Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - August 27, 2013 and JSC Today



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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: August 27, 2013 6:04:45 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - August 27, 2013 and JSC Today

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Organizations/Social

  1. Next... next slide... next slide... next...

What if you were able to advance a slideshow presentation with a wave of your hand? What if you were able to enter a room and do the same to turn on lights? Change the temperature? Open the blinds? Apply this concept to a home, office, or vehicle, and the list is endless when it comes to gesture-based interfaces.

If you missed the IT Labs' Heroes Showcase on Gesture-Based Interfaces hosted here at JSC, you can still check it out on our blog. It's only 20 minutes long and has many potential applications using Microsoft Kinect. Further discussion with Kinect is being conducted regarding smart surfaces, 3D scanning and printing, all in the Kinect CoLab tomorrow.

Kevin Rosenquist 281-204-1688 https://labs.nasa.gov/Blog

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   Jobs and Training

  1. Facility Manager Training

The Safety Learning Center invites you to attend an eight-hour Facility Manager's Training that provides JSC facility managers with insight into the requirements for accomplishing their functions.

NOTE: This will be the final course for FY13 and space is limited.

    • Includes training on facility management, safety, hazard identification and mitigation, legal, security, energy conservation, health and environmental aspects.
    • Attendees of this course must also register in SATERN for a half day Fire Warden Training. *Others that need Fire Warden training can register through the normal process.

SATERN registration required.

Event Date: Thursday, September 5, 2013   Event Start Time:8:00 AM   Event End Time:5:00 PM
Event Location: Safety Learning Center, Building 20, Room 205/206

Add to Calendar

Aundrail Hill x36369

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  1. August RLLS Portal Education Series WebEx Training

The August weekly RLLS Portal Education series:

    • Aug. 28 - International Shipping at 7:30 a.m.; Cell Phone Request at 2:00 p.m. CDT
    • Aug. 29th - International Shipping at 7:30 a.m.; Cell Phone Request at 2:00 p.m. CDT

The 30 minute training sessions are computer based WebEx sessions, offering individuals the convenience to join from their own workstation. The training will cover the following:

    • System login
    • Locating support modules
    • Locating downloadable instructions
    • Creating support requests
    • Submittal requirements
    • Submitting on behalf of another
    • Adding attachments
    • Selecting special requirements
    • Submitting request
    • Status of request

Ending each session there will be an opportunity for questions. Please remember TTI will no longer accept request for U.S.-performed services unless they are submitted through the RLLS Portal.

Email or call 281-335-8565 to sign up.

James Welty 281-335-8565 https://www.tti-portal.com

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  1. HTC University at JSC: Entrepreneurship Course

Interested in learning how to turn your ideas and expertise into a company?

Learn how by attending HTC University at JSC, Foundations of Entrepreneurship and Starting a Business Course.

Friday, Sep. 27, 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

This one day course will focus on the fundamentals of starting a business. You will leave HTC University with a better understanding of how to bring your company to fruition and take home materials to enact a plan to start your business.

    • Preparing a business plan
    • Business structure and ownership
    • Financial assumptions and projects
    • Marketing
    • Financing alternatives

Register now here.

Event Date: Friday, September 27, 2013   Event Start Time:7:30 AM   Event End Time:3:30 PM
Event Location: 2200 NASA Road 1, Houston, TX 77058

Add to Calendar

Evelyn Boatman 281-244-8271 www.HoustonTech.org

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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.

Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Human Spaceflight News

Tuesday – August 27, 2013

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

NASA Orders More Development Work Under Commercial Crew Contracts

 

Dan Leone – Space News

 

NASA is stretching out the third phase of its Commercial Crew Program, providing an additional $55 million to three contractors for more development work on privately designed space transportation systems that could ferry astronauts to and from the international space station as soon as 2017. The added funding brings the combined value of the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) Space Act Agreements NASA awarded in August 2012 to Boeing Space Exploration of Houston, Sierra Nevada Space Systems of Louisville, Colo., and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif.  to about $1.16 billion. It also stretches the contracts' base period to August 2014 from May 2014, according to an Aug. 15 press release from NASA.

 

Former astronaut takes over local ISS nonprofit group

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

Former shuttle pilot Gregory H. Johnson has been named executive director at the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, the local nonprofit charged with managing non-NASA research on the International Space Station's national lab. Effective Sept. 1, Johnson will take over from Jim Royston, the organization's interim director for more than a year since its first leader resigned over differences with the board. "It is an honor to accept the role of executive director with CASIS and promote the benefits of conducting research on the ISS," Johnson, a retired Air Force colonel, said in a statement. Johnson joined NASA as an astronaut in 1998 and piloted Endeavour on two missions to the station, delivering a Japanese module in 2008 and a high-profile science instrument, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, on the orbiter's final flight in 2011. Started by Space Florida, CASIS is based at the state-owned Space Life Sciences Lab just outside Kennedy Space Center's south gate. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

 

Space Station Astronauts to Test 3-D Printing in Microgravity

NASA has big plans for 3-D printing in space, where mined asteroid materials could resupply longer missions

 

Larry Greenemeier - Scientific American

 

The infamous NASA tool bag lost in space during a November 2008 International Space Station (ISS) maintenance mission left the crew with one less grease gun and no way to replace the missing tool. In a few years astronauts may be able to restock lost or damaged instruments by simply 3-D printing new ones. NASA will test the feasibility of 3-D printing in a confined microgravity environment early next June when it sends a microwave-size printer to the ISS for a series of experiments producing plastic and composite parts and tools. If all goes well, the space agency plans to install a permanent ISS printer in 2015.

 

Incredible Technology: How Astronauts Could Hibernate On Mars Voyage

 

Mike Wall - Space.com

 

By the time humanity is ready to put boots on Mars, the long cruise to the Red Planet may be as easy as a dream. NASA-funded scientists are investigating ways to induce a hibernation state in astronauts. The work could help bring manned Mars missions closer to reality by making the journey to the Red Planet cheaper, safer and less taxing for crewmembers both psychologically and emotionally, researchers said. "Every year, it's, 'We're going to go to Mars in 20 or 30 years,'" said project principal investigator John Bradford, of SpaceWorks Engineering in Atlanta. "We plan to help stop that slide. This, we feel like, addresses a number of the key challenges, and maybe we can eliminate some of the technology requirements in multiple areas."

 

Hot EVA Nights: The Spacewalking Summer of 2013

 

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.com

 

Before he launched from Earth on 28 March, Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov anticipated a hot and heavy summer of spacewalking. A total of four EVAs from the Russian segment of the International Space Station, and at least two from the U.S. segment, were planned between April and August. "It's very hard to prepare a person to perform the EVA," he said in a pre-flight NASA interview. "It's very hard to measure and spread out the tasks between the crew members and the load between the crew members." Since then, Vinogradov, who turns 60 on Saturday, 31 August, has established a new record as the oldest Russian ever to fly into space … and the oldest Russian ever to perform a spacewalk.

 

Astronaut Gregory H. Johnson Leaves NASA

 

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.com

 

Almost half a century ago, a grainy television picture of a man bouncing around on the airless surface of the Moon convinced a seven-year-old boy to someday become an astronaut. Gregory Harold Johnson was in Michigan, at his grandparents' home, watching the black-and-white image of Neil Armstrong on the Sea of Tranquility. "I looked at my brother and sister," Johnson later recalled, "and we were amazed. I said: Wow. I'd love to be an astronaut." Thirty years later, in June 1998, he made the cut and was accepted into NASA's 17th group of astronaut candidates. And ten years after that, in March 2008, Johnson found himself rocketing into space in the pilot's seat of Space Shuttle Endeavour. It was the culmination of an adventure which illustrated how "a very short event…can have an incredible impact on somebody's future". After 15 years with NASA, and having chalked up two Shuttle missions and over 31 cumulative days in orbit, Johnson has announced his retirement from the Astronaut Office and will shortly assume a new position with the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space.

 

Going Nowhere Fast

 

Space News (Editorial)

 

With the impending departure of Lori Garver as NASA's deputy administrator, the Obama administration has lost the most effective advocate for its latest human spaceflight initiative: a mission to capture an asteroid and haul it into lunar orbit for closer inspection by astronauts. Proposed in April, the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) was greeted with skepticism and has been losing ground ever since. Legislation drafted this summer in the House would bar NASA from spending any money on the concept next year, and while that measure might be chalked up to a Republican majority reflexively opposed to all things Obama, support in the Democrat-controlled Senate appears lukewarm at best. The scientific community — which is not entirely impartial when it comes to human spaceflight but probably is as close as it gets — seems to have little use for the idea. Of course, scientists aren't very enthusiastic about returning to the Moon either, which is where the ARM's political opponents think NASA should be headed.

 

Space exploration: looking at the stars

 

The UK Guardian (Editorial)

 

The US space agency, Nasa, plans next month to reawaken an orbiting telescope that ended its mission more than two years ago, to identify asteroids within a few million miles of Earth. Asteroids are small, dark and potentially dangerous. Just think of the one that blasted across the sky over Chelyabinsk in Russia in February, shattering windows, damaging buildings and injuring 1,000 people, as well as providing images straight out of Hollywood, before slamming through the ice on a lake near Chebarkul. So a wide-field infrared survey explorer just known as Wise is a useful instrument for spotting any future potential invaders. But the agency has one extra reason for the neighbourhood watch. It wants to send a manned mission far into space to capture a 500-ton asteroid, land on it, and then bring it into some safe orbit near Earth. This ambition is variously daring, imaginative or crazy, or perhaps all three. It will demand technology that doesn't yet exist and commit astronauts to a complex journey into distant space that could last for weeks, to an as yet unidentified flying object.

 

Discussion at SCH to address commercial spaceflight potential

 

Alex Macon - Galveston County Daily News

 

The Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership will have a public discussion on the future of commercial spaceflight Sept. 4 at Space Center Houston. Much of the discussion will revolve around a proposal to turn Ellington Airport into a licensed spaceport. Last month, the Houston City Council approved a $718,900 contract authorizing consultants to push for a license that would allow the airport to serve as a hub for commercial spaceflight. Houston Airport System Director Mario Diaz, the keynote speaker at the event, has said Ellington could obtain a license from the Federal Aviation Administration next year.

 

Jimmy Buffett Sings About 'That Rocket' Neil Armstrong Rode

 

Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com

 

In "The Rocket That Grandpa Rode," a song on Jimmy Buffett's first new album in four years, the "man from Margaritaville" sings about the man on the moon. "And the kids turned into flying machines with their arms opened wide like wings, but one solitary boy knows the plane is not a toy, I'm talking about the man on the moon," croons Buffett in the twelfth track from "Songs From St. Somewhere," the singer's 27th studio album, which was released last week. Jimmy Buffett is "talking" about Neil Armstrong, the moonwalker who died one year ago Sunday. As commander of the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong took "one small step" to make "a giant leap

__________

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

NASA Orders More Development Work Under Commercial Crew Contracts

 

Dan Leone – Space News

 

NASA is stretching out the third phase of its Commercial Crew Program, providing an additional $55 million to three contractors for more development work on privately designed space transportation systems that could ferry astronauts to and from the international space station as soon as 2017.

 

The added funding brings the combined value of the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) Space Act Agreements NASA awarded in August 2012 to Boeing Space Exploration of Houston, Sierra Nevada Space Systems of Louisville, Colo., and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif.  to about $1.16 billion. It also stretches the contracts' base period to August 2014 from May 2014, according to an Aug. 15 press release from NASA.

 

NASA has used Space Act Agreements, an alternative procurement mechanism not bound by the Federal Acquisition Regulations, to fund development work in its Commercial Crew and Cargo programs. Under Space Act Agreements, contractors are paid for completing self-imposed milestones they create with input from NASA. Such contracts sometimes include optional milestones, which can be funded only at NASA's discretion.

 

For Sierra Nevada, NASA activated two milestones worth a combined $15 million, bringing the total value of the company's CCiCap award to $227.5 million. Under the newly activated milestones, Sierra Nevada will test the reaction control systems for its lifting-body Dream Chaser spacecraft, and perform a partial critical design review.

 

Sierra Nevada's CCiCap award was the smallest of the three NASA gave out last year, and notable because the funding provided would not be enough to take Dream Chaser, which would launch aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5, to the critical design review milestone. Boeing and SpaceX, on the other hand, are expected to reach that milestone, which in NASA engineering cycles directly precedes construction of flight hardware.

 

Meanwhile, Boeing, which is working on a capsule called CST-100 that would also launch aboard Atlas 5, would get another $20 million under the CCiCap extension. That brings the company's award, already the program's largest, to $480 million. With the extra money, Boeing would hold a Phase 2 Spacecraft Safety Review Board in July, according to an amended copy of the company's CCiCap contract posted online by NASA.

 

SpaceX would also get another $20 million, bringing the company's total CCiCap award to $440 million.  The new milestone would fund parachute tests, to be completed in November, for the crewed version of the company's Dragon spacecraft. The newly funded test will give SpaceX a chance to evaluate Dragon's chutes before they are used in April for a previously scheduled pad-abort test at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. In that test, SpaceX will evaluate the capsule's crew escape system, which is designed to blast crews to safety in the event of an anomaly during any phase of Dragon's ascent to space aboard the company's Falcon 9 rocket.

 

NASA plans to pay for the extended CCiCap work with its 2014 appropriation, which has not yet been settled by a deeply divided Congress that is nowhere close to agreeing on a federal budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Partisan discord — Republicans who control the House insist on deeper spending cuts than the Democrats who control the Senate — has some in industry and government expecting that 2013 spending levels will be carried over for at least part of 2014 with a stopgap spending measure known as a continuing resolution.

 

The Commercial Crew Program, the Obama administration's signature human spaceflight initiative, stood to receive about $490 million in 2013 under a spending bill that was subject to across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration. However, the White House has tried to bump that up to $525 million for 2013 in an operating plan that Congress has yet to approve. Federal agencies have some discretion to shift appropriated funds between programs via operating plans, so long as their congressional appropriators do not oppose the changes.

 

Meanwhile, an award is expected next July for the fourth phase of the Commercial Crew Program, the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract. For this phase of the program NASA plans to subsidize construction and certification of new crewed spacecraft, and a proof-of-concept flight to the international space station.

 

Also under this fourth round of the Commercial Crew Program, the agency could issue task orders for astronaut taxi services. These task orders would be available only to contractors that have staged at least one demonstration flight to the station.

 

In a July 30 meeting of the NASA Advisory Council's Human Exploration and Operations Committee at NASA headquarters in Washington, Phil McAlister, NASA's director of commercial spaceflight development, said the current budget might allow the agency to carry two companies into the fourth phase of the Commercial Crew Program.

 

Space Station Astronauts to Test 3-D Printing in Microgravity

NASA has big plans for 3-D printing in space, where mined asteroid materials could resupply longer missions

 

Larry Greenemeier - Scientific American

 

The infamous NASA tool bag lost in space during a November 2008 International Space Station (ISS) maintenance mission left the crew with one less grease gun and no way to replace the missing tool. In a few years astronauts may be able to restock lost or damaged instruments by simply 3-D printing new ones.

 

NASA will test the feasibility of 3-D printing in a confined microgravity environment early next June when it sends a microwave-size printer to the ISS for a series of experiments producing plastic and composite parts and tools. If all goes well, the space agency plans to install a permanent ISS printer in 2015.

 

In the near term such a machine would let the ISS crew replicate odds and ends—plastic clips to anchor cargo, for example—without having to wait for the next resupply mission. Further in the future the space agency imagines a day when raw materials mined from asteroids could be delivered to a spacecraft or orbital lab and used as 3-D printing fodder. The ability to resupply far from Earth would give such a vessel the ability to carry out longer, deep-space missions, assuming myriad other sticking points are worked out—fuel, food and radiation exposure among them.

 

Test run

 

First things first: Astronauts will install the test 3-D printer—built by a company called Made in Space—in the ISS's Microgravity Science Glovebox, an enclosed 255-liter work space located in the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory module. ESA developed the work space to allow terrestrial scientists from different disciplines carry out experiments in space, aided by ISS crew members via real-time data links and video. The work space is sealed and held at a negative pressure to enable the crew to manipulate experimental hardware and samples without the danger of small parts, particulates, fluids or gases escaping into the open laboratory module.

 

Made in Space's printer builds objects by first heating a thermoplastic filament and then using an extrusion head to deposit the softened material according to a blueprint dictated by a computer-aided design (CAD) file. This printing technique—commonly used by inventors for quickly prototyping their designs—creates items from the bottom up, depositing materials in layers as thin as 0.04 millimeter.

 

3-D printers are generally designed to take advantage of gravity and surface tension to help form layers without air bubbles or other imperfections that weaken the finished product. "In the presence of microgravity all the components of a 3-D printer begin to float around, and even fractions of a millimeter of float can be detrimental to a print," says Made in Space chief technology officer Jason Dunn. Without going into specifics—for competitive reasons—Dunn says that his company has developed "the first 3-D printer that is essentially gravity independent."

 

Lack of gravity also means the ISS atmosphere offers no natural convection. This poses problems for managing heat, which is central to the 3-D printing process. "Keeping hot things hot and cold things cold requires new thermal-management methods compared to those found in terrestrial 3-D printers," Dunn adds.

 

The prototype printer has passed a number of vibration and stress tests to determine whether it could survive a launch and function in microgravity. Parabolic test flights provided 20- to 30-second intervals of weightlessness in which to test the printer and yielded a limited set of performance data that NASA hopes to round out during next year's ISS installation. Made in Space will present research from its early test flights at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space 2013 conference next month.

 

During the ISS test, the Made in Space printer will build a variety of objects, including mock-ups of tools and parts used on the space station. "The main goal of this project is to identify not only how the printer reacts when exposed to long-duration microgravity but also to determine if the materials change when being built in that environment," says Mike Snyder, a founding partner of Made in Space as well as the company's lead engineer and director of research and development.

 

Station power limits

 

Extrusion-based 3-D printers typically generate temperatures of about 200 degrees Celsius to soften their thermopolymer filaments. That is not a huge power draw, but the printer might need additional energy to keep its build chamber heated—this helps keep objects from distorting or curling as the bottom layers dry under the newly deposited ones, says Lonnie Love, a senior research scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Measurement Science and Systems Engineering Division. If the build chamber is not heated, another option is to use a heated build platform—like a hot plate—to keep the lower layers from cooling too quickly. Love knows a thing or two about 3-D printing—he is principal developer on Oak Ridge's project to develop a 3-D printed robotic prosthetic hand.

 

Higher-grade plastic 3-D printers require lots of heat—often supplied by a power-hungry laser—to liquefy feed polymers and build denser, more durable plastic objects. Extrusion-based systems make lower-quality plastic items by softening polymers so they flow through the printhead more like toothpaste. Installing lasers on the ISS is likely impractical because power usage would be a concern, says Joseph Beaman, a University of Texas at Austin mechanical engineering professor and pioneer in additive manufacturing techniques such as 3-D printing. "As efficient as 3-D printers are in not wasting materials, they are not terribly energy efficient," he adds.

 

Although Snyder says he cannot go into detail about the power requirements of his company's printer, he points out that devices operating in the ISS Glovebox are limited to about 200 watts. The Made in Space machine operates "nominally" within that requirement, he adds.

 

NASA's interest in 3-D printing makes a lot of sense, and Made in Space's extrusion-based approach seems rational, given the size and power constraints imposed by the ISS, Love says.

 

Next steps

 

Moving space-based 3-D printing to more industrial levels that would enable ISS crew to replace sturdier, more sophisticated parts is beyond the scope of the current experiment. Three-dimensional printers that build items out of titanium and other metal powders would be great for repairing or replacing more critical components on the space station but are an even bigger stretch for a microgravity environment, Beaman says. "You don't want those powders flying around, although maybe you might be able use an electrostatic system to keep nonconducting powders down in the build chamber," he adds.

 

Challenges aside, "I think [3-D printing on the ISS] actually will work," Beaman says. "The question is how useful it will be, but it's certainly worth trying out."

 

Love agrees, particularly if and when astronauts move beyond the space station: "Rather than sending all of the materials needed to a particular location, you just send a printer, and you make what you need using what's available locally," he says. "It sounds way out there, but technically it's feasible."

 

Incredible Technology: How Astronauts Could Hibernate On Mars Voyage

 

Mike Wall - Space.com

 

By the time humanity is ready to put boots on Mars, the long cruise to the Red Planet may be as easy as a dream.

 

NASA-funded scientists are investigating ways to induce a hibernation state in astronauts. The work could help bring manned Mars missions closer to reality by making the journey to the Red Planet cheaper, safer and less taxing for crewmembers both psychologically and emotionally, researchers said.

 

"Every year, it's, 'We're going to go to Mars in 20 or 30 years,'" said project principal investigator John Bradford, of SpaceWorks Engineering in Atlanta. "We plan to help stop that slide. This, we feel like, addresses a number of the key challenges, and maybe we can eliminate some of the technology requirements in multiple areas."

 

Reducing cost and risks

 

It takes six to nine months to get to Mars using traditional propulsion technology. Keeping astronauts happy and healthy for such long stretches in deep space would be no small feat, requiring lots of food, water and other consumables, as well as relatively large living spaces that include a kitchen, sleeping quarters and exercise equipment (to mitigate bone loss, muscle atrophy and other hazards of microgravity).

 

But when astronauts eventually take the trip, it would be significantly cheaper and safer for them to hibernate through the vast majority of it, like bears waiting out the winter, Bradford said. A Mars-bound spacecraft could be much lighter and leaner, for example, or more capable in certain vital areas.

 

"With these mass savings, we think we can just reduce the cost, or use them to add margin to the system," Bradford told SPACE.com.

 

"One area would be in radiation shielding," he said. Astronauts "will almost always be contained in one spot. You could significantly increase the radiation shielding over this small area and reduce the dosage they're taking over the mission."

 

Hibernation would also lessen the psychological stress of the journey, he added. The astronauts would still be cooped up in a tiny space millions of miles from home for months at a time, but they wouldn't know it until they were awakened.

 

Further, the strategy could lessen the need for technological breakthroughs in other areas, Bradford said. Life-support systems would not have to carry such a heavy load, for example. And with enhanced shielding around hibernating astronauts, developing a superfast new propulsion system such as nuclear fusion rockets — which NASA officials have said is a key priority to keep astronauts' radiation doses down on long flights — may not be necessary.

 

NASA is intrigued by the possibilities hibernation presents. Bradford's group was one of 12 research teams to win a grant under Phase 1 of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program this year. The awards, which are worth about $100,000 each and are intended to support initial analysis studies, were announced last month.

 

Cooling down

 

Bradford's team is trying to leverage and extend medical advances in therapeutic hypothermia, which seeks to prevent tissue damage during periods of low blood flow by lowering core body temperature.

 

For every drop of 1 degree Fahrenheit in body temperature, metabolic rate decreases by 5 to 7 percent, Bradford said. The researchers are aiming for a 10-degree drop during manned Mars missions, or a 50 to 70 percent reduction in metabolic rate.

 

That's a big drop, but it's still a far cry from the suspended animation featured in sci-fi films such as the 1979 classic "Alien," which takes body processes all the way down to zero.

 

"We're not freezing anybody. It's not cryopreservation; it's closer to hibernation," Bradford said. "So they're still breathing, and they still need sustenance." (Food and water would be delivered intravenously, he added.)

 

Ideally, the body-temperature drop would induce an unconscious state by itself, he added, so sedatives would not have to be administered to voyaging astronauts.

 

The team is investigating the best ways to cool an astronaut's core. The front-runner idea at the moment may be the gel pads that doctors use during hypothermia therapy, Bradford said. Injecting fluids into the bloodstream could also get the job done, but the researchers are hoping to avoid such invasive methods.

 

It's also possible to take another tack, Bradford said: Let the Mars-bound spacecraft cool down in the frigid depths of space, but work to warm the astronauts up to the desired temperature.

 

The longest anyone has remained in a medically induced hypothermic torpor to date is about 10 days, Bradford said. But that's likely not an upper limit, he stressed; rather, it's a reflection of the low medical need to keep people in such states for prolonged periods of time.

 

"We're trying to give [the medical community] a need, or a rationale" to push the 10-day record out to 30 days and beyond, and to look for any possible attendant complications, Bradford said.

 

Challenges ahead

 

While long-term space hibernation could solve a number of problems, it would also pose some challenges of its own. For example, hibernating astronauts would obviously not be able to keep bone loss and muscle degeneration at bay by exercising, as crewmembers aboard the International Space Station do.

 

The NIAC study is looking into how to mitigate this issue. One possible solution is to induce artificial gravity by spinning the spacecraft, Bradford said — a strategy that could be made even more effective by the astronauts' unresponsive state.

 

"Typically, you have to have these very slow rotation rates, because spinning too fast makes people sick," he said. (Rotation rate dictates the magnitude of the induced gravitational force.) "Because they're not conscious, they obviously won't be susceptible to disorientation, and we think we can actually put them on a much faster rotation."

 

The team is also looking to the animal world for ideas and inspiration.

 

"There's a lot of research on black bears — they hibernate for five or seven months, and they experience very little muscle atrophy," Bradford said. Scientists "are trying to understand why that is. Are body processes tricking the muscles into thinking they're active? So we're looking at that."

 

Early days

 

As they conduct their research in this phase of the study, the researchers are looking for any possible "showstoppers" that would make hibernation impossible or impractical for astronauts on long spaceflights. If they find none, they'll apply for the next round of NIAC funding, with the aim of investigating the issue in more depth and laying out a detailed road map.

 

At the moment, Bradford said, the strategy looks promising. He thinks it should be possible to put astronauts into a torpor state by the mid-2030s — the same timeframe NASA is targeting for its first manned Mars mission.

 

"I don't think it's quite as far-fetched as some people may think," Bradford said. "My goal would be to have something here in 20 years, and I think a lot of the research and experimentation stuff could begin even sooner."

 

As an example, he said that hypothermia therapy experiments could begin on the International Space Station at pretty much any time.

 

Bradford also sees potential in the longer term, saying that the hibernation approach could make it easier to establish and sustain a permanent Mars colony.

 

With current technology, the maximum crew size for a manned Red Planet trip is probably between four and six people, he said; beyond that, the spacecraft likely gets too big and unwieldy to launch. But the reduced needs of hibernating astronauts may make it possible to pack 10 or 20 people into a Mars-bound vessel.

 

"If there are no problems with maintaining a stasis, we can put people on a slow boat out there," Bradford said, "and kind of ship them, almost like cargo."

 

Hot EVA Nights: The Spacewalking Summer of 2013

 

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.com

 

Before he launched from Earth on 28 March, Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov anticipated a hot and heavy summer of spacewalking. A total of four EVAs from the Russian segment of the International Space Station, and at least two from the U.S. segment, were planned between April and August. "It's very hard to prepare a person to perform the EVA," he said in a pre-flight NASA interview. "It's very hard to measure and spread out the tasks between the crew members and the load between the crew members." Since then, Vinogradov, who turns 60 on Saturday, 31 August, has established a new record as the oldest Russian ever to fly into space … and the oldest Russian ever to perform a spacewalk.

 

His historic EVA came on 19 April, three weeks after he and Soyuz TMA-08M crewmates Aleksandr Misurkin of Russia and NASA's Chris Cassidy launched from Baikonur and docked at the multi-national orbital outpost in a mere six hours. For those first few weeks, his team formed a subset of Expedition 35—commanded by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield—and the 19 April EVA was performed by Vinogradov and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko. The two men spent six hours and 38 minutes outside, deploying the Obstanovka plasma-wave and space-weather experiment and retrieving the Biorisk and one of two Vinoslivost materials sample panels. They also replaced a faulty navigational retroreflector to support the requirements of Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV)-4 "Albert Einstein" during its approach and docking in early June. The EVA was the seventh career spacewalk for Vinogradov and the first for Romanenko.

 

A few weeks later, shortly before the return of Expedition 35 crewmen Hadfield, Romanenko, and NASA's Tom Marshburn to Earth, a serious incident arose aboard the station when a leak was visually observed in the form of ammonia "snow" emanating from the critical 2B power channel of the 17,000-pound P-6 truss. Within two days, a hasty contingency EVA plan was assembled, and on 11 May Cassidy and Marshburn ventured outside the station for five hours and 30 minutes. Although they found only a few tiny flakes of leaking ammonia, it was deemed prudent to remove, replace, and test a suspect Pump Flow Control Subassembly (PFCS), which was expected to yield additional clues for investigators as they sought the root cause of the problem.

 

Three days after the EVA, Hadfield, Romanenko, and Marshburn were safely back on Earth, having handed command of the space station to Vinogradov. This officially kicked off Expedition 36, whose inaugural three members were boosted to a full staff of six on 28 May, when Soyuz TMA-09M arrived with Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA's Karen Nyberg, and Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano. It was already planned for Parmitano to participate in at least two EVAs from the U.S. segment with Cassidy—making him the first Italian ever to walk in space—but the sheer drama associated with the second of those spacewalks could hardly have been anticipated.

 

Ahead of the Cassidy-Parmitano EVAs was the first "official" spacewalk of Expedition 36, which took place on 24 June. It involved Yurchikhin and Misurkin and lasted six hours and 34 minutes. The two men—Yurchikhin making his sixth career EVA and Misurkin his first—worked to prepare the station for the arrival of Russia's long-awaited "Nauka" ("Science") Multi-Purpose Laboratory Module (MLM). Originally scheduled for launch in 2006, the module has been repeatedly delayed by organizational and other issues, most recently until December 2013, then April 2014, and probably will be postponed yet further. Yurchikhin and Misurkin retrieved a pair of science experiments, installed a new one, and replaced an aging fluid flow control panel on the Zarya module as preventative maintenance on the Russian segment's cooling system. They also fitted clamps for future power cables as an early step toward removing the Pirs docking module and replacing it with Nauka.

 

Two weeks later, on 9 July, history was made when an astronaut ventured into the void, clad in a pure white space suit … but with a notable exception: it bore the il Tricolore (tricolor) red, white, and green flag of Italy on its sleeve. Although preceded into orbit by several other Italians—including Italy's first astronaut, Franco Malerba—it was the achievement of Luca Parmitano that he became the first of his countrymen in history ever to perform a spacewalk. Parmitano's first EVA was a spectacular success. He and Cassidy—by now a veteran of four previous spacewalks, including the 11 May contingency—replaced a failed component of the Space-to-Ground Antenna (SGANT) hardware, which funnels data between the station and Mission Control through the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) network. Parmitano also retrieved two scientific experiments from the ExPRESS Logistics Carrier (ELC)-2 and the two men installed a pair of Radiator Grapple Bars (RGBs) to facilitate a means for the Canadarm2 robotic arm to interface with the station's radiator elements, should the need ever arise to repair or replace them.

 

Cassidy also began a two-part task to install jumper cables to the Z-1 truss segment, which was to be completed during the dramatic second U.S. spacewalk on 16 July. Depressurization of the Quest airlock's outermost "crew lock" was in work by 7:30 a.m. EDT, with a brief pause at 5 psi for standard leak checks, after which the pressure continued to drop down to near-vacuum. At 2 psi, the remaining oxygen in the crew lock was vented into space, and at 7:57 a.m. Cassidy and Parmitano switched their space suits' life-support utilities onto internal battery power. This signaled the official start of the planned 6.5-hour EVA, a full 13 minutes ahead of schedule.

 

As planned, Parmitano departed the airlock first and began configuring tether and equipment, before Cassidy joined him and the two men checked themselves before splitting up on their separate first tasks. Cassidy returned to the Z-1 work site, atop the station's Unity node. He quickly plunged into the task of concluding the reconfiguration of Y-Bypass jumper cables which started on EVA-22. Due to the sheer volume of cables, connectors, and jumpers—caused by numerous electrical and data system upgrades over the years—the area has been nicknamed "The Rat's Nest." By 8:35 a.m., he had completed the task and would have moved next to the P-1 and S-1 trusses to begin the installation of four radiator V-guides onto the two Radiator Grapple Bars (RGBs).

 

By this time, however, the first signs of trouble were already brewing. After he and Cassidy parted ways at the airlock, Parmitano translated "beneath" the Unity node toward its aft end cone, where he temporarily stowed a bag of data cables. He mated the 1553 data cables, hooking up the Power and Data Grapple Fixture (PDGF) on Russia's Zarya module to ISS data systems on the Avionics Panel of the Tranquility node. This will ultimately permit the Canadarm2 robotic manipulator arm to access the Russian segment of the station. He then embarked on what should have been an hour-long task of retrieving and installing the Ethernet cable for Russia's Nauka module, connecting one end to a space Ethernet connector at the junction between the Destiny, Unity, and Tranquility modules; he then began the process of laying out the cable as he worked his way aft toward the Russian Segment.

 

Then, at about 8:42 a.m. EDT, Parmitano made his reference to water inside his "Snoopy" communications cap. He was quickly joined by Cassidy, who verified that up to 800 milliliters of water was visible inside Parmitano's helmet. Initially suspecting a coolant leak, he reduced the flow rate, and the possibility of a drinking bag leak seemed unlikely as it was already dry. Monitoring the increasingly tense situation from the Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, was a team headed by ISS Flight Director David Korth. At 9:06 a.m., with Parmitano now reporting water in his eyes, Korth gave the call to terminate the EVA. Under his directive, Parmitano would proceed immediately to the airlock, whilst Cassidy stowed the Ethernet cable and cleaned up the work site.

 

Within five minutes, Parmitano was back at Quest, by now with water droplets entering his eyes, nose, and mouth. Cassidy handled the closure of the hatch, which was locked at 9:26 a.m. and repressed back up to ambient ISS pressures 11 minutes later. "He looks miserable," Cassidy said of his crewmate, "but he's okay." At 9:38 a.m., the hatch connecting the outer crew lock with the inner equipment lock was open and "intravehicular" crew member Karen Nyberg removed Parmitano's helmet, releasing a flurry of water droplets in the process. The official "end time" for EVA-23 was 9:29 a.m. EDT, concluding a 92-minute spacewalk. This duration established the partially-successful spacewalk as the second-shortest ISS-based EVA in history. Investigative work to identify the cause of the problem is ongoing.

 

Since then, two more Russian EVAs have taken place, on 16 August and 22 August, both by Fyodor Yurchikhin and Aleksandr Misurkin. The first spacewalk created a new national record for the longest Russian EVA in history, as the cosmonauts spent no less than seven hours and 16 minutes outside the station. This eclipsed the previous Soviet/Russian record by 13 minutes, although it falls well shy of the all-time world EVA record of eight hours and 56 minutes, set by U.S. astronauts Jim Voss and Susan Helms in March 2001. During their epic spacewalk, Yurchikhin and Misurkin rigged Ethernet and other data cables onto Zarya in readiness for the arrival of the Nauka module. Misurkin also installed the Vinoslivost materials exposure experiment onto the Poisk module.

 

Most recently, on Thursday 22 August, Yurchikhin and Misurkin completed what is expected to be the final Expedition 36 EVA. They spent five hours and 58 minutes outside the space station, replacing a laser communications experiment with a new platform for a small optical camera system, together with new EVA aids and inspections of antenna covers. Near the end of their excursion, the cosmonauts unfurled a Russian tricolor flag in commemoration of Russian Flag Day.

 

Last Thursday's EVA marked the 173rd dedicated to ISS construction and maintenance since the initial STS-88 spacewalks in December 1998. It also marks the last scheduled EVA for Expedition 36, which will come to an end on 11 September when Vinogradov, Misurkin, and Cassidy board Soyuz TMA-08M and return to Earth. They will conclude a mission of 167 days and hand over the station to Yurchikhin, who will command Expedition 37 until mid-November. His crew will be joined on 25 September by Soyuz TMA-10M crewmen Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky of Russia, together with NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins.

 

Astronaut Gregory H. Johnson Leaves NASA

 

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.com

 

Almost half a century ago, a grainy television picture of a man bouncing around on the airless surface of the Moon convinced a seven-year-old boy to someday become an astronaut. Gregory Harold Johnson was in Michigan, at his grandparents' home, watching the black-and-white image of Neil Armstrong on the Sea of Tranquility. "I looked at my brother and sister," Johnson later recalled, "and we were amazed. I said: Wow. I'd love to be an astronaut." Thirty years later, in June 1998, he made the cut and was accepted into NASA's 17th group of astronaut candidates. And ten years after that, in March 2008, Johnson found himself rocketing into space in the pilot's seat of Space Shuttle Endeavour. It was the culmination of an adventure which illustrated how "a very short event…can have an incredible impact on somebody's future".

 

After 15 years with NASA, and having chalked up two Shuttle missions and over 31 cumulative days in orbit, Johnson has announced his retirement from the Astronaut Office and will shortly assume a new position with the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space. "Greg contributed greatly to the construction of the International Space Station and I very much enjoyed my time in orbit with him," said Bob Behnken, chief of the Astronaut Office, who flew his first mission with Johnson on STS-123. "We are grateful for his service to NASA and wish him well in his new career."

 

Johnson was born on 12 May 1962 in South Ruislip, Middlesex, in the United Kingdom. A self-described "military brat", his family moved around a great deal in his formative years, but settled eventually in Ohio, where he completed high school in Fairborn. "I had amazing teachers in high school," he reflected, but admitted that his older siblings teased him for being "like peanut butter; I was spread too thin because it was involved in so many different activities and I was always trying to do the best I could in every activity." His commitment brought him to the U.S. Air Force Academy and Johnson adapted particularly well to its central tenets of self-discipline, physical fitness and academic rigor.

 

He earned a degree in aeronautical engineering in 1984, leaving the Air Force Academy as a Distinguished Graduate with Honors, and went on to gain a master's in flight structures engineering from Columbia University in 1985. Johnson was designed an Air Force pilot in May 1986 at Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock, Texas – meeting his wife, Cari, whilst there – and served as a T-38A instructor for several years, then was selected to fly the F-15E Eagle at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, near Goldsboro, N.C. Deployed to Saudi Arabia in December 1990, he flew 34 combat missions in support of Operation Desert Storm and later flew 27 missions in support of Operation Southern Watch in 1992-1993. Upon returning to the United States, Johnson attended the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and completed the grueling course of academics and piloting as a Distinguished Graduate in 1994. He later earned the Lieutenant General Bobby Bond Award for Top USAF Test Pilot in 1996.

 

It was at around this point in his life that Johnson began to realize that the astronaut career path was opening up to him. "It's kind of a rebirth," he told a NASA interviewer, "and at that time I realized that…I'm flying really cool stuff and they like to hire test pilots, because each Shuttle mission really is a test flight, and so went ahead and threw my name in the hat. My goal was to get an interview, come down, and meet some astronauts." Little could he have known that in June 1998 he would be accepted into the world's most elite flying fraternity. And years later, Johnson would credit Charlie Bolden – today's Administrator of NASA – as having pushed him in the right direction. It had been Bolden who encouraged Johnson to enter test pilot school.

 

After two years of grueling training, Johnson undertook technical duties, working on Shuttle displays as part of the Cockpit Avionics Upgrade Council and later on the External Tank foam impact test team, convened in the wake of the 2003 Columbia disaster. He later rose to become deputy chief, then chief, of the Astronaut Safety Branch, and in January 2007 was named as pilot of STS-123, a 16-day mission aboard Endeavour, which launched on 11 March 2008. Johnson and his crewmates supported five spacewalks to install the Japanese Experiment Module Logistics Pressurized Module (JLP) module and Canada's "Dextre" manipulator "hand" onto the International Space Station.

 

Upon his return from his first mission, Johnson trained as pilot for STS-400, the planned – but thankfully unneeded contingency flight to rescue the STS-125 Hubble servicing crew – and in August 2009 he was named as pilot for STS-134, which wound up as the penultimate Shuttle mission and the 25th and final voyage of Endeavour. The mission launched on 16 May 2011 and ran for almost 16 days.

 

"Endeavour's always been my favorite vehicle, I guess, because it's the newest of the vehicles," he told a NASA interviewer. "When I first became an astronaut, one of my early jobs was to help prepare the vehicle and the crews for launch at the Cape, flipping switches, setting up procedures, taping things down. And so I became familiar with all of the different shuttles that I spent a lot of time in all of them. Endeavour always looked the cleanest, it was the most pristine, and it was my favorite vehicle from the very start."

 

Whilst training for STS-134, Johnson resigned from the Air Force, with the rank of colonel, and upon his return from his second mission, in October 2011 he began a rotational assignment as Associate Director of External Programs, Center Operations, at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. His departure from the Astronaut Office continues a trend which – despite the recent arrival of eight new candidates – has seen the corps decline in numbers to a mere shadow of its strength in previous years.

 

Going Nowhere Fast

 

Space News (Editorial)

 

With the impending departure of Lori Garver as NASA's deputy administrator, the Obama administration has lost the most effective advocate for its latest human spaceflight initiative: a mission to capture an asteroid and haul it into lunar orbit for closer inspection by astronauts.

 

Proposed in April, the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) was greeted with skepticism and has been losing ground ever since. Legislation drafted this summer in the House would bar NASA from spending any money on the concept next year, and while that measure might be chalked up to a Republican majority reflexively opposed to all things Obama, support in the Democrat-controlled Senate appears lukewarm at best.

 

The scientific community — which is not entirely impartial when it comes to human spaceflight but probably is as close as it gets — seems to have little use for the idea. Of course, scientists aren't very enthusiastic about returning to the Moon either, which is where the ARM's political opponents think NASA should be headed.

 

NASA, for its part, has tried different tacks to build support for the idea. One was that the ARM would equip the nation to detect and, if necessary, divert a killer asteroid. In July, Ms. Garver, apparently prompted by criticisms that the 7- to 10-meter-diameter rock targeted by the ARM would not pose a huge threat to Earth, floated the idea of visiting a larger asteroid, breaking off a piece and bringing that in for closer inspection.

 

That was a desperate-sounding stretch, and might well have been the last gasp for the planetary defense argument. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in recent weeks has backed away from the idea.

 

Mr. Bolden has tried to make the case that the ARM could fulfill the president's goal, spelled out in an April 2010 speech, of sending humans to an asteroid by 2025. It's a reverse take on the reality-based proverb that says if the mountain won't come to Mohammed then Mohammed must come to the mountain. At this point, however, it's by no means clear that any human-asteroid rendezvous is achievable on the schedule laid out by the president.

 

Perhaps the most logical reason to do the ARM, articulated recently by Ms. Garver, is that it's the only plausibly affordable concept for deep-space exploration that can leverage the heavy-lift Space Launch System and Orion capsule that Congress has directed NASA to build. These vehicles, whose development is costing nearly $3 billion annually, have no other place to go under any realistic budget scenarios for NASA.

 

Of course, the ARM-by-default argument rests on the assumptions that NASA can reliably identify a suitable target asteroid and then pull off the mission for $2 billion to $3 billion, both of which are questionable. Either way, it leaves a lot to be desired in the inspiration department.

 

One has to wonder whether the task of defending the ARM played a role in Ms. Garver's decision to leave the space agency, or at least its timing. Even for someone who spearheaded the privatization of NASA crew transport to and from the international space station — overcoming fierce resistance in the process — selling the asteroid capture mission was bound to be a monumentally difficult, if not impossible, task.

 

NASA's human spaceflight program, meanwhile, remains caught between two opposing visions, neither of which appears grounded in reality. As this sad theater of the absurd plays on, U.S. political support for human spaceflight outside the states that directly benefit from the activity will erode, perhaps even to the point of collapse. The issue then will be less about where to send human explorers than whether to have such a program in the first place.

 

Space exploration: looking at the stars

The plan to send a manned mission into space to capture a 500-ton asteroid is variously daring, imaginative or crazy, or perhaps all three

 

The UK Guardian (Editorial)

 

The US space agency, Nasa, plans next month to reawaken an orbiting telescope that ended its mission more than two years ago, to identify asteroids within a few million miles of Earth. Asteroids are small, dark and potentially dangerous. Just think of the one that blasted across the sky over Chelyabinsk in Russia in February, shattering windows, damaging buildings and injuring 1,000 people, as well as providing images straight out of Hollywood, before slamming through the ice on a lake near Chebarkul.

 

So a wide-field infrared survey explorer just known as Wise is a useful instrument for spotting any future potential invaders. But the agency has one extra reason for the neighbourhood watch. It wants to send a manned mission far into space to capture a 500-ton asteroid, land on it, and then bring it into some safe orbit near Earth. This ambition is variously daring, imaginative or crazy, or perhaps all three. It will demand technology that doesn't yet exist and commit astronauts to a complex journey into distant space that could last for weeks, to an as yet unidentified flying object.

 

The mission will take off on a rocket that has, so far, never left the ground, and commit the crew to Orion, a spacecraft yet to be completed. The case for chasing a near-Earth object is good: asteroids are leftovers from the construction of planets, and there are solid scientific reasons for wanting to know more about them; they represent a space traffic hazard with colossal destructive power, so any plan to deflect an asteroid would require detailed understanding of its behaviour and composition; beyond that, carbonaceous asteroids are rich in valuable minerals and an obvious resource for future space missions.

 

The reasons for not going ahead are that the mission would be cripplingly expensive, and could go horribly wrong. While the debate within the US space community intensifies, a spectacular European robot mission launched in 2004 is about to steal the headlines. Next spring, a spacecraft called Rosetta will meet a comet, go round it, drop a little lander called Philae on it, and then ride along with it on its journey around the sun. Rosetta has already encountered two asteroids on its flight to meet comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

 

If the rendezvous is successful, the scientific returns will be prodigious; if it isn't, no lives will be lost. The difference is that Rosetta is the end of a great adventure, while the decision – not yet confirmed – to chase after and lasso an orbiting lump of celestial real estate is the beginning of something immeasurably bigger, and riskier. It will be a rehearsal for something else: a manned mission to Mars. The stakes are high. So, in every sense, could be the rewards. The real question is not whether it should be done, but whether it can be done.

 

Discussion at SCH to address commercial spaceflight potential

 

Alex Macon - Galveston County Daily News

 

The Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership will have a public discussion on the future of commercial spaceflight Sept. 4 at Space Center Houston.

 

Much of the discussion will revolve around a proposal to turn Ellington Airport into a licensed spaceport. Last month, the Houston City Council approved a $718,900 contract authorizing consultants to push for a license that would allow the airport to serve as a hub for commercial spaceflight.

 

Houston Airport System Director Mario Diaz, the keynote speaker at the event, has said Ellington could obtain a license from the Federal Aviation Administration next year.

 

The FAA has licensed eight commercial spaceports in the U.S., and Diaz sees Ellington as a potential port for space tourism and other commercial space endeavors.

 

It would cost somewhere between $48 million to $122 million to equip Ellington to launch space vehicles, according to a 2012 study conducted by the airport system.

 

As the home to NASA's Johnson Space Center and other aerospace and commercial flight companies, the Bay Area is particularly well-suited for a commercial spaceport, Diaz has said.

 

Other panelists will include former astronauts and leaders in the commercial spaceflight industry.

 

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation and Barrios Technology are also sponsoring the public discussion.

 

At a glance

 

·         WHAT: Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership's public discussion on commercial spaceflight with keynote speaker Mario Diaz

·         WHEN: 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sept. 4

·         WHERE: Space Center Houston, 1601 NASA Parkway

 

Jimmy Buffett Sings About 'That Rocket' Neil Armstrong Rode

 

Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com

 

In "The Rocket That Grandpa Rode," a song on Jimmy Buffett's first new album in four years, the "man from Margaritaville" sings about the man on the moon.

 

"And the kids turned into flying machines with their arms opened wide like wings, but one solitary boy knows the plane is not a toy, I'm talking about the man on the moon," croons Buffett in the twelfth track from "Songs From St. Somewhere," the singer's 27th studio album, which was released last week.

 

Jimmy Buffett is "talking" about Neil Armstrong, the moonwalker who died one year ago Sunday. As commander of the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong took "one small step" to make "a giant leap for mankind" on July 20, 1969.

 

But it wasn't the astronaut's passing that apparently led to Buffet's song. As the lyrics to "The Rocket That Grandpa Rode" hint, inspiration came from a trip the musician took a year earlier, in July 2011.

 

"We're going to watch the shuttle fly away – last day," the song recounts.

 

Buffett was among the guests invited to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to witness the final launch of the space shuttle program on July 8, 2011. To get to the VIP viewing site, the singer rode a bus with other spectators.

 

"And for some kids behind my seat, there's a very special treat, more than just history on parade," Buffett describes in "The Rocket That Grandpa Rode."

 

Those kids happened to be Armstrong's grandchildren.

 

As recalled by Rick Armstrong, one of the moonwalker's two sons, he and his children were seated in the very last row of the bus. As they were driven past the voluminous Vehicle Assembly Building, he remarked something along the lines of, "that's where the rocket that grandpa rode was put together."

 

Hearing this, the man seated in front of Armstrong and his family turned around and replied, "That sounds like a good idea for a song," Rick Armstrong recounted in an e-mail to collectSPACE.com.

 

The exchange led to introductions, and Jimmy Buffett met the Armstrongs.

 

NASA's VIP launch viewing site is located adjacent to the Apollo/Saturn V Center, where one of the three remaining Saturn V rockets is on full display. The 363-foot-long (110 meter) booster was the type of rocketship that Armstrong — together with Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins — rode to the moon in July 1969.

 

"Giant nozzles, bolts and beams," Buffett sings, "She was a stairway to heaven, ole' Apollo 11."

 

"The rocketship their Grandpa drove," the chorus repeats.

 

Buffett did more than watch space shuttle Atlantis lift off that day. He also performed a private concert for shuttle workers, marking the end of 30 years of launches.

 

As "The Rocket That Grandpa Rode" ends, Buffett thanks NASA, as he does "Neil."

 

It's not the only time the singer paid tribute to the first man to walk on the moon.

 

On Aug. 25, 2012, on the day Armstrong died, Buffett was performing for an audience in Wisconsin, when at the end of his show, he dedicated an encore performance to the late astronaut.

 

"We lost a great flyer in America today," Buffett told the concertgoers. "Neil Armstrong passed away, the man on the moon. As you know, flying has been an inspiration in my life the whole time, so I'd like to send this off to Neil Armstrong's family tonight. It's a little thing called 'Oysters and Pearls' and he certainly was a pearl."

 

The song's lyrics cite aviator Charles Lindbergh and artist Elvis Presley. Buffett added a final stanza for that night's rendition.

 

"Neil Armstrong walked upon the moon, and now he has gone to heaven," Buffet sang.

 

END

 

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