Fwd: Human Spaceflight (and Mars) News - January 10, 2013 and JSC Today

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: January 10, 2013 7:21:55 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight (and Mars) News - January 10, 2013 and JSC Today

 

 

 

 

Thursday, January 10, 2013

 

JSC TODAY HEADLINES

1.            Joint Leadership Team Web Poll

2.            TODAY at 9 a.m. -- 'What Happened to the STS-107 Columbia Crew?'

3.            'Teamwork Makes the Dream Work' -- William A. Lawson to Speak Jan. 17

4.            What is Intracranial Pressure?

5.            Aging Gracefully Part II: Later Life

6.            Personal Training at the Gilruth Center

7.            OSHA Record Keeping Seminar ViTS - Feb. 15

________________________________________     QUOTE OF THE DAY

" We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future. "

 

-- Frederick Douglass

________________________________________

1.            Joint Leadership Team Web Poll

The Mayan end of the world came and went, and we survived somehow, so let me be one of the first to welcome you back from the holidays. The answer to last year's question was that James Marion West did sell our property to Humble Oil, but we also bought it outright from Rice University. It's an urban legend that it reverts back to Rice if we leave.

This week I'm wondering if your immediate family really knows what you do at NASA? Are they just vaguely familiar with your job or confused about what you do? We all got gifts during the holidays, so question two is searching for your favorite gift. I've listed some traditional favorites -- pick yours.

Fiscal your Cliff on over to get this week's poll.

Joel Walker x30541 http://jlt.jsc.nasa.gov/

 

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2.            TODAY at 9 a.m. -- 'What Happened to the STS-107 Columbia Crew?'

Join us for JSC's 2013 back In the saddle event TODAY at 9 a.m. in the Teague Auditorium. Don't miss Dr. Nigel Packham present: "What Happened to the STS-107 Columbia Crew?"

Packham will discuss the Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report. What happened to the STS-107 Columbia crew, and what can be learned from it?

The presentation will provide a background of the investigation, the timeline of the accident derived from the evidence described above and discuss several of the key findings that may have application to future spacecraft designers.

Event Date: Thursday, January 10, 2013   Event Start Time:9:00 AM   Event End Time:10:00 AM

Event Location: Teague Auditorium

 

Add to Calendar

 

Joye Abbey 281-335-2041

 

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3.            'Teamwork Makes the Dream Work' -- William A. Lawson to Speak Jan. 17

William A. Lawson, a civil rights icon who worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the early days of the civil rights movement, will speak to the JSC team members about King's legacy, teamwork and inclusiveness on Thursday, Jan. 17, at 11 a.m. in the Teague Auditorium. The event is sponsored by the center's African-American Employee Resource Group to commemorate JSC's diverse workforce during the months of January and February for the Martin Luther King Jr. and Black History observances, respectively. Civil servant and contractor employees are invited to attend.

Event Date: Thursday, January 17, 2013   Event Start Time:11:00 AM   Event End Time:1:00 PM

Event Location: Teague Auditorium

 

Add to Calendar

 

Carla Burnett x41044

 

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4.            What is Intracranial Pressure?

Please join the Human Systems Academy in a lecture introducing participants to the concepts of intracranial pressure. This lecture will provide insight into documented changes in visual acuity and eye anatomy that have been experienced by several astronauts after long-duration missions. Specifically, we will analyze the relationship to intracranial pressure and discuss how this translates into a human long-duration spaceflight risk.

Event Date: Thursday, January 17, 2013   Event Start Time:2:00 PM   Event End Time:4:00 PM

Event Location: B17/ CR1066

 

Add to Calendar

 

Cynthia Rando 281-461-2620 http://sa.jsc.nasa.gov/

 

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5.            Aging Gracefully Part II: Later Life

Please join the JSC Employee Assistance Program as we proudly host Angela Sarafin, M.A., LMFT, LPC, and Stacey Dunn, M.A., LPC, who will present "Aging Gracefully, Part II: Later Life" on Thursday, Jan. 24, in the Building 30 Auditorium at 12 noon. Among the topics covered will be what we call "end-of-life issues" such as role reversal due to illness/disability, communicating about your final plans and coping with losing friends and family.

Event Date: Thursday, January 24, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM

Event Location: Building 30 Auditorium

 

Add to Calendar

 

Lorrie Bennett x36130

 

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6.            Personal Training at the Gilruth Center

Need that extra motivation, support or guidance to start your new fitness regimen for the new year? Personal Training at the Gilruth Center offers the newest fitness techniques, teaches you how to maximize your workout routine, increases your stamina, helps you set realistic workout goals and tailors your workout so you can achieve your desired results. Whether you train alone or in groups of two or three, we have the option that's right for you. A Starport Fitness membership at the Gilruth Center is not required to purchase personal training sessions. For training session options and fees, visit Starport's Personal Training website.

Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

 

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7.            OSHA Record Keeping Seminar ViTS - Feb. 15

SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0047: This three-hour seminar will assist the student in understanding the new Occupational Safety and Health Administration rules and requirements for record keeping. The 29 CFR 1904, Recording and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, has been completely revised, and the new rules took effect on Jan. 1. Everything concerning this new standard, from the scope of "who must comply" to the new, more specifically defined "work-related recording criteria," is outlined in this seminar. Several examples of the "old rules" compared to the "new rules" are presented to aid those making the transition. Workshop activities accomplished during class include discussion of some "sanitized" case histories for determination of "recordables." This seminar is recommended for those who are responsible for reporting occupational injuries and illnesses at their work sites.

Use this direct link for registration.

https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...

Event Date: Friday, February 15, 2013   Event Start Time:9:00 AM   Event End Time:12:00 PM

Event Location: ViTS Room

 

Add to Calendar

 

Shirley Robinson x41284

 

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________________________________________

JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.

 

 

 

NASA TV: 11:15 am Central (12:15 pm EST) – E34's Chris Hadfield with Canadian Media

 

Human Spaceflight News

Thursday – January 10, 2013

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

Company test pilots slated for first commercial space flights

 

William Harwood - CBS News

 

The first American rockets and spacecraft to fly in the wake of the shuttle's retirement will be crewed by company test pilots -- not NASA astronauts -- in part to give space agency managers better insight into flight readiness and safety, officials said Wednesday. Assuming NASA gets the funding managers say they need -- a big if in today's political environment -- Space Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, hopes to launch a manned version of its Dragon cargo ship in the mid 2015 timeframe, followed by a crewed flight to the International Space Station later that year.

 

NASA, partners: Commercial-crew flights on track

Panel praises progress but reminds NASA and partners of safety

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

NASA and industry partners on Wednesday touted progress they've made developing private spacecraft that could fly astronauts from Florida to the International Space Station by 2017. Soon after the briefing at Kennedy Space Center, NASA's independent Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel released a report confirming progress while identifying several concerns with the agency's Commercial Crew Program. "The ASAP is pleased to see that progress has been made with the CCP over the last year, but many challenges remain that will require resolution at the earliest possible time," the panel's 2012 annual report said.

 

NASA praises commercial space partners as federal budget battles near

 

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

 

NASA and the four companies it calls "the leading edge" of the quest to put American astronauts back into space aboard American rockets delivered progress reports and spelled out future mission milestones Wednesday. But the conversation sputtered when the questions turned to money in the tight federal budget environment. NASA commercial crew program managers appeared on a panel at Kennedy Space Center Wednesday with representatives of Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada and SpaceX. All four companies have received commercial crew development funding from NASA in recent years, but Blue Origin was not one of the three funded in the latest round in August 2012. It is continuing to develop commercial rockets, however.

 

SpaceX plans to launch humans into space in 2015

 

Mark Matthews - Orlando Sentinel

 

A top executive at SpaceX said Wednesday that the California-based rocket company hoped to launch U.S. astronauts into orbit as early as 2015 — with the twist that these space-farers would be SpaceX employees and not NASA personnel. The goal was announced during a NASA news conference held at Kennedy Space Center intended to broadly update the public on the agency's efforts to use commercial companies to ferry its astronauts to the International Space Station.

 

U.S. spaceship ventures plan to send test pilots into orbit as early as 2015

 

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log

 

Americans could be flying into orbit on U.S.-built spaceships again as early as 2015 — but the first fliers won't be NASA astronauts or millionaire space tourists. Instead, they'll be commercial test pilots, employed by the Boeing Co., Sierra Nevada Corp., SpaceX or maybe even a dark-horse company like Blue Origin, the venture funded by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos. Those four companies provided updates on their efforts to build new spaceships capable of carrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station during a Wednesday news briefing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

 

NASA, partners move toward return to manned spaceflight

 

Melonie Holt - WFTV TV (Orlando)

 

The four companies developing the next generation of spacecraft said they're reaching some major milestones and some of the credit goes to the groundwork already laid by NASA. WFTV was at the Kennedy Space Center Wednesday afternoon as members of NASA's commercial crew program met to discuss their singular mission: U.S. commercial crew space transportation.

 

Commercial spaceflight companies lay out 2013 plans

 

Zach Rosenberg - FlightInternational.com

 

Representatives from Boeing, Sierra Nevada, Blue Origin and SpaceX updated the status of their current programmes and laid out plans for 2013 at a 9 January NASA press conference. Three of the companies - Boeing, Sierra Nevada and SpaceX - are participating in what is effectively the third round of CCDev, called commercial crew integrated capability (CCiCap), while Blue Origin is wrapping up its involvement with CCDev. The four companies have major technical and programmatic milestones planned in 2013. Blue Origin has imminent plans to test its first full BE-3 engine in February, while Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser will begin its first crewed drop tests in the fourth calendar quarter of the year.

 

The 4 Spaceships Vying to Send Crews to the ISS

 

Michael Belfiore - Popular Mechanics

 

In a press conference today, NASA and four private companies briefed the press on their progress in developing private vehicles to send crews to the International Space Station. To date, NASA has spent $1.5 billion fostering the development of the new vehicles, and plans to up the ante in the next couple of years.

 

NASA Deal May Put Inflatable Private Module on Space Station

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

NASA and Bigelow Aerospace have reached an agreement that could pave the way for attaching a Bigelow-built inflatable space habitat to the International Space Station, a NASA spokesman said. The $17.8 million contract was signed in late December, NASA spokesman Trent Perrotto told Space News Monday. Perrotto declined to provide other terms of the agreement, except to say that it centers around the Bigelow Expanded Aerospace Module (BEAM). He said a formal announcement is in the works.

 

NASA To Review SLS Core Stage, Orion Weight Issues

 

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aerospace Daily

 

An integrated systems definition review of NASA's three human exploration elements — launcher, capsule and ground systems — kicks off next week, with major items of discussion to include the schedule for developing the Space Launch System (SLS) core stage and the Orion crew capsule's weight. The three-day review at Johnson Space Center will build on previous design work on the SLS, Orion and modifications at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., to make sure all of the requirements and interface control documents match up.

 

AXE Company Wants to Launch 22 People Into Space

 

Space.com

 

The men's personal care product company AXE has teamed up with famed moonwalker Buzz Aldrin to send 22 people into space, and make sure they smell nice doing it. The company Wednesday kicked off its new AXE Apollo Space Academy, an online contest that promises to send 22 winners to the edge of space and back aboard a private spaceship. The winning space travelers will launch aboard a suborbital Lynx space plane built by the U.S. company XCOR Aerospace and operated by the tourism firm Space Expedition Curacao, AXE officials said.

 

Astronaut urges Barrington students to aim for stars

 

Eric Peterson - Associated Press

 

The space shuttle may be gone, but American children need not give up their dreams of becoming astronauts. That was the message Shannon Walker of NASA shared Wednesday morning with students at St. Anne School in Barrington, Illinois. Walker spent six months on the International Space Station in 2010 and hopes to use the years of training she underwent by going back into space someday.

 

Palazzo to remain space subcommittee chair; Shelby to be top Republican in Senate Appropriations

 

Jeff Foust - SpacePolitics.com

 

Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS) will return as chairman of the space and aeronautics subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, the full committee announced Tuesday. Palazzo chaired the subcommittee in the last Congress as well. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) will serve as the vice-chair of the subcommittee.

 

Russian cosmonauts tighten belts

Are five times poorer than Western counterparts and even Russian civil aviation pilots

 

Natalia Zhuravleva - Russia & India Report

 

The Russian government recently approved salaries for the country's cosmonauts. Depending on their position and "status," they can expect to receive between 61,000 - 88,000 rubles ($2,000-2,900) per month, plus a few perks. Not only do their American counterparts earn more, but so do even Russian civil aviation pilots. The government has approved position-dependent pay packages for Russia's cosmonauts, as well as bonuses for tenure and qualifications. A corresponding resolution was drawn up by the Cabinet of Ministers and added to the corpus of federal regulatory and administrative acts.

 

Clark Creek students video conference with NASA

 

Megan Thornton - Cherokee Tribune (Georgia)

 

Students at Clark Creek Elementary School STEM Academy may view exploring outer space with NASA as a career that's no longer out of reach after experiencing a rare opportunity to video conference with members of Mission Control, the people in charge of operations for the International Space Station. With questions written on note cards in hand, about 30 of Dr. Laura Lamar's fifth-grade students eagerly anticipated the arrival of Dr. Patricia Moore, NASA Digital Learning Network specialist, who video conferenced with them early Tuesday afternoon from Johnson Space Center in Houston.

__________

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

Company test pilots slated for first commercial space flights

 

William Harwood - CBS News

 

The first American rockets and spacecraft to fly in the wake of the shuttle's retirement will be crewed by company test pilots -- not NASA astronauts -- in part to give space agency managers better insight into flight readiness and safety, officials said Wednesday.

 

Assuming NASA gets the funding managers say they need -- a big if in today's political environment -- Space Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, hopes to launch a manned version of its Dragon cargo ship in the mid 2015 timeframe, followed by a crewed flight to the International Space Station later that year.

 

A top Boeing manager told reporters the company's CST-100 capsule should be ready for an initial three-day orbital test flight, with company pilots, in 2016. A senior manager with Sierra Nevada, which has pinned its hopes on a winged orbiter similar in appearance to a mini space shuttle, said both manned and autonomous sub-orbital test flights will be used to pave the way to orbital missions.

 

The test flights will be part of a complex certification process that will lead to NASA flights to and from the space station in the 2017 time frame, budgets permitting. Whether those flights will use all-NASA crews or combinations of company pilots and NASA passengers is not yet clear.

 

But until Boeing, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada or some other company fields an American-built manned spacecraft, U.S. astronauts will be forced to continue reliance on rides to and from the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft at more than $60 million a seat.

 

"For well over a year now, since Atlantis (completed the final shuttle mission), the United States of America no longer has the capability to launch people into space," said Garrett Reisman, a former shuttle astronaut who heads the SpaceX commercial crew program. "And that's something that we are not happy about.

 

"I'd venture so far as to say nobody sitting up here on this panel is happy about that," he said, referring to representatives of Boeing, Sierra Nevada and Blue Origin, a company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

 

"But we're very, very proud to be part of the group, the commercial crew program, that's going to do something about that and get Americans back into space," Reisman said. "At SpaceX, we feel a sense of urgency to get Americans back into space on safe and reliable transportation, on American-made rockets."

 

SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada won NASA contracts last August under the agency's Commercial Crew Integrated Capability Initiative, or CCiCap, program, NASA's third set of contracts aimed at spurring private-sector development of low-cost manned spacecraft to carry crews to and from the space station.

 

SpaceX was awarded $440 million to continue development of a manned version of its Dragon cargo ship, which has now completed two flights to the International Space Station. The SpaceX capsule will carry up to seven astronauts using an upgraded version of the company's Falcon 9 rocket.

 

Boeing won a CCiCAP contract valued at up to $460 million for continued development of its CST-100 capsule. The spacecraft will seat up to seven astronauts and fly atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.

 

Sierra Nevada of was awarded a $212.5 million control to continue work on the Dreamchaser spaceplane, originally developed by NASA as a space station lifeboat. The Dreamchaser will seat seven and launch stop an Atlas 5. Like the now-retired space shuttle, it would land on a runway at the end of a mission.

 

Blue Origin, which participated in earlier commercial crew contracts with NASA, plans to continue development of its own spacecraft and rocket system under unfunded Space Act Agreements with NASA.

 

SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada laid out long-range schedules at NASA's request showing how they plan to ramp up to manned flight tests on the assumption that funding is available and no major technical problems develop.

 

Reisman said SpaceX hopes to make its first crewed test flight "in the middle of 2015 and flying to the station at the end of 2015."

 

"That would be done with a test pilot crew," he said. "We were told that because this would be part of the development and prior to final certification that we were not allowed, legally, to use NASA astronauts to be part of that test pilot crew.

 

"So at SpaceX we're going to have to have company test pilots who would fly those missions. It would be a minimum crew for these test flights, we're not selling tickets. Don't call our toll-free number! Those are going to be test flights as part of the final development and test and certification process."

 

John Mulholland, Boeing's Commercial Programs Space Exploration vice president and program manager, said his company will follow suit in 2016, following a series of major test objectives that follow a "test like you fly and fly like you test" approach.

 

"To us, the big integrated tests, such as (on-) pad abort, we decided that we needed to incorporate those in our qualification series so it would be flight design hardware," he said. "Those would be in our next phase so you can ensure those larger tests would be done in the flight configuration."

 

Mark Sirangelo, a Sierra Nevada vice president and chairman of the company's space systems division, said the winged Dreamchaser spaceplane has been designed from the ground up to fly in both an autonomous mode and under the direction of pilots.

 

He did not specify when the first test flights to space might be carried out, but he said atmospheric tests will begin later this year, leading up to sub-orbital space flights and eventually, orbital missions.

 

"Our vehicle is what we like to call 'optionally piloted,' which means it's fully autonomous and fully piloted from its design," he said. "So, too, does the flight test program alternate between autonomous flights and crewed flights. We will be going through the sub-orbital regime to get to orbital flights and we will be doing that in both autonomous and crewed versions."

 

Ed Mango, NASA's commercial crew program manager at the Kennedy Space Center, told reporters the flight test program will resemble the model used by the military in years past when company pilots flew the initial test flights before turning a plane over to the government.

 

"We would like them to get to a point where they're ready to put their crew on their vehicle at their risk," he said. "And so it changes the dynamic a little bit. Normally under a contract, the contractor comes forward and says he's ready to go fly but it's a NASA individual who's going to sit on the rocket, so it's a NASA risk.

 

"What we did is we flipped it around under iCAP. It's not what we're going to do long term under phase two, but we flipped it around under iCAP and said we want to know when you're ready to fly your crew and put your people at risk. And that then becomes something that we're able to evaluate."

 

In the end, he said, government and private-sector engineers and managers all want the same thing, "to fly safe."

 

"They're not going to take any shortcuts," he said. "All of us have the same initiative and it doesn't matter who's sitting on top of the vehicle. It's a person, and that person needs to fly safely and get back home to their families. That's the mission of all our folks."

 

But it will take money, and funding is far from certain.

 

The Obama administration asked for $800 million for commercial manned spaceflight in NASA's fiscal 2012 budget request, but Congress approved just $400 million. That reduction was blamed for pushing the first NASA flight to the station back one year to 2017.

 

The administration requested $830 million for commercial space development in its fiscal 2013 budget, but that ultimately was reduced to about $500 million.

 

The CCiCAP contracts, valued at up to $900 million, run through end end of May 2014. Another round of "phase two" contracts is expected after that to continue development through the test flight stage. How much the administration might request in NASA's fiscal 2014 budget -- and how much the agency ultimately gets -- is not yet known. But if funding is significantly reduced or held up in a continuing resolution, at least one of the companies likely would drop out and the flight schedule would slip even more.

 

Despite the uncertainty, Mulholland stressed that "human spaceflight is not dead in America."

 

"There are at least four companies represented here that are working very hard to make that happen in partnership with NASA," he said. "And as we go through our budget cycles, it's important to be able to say that for not a lot of money, we've made tremendous progress and are continuing to make tremendous progress."

 

NASA, partners: Commercial-crew flights on track

Panel praises progress but reminds NASA and partners of safety

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

NASA and industry partners on Wednesday touted progress they've made developing private spacecraft that could fly astronauts from Florida to the International Space Station by 2017.

 

Soon after the briefing at Kennedy Space Center, NASA's independent Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel released a report confirming progress while identifying several concerns with the agency's Commercial Crew Program.

 

"The ASAP is pleased to see that progress has been made with the CCP over the last year, but many challenges remain that will require resolution at the earliest possible time," the panel's 2012 annual report said.

 

NASA has committed about $1.5 billion to develop commercial crew systems since 2010, with most of that awarded last year to The Boeing Co., Sierra Nevada Corp. and SpaceX.

 

Those three companies hope to complete system designs in 2014 and could launch crews on test flights as soon as 2015 or 2016.

 

Among the safety panel's concerns is the possibility that NASA could ask its commercial partners to fly orbital test flights with their own crews before NASA astronauts board the new vehicles.

 

The optional tests, the report says, raise questions about who would certify their safety and whether NASA could be seen as "irresponsible in its sponsorship/facilitation or tacit acceptance of a high-risk activity."

 

NASA has told the panel it has no plan to exercise those flights.

 

Ed Mango, manager of the Kennedy-based commercial crew program, said Wednesday that the commercial crew program's goal was to develop and certify systems that could fly NASA crews to the space station and also enable commercial flights to other destinations.

 

As such, the agency wanted companies to say when they would be ready to put their own crews at risk.

 

"All of us have the same initiative, and it doesn't matter who's sitting on top of the vehicle," he said. "It's a person, and that person needs to fly safely and get home to their families."

 

Garrett Reisman, a former NASA astronaut heading upgrades of SpaceX's Dragon capsule for crewed flight, said he might not fly the company's initial test flight but would have to be willing to.

 

"I have to be willing to go, because I'm not strapping somebody else into it if I'm not willing to strap into it myself," he said.

 

Rob Meyerson, president and program manager at Blue Origin, which received NASA funding earlier in the development program, said he expected there would be many volunteers.

 

"If I know the people that come to work at commercial space companies, I think there's probably no shortage of people that will want to sign up and fly on any of our vehicles in those early flights," he said.

 

Still, the safety panel said of the optional flights: "We do not understand the full implication of the optional approach and are concerned that it increases risk."

 

The report also noted concerns about NASA's non-traditional contracting strategy, which reduces the agencies role in the design of private spacecraft, and how it would go about certifying the vehicles' safety.

 

But it said a two-phase certification program that begins this month "helps to clear the certification 'fog' and is a significant step forward."

 

The panel's only issue given a "red" level of concern was NASA's overall budget uncertainty.

 

It questioned whether NASA would be able to afford to certify at least two commercial systems and said operational flights would not start by 2017 without increases in funding.

 

The program requested $830 million for 2013 and later years, and this year is expected to receive closer to $500 million.

 

Mark Sirangelo, vice president and chairman of Sierra Nevada Corp. Space Systems, which is developing the Dream Chaser mini-shuttle, said lower budgets would delay schedules, extending U.S. reliance on Russia to reach the station and impact research performed there.

 

"It might take longer to get there, and that's going to have an effect on the really valuable work that's being done on the station," he said.

 

NASA praises commercial space partners as federal budget battles near

 

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

 

NASA and the four companies it calls "the leading edge" of the quest to put American astronauts back into space aboard American rockets delivered progress reports and spelled out future mission milestones Wednesday. But the conversation sputtered when the questions turned to money in the tight federal budget environment.

 

NASA commercial crew program managers appeared on a panel at Kennedy Space Center Wednesday with representatives of Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada and SpaceX. All four companies have received commercial crew development funding from NASA in recent years, but Blue Origin was not one of the three funded in the latest round in August 2012. It is continuing to develop commercial rockets, however.

 

NASA commercial crew program manager Ed Mango said NASA will release requests for company proposals on the next phase of the program as soon as next week. It hopes to award contracts in May of 2014 for final development of the systems that it hopes will be transporting astronauts to the International Space Station by late 2015 or early 2016.

 

When asked by a reporter, NASA managers declined to say what percentage of the money spent on commercial crew development has been put up so far by NASA versus what percentage the companies have put up -- the so-called "skin in the game" NASA said was essential for them to compete. The companies' investment is proprietary to them, NASA Commercial Spaceflight Development Director Phil McAlister said, although he said "all of them are (contributing) in a pretty substantial fashion." McAlister acknowledged that NASA administrators are nervously watching the current budget debate shape up in Washington, but he had no estimate when President Obama would release his budget proposal for 2014.

 

McAlister's resistance to spelling out the government-company split was an answer to part 1 of a two-part question. Part 2 went to the company executives, specifically whether they are prepared to make up the difference if Congress cuts the approximately $850 million budgeted for commercial space this year. "You'd want to have a look at the market" at that point, said John Mulholland, Boeing vice president.

 

Work to develop commercial spacecraft will continue, the executives agreed. But it will be stretched out. And that stretching will limit utilization of the space station taxpayers have already spent $100 billion to build. It will also require America to spend millions -- $63 million currently -- for each seat it buys on a Russian rocket to the station.

 

Mango stressed that the program to develop commercial space taxis is "a national effort" with 63 companies involved in 26 states. It's not a Florida-Texas-California project, he said. He also said NASA will be "encouraging its industry partners to propose variances to NASA's technical requirements" for human spaceflight as the program develops. The goal of the requirements will remain, Mango said, but NASA will be open to varying ways of meeting them.

 

SpaceX plans to launch humans into space in 2015

 

Mark Matthews - Orlando Sentinel

 

A top executive at SpaceX said Wednesday that the California-based rocket company hoped to launch U.S. astronauts into orbit as early as 2015 — with the twist that these space-farers would be SpaceX employees and not NASA personnel.

 

The goal was announced during a NASA news conference held at Kennedy Space Center intended to broadly update the public on the agency's efforts to use commercial companies to ferry its astronauts to the International Space Station.

 

But the pronouncement by ex-NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman — now a project manager with SpaceX — stole the show, especially because SpaceX made history last year by becoming the first commercial company to blast an unmanned spacecraft to the station and return it safely to Earth.

 

"We are not selling tickets. Don't call our toll-free number," joked Reisman, who said the test flight would be part of the company's effort to convince NASA that its Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules are safe enough to carry NASA crews.

 

He said the company, founded by Internet tycoon Elon Musk, had just begin "internal discussions" on whom SpaceX would send on the mission — and deflected questions about whether he would be onboard.

 

"I did not come to SpaceX specifically … with the intent of going back to space," said Reisman, a veteran of NASA station and space-shuttle missions.

 

But he said that no matter who flew for SpaceX, he would help ensure it was safe.

 

"What's important to me is that I can look myself in the mirror … [and say] that the risk is acceptable for me to fly," he said.

 

The 2015 demonstration flight by SpaceX — along with a similar mission planned by Boeing in 2016 for its new capsule — are being encouraged by NASA as a precursor to launching agency astronauts.

 

"We want to know when you [commercial companies] are ready to fly your crew at your risk," said Ed Mango, manager of NASA's commercial-crew program.

 

SpaceX documents filed with NASA indicate that the company's first manned mission would be an "orbital-demonstration flight" that would stay in space at least three days. It would not dock with the space station.

 

NASA has had to hire commercial-rocket companies for transportation because of years of stop-and-start space policy.

 

When NASA retired the shuttle in 2011, it had no homegrown, human-rated spacecraft to replace it. So the agency has relied on Russia to ferry astronauts to and from the station — an arrangement costing the U.S. roughly $1.5 billion during five years.

 

To fix that situation, NASA began a "space taxi" program that aimed to put NASA astronauts on commercial rockets by the end of the decade.

 

The effort is a continuation of an earlier NASA program to help commercial companies develop rockets and capsules to ferry cargo to the station. SpaceX began doing that work last year, including an October flight that delivered 882 pounds of supplies to the orbiting observatory; another cargo mission is scheduled for March, according to a NASA launch manifest.

 

But the October mission was not flawless. One of the rocket's nine engines failed about 79 seconds after takeoff — though the Dragon capsule was still able to make it to the station.

 

Still, a joint investigative team of NASA and SpaceX experts was formed to look into it. Reisman said Wednesday that the team had found the problem's root cause, presented that data to top NASA officials and would make the information public soon.

 

U.S. spaceship ventures plan to send test pilots into orbit as early as 2015

 

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log

 

Americans could be flying into orbit on U.S.-built spaceships again as early as 2015 — but the first fliers won't be NASA astronauts or millionaire space tourists. Instead, they'll be commercial test pilots, employed by the Boeing Co., Sierra Nevada Corp., SpaceX or maybe even a dark-horse company like Blue Origin, the venture funded by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos.

 

Those four companies provided updates on their efforts to build new spaceships capable of carrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station during a Wednesday news briefing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. One of the companies, Blue Origin, is wrapping up its work for NASA and is no longer receiving money through the Commercial Crew Program, or CCP. But SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada are splitting more than $1 billion that's to be paid out through 2014.

 

NASA's manager for the Commercial Crew Program, Ed Mango, said the agency and its commercial partners are already talking about "Phase 2" for the program. The certification requirements and timetable for Phase 2 are expected to be set this year, with contracts awarded by May 2014, Mango said. "We believe that there'll be more than one, probably two, three, maybe others, that will be ready to compete for Phase 2," he said.

 

That phase would move the program forward to 2017, by which time NASA expects to be flying its astronauts on U.S. launch vehicles for the first time since the shuttle fleet was retired in 2011. In the meantime, NASA will be paying the Russians more than $60 million per seat for round trips to the space station.

 

"Our target was to repatriate that industry back to the United States, and that's what we're doing," said Mark Sirangelo, chairman of SNC Space Systems at Sierra Nevada.

 

Here's how the companies' plans are shaping up:

 

SpaceX: Former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman, SpaceX's commercial crew project manager, said his company is working toward a launch pad abort test by the end of the year at Kennedy Space Center. An in-flight test that would demonstrate the ability to abort a launch safely during ascent, "at the worst possible moment," is planned for April 2014, he said. If SpaceX sticks to its schedule, it would use its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule for a manned test flight in mid-2015, and would send test pilots to the space station by the end of 2015. "We're not selling tickets. Don't call our toll-free number," Reisman joked.

 

Sierra Nevada Corp.: Sirangelo said his company was planning to drop its Dream Chaser mini-shuttle from a carrier airplane for its first autonomous, free-flying glide test in the first quarter of this year. That would be followed by a series of autonomous and crewed aerodynamic test flights, similar to the tests conducted by NASA using the prototype shuttle Enterprise in the late 1970s. Then Sierra Nevada's team would launch the Dream Chaser into space — first on suborbital test flights, and eventually into orbit. Last year, the company said manned orbital flights could begin in 2016.

 

The Boeing Co.: John Mulholland, vice president and program manager for Boeing's commercial crew program, said his company proposed conducting a three-day orbital spaceflight with a Boeing crew in 2016. The head of Boeing's flight test program is former NASA astronaut Chris Ferguson, who commanded Atlantis' crew during the final flight of the shuttle program. "He is defining crew requirements," Mulholland said. Before the test pilots fly, Boeing will conduct an unmanned orbital trial of its CST-100 space capsule, plus an altitude abort test.

 

Blue Origin: The company that Bezos founded in 2000 is not receiving NASA funding during the current phase of the agency's spaceship development program — but Blue Origin's president and program manager, Rob Meyerson, said he's still doing business with the space agency. "We're working with NASA to extend our Space Act Agreement in an unfunded manner," Meyerson said. The company is continuing to test its BE-3 rocket engine and work on its next prototype propulsion vehicle. Eventually, Blue Origin aims to launch crews on suborbital as well as orbital spaceflights.

 

The plans for future flights are dependent on continued NASA support — and Phil McAlister, NASA's commercial spaceflight development director, acknowledged that "the budget is going to be an extremely challenging topic."

 

If NASA's funding is reduced, Reisman said his company would continue to move toward manned flights, but at a slower pace. "Human spaceflight is our reason for being. We are in this for the long haul," Reisman said. "There will be impacts to cost and schedule, should funding dry up. But we're going to get there eventually."

 

NASA, partners move toward return to manned spaceflight

 

Melonie Holt - WFTV TV (Orlando)

 

The four companies developing the next generation of spacecraft said they're reaching some major milestones and some of the credit goes to the groundwork already laid by NASA.

 

WFTV was at the Kennedy Space Center Wednesday afternoon as members of NASA's commercial crew program met to discuss their singular mission: U.S. commercial crew space transportation.

 

"Human space flight is not dead in America. There are at least four companies represented here that are working very hard to make that happen in partnership with NASA," said Mark Sirangelo of the Sierra Nevada Corporation.

 

NASA has already invested $1.5 billion in its commercial crew program, and its partners Blue Origin, the Boeing Company, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and SpaceX.

 

In 2012, SpaceX flew two cargo missions to the International Space Station. It hopes to fly a test crew to the ISS by 2015.

 

"The U.S. no longer has the capability to launch people into space and that's something we're not happy about," said Garrett Reisman of Space Exploration Technologies.

 

NASA's goal is a return to operational flights by 2017 and its commercial partners are reaching for some major milestones.

 

Blue Origin has already flight-tested a propulsion module. Boeing is entering its final design phase. And Sierra Nevada is about ready to begin it's free-flight test of the Dream Chaser.

 

"We are moving forward very rapidly and I think it's a testament to where we are with the program," said Sirangelo

 

Each of the companies in the commercial crew program will have to complete a  certification process before they're allowed to shuttle astronauts.

 

Commercial spaceflight companies lay out 2013 plans

 

Zach Rosenberg - FlightInternational.com

 

Representatives from Boeing, Sierra Nevada, Blue Origin and SpaceX updated the status of their current programmes and laid out plans for 2013 at a 9 January NASA press conference. Three of the companies - Boeing, Sierra Nevada and SpaceX - are participating in what is effectively the third round of CCDev, called commercial crew integrated capability (CCiCap), while Blue Origin is wrapping up its involvement with CCDev.

 

The four companies have major technical and programmatic milestones planned in 2013. Blue Origin has imminent plans to test its first full BE-3 engine in February, while Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser will begin its first crewed drop tests in the fourth calendar quarter of the year.

 

"In the next couple of weeks we'll be releasing our first flight software configuration," says John Mulholland, programme manager of Boeing's CST-100 capsule, "and the team is in the lab now running tests on that. It looks like it's running very well."

 

SpaceX, the only commercial entity to enter space thus far, is planning two pad abort tests in the latter half of 2013. The first will test the SuperDraco escape motors from a rocket on the launch pad, while the second will test the same systems during a launch at maximum aerodynamic pressure, or Max-Q.

 

The three CCiCap companies have funded SAAs scheduled to last through May, 2014, allowing NASA to fund development of their respective projects. Upon conclusion of CCiCap, NASA will invite competitive bids to provide operational crewed flights to the International Space Station (ISS).

 

The 4 Spaceships Vying to Send Crews to the ISS

 

Michael Belfiore - Popular Mechanics

 

In a press conference today, NASA and four private companies briefed the press on their progress in developing private vehicles to send crews to the International Space Station. To date, NASA has spent $1.5 billion fostering the development of the new vehicles, and plans to up the ante in the next couple of years.

 

Blue Origin

 

The secretive private space program of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos divulged perhaps the most details of its progress to date. Blue Origin president Rob Meyerson boasted that his was the only company of the four to conduct a flight demonstration for NASA's Commercial Crew Development program (CCDev). While that is technically true, it ignores SpaceX's recent flights to the International Space Station with a cargo version of its planned crew vehicle.

 

Nevertheless, Meyerson outlined the 2012 milestones in Blue Origin's attempt to build suborbital vertical-takeoff/vertical-landing rockets with the goal of scaling up to orbital flight and eventually reaching the International Space Station.

 

In a flight test at Blue Origin's West Texas launch facility in 2012, the company tried out the launch-abort system. A full-scale model of the company's planned crew capsule blasted off, deployed parachutes, and drifted to a gentle touchdown within 7 feet of its planned target, Meyerson said. He compared the launch-abort system to the airbags in a car, saying that the reusable capsule would be able to fly multiple times with no maintenance to the safety system, as long as no mishap required them to be used.

 

Perhaps more impressive was Blue Origin's test of a new hydrogen/liquid-oxygen-powered rocket engine with 100,000 pounds of thrust. Blue Origin designed the engine, called the BE-3, for the company's planned orbital rocket and tested it at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi in October. The engine, along with a Blue Origin–designed rocket and so-called biconic capsule, which uses its shape to provide some lift on reentry, is designed to be fully reusable.

 

It's clear that Blue Origin is serious about reaching orbit, using its own money if necessary. Meyerson said that the NASA seed money the company received has sped its development process, but he also made it clear that Blue Origin would continue no matter what, with the help of Bezos's private fortune.

 

Boeing

 

The aerospace giant is busy building a capsule called the CST-100. Boeing's John Mulholland, Commercial Programs Space Exploration vice president and program manager, said Wednesday that the company has completed a series of parachute drop tests of a full-scale space capsule mockup, with a landing system that consists of parachutes and airbags. The team building the capsule also tested potential control and display layouts over the course of three days with NASA astronauts, conducted simulated micrometeoroid-impact tests, and tested automated rendezvous and docking software.

 

However, while Boeing seems to have the financial and technical wherewithal to accomplish the ISS mission, at least one Boeing executive has stated that Boeing's commitment to building the ship is limited. For Boeing execs to justify completing the ship, they will have to see NASA commit not only to funding CST-100's development, but also to actually using it to reach the space station.

 

Sierra Nevada Corporation

 

Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser spacecraft is the only one of the bunch with wings, which are incorporated into the vehicle in what's called a lifting-body configuration. The ship is designed to return to Earth on a runway, like the space shuttle did.

 

SNC's main achievement to date is construction of a full-size engineering test article. The mockup underwent unmanned drop tests from a helicopter near the company's headquarters in Colorado in 2013. Head of space systems Mark Sirangelo said Sierra Nevada also completed a docking simulator and conducted rocket-engine tests for the Dream Chaser's on-orbit maneuvering system. The company plans an autonomous landing test sometime in 2013.

 

SpaceX

 

SpaceX is the clear frontrunner in the race: It's the only contender that has reached the International Space Station. In two flights so far, the SpaceX Dragon has successfully docked with the station and delivered cargo.

 

SpaceX's Garrett Reisman said that his company spent the NASA seed money it has received thus far to determine what the engineers must do to let the Dragon cargo capsule carry humans, which has been SpaceX's goal from the outset.

 

Although the Dragon has carried only cargo to the ISS so far, the capsule already has windows. And like Boeing, SpaceX has been working on cabin layouts with the help of NASA astronauts (Reisman himself is a former astronaut). The main order of business, then, is an escape system for the crew in case something were to go wrong during a launch. The company tested a new engine, called the Super Draco, for that purpose in 2012. The crew-rated Dragon will use eight Super Dracos with 17,000 pounds of thrust each to escape from a launch gone awry.

 

In 2013, SpaceX plans to launch a Dragon from the Kennedy Space Center to test the launch-abort system, building up to an in-flight abort test in 2014 in which the capsule will blast away from a rocket that is already in the air.

 

Reisman said SpaceX was on track to send its first crew to the International Space Station by the end of 2015.

 

NASA Deal May Put Inflatable Private Module on Space Station

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

NASA and Bigelow Aerospace have reached an agreement that could pave the way for attaching a Bigelow-built inflatable space habitat to the International Space Station, a NASA spokesman said.

 

The $17.8 million contract was signed in late December, NASA spokesman Trent Perrotto told Space News Monday. Perrotto declined to provide other terms of the agreement, except to say that it centers around the Bigelow Expanded Aerospace Module (BEAM). He said a formal announcement is in the works.

 

That inflatable space habitat, which is similar to the Genesis-model prototypes Bigelow launched in 2006 and 2007, could be used for extra storage at the space station and provide flight data on the on-orbit durability of Bigelow's inflatable modules compared to the outpost's existing metallic modules.

 

Bigelow and NASA have been discussing an inflatable addition to the space station for years.

 

The deal signed in December follows a nonpaying NASA contract Bigelow got in 2011, under which the North Las Vegas, Nev., company worked up a list of procedures and protocols for adding BEAM to the space station. Bigelow got that contract, which did not call for any flight hardware, in response to a 2010 NASA Broad Agency Announcement seeking ideas for support equipment and services meant to help the U.S. portion of the International Space Station live up to its billing as a national laboratory.

 

Last March, NASA spokesman Josh Buck said the agency would tap one of its Commercial Resupply Services contractors, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) or Orbital Sciences Corp., to get BEAM to the space station.

 

SpaceX and Orbital are under contract for space station cargo deliveries through 2016. So far, only SpaceX has flown to the station. The company, which flies Dragon cargo capsules atop Falcon 9 rockets, completed its first contracted run in October. Orbital, which is developing a cargo freighter called Cygnus for launch aboard its new Antares rocket, is now scheduled to launch a demonstration cargo run in February from NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia.

 

SpaceX and Orbital both signed Commercial Resupply Services contracts in 2008. SpaceX's $1.6 billion resupply pact calls for 12 flights. Orbital's $1.9 billion deal is for eight flights.

 

NASA To Review SLS Core Stage, Orion Weight Issues

 

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aerospace Daily

 

An integrated systems definition review of NASA's three human exploration elements — launcher, capsule and ground systems — kicks off next week, with major items of discussion to include the schedule for developing the Space Launch System (SLS) core stage and the Orion crew capsule's weight.

 

The three-day review at Johnson Space Center will build on previous design work on the SLS, Orion and modifications at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., to make sure all of the requirements and interface control documents match up.

 

The SLS core stage is the "critical path" to the first flight test of an unmanned Orion multipurpose crew vehicle atop an early variant of the SLS in 2017, according to Dan Dumbacher, deputy associate administrator for exploration systems, and the Orion capsule weighs about 4,000 lb. more than its recovery parachutes can handle. Both issues are tractable, he says.

 

"Just before the holidays they completed the preliminary design review [PDR] on the core stage," he said Jan. 7. "Doing the review, we actually came through pretty clean, so we're gaining some confidence. Obviously, we have hardware in front of us [and] Mother Nature has a wonderful way of keeping us all humble."

 

'Acceptable risk'

 

The PDR determined the big rocket's main stage can meet requirements "within acceptable risk," and can be integrated with the surplus RS-25D space shuttle main engines that will power it for the first few flights. Combined with the solid-fuel, shuttle-derived boosters and other planned launch hardware, the initial SLS variant has enough extra capability to handle the overweight Orion capsule.

 

Specifications call for the Orion capsule and its service module to weigh 73,500 lb. at liftoff. Lately the capsule has been running "something like 4,000" lb. over its allotted weight, Dumbacher says. The service module is about 1,200 lb. too heavy.

 

While the baseline SLS probably can handle the extra weight, the parachutes that will bring the capsule back to a water landing after re-entry cannot, Dumbacher says. Going into the integrated review, design teams have been wringing out the extra weight on the capsule, he says, and an upcoming flight test atop a Delta IV heavy may allow engineers to cut their margins to save more weight.

 

Scheduled for September 2014, the flight test will take an Orion test article through a highly elliptical orbital trajectory designed to bring it back into the atmosphere at about 80% of the velocity it would see returning from the Moon or beyond.

 

"That is enough to start to tell us what we need to do from a heat-shield standpoint, and where we can reduce weight, or where we might have to add weight, depending upon what we learn," Dumbacher says, adding that the flight test also will help designers decide whether they can take weight out of the capsule structure.

 

A press conference is scheduled during the Jan. 16 session of the integrated review to announce the formal agreement of the European Space Agency's (ESA) participation in developing the Orion service module, using propulsion-system hardware from ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle.

 

"We're somewhere between systems definition review level and PDR level on the maturity of that service module design from ESA," Dumbacher says. "There are still technical and programmatic issues and questions that have to be worked. We are not going to be able to lay out all the nuts and bolts and all the detailed designs, nor are we going to be able to lay out all the specific impacts to all the suppliers, down to the second, third and fourth tier. We still have work to do on it."

 

AXE Company Wants to Launch 22 People Into Space

 

Space.com

 

The men's personal care product company AXE has teamed up with famed moonwalker Buzz Aldrin to send 22 people into space, and make sure they smell nice doing it.

 

The company Wednesday kicked off its new AXE Apollo Space Academy, an online contest that promises to send 22 winners to the edge of space and back aboard a private spaceship. The winning space travelers will launch aboard a suborbital Lynx space plane built by the U.S. company XCOR Aerospace and operated by the tourism firm Space Expedition Curacao, AXE officials said.

 

"Space travel for everyone is the next frontier in the human experience," Buzz Aldrin, who became the second person ever to walk on the moon during NASA's 1969 Apollo 11 mission in 1969, said in a statement. "I'm thrilled that AXE is giving the young people of today such an extraordinary opportunity to experience some of what I've encountered in space."

 

The contest is open to men and women in more than 60 countries who sign up on the AXE Apollo Space Academy website (AXEApollo.com) and write about why they should be chosen to fly in space, while others will vote on the entries. The deadline to enter is Feb. 3.

 

The 22 winners will be selected during the AXE Global Space Camp in Orlando, Fla., which will feature competitive "space-simulation challenges," AXE officials said.

 

Winning space travelers will fly, one at a time, aboard Lynx space planes once Space Expedition Curacao begins operational flights. The reusable space planes are designed to fly two people — one pilot and a passenger — to an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers) during suborbital flights. The rocket plane is built to take off and land horizontally on a runway.

 

Space Expedition Curacao will oversee commercial Lynx flights from the Caribbean island of Curacao. Tickets for a flight are set at $95,000.

 

XCOR Aerospace is expected to begin the first test flights of a high-altitude Lynx design sometime later this year. The first passenger flights could begin in 2014.

 

AXE's deodorant body sprays are apparently known as Lynx in some parts of the world, so booking seats on a space plane with the same name was no giant leap, company officials explained.

 

"The AXE Apollo launch is the biggest and most ambitious in the AXE brand's 30-year history," AXE's global vice president Tomas Marcenaro said. "For the first time, we're simultaneously launching one global competition in over 60 countries offering millions of people the opportunity to win the most epic prize on Earth. A trip to space — yes, actual space."

 

Astronaut urges Barrington students to aim for stars

 

Eric Peterson - Associated Press

 

The space shuttle may be gone, but American children need not give up their dreams of becoming astronauts.

 

That was the message Shannon Walker of NASA shared Wednesday morning with students at St. Anne School in Barrington, Illinois.

 

Walker spent six months on the International Space Station in 2010 and hopes to use the years of training she underwent by going back into space someday.

 

"I actually flew to the space station in a Russian rocket," she told students. "I had to learn the Russian language first before I could do my training in Russian."

 

Despite that, and the fact that her liftoff and return occurred in Kazakhstan, Walker's rocket crew consisted of two Americans and one Russian cosmonaut.

 

Students were full of questions about all aspects of Walker's mission — the main one being what they could do to have a similar experience.

 

"NASA takes all kinds of people," she told them. "The most important thing is you have to do well in school. So study hard if you want to be at NASA."

 

Walker became a physicist to make herself a candidate for space missions. But once she was chosen to go to the space station, she had to learn a lot more that had nothing to do with her physics degrees.

 

Apart from the physical training to prepare herself for the G-forces and weightlessness of space travel, she had to learn basic survival skills as well as a moderate level of dental and medical know-how to handle unforeseen emergencies.

 

And then there was the Russian.

 

"Russian was very hard for me," she said. "I don't have a gift for languages."

 

She strongly suggested that the students start studying any language they're interested in while they're still children — not well into adulthood as she did with Russian.

 

Apart from the scientific missions that were the basis of her stint on the space station, students most wanted to know about the challenges of everyday life in space.

 

Despite the conventions of science fiction — which often make space travel look like flying on a plane — Walker said weightlessness and other inconveniences will probably always be a part of the experience.

 

But flying through rooms like Superman also provides a great deal of the fun of the experience, she added.

 

Most of the challenge she felt was in just getting through the preparation training, Walker said. But she did share several ways in which living in space was significantly different from living on Earth.

 

Exercise is even more essential during six months on a space station to keep one's bones and muscle healthy. But the sweating that inevitably occurs can't be overcome with a shower as there is no running water in space.

 

Baby wipes are mostly used to clean the skin, while hair is washed with very small amounts of water and shampoo, she said.

 

The toilets on the space station also require the use of gentle fans and a great amount of care.

 

"Never underestimate how useful gravity is in going to the bathroom," she joked.

 

As much as she enjoyed her time in space, what she most looked forward to back on Earth was a shower and food that hadn't been dehydrated.

 

It took her inner ear and sense of balance a little while to readjust to gravity, and her muscles were sore for awhile from the impact of the ground landing in Kazakhstan.

 

Still, she's excited to continue being a part of the evolution of space exploration. She hopes that during her career expeditions might resume to the moon as a steppingstone for more distant Mars missions.

 

Two parent volunteers at St. Anne School — Lisa Sadowski and Laura Lambertsen — applied to NASA for the visit. They also arranged for her to visit Station Middle School in Barrington Unit District 220 on Thursday.

 

Palazzo to remain space subcommittee chair; Shelby to be top Republican in Senate Appropriations

 

Jeff Foust - SpacePolitics.com

 

Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS) will return as chairman of the space and aeronautics subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, the full committee announced Tuesday. Palazzo chaired the subcommittee in the last Congress as well. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) will serve as the vice-chair of the subcommittee.

 

On the full committee, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who lost out on the committee chairmanship to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), will serve as vice-chairman. Democrats have not announced their leadership selections beyond Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), who will return as ranking member of the full committee. Rep. Jerry Costello (D-IL), who was the top Democrat on the space subcommittee in the last Congress, has retired.

 

In the Senate, it appears that another senator with an interest in space issues will take a leadership position on the Senate Appropriations Committee. Although there's been no formal announcement by the committee, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) announced via Twitter several days ago he will be the ranking member of the full committee:

 

@SenShelbyPress I'm honored to be chosen as ranking member of @SenateApprops & look forward to working w/ @SenatorBarb to address #fiscal challenges ahead.

 

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) has already been picked as the chairwoman of the full committee, succeeding the late Daniel Inouye last month. Both Mikulski and Shelby have shown an interest in space issues, and also have a record of working together despite their different political affiliations: Shelby even helped support a fundraiser for Mikulski in Huntsville in 2009.

 

Russian cosmonauts tighten belts

Are five times poorer than Western counterparts and even Russian civil aviation pilots

 

Natalia Zhuravleva - Russia & India Report

 

The Russian government recently approved salaries for the country's cosmonauts. Depending on their position and "status," they can expect to receive between 61,000 - 88,000 rubles ($2,000-2,900) per month, plus a few perks. Not only do their American counterparts earn more, but so do even Russian civil aviation pilots.

 

The government has approved position-dependent pay packages for Russia's cosmonauts, as well as bonuses for tenure and qualifications. A corresponding resolution was drawn up by the Cabinet of Ministers and added to the corpus of federal regulatory and administrative acts.

 

In accordance with the new amendments to the regulation on cosmonauts' remuneration (approved May 17, 1993), the basic salary is 60,900 rubles for short-listed candidates, 63,800 rubles for trained cosmonauts, and 88,450 rubles for cosmonaut instructors. After a cosmonaut's first trip into space, the salary rises to 69,600 rubles.

 

Alexei Krasnov, head of the manned spaceflight program at Roscosmos, says that, in Soviet times, cosmonauts were financially much better off than ordinary citizens. They received an apartment, a Volga car, and other goodies from the state. Everything was provided for the country's space heroes, right down to bed linen, suits, coats, and even socks.

 

Unfavorable comparison

 

Today, Russian cosmonauts find themselves less catered to than, say, Russian airline pilots for commercial international routes. They are also an order of magnitude worse off than their foreign counterparts.

 

U.S. astronauts, for example, receive a fixed salary (regardless of whether they operate on Earth or in space) of $120,000-130,000 a year. The official monthly salary of NASA employees is $10,800.

 

Russian cosmonauts only receive $130,000-150,000 if they spend six months on the International Space Station (ISS), said Vladimir Solovyov, head of the Russian segment of the ISS mission.

 

The monthly income of the world's first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, in 1962 amounted to $575.10 a month (the 1962 exchange rate was 90 cents to the ruble). Meanwhile, the wage of moonwalker Neil Armstrong in 1969 came to $1,666.

 

While in those days the income of an American astronaut was 2.8 times more than the salary of a Soviet cosmonaut, today that gap has almost doubled.

 

Astronauts of the European Space Agency (ESA) earn 4,500-5,100 euros ($5,900-6,700) a month in their first year and 5,600-6,300 euros a month in subsequent years, rising to 6,500-7,300 euros a month after their first flight into space.

 

Alexei Leonov, a pilot, cosmonaut and Hero of the Soviet Union, said this on the matter: "Russian cosmonauts cannot boast of a big salary; and some of them, even those awarded the title 'Hero of Russia,' live with their families and children for many years in one-room apartments or factory hostels."

 

In the opinion of Sergei Krikalev, head of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, Russian cosmonauts should receive a decent wage – above both the national and the industry average. However, money should not be the primary motivator for those seeking to enter the profession.

 

"Cosmonauts' remuneration should be pegged to the actual work they perform, as well as to the degree of risk involved. There should be no illusion that cosmonauts can just rest on their laurels and enjoy privileges. I know some examples of that," Krikalev said in an interview with RIA Novosti.

 

Worth the same as a train driver

 

Vyacheslav Rodin, deputy director of the Space Research Institute of Russia, advises against comparing the salaries of Russian space explorers with their foreign counterparts.

 

"The salaries of Russian cosmonauts are not overly high – nothing exorbitant, of course. They don't sit in meetings stroking a lap-dog, or anything like that; but neither can you describe them as poor," he told Vzglyad.

 

"Our cosmonauts do OK. They are decent, humble guys. I certainly wouldn't compare their salaries to those of astronauts from other countries," said Rodin.

 

Still, Yuri Karash, a member of the Russian Tsiolkovsky Academy of Cosmonautics, believes that the cosmonaut profession in Russia has been debased to the level of pilot, at best: "These days, pilots earn more than astronauts. The captain of an A320 liner can get $11,000-12,000, or up to 400,000 rubles per month, while a cosmonaut receives no more than 88,000 rubles."

 

"I recently spoke with a good cosmonaut who is preparing to fly into space. He will receive $90,000 for the trip. Sounds a lot, you might say – but that won't buy even a one-room apartment in Moscow. More significantly, he's spent 12 years getting ready to fly, during which time his salary has been no more than 60,000 rubles a month," said Karash, concluding that Russian pilots are financially better off than cosmonauts.

 

The article is abridged and first published in Russian in the Vzglyad

 

Clark Creek students video conference with NASA

 

Megan Thornton - Cherokee Tribune (Georgia)

 

Students at Clark Creek Elementary School STEM Academy may view exploring outer space with NASA as a career that's no longer out of reach after experiencing a rare opportunity to video conference with members of Mission Control, the people in charge of operations for the International Space Station.

 

With questions written on note cards in hand, about 30 of Dr. Laura Lamar's fifth-grade students eagerly anticipated the arrival of Dr. Patricia Moore, NASA Digital Learning Network specialist, who video conferenced with them early Tuesday afternoon from Johnson Space Center in Houston.

 

From her location at the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, Moore gave students an overview of the Johnson Space Center, Mission Control and updates on what's going on at the International Space Station, which is orbiting the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour about 220 miles above the planet with six astronauts on board.

 

"At Johnson Space Center, we focus on human space exploration and astronaut training," Moore told the students.

 

During a 30-minute informational session, Moore told students 13,000 people work at Johnson Space Center, with only a few hundred who are astronauts. She said there are teachers (like herself), media representatives, doctors, lawyers and all kinds of professions that work at NASA.

 

"Only about 60 of (the 100 astronauts) are active astronauts that are eligible to go in space," Moore said. "There are lots of careers at the Johnson Space Center that are unrelated to being an astronaut."

 

She also showed live views of astronauts working in the training pools at Johnson Space Center that are used to imitate the zero-gravity feeling in space as well as a live view of the International Space Station and Mission Control.

 

"The space station is actually bigger than a football field and is about the volume of a five-bedroom home and uses about the same amount of power and electricity you would use in your house," Moore said, adding that the power is generated through solar panels attached to the space station, which was built about 12 years ago.

 

Moore also shared plans NASA has for the future, including a new rocketship the organization is building to send astronauts into space and a new spaceship called Orion that looks similar to the Apollo 11, which was used in the first moon landing in 1969.

 

"It's bigger, it's better, it's got newer technology and can fit more people," she said.

 

She said the first unmanned test of the spaceship is planned for 2015.

 

"The spaceship may be used to go to the moon, Mars or another asteroid," she said. "Between 2015 and 2017, we'll hopefully have a spaceship that's ready to go into space. Right now, our goal for NASA is to look beyond Earth and look for places to go."

 

Students also learned about the dehydrated food that astronauts eat and how microgravity affects everything astronauts experience and do in space.

 

Later, students had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Tara Ruttley, an associate program scientist for the International Space Station, and Dan Huot, a NASA public affairs officer.

 

Student Sebastian Vizuete asked what kinds of science experiments are performed in space.

 

Ruttley said any kind of experiment that can be done on Earth can be done in space — with much more interesting results.

 

"It's a lot more fun than what I did as a student in my science fair days," Ruttley said. "The No. 1 coolest thing I think they work on is the human research. They test their own bodies for changes that occur in microgravity."

 

"What they're finding is that our bones start to get weaker, our muscles start to shrink, our heart changes size because it's pumping fluids differently … any system in the human body you can think of, they're doing an experiment to figure out what's going on with the changes in space," Ruttley said

 

Ruttley said they are also doing experiments in physics, biology and just about every scientific or engineering discipline.

 

Student Sequoyah Jackson asked how many planets have been recently discovered and where they are located.

 

Ruttley said NASA's Kepler Telescope has discovered 461 potential new planet candidates.

 

"Of all of those, four of those are in what's called the 'habitable zone' and have the potential to have water on the surface," Ruttley said.

 

Lamar said she thought the students really enjoyed the experience and were able to bring thoughtful questions related to their recently-completed biology unit.

 

She said her other five science classes will be able to experience the same video conference in coming weeks.

 

"I think they really liked the question-answer part," Lamar said. "The kids get excited. All of those experiments they're doing now in outer space relate to everything we're learning in science."

 

Lamar said she's also in talks with a physics professor at Georgia Tech about doing a hands-on experiment using the video conferencing system.

 

"(The scientists) serve as live role models instead of just seeing their teachers all the time," Lamar said. "Some of these kids now think, 'I want to do what they're doing and school is important to get me there.' That makes my job easier, but I have high expectations. I tell them, 'if you want to do that, you're going to get there by being engaged with your education.'"

 

END