter-fall of all the tweets in real time was projected onto large screens at the front of the room. Occasionally, the real-time feedback to the speakers was hilarious. “Oh- ok, so I know you’re all listening, even though no-one’s looking at me, because I just saw what I was saying on the wall!” With 100 people tweeting solidly all morning, the #NASATweetUp certainly got noticed in the Twitterverse - at one point we rose to number three on the trending topics.

The lunchtime break was a great time to explore the KSC visitor complex, and many of us tried out the Shuttle Launch Experience ride. Some of us more than once And I suspect that the hundred of us put a noticeable blip into the gift shop’s sales figures for that day.

Tour to the Launch Pad

In the afternoon we boarded buses for a tour of the space center. Where I was really hit home for me as the bus turned a corner and the iconic towering bulk of the Vertical Assembly Building came into view in the distance. The bus continued on, and the VAB grew larger - and larger - and larger. That building is huge! I’d seen it so many times in pictures and on NASA TV, and now I was actually there. I could just imagine a giant Saturn V rocket emerging slowly from one of those massively tall hangar doors. Now, it houses the shuttles as they are stacked in preparation for flight.

Nestled at the base of the VAB is the launch control center, containing the firing rooms from which the complex process of launching a shuttle is directed. The bus continued on past that, to the dock where barges bring the big orange External Tanks from their assembly facility in Michoud. From there we went past the crawler park, where the tracked crawler transporters live when they are not taking a shuttle stack out to the launch pad (or in days gone by, a Saturn V moon rocket). Just past the crawlers, we saw several as-yet-unstacked sections of the launch gantry being assesmbled for the new Ares rocket, then we were on a road running parallel to the crawlerway, out toward the launch pads. We were on our way to meet shuttle Atlantis. About half-way to the pad, we passed a gantry-like building on our right, and our tour guide explained that that was the viewing platform from which members of the public were allowed to see the shuttle at the launch pad. But our bus kept on going right past it.

Shuttle Atlantis on the launch pad, mostly obscured by the rotating service structure

We got out of our buses, into a roped-off grassy viewing area, just across the road from the space shuttle on its launch pad. I stood and gaped for a while. Even mostly hidden within its rotating service structure, the shuttle stack was a thing of awe. Today it sat silent, waiting, being prepared and checked out for flight. Tomorrow its engines would roar for eight short minutes, and then it would be in space, traveling round the world at eighteen thousand miles per hour.

Launch Day

For launch day, we were all to assemble at KARS park, from which we would be bused to KSC proper and the press site where our tweet-up marquee was. We all thought the traffic would be terrible, and no one wanted to miss the buses. Consequently, we were all there far too early – some of us well over an hour – and a bit of an impromptu tailgate party ensued while we waited. Eventually the buses came, and we were taken to the press area just behind the VAB, with the grassy area in front of the countdown clock that you often see on NASA TV, and a view of the shuttle on the pad in the distance out beyond that.

Twitter Central with the Vertical Assembly Building in the background

We were once again well catered for, in a marquee with full wireless connectivity and streaming NASA TV on two large flatscreen displays at the front of the room. Outside, we got to mingle with all the press representatives who had come to cover the launch. Once again there were a series of talks, this time from the guys who prepare the shuttle for launch. You could tell these folks loved their jobs (and who wouldn’t). We learned all about the shuttle systems, right down to how the hatch is sealed when closing the astronauts in for the flight.

At the beginning of the day, conditions were looking iffy for launch - there was a layer of cloud, the likes of which had caused launch postponements in the past. We all told each other that it would burn off before the mid-afternoon launch time. We all hoped that we were right. Luckily, we were.

The launch of a space shuttle is a true spectacle. We were as close as you can get to the launch, without being in one of the rescue armored personnel carriers parked a little further up the crawlerway. That’s still four miles from the pad. They keep you that far away for a good reason: the energies released are gargantuan. First there is bright light, and the distant shuttle rises noiselessly and slowly into the air. It picks up speed, trailing a magnesium-bright flare of white-hot rocket exhaust atop a pillar of white smoke. Then the sound finally hits you, a rumbling, crackling roar that seems to intensify as the shuttle climbs higher and arcs over away from you, till it seems that its mighty engines are pointed right at you. Then the sound fades, you can just make out the solid rocket boosters separating, and the rapidly receding shuttle is just a bright point, well on its way to space. Then everyone is quiet, and contemplative, and you take a moment to reflect on the fact that what you just saw was a machine made by people, harnessing tamed energies equivalent to a small nuclear bomb, with courageous astronauts riding inside it, and while you’ve been thinking about that, they are already floating weightless in space. It’s a profound and amazing experience, and there aren’t really words to do it justice.

Unless you’re seriously into cameras, don’t spend the launch hiding behind a viewfinder. Put all your gadgets down at t-10 or so, and just watch, and listen, and drink in the experience. If, as the shuttle arcs skyward, you find yourself swallowing a lump in your throat, or blinking away a tear, don’t worry about it, you’ll be in good company.

Freedom star and the return of the solid rocket boosters

I’m not normally a pessimist, but I’ve followed the Shuttle long enough to know that there is no guarantee of an on-time launch. Because I was coming from so far away, I was determined that I would see the thing launch even if it were delayed, and so I planned my trip to stay in Cocoa for several days after the nominal launch date.
Perhaps because I was so well prepared for delays, it was a flawless countdown and on-time launch. Not only did it give me a chance to visit the Orlando theme parks, but it had one unexpected side benefit: On the Thursday morning after the Monday launch, the booster recovery ships returned to port, towing the two white solid rocket boosters that had lofted Atlantis for the first two minutes of her journey to orbit. To get back to the processing facility, they have to come through the lock at Port Canaveral, which is a perfect time to catch them for a photo:

The Freedom Star and a Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster

It meant an early start on a cold morning, but sure enough, the booster recovery ship Freedom Star came gliding past, with Atlantis’ right hand solid rocket booster in tow.

[Update 5/15 - Somehow, I managed to get my wires crossed. STS-129 was Atlantis, not Discovery. Corrected]

Ken Murphy / 12:51 am April 6th, 2010

Howdy everyone! Thing’s are certainly perking up for Spring, even with regards to our Moon, so I decided to throw together another Carnival of the Moon.

Recently, The Moon Society sent out a request to its members eliciting support for a book donation project to create a Lunar Resource Library in India. Moon interest is rather strong in India, and they’re the #6 visitor to Out of the Cradle, ahead of France but behind Australia and Germany. They have active chapters of The Moon Society and SEDS, and even have a Moon Miner’s Manifesto India Quarterly edition.

But they realize that the internet isn’t everything, and they’re looking to put together a physical library of reference books that can be used to develop Moon knowledge in India. Like a more focused version of the library at the Lunar & Planetary Institute down in Houston. My own personal collection overlaps that collection to some extent, but LPI has titles that I don’t have, though I do have a lot of stuff that they don’t have. The online Lunar Library (LL) catalogues almost the entirety of that collection (well over 2,000 items), and I have delusions of putting it to good use at a local university for a Lunar studies program before eventually bequeathing it to International Space University (ISU) for their eventual Lunar campus.

So India needs Moon books! It’s still kind of a nebulous project, because the organization, composed entirely of volunteers, needs to figure out things like aggregating the collection, clearing customs, and shipping it there. I’ve got a few dups in the LL that I’m going to forward. If you have an interest in this project, head on over to The Moon Society website and drop them a line.

Back here in the States, if you’re a student who wants to present research at a conference, but are coming up short of funds, LPI reminds us that the deadline for this year’s Gerald A. Soffen Memorial Fund 2010 Travel Grants (2x$500!) is coming up on April 15th. If you’re looking for other opportunities coming up, there are still a few left in the Scholarships for Space Studies article I posted back in November, including the Moon Art contest which also has an April 15 deadline for submissions.

If Moon art gives you a hankering for modern Moon stories, there are a variety of choices. Recently, Dr. Philip Harris donated the copyrights to both his original Moon settlement fiction story “Launch Out” as well as his brand new sequel, “Lunar Pioneers” to The Moon Society. “Lunar Pioneers” is currently exclusively to be found only in the Lunar Library. That’s right, folks, the entire text is available for free courtesy of the author, The Moon Society, and the Lunar Library. With the Moon settlement getting established, the young and restless start looking further beyond…

Another free source of modern Moon (and high frontier) fiction is the quarterly on-line magazine “Moonbeams“, which features short stories and is always looking for fresh submissions. Perfect for a portable electronic reading tablet. Still, if you’re an old-fashioned paper guy like I am, and you’re looking for some Moon stories for younger folks then you should stop by the Summer Space Reading Camp.

Over at The Once & Future Moon blog, Dr. Spudis articulates his belief that NASA has lost its way to the Moon under the new plans for how NASA is going to approach space. I don’t necessarily agree with his arguments, as I ask myself what is the destination of the U.S. Geological Survey? What is The Goal of the the Department of Energy? I don’t buy into the insistence that NASA needs to have a particular Goal or destination right at this moment.

I look at things like larger macroeconomic factors and how they interplay to look at what’s going to happen at NASA for it to keep or increase its relevance to generating value for the U.S. economy. The Old Guard is moving on, and reality is having to adapt to the fact that younger generations don’t necessarily do things the same way just because that’s the way it was done. I see the Apollo-architecture redux (throw everything away along the way) that was Ares I/V as an example of how this applies.

I saw it from a different perspective than most of the space-interested, though it was information that was available to those undertaking space outreach activities. NSS of North Texas periodically receives boxes of handout pamphlets relating to various NASA activities. These cover a variety of topics from ISS to Return to the Moon. We had numerous handouts for the Ares rockets, but people never took them, though the other topics rapidly disappeared. This left us lugging around large amounts of Ares handouts from event to event that folks in general just weren’t interested in.

This jibes with NASA’s own research from a couple of years ago, where they hired a communications consultant to help them figure out why NASA didn’t have more support in the general populace. One tidbit hidden in the results was that only about 14% of folks saw NASA as a rocket launching organization. This in spite of the fact that right now NASA is best known for the Space Shuttle.

So it’s time for NASA to stop trying to provide the National Space Transportation System (their own words), and instead help the U.S.’s industrial sector provide the solutions. That is a key way to grow the U.S. economy. This also taps into the demographic fact that those of Generation X have gone entrepreneurial at a rate twice that of the preceding generation, but current economic factors are driving an even stronger entrepreneurial urge in the succeeding generation. So we’re seeing a confluence of meta-factors that actually favors the new direction that NASA is going to have to undertake to make sure that the U.S. space industry grows ever stronger in contributing to GDP.

I don’t think you necessarily need a destination to work on aerospike engines for rockets. I do think you need work on custom alloys and foamed metal-ceramics that can likely only be produced in microgravity. I don’t think you need The Goal to work on things like orbital fuel depots scattered around cislunar space, or a Universal Docking Node that will allow for greater modular customization of orbital facilities, or a universal interface for the Atlas/Delta/Falcon/Ariane/Other 20mt class launchers. Let the market sort out what are the best crew vehicles to ride on top. Because I want mine with rich Corinthian leather seats.

Once you have infrastructure elements like orbital LEO facilities (at 51, 40, 28, and 0 inclinations, for example) and fuel depots on orbit, we can start thinking about vehicles that only travel in space and don’t necessarily need to lug around a heat shield for Earth return. Ditch the heat shield and beef up the radiation shielding. Modularity allows for things like a Bigelow module or two and a Progress module to set up shop at EML-1, or do free returns around the Moon for brief near-Moon visits. Once you have a facility at EML-1 and a ferry back and forth to LEO, then you have access to the entire Moon, and you can have a vehicle designed just for near-Moon operations. Once you’re on the Moon the first thing is to start getting oxygen, both to breathe, and to ship up to cislunar space so that shipments from Earth can be more valuable stuff instead.

Where NASA goes next is going to have a huge affect on where the U.S. space industry ends up. If it picks a goal, then we will end up with an optimized engineering architecture that ignores unnecessary (to that goal) technologies that may otherwise prove invaluable in developing cislunar space. We’ll end up with deadlines that get passed, and increased expenses from indulgent cost-plus contractors because NASA guys keep changing the specs.

Or, we can go with a more entrepreneurial approach where a variety of technologies are moved up the TRL ladder to help optimize how the U.S. approaches space development by letting the market determine the best approach.

Why the Old Guard can’t understand the kids today, courtesy of xkcd:

If you don’t think there is a generational shift that NASA is facing, I offer up a couple of slides courtesy of a presentation from the California Space Education & Workforce Institute. The first is an age distribution that is from calendar year end 2004 at the latest, so picture everything shifted to the right. I’m in the bracket (then 35-39, now 40-45) where you have the three lines intersecting, though an above average representation in the talent pool.

This second shows the age distribution of the aerospace workforce in general. I was trying to break into the field in the 2002-2003 timeframe, a time when that sector shed about 1/7th of its jobs (1/5th in the case of my demographic; I’m in the light blue bracket).

Any surprise that I went back into banking?

Like most folks, the closest I’m likely to ever get to space is to buy a piece of someone else’s adventure. Which can have its appeal. Heritage Auction Galleries is going to be holding a ‘Space Exploration Auction‘ on April 21st here in Dallas. Looking through the catalog I can see several items that would be interesting to add to the Lunar Library, I just wish more people would buy Moon books through the Amazon links so that I could have an acquisition budget for historical artifacts.

Why would Lunar Library LLC want to acquire historical artifacts? Why to share, of course. An example is the art show I’m putting together for this year’s Moon Day event at the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Love Field in Dallas. I just got the go ahead to start putting together the pieces of the event, and since this is a non-decadal anniversary year I’m going to have to work extra harder to get to my goal of 1,000 attendees. I’ve finally accumulated enough Moon-related art and posters that I can actually put together the equivalent of a small gallery showing. The Lunar Quadrant Maps take up a fair amount of real estate now that they’re framed, but a perusal of the Cultura Lunaris section of the Lunar Library shows a lot of other goodies (Lunar Adventures, The Ultimate Sandbox, One Small Step, Asteroid Mine, Probe, Lunar Base, Plinius Cemetary, and more). I’m in the process of getting some of them framed over the next several months, and then the museum wants to exhibit them for 6-8 weeks.

The actual Moon Day event is on July 18th. Lots of planning to due for that one, and like last year I’m going to be posting about my planning efforts to help serve as a road map for those masochistic enough to to try to put together a space event with no budget in their own communities.

So what is the Egg Moon? It was one of the nicknames for the Full Moon in April back in Colonial days, an appellation that the Algonquins also used. The April Moon was more commonly known as the Planter’s Moon, reflecting the return of the fertility phase of the annual cycle. That’s why I’m looking forward, confident that the entrepreneurial phase we’re entering into in the human spaceflight sector offers fertile opportunity to accelerate the day when we’re transforming the grayfields of the Moon.

Ken Murphy / 1:36 am February 7th, 2010

The space program announcement on Monday was, in my view, status quo shattering.

It engages a lot of risk, but if you look carefully at what it says (as opposed to what the mass media says it says), you will see that it unlocks an enormous realm of opportunity. In my view, the opportunity far outweighs the risks.

When NASA operates the only crewed vehicle to space, then NASA decides who gets to go. NASA’s choice is a select cadre of individuals, highly trained not only in the systems and environment of space, but also in how to keep it together when the crap hits the fan. Taking this training to the private sector will no doubt prove remunerative for many.

From a company perspective, not being able to send the employee you choose because NASA said no rather works against your business decisions. When a company can pay a launch provider to take their chosen employee to an orbital site to do whatever, then a barrier to entry has been removed, making it easier for a company to make the decision to send an employee to orbit to do research or production in space.

By choosing to end NASA’s monopoly on the provision of crewed transport to orbit, the President (via his advisors, I’m sure) has made the decision to open space commerce to all of the American enterprise.

The challenge is the provision of transport to orbit. I’ve seen a lot of negative comments regarding whether U.S. industry can step up to the plate and deliver on their potential. Given that Boeing and Lockmart are the legacies of the companies that have built our spacecraft, it seems a bit unreasonable to say that they cannot provide a crewed vehicle for their existing launch vehicles. They may choose not to take that route, but I have a strong feeling that they can in fact do so.

There are folks who say that we shouldn’t rely on the private sector, yet that is what everyone does every day. As I look around my apartment I the only thing that I can think of that is actually government-provided is my clean water. Sure the government has touched pretty much everything in my apartment in some way, shape or form, but for my DVD player I rely on Dynex. For my laptop I use Fujitsu. The bowl with all my pens in it is from Clark of the Navajo. My desk was made by Leopold Co. of Burlington, Ohio. My ride to work is a Volkswagen.

Let’s talk about rides to work for a minute. The shuttle and Soyouz are, right now, the rides to work for those on orbit. The Soyouz has a long track record of getting its passengers home alive. Not spotless, but definitely solid. The Shuttle has had two major stand-downs in the last quarter century, for a hair’s breadth over 20% of that time. In essence, one year in five was non-performing. Imagine if your car could only get you to work four days out of the standard five day work week.

So when people say that only government can provide transportation to orbit, they’re saying that the U.S. is limited to the transportation that NASA provides, when NASA can provide it, and who they say can go. I don’t know about other folks, but I tend to chafe under that kind of diktat.

“Oh, but there’s no business up in space!” cry the nattering nabobs of negativity. As if they have any clue of what business is about. Their lack of imagination should not be my burden.

So what kinds of things are there to do on orbit? My first suggestion would be to scrounge up a copy of the book “Space Industrialization Opportunities“, edited by Jernigan & Pentecost, and then actually read through it. Sure it’s long at 601 pages, and there’re sections that can be skipped over, but reading through it is absolutely eye-opening as far as seeing what kind of research still awaits us.

So there are going to be two initial approaches - a continuation of the existing Mid-Deck Locker (MDL) model, and infrastructure pieces that allow for more crewed work, the orbital equivalent of the lab bench. It’s unknown (or at least, I don’t know) whether the Bigelow facilities will conform to the ISPR standard (which the MDLs fit in), but my guess is that would be the decision of the lessor or the lessee and the terms of the contract.

Microgravity science research is not a make-believe industry. People paid Richard Garriott to take their experiments to orbit. The former SpaceHab (now AstroTech) is doing breakthrough research on orbit. Before Challenger, NASA had a long list of private companies queueing up to send their payloads to orbit. After Challenger, and then catching up with the military payloads, and then the NASA science payloads, and then the runs to Mir, and the private companies could never get back on board. You can’t blame them, they don’t have the capital to keep people on payroll on standby waiting for NASA to take their payload up maybe at some point. Business can’t operate like that, but that is where we have been for the last couple of decades.

And who’s going to provide human crewed transport to orbit in competition with NASA and Energia? That made no business sense, but everyone talked as if that was the way it had to be.

Now we have a different path to not only the ISS, but additional (thank you Mr. Bigelow) destinations on orbit. And Man, in the generic species-wide sense, does not live on science alone. What other things could we be doing in enclosed microgravity environments? I imagine part of the reason that Mr. Cameron wrote such a glowing editorial in support of the changes proposed is that he has his eye on a large hollow three-dimensional space with cameras everywhere, as could be provided by a Bigelow balloon. He could pay a company to take his team and equipment to orbit, and he would be able to film in a way that no one ever has before, although the IMAX films come close. I can also see Hong Kong filmmakers doing away with the wires and filming radical new combat scenes. I don’t know about the Apollo folks, but my generation grewup on Ender’s Game, and I was a huge fan of the Battle Room. Laser Tag in 3-D? You know that’s going to be a popular workout.

Habitation is a de rigeur requirement of humans in orbit, so there exists any number of opportunities in that domain. From the design of sleeping quarters to the provision of supplies, there are a number of niches for companies to exploit. Final Frontier Beef Jerky seems to have already cornered the market on dried beefstuffs on orbit, but there are lots of other things that go well with the microgravity environment.

What to do in space? Sightseeing is already a favored pastime on the ISS, so I have no doubt it will be popular in that regard amongst a broader audience. Certain adult recreational activities are oft cited, and if you want to do some research in that regard I would point you to the 3-DVD set “The Uranus Experiment” [Link absolutely totally not safe for work or children]. This is an adult film that is absolutely not for amateurs, but does contain the first cinematic instance in microgravity of what is colloquially referred to as the Money Shot. And no, things don’t behave the way they do here on Earth.

There’s actually an interesting story behind the movie. A German adult film company decided to make a science-fiction film sometime in the mid to late 1990s. They toured NASA, but when NASA found out what they wanted to film on the Vomit Comet, they declined to license their services. So the company went to the Russians, who said “You pay us how much? Okay! And you clean up afterwards!” Having flown on Zero-G, I have a great deal of respect for the professionalism of the actors and actresses who performed under unique and difficult circumstances. I’ve already got an idea for “Murphy Straps” to help facilitate the process, perhaps do a licensing agreement with Victoria’s Secret. So is there a market for that sort of stuff? Duh! Because in addition to The Uranus Experiment there is also Rocket Girls, Emmanuelle in Space, Space-Thing and others. Oh, can’t forget Wham! Bam! Thank you Spaceman!

One obvious piece of orbital hardware, part of the “infrastructure” that people talk about, is a Universal Docking Node (UDN). This would allow unlimited modularity of vehicles and modules. Setting universal interface standards is a key way to accelerate cislunar development. Provision of a UDN would more easily allow a private venture to cobble together a couple trans-LEO vehicles, some Bigelow balloons for habitation and storage, and sufficient fuel for a trip to take-your-choice destination. GEO, EML-1, LLO, a visit to an asteroid, maybe park out at L5 for a while to get some preliminary environmental readings. That’s the power of opening space to private interests. It allows for a much greater variety of projects, and more destinations can be explored.

That of course, is not enough to sustain a LEO economy, so let’s consider other ways to add value. One obvious way is post-launch inspection and repair of satellites. The roughest part of the trip for a satellite is the launch through the atmosphere of Earth. Stuff ends up not working right after launch, and being able to inspect and repair satellites may be a key part of the service sector in LEO. There’s also going to need to be an aggregation of materials in LEO for pushes further out. Things like research and development on propellant depots will help to accelerate this process. As will the availability of storage so that longer-term assets can be parked in orbit for a while.

So where would one have facilities in LEO? Given how tough it is to change inclination that deep in the gravity well, facilities are likely to spring up at inclinations of particular utility. Equatorial would provide a fair amount of GEO CommSat traffic that might be interested in a post-launch overhaul. Jon Goff over at the Selenian Boondocks (one of my old haunts) suggested something in the low-40s that would be readily accessible to most inland spaceports, making it of particular interest to the tourist trade. ISS has the benefit of passing over 85% of the land mass of Earth over the course of its orbits, making it an excellent platform for Earth observation. So different markets are going to be available.

Looking further out, the Earth-Moon L-1 point (EML-1) is the next logical destination, as it is indifferent to the LEO inclination. This is not necessarily intuitive, but the best way to think about it is like this - imagine the Earth and Moon in three dimensions, about 240,000 miles (384,000 km) apart. Now draw a line from the center-of-mass of the Earth to center-of-mass of the Moon. Hold that line fixed in 3-D space.

Now drop the Earth and Moon into gravity wells. The Earth’s gravity well is quite deep, the Moon’s a dimple in comparison. Perched about 86% of the way to the Moon along that fixed line is where those gravity wells peak, at EML-1. This is the lowest delta-V launch point in cislunar space to more places than anywhere else.

Now draw a Hohmann ellipse from LEO out to EML-1. This is traditionally done in the plane of orbit of the Moon, but we’re dealing with space, you have to think in three dimensions. Rotate that ellipse around the fixed line, and you have your map of orbits to EML-1, and they basically all cost the same delta-V, which helps to standardize fuel delivery requirements. Polar orbits are the exception, as the Earth is a bit pudgy around the middle and that messes things up a bit.

EML-1 serves as a crossroads in cislunar space, making it a key logistics point. It will also serve as a stockpiling point, enabling missions to the Moon, the asteroids, and even Mars. I would love to be the bartender on that facility.

Cargo and Machinery is going to be heading out to the Moon, eventually you want LOX to head back all the way down to LEO. Hydrogen we really need to be getting from asteroids, but the Moon’s polar deposits can help serve as a stopgap measure to supplement shipments from Earth.

Dropping back down to GEO, one long-term business plan is to provide near-constant Solar power as baseline electricity. It has been noted that we have been beaming Solar power to Earth for decades now, via our communications satellites, so to say that solar power satellites are a flight of fancy is patently false. What is a flight of fancy is to presume that terawatt-scale facilities are going to be launched from the surface of the Earth. That’s just not going to happen. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do space-based Solar power, we just have to consider alternate paths to that end.

One of the most valuable exports from the Moon is going to be mass. Luckily, it’s a lot easier to get stuff into cislunar space from the Moon than the Earth. LOX is the most frequently cited export, and it is one of the easier business cases to close, thanks to its manifold utility and abundant availability on the Moon, just locked up in minerals. LOX/LH is pretty much our best possible chemical propellant combo (unless you want to deal with some really, really nasty stuff), but oxygen represents about 7/8ths of the combined mass. Lifting that from the Earth’s gravity well is hard, and we could be sending more useful mass up instead. That’s why, over the long term, there is even a market for Lunar LOX in LEO.

A byproduct of Lunar oxygen production is slag. This could be exported to serve as radiation shielding for long-term facilities out beyond the Earth’s magnetosphere.

Another possible Lunar export could be the high-mass/low-value added components of a GEO Solar Power Satellite system, such as structural members and cheap and plentiful, if not terribly good, solar cell arrays.

The point is that the only thing you need to be lifting out of the Earth’s gravity well is the kind of high-value-added stuff like electronic components or high-precision parts. Earth is like the Switzerland of cislunar space; its contributions to commerce have to be small-mass/high-value-added items, at least until we can get a space elevator in place.

As capabilities grow on the Moon, more value-added can be brought to bear on the raw resources found there. Commerce will start stepping up the value-added chain. Foodstuffs is a good example. It’ll be easier to get foodstuffs from the Moon to LEO, even with a detour to EML-1, than to get it up from the Earth. Not by much, but it’s still a transport advantage. Given the unique terroir of the Moon, it’s not difficult to imagine a trade springing up in specialty food items, akin to the spice trade of yore.

If you’re interested in Lunar commerce, there are a few books I can recommend. First and foremost is Neil Ruzic’s “The Case for Going to the Moon“, written in 1965. Mr. Ruzic was editor and publisher of Industrial Research magazine, so he had a pretty good handle on what industry was all about. Decades have passed and the book is still relevant, as Mr. Ruzic understood the roles of things like vacuum and extreme temperatures in industrial processes. If you ever only read one book about Moon business, make it this one.

Another title I would highly recommend would be “The Once and Future Moon” by Dr. Paul Spudis. Dr. Spudis is one of the leading Lunar scientists in the world, and I’ve long considered him something of a Moon mentor. His book lays out a lot of geological background on the Moon, but also talks about how commerce and industry can take advantage of that. He blogs at “The Once and Future Moon” blog, and has, to my surprise, expressed a certain amount of disdain regarding the new policy. I can understand his point. The strategic objective of “Provide the tools and the processes to open up cislunar and translunar space to American enterprise” allows for a lot of interpretation. That’s not the NASA way. They want something like “Go to the South Pole of the Moon, explore, go to Asteroid B612, characterize, go to Phobos, set up base camp.” This makes it easier to design an optimized system, close out all the variables in the parametric models, and run some Monte Carlo simulations to nail down the budget.

However, as nice as those would be to have, that’s not the point of opening space to private industry. We don’t need a transport system optimized for going to the South Pole of the Moon. We need a transport system that allows for multiple destinations, because there’s no surer way to set off a rancorous frenzy in the space community than to assign a particular goal such as the Moon or Mars. I’m a known Moonatic. I have zero interest in Mars, and I don’t see it as THE Goal of our space efforts. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want to help the folks who want to go to Mars to get there (for a fair price). But I’m not going there, so if Mars is set as NASA’s (and by extension the U.S.’s) goal, bypassing the Moon, then I’m being excluded and will react accordingly. This is no different from the resentment felt by Mars Advocates when they see the Moon, what they consider a cul-de-sac, given a priority over their goals. And then there’s the long simmering angst of the asteroid folks, who know that their destinations are the best (and they’re right), but everyone ignores them. There’re also the L-5 colonists, who think the gravity-well-bound-thinkers are ignorant and can’t understand the human cultural potential that could be unleashed by micro-cultures in the different L-5 colonies. (Sort of what the U.S. is supposed to be about with the different cultures in the different states) We also can’t forget those who thought we would be exploring the Jupiter Moons by now.

So while I think I understand Dr. Spudis’ perspective, I have to disagree with his conclusions. I have no doubt that if we set the folks at NASA on, say, optimizing the design of inflatable fuel depots that use straps to transfer propellant, what I call Murphy Bags, then they would blow our minds with their results. By using straps controlled by electric motors, you’re doing away with the need for pumps. And by having multiple electric motors used to tighten the straps, the failure of a couple of them doesn’t negate functionality of the propellant bag (whereas if your pump breaks you’re hosed). How do you best place the restraining guides for the straps so that they don’t tangle? What are the actions/reactions at work during that kind of transfer process? That’s the sort of stuff that the NASA folks eat for breakfast. They have much, much to contribute to where we’re going.

Another obvious book choice, and of much more recent vintage is “The Moon: Resources, Future Development, and Settlement“. Lots of good stuff in there on Lunar industries. A little more hardcore is “The Lunar Base Handbook“, and beyond that is the first ISU Summer Session Project, the “International Lunar Initiative Organization“, which contains the best discourse I’ve found on Lunar Medicine. There’re over 2000 pages of densely packed info in those three. Other good titles include “Moonrush” and “Return to the Moon“.

Given how extensively these questions have been examined over the past few decades, it amazes me that there is so much ignorance being displayed in the comments and responses around the blogosphere. It’s almost as if there is a national schizophrenia at work regarding space activities. No one ever really supports space activities that much. Public polls show that time and again. Were that not the case then NASA would have no problem getting funding from Congress each year, and certainly at a higher level than 0.5 - 0.7% of the regular budget. Yet those who follow the process can tell you it is a fight year after year. But have the media trumpet that “The Moon program is dead!” and people start coming out of the woodwork.

There are also the logical disconnects. Some people point to the cancellation of the Orion capsule as the end of trans-LEO human spaceflight. Never mind that Space Adventures has already sold one Lunar free-return trajectory visit to the Moon (they need two for the flight). It is claimed that Orion could be ready by 2014, and yet the vehicle on which it would ride won’t be ready for another 4-5 years. The original Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) (pdf) called for the Orion to have its first test flight in 2010 and operational by 2014. Here we are in 2010 about 4 years from test flight.

I can remember back to the heady days of 2004, when various space companies were proposing solutions for the CEV during the Concept Exploration & Refinement (CE&R) stage of the process. This was in line with what the VSE had proposed, and which had also stated, and I quote:

“NASA does not plan to develop new launch vehicle capabilities except where critical NASA needs - such as heavy lift - are not met by commercial or military systems.” [p. 15]

Which brings us to another topic - that of heavy lift. There is a widespread and ingrained belief in the space community that a heavy-lift launch vehicle (HLLV) is required to do anything in space. My guess is that it stems from the “economics for engineers” analysis which demonstrates that the best way to scale down the cost of a kilo to orbit is to scale up the volume launched on any one vehicle, thereby distributing the fixed and variable costs amongst a greater number of kilos. Which is a fine analysis as far as it goes, but bears little relationship to the actual existing market of space launch vehicles.

There is a vehicle that can take heavy payloads to orbit, the Energia rocket. The Russians looked at the global market and saw that there was no demand for that volume of mass to orbit in one shot, and so don’t manufacture the rocket for the marketplace. And apparently the NASA version, Ares V, won’t be ready until the late 2020s. If all of your budget is being sucked into the design and manufacture of the rocket, then what can you afford to put on top? This particular path of logic seems to assume that there will be NASA budget increases in the future to pay for the equipment to ride on top. I question that assumption.

What became the Ares rockets were proposed back in 2004 at about the same time that the CE&R studies were being reviewed. I know this because I have an ATK marketing DVD for the shuttle-derived rockets and the files on it are dated August 2004. But it wasn’t part of the CE&R process, even if it was marketed as Safe, Simple & Soon. My guess is that it was because the SS&S rockets were a solution to a requirement that NASA didn’t have, that of “develop[ing] new launch vehicle capabilities”.

So what did we get? A new rocket development program and not a trans-LEO CEV. NASA was supposed to be out of the launch business and back into the exploration business, but here we are five years later and it’ll be nigh on a decade before NASA can get us into LEO, and another decade still until the Ares V allows us to go trans-LEO. And private industry is supposed to wait on that before we’re ready to develop space? I think some folks are really, seriously underestimating the capabilities that exist in the U.S. Do I think the private sector can get us back to the Moon in less than two decades? Heck yes!

By refocusing NASA’s capabilities on accelerating the development of the tools necessary for cislunar, Lunar, and translunar space, we can ensure that it happens a lot faster.

I’m excited by this new direction. Especially because as an investor I can put some capital into the industry and, if I do it carefully, profit from where we are now going. That excites me a whole lot more than watching a cadre of select government employees planting a flag on [pick your celestial destination]. I want human spaceflight to be a growth industry for our economy, not a government program delimited one.

The U.S. is desperately in need of industries and trades that will lead to economic growth. We have no choice, as we are leveraging our existing future to an unsustainable level. Space is a domain in which the United States has a competitive advantage. We need to exploit that advantage, to the ends of providing energy and resources so that we can start remediating the damage we do to our own planet to get those things.

This new direction opens the door to more than just NASA to achieve those ends. Therefore I applaud the President’s choices, and look forward to American enterprise taking us into space.

Rob Wilson / 4:11 am November 15th, 2009

Hey there folks, Rob the many-Moons-ago OotC founder here. (Sorry, Ken, Lunar Library pun very definitely intended ::vbg::)

I still check in on the place regularly, and I have to say I’ve been really impressed with what Ken’s been doing. Someone at NASA must have been as well: Recently, we got invited to attend the STS-129 Shuttle launch Tweet Up and Blogger meeting. Ken couldn’t make it because of LEAG, so with his permission I took the opportunity to travel over from my home base, New Zealand, and represent OotC at the launch.

Which I have to say is a pretty darn cool thing to get to do!

You can follow our coverage of the launch on Twitter via @RobOotC, and also here at the website. Hopefully you’ll get an interesting perspective from a first-time Shuttle launch watcher, and visitor to KSC.

Tomorrow the hundred NASATweetUp guests will be meeting at Kennedy Space Center for the first day of the tweetup event, and a guided tour of KSC. Then on Monday we get to live-tweet the launch (if that’s the right term) from the KSC press area beside the big countdown clock you often see on NASA TV.

Tune in for more over the next few days!

Ken Murphy / 4:35 am November 3rd, 2009

Ah, your Lunar Librarian can well recall his student years, hitting the books and starving more often than not in the pursuit of knowledge. Ramen noodles, rice & beans, ravioli. I seemed to have a very R-rich diet.

So that you won’t have to suffer as I did in my space studies, I’ve gathered together a number of different scholarship and competition opportunities for all different fields.

There’s a lot of money out there for space studies, and one thing you should realize from the following list is that you need to be creative in seeking out funding and learning opportunities. The real question is how much scholarship fundage can be brought into the space field through creative application. That’s for y’all to find out.

And treat yourself to a nice dinner at least once per semester.

Nininger Meteorite Award

The 2009 application deadline is November 13, 2009.
http://meteorites.asu.edu/nininger

Recognizes outstanding student achievement in the meteoritical sciences as embodied by an original research paper. Papers must cover original research conducted by the student and must have been written, submitted or published between November 15, 2008 and November 13, 2009. Applicants must be the first, but not sole, author of the paper and must be studying at an educational institution in the United States. The Nininger Award recipient receives $1000 and an engraved plaque commemorating the honor.

Amelia Earhart Fellowship Program

All applications for 2010 Amelia Earhart Fellowships, recommendations, transcripts, and letter of current standing must be received or post-marked by 15 November 2009.
http://www.zonta.org/site/PageServer?pagename=zi_issues_programs_amelia_earhart_application

Women of any nationality pursuing a PhD/doctoral degree who demonstrate a superior academic record in the field of aerospace-related sciences and aerospace-related engineering are eligible. Please note that post-doctoral research programs are not eligible for this Fellowship.
The Fellowship of US $10,000 may be used at any university or college offering accredited graduate courses and degrees.

Conrad Foundation
Spirit of Innovation Awards

Team Nutrition Bar Submissions Due: November 20, 2009
http://www.conradawards.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=152&Itemid=183

Space Nutrition
Design and formulate a nutrition bar for use in space flight.

Finalists – top teams invited to participate in the final competition (selected January 8, 2010)

* $1000 travel stipend for Mattson Inc. manufacturing program.
* $1000 Matching Grant for Innovation Summit program.

Pete Conrad Scholars – winning teams chosen from finalists (selected April 12, 2010)

* 10,000 of the team’s Nutrition Bars
* Recognition medallions
* Promotional media opportunities
* Consideration for selection into the Conrad Portal to support the commercialization of their product.
* Sigma Xi Associate membership.

8C Business Plan Competition 2010

http://www.8cproject.com/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=20

Coming November 2009 - The 8th Continent Project will be accepting entries from around the globe for its 2010 Business Plan Competition for university students.

$50,000 in prizes will be awarded including cash and in-kind services, and an unforgettable ride on the Zero Gravity Corporation aircraft. Final Rounds will be held April 9-10, 2010, on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines in Golden.

The 8C Business Plan Competition (formerly Lunar Ventures) challenges students in business, engineering and science to collaborate in creating business plans that employ space-derived technology in products and services with immediate commercial application here on Earth.

2010 CanSat Competition

Application forms due November 30, 2009.
http://www.cansatcompetition.com/Main.html

The mission is to launch an autonomous cansat carrying one large hen’s egg intact for the
entire duration from launch to landing. The descent control system must not use a parachute,
para-foil, or any similar device. During the flight and descent, data shall be transmitted once
every five seconds to a relay balloon station. The cansat must land without damaging the egg.

Launch Location for 2010 is Amarillo, Texas June 11 - 13

Society of Women Engineers

http://societyofwomenengineers.swe.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=222&Itemid=111

Scholarship information for the 2010-2011 school year will be available starting in December for undergradate/graduate students, and February for incoming freshman.

The SWE Scholarship Program provides financial assistance to women admitted to accredited baccalaureate or graduate programs, in preparation for careers in engineering, engineering technology and computer science.

Geological Society of America

Deadline of December 10, 2009
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2010/documents/lpsc2010.studentapp.pdf

Each year the Planetary Geology Division of the Geological Society of America (GSA) gives the Stephen E. Dwornik Planetary Student Paper Awards for the best student research presentations, one for an oral presentation and one for a poster presentation. The purpose of these awards is to provide encouragement, motivation, and recognition to outstanding future planetary scientists who are U.S. citizens. Winners will be introduced and awarded a plaque and a cash prize of $500.00 at the following years’ LPSC.

To apply for the award, students MUST complete the student award application form and MUST send the original application, with an original signature by their advisor, to LPI on or before the deadline of December 10, 2009.

SPACE CAMP/AVIATION CHALLENGE
Scholarship Program

The 2010 scholarship applications are due December 11, 2009.
http://www.spacecamp.com/details.php?cat=Scholarships&program=Scholarships

The scholarship program is managed by the U.S. Space & Rocket Center Foundation. Full Scholarships cover tuition, room & board for any weeklong, age-appropriate camp and are good for one year. Transportation and incidentals are the responsibility of the scholarship recipient.

Applicants may apply in one of four categories - Financial Need/Disadvantaged, Special Needs, Academic Achievement, or General. Each applicant must answer an essay question, design a mission patch, describe a science project using the scientific method, and provide three letters of recommendation.

Moon Tasks

Notice of Intent is requested as soon as possible, or no later than December 15, 2009
http://moontasks.larc.nasa.gov/

The NASA Exploration Systems Mission Directorate and the Exploration Technology Development Program encourage college students to design tools and instruments needed for future human and robotic exploration of the moon. Student projects will tackle real problems required for successful lunar missions.
All awards are subject to available funds. We expect to award prizes in the form of travel stipends to the NASA lunar rover analog testing in the fall of 2010.

Conrad Foundation
Spirit of Innovation Awards

Team Product Submissions Due: December 15, 2009
http://www.conradawards.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=87&Itemid=182

Aerospace Exploration Category
The Aerospace Exploration category encompasses a wide variety of topics ranging from vehicles to spacesuits to planetary exploration to satellites, and many other related subjects including space medicine.

Finalists
* $1000 matching grant (pending matching funds raised by the team)
* Recognition certificates
* Promotional media opportunities
* Invitation to the Innovation Summit and final awards competition
Laureates
* $5000 Next Step grant.
* Access to online fundraising tools
* Recognition medallions
* Promotional media opportunities
* Conrad Portal selection consideration.
* AIAA student membership.
* Sigma Xi Associate membership.
$5,000 National Space Biomedical Research Institute Prize for Innovation in Space Exploration Health Care will be awarded to one team for the best aerospace-related human health product.

Each of the winning student-up to 30- will receive a 1 year student membership to AIAA.

IAU/Peter & Patricia Gruber Foundation
Gruber Cosmology Prize

Nominations for the Gruber Cosmology Prize 2010 will close on 15 December 2009
http://www.iau.org/grants_prizes/gruber_foundation/

The Cosmology Prize honors a leading cosmologist, astronomer, astrophysicist or scientific philosopher for theoretical, analytical, conceptual or observational discoveries leading to fundamental advances in our understanding of the Universe.

The Cosmology Prize of the Gruber Foundation is awarded annually to one or more scientists of any nationality working in the fields of astronomy, physics, mathematics, and philosophy of science, for scientific advances in our understanding of the Universe and how we perceive it.

The Cosmology Prize consists of a gold medal and a cash prize of, as of 2008, US$ 500,000.

NASA Great Moonbuggy Race

INTERNATIONAL REGISTRATION ENDS JANUARY 1, 2010
US REGISTRATION ENDS FEBRUARY 1, 2010
http://moonbuggy.msfc.nasa.gov/compete.html

Students are required to design a vehicle that addresses a series of engineering problems that are similar to problems faced by the original Moonbuggy team.

Each Moonbuggy will be human powered and carry two students, one female and one male, over a half-mile simulated lunar terrain course including “craters”, rocks, “lava” ridges, inclines and “lunar” soil.

National Society of Black Physicists

Applications are due by January 8, 2010
http://www.nsbp.org/scholarships/

The organization seeks to develop and support efforts to increase opportunities for African Americans in physics and to increase their numbers and visibility of their scientific work. It also seeks to develop activities and programs that highlight and enhance the benefits of the scientific contributions that African American physicists provide for the international community. The society seeks to raise the general knowledge and appreciation of physics in the African American community.

EntryPoint 2010

Deadline for NASA applications is January 15, 2010
http://ehrweb.aaas.org/entrypoint/index.htm

ENTRY POINT! is a program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) offering outstanding internship opportunities for students with apparent and non-apparent disabilities in science, engineering, mathematics, computer science, and some fields of business.

ACCESS (Achieving Competence in Computing, Engineering, and Space Science) is a summer internship program for students with disabilities sponsored by AAAS and NASA.

NASA Academy

Application Deadline: January 18, 2010
https://academyapp.com/

The NASA Academies are an immersive summer programs for highly motivated and successful undergraduate and graduate students. These summer NASA internships are intensive. Their purpose is to bring together the likely future leaders in space activity and train them in research, leadership, team building and networking. The program’s structure is set so that the work day is spent on an individual research project specifically working with a NASA Principle Investigator, the evenings are filled with work on the group project and weekends are devoted to traveling to different NASA centers, research institutes, and commercial space-related businesses so that the students learn at an early stage how NASA operates from the inside-out.

Lunar Exploration Summer Intern Program

Deadline for Application: January 22, 2010
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar_intern/

The Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) is hosting a special summer intern program to evaluate possible landing sites for robotic and human exploration missions. Four to six interns will work with LPI science staff and other collaborators to evaluate the best landing sites to address each of the NRC’s science priorities. This will be a unique team activity that should foster extensive discussions among students and senior science team members. This Lunar Exploration Summer Intern Program will operate parallel with LPI’s regular summer intern program.

This program is open to graduate students in geology, planetary science, and related programs. It is also open to undergraduates with at least 50 semester hours of credit so that they, too, can participate in lunar exploration activities.

The 10-week program runs from June 1, 2010 through August 9, 2010. Selected interns will receive $5,000.00 and a $1000.00 travel expense reimbursement.

Lunar and Planetary Institute
Summer Intern Program in Planetary Science

Deadline for Application: Friday, January 22, 2010
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lpiintern/

The Lunar and Planetary Institute invites undergraduates with at least 50 semester hours of credit to experience cutting-edge research in the lunar and planetary sciences. As a Summer Intern, you will work one-on-one with a scientist at the LPI or at the NASA Johnson Space Center on a research project of current interest in lunar and planetary science. Furthermore, you will participate in peer-reviewed research, learn from top-notch planetary scientists, and preview various careers in science.

The 10-week program runs from June 7, 2010–August 13, 2010. You will receive a $5,000.00 stipend plus $1000.00 U.S. travel stipend, or $1,500 foreign travel reimbursement for foreign interns.

The National Society of Black Engineers

Applications Due January 22, 2010
http://national.nsbe.org/Programs/Scholarships/tabid/84/Default.aspx

NSBE’s mission is ” to increase the number of culturally responsible Black Engineers who excel academically, succeed professionally and positively impact the community. ”

The National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) with more than 30,000 members, is one of the largest student-managed organization in the country. NSBE is comprised of more than 233 chapters on college and university campuses, 65 Alumni Extension chapters nationwide and 89 Pre-College chapters.

NASA ESMD
Research Paper Competition

The deadline is midnight EST January 25, 2010.
http://education.ksc.nasa.gov/esmdspacegrant/ResearchPaper.htm

Join NASA’s mission to bring us to the moon, Mars and beyond by submitting a research paper on one of the four ESMD topics listed below. Your research may be used as the solution to current NASA challenges.

1. Spacecraft Landing and Recovery Architecture: Historical Approaches and Ideas for the Future
2. Synergistic degradation effects of materials exposed to radiation, micrometeors, thermal sinks and lunar dust
3. Loading of Cryogenic Propellant in Space Launch Vehicle
4. Determination of the Optimum Internal Cockpit Layout

Four 1st place prizes of $3500 cash scholarships–one for each research topic and VIP seating to an upcoming launch

AIAA

Deadline for applications: 31 January 2010
http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=211

The AIAA Foundation’s undergraduate scholarship program offers 30 scholarships of $2000 - $2500 to college sophomores, juniors, and seniors each year. All recipients can apply to renew their scholarship annually until they graduate. And through the annual graduate scholarship program, the AIAA Foundation presents ten graduate awards worth $5000 each and four graduate awards of $10,000 each.

NSBRI Summer Internship Program

Application deadline for the 2010 summer program is January 31, 2010.
http://www.nsbri.org/Education/SummerInternship.html

NSBRI has a summer program that provides the opportunity for undergraduate, graduate or medical students to join ongoing projects in laboratories at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Applicants must have completed their second year of undergraduate studies by the start of the internship. The program is open to U.S. citizens. Interns receive an hourly wage, but the program does not cover housing or travel.

ISU Space Studies Program

SSP10 applicants who are requesting financial aid must apply before the deadline of 31 January 2010.
http://www.isunet.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=61&Itemid=204

SSP 2010 lands in Strasbourg, France - 28 June to 27 August 2010

The SSP’s interdisciplinary curriculum emphasizes international cooperation and provides students with varied perspectives on the world’s space activities—perspectives normally reserved for those with years of diverse professional experience. The program includes a wide variety of activities, including lectures by renowned experts, hands-on activities and projects, team work exercises and professional visits, and each year it evolves to better meet the needs of its students and their employers.

American Astronautical Society

http://astronautical.org/awards/scholarships/

The American Astronautical Society (AAS) is pleased to offer the $10,000 Lady Mamie Ngan Memorial Scholarship for students to attend the International Space University’s 2010 Space Studies Program in Strasbourg, France and Stuttgart, Germany, or the 2010-2011 Masters of Science (Space Studies or Space Management) programs conducted at the ISU Central Campus in Strasbourg.
Scholarship available for any progam (SSP, MSM, MSS)

National Space Society ISU Scholarship

http://www.nss.org/education/ISU_scholarship.html

For the 2010 scholarship, we are excited to support the Space Studies Program (SSP) to be hosted at the ISU University in Strasbourg France next summer (26 June - 28 August 2010.).

The 2010 scholarship will be available only for those applying to the Space Studies Program. The scholarship is worth up to $12,000, and may be allocated by the scholarship committee to meet the needs of one or more worthy students.

Applications for the 2010 scholarship will be coming soon.

Society of Manufacturing Engineers

SME Education Foundation online scholarship applications must be submitted by February 1, 2010.
http://www.sme.org/cgi-bin/smeefhtml.pl?/foundation/scholarships/fsfstudp.htm&&&SEF&
Since 1998, the SME Foundation has provided over $3.5 million dollars in financial aid through its various scholarship programs. The Foundation awards scholarships to graduating high school seniors, current undergraduates and masters or doctoral degree students pursuing degrees in manufacturing and related fields at two-year and four-year colleges.

Mars Society
University Rover Challenge

Indication of Participation Deadline: February 1, 2010
http://www.marssociety.org/portal/c/urc

The Mars Society’s University Rover Challenge (URC) is a competition for college students to design and build the next generation of Mars rovers that will work alongside astronauts in the field. Teams square off every June at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) near Hanksville, Utah.

RASC-AL
REVOLUTIONARY AEROSPACE SYSTEMS CONCEPTS ACADEMIC LINKAGE

Deadline for Abstract submission: February 5, 2010
http://www.nianet.org/rascal/index.html

LUNAR OUTPOST TO SETTLEMENT
NASA’s goal for a lunar outpost is to gain experience that will reduce risk for future human missions to Mars and establish core infrastructure from which economic development and permanent settlement could occur.
* Utilizing lunar, space, and other planetary resources for infrastructure development, power, and consumables to minimize the logistics supply chain needed from Earth
* Converting lunar oxygen, hydrogen, and water ice into propellants and transfer to a propellant depot in lunar orbit or at a libration point
* Lunar transportation system(s) for routine access to the settlement and for exploration of remote regions for discovery of new resources.
* Durable lunar settlement designs and settlement layouts, including all required utilities and infrastructure
* Dramatically improved Earth-to-orbit and in-space transportation systems that can significantly reduce cost and improve safety.
* A business plan on how to develop a self-sufficient lunar economy with unique utilization of lunar resources

TECHNOLOGY-ENABLED HUMAN MARS MISSION
NASA is interested in eventual human mission to the Martian surface. Current Mars design reference architectures that use chemical or nuclear thermal propulsion require several years to complete, a large number of heavy lift launches and over 500 days on the surface the first time humans visit the planet. Approaches that lead to sustainable human Mars exploration leading up to the establishment of an outpost are encouraged.

BRINGING THE WORLD ALONG WITH PARTICIPATORY EXPLORATION
An important element of NASA’s exploration program is engaging the general public in human exploration missions. To capture the attention of a large cross section of the general population, NASA must use a variety of innovative and diverse approaches. The approach should yield a cultural shift in and outside of NASA that results in awareness and excitement about what NASA is doing at the moment, not what it did in the past.

COMMON LUNAR SORTIE / NEAR-EARTH OBJECT (NEO) MISSION DESIGN
NASA is interested in architecture approaches that provide cost-effective Earth neighborhood exploration with minimal infrastructure. Assuming that commonality with currently planned Constellation architecture elements is not required, what low-cost options are available to accomplish such a mission?

Teams presenting at the 2010 RASC-AL Forum June 7-9th will receive $5,875.00 for travel expenses and registration fees.

Rice University
Business Plan Competition

Intent to Compete: Friday, February 5, 2010
http://www.alliance.rice.edu/alliance/RBPC.asp?SnID=1375247303

The Rice University Business Plan Competition (RBPC) has become the premier intercollegiate business plan competition in the world. The three-day event is intended to simulate the real-world process of entrepreneurs soliciting start-up funds from early-stage investors and venture capital firms. The Competition is hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University.

Forty-two teams from top MBA programs will be selected to compete at Rice University, in Houston Texas, for more than $800,000 in prizes; including an investment opportunity of $125,000 for the grand prize winner

NASA ESMD
Lunabotics Mining Competition

Competition registration deadline: February 28, 2010
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/centers/kennedy/technology/lunabotics.html

The purpose of the Lunabotics Mining Competition is to engage and retain students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM, in a competitive environment that may result in innovative ideas and solutions, which could be applied to actual lunar excavation for NASA.

Undergraduate and graduate student teams enrolled in a U.S. college or university are eligible to enter the inaugural Lunabotics Mining Competition.

1st place: $5,000 and VIP Kennedy launch tickets.

Space Medicine Association

Application Deadline: Postmarked by March 1, 2010.
http://www.asma.org/Organization/smb/scholar.htm

The Space Medicine Association of the Aerospace Medical Association (AsMA) is pleased to announce an opportunity to apply for a scholarship award for 2010. The purpose of the SMA Scholarship is to encourage students, who have demonstrated academic achievement and shown an interest in Space Biology and Space Medical Operations to further pursue a career in Space Medicine.
A scholarship of $500 will be awarded.
Scholarship sponsored by Dr. Jeffrey R. Davis.

Society of Exploration Geophysicists Foundation
Scholarship Program

Applications and supporting documents must be received by 1 March.
http://www.seg.org/SEGportalWEBproject/portals/SEG_Online.portal;jsessionid=wvyLKzKBpRvl2TSZwWWBB2gcfTSPkb367Wv57NS2FlKVRgRvGvpR!1252845693?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pg_gen_content&Doc_Url=prod/SEG-Foundation/Foundation-Scholarship-Program/scholarship.htm

In 1956 the Society of Exploration Geophysicists began a program of encouraging the establishment of scholarship funds by companies and individuals engaged or interested in the field of geophysics. SEG saw the need for a more appropriate organization and caused the SEG Foundation to be organized.

The awards to recipients range from US$500 to US$14,000 per academic year, with average awards being approximately US$2,700 per academic year.

American Society of Mechanical Engineers

Applications for each academic year are accepted online each year only from February 1 through March 15, when our online application is closed.
http://www.asme.org/Education/College/FinancialAid/Scholarships.cfm

Over $100,000 in academic scholarships are awarded annually to ASME Student Members worldwide. You must be a current undergraduate ASME Student Member

AIAA Undergraduate Team Space Design Competition
L2 Space Weather Monitoring Constellation

Letter of Intent — 19 March 2010
http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=221

Future observatories such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and the ESA/NASA Hershel/Planck telescopes, are being placed away from Earth orbit, into heliocentric orbits at locations such as the second Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system, L2 (see Figure 1). The advantages of L2 include a stable thermal environment, and low light pollution from Moon, Earth, or the Sun. However, these spacecraft must be placed into orbits around L2, since it is a quasi-stable gravitational point. Significant propulsion is needed to arrive at L2 and perform an orbit insertion maneuver. While a family of Lissajous orbits exists around L2, most observatories are scheduled to enter a long baseline halo orbit, some 100,000’s of km in semi-major axis. This means that the spacecraft may be entering and exiting the Earth’s magnetotail and magnetosheath.

It is of great interest and need to characterize the radiation environment at L2, not only to understand the strength and extent, but more importantly, to understand the time variability of magnetotail. With no less than 5 major observatories scheduled to be at L2 in the coming decade, concerns about its radiation and space weather environment will only increase. In addition, there is also intrinsic scientific value in monitoring activities on the magnetotail. Interactions at the magnetotail causes charged plasmoids to travel back up the tail and interact with the Earth’s magnetosphere.

First place-$2,500;
Second place-$1,500;
Third place-$1,000 (USD)

AIAA Undergraduate Team Space Transportation Design Competition
Design of a Human Asteroid Exploration System

Letter of Intent — 19 March 2010
http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=301

The goal of this project is to design a Human Asteroid Exploration System (HAES). The HAES should consist of a transportation system capable of sending two or more astronauts from Earth to a Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) and returning them safely to the Earth. The transportation system should be designed for a mission opportunity to a specific asteroid during the 2018-2030 timeframe.

First place-$2,500;
Second place-$1,500;
Third place-$1,000 (USD)

NASA Ames/National Space Society
Space Settlement Design Competition

All submissions must be received by March 31, 2010.
http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/Contest/index.html

This annual contest, co-sponsored by NASA Ames and the National Space Society (NSS), is for 6-12th graders (11-18 years old) from anywhere in the world.

The best submission wins the grand prize, consisting of the space colony submission being placed on the NASA Ames World Wide Web site.

Fabricators and Manufacturers Association

Applications available after Jan 1, due April 1.
http://www.nutsandboltsfoundation.org/Scholarships.cfm

Since 1990, FMA’s foundation has awarded scholarships annually to students in courses of study that may lead to careers in manufacturing.

College scholarships for non-members are $2,500 per school year and college scholarships for members are $5,000 per school year. Trade school and two-year college scholarships up to $2,000 require membership.

Moon Art 2009 -2010 Contest

Entries are due no later than April 15, 2010.
http://artcontest.larc.nasa.gov/

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration invites high school and college students from all areas of study to enter, including the arts, industrial design, architecture, computer design, and the fine arts. Students are asked to submit their work on the theme: Life and Work on the Moon. Artists are encouraged to collaborate with science and engineering students. Such collaboration is not required, but would help to ensure that the art is valid for the Moon’s harsh environment. Any full time student can enter, regardless of major or area of study. Entries will be accepted in three categories: two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and digital, including music and video.

For the first time, we will also accept entries in literature (poetry and short stories). Entries will be evaluated on creativity, artistic qualities, but also on whether they depict a valid scenario for the moon’s harsh conditions. Prizes include awards and exhibit opportunities. Cash prizes, certificates of achievement, and exhibit opportunities are planned.

The Barringer Family Fund
for Meteorite Impact Research

April 2010
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/kring/Awards/Barringer_Fund/index.html

The Barringer Crater Company has established a special fund to support field work by eligible students interested in the study of impact cratering processes. The Barringer Family Fund for Meteorite Impact Research will provide a small number (3 to 5) of competitive grants each year in the range of $2,500 to $5,000 USD for support of field research at known or suspected impact sites worldwide. Grant funds may be used to assist with travel and subsistence costs, as well as laboratory and computer analysis of research samples and findings. Masters, doctoral, and post-doctoral students enrolled in formal university programs are eligible.

Mineralogical Society of America

Completed applications must be returned to the MSA Business Office by June 1, 2010.
http://www.minsocam.org/MSA/Awards/Min_Pet_Award.html

2011 MSA Grant For Student Research In Mineralogy And Petrology from an endowment created by contributions from the MSA membership. The grant comprises two awards of up to $5000 each for research in mineralogy and petrology. Graduate and undergraduate students, are encouraged to apply. However, all proposals are considered together. The award selection will be based on the qualifications of the applicant, the quality, innovativeness, and scientific significance of the research, and the likelihood of success of the project.
The grant is for research-related expenses only.

Starfleet - The International Star Trek Fan Association

The application period runs from January 1st through July 1st.
http://www.sfi.org/portal/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=122&Itemid=117

Ever since 1990, our organization has presented monetary scholarships to special active STARFLEET members who are attending community colleges, four-year colleges, most technical schools, junior colleges and universities or graduate school.

Scholarships are awarded in amounts of up to $500 based on number of applicants and availability of funds.

Eugene M. Shoemaker
Impact Cratering Award

Proposals for the 2010 research award will probably be due in early September 2010
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/kring/Awards/Shoemaker_Award/index.html

The Eugene M. Shoemaker Impact Cratering Award is for undergraduate or graduate students, of any nationality, working in any country, in the disciplines of geology, geophysics, geochemistry, astronomy, or biology. The award, which will include $2500, is to be applied for the study of impact craters, either on Earth or on the other solid bodies in the solar system, which areas of study may include but shall not necessarily be limited to impact cratering processes, the bodies (asteroidal or cometary) that make the impacts, or the geological, chemical or biological results of impact cratering.

American Astronomical Society

Deadline is October 1st 2010
http://aas.org/grants/awards.php

Has a number of Grants and Awards
includes
Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy

The Annie Jump Cannon Award is given to a North American female astronomer within five years of receiving her PhD in the year designated for the award. The Cannon Prize is for outstanding research and promise for future research by a postdoctoral woman researcher. The prize will amount to $1500 and the winner will give an invited talk at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society and travel expenses will be paid. Self nominations will be allowed.

L. RON HUBBARD’S ILLUSTRATORS OF THE FUTURE CONTEST

http://www.writersofthefuture.com/17/rules/ilofrules.html

All themes of science fiction and fantasy illustrations are welcome: every entry is judged on its own merits only. No entry fee is required and all rights in the entries remain the property of their artists.
There will be three co-winners in each quarter. Each winner will receive an outright cash grant of U.S. $500.00, and a certificate of merit. Such winners also receive eligibility to compete for the annual Grand Prize of an additional outright cash grant of $4,000, together with the annual Grand Prize trophy.

State Space Grant Consortium

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/programs/national/spacegrant/home/Space_Grant_Consortium_Websites.html#VI

The 52 consortia fund fellowships and scholarships for students pursuing careers in science, mathematics, engineering and technology, or STEM, as well as curriculum enhancement and faculty development. Member colleges and universities also administer pre-college and public service education projects in their states.

Texas, e.g. has the Columbia Crew Memorial Undergraduate Scholarship Program with a $1,000 Stipend and a Graduate Fellowship Program with a $5,000 Stipend.

Each NASA Space Center typically runs a number of its own program opportunities

KSC
http://education.ksc.nasa.gov/students/undergrad.htm
GSFC
http://university.gsfc.nasa.gov/
JSC
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/centers/johnson/classroom/index.html
GRC
http://newbusiness.grc.nasa.gov/university-affairs/
JPL
http://education.jpl.nasa.gov/higher_ed/index.html
SSC
http://education.ssc.nasa.gov/highered.asp
ARC
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/postsecondary/index.html

Full list of NASA programs at:
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/programs/descriptions/Students-rd.html

If you’re looking for some European travel, there are a couple of newer European programs:

EuMAS

European Masters Course in Aeronautics and Space Technology
http://www.aerospacemasters.org/

EuMAS is a two-year MSc programme jointly offered by five European aerospace schools: Università di Pisa (Italy), Technische Universität München (Germany), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain), Institut Supérieure de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace (ISAE-Supaero) of Toulouse (France), and Cranfield University (United Kingdom).

SpaceMaster

Joint European Master in Space Science and Technology
http://www.spacemaster.se/

The main objective of the Course is to combine the great diversity of space expertise at six European universities and two Third-Country universities to a common platform of competence within the guidelines of the Bologna process. The educational cooperation is supported by scientific and industrial organisations, thus providing direct contacts with professional research and industry.

Another objective is to give the students cross-disciplinary extension from laboratory and computer simulation environments to hands-on work with stratospheric balloons, rockets, satellite and radar control, robotics, sensor data fusion, automatic control and multi-body dynamics.

SUCCESS

A competition for European university students* from all disciplines to propose an experiment that could fly on board the International Space Station (ISS).
http://www.esa.int/esaHS/SEMU9TGHZTD_education_0.html

The goal of the competition is to make today’s students the International Space Station users of tomorrow. The first prize of the competition is a one-year internship at ESA’s space research and technology centre, ESTEC, in the Netherlands. At ESTEC, the winner of the contest can work on his/her experiment with the possibility of qualifying it for flight to the International Space Station.

A new SUCCESS Student Contest is currently foreseen for 2010.

FIRST Robotics Competition

http://www.usfirst.org/aboutus/content.aspx?id=508

Our mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.

Association for Women in Science

http://www.awis.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=69

AWIS is a vibrant, highly charged organization committed to helping women in STEM at every stage of their career achieve their greatest potential. We work on multiple levels to lower the barriers and create opportunties for success.

American Radio Relay League

http://www.arrlf.org/programs/scholarships

The American Radio Relay League Foundation offers a number of college scholarships to students who plan to study engineering and hold a valid ham radio license.

American Society for Metals
ASM International

http://asmcommunity.asminternational.org/portal/site/www/Foundation/Students/Scholarships/

Since 1953, the ASM Materials Education Foundation and leading ASM Chapters nationwide have awarded scholarships totaling over $1 million. Currently 37 scholarships are awarded annually through the ASM International Foundation.

Astronaut Scholarship Foundation

(for select schools)
http://www.astronautscholarship.org/scholarship.html

The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation was created to ensure that the United States would maintain its leadership in science and technology by supporting promising students in science and engineering.

USRA

http://www.usra.edu/cs/usra_scholarship_program

The USRA Scholarship Program provides college scholarships to students who have shown a career interest in the physical sciences or engineering with an emphasis on space research or space science education.

An undetermined number of undergraduate scholarships are available in amounts up to $1,000. The McLucas Research Prize is $400.

National Space Club

http://www.spaceclub.org/goddard.html

Awards a $10,000 scholarship each year, in memory of Dr. Robert H. Goddard, America’s rocket pioneer. The scholarship is presented at the Goddard Memorial Dinner each spring, for the following academic year. The award is given to stimulate the interest of talented students in the opportunity to advance scientific knowledge through space research and exploration.

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

http://www.ieee.org/web/membership/students/scholarshipsawardscontests/SAG_homepage.html

IEEE offers a variety of awards, competitions, contests, scholarships and fellowships

International Academy of Aviation and Space Medicine
Aviation Medicine Scholarship

http://www.iaasm.org/scholarship.cfm

The International Academy of Aviation and Space Medicine has a well-established Scholarship Programme, the aims of which are to enable young physicians commencing a career in aerospace medicine to undertake training in the specialty. The Scholarship can be used to facilitate attendance at a formal training course, or participation in a work programme (one year or more, structured towards educational goals) in a recognized aerospace medicine institute. The scholarship is for US $15,000.

Aerospace Medical Association

http://www.asma.org/aboutasma/careers.php#AerospaceMedecine

Careers in Aerospace Medicine with information on scholarships and programs

American Institute
of Chemical Engineers

http://www.aiche.org/Students/Scholarships/index.aspx

Each year, students are awarded scholarships based on outstanding academic achievement and their involvement in AIChE programs and activities.

Ken Murphy / 4:35 am March 31st, 2009

Howdy everyone!

I’m fresh back from the latest Lunar & Planetary Science Conference (affectionately referred to as the LPSC), and what a time it was. I ran into a lot of old friends, met some new ones, and wallowed in copious amounts of Moon stuff. The proceedings are found here (pdf).

READ MORE…

Ken Murphy / 1:30 am December 24th, 2008

The NASA Academy is a phenomenal program created by Dr. Gerald Soffen in 1993 to emulate the ISU model and help train promising up-and-coming scientists for future leadership at NASA. Participants work in the labs side-by-side with NASA PIs on all kinds of wild projects. At Goddard these were usually DDF projects, meaning they were way out on the bleeding edge of research. I worked Program Support and ISU Liaison for the 2002 Goddard Academy, but essentially went through the program myself, except that my project was reviewing a decade’s worth of DDF projects for the Technology Transfer Office. I got to see write-ups of the early days of LIDAR, and expeditions to potential crater locations in South America. Our Academy visited HQ, Wallops, Langley, KSC, & JSC, even Congressional hearings, taking behind-the-scenes tours to find out about the myriad things that NASA does, and the complexity of trying to manage it.

If you are a promising scientist or engineer (about grad school level) make sure to apply for a truly unique summer experience! If you know of any budding young scientists or engineers, let them know about the Academy so they can have the opportunity to try to add it to their resume!

[Full Disclosure: I’m an honorary member of the NASA Academy Alumni Association (since I was technically staff, not RA)]

Ken Murphy / 2:36 am July 12th, 2008

“Lunar Challenge“, published by EdNovations in 2004, it weighs in at several pounds of resources.

I’ve got to admit, this is probably the most challenging review I’ve done to date, as there was a lot to cover.

“Lunar Challenge” was developed in response to the President’s Vision for Space Exploration (VSE), which has generally been well received in the space-interested communities. The VSE was well-researched, well-structured, and laid out a reasonable path to explore and even pioneer the High Frontier of our Solar system in the interest of commerce, security, and science. So long as NASA didn’t decide to build a new launch vehicle. Which they decided to do anyway, and consequently it’s sucking all of the budget out of everything else at the agency. But that’s for another post…

The folks at EdNovations saw the opportunity to create an informal education tool-kit that used a Lunar theme to develop an understanding of systems and how they fit together, as well as to encourage youngsters into more technical fields. The foundation was laid years earlier as the result of a National Science Foundation grant and work with the Challenger Center for Space Science Education (locations). They developed the “Lunar Challenge“, and proceeded to win recognition from the National Science Teachers Association and NASA, as well as others. I’ve got a fair amount of curricular materials in the Lunar Library, but nothing quite like this box of goodies.

READ MORE…

Ken Murphy / 5:16 am November 29th, 2007

Howdy Everyone! Welcome back to The Carnival of Space, which stops again here at Out of the Cradle with an all new show, its 31st ever!

[Update: Thanks to Alan Boyle at Cosmic Log for the heads-up on the broken links. They should all work now]

I’m Ken Murphy, the Lunar Librarian here at Out of the Cradle and your guest Ringmaster for this week. We’ve got an exciting show lined up, so let’s get started and blast off to Cislunar Space.

READ MORE…

Ken Murphy / 4:15 am November 25th, 2007

Over at Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog. Out of the Cradle will be hosting an upcoming Carnival, so stay tuned!

Update: That would be this Thursday, November 29. Be sure to submit your entries early and often to: info@universetoday.com

Rob Wilson / 2:26 am October 5th, 2007

50 years to the day after the space race began, the US Senate has voted to commit an extra billion dollars to NASA’s budget.

Rob Wilson / 10:50 pm October 4th, 2007

There’s lots of talk at the moment about various different nations sending unmanned spacecraft to the Moon. In the meantime, Japan has gone ahead and done it:

Japan’s Kaguya probe slid into lunar orbit late Wednesday after a circuitous 20-day trek from Earth to begin more than a dozen science investigations designed to gain insights about the moon’s history.

The two-ton spacecraft fired its maneuvering thruster for between 10 and 20 minutes at about 2055 GMT (4:55 p.m. EDT) Wednesday, or in the predawn hours Thursday Japanese time, according to JAXA spokesperson Satoki Kurokawa.

“We have completely done it and found no problem,” Kurokawa said.

Congratulations to the Kaguya team!

Rob Wilson / 9:22 pm October 4th, 2007

50 years ago today, the space age began when the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite. That little silver ball started something quite amazing - literally the beginning of the transformation of humanity into a space-faring society.

But, looking back over the last 50 years, we have to acknowledge that, in the grand scale of things, we have only just begun. Cheap, reliable access to space, and cheap reliable operations in the space environment, remain hard nuts to crack.

The work of decades and probably centuries lies ahead.

Rob Wilson / 1:41 am October 3rd, 2007

I don’t much like the spin-offs argument for why we should have a space program. Here’s a good example of why. It’s a weak justification. If you can damn with a faint praise, the spin-off argument is damning with a weak justification. You don’t justify something like the space program on the basis of its serendipitous spin-offs - they’re just accidental bonuses along the way.

Having said that, the space program spawned at least one pretty big accidental bonus.

Rob Wilson / 2:02 am September 30th, 2007

No, Out of the Cradle is not that old. But on October the fourth, the Space Age will be. Thursday this coming week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik-1, the world’s first artificial satellite. Just a small silver ball with four long antennae and a pair of beeping radio transmitters, it blasted into space from the Kazakh steppes of the Soviet Union aboard an R-7 Semyorka ballistic missile. It could be seen gliding across the night sky from most of the surface of the Earth. Its appearance in the heavens marked one of those time-frozen moments when, while everyone gazed upward and wondered, the world changed.

Sputnik-1 heralded the beginning of a race in space that would culminate, less than twelve years later, with the landing of the first human beings on the Moon. But when it happened, its meaning was more pointed - and fearful. The Soviet Union had demonstrated, in a peaceful but unmistakable way, that it possessed a ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to any point on the surface of the Earth. And you had only to look up at night, or tune in a ham radio, to know that it was true. The launch of Sputnik was the cold war’s Pearl Harbor. The Soviet demonstration of capability only became more pointed, four days later, with the successful test of a massively powerful hydrogen bomb.

There’s a new documentary film coming out called Sputnik Mania. It details the shock that began the space age with interviews and footage never seen before. OotC is getting a copy soon, and I’ll post a review.

In the meantime, have a think about where the last fifty years in space have taken us. As for the next fifty, one way or another, I suspect they will look a lot different.

Ken Murphy / 12:01 am August 30th, 2007

Hear ye! Hear ye!

Step right up ladies and gentlemen and prepare to be shocked and amazed at the wonders of the universe that await you here at the Carnival of Space. I’m Ken Murphy, custodian of the Lunar Library here at Out of the Cradle, and I’ll be your Ringmaster for this week. We have a full slate of submissions, so let’s dive right into the action. Our first attraction - Cislunar Space!

READ MORE…

Rob Wilson / 12:53 am June 21st, 2007

…because there isn’t a shower.

“Sweat doesn’t fall of you. The water just accumulates until it gets too big and agitated and falls off like a sphere of water. It then floats around until it hits something. It takes a lot of water to fall off.” Imagine huge water balls of sweat bouncing and crashing around mid-air.

Um, yuk. Especially when you take into account that the station crews have to spend an appreciable portion of each day exercising to keep healthy in zero-g. I’m sure the mechanics of making a shower work in microgravity are tricky (the toilet is bad enough), but this sure sounds like a human factors problem waiting for a solution. I wonder what floating globs of sweat do to station electronics?

Rob Wilson / 1:21 am June 20th, 2007

Good to see that construction on the ISS is continuing, although not without some hiccups. There was a problem with the command and control computers in the Russian segment - all six crashed simultaneously, a failure that must have really gotten the attention of everybody on board, and everybody in mission control. Four days of troubleshooting led to a work-around that has the computers back up and operational, but the work-around leaves me a little uneasy. The exact source of the problem is still under investigation, but the immediate symptom was that the surge protection on the computers’ power supply would trip. The ‘fix’ was to have the ISS crew use jumper cables to bypass the surge protectors.

I’m sure that’s a configuration they wont want to stay in for very long.

In the meantime, the visit by shuttle Atlantis and the installation of the new s3/s4 truss and solar array wing went pretty smoothly. Atlantis had a problem with a thermal protection blanket on one of the orbital maneuvering system pods peeling back, but with a little ingenuity and a medical stapler, spacewalking astronaut Danny Olivas has tacked it back down again. Luckily, the problem was in a place where there is not enough thermal heating on re-entry to place the shuttle in danger.

This photo of the ISS, taken by the departing shuttle, gives a good overview of the changed station layout. It sure looks bigger and better with that new solar array wing on board.

Ken Murphy / 8:19 pm May 31st, 2007

Howdy everyone! I’m almost done convalescing after co-chairing the ISDC, and have done a little scouting around the web to see the news that came out of it. Much of which I only got to see bits and pieces of whilst patrolling the conference making sure that everything was going okay. In no particular order:

READ MORE…

Ken Murphy / 3:35 am May 10th, 2007

Howdy everyone! Regular visitors to the Lunar Library know that yours truly is one of the co-chairs for the International Space Development Conference coming up over the Memorial Day weekend here in Dallas. This is the largest citizen space conference in the world, and gathers together leaders in industry, academia, research, activism and the general public to learn all of the latest goings on in the space field.

READ MORE…

Rob Wilson / 10:26 pm March 5th, 2007

From Elon:

The launch window is now March 19th to 22nd (California time). During extended ground testing in late February, one of our second stage thrust vector control boards indicated a problem. Although our analysis showed substantial margin for flight, we decided nonetheless to increase the robustness of certain of the components and run a delta qualification.

The upgraded boards will be installed this week. If all goes well, Falcon 1 will do a static fire next week and then launch in the week of the 19th.

–Elon–

Rob Wilson / 12:30 am February 26th, 2007

Well, very soon you will be able to find out for yourself. Head on down to the Kennedy Space Center’s Visitor Complex, and go for the ride of your life on their soon-to-be-opened shuttle launch simulator.

Rob Wilson / 12:51 am February 23rd, 2007

Alan Boyle over at Cosmic Log has just interviewed Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace, the company building and testing inflatable space habitats for low-Earth-orbit.

Turns out that they’re not just for low-Earth-orbit. Bigelow’s long-range plans include assembling moon-bases out of his modules, at the Earth-Moon-L1 lagrange point, and flying them whole to the lunar surface. Just cover with lunar regolith for radiation protection, and you have an instant prefabricated moon base. According to the interview, NASA is interested.

Of course, at this point it’s all speculation, but Bigelow does have one ace up his sleeve that most NewSpace companies can’t claim: hardware in orbit. An uncrewed, one-third-scale prototype of the habitat, Genesis One, is already being checked out in space. Another, more sophisticated prototype is due for launch in early April. Sometime after that, a one-half scale prototype will be launched, and Bigelow plans to have a human-capable space module, Sundancer, on-orbit and ready for occupation some time in 2010.

Rob Wilson / 11:16 pm January 25th, 2007

Elon Musk has posted another update on the SpaceX website. The planned static firing test did not go ahead, and the rocket has been returned to the hangar for a stage de-mate and inspection. Elon didn’t go into what has necessitated that move. The flow-on effect is that the static fire wont happen now until mid to late February. Elon didn’t mention a possible launch date at all.

Here’s what he said:

January 25, 2007: DemoFlight 2 Launch Update

In an excess of caution, we decided not to proceed with the static fire this month. The vehicle is now back in the hangar, where the stages are being demated for careful inspection.

The static fire and launch window is now mid to late February, due to Kwaj having to configure for an incoming Minuteman and then reconfigure back to handling a Falcon launch. During this downtime, we will take the opportunity to go over every inch of the rocket with a microscope again.

As Andy Grove said, “Only the Paranoid Survive“.

—Elon

You can forgive them a little paranoia. Having this launch go right is key to everything that SpaceX hopes to do.