Section: International Space Station
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]
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.
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!
Image by R.A. Smith from
“The Exploration of the Moon”
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!
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…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?
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.
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:
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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.
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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–
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.
ABCNews has a short interview with the current crew of the International Space Station.
It’s not mentioned in the interview, but there’s a strong perception out there that the ISS is a waste of time and money, that it’s a platform without a purpose. There’s no doubt that it’s a creature of political compromise, and there’s no doubt that it’s expensive for what it does, but I still feel uncomfortable writing it off completely. We should at least wait until it has had its full crew (of six) for a few years, doing science rather than construction. I don’t believe the ‘might cure cancer’ propaganda that got the thing built, but the fact remains that there is a vast amount of microgravity science that can be done, and we have no way of knowing what might (eventually) come of it.
The key for the ISS is not so much the station itself, but regular access to it. If it takes years to get a payload on board, and results of an experiment returned, before a follow-up can be flown (this was the experience of the space shuttle) then it’s hard to imagine how very much basic investigation could be done there before the end of it’s life. On the other hand, if experiments can be turned around in just a couple of months, researchers have a much better opportunity to test and explore their theories, and respond to the things they learn with re-designed experiments.
Is this possible with the current level of access to the station? No. But I believe it could be if one or both of the COTS companies, SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler, succeed in their task of demonstrating commercial access to the ISS.
We simply don’t know what might be waiting to be discovered up there, but it seems a fair bet, given that microgravity is such a radically different environment to the 1-G world in which almost all science has been, that there will be some very interesting surprises. We just need a place to do the experiments, and regular access.
When the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, it had a flawed mirror, and it looked like the mission was a failure. NASA figured out a way to correct its optics, and it has become the most amazing scientific instrument in history. The ISS is still in its construction phase, and there will be very little science done there until that is finished. It’s far too soon to write it off.
(Via Clark at HobbySpace RLV and Space Transport News)
An analysis of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program by aerospace engineering and consulting firm Spaceworks Engineering, shows a potential $6.5 to $7 billion market for COTS services, with the government saving as much as $8 billion over the same period compared to using government-owned vehicles.
Sounds like a match made in heaven.
 Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX to most of us, has announced that it plans to launch its second Falcon 1 rocket on the 21st of this month. The rocket is on the pad, and the launch team have already taken it through a ‘wet dress rehearsal’ where they fuel it up and run the countdown down to T - 1 minutes.
SpaceX’s first launch of the Falcon 1 ended in failure about 30 seconds into its flight. A corroded nut failed, causing a fuel leak and fire that ultimately led to the shutdown of the main engine in mid-flight. The rocket then crashed back onto a coral reef beside its launch site.
Since then, SpaceX has made improvements in the Falcon 1 launch vehicle, essentially creating a Falcon 1.1 launcher. The company has also won a NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) contract to perform a cargo delivery demonstration flight to the International Space Station with their larger Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule.
OotC wishes SpaceX good fortune and a smooth flight.
 NASA press release:
NASA’S SHUTTLE DISCOVERY BEGINS MISSION TO THE SPACE STATION
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The space shuttle Discovery and its seven-member crew lifted off Saturday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 8:47 p.m. EST on one of the most complex missions ever to the International Space Station.
Shortly before launch, Discovery’s Commander Mark Polansky said he and his crew were excited to continue assembly of the station, “We look forward to lighting up the night sky and rewiring ISS.”
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In this artist’s concept, the Orion CEV docked to a lunar lander,
is depicted orbiting the moon. Credit: Lockheed-Martian
Associated Press reporter recounts his experiences as he tries out Lockheed-Martian’s mock-up of their Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, (CEV). Fresh off of receiving an $8 billion contract to build it, Lockheed-Martian gave media a chance to look over a rough mock-up of the capsule, said to have been built to “get a feel of the geometry” involved with the craft.
The article is posted on MSNBC’s news site.
Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, an astronaut on the STS-115 mission, collapsed twice Friday, a day after she returned to Earth in the shuttle Atlantis, and officials attributed her wobbles to the adjustment from 12 days at zero gravity. Wobbly and light-headed, Stefanyshyn-Piper collapsed while speaking publicly at a welcome-home ceremony.
Fellow crew members caught her as her legs buckled under her, lowering her to the ground. She rested there for a few moments before rising back to her feet and attempted to centime.
Speaking again for less than a minute, gripping the podium tightly for support, she once again became dizzy and stopped speaking. Stefanyshyn-Piper was lowered to the floor. After resting a few moments again, she was helped to her feet and escorted out through a side door.
“She’s doing 100 percent well,” husband Glenn Piper said by phone from home later in the day. “Basically, she’s embarrassed.”
Smith Johnston, the crew’s flight surgeon, who was at Piper’s side when she fell, said astronauts typically lose 10 percent to 14 percent of their blood volume while in space, usually regaining it in a day or two. Hospitalization was not required and Stefanyshyn-Piper was allowed to go home a few hours later.
Piper, 43, of St. Paul, Minn., is a commander in the Navy and was a mission specialist and cosmic electrician aboard the shuttle. She carried out two of the spacewalks, joining an elite club of only six other U.S. women and a single Russian woman who have made spacewalks.
We wish her the best and a speedy recovery as she regains her “Land Legs”.
 You really want to take the time to read this. It is an inexpressibly cool story, made even more so by the knowledge that a) it is true, and b) the author is writing it floating in zero gravity far above the Earth on the International Space Station.
As I read this I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had been transported back to being ten years old reading a Boys’ Own - sorry Anousheh - Girls’ Own Adventure story.
But this is real. How cool is that?
 Atlantis is home safely. Or, I should say, her crew is home safely. For the shuttle herself, I don’t think that being tucked up in a warm hangar at Kennedy Space Center counts as being ‘home’. If you’ll allow me a little poetic license, I believe that her home is ‘up there’ - and it’s sad that she gets to go there so infrequently.
The shuttle system is aging and expensive, and the decision to retire the fleet in 2010 is the right one. Today we need much more prosaic access to space: cheap, reliable, and regular - things that we all wanted the shuttle to be, but we were perhaps asking too much of her.
In her native environment of low Earth orbit, she’s nothing short of breathtakingly beautiful:
The shuttle is an amazing and capable machine, and it may be a while before we see her like again. As we watch her gracefully fly out the remaining flights leading to her retirement, I think it’s important that we take the time to recognise that what we are giving up is something very special indeed.
 Anousheh Ansari, X-Prize backer and private astronaut, has arrived at the ISS, along with the station’s new crew. In downlink video of the hatch opening, she could be seen smiling broadly, and wearing an X-Prize cap.
You can read about her adventures in near-real time: she is blogging from the ISS (via email I think) here.
 Space shuttle Atlantis’ landing has been delayed by at least a day, to give mission managers time to investigate an object seen floating close by that may have fallen off the shuttle. The object was spotted on footage from a payload bay camera, floating between the Shuttle and Earth in very nearly the same orbit, leading experts to speculate that it may be ice or something from the payload bay that has been shaken loose by thruster firings performed as part of pre-landing checkout operations.
There is also talk of an impact registering on one of the shuttle’s wing leading edges, but that may have simply been the sensors registering the same landing checkout thruster firings.
In the meantime, the delay will extend the time that there are three crewed spacecraft operating in LEO - Atlantis, the Soyuz carrying the Expedition 14 crew and fare-paying astronaut Anousheh Ansari, and the International Space Station itself. With the undocking and de-orbiting of an automated Progress supply freighter happening at the same time, it’s been really busy up there in low Earth orbit.
Congratulations to Anousheh Ansari, who has just realised her lifelong dream of travel into space. She has worked hard, trained hard, accepted real risk, and conducted herself professionally to get there.
And in the mainstream media, she’s the first ‘female space tourist’.
Anousheh is no more a ’space tourist’ than someone who summits Everest is a ‘mountain tourist’. If you were to tap a mountaineer on the shoulder and address him as such, you would get a frosty reception (and probably an ice axe handle shoved somewhere painful). Many people pay to be guided up mountains and that does not make them any less mountaineers.
So it irks me that someone who puts in the huge expense and months of training for spaceflight should be labelled a tourist, just because they paid to fly.
Anousheh Ansari is an astronaut. She may not be a professional astronaut like her crew-mates, but she’s an astronaut nonetheless. She should be referred to as such. Anything less is disrespectful.
Having said that, I look forward to the day when there are space tourists for real. When anyone with a couple of thousand dollars and a spare week can put on a Hawaiian shirt, sling a camera round their neck, and buy a ticket to the LEO Hilton with no training or real risk, spaceflight will have come a long way indeed.
Atlantis continues its orbital journey toward the International Space Station, and is scheduled to dock there at 10:46 GMT Monday (05:46 CDT at the control center in Houston). Flight day two inspections have revealed no damage of concern to the orbiter’s heat shield.
According to shuttle program manager Wayne Hale:
“The bottom line is we are looking at nits, nothing of remote consequence.”
(via Clark at HobbySpace RLV and Space Transport News)
Elon Musk has posted a new update at the SpaceX website.
There’s plenty to read, including some information about the company’s recent COTS win, pictures of the Falcon-9 with a Dragon crew capsule - showing, for the first time, a launch escape tower - and some very interesting words on SpaceX’s pricing policy. Well worth a read.
The update also mentions that SpaceX is in discussions with Bigelow Aerospace, about providing crew and cargo services to Bigelow’s planned commercial space complex. This is not at all surprising - if both companies can field their respective vehicles, it will be a match made in heaven. And if Bigelow gets anywhere near his current traffic projections (20 crew and cargo launches in the third year of operation) we might just start to see what a robust flight rate can do to lower launch costs.
None of this is a done deal, of course - there is a lot of water to flow under the bridge before we see a commercial crew fly to a commercial space station on a commercial rocket.
But despite the risk, the possibilities are pretty exciting.
 Space shuttle Atlantis roared away from the launch pad today in an apparently flawless launch, having endured many days of technical and weather-related delays, and a three-year mission postponement brought about by the disastrous loss of her sister ship, Columbia.
Eight and a half minutes after liftoff, Atlantis and her crew of six astronauts safely reached orbit, beginning a two-day journey to rendezvous with the International Space Station. The shuttle is carrying a major new station component, the P3/P4 truss and solar array wing. Atlantis’ flight restarts the space station assembly sequence, which has been on hold since the loss on re-entry of Columbia in February 2003.
The new component, which will be installed with a series of three spacewalks over the next 10 days, will almost double the International Space Station’s power generation capability, and pave the way for further assembly flights, the next of which is scheduled for December.
| Howdy everyone, and welcome to the Best of the Moon 2007!
Each year we stop and take a look at the best additions to the Lunar Library over the course of the year. 2007 has been an unusual one for the Lunar Library, not least because your friendly Librarian was co-chair of the […]
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