Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Human Spaceflight News

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: March 26, 2013 6:08:17 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - March 26, 2013 and JSC Today

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            Protect NASA's Data Today
2.            This Week at Starport -- Order Your Innovation Day T-Shirt
3.            Smithsonian's 'Aerial America' to Fly Over JSC Today
4.            Today: Self-Injury Awareness
5.            Human System Integration ERG Meeting Today
6.            JSC Praise and Worship Club Meeting
7.            Starport's Sunrise Spinning -- This Sunday
8.            Beginners Ballroom Dance -- March Discount Ends Tomorrow
9.            JSC Knowledge Online New Release
10.          Applications Being Accepted for Scholarship
11.          Pre-Travel to Russia Live Class
12.          Space Available - APPEL - Risk Management II
13.          Personal Protective and Life Saving Equipment ViTS: April 12
14.          System Safety Seminar ViTS: April 26, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. -- Building 17, Room 2026
15.          RLLS Translation, Telecon, Flight Arrival Departure Request WebEx Training
________________________________________     NASA FACT
" On March 16, the Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft brought home Expedition 34 Commander Kevin Ford of NASA, Soyuz Commander Oleg Novitskiy and Flight Engineer Evgeny Tarelkin to a landing northeast of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, following a one-day delay due to inclement weather in the area."
________________________________________
1.            Protect NASA's Data Today
Cyber security threats are becoming more sophisticated each day. E-giants like Apple, Facebook and even Google, via Google Docs URLs, have succumbed to recent cyber attacks.
Empower yourself with the knowledge on the latest Information Technology (IT) security threats and countermeasures to ensure NASA's mission safety and success. All NASA federal employees, contractors and grantees at JSC and White Sands Test Facility must complete the Security Awareness Training (#ITS-013-001) assigned to your learning plan in SATERN by May 31. Don't wait -- take it TODAY.
NEW employees, contractors and grantees must complete the "Introduction to Information Security for New Employees" training (#ITS-013-002), which will be assigned to their individual learning plans in SATERN.
To access SATERN, click here.
For more information, contact your organization's Organizational Computer Security Official.
Report all IT security breaches to the NASA Security Operations Center at 1-877-NASA-SEC/1-877-627-2732.
JSC IRD Outreach x31081 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/ITSecurity/training/default.aspx

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2.            This Week at Starport -- Order Your Innovation Day T-Shirt
Order your official JSC Innovation Day T-Shirt now! For only $16, you can have a soft keepsake of how you helped define JSC 2.0. The T-shirt will feature last year's award-winning design and can be purchased in red, navy and gray in sizes YM to 3XL.
Order your shirts now through March 31 in the Buildings 3 and 11 Starport Gift Shops, with local pickup on April 19. Or, have your shirts shipped to you by ordering online (delivery charges apply).
Sam's Club will be in the Starport Cafés Thursday and Friday from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. to discuss membership options. Receive a gift card on new memberships or renewals. Cash or check only for membership purchases.
Cyndi Kibby x35352 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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3.            Smithsonian's 'Aerial America' to Fly Over JSC Today
A video crew producing "Aerial America: Texas" for the Smithsonian Channel will be flying a helicopter low over JSC today. No schedule for the flight has been set at this time. The fight is dependent upon weather conditions. The video crew will spend about 45 minutes flying over the center to capture shots of Rocket Park, mission control, the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory and JSC campus.
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111

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4.            Today: Self-Injury Awareness
Did you know that 3 million Americans engage in self-harming behaviors yearly, and that 40 percent of those that self-injure are males? Discover more about what self-injury is and isn't in recognition of National Self-Injury Awareness. Please join Anika Isaac, MS, LPC, LMFT, LCDC, CEAP, NCC, of the JSC Employee Assistance Program, today, March, 26, at 12 noon in the Building 30 Auditorium learn more about Self-Injury Awareness. She will discuss facts of self-injury, how to identify signs of self-harm and offer tools to support those impacted by self-injury.
Event Date: Tuesday, March 26, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Building 30 Auditorium

Add to Calendar

Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Clinical Services Branch x36130

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5.            Human System Integration ERG Meeting Today
Please join us at today's Human Systems Integration Employee Resource Group (ERG) meeting. We will be reviewing the activities that the ERG is currently supporting and discuss elections for new officers. We are actively seeking candidates for the chair, co-chair and secretary positions. ERG officers will meet new people, help shape the JSC HSI ERG direction and have several opportunities to meet with senior management at the Headquarters, center and directorate levels. For additional information, please contact any of the current officers or ask questions at today's meeting. We hope to see you there.
Event Date: Tuesday, March 26, 2013   Event Start Time:11:30 AM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: B1/220

Add to Calendar

Deb Neubek 281-222-3687 https://collaboration.ndc.nasa.gov/iierg/HSI/SitePages/Home.aspx

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6.            JSC Praise and Worship Club Meeting
The JSC Praise and Worship club will meet Wednesday, March 27, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. in Building 29, Room 237 (also known as Sp.ace) to play and sing hymns and contemporary worship songs. Prayer partners will be available for anyone who wants it. Everyone is welcome!
Event Date: Wednesday, March 27, 2013   Event Start Time:11:30 AM   Event End Time:12:15 PM
Event Location: B.29 Room 237

Add to Calendar

Mike FitzPatrick x30758

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7.            Starport's Sunrise Spinning -- This Sunday
Renew your senses and invigorate your mind and body with a 60-minute outdoor Spinning class that will conclude as the sun rises. This motivational endurance ride is great for all levels. Light refreshments will be provided after class. Reserve your spot now; there are a few spots left at the discounted $10 registration fee! Register at the Gilruth Center information desk.
Starport's Sunrise Spinning
o             March 31
o             6 to 7 a.m.
o             Registration fee - $10 per person
For more information about this Spinning class, or for those interested in biking or running in to the Gilruth that morning, please contact Kerri Knotts.
Event Date: Sunday, March 31, 2013   Event Start Time:5:45 AM   Event End Time:7:15 AM
Event Location: Gilruth Live Oak Pavillion

Add to Calendar

Steve Schade x30317 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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8.            Beginners Ballroom Dance -- March Discount Ends Tomorrow
Take advantage of a great discount on one of our most popular programs:
Beginners Ballroom Dance
This eight-week class introduces you to the various types of ballroom dance. Students will learn the secrets of a good lead and following, as well as the ability to identify the beat of the music. This class is easy, and we have fun as we learn. JSC friends and family are welcome.
Discounted registration:
o             $90 per couple (ends tomorrow, March 27)
Regular registration:
o             $110 per couple (March 28 to April 2)
Two class sessions available:
o             Tuesdays from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. -- Starting April 2
o             Thursdays from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. -- Starting April 4
All classes are taught in the Gilruth Center dance studio.
To register or for additional information, please contact the Gilruth Center information desk: 281-483-0304
Shericka Phillips x30304 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/RecreationClasses/RecreationProgram...

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9.            JSC Knowledge Online New Release
Features of the JSC Knowledge Online (JKO) site are constantly being improved as the experiences of engineers, leaders and entire programs are captured and reported for JSC users. The "Leadership and Inspiration," "Storytelling" and "Operational Excellence Program" are all focuses for improved searching and ease of use.
New to JKO is a collection of "Leadership and Inspiration" videos. Pete Hasbrook, Jim McIngvale and Walter Ugalde are among the many presenters sharing their experiences on human sustainability, multi-physics simulations, nuclear safety and systems engineering for Morpheus.
Let us know what you think! We'd love to hear your suggestions. Just select one of the user feedback links available from the "Shuttle Knowledge Console," "Taxonomy" or "Case Studies" tabs to let us know. Feedback can be anonymous, or you are welcome to leave your information for a prompt response.
Brent J. Fontenot x36456 https://knowledge.jsc.nasa.gov/index.cfm

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10.          Applications Being Accepted for Scholarship
The NASA College Scholarship Program will award multiple scholarships agencywide to qualified dependents of NASA civil servant employees. Scholarship recipients must pursue a course of study leading to an undergraduate degree in science or engineering from an accredited college or university in the United States. Applications are available online.
The application deadline is March 31.
Amanda Gaspard x31387

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11.          Pre-Travel to Russia Live Class
Will you be traveling to Russia on a NASA-sponsored trip soon? Do you know what information you will need to provide to obtain a Russian visa? What other types of clearances are required, and how one gets them? Need to familiarize yourself with the procedures for Russian passport and immigration control, obtaining transportation from the airport to your accommodations, as well as to and from your meetings? Would some tips on Russian etiquette and social or business customs be useful?
For answers to these and other questions, join us at the JSC Language Education Center for the Pre-Travel to Russia Live Class on Friday, April 19. This two-hour class runs from 1 to 3 p.m. in Building 12, Room 158Q. Please register through SATERN. The deadline for registration is April 17. If you have any questions, please submit them to via email. We will respond in 24 hours.
Delila Rollins 281-335-8000 http://www.tti-portal.com

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12.          Space Available - APPEL - Risk Management II
This two-day course builds on the knowledge of NASA's approach to managing risk provided in Risk Management I. It provides an opportunity to evaluate and practice application of Risk Informed Decision Making and Continuous Risk Management in the context of NASA projects and programs.
This course is designed for NASA's technical workforce, including systems engineers and project personnel who seek to develop the competencies required to succeed as a leader of a project team, functional team or small project.
This course is available for self-registration in SATERN until 11:59 p.m. today, and attendance is open to civil servants and contractors.
Dates: Thursday to Friday, April 5 to 6
Location: Building 12, Room 152
Zeeaa Quadri x39723 https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHED...

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13.          Personal Protective and Life Saving Equipment ViTS: April 12
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0067: Personal Protective and Life Saving Equipment
This three-hour course is based on Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) CFR 1926.95 through 1926.107 of the construction industry regulations, Subpart E, Personal Protective and Life Saving Equipment. During the course, the student will become familiar with the 1926.95 through 1926.107 regulations criteria for personal protective requirements in construction and will receive an overview of those topics needed to apply the proper personal protection equipment. There will be a final exam associated with this course, which must be passed with a 70 percent minimum score to receive course credit.
Use this direct link for registration. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Event Date: Friday, April 12, 2013   Event Start Time:9:30 AM   Event End Time:12:30 PM
Event Location: Bldg. 17 Room 2026

Add to Calendar

Shirley Robinson x41284

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14.          System Safety Seminar ViTS: April 26, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. -- Building 17, Room 2026
This seminar serves to provide an overview of system safety origins, definitions, principles and practices. It includes a discussion of NASA requirements for both the engineering and management aspects of system safety and answers the questions: Why do we do system safety? What is system safety? How do we do system safety? What does it mean to me?
Engineering aspects will include a brief discussion of three typically used analytical techniques: Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA); Fault Tree Analysis (FTA); and Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA). This course will not prepare attendees to manage or perform system safety, only to introduce them to the concepts. SATERN registration required. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Polly Caison x41279

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15.          RLLS Translation, Telecon, Flight Arrival Departure Request WebEx Training
TechTrans International will provide 30 minute WebEx training March 27, 28 and 29 for RLLS Portal modules. The following is a summary of the training dates:
Translation - March 27 at 7:30 AM - 4:30 Russia Time and 2 PM CDT
Telecon - March 28 at 7:30 AM - 4:30 Russia Time and 2 PM CDT
Flight Arrival Departure - March 29 at 10 AM and 2 PM CST
o             Locating desired support request module
o             Quick view summary page for support request
o             Create new support request
o             Submittal requirements
o             Submitting on behalf of another individual
o             Adding attachment (agenda, references)
o             Selecting special requirements (export control)
o             Submitting request
o             Status of request records
o             View request records
o             Contacting RLLS support
Please send an email to James.E.Welty@nasa.gov or call 281-335-8565 to sign-up for RLLS Support WebEx training courses. Classes are limited to the first 20 individuals registered.
James welty 281-335-8565 https://www.tti-portal.com

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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:
·         10:10 am Central (11:10 EDT) – E35 C. Hadfield w/Societe Radio-Canada (native language)
·         11 am Central (Noon EDT) – File of Soyuz rocket mating & rollout to pad in Baikonur
·         1 pm Central (2 EDT) – CNN Espanol with Johnson Space Center Director Ellen Ochoa
·         2 pm Central (3 EDT) – Interpreted Replay of Hadfield's interview with Societe Radio-Canada

Human Spaceflight News
Tuesday, March 26, 2013

HEADLINES AND LEADS

SpaceX Dragon cargo ship leaves space station

Marcia Dunn - Associated Press

The Dragon cargo ship has left the International Space Station and is on its way back to Earth. Astronauts released the unmanned cargo ship from the end of the space station's giant robot arm Tuesday morning. The parting occurred about 250 miles over the South Pacific. The privately owned spacecraft will splash down in the Pacific early in the afternoon. It's returning science samples and old space station equipment.

SpaceX capsule headed for return trip to Earth

Irene Klotz - Reuters

A Space Exploration Technologies' cargo ship parked at the International Space Station for three weeks returns to Earth on Tuesday and will ferry back experiment samples key to ongoing science research. The Dragon spaceship, built and operated by the privately owned company known as SpaceX, is due to depart the orbital outpost at 7:06 a.m. EDT (1106 GMT) and parachute down into the Pacific Ocean west of Mexico's Baja California about 5-1/2 hours later.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule returns to Earth today

Todd Halvorson – Florida Today

A cargo-carrying SpaceX capsule is poised for departure from the International Space Station this morning in advance of a planned splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Now secured to the end of the station's 57-foot Canadian robotic arm, the SpaceX Dragon is to be released at 6:56 a.m. EDT. Flight controllers in NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston grappled the spacecraft with the arm at 4:10 a.m. EDT and moved it away from the Earth-facing port of the station's U.S. Harmony module.

SpaceX capsule set to return from orbit, splash down in Pacific

W.J. Hennigan - Los Angeles Times

After spending more than three weeks docked with the International Space Station, SpaceX's Dragon space capsule is ready to return to Earth and splash down Tuesday in the Pacific Ocean. The Dragon capsule will return with about 2,668 pounds of science samples from human research, biology and biotechnology studies, physical science investigations and education activities for NASA, the space agency said.

SpaceX Dragon Capsule Returns to Earth Tuesday

Mike Wall - Space.com

A private cargo capsule is returning to Earth from the International Space Station Tuesday (March 26), and you can watch its orbital departure live online. SpaceX's unmanned Dragon spacecraft is slated to depart the orbiting lab at 6:56 a.m. EDT (1056 GMT) Tuesday (March 26), perform a series of burns and then splash down at 12:34 p.m. EDT (1634 GMT) in the Pacific Ocean, 246 miles (396 kilometers) off the coast of Baja California.

SpaceX Dragon Capsule to Return to Earth after Delay

RIA Novosti

About three weeks after arriving at the International Space Station, the Dragon spacecraft built by the Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) will return to Earth on Tuesday. Dragon's return date, originally scheduled for March 25, was postponed due to bad weather near its targeted splashdown site in the Pacific Ocean. A Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon spacecraft blasted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on March 1. The docking with the space station was performed on March 3, one day later than scheduled due to a thruster failure.

Whisky created from space experiment is named best in the world
Scotland's Ardbeg Distillery beats Japan, South Africa and US entries to take top prize

Martin Newman - The Mirror (UK)

A whisky designed around a space experiment has been named the best spirit of its kind in the world. The Ardbeg Distillery in Scotland's Galileo single malt whisky took the top honour at the annual World Whiskies Awards. The 12-year-old limited edition drop, which sells for about £150 a bottle, was created as part of collaboration with space research company NanoRacks LLC. The Houston, Texas, firm has been undertaking zero gravity experiments in space involving the maturation of chemical compounds in Ardbeg's whisky, while the distiller monitors control samples on Earth.

Spotlight
Bigelow Aerospace

Irene Klotz - Space News

When Robert Bigelow was around 9 years old, he heard a story that changed his life. It was about his grandparents coming home after an evening's drive to Mount Charleston, located just outside of Las Vegas. They saw what looked to them like an airplane on fire and slowed down. Seconds later, they realized the craft was not exactly on fire, but it was glowing. They stopped the car. It approached. "The proximity of that spacecraft was so close that it filled up the entire windshield," Bigelow said during a recent interview. "Within seconds of that spacecraft coming from a certain distance away to filling up the windshield they thought they were going to die." At the last second, his grandparents said, the vehicle darted off to the left and flew away at an amazing speed. "My grandfather, who was not a wimpy guy, was so shook up they had to sit there for about a half-hour before they were able to compose themselves and start heading down the road again," Bigelow said. That experience, among others, turned young Bigelow's eyes permanently toward space, though it took a career in the most terrestrial industry imaginable — real estate — to launch the aerospace business that now carries the Bigelow name.

Profile
James Van Laak, Director of Commercial Space, Natl Institute of Aerospace

Irene Klotz - Space News

As a top NASA mission manager, Jim Van Laak wrestled often with risk. Sometimes the challenges were technical, like how to prepare for the sheer number of spacewalks needed to construct the international space station. During the predecessor shuttle-Mir program, Van Laak occasionally found dangers masked behind politics. Now with the nonprofit National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) research center, Van Laak is working to share his insights and lessons learned with the fledgling commercial human spaceflight industry…

Sarah Brightman among celebrities setting sight on the stars

Adrian Lee - London Daily Express

Asa little girl Sarah Brightman was transfixed by grainy television pictures of the Moon landing. Those giant steps for mankind started a lifelong fascination with space travel and inspired her hit song I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper. Now it seems the 52-year-old is poised to follow her astronaut heroes as one of the early space tourists. Adventures in space promise to be the next big thing with several private companies vying to take ordinary punters, albeit with deep pockets, on the trip of a lifetime. So far only a handful of paying customers have made it into space via the Russian government's official programme. There are occasional spare seats and Miss Brightman claims to have raised £20 million to pay for one. If all goes to plan she will be strapped into a Soyuz rocket for a 10-day mission including a visit to the International Space Station.

Retired astronaut coming to Urbana

Andrew McGinn - Dayton Daily News

After you've launched off an aircraft carrier more than 300 times and flown into space five times, it takes a lot to impress a man. But in October, retired Navy Capt. Robert "Hoot" Gibson will be inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton. "What a thrill," he said. "All my kids want to come," he added. "It's going to cost me a fortune."

LEGO toys returning from space station on Earth-bound cargo craft

Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com

For the astronauts living on board the International Space Station (ISS), it has come time to put away their toys. Hundreds of LEGO toy bricks are soon to be Earth-bound after spending two years circling the planet as part of an educational partnership between the Danish toy company and NASA. The astronauts have packed the iconic multi-color toys aboard SpaceX's Dragon, a commercial cargo spacecraft, which is scheduled to leave the space station and splash down in the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday.

Jeff Bezos' salvaged rocket engines land in Kansas for conservation

Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com

The historic NASA rocket engine parts raised off the ocean floor by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have landed at a Kansas museum, where the 40-year-old artifacts' conservation will soon begin in view of the public. The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center announced Monday the arrival of more than 25000 pounds (11,340 kilograms) of Apollo-era F-1 engine components, which just four days earlier had arrived on shore in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

High Cost and Fuzzy Plans Threaten SLS

Edward Hujsak - Space News (Opinion)

(Hujsak is a career rocket engineer and the author of two books on rockets, "The Future of U.S. Rocketry" and "All About Rocket Engines.")

An unspoken reality in the world of U.S. corporate mergers and purposeful acquisitions across a broad geographical spectrum is the formidable clout the parent company gradually and arguably builds in the political arena, and in particular with members of Congress. It came to light recently in the spectacle of senators essentially fixing the design of the heavy-lift launch vehicle with the obvious intent of supporting industries in the territories they represent. In the broader perspective, the Space Launch System (SLS) was the result of a transparent collusion between the senators and NASA to do something that would preserve the space shuttle industries in their home states as part of the roadmap to an ultimate heavy lifter with a capability on the order of 130 metric tons. Sure, the intermediate rocket would have a capability of only 75 metric tons, and compelling missions for it are elusive, but hang the expense — this is what we want you to do. So NASA is spending big money on a rocket to nowhere.

Big space auction today: You bidding?

Eric Berger – Houston Chronicle's SciGuy

Last September, Congress passed a law allowing astronauts from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo eras to resell any artifacts they received. Now many of them are doing just that. Beginning this afternoon Bonhams will hold a sale of 325 items, including many space artifacts. Among the highlights is a "maneuver card" from the Apollo 11 mission with recorded flight notes by both Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. It's signed by Aldrin and worth an estimated $70,000 to $90,000.
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COMPLETE STORIES

SpaceX Dragon cargo ship leaves space station

Marcia Dunn - Associated Press

The Dragon cargo ship has left the International Space Station and is on its way back to Earth.

Astronauts released the unmanned cargo ship from the end of the space station's giant robot arm Tuesday morning.

The parting occurred about 250 miles over the South Pacific. The privately owned spacecraft will splash down in the Pacific early in the afternoon. It's returning science samples and old space station equipment.

The California-based SpaceX company launched the Dragon from Cape Canaveral, Fla., at the beginning of March. NASA is paying SpaceX to periodically supply the space station.

Mechanical trouble caused a one-day delay in Dragon's arrival to the space station.

Three people are aboard the space station right now. They'll be joined by three more following this week's Soyuz launch from Kazakhstan.

SpaceX capsule headed for return trip to Earth

Irene Klotz - Reuters

A Space Exploration Technologies' cargo ship parked at the International Space Station for three weeks returns to Earth on Tuesday and will ferry back experiment samples key to ongoing science research.

The Dragon spaceship, built and operated by the privately owned company known as SpaceX, is due to depart the orbital outpost at 7:06 a.m. EDT (1106 GMT) and parachute down into the Pacific Ocean west of Mexico's Baja California about 5-1/2 hours later.

A skeleton crew of three astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the space station will oversee Dragon's release. Three new crew members are due to launch to the orbital complex, a $100 billion project of 15 nations, on Thursday and, for the first time, arrive the same day.

The Dragon cargo ship reached the station on March 3 with more than 2,300 pounds (1,043 kg) of science equipment, spare parts, food and supplies. It was the second of 12 planned cargo runs for NASA under a $1.6 billion contract. A second freighter, built and operated by Orbital Sciences Corp is expected to debut this year.

The U.S. space agency hired both firms to fill the gap left by the retirement of its space shuttle fleet in 2011.

Dragon's arrival was delayed a day while SpaceX engineers grappled with a thruster pod problem that had threatened to derail the mission.

"I don't want to go through that again. That was hard-core," SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk said during a keynote speech at the popular South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, earlier this month.

Engineers believe the glitch was caused by a blockage in a pressurization line or a stuck valve. It was cleared and the capsule made a precision rendezvous with the station with no problems.

Dragon is due to return to Earth with 2,668 (1,210 kg) of cargo, including a freezer filled with biological samples from the crew for medical research.

While Russian, European and Japanese freighters also service the station, only the SpaceX vessel is designed to return cargo to Earth, a critical transportation link that had been lost with the retirement of the shuttles.

SpaceX is working to upgrade the Dragon capsule to fly people as well. A test flight with company astronauts is targeted for 2016.

In addition to enhancing the Dragon capsules, SpaceX is working on an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket. Last week, the rocket's new Merlin engines completed a 28th and final test run, certifying it for flight, said SpaceX spokeswoman Christina Ra.

The company plans to debut its upgraded Falcon 9 rocket on a science satellite-delivery mission for the Canadian Space Agency in June. That rocket also will be the first flight from SpaceX's new launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Five previous Falcon 9 flights have launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Dragon's return initially was scheduled for Monday, but it remained docked an extra day due to high seas in the Pacific. Splashdown now is targeted for 12:34 p.m. EDT (1634 GMT) on Tuesday about 246 miles (396 km) off the coast of Baja California.

A recovery ship will retrieve the capsule and ferry it back to the Port of Los Angeles, a journey expected to take about 30 hours.

Meanwhile, Orbital Sciences Corp, which holds an eight-flight, $1.9 billion NASA contract for station resupply flights, plans to test launch its new Antares rocket as early as April 16 from the commercial Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Orbital's Cygnus cargo capsule is targeted to make a demonstration run to the space station later in the year.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule returns to Earth today

Todd Halvorson – Florida Today

A cargo-carrying SpaceX capsule is poised for departure from the International Space Station this morning in advance of a planned splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

Now secured to the end of the station's 57-foot Canadian robotic arm, the SpaceX Dragon is to be released at 6:56 a.m. EDT.

Flight controllers in NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston grappled the spacecraft with the arm at 4:10 a.m. EDT and moved it away from the Earth-facing port of the station's U.S. Harmony module.

U.S. astronaut Thomas Marshburn and Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency will control the release from a work station in the complex's Cupola module, a seven-window observation deck on the U.S. side of the outpost.

Once released, thrusters on the spacecraft will be ignited to push the Dragon away from the outpost. Three thruster firings are planned to move the carrier out of the station's immediate vicinity.

A retrograde thruster firing will take place at 11:42 a.m. EDT, slowing the spacecraft enough to drop it onto a supersonic plunge back through the atmosphere. A parachute-assisted splashdown about 250 miles off the coast of Baja California is scheduled at 12:34 p.m. EDT.

The unmanned Dragon spacecraft is hauling back 2,668 pounds of experiment equipment and science samples. SpaceX Dragon capsules are the only spacecraft capable of returning large amounts of cargo to Earth now that the U.S. shuttle fleet is retired. Other station resupply ships are filled with trash and deliberately incinerated during atmospheric reentry.

SpaceX vessels and personnel were deployed to the splashdown area on Sunday. The return had been planned for Monday but rough seas prompted a one-day delay.

The SpaceX recovery fleet includes a 185-foot barge equipped with cranes to lift the spacecraft onto the vessel. A smaller crew boat carries engineers and a dive team. Two rigid-hull inflatable boats round out the fleet.

The Dragon should be returned to the Port of Los Angeles on Wednesday.

On Thursday, U.S. astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin are scheduled to blast off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Their six-hour flight to the outpost will mark the first same-day launch-to-docking for a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Two-day trips have been the norm since the first expedition crew opened the orbiting laboratory complex in November 2000.

The three-man crew already aboard also includes Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko.

SpaceX capsule set to return from orbit, splash down in Pacific

W.J. Hennigan - Los Angeles Times

After spending more than three weeks docked with the International Space Station, SpaceX's Dragon space capsule is ready to return to Earth and splash down Tuesday in the Pacific Ocean.

The Dragon capsule will return with about 2,668 pounds of science samples from human research, biology and biotechnology studies, physical science investigations and education activities for NASA, the space agency said.

Dragon is slated to splash down around 9:36 a.m. in the Pacific Ocean about 300 miles west of Baja California.

The Hawthorne company, whose formal name is Space Exploration Technologies Corp., initially planned to return the capsule on Monday, but rescheduled because of inclement weather.

SpaceX's mission began March 1 with a launch of its Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the Dragon capsule, from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The capsule was packed with more than 1,200 pounds of food, scientific experiments and other cargo for delivery to the six astronauts aboard the space station.

Shortly after blastoff, the company ran into a thruster issue with its Dragon capsule as it orbited around the Earth. But in a matter of hours engineers resolved the problem with the thrusters, which help maneuver the capsule in orbit. The capsule later docked with the station.

The resupply mission was SpaceX's second of 12 missions made under a $1.6-billion contract with NASA. The other official resupply mission was made in October, and a demonstration mission took place in May.

NASA wants to turn the job of carrying cargo and crews over to private industry. Meanwhile, the agency will focus on deep-space missions to land astronauts on asteroids and Mars.

SpaceX, founded in 2002, employs nearly 3,000 scientists, engineers and technicians, many of whom work at the company's sprawling production facility in Hawthorne, where it builds rockets and capsules.

But SpaceX is not alone in the so-called private space race. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., is nipping at the company's heels, with a test flight of its commercial rocket set for later this year. Orbital also has a $1.9-billion cargo-hauling contract with NASA.

SpaceX Dragon Capsule Returns to Earth Tuesday

Mike Wall - Space.com

A private cargo capsule is returning to Earth from the International Space Station Tuesday (March 26), and you can watch its orbital departure live online.

SpaceX's unmanned Dragon spacecraft is slated to depart the orbiting lab at 6:56 a.m. EDT (1056 GMT) Tuesday (March 26), perform a series of burns and then splash down at 12:34 p.m. EDT (1634 GMT) in the Pacific Ocean, 246 miles (396 kilometers) off the coast of Baja California.

Dragon is wrapping up its second contracted cargo run to the space station for NASA. The capsule launched on March 1 and arrived at the orbiting lab two days later after overcoming an unexpected thruster malfunction.

The Dragon capsule delivered about 1,200 pounds (1,210 kilograms) of supplies to the space station and will return about 2,670 pounds (1,210 kg) of equipment, hardware and scientific experiments when it returns Tuesday. Packed among that returning cargo is a batch of LEGO toys that have been on the space station for the last two years.

SpaceX officials will pluck Dragon out of the water using a crane-equipped boat and ferry it back to shore after splashdown, which was originally scheduled to take place Monday (March 25). Weather worries pushed things back a day, but the delay shouldn't affect the scientific experiments coming home with Dragon, NASA officials said.

Dragon is the only currently operating cargo vessel that can return supplies to Earth. Other robotic supply vehicles — such as Japan's HTV, Europe's ATV and Russia's Progress spacecraft — burn up upon re-entering our planet's atmosphere.

California-based SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion NASA contract to fly 12 unmanned supply missions to the orbiting lab. Dragon made its first bona fide cargo run this past October, after successfully linking up with the space station on a demonstration mission in May 2012.

NASA has also signed a $1.9 billion deal with Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. to make eight unmanned cargo flights with its Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule. Antares is scheduled to make its first test flight in mid-April, and the rocket should blast Cygnus toward the station on a demonstration mission later this year if all goes well, Orbital officials have said.

SpaceX Dragon Capsule to Return to Earth after Delay

RIA Novosti

About three weeks after arriving at the International Space Station, the Dragon spacecraft built by the Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) will return to Earth on Tuesday.

Dragon's return date, originally scheduled for March 25, was postponed due to bad weather near its targeted splashdown site in the Pacific Ocean.

A Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon spacecraft blasted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on March 1. The docking with the space station was performed on March 3, one day later than scheduled due to a thruster failure.

The Dragon brought some 550 kilograms (1,212 pounds) of cargo to the ISS, and will take back to Earth over 1 metric ton of load.

It was the second of at least 12 flights to the ISS that US private company SpaceX carried out under its $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract.

Last year, the Dragon made a demonstration flight to the space station in May and carried out the first resupply mission in October, delivering more than 450 kg (1,000 pounds) of cargo to the ISS.

Dragon's third mission to the space station is expected in the fall of 2013. The spacecraft will be launched on board a modernized version of the Falcon 9 rocket.

The Dragon is a reusable spacecraft developed by SpaceX to fly cargo to the ISS after NASA retired its space shuttle fleet last year. The spacecraft is capable of carrying more than 7,000 pounds (3,175 kg) of cargo split between pressurized and unpressurized sections, according to NASA.

Whisky created from space experiment is named best in the world
Scotland's Ardbeg Distillery beats Japan, South Africa and US entries to take top prize

Martin Newman - The Mirror (UK)

A whisky designed around a space experiment has been named the best spirit of its kind in the world.

The Ardbeg Distillery in Scotland's Galileo single malt whisky took the top honour at the annual World Whiskies Awards.

The 12-year-old limited edition drop, which sells for about £150 a bottle, was created as part of collaboration with space research company NanoRacks LLC.

The Houston, Texas, firm has been undertaking zero gravity experiments in space involving the maturation of chemical compounds in Ardbeg's whisky, while the distiller monitors control samples on Earth.

The commemorative whisky, made from a vatting of different styles of Ardbeg laid down in 1999, took out the prestigious prize at an event at the Waldorf Hotel in Central London.

Judges undertook three blind tasting rounds in Scotland and America of over 300 whiskies from around the globe before making their decision.

While the best in show went to Scotland, whiskies from Japan, South Africa and America took out many of the other big awards.

Japanese distiller Mars Maltage won Best Blended Malt Whisky for its 3 plus 25, 28 Years Old, and its compatriot distiller Hibiki won Best Blended Whisky for its 21 Years Old.

South Africa's Bain's won Best Grain Whisky for its Cape Mountain Whisky and US distiller George T Stagg won Best American Whisky.

English distiller Master of Malt won Best Whisky Liqueur for its 40 Years Old whisky.

A prize for the best whisky bar was won by Boisdale restaurant and bar in Canary Wharf, London, where bars manager Hannah Lanfear has assembled some 800 whiskies, many of them rare bottles from mothballed and dismantled distilleries.

Irish Distillers, Pernod Ricard, was named Whisky Distiller of the Year and Master of Malt was adjudged the most innovative.

Whisky Magazine's independent judging panel was drawn up from the best drinks journalists, retailers, master blenders, distillers and brand ambassadors from across the world.

The magazine's Rob Allanson said: "The competition featured some eye-opening whiskies and the judging panel had a hard time separating the good from the very good.

"After last year's Japanese domination of the single malt category Islay's Ardbeg Distillery carries off the top single malt title, returning the crown to Scotland.

"But Japanese whiskies still remained strong in the Blended and Blended Malt categories."

Spotlight
Bigelow Aerospace

Irene Klotz - Space News

When Robert Bigelow was around 9 years old, he heard a story that changed his life. It was about his grandparents coming home after an evening's drive to Mount Charleston, located just outside of Las Vegas.

They saw what looked to them like an airplane on fire and slowed down. Seconds later, they realized the craft was not exactly on fire, but it was glowing. They stopped the car. It approached.

"The proximity of that spacecraft was so close that it filled up the entire windshield," Bigelow said during a recent interview. "Within seconds of that spacecraft coming from a certain distance away to filling up the windshield they thought they were going to die."

At the last second, his grandparents said, the vehicle darted off to the left and flew away at an amazing speed.

"My grandfather, who was not a wimpy guy, was so shook up they had to sit there for about a half-hour before they were able to compose themselves and start heading down the road again," Bigelow said.

That experience, among others, turned young Bigelow's eyes permanently toward space, though it took a career in the most terrestrial industry imaginable — real estate — to launch the aerospace business that now carries the Bigelow name.

"I've built about 15,000 apartments in my career. I've purchased about 8,000 more, and I've built a lot of other kinds of buildings besides those kinds of developments," said Bigelow, who is perhaps best known in real estate circles as the owner of the Budget Suites of America hotel chain.

He made millions, which was exactly the plan, and in 1999 — the year he turned 50 — Bigelow began pouring his fortune into a new venture, Bigelow Aerospace.

"It was a very premeditated life's ambition," Bigelow said. "It was spawned from the conversations I had had with my family as a young boy about sightings and things that they had seen that were novel kinds of spacecraft.

"Hearing those stories from members of my own family made me quickly realize that there was a whole lot that we didn't know. I became just fascinated — that's an understatement — in terms of things to do with space."

Unlike most commercial space startups of the day, Bigelow decided to pass on transportation services and focus on destinations, a fitting match to his real estate ventures.

Picking up on work abandoned by NASA, Bigelow Aerospace focused on inflatable habitats that could be folded up for launching and expanded in orbit. The lightweight structures not only can fly for far less cost than traditional metal spacecraft, but the balloon-like structures also should offer better radiation protection.

Two Bigelow Aerospace prototypes already are in orbit and NASA last year signed up for a test module, called BEAM, to fly on the international space station.

Bigelow's goal is to launch a free-flying outpost, comprised of two BA-330 modules, which would have half the volume of the space station. The company intends to lease out space and time aboard the habitat, which it calls station Alpha, to research agencies, companies, sovereign nations and perhaps even some well-heeled tourists.

Success, however, rides on something beyond the company's control — the availability of rides to space.

"Transportation was much slower in becoming a reality than I had imagined it would be back in 2002 or 2003. I never suspected that we would be sitting here in 2013 still talking about the potential eventuality of taxi service to and from low Earth orbit," Bigelow said.

"I've had to throttle our company back and choke our progress relative to the pace of what allocations have been made to the different companies," he added.

Bigelow is counting on Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) and/or Boeing to deliver its spaceships, customers and cargo to orbit. Launch of the BA-330s is targeted for late 2016 or early 2017.

"I think that SpaceX is going to be there first. I think they'll be functioning a human-rated rocket and a human-rated spacecraft by 2016, maybe before we even have our two 330s (modules) ready to fly. If Boeing is there, fine. If they're not, we hope that SpaceX will be. I still think it's very possible to be in operations in early 2017," Bigelow said.

The company's ambitions do not end at Earth orbit. Within a decade Bigelow wants to have a small base on the Moon, perhaps operated in partnership with NASA.

Bigelow does not regret that he did not take on space taxi development, despite the fact that his company's future rides on its success.

"It's never wise to fight a two-front war, and looking at the resources that I had to work with I had to make a conscious decision about what not to get into and I did not want to get into what everybody else was getting into," Bigelow said. "We obviously have a dependence on other people doing their job and perfecting the transportation safely and expeditiously and affordably, but that's not a decision I would have ever changed."

Success for Bigelow Aerospace may never be measured in dollars — that is not its raison d'être.

"The ambition for me is a lot more than money," said Bigelow, who has contributed more than $250 million of his own funds in the company and expects that investment to double over the next few years.

"I want to be part of something that is exciting and fun and, on a more substantive scale, to be part of something that can change society, that can change the human race, that opens up great potential for our species, and to be part of the community of other folks who are trying to do the same thing," he said.

Bigelow Aerospace has not yet taken any deposits for station Alpha leases, though it has preliminary agreements with agencies in seven countries, including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Australia, Singapore, Japan, Sweden and the United Arab Emirate of Dubai.

The BA-330s are the largest modules the 100-employee company can handle in its land-locked Las Vegas construction facility. Its bigger space habitats, already in design, will need to be built where they can be shipped, not flown, to the launch site.

"We're interested in having facilities near Huntsville, Ala., where there's a waterway and we can have a plant building much larger expandable systems that would fly on larger, heavy-lift rockets," Bigelow said. "We have spacecraft already designed larger than the 330, so we don't have any alternative but to start a plant and open another facility someplace close to a launch site that can accommodate larger payloads."

Bigelow Aerospace at a Glance

·         Business focus: Space habitats
·         Product lines: Genesis prototypes, Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), station Alpha
·         Founder and president: Robert Bigelow
·         Established: 1999
·         Location: Las Vegas
·         Personnel: About 100

Profile
James Van Laak, Director of Commercial Space, Natl Institute of Aerospace

Irene Klotz - Space News

As a top NASA mission manager, Jim Van Laak wrestled often with risk. Sometimes the challenges were technical, like how to prepare for the sheer number of spacewalks needed to construct the international space station.

During the predecessor shuttle-Mir program, Van Laak occasionally found dangers masked behind politics.

Now with the nonprofit National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) research center, Van Laak is working to share his insights and lessons learned with the fledgling commercial human spaceflight industry. He recently spoke to SpaceNews correspondent Irene Klotz.

What do you want to accomplish at the NIA?

I'm trying to use my experience and contacts to influence the new industry folks and get them started as quickly as possible on implementing the professional culture that it's going to take to be successful.

As an example, I have tried to get the new industry folks to share information about close calls and near-misses. One of my initiatives right now is working with the Commercial Spaceflight Federation to create the industry's own version of the mishap reporting system that's been such an important part of aviation's safety growth.

I was a military pilot in the late 1970s and early 1980s and the difference between the mishap rate in military aviation from then to today is literally an order of magnitude. I flew during the Cold War, but there was no fighting war going on in those days, so the 50 or so pilots we lost a year in the tactical Air Force were lost on training accidents. Over time, the military and other operational organizations have learned that keeping an open dialogue and sharing with each other what happens with a near-miss is a critical part of safety for everybody.

A really good example of this is the Airbus 380 issue of cracks in the wing ribs. Airbus didn't have to tell anybody about that except the regulators, but everybody knows about it. Boeing probably knows as much about it as anybody on the planet. The reason they share the information is because they will benefit from things other people will tell them about cracking, but they'll also benefit when other people reciprocate that openness by telling them about other issues they're discovering. That's a big part about what it is to be a professional in this industry, and I'm trying to get it started.

What kind of chance do you have to bring people like Elon Musk of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), who comes from the very competitive environment of Silicon Valley, to be open with information?

I don't have a personal relationship with Elon. We've had a few email exchanges, but I do talk to people in the company. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said as long as it's a level playing field she would certainly be open to that kind of an initiative.

So how receptive has the industry been?

There is progress being made because there has to be. Another company — not SpaceX — has told me that they are not interested in supporting this information-sharing because "We're the best in the business and we're not going to learn anything from anybody else." I'm not going to name who it is, but their colleagues are very concerned about the problem. Unfortunately the whole industry suffers from something like that. It's a small industry and if there's a mishap or even a very serious close call it will erode confidence in what's going on.

One way to accomplish this could be to use the leverage of the government, not just NASA for when it buys commercial launches, but also the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which oversees the industry. Is that a tactic you're pursuing, or do you want this to grow organically from the operators and manufacturers?

At this time, it's not part of what I'm doing because those agencies already have formal reporting requirements. Part of what I am proposing for the industry is that it adopt a posture and request from the FAA the equivalent of something that's called the Aviation Safety Reporting System, ASRS.

It allows a person involved in aviation to report an incident anonymously. You fill out a form, either paper or electronically, and it goes to a contractor for NASA who strips all the identification off of it and then just inputs the information into the system for learning purposes. The great thing about ASRS is that it gives limited immunity from penalty for inadvertent violations.

The FAA has already expressed a willingness to consider this — they haven't said, "Yes, we'll do it because it doesn't exist" — but it's a starting point for a conversation.

Are proprietary issues a concern?

Most of what needs to be done for the purpose of safety does not require revealing proprietary information. If you, for example, had a proprietary design for a battery and you had a problem that caused it to overheat or catch fire, you could describe the symptoms or even simply the fact that you've changed technology and suddenly you've exposed a new failure mode you didn't consider. You can share that and industry would say, "Maybe we'd better be doubly careful before we adopt a new technology in this energy storage." So I am not proposing to undermine the competitive position. The one thing that it does potentially do is admit to the world that you're still learning, that you didn't have it all figured out from the beginning. But anyone who's surprised by that admission is not paying very close attention.

How do you go about implementing a safety culture like this?

Well, first I'd use the term "professional culture," and safety is one of the key manifestations of it. The reason I want to say that is first of all there is a group of people who look down their nose at anything that says "safety" and whether or not you agree with them it automatically starts a communication problem that we don't really need to have.

Second, there are a lot of things that people don't view as related to safety and success that actually are absolutely paramount. If you don't have real experience in the business, there are a lot of things that look like bureaucratic baloney that are in fact terribly, terribly important. One example is the requirement for data on the hardware — who made it, when, who the inspectors were, where did the material come from, how was it handled, how was it stored. That sounds like a terribly bureaucratic thing but in truth it's an incredibly valuable requirement.

Think about a situation where you have a launch vehicle sitting out on the pad and a turbopump for a subsequent vehicle fails some kind of an acceptance test. Well, how do you clear the one that's sitting on the pad when you've just had a failure of the same unit that should not have failed? The answer is you have to dive into the details and find out who built it, when did they build it, was it subjected to any handling problems during shipment, and so on and so forth.

Or let's say you've just launched a spaceship to Mars and it's full of happy people who are going to do all kinds of great science when they get to Mars. They go into Mars orbit, they're getting ready to land and they fail some part of the predescent check — one of the actuators for one of the thrusters gives a noisy input. Now you've got a probably $10 billion or $12 billion mission, and if you're conservative you abort. Or you could say, "Aw, what the hell, let them go," and there's a big group of people who would say that's just flat irresponsible.

So what's the real answer? The real answer is you want to put yourself into the position to clear that anomaly, or at least to have high confidence for making a decision to go or not go. That can only be done if you have that kind of information. As a mission manager, I personally have exercised that kind of knowledge probably several thousand times.

Are you seeing that the commercial companies are doing that?

They are learning how to do it.

To those of us who covered shuttle it was impressive how NASA could know the pedigree of everything from the littlest screw to a wing panel. But I guess the idea with private industry is, can you do it without the standing army of 25,000 people that it took NASA to fly the shuttles?

That is an absolutely critical question to answer. Commercial belongs operating in an area where the risk-reward relationship and the technology are mature. Where commercial is inappropriate is where those are not mature or well understood.

Imagine your company has got to make payroll and the only way you're going to make payroll is if you launch next week. That has the potential to have an enormous impact on the judgment that you exercise. Human judgment is affected by these pressures. It's a hard problem.

But it seems like the financial risks to a company of flying and losing passengers would be far greater than delaying a week or a month if needed for more inspections or to deal with safety issues.

It's easy for someone who is not part of the system to think, "Well they were going to launch tomorrow, but they found an engine flaw." Unfortunately, most of the

time you don't "find a flaw." Usually what happens is you find potential evidence of a potential problem. Then you get people together and you talk about, for example, someone putting the engine together and the torque wrench that they used hadn't been calibrated in the time it was supposed to be calibrated. Well, is that a bureaucratic requirement or is that a real requirement? What are the chances that that torque wrench was so far out of calibration that it did damage or didn't meet minimum performance specs? Those kinds of discussions happen all the time. Any one of them could have serious consequence for the mission — not necessarily destroy the mission.

The performance has to come from every element of the system, including the human decision-makers. But the human being is still a human being, subject to emotional and other stresses.

What else falls under the umbrella of "professional culture" in commercial space?

I think the biggest thing right now is the whole attitude question. Hubris is all over this new space industry. The space industry is overflowing with smart people, but that's because that's the cost of admission. You can't get in the door if you don't know how to run the rocket equation and do Hohmann transfers and things like that. That's the nuts and bolts of the industry. What's not necessarily present is maturity and humility.

The other thing I'm strongly recommending is more attention on lessons learned. That's been a focus of mine my entire life. I've read well over 5,000 lessons learned and found that a half-dozen of them show up 100-plus times. There are plenty of examples where the road to failure is clearly marked and somebody came along and either was ignorant of it because they didn't even ask the question, or they took a quick look at it and said, "Well that guy was an idiot. I'm not an idiot so it's not going to be a problem." That's very distressing. It's completely avoidable. Nobody expects you to go out and read all 5,000 lessons learned before you start working, but if you're going to work in an area of propulsion you ought to go out and study the lessons from the propulsion. There's plenty of evidence to indicate that that's not been true from certain companies.

Sarah Brightman among celebrities setting sight on the stars

Adrian Lee - London Daily Express

Asa little girl Sarah Brightman was transfixed by grainy television pictures of the Moon landing. Those giant steps for mankind started a lifelong fascination with space travel and inspired her hit song I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper.

Now it seems the 52-year-old is poised to follow her astronaut heroes as one of the early space tourists.

Adventures in space promise to be the next big thing with several private companies vying to take ordinary punters, albeit with deep pockets, on the trip of a lifetime.

So far only a handful of paying customers have made it into space via the Russian government's official programme. There are occasional spare seats and Miss Brightman claims to have raised £20 million to pay for one. If all goes to plan she will be strapped into a Soyuz rocket for a 10-day mission including a visit to the International Space Station.

The singer, who was married to Andrew Lloyd Webber, has talked about the demanding training regime to prepare her for the rigours of blast-off and weightlessness. It has included spinning in a centrifuge at 170mph and withstanding eight times the force of gravity.

Despite unkind suggestions that this is part of a stellar stunt to promote her new album, aptly titled Dreamchaser, she could be in space with the Russians in two years.

They say no one can hear you scream in space but she has even raised the possibility of singing from beyond the Earth's atmosphere.

Keeping all bases covered Miss Brightman, who has an estimated fortune of £30million, already has a much cheaper ticket, just £125,000, for Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic programme, which hopes to begin carrying commercial passengers into space next year. But the singer is said to be frustrated by the lack of any firm date.

With the Russians she would travel 200 miles above the Earth and orbit it 160 times before parachuting back in a capsule.

Virgin's flights will each have six passenger seats and two pilots, travelling to the official boundary of space 70 miles above the Earth. Tourists will get a two-and-a-half hour adventure, including just 15 minutes in space. That might seem a bit steep but what price the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of hearing the pilot announce: "Ladies and gentlemen, you may now un-strap yourselves and float around the cabin."

Virgin's spaceship will be tethered to a conventional jet to get it airborne, taking off from New Mexico, then released to complete the journey into space. Virgin Galactic's commercial director Stephen Attenborough says: "We will be offering the full space experience. It will be life-changing for those on board. Tests are going well. We haven't been into space yet but we expect that will happen this year.

"What we are trying to achieve is monumentally difficult and we are at least four or five years ahead of the opposition to became the first private company to offer commercial space flights. We have to get everything right."

Virgin's spaceship is re-usable and Sir Richard, having spent hundreds of millions of pounds to launch the project, wants to make it profitable. The company's passengers will also have to undergo a medical and three days' training, including a trial flight simulating zero-gravity conditions. The flight promises to be more relaxed than on the cramped Soyuz space ships but those thinking of toasting their arrival in space with a glass of champagne – forget it. There will be no alcohol served but Virgin promises that once safely back on Earth the party will be out of this world.

Some 600 people from more than 50 countries have so far paid the full price for a ticket, says Mr Attenborough, The passenger list includes almost 100 Britons, all keen to travel at four times the speed of sound.

Companies offering space tourism claim to have been inundated with enquiries from wealthy celebrities but to exactly what type of person does the concept appeal?

Kristina Boyce of the Adventure Travel Company in Toronto, Canada, which is arranging space travel packages, says: "For a lot of our clients, they've been to Antarctica, they've done Peru, they've trekked Mount Everest. Now this is the next thing to do. It's the ultimate adventure."

In the history of mankind only about 500 people have been into space but the vision is that space travel will soon complete the leap from the pages of science fiction and eventually become commonplace.

According to space scientist and author Dr David Whitehouse the dream could become reality within a decade. There have been complaints that commercial space travel, with no research or exploration value, is only for the super-rich. But Dr Whitehouse says: "In the Fifties, ordinary families aspired to go on holiday to Butlins. By the Seventies they could afford to go abroad as the cost of air travel became affordable.

"In the near future, as the price of space travel falls, it could become the norm. I think there will be an enormous market. That's even more likely to happen when space flights start taking off from Scotland, as is planned.

"I believe it will be a fantastic experience right from the start, even spending just a few minutes in space. The sky will be black, you will be able to see the stars, the Moon and the curve of the Earth and all for the price of a Porsche.

"We are entering a fascinating era for space flight and the impetus is now with private companies rather than governments. But you have to remember there will always be a risk. That is why it has taken so long to get commercial space ships off the ground." The biggest barrier to overcome was the intense temperature generated during re-entry, but now that better heat-shield and speed-limiting technology has been developed the final frontier is about to be breached.

Schemes have also been unveiled to build space hotels by 2020, while there is no shortage of former Nasa astronauts willing to become commercial space pilots.

Inevitably companies have already emerged offering budget versions of space travel. One is claiming to offer space flights for about half the price of Virgin Galactic. It's not yet clear, however, if those passengers will be involved in an unseemly scramble for seats prior to take off and face paying extra for a bag of peanuts.

Retired astronaut coming to Urbana

Andrew McGinn - Dayton Daily News

After you've launched off an aircraft carrier more than 300 times and flown into space five times, it takes a lot to impress a man.

But in October, retired Navy Capt. Robert "Hoot" Gibson will be inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton.

"What a thrill," he said.

"All my kids want to come," he added. "It's going to cost me a fortune."

Dave Shiffer, chairman of the fledgling Champaign Aviation Museum, is just as thrilled that the former fighter pilot and NASA astronaut accepted an offer to visit Urbana next month.

Gibson will speak at the museum's gala dinner — its first fundraiser to support the collection of airworthy vintage planes — at 5:30 p.m. April 13.

"It's just amazing," Shiffer said. "I was overjoyed he was able to do it and wanted to do it."

Tickets are $100 and should be purchased by April 1. Call 937-652-4710 or visit www.champaignaviationmuseum.org to order.

The night includes dinner, music and dancing, plus a flyover of the museum's restored B-25 Mitchell, piloted by Shiffer himself, if the weather cooperates.

"The controls are very heavy. Even when it's cold outside, you finish and you're sweating," Shiffer said of the museum's Mitchell bomber, dubbed Champaign Gal. "It's a whole body experience. It's the sound, the smell, the feeling of sitting in the seat. You get tingles."

Even still, it will be hard to upstage the man known as Hoot, who, at 66, still flies in the Reno Air Races at speeds of 476 mph just 50 to 70 feet off the ground.

"At some point," Gibson explained, "you need to step down from air racing. I'm not there yet."

A recipient of the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Distinguished Flying Cross and three Air Medals, the Murfreesboro, Tenn., resident was an experienced combat pilot over Vietnam, a graduate of the Navy's famed Top Gun school and one of the first F-14 Tomcat jocks when NASA unveiled the space shuttle in the mid-1970s.

Unlike most others in NASA's astronaut corps, Gibson didn't harbor childhood dreams of one day visiting space — until he saw the shuttle.

"Everything before it had been capsules," he said. "They didn't have wings on them."

However, he instantly was attracted to the world's biggest, fastest airplane.

"It doesn't turn like an F-14 does, so it wouldn't be good in a dogfight," Gibson said. "But you talk about speed. You'd crisscross the United States in either eight or nine minutes."

At speeds of 17,500 mph, the shuttle could cover five miles per second, he said.

Selected as a shuttle astronaut in 1978 — as was his future wife, medical doctor Rhea Seddon — Gibson made five trips to space, beginning in 1984 as a pilot and commander.

In all, he spent 36½ days in space.

His last shuttle mission, in 1995, was also the first shuttle mission to dock with the Russian space station Mir.

What's ironic is that he'd been groomed during his Navy career to shoot down and kill the Russian pilots then aboard Mir who previously had been trained to shoot down and kill him.

"It was a real change of pace," he said.

Entering active-duty Navy service in 1969, Gibson found himself a part of two iconic fighter squadrons — squadrons that are instantly identifiable to anyone who assembled model airplanes in the '70s and '80s.

Gibson first flew 56 combat missions in 1972 over Vietnam with VF-111, the "Sundowners." With their painted-on shark teeth and sunburst fins, their F-4 Phantoms were made to stand out.

"We wanted the MiGs to be able to see us, so we could, pardon the expression, wax their (expletive)," Gibson said. "We were all trigger-happy for MiGs."

Unfortunately, Gibson never saw a single MiG.

He did, however, later go up against Randy Cunningham, the Navy's only flying ace during Vietnam (and later a disgraced congressman), in a one-on-one mock dogfight at Top Gun. Gibson's claim to fame is that it ended in a draw.

Gibson also can claim to have seen the exact end of the Vietnam War from the cockpit of an F-14.

Flying with VF-1, the "Wolfpack" squadron, Gibson provided air cover on April 30, 1975, for the helicopters evacuating Saigon.

Even though it marked the Tomcat's first combat outing, the mood that day was grim.

"It was a big disappointment to see all that expense and those lives wind up going for nothing at the end of it," he said.

But, perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Gibson's career is what he did after all the combat missions and orbiting the Earth.

He became a pilot for Southwest Airlines for 10 years, beginning in 1996.

"They don't want to see a bank angle of even 30 degrees," Gibson said. "Everyone wanted to feel like they were sitting in their living room."

"Every so often," he added, "the flight attendants would find out who I was and they'd make the announcement that the captain was a former astronaut."

When that happened, he always ended up signing autographs.

LEGO toys returning from space station on Earth-bound cargo craft

Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com

For the astronauts living on board the International Space Station (ISS), it has come time to put away their toys.

Hundreds of LEGO toy bricks are soon to be Earth-bound after spending two years circling the planet as part of an educational partnership between the Danish toy company and NASA. The astronauts have packed the iconic multi-color toys aboard SpaceX's Dragon, a commercial cargo spacecraft, which is scheduled to leave the space station and splash down in the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday.

The LEGO toy sets, all 13 of them, are landing with about 2,700 pounds (1225 kilograms) of cargo, including science samples from human research, biology and biotechnology studies and physical science investigations, as well as no longer needed equipment. The SpaceX Dragon is the only cargo capsule presently flying that is able to return station supplies to the ground, including experiments.

Launched in 2011 on the final mission of the space shuttle Endeavour, the LEGO toys were used by the station crew members to demonstrate the effects of weightlessness on simple machines, including a trundle wheel, hammer and balance beam. The astronauts built the devices from the LEGO bricks and then filmed videos of them working with their creations.

The videos were then downlinked to the ground for use in classrooms. Students could build the same models they saw in space and use them to compare how they worked with the devices floating in orbit.

"I think most kids worldwide know what a LEGO brick is," former shuttle astronaut Leland Melvin, NASA's Associate Administrator for Education, told collectSPACE in a recent interview. "It is basically intrinsic in most kids' DNA what a LEGO brick is and I think the partnership has helped us let children see that they could build and develop in a 1-g [gravity] environment and then have them start to think about what it would be like for the device to exist, to work, or not work in a zero-g environment."

The LEGO models, which for safety and simplicity were launched partially assembled, also included replicas of the space shuttle and International Space Station, the latter a 3-foot long (0.9 meters) replica that could only be built in space. On Earth, the space station model would collapse under its own weight.

The LEGO toys' two years in space are coming to an end just as NASA has suspended most of its educational and public outreach activities for review. Mandatory spending cuts forced by the government-wide sequester has left the space agency to look for ways to implement cost-saving measures while at the same time minimizing the impacts to its mission-critical activities.

The events' timing is, however, coincidental. The LEGO toys have been slated to return to Earth for some time, as the original terms of the NASA-LEGO partnership called for a set span of in-space activities.

Once back on Earth, some of the space-flown bricks will be returned to LEGO, while others are retained by NASA. According to Matthew Keil, an education specialist in the Teaching from Space office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the well-traveled LEGO models will eventually go on display.

As for the future of the NASA-LEGO partnership, this may not be the last time the toys are seen on the station.

"This partnership has been great," Melvin said. "We have some other things that will be going forward with LEGO. There is the new EV3, [LEGO's] Mindstorms robotics kits. I think we're looking at maybe exploring a relationship with those going to space station also."

Jeff Bezos' salvaged rocket engines land in Kansas for conservation

Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com

The historic NASA rocket engine parts raised off the ocean floor by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have landed at a Kansas museum, where the 40-year-old artifacts' conservation will soon begin in view of the public.

The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center announced Monday the arrival of more than 25000 pounds (11,340 kilograms) of Apollo-era F-1 engine components, which just four days earlier had arrived on shore in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

"Raising these artifacts from a depth of three miles below the ocean surface is a herculean task by itself, and we salute Bezos and his entire team for their perseverance and tenacity in the effort," said Jim Remar, Cosmosphere president and chief operating officer. Remar took charge of the conservation portion of the F-1 engine artifacts as they were offloaded at Port Canaveral to begin their trip to the Hutchinson, Kansas, museum.

Now at the Cosmosphere's SpaceWorks, a 20,000 square foot (1,860 square meters) facility, conservators, artisans, craftsmen and engineers will carefully separate the engine components of each recovered piece, some weighing over 2000 pounds (907 kilograms), and continuously flush each piece in basins containing water and anti-corrosion agents to remove ocean debris and prevent further decay.

Once each F-1 part is stabilized, it will undergo a detailed conservation process involving a thorough cleaning, photo documentation, and a studiously-prepared provenance of its components, manufacture and use.

The SpaceWorks' five-member team will be assisted by a conservator, maritime archeologist, and a partnership with aerospace engineers from the Wichita State University's National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR).

The Cosmosphere has also recruited former space shuttle astronaut Steven A. Hawley, now with the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Kansas, and materials corrosion expert Carl Locke, the former dean of the University of Kansas School of Engineering.

Restoration versus conservation

According to the Cosmosphere, the F-1 engines' recovery and conservation project will be one of the most complex efforts ever undertaken.

The closest aerospace project of similar size, scope or complexity was SpaceWorks' 1999 restoration of Liberty Bell 7, astronaut Gus Grissom's sunken Mercury capsule, which was recovered through a Discovery Channel-funded expedition after sitting on the seafloor for nearly 38 years.

SpaceWorks is perhaps best known for its restoration of Liberty Bell 7 and for Odyssey, the Apollo 13 command module, both of which are now on public display in the Hall of Space at the Cosmosphere. Remar stressed however, that while both projects were aimed at restoration, the F-1 engine project now underway is considered a conservation mission.

"In the case of both Apollo 13 and Liberty Bell 7, the goal of SpaceWorks was restoration — to reintegrate as many original parts as possible into the actual exhibit. Where original parts are not available, restoration allows you to fabricate similar-looking parts or to add new materials to replicate the artifact as it would have originally appeared," Remar explained.

"A conservation project such as the F-1 engine recovery is very different," Remar continued. "Here, our goal is to conserve the artifacts, preserve the integrity and original materials of the engines, and prevent any further damage from corrosion or age."

"They'll be cleaned and documented, and their engineering designs studied with modern scanners and technology," Remar said. "But the engines will not be rebuilt with new materials or replicated in any way."

Despite Bezos having funded the location, recovery and now conservation of the F-1 engines, the artifacts remain the property of NASA. The work being conducted by the Smithsonian-affiliated Cosmosphere is being done with the space agency's knowledge.

Conservation on display

A public observation gallery will soon allow Cosmosphere visitors to see the conservation work in progress. Exhibits about the maritime recovery of these artifacts and others will be housed in the observation area.

In addition, a new website is now under development that will allow the public to watch the progress live online.

The public opening date for the observation area has not yet been determined, but is expected to be within the next month. Visitors will be able to purchase a viewing ticket at the Cosmosphere, and then will be shuttled to the nearby SpaceWorks facility. There will be no public entrance to SpaceWorks without a ticket from the Cosmosphere.

High Cost and Fuzzy Plans Threaten SLS

Edward Hujsak - Space News (Opinion)

(Hujsak is a career rocket engineer and the author of two books on rockets, "The Future of U.S. Rocketry" and "All About Rocket Engines.")

An unspoken reality in the world of U.S. corporate mergers and purposeful acquisitions across a broad geographical spectrum is the formidable clout the parent company gradually and arguably builds in the political arena, and in particular with members of Congress. It came to light recently in the spectacle of senators essentially fixing the design of the heavy-lift launch vehicle with the obvious intent of supporting industries in the territories they represent.

In the broader perspective, the Space Launch System (SLS) was the result of a transparent collusion between the senators and NASA to do something that would preserve the space shuttle industries in their home states as part of the roadmap to an ultimate heavy lifter with a capability on the order of 130 metric tons. Sure, the intermediate rocket would have a capability of only 75 metric tons, and compelling missions for it are elusive, but hang the expense — this is what we want you to do. So NASA is spending big money on a rocket to nowhere.

Why not go directly to the 130-metric-ton heavy lifter? There are missions for that, not the least of which are replacement work stations when the international space station reaches end of life. If it has overcapacity for the one or two missions planned for the interim SLS, it's an opportunity for forward thinkers within NASA and the industry to use that capacity for a robust experiment in propellant transport and storage in orbit.

To the ordinary observer, the estimated program runout cost of $41 billion (some consider this conservative) to an operational 130-metric-ton heavy lifter is astonishing. Much of this cost is attributable to NASA's toying with several configurations, starting out with solid boosters and gradually evolving to the desired final capability instead of going directly to it.

The initial cost per launch, estimated by NASA's Jody Singer, SLS deputy program manager, as "perhaps" $500 million, is lowballed by a wide margin. The cost of a Titan 4 launch in 1985 dollars was $400 million. At the conclusion of the space shuttle program the cost per flight for that vehicle approached a billion dollars. At the low anticipated annual launch rates, the cost per launch, considering the high usage of space shuttle-derived hardware, would likely be similar to shuttle launch costs. Some of the cost of the initial few vehicles would be abated by the use of 15 RS-25 liquid oxygen/hydrogen engines left over from the shuttle program.

¬On Oct. 6, 2012, NASA announced the award of contracts totaling $137 million to three contractors for development, engineering and risk reduction efforts related to the SLS program. One of the contractors, Dynetics of Huntsville, Ala., teamed with Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne to assess updating the F-1 engine as a candidate thruster for the 130-metric-ton heavy lifter. At that time it was announced that negotiations were in progress with Aerojet for a similar study on its proposed 1 million-pound thrust staged combustion engine. The liquid-fueled boosters for the 130-metric-ton heavy lifter would thus require three engines per booster, in contrast to two F-1 engines, but superior performance was to offset that difference.

An article in the Feb. 18 issue of SpaceNews announced that NASA had finally executed a contract with Aerojet for an engine at a 550,000-pound thrust level ["Aerojet Awarded Contract for SLS Booster Design Work," page 3].

What's going on? The reference configurations for the SLS show no conceivable application for a 550,000-pound thrust liquid oxygen/kerosene engine — surely not six or seven as substitutes for an F-1 pair.

There is a love affair with the F-1 engine that may be the driver for this engine being selected by fiat. It stems from its superb performance in the Apollo program. However, of the two designs, it would be the poorer choice. The F-1 engine, at 1.8 million pounds thrust, would have only one application — the SLS. It would be a very expensive engine as its usage rate would likely be considerably under what was the case for Apollo.

On the other hand, the 1 million-pound thrust engine proposed by Aerojet would find broader application. It could replace the Russian-built RD-180 engine used on Atlas 5, which is a strategic weak spot for U.S. Defense Department missions. It could also be adopted for the Space Exploration Technologies Falcon launcher, particularly the Falcon Heavy, provided performance and cost benefits outweighed the multiple engine configuration now in play.

Other aspects of rocket engine production need attention in order to lower costs. Producers of the F-1 will claim innovations in design and processes, but the cost will still largely be rate dependent. Experience has shown that. Innovations for a 1 million-pound thrust engine, however, could include heavy emphasis on automated production and production in relatively large lots. The system could be designed for seamless, periodic restart when needed. In this scheme, for example, a 10-year inventory of engines, produced rapidly at the lowest possible cost, would be mortgaged. The cost of mortgaging would be significantly lower than the on-running overhead costs in a process that produces engines at a low rate.

High-rate production of rocket engines is not a new idea. The model can be found in the U.S. Air Force's construction of Plant 65 in Neosho, Mo., during the late 1950s, operated by the Rocketdyne division of North American Aviation solely for production of MA-3 thrusters for Atlas E and Atlas F, and followed by production of H-1 engines for Saturn 1 and Saturn 1B. Over 400 engines were produced, the Atlas engines ahead of schedule and under projected cost. It was the first, and perhaps only, venture into manufacturing rocket engines with a strong level of automation for that day and age.

In summary, I believe the United States needs a heavy lifter if we are to proceed with ambitious and purposeful space exploration and exploitation. To get there in the roundabout fashion that is the current plan is unnecessarily costly, and indeed would shackle the space program indefinitely into the future, should politicians decide that the shuttle-derived heavy lifter is as far as we need to go, or what the nation can afford.

Anyone can now see the SLS as a vast make-work program. Its principals need to be corralled by someone like former NASA Administrator James Webb and given marching orders.

Big space auction today: You bidding?

Eric Berger – Houston Chronicle's SciGuy

Last September, Congress passed a law allowing astronauts from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo eras to resell any artifacts they received.

Now many of them are doing just that. Beginning this afternoon Bonhams will hold a sale of 325 items, including many space artifacts.

Among the highlights is a "maneuver card" from the Apollo 11 mission with recorded flight notes by both Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. It's signed by Aldrin and worth an estimated $70,000 to $90,000.

So why is Buzz selling? He's not, according to CollectSpace:

Contrary to recent headlines prompted by Bonhams' upcoming Space History Sale, the Apollo 11 moonwalker, whose lunar-traveled checklists and flight plans are being offered, is not the one doing the selling.

"I am not offering any items for sale from my current collection of Apollo 11 articles in the Bonhams auction," astronaut Buzz Aldrin clarified in a written statement sent to collectSPACE.com on Saturday. "The Apollo 11 items being auctioned on Monday are being resold from auctions that took place in 2007 or earlier at the instigation of my ex-wife and her daughter who acted as my attorney and business manager."

Aldrin, who with the late Neil Armstrong walked on the moon's Sea of Tranquility in 1969, was divorced from his wife of 24 years, Lois Driggs Cannon Aldrin, in December. The 83-year-old astronaut cited "irreconcilable differences" as to the reason for the separation.

But many other astronauts are offering mementos out of their own collections. Although this is not the first time astronaut memorabilia has been available on the market, it is by far the largest auction of its kind because of the law passed by Congress last fall.

END

Keep the shuttle flying

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - March 26, 2013 and JSC Today

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