Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - August 28, 2013 and JSC Today

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: August 28, 2013 5:54:48 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - August 28, 2013 and JSC Today

 

 

 

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

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JSC TODAY CATEGORIES Headlines -  Tech & Tell Poster Sessions Coming Sept. 12 -  MCCDPS & RSS Telemetry Delivery Systems Shutdown -  It'll Be Here Soon - Safety & Health Day Oct. 10 Organizations/Social -  Mental Health Disorders and Coping Strategies -  Kinect CoLab meeting -  JSC Praise and Worship Club -  League Sports - Starport's Fall Season Jobs and Training -  Cancelled - Upcoming Privacy Act PII/SBU Training -  Payload Safety Review and Analysis: Sept. 9-12 -  Lockout/Tagout - Sept 24, 8 p.m. - B20/R205/206 -  Basic Explosives Safety - Sept. 25-26 - B20/R116 Community -  Apollo 13 Movie Night Hosted by Gene Kranz -  Blood Drive Thank You

Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer

 

Headlines Tech & Tell Poster Sessions Coming Sept. 12 Mark your calendar to come to the second annual Institutional Research and Development (IR&D) Poster Session this September! Tech & Tell posters will be set up in the Building 3 Collaboration Center on Thursday, Sept. 12, from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Innovators from JSC and White Sands Test Facility will display technology project posters. The JSC Technology Working Group (JTWG) is sponsoring this interactive event, which is designed to showcase the innovators among us while promoting communication and encouraging future collaborative work on new technologies that could benefit human space exploration and other NASA missions. Remember, stop by Building 3, support your colleagues and vote for the "People's Choice Award" to recognize the best new technology idea for JSC! A fall call for IR&D proposals is coming very soon. What impact will you make on the future of human exploration? Holly Kurth x32951 [top] MCCDPS & RSS Telemetry Delivery Systems Shutdown Personnel operating from office and lab environments who view telemetry using Web displays, BEV, IAM, MSKWin, MSKview tool or specialized applications should review the detailed information contained here. Support for legacy MCCDPS and RSS systems supporting these capabilities will be terminated on Sept. 30. The capability will be replaced by the new MCCDPS system. This shutdown does not affect users of the MCC-X system, International Partners, directly connected control centers or users of the MCC EIS system. Bruce Hochstetler x32613 [top] It'll Be Here Soon - Safety & Health Day Oct. 10 Make your plans now for JSC's Safety & Health Day - Oct. 10. Our theme is Safety & Health 2.0.13 - Bold, Innovative and Creative Ideas on Safety & Health. We will kick things off at 9 a.m. in the Teague Auditorium with our center director, Dr. Ellen Ochoa, and guest speaker Christine Yager. Yager is an Assoc. Transportation Researcher for the Human Factors Group within the Texas A&M Transportation Institute's Center for Transportation Safety. She'll be discussing distracted driving. From 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., various exhibits will share information on your safety and health. Have questions? Contact our Safety & Health Day co-chairs, Supricia Franklin (x37817) and Angel Plaza (x37305). Event Date: Thursday, October 10, 2013   Event Start Time:9:00 AM   Event End Time:12:30 PM Event Location: Teague Audtorium and Mall area Add to Calendar Supricia Franklin/Angel Plaza x37817 http://sthday.jsc.nasa.gov/ [top]    Organizations/Social Mental Health Disorders and Coping Strategies Please join Takis Bogdanos, LPC-S, CGP, with the JSC Employee Assistance Program today, Aug. 28, at 12 noon in the Building 30 Auditorium for a presentation about depression as part of the psycho-educational series: "Mental Health Disorders, Causes and Treatments." He will be discussing causes, prevalence, symptoms and impact in everyday life, as well as the latest treatments being implemented. Event Date: Wednesday, August 28, 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, Occupational Health Branch x36130 [top] Kinect CoLab meeting Are you currently working on or interested in starting a project involving Kinect, Leapmotion or other motion-tracking hardware? If so, you are invited to the Kinect CoLAB. CoLABs provide a casual forum to share lessons learned and generate innovative new ideas and uses of technologies. We will be answering questions and providing demos of the technology. Come make cross-directorate contacts and learn more about what others are doing with these exciting technologies. We will discuss group topics for collaboration, look at the new Kinect One video and Leapmotion, and discuss the upcoming Innovation Day. The Kinect CoLAB will be held Wednesday from 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Building 30A, Room 2090B. Feel free to bring your lunch and your co-workers. Join the group. Event Date: Wednesday, August 28, 2013   Event Start Time:11:45 AM   Event End Time:1:00 PM Event Location: Building 30A, Room 2085B (Bell Room) Add to Calendar Shelby Thompson x48701 https://collaboration.ndc.nasa.gov/CoLab/kinect/SitePages/Home.aspx [top] JSC Praise and Worship Club Join with the praise and worship band "Allied With the Lord" for a refreshing set of traditional and contemporary praise and worship songs on Wednesday, Sept. 4, from 11:15 a.m. to noon in Building 29, Room 237 (also called Creative Sp.ace). Prayer partners will be available for anyone who would like it. All JSC civil servants and contractors are welcome. Event Date: Wednesday, September 4, 2013   Event Start Time:11:15 AM   Event End Time:12:00 PM Event Location: Building 29 room 237 Add to Calendar Mike FitzPatrick x30758 [top] League Sports - Starport's Fall Season Registration is opening for Starport's popular league sports! Registration NOW OPEN: Flag Football (Co-ed) | Tuesdays | Registration ends Sept. 4 | Leagues start Sept. 10 Soccer (Co-ed) | Saturdays | Registration ends Sept. 3| League starts Sept. 7 Softball (Men's DD) | Tuesdays, Wednesdays | Registration ends Sept. 18 | Leagues start Sept. 24 Registration Opening Soon: Dodgeball (Co-ed) | Thursdays | Registration Sept. 9 to 30 | League starts Oct. 3 Softball (Co-ed) | Thursdays | Registration Sept. 9 to 30 | League starts Oct. 3 Volleyball (Rev 4s and Co-ed) | Mondays and Tuesdays | Registration Sept. 9 to Oct. 2 | Leagues start Oct. 7 Free-agent registration is now open for all leagues. All participants must register at IMLeagues. For more information, please contact the Gilruth information desk at 281-483-0304. Robert Vaughn x30304 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/ [top]    Jobs and Training Cancelled - Upcoming Privacy Act PII/SBU Training The optional Aug. 29 PII/SBU IT Security Training session to be hosted by JSC in the Teague Auditorium has been CANCELLED. However, this session is still being hosted at the agency level. Individuals wanting to take this session will need to register in SATERN for this event, permitting spaces are still available. The training will become mandatory in the next fiscal year, and registration will be through SATERN. You MUST register for this event in SATERN (search for "ITS-SBUPII-013-W" and select the date you wish to attend). For more information on SBU/PII, go here or contact JSC Privacy Manager Ali Montasser (x39798) or JSC Information Security Officer Mark Fridye (x36660). JSC-IRD-Outreach x41334 [top] Payload Safety Review and Analysis: Sept. 9-12 Class is 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. This course is designed as a guide to payload safety review for payload program safety and management personnel. The student will gain an understanding of payload safety as it relates to the overall payload integration process, how the payload safety review process works and the roles and responsibilities of the various players in the payload safety review process. In addition, the student will be instructed in the hands-on fundamentals of payload hazard analysis, hazard documentation and presentation of analyses to the Payload Safety Review Panel. The course will include a mock presentation to the Payload Safety Review Panel. Those with only support or supervisory responsibilities in payload safety should attend course SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0016, Payload Safety Process and Requirements. Use this direct link for registration. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_... Event Date: Monday, September 9, 2013   Event Start Time:8:00 AM   Event End Time:4:00 PM Event Location: Bldg. 20 Room 205/206 Add to Calendar Shirley Robinson x41284 [top] Lockout/Tagout - Sept 24, 8 p.m. - B20/R205/206 The purpose of this course is to provide employees with the standards, procedures and requirements necessary for the control of hazardous energy through lockout and tagout of energy-isolating devices. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standard 29 CFR 1910.147, "The Control of Hazardous Energy (Lockout/Tagout)," is the basis for this course. A comprehensive test will be offered at the end of the class. Use this direct link for registration. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_... Event Date: Tuesday, September 24, 2013   Event Start Time:8:00 AM   Event End Time:11:00 AM Event Location: Bldg. 20 Room 205/206 Add to Calendar Shirley Robinson x41284 [top] Basic Explosives Safety - Sept. 25-26 - B20/R116 This two-day course provides initial or refresher training for technicians, supervisors and managers who work with or in the presence of explosive systems, components or materials. In-class mishap case studies are used, in addition to lecture and video, to ensure student understanding. Topics include: Characteristics and hazards of explosives Explosive effects Types of explosive systems/components/devices used in NASA Operating procedures Explosive siting criteria Storage, handling and disposal of explosive wastes Fire protection Electricity, electromagnetic radiation, ESD, and lightning protection Housekeeping Personal Protective Equipment Tooling and equipment safety Hazard classification systems and divisions Quantity/distance requirements Transporting, shipping and handling explosives, propellants and pyrotechnics Explosive hazards and exposure risk assessment Target audience: Safety, Reliability, Quality and Maintainability professionals. Technicians, supervisors and managers who work with or in the presence of explosive systems components or materials. CEUs: 1.2. Use this direct link for registration. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_... Event Date: Wednesday, September 25, 2013   Event Start Time:8:00 AM   Event End Time:4:00 PM Event Location: Bldg. 20 Room 116 Add to Calendar Shirley Robinson x41284 [top]    Community Apollo 13 Movie Night Hosted by Gene Kranz Just a reminder! Thank you all for your JSC Feeds Families contributions this year. Space Center Houston is hosting our free movie event featuring "Apollo 13" with special guest host Gene Kranz this Thursday. For those of you who received free tickets, the doors open at 6 p.m., with the movie starting promptly at 6:30 p.m. The movie will be displayed on the Imax screen. Please be sure to arrive early to get a good seat. Elizabeth Urban x49083 [top] Blood Drive Thank You Thank you to all those who took the time to donate at last week's blood drive. St. Luke's collected a total of 199 units of blood. Each donation can help up to three people -- that's 597 lives. Mark your calendar for the next blood drive from Oct. 23 to 24. For additional information, check out our website or contact Teresa Gomez at 281-483-9588. Teresa Gomez x39588 http://jscpeople.jsc.nasa.gov/blooddrv/blooddrv.htm [top]

 

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.

 

 

 

 

NASA TV:

·         11:25 am Central (12:25 pm EDT) – E36's Karen Nyberg w CW's "Arsenio Hall Show"

·         1 pm Central (2 EDT) – Expedition 38/39 Crew News Conference

ü  Michael Tyurin, Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata)

 

Human Spaceflight News

Wednesday – August 28, 2013

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

Astronauts recreate waterworks in leaky spacesuit

 

Marcia Dunn - Associated Press

 

The mystery of NASA's leaky spacesuit continues. On Tuesday, International Space Station astronauts turned on the suit that leaked water last month and almost led to the first-ever drowning in orbit. This time, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano was safely outside his suit. It's a good thing: Big jiggly blobs of water sloshed around inside the empty helmet during the test, just as it did on his July 16 spacewalk. NASA says it's good the problem reappeared. That should make it easier for engineers to determine the cause. The astronauts will remove suspect pieces and, possibly, return them on the next three-man Soyuz spacecraft bound for Earth next month. Engineers are zeroing in on the backpack that contains life-support equipment, including water for suit cooling. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

 

Female astronauts face discrimination from space radiation concerns, astronauts say

 

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

 

Female astronauts have fewer opportunities to fly in space than men partially because of strict lifetime radiation exposure restrictions, astronauts say. Both male and female astronauts are not allowed to accumulate a radiation dose that would increase their lifetime risk of developing fatal cancer by more than 3 percent. A six-month mission on the International Space Station exposes astronauts to about 40 times the average yearly dose of background radiation that a person would receive living on Earth, NASA spokesman William Jeffs said in an email. While the level of risk allowed for both men and women in space is the same, women have a lower threshold for space radiation exposure than men, according to physiological models used by NASA.

 

Orbital launch set for Sept. 17

 

Carol Vaughn - Eastern Shore News (Gannett)

 

Orbital Sciences and NASA announced a new launch date for a demonstration mission to the International Space Station being launched from Wallops Island in September. The launch is now set for Tuesday, Sept. 17, at 11:16 a.m., with a 15-minute launch window. The previous date announced was Sept. 14, with a launch window from Sept. 14-19. The launch of Orbital's Antares rocket carrying the Cygnus spacecraft is one of two high-profile missions planned for take-off in September from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA Wallops Flight Facility. Both are expected to draw large crowds to the Eastern Shore of Virginia to view the launches, which should be widely visible.

 

Q-and-A with Navy SEAL - from space

 

Tony Lombardo - Army Times

 

Recruiters say if you join the military, you can see the world. For Cmdr. Chris Cassidy, that is literally the case. The Navy SEAL-turned-astronaut has a nice view from the International Space Station, where he has been serving since March. It's the 43-year-old's second time in space — his first was in 2009 aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. His typical day aboard the station includes science experiments, the occasional spacewalk and, yes, a fair amount of stargazing.

 

Marshall uses 3D printing to make record-breaking rocket engine part

 

Lee Roop – Huntsville Times

 

The largest 3D-printed rocket engine component NASA has ever tested generated a record amount of thrust in tests Aug. 22, moving the agency closer to a new, cheaper way of building better rocket parts. The 3D injector - made by a laser from metallic powder - generated 20,000 pounds of thrust at a test facility on the Marshall Space Flight Center. "This entire effort helped us learn what it takes to build larger 3-D parts -- from design, to manufacturing, to testing," said Greg Barnett, the lead engineer for the project, in a statement. "This technology can be applied to any of SLS's engines, or to rocket components being built by private industry."

 

Russian rocket engine export ban could halt US space program

 

Russia Today

 

Russia's Security Council is reportedly considering a ban on supplying the US with powerful RD-180 rocket engines for military communications satellites as Russia focuses on building its own new space launch center, Vostochny, in the Far East. A ban on the rockets supply to the US heavy booster, Atlas V, which delivers weighty military communications satellites and deep space exploration vehicles into orbit, could impact NASA's space programs – not just military satellite launches.

 

Worms Under Stress:

How The Nematode Could Help You Overcome Anxiety And Trauma

 

Chris Weller - Medical Daily

 

When Space Shuttle Columbia exploded in 2003 upon reentry into Earth's atmosphere, there were no human survivors. But while all seven crew members died in the disaster, a small petri dish of Caenorhabditis elegans — roundworms — was recovered in the weeks following the crash. Upon surprising analysis, all of the worms survived. Now, new research attempts to link the worms' advanced endurance abilities with human stress responses, in order to better treat anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

 

Virgin Galactic takes step toward flight license

Outlook revised for first flights

 

Diana Alba Soular - Las Cruces Sun-News

 

Virgin Galactic, the main client of Spaceport America, has taken a step closer to launching passengers to suborbital space from southern New Mexico after a recent move by federal flight officials. The company's application for a license for its commercial space system, which includes a plane and a spaceship, has been officially accepted by the Federal Aviation Administration, Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said. "It is our application for a license to fly commercial customers to space," he said. "This is the primary license we will require to begin commercial operations." Virgin Galactic has said its best guess is that the first paid flights from Spaceport America could start in 2014. The company has said ensuring the vehicles are safe is the key variable in determining when paid flights will start.

 

Salyut: humanity's first space station

 

Amy Shira Teitel - DVICE.com

 

When the United States successfully landed men on the Moon in 1969, it changed the landscape of space exploration. In America, the success of Apollo left the space program searching for an ongoing purpose in the face of imminent cancellation. In the Soviet Union, losing the race to the Moon solidified the inertia that had dogged the country's manned lunar landing efforts. In both nations, leaders were looking for the next big move in space, and in the Soviet Union, this next step became the Salyut space station.

 

Wave of retirements hitting federal workforce

 

Lisa Rein - Washington Post

 

A wave of retirements by senior federal employees has begun rolling across the government as aging baby boomers who held on to their jobs during the economic downturn are increasingly calling it quits. With retirement accounts on the rebound, many veteran workers are finding little reason to remain in government, especially at a time when agency budgets are being slashed, workers are being furloughed and morale is tumbling. The number of executive branch employees retiring this fiscal year, which ends next month, is on track to be nearly twice the total who retired in 2009, according to government figures. And the rate looks certain to accelerate. In 2000, about 94,000 people age 60 and older worked for the government. Last year, the number was 262,000. The exits are helping to bring down the size of the federal payroll and — where funding is available — could afford agencies the chance to hire younger workers with crucial skills. The retirement of clerks could clear the way for experts in cybersecurity and information technology.

 

Canada should be inspired by a new plan to explore space, including the moon

 

Toronto Star (Editorial)

 

A Canuck on the moon? Humans on Mars? Why not? Canada is backing a bold international plan that could lead to both. It's all part of an ambitious "roadmap" for interplanetary exploration developed by 14 space agencies, and it's entirely appropriate that we take part. The multi-stage plan envisions construction of a space station orbiting the moon. It would serve as a base for a series of missions to the lunar surface, cumulating in creation of a human settlement dedicated to scientific experimentation and resource exploration.

__________

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

Female astronauts face discrimination from space radiation concerns, astronauts say

 

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

 

Female astronauts have fewer opportunities to fly in space than men partially because of strict lifetime radiation exposure restrictions, astronauts say.

 

Both male and female astronauts are not allowed to accumulate a radiation dose that would increase their lifetime risk of developing fatal cancer by more than 3 percent. A six-month mission on the International Space Station exposes astronauts to about 40 times the average yearly dose of background radiation that a person would receive living on Earth, NASA spokesman William Jeffs said in an email.

 

While the level of risk allowed for both men and women in space is the same, women have a lower threshold for space radiation exposure than men, according to physiological models used by NASA.

 

"Depending on when you fly a space mission, a female will fly only 45 to 50 percent of the missions that a male can fly," Peggy Whitson, the former chief of NASA's Astronaut Corps, said. "That's a pretty confining limit in terms of opportunity. I know that they are scaling the risk to be the same, but the opportunities end up causing gender discrimination based on just the total number of options available for females to fly. [That's] my perspective." [Radiation Threat for Mars-Bound Astronauts (Video)]

 

NASA follows radiation exposure recommendations established by the National Council of Radiation Protection and Measurements. The exposure limits for women are about 20 percent lower compared to men "largely due to additional cancer risk for woman from breast, ovarian, and uterine cancers," Jeffs told SPACE.com.

 

The models governing the radiation limits are based, in part, on data collected from the aftermath of the nuclear bomb that was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945, Whitson said.

 

"I think that the current standards are too confining for exposure limits based on my personal experience and because I think it limits careers more than it is necessary," Whitson said during an Institute of Medicine Workshop on Ethics Principles and Guidelines for Health Standards for Long Duration and Exploration Class Spaceflights requested by NASA on July 25.

 

"In my case, if I had a Y chromosome, I would be qualified," Whitson added. "Because I have two X's, I'm not."

 

These stringent limits don't affect only women.

 

Radiation exposure is one of the major factors preventing manned space exploration from extending farther into the solar system. A mission to Mars now would probably put either a male or female astronaut above the 3 percent threshold risk of developing cancer, according to scientists.

 

By going farther into the solar system and spending more time in space, with current shielding technologies, male and female astronauts would be exposed to levels of radiation that exceed the 3 percent limit for both men and women.

 

Out of about 50 astronauts in NASA's corps at the time, only three astronauts were eligible for NASA's one-year mission to the International Space Station, partially because of the stringent radiation limits imposed by the space agency, said Robert Behnken, the current chief of NASA's Astronaut Office.

 

"We were effectively limited to three candidates for the two positions, the prime and backup for that flight based on the programmatic and health constraints that were in place," Behnken said during the workshop. "We are running into these limits now with the exploration that we're doing, so it's not a stretch to assume that if you go further and farther and longer, you're going to run into them continuously with the exploration class missions."

 

The pool of eligible astronauts was limited not just by radiation concerns, but other factors, including Russian-language proficiency and "technical ratings" for various astronauts, Behnken said. If the radiation limit was different, it might have doubled the number of eligible spaceflyers, Behnken added.

 

Radiation exposure limits shouldn't necessarily be broken for every mission, Behnken said. The science that could be gained from certain missions might merit the risk astronauts would take to perform it, he added.

 

"The value of the individual mission would need to be assessed in terms of what the need was to potentially break through that limit," Behnken said. "If there are mitigation strategies, whether it's long-term surveillance, additional screening to protect from cancer or detect it early, I think that those mitigations would be applicable to all astronauts that would take these missions on, not simply the one that's got a slightly elevated risk of cancer."

 

Orbital launch set for Sept. 17

 

Carol Vaughn - Eastern Shore News (Gannett)

 

Orbital Sciences and NASA announced a new launch date for a demonstration mission to the International Space Station being launched from Wallops Island in September.

 

The launch is now set for Tuesday, Sept. 17, at 11:16 a.m., with a 15-minute launch window.

 

The previous date announced was Sept. 14, with a launch window from Sept. 14-19.

 

The launch of Orbital's Antares rocket carrying the Cygnus spacecraft is one of two high-profile missions planned for take-off in September from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA Wallops Flight Facility.

 

Both are expected to draw large crowds to the Eastern Shore of Virginia to view the launches, which should be widely visible.

 

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, an 844-pound spacecraft about the size of a small refrigerator, is set to take off from Wallops on Sept. 6 aboard a Minotaur V rocket. It will be the first mission to the moon launched from Wallops Island. The launch window for the LADEE mission runs through Sept. 10.

 

The ISS mission will mark the first time Orbital's Cygnus spacecraft will deliver cargo to the International Space Station. The spacecraft will be launched aboard an Antares rocket from pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island.

 

The mission is the final milestone in the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services agreement between Orbital Sciences and NASA.

 

A successful demonstration mission will clear the way for Orbital to begin regular cargo supply missions to the International Space Station. The company has a contract with NASA for eight such missions under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services program.

 

More than 1,300 pounds of non-critical crew supplies will be taken to the International Space Station on the demonstration mission—including computer supplies, food bags, tools and several small experiments, called Nanorack modules, a NASA spokesman said.

 

Q-and-A with Navy SEAL - from space

 

Tony Lombardo - Army Times

 

Recruiters say if you join the military, you can see the world. For Cmdr. Chris Cassidy, that is literally the case.

 

The Navy SEAL-turned-astronaut has a nice view from the International Space Station, where he has been serving since March.

 

It's the 43-year-old's second time in space — his first was in 2009 aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. His typical day aboard the station includes science experiments, the occasional spacewalk and, yes, a fair amount of stargazing.

 

Before being selected for NASA in 2004, the Naval Academy grad spent 10 years serving on SEAL teams. Two weeks after 9/11, he put boots on the ground in Afghanistan, the first of two deployments there. His decorations include a Bronze Star with "V" device for heroism while operating in the caves of Zharwar Kili in Khost province.

 

Cassidy, who calls York, Maine, his hometown, is married with three children. He's due back on Earth on Sept. 10.

 

The astronaut connected with Military Times (with a little help from mission control) on Aug. 20. Watch the video above.

 

Q. You're up there representing the Defense Department. How would you say what you're doing is advancing the U.S. military mission?

 

A. If you look at the astronaut office, we're about half military, half civilian. So any given time you'll have a military uniform-wearing astronaut up here. Not only from the United States, but my crewmate Luca Parmitano is an Italian air force officer and pilot. What the military brings is pretty substantial to being a good crewmate, an effective astronaut and understanding how to work in an operational environment because that's what we have here is an operational environment.

 

Q. You mentioned your Italian crewmate. What other foreign countries are represented, and what specifically are you learning from them?

 

A. Myself and Karen Nyberg are NASA U.S. astronauts. Luca Parmitano is an Italian astronaut from the European Space Agency, and we have three Russian cosmonauts, Pavel, Fyodor and Sasha. What we learn together is just good interaction, much like if you do a joint training exercise. What I've learned is that, internationally, we're all training for the same mission, and we're basically the same guys wearing slightly different uniforms and with different accents.

 

Q. What career advice would you offer to a service member looking to get into the space program?

 

A. Just keep on doing jobs and taking sets of orders that you're satisfied with. Because when you do that you'll tend to do them well, and you will enjoy your military career. During my interview process, I realized just how many really, really good people there are out there, and I just was really lucky to get picked. If I had continued on in my SEAL team career that would have been fine, too, because I thoroughly enjoyed what I was doing there.

 

Q. Most of us here on Earth will never get a chance to do a spacewalk. Can you describe what that experience is like?

 

A. If you went to the top of a skyscraper and put your toes over the edge and leaned over, your brain would tell you 'What are you doing? You're crazy.' That's kind of the sensation that you have on your first spacewalk when you open the hatch. It only takes a couple minutes to realize you're not going to fall. And then you start going to work. Every now and then I take in where I am, out with one hand on the port side of the space station, looking all the way down to the Earth and trying to capture that in my mind's eye forever.

 

Marshall uses 3D printing to make record-breaking rocket engine part

 

Lee Roop – Huntsville Times

 

The largest 3D-printed rocket engine component NASA has ever tested generated a record amount of thrust in tests Aug. 22, moving the agency closer to a new, cheaper way of building better rocket parts. The 3D injector - made by a laser from metallic powder - generated 20,000 pounds of thrust at a test facility on the Marshall Space Flight Center.

 

"This entire effort helped us learn what it takes to build larger 3-D parts -- from design, to manufacturing, to testing," said Greg Barnett, the lead engineer for the project, in a statement. "This technology can be applied to any of SLS's engines, or to rocket components being built by private industry."

 

SLS is NASA's new heavy-lift rocket called the Space Launch System. It is being developed at Marshall.

 

The injector is used to deliver propellant to a rocket engine. The fuel in this case was liquid oxygen and gaseous hydrogen, and NASA said it produced 10 times the thrust ever achieved by a 3D-printed injector.

 

To make the part, NASA used a laser to build up layers of nickel-chromium alloy powder to make an injector with 28 elements for channeling and mixing propellants. The resulting injector had two parts, down from 115 in an earlier version.

 

Russian rocket engine export ban could halt US space program

 

Russia Today

 

Russia's Security Council is reportedly considering a ban on supplying the US with powerful RD-180 rocket engines for military communications satellites as Russia focuses on building its own new space launch center, Vostochny, in the Far East.

 

A ban on the rockets supply to the US heavy booster, Atlas V, which delivers weighty military communications satellites and deep space exploration vehicles into orbit, could impact NASA's space programs – not just military satellite launches.

 

An unnamed representative of Russia's Federal Space Agency told the Izvestia newspaper that the Security Council is reconsidering the role of Russia's space industry in the American space exploration program, particularly the 2012 contract to deliver the US heavy-duty RD-180 rocket engines.

 

Previously, Moscow has not objected to the fact that America's Atlas V boosters, rigged with Russian rocket engines, deliver advanced space armament systems into orbit. If a ban were to be put in place, however, engine delivery to the US would probably stop altogether, beginning in 2015.

 

Over the last decade, most of NASA's Atlas V heavy rocket launches performed by the United Launch Alliance (a Boeing/Lockheed Martin joint venture) were carried out using Russian RD-180 dual-nozzle rocket engines, a legacy of the Soviet Buran space shuttle program and its unparalleled rocket booster Energia, which could put 100 tons worth of spacecraft or satellite payloads into orbit.

 

Military payloads

 

It is widely believed that many Atlas V launches carry a military payload. Such Lockheed Martin-designed military spacecraft include the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) series of communications satellites launched for Air Force Space Command, the mysterious Palladium at Night communication platform designed for the US Navy's Ultra-High Frequency (UFO) Follow-On program, and most certainly all three launches of Boeing's X-37 unmanned demonstrator spacecraft. These are only a part of the military space missions undertaken by Atlas V rockets, boosted by RD-180 engines

 

A ban could also affect the US's non-military space exploration launches, which are also highly dependant on the Atlas V rocket and RD-180 engines. The most famous and challenging among these exploration missions are NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, now traveling to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt (launched in 2006), and the Curiosity Mars rover (launched in 2011) currently operating on the Red Planet.

 

A number of experts told Izvestia that termination of the rocket engine contract would not be a good idea commercially for NPO Energomash, which produces the rockets, as at the moment it exclusively makes RD-180 engines for the US space industry. The rockets typically take Energomash 16 months to produce.

 

If production of the RD-180 engine is halted, the enterprise would have to find other contracts to keep its production line and experienced staff busy.

 

"In my opinion, stopping the export of rocket engines to the US is stupid, as we would suffer financial and reputational losses," Ivan Moiseyev, scientific head of the Space Policy Institute, told Izvestia. "The US would not suffer much and would definitely continue with military space launches, while Russia would have to stop production of the RD-180, because no one else needs the RD-180 engine."

 

Many space experts believe that the US would find it difficult to quickly replace the Russian-made rocket boosters.

 

Meanwhile, Energomash could soon find other orders elsewhere. Russia plans to start space launches from its new, multibillion-dollar Vostochny cosmodrome in the Far East in 2015. Vostochny will host a heavy rocket class launch pad, which means the producer of world's most powerful rocket engines will be kept busy for many years to come.

 

The RD-180 is equivalent to half of the Soviet-era Energia booster, the most powerful liquid rocket engine ever made. With 20 million horsepower output, the Soviet-era RD-170 was about 5 percent more powerful, yet 1.5 times smaller, than American's F-1 first stage rocket engine made for the Saturn V booster of the Apollo lunar program. 

 

Reportedly, when the Energia booster with the Buran space shuttle was launched in November 1988, the massive concrete bays paving the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan were flying around like dry leaves, due to the immense power coming from the four RD-170 engines, which blasted the 2,400-ton rocket booster into space.

 

In the post-Soviet era, Russian-US rocket engine cooperation started back in 1996, when America's General Dynamics Company bought exclusive rights for use of RD-180 in the US, later selling it to Lockheed Martin for its Atlas rocket program. NPO Energomash, the producer of unique engines based in Moscow's suburb Khimki, signed a contract for production of 50 RD-180 engines and an option for the production of another 51 units.

 

A specially created joint venture, RD-AMROSS, between NPO Energomash and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, has already delivered 63 engines to the US worth $11-15 million apiece, reportedly 40 of them have already been used. In December 2012, a new contract was signed to deliver another 31 engines. But this contract is now being reconsidered by Russia's Security Council, according to Izvestia.

 

Rocket engines: space at stake

 

The RD-AMROSS joint venture has always been controversial for Russia's military.

 

In 2011 Russia's Audit Chamber announced that the RD-180 rocket engines delivered to the US according to the 1996 contract were sold for only half of their real production value. The total loss in 2008-09 reached 880 million rubles (about $30 million) or 68 percent of all financial losses of NPO Energomash at the time, the Audit Chamber said.

 

In an interview, the general director of RKK Energia Corporation, Vitaly Lopota, estimated that at the time of the RD-180 first launch in the late 1980s, USSR was "at least" 50 years ahead of America's liquid fuel rocket engine technology.

 

In the 1990s Russia agreed not only to sell unique engines to the US, but also provided the Americans with full documentation on the engine's design specifications. But the US space industry opted to buy ready engines instead of trying to make them on their own, because of the technological and material engineering gap between the two countries' space industries. And today, the situation appears to be pretty much the same.

 

In December 2012, the head of Roskosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency, Vladimir Popovkin, commented to Izvestia on the engines: "Americans are buying RD-180 engines and are negotiating to buy promising new RD-193 engines, because they've learned that we're making a quality product, the best liquid-fueled rocket engines in the world. For them it's easier to buy than to make up with us, [while] for us it is important to ensure the development of the NPO Energomash enterprise."

 

In June 2013, the US Federal Trade Commission launched an antitrust investigation into United Launch Alliance, which was accused of "monopolizing" the rocket engine market and thus barring its direct rival, Orbital Sciences Corporation, from obtaining RD-180 engines for its Antares rocket booster to break into the lucrative market for US government rocket launches.

 

Experts say that the fact that Orbital Sciences Corporation is battling for the RD-180 could only mean that the company has so far failed to acquire anything similar on either the American, or the international space industry market.

 

Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket is powered by Aerojet AJ-26 engines, which are actually Soviet NK-33 engines produced for the super-heavy N-1 rocket booster of USSR lunar program. Orbital Sciences once managed to buy 43 NK-33 engines stored for decades in Russian space corporation's depots, and then adopted them for their needs. Now Orbital Sciences would like to restart production of the NK-33, but Energomash announced that this engine is out of production for the time being. In this situation, Orbital Sciences is taking ULA to court for the right to buy Russia's RD-180 rocket engines. 

 

SpaceNews reported earlier this month that NASA's internal agency audit is warning that the Orion deep-space manned spacecraft program faces a "difficult budget environment" that ultimately could cause delays and cost increases. The Orion capsule could be launched with various rockets, including ULA's Atlas V and Space Exploration Technologies' Falcon 9.

 

In spring of this year, Amazon founder and space enthusiast Jeff Bezos, owner of the Blue Origin space exploration startup, financed a successful expedition recovering two F-1 engines for Apollo project's Saturn V rocket from the Atlantic sea bed near Florida's Kennedy Space Center. Bezos said that his fascination with space began back in 1969 with the Apollo program, when he saw astronaut Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon.

 

The rocket engines still remain property of NASA and the US government, and Bezos has promised NASA the units to place them on display at a museum in Seattle as "testament to the Apollo program."

 

Worms Under Stress:

How The Nematode Could Help You Overcome Anxiety And Trauma

 

Chris Weller - Medical Daily

 

When Space Shuttle Columbia exploded in 2003 upon reentry into Earth's atmosphere, there were no human survivors. But while all seven crew members died in the disaster, a small petri dish of Caenorhabditis elegans — roundworms — was recovered in the weeks following the crash. Upon surprising analysis, all of the worms survived. Now, new research attempts to link the worms' advanced endurance abilities with human stress responses, in order to better treat anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

 

In learning the mechanisms behind the roundworm's neural reaction, scientists hope to find similar underlying behavior in humans — finally grasping, for instance, how certain people overcome stress seemingly in an instant, while others suffer crippling bouts of anxiety long after the trauma has passed.

 

"This type of research provides us necessary clues that ultimately could lead to the development of drugs to help those suffering with severe anxiety disorders," Maureen Barr, professor of genetics at Rutgers University and member of a research team investigating nematodes' reaction to stress, said in a statement.

 

In their study, Barr and her team tested the worms for several measures of environmental stress: heat shock, oxidative stress, hypoxia, and osmotic stress. Precisely, the team looked at six sensory nerve cells in the worm's brain to see how the tree-like structures connecting the neurons, called dendrites, changed shaped when exposed to these stressors. The same structures exist in humans, and science has long known of their shape-shifting properties: under stress, the connections tend to weaken in some place and strengthen in others, narrowing a person's range of cognition.

 

In worms, however, these connections have the unique ability to strengthen almost ubiquitously under intense stress. During the larval stage, C. elegans normally molts through four phases. When conditions become too harsh, the worms divert their normal molting pattern and enter an alternative larval stage called the dauer. In this form, the same one entered in the 2003 disaster, C. elegans can withstand extreme heat, starvation, and overcrowding.

 

"These worms that normally have a short life cycle turn into super worms when they go into the dauer stage and can live for months, although they are no longer able to reproduce," Barr said.

 

What Barr and her team hope to uncover from this remarkable transformation is the process that takes place afterwards. Once the stressful episode passes, the strengthened connections prune back and the neural activity settles back into its baseline state. This behavior demonstrates the worm's extreme resilience in the face of trauma, making it a prime candidate for Barr and other researchers to study against human responses.

 

Conditions such as PTSD and anxiety could see profound breakthroughs in medication and treatment methods if researchers can successfully harness the roundworm's neural coping mechanism. So far the enzyme that researchers have pinned down is called KPC-1/furin. It provides essential bodily functions in humans, such as blood clotting, and in the worm it allows the larval morphing to take place.

 

Barr says the future for studying roundworms' nervous systems could make for great leaps in therapeutics, and that understanding the worms' molecular pathways may let scientists drill even further into the mysterious bedrock of mental illness and disorders.

 

Virgin Galactic takes step toward flight license

Outlook revised for first flights

 

Diana Alba Soular - Las Cruces Sun-News

 

Virgin Galactic, the main client of Spaceport America, has taken a step closer to launching passengers to suborbital space from southern New Mexico after a recent move by federal flight officials.

 

The company's application for a license for its commercial space system, which includes a plane and a spaceship, has been officially accepted by the Federal Aviation Administration, Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said.

 

"It is our application for a license to fly commercial customers to space," he said. "This is the primary license we will require to begin commercial operations."

 

The company, part of billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Group, first submitted its application earlier this summer.

 

The carrier plane, WhiteKnightTwo, and spaceliner, SpaceShipTwo, are still in the testing phase in Mojave, Calif. But they're eventually slated to launch tourists from Spaceport America, just north of Doña Ana County.

 

The acceptance of the application starts a review process that will culminate in a decision by the FAA on issuing the license, according to Whitesides.

 

"It now formally enters a period during which the space division of the FAA considers the application," he said.

 

The FAA has six months to make a decision on the license, by statute. But Whitesides also noted the agency can pause, or "toll," the process, which would stop the clock from ticking.

 

Hank Price, FAA spokesperson, declined to comment on whether Virgin Galactic had submitted its application, saying the agency would defer to the company.

 

New Mexico Spaceport Authority executive Director Christine Anderson declined to say whether Virgin Galactic had been in touch with the agency about the licensing application.

 

Branson remarked during a trip to Dubai in May that the first flight could happen Dec. 25. But Virgin Galactic has said its best guess is that the first paid flights from Spaceport America could start in 2014. The company has said ensuring the vehicles are safe is the key variable in determining when paid flights will start.

 

The state spaceport authority, which will receive between $25,000 and $75,000 for each Virgin Galactic flight, isn't banking on receiving any of that money in the fiscal year that ends June 30, 2014.

 

Anderson said recently the agency, which runs Spaceport America, hasn't budgeted to receive flight fee payments from the company in 2013-14, the agency's fiscal year.

 

"Last year, when I went in for my budget, we predicted February '14 I would have had some revenue coming in," said Anderson in a recent interview. "It does not look like that now. I would love it if they surprised me, and I would love it if they flew, but I can't count on that."

 

Flight ticket prices have jumped from $200,000 to $250,000 per person. More than 625 customers are signed up for flights, according to Virgin Galactic.

 

Salyut: humanity's first space station

 

Amy Shira Teitel - DVICE.com

 

When the United States successfully landed men on the Moon in 1969, it changed the landscape of space exploration. In America, the success of Apollo left the space program searching for an ongoing purpose in the face of imminent cancellation. In the Soviet Union, losing the race to the Moon solidified the inertia that had dogged the country's manned lunar landing efforts. In both nations, leaders were looking for the next big move in space, and in the Soviet Union, this next step became the Salyut space station.

 

Hijacking Almaz

 

In the Soviet Union, like in the United States, the advent of manned spaceflight had raised questions about the military's role in space. Looking to give the military a platform in space, Vladimir Chelomei, Chief Designer from the OKB-52 design bureau, drew up a proposal for the Orbital Piloted Station (OPS). Announced on October 12, 1964, the project was code-named Almaz (or "diamond" in English), and was similar to the U.S. Air Force's appropriate of NASA's Gemini spacecraft for its own Manned Orbiting Laboratory program.

 

As the 1960s continued, efforts towards realizing Chelomei's OPS were overshadowed by the race to the Moon. Almaz remained on the back burner until 1969, when the Soviet Union needed a new goal. But OKB-52 wouldn't see its design come to fruition, as Vasiliy Mishin of the rival design bureau TsKBEM proposed a civilian manned space station program that would leapfrog Almaz by cannibalizing the military program for parts.

 

The program, which was approved on February 9, 1970 and code named DOS-7K, created a space station made from the body of Almaz with modified parts and systems from Soyuz spacecraft. It was designed to launch unmanned; crews would follow it into orbit, docking with and then transferring to the main module for the duration of their orbital stay.

 

Salyut 1

 

Once the first station was built, it was rechristened Salyut. It was a 65-foot long cylinder measuring 13 feet in diameter at its widest point. It was made of several components, three of which were pressurized and only two of which the crew could access. The total habitable space was about 3,531 cubic feet. Cosmonauts gained access to the station through a docking cone that would connect one end of the Soyuz spacecraft to one end of the station. The two habitable modules were a main module with eight consoles and 20 porthole windows, plus a second module that housed all communications and control systems including the life support and power supply systems. Between these two pressurized sections, crews would have all the necessary amenities to live and work in space, including dining and recreation areas, food and water storage, a toilet, control stations, exercise equipment, and scientific equipment. The third module that the crew had no access to housed the engine and all associated equipment.

 

To keep crews alive and the station humming, Salyut relied on two pairs of externally mounted solar panels that extended like wings from the smaller compartments at either end of the station. Salyut also had a heat regulation system, orientation and control devices, as well as chemical batteries and reserve supplies of oxygen and water.

 

Manning the Station

 

The first generation, Salyut 1, was launched on April 19, 1971. It beat NASA's Skylab station into orbit by a little over two years; Skylab launched, also unmanned, on May 14, 1973. Only once it had launched did the Soviet Union announce its purpose as a test bed for future space station elements as well as a place for cosmonauts to conduct scientific experiments.

 

The three-man crew of Soyuz 10 was meant to be the first to occupy Salyut 1 on a 30 day mission. But after a successful launch on April 22, 1971, the mission was hampered by technical problems. The crew rendezvoused and soft docked with the Salyut station, but they couldn't manage a hard docking. The docking collar couldn't secure itself, which meant the crew couldn't safely board the station. The mission was aborted, but the technical problems didn't end. After difficulty separating from the station, toxic fumes seeped into the spacecraft during reentry. In spite of these issues, the crew was recovered in good health.

 

The subsequent Soyuz mission, Soyuz 11, launched two months later on June 6. The docking problems that had plagued Soyuz 10 didn't resurface, and the crew of Soyuz 11 spent 24 days living on board the Salyut 1 station. The crew ran a series of experiments, the majority of which focused on gathering data on human performance in weightlessness. It was clear the Soviets were looking ahead at longer duration missions.

 

The Salyut program hit a major setback at the end of the Soyuz 11 mission. During reentry, a ventilation valve failed and opened prematurely. The crew reentry capsule depressurized and the crew, wearing simple flight suits rather than pressure suits, were killed. The accident meant that changes be made not only to the Soyuz spacecraft but to the Soviet space policy as well. It was clear none of the major changes would come during Salyut 1's lifetime. The station was deliberately deorbited, crashed into the Pacific Ocean on October 11, 1971.

 

Later Incarnations

 

On April 3, 1973, the first Almaz station, OPS-1, was launched. To hide its true purpose, and to avoid admitting it was developing a military space station, the Soviets swiftly renamed the station Salyut 2 once it reached orbit. Thirteen days later, with a crew eagerly awaiting their own launch to the station, ground crews noticed a loss of pressure in the station. The official investigation found that faulty wiring had caused one of the lines in the station's propulsion system to burst when the engine fired. The resulting plume had likely burned through the pressurized hull. But this theory fell apart with closer analysis of fragments found orbiting near the station. It turned out that the upper stage of the Proton rocket that had delivered the station to orbit had exploded. It was a stray piece of debris that had pierced the hull, causing the station to lose pressure. The station was never manned, and it fell back to Earth on May 28, 1973.

 

Another OPS military space station, OPS-2, was publicly announced as Salyut 3 when it launched a little over a year later on June 25, 1974. This new station featured novel developments, like an "electro-mechanical" attitude control system, rotating solar arrays, and separate areas for work and leisure. It also boasted a new water-recycling system. A large part of its payload was made of cameras that could observe the Earth in a variety of wavelengths. The station hosted two crews and one unmanned Soyuz capsule before it was deorbited on January 24, 1975.

 

Salyut 4 was launched on December 26, 1974, even before Salyut 3 was deorbited. This station was a copy of Salyut 1, though it was much more successful. Two crews. Soyuz 17 and Soyuz 18, occupied this station. It was also visited by an unmanned Soyuz spacecraft. It stayed docked for three months, proving Salyut could support long-duration manned visits. Salyut 4 was deorbited February 2, 1977, and re-entered the Earth's atmosphere the next day.

 

Salyut 5 was yet another military station. Called OPS-3, it took on its innocuous Salyut designation after launching on June 22, 1976. This big development on this station was a new radio that allowed data transmission in real-time to tracking stations on Earth. But it was also plagued with environmental problems. The Soyuz 21 crew was the first to visit the station and left early after complaining of a bad smell and headaches; mission controllers thought a toxic gas leak could be the culprit. The Soyuz 23 and 24 crews followed. The station was deorbited on August 8, 1977.

 

Working Towards Longevity

 

The last two Salyut stations, Salyuts 6 and 7, marked a shift in the program. These two functionally similar second-generation Salyut space stations were designed with longevity in mind. Both were built using Salyut 1 as a model and featured two docking ports. This was vital to long term missions, since having two docking ports meant an second Soyuz crew or an unmanned Progress spacecraft could dock with the station and resupply a resident crew during longer stays.

 

Both stations enjoyed great success. Salyut 6 operated between 1977 and 1982 (it was deorbited on July 29 of that year) during which time it hosted six long-term crews and ten additional short term that brought supplies for the resident crews. Salyut 7 stayed aloft between May 31, 1982 and November 21, 1985. It also hosted six resident crews and four short-term visiting crews.

 

Salyut's Legacy

 

When Salyut 7 was deorbited on February 7, 1991, it ended the Salyut program. But the Salyut legacy was clear: it had proved the value of a modular design in space station, something the Soviet Union brought to its subsequent space station program, Mir.

 

The Almaz station, too, has its legacy in modern spaceflight. Though the last Almaz hardware was flown as Salyut 5, the core module of the military station evolved into Zarya, also called the Functional Cargo Block. This was the first piece of the International Space Station to reach orbit, and it's still 200 miles above the Earth today.

 

Wave of retirements hitting federal workforce

 

Lisa Rein - Washington Post

 

A wave of retirements by senior federal employees has begun rolling across the government as aging baby boomers who held on to their jobs during the economic downturn are increasingly calling it quits.

 

With retirement accounts on the rebound, many veteran workers are finding little reason to remain in government, especially at a time when agency budgets are being slashed, workers are being furloughed and morale is tumbling.

 

The number of executive branch employees retiring this fiscal year, which ends next month, is on track to be nearly twice the total who retired in 2009, according to government figures. And the rate looks certain to accelerate. In 2000, about 94,000 people age 60 and older worked for the government. Last year, the number was 262,000.

 

The exits are helping to bring down the size of the federal payroll and — where funding is available — could afford agencies the chance to hire younger workers with crucial skills. The retirement of clerks could clear the way for experts in cybersecurity and information technology.

 

But among those leaving are people with specific expertise that cannot easily be replaced — for instance, nuclear physicists at the Energy Department and a large cohort of air traffic controllers who were hired three decades ago. And with most hiring on hold, the departures are already reshaping agencies that cannot replace most of the retirees or mentor and train new executives.

 

In some corners of government, the challenge is acute. By 2016, 42 percent of the Department of Housing and Urban Development workforce will be eligible to retire. At the Small Business Administration, it's 44 percent.

 

There is no mandatory retirement age for most civilian federal employees. But retiring is looking ever more attractive, employees say, with their salaries frozen for three years by Congress and public service demonized by many politicians.

 

"It finally got to the point where I got disillusioned," said Richard Swensen, 60, who retired from the Agriculture Department last year after 38 years. "You get weary of the bureaucrat-bashing."

 

* * *

 

Today's federal civil servants are much grayer than they were a decade ago. Their average age is 47, four years older than the overall workforce.

 

Retirements have fluctuated since the mid-1990s. The numbers surged when the Clinton administration offered early retirement incentives as part of a push to "reinvent government." After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2011, the government ramped up its hiring for national security positions, and federal payrolls swelled.

 

Baby boomers began trickling out in about 2005, but the financial crisis and deep recession that hit a couple of years later discouraged many from leaving. Departures from the executive branch bottomed out in 2009. They have been increasing ever since and are on track to exceed 80,000 retirements — about 5 percent of the workforce — by the end of the fiscal year, according to figures from the Office of Personnel Management. It's already the largest outflow in at least two decades.

 

"The [stock] markets have recovered," said Gregory Parham, assistant secretary for administration at the Agriculture Department. "And many people are thinking, 'This is a good time to go.'?"

 

In addition, about 34,000 Postal Service employees have retired in this fiscal year through July, with many taking early-out incentives. Add to that swelling numbers of younger federal workers who have been exiting the government, discouraged by public disdain, furloughs and budget austerity.

 

By 2016, more than a third of the federal workforce will be eligible to retire, according to the Government Accountability Office, which has put the pending loss of so many experienced workers on its "high-risk" list of management challenges for government.

 

Among them will be nearly three in five senior executives and almost half the ranks of top managers.

 

* * *

 

Swensen kept working at the Agriculture Department four years past the day he was eligible to retire. He would have stayed longer, he said, though his long commute from Catonsville, Md., was tiring him. But with bills pending in Congress to change the way retirement annuities are calculated, Swenson said he was convinced his earnings could soon be based on his highest five earning years instead of the highest three, as they are now. That would cost him: "It would have made a few thousand dollars difference in my check," he said.

 

In interviews, recently retired senior executives from across the government offered a range of reasons for their decisions to leave. Most cited the pay freeze, the public's negative opinion about federal workers and government spending cuts, which have resulted in furloughs, less overtime and a larger workload for many.

 

Craig Charles retired last year at 49 after a 25-year career in customs and immigration enforcement in Kansas City. He said he left the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency "very unhappy," in part because of frustration with inexperienced political appointees who were in charge. Also, he hadn't had a raise in three years, "and that was getting pretty old." And as a manager in charge of air operations, budget cuts weighed on him.

 

"Everybody was under the constraints of sequestration and a lack of money," he said. "It was constant scrambling for the budget."

 

Peter Henry retired from the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2011 after working there for 41 years and 11 months. He had run two hospitals for veterans in the Blacks Hills of South Dakota and received a pair of prestigious awards for high-performing senior employees, the last in 2010. But amid criticism in Congress over federal pay, his supervisors told him to keep the $12,000 bonus he won a secret.

 

"It was like, 'You will be shot if anybody discovers you got this,'?" Henry, 66, recalled.

 

This year, the Obama administration eliminated the awards, and most bonuses for top managers.

 

"I certainly didn't want to be part of being embarrassed and ashamed of what I did for a living," Henry said. "It was a very honorable profession."

 

* * *

 

Thirty-two years ago, President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers who had refused his order to get back to work, and his administration hired an entirely new workforce, bringing on 9,000 replacements in 1982 alone.

 

Now, many of those controllers are hitting their mandatory retirement age of 56. This is perhaps one of the most dramatic, and urgent, challenges posed by the growing wave of departures.

 

About a third of the 12,700 controllers who direct planes at airports across the country could leave today, the GAO says. In three years, half the force will be eligible. The Federal Aviation Administration has stepped up hiring in recent years, bringing on about 750 new controllers a year.

 

But new hires, who start as apprentices, require between three and five years of training before they are considered fully qualified. More a third of the current workforce has been on the job less than five years, according to the air traffic controllers union.

 

"It's a young person's occupation," said Patricia Gilbert, executive vice president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. "But an overwhelming number of them are inexperienced."

 

And hiring stopped altogether when automatic federal spending cuts took effect March 1.

 

The Social Security Administration, meantime, could be headed to what its personnel chief calls "a perfect storm."

 

Even as the overall American population is aging and making more disability claims, many of the agency's administrative law judges, who rule on disputed claims, are themselves heading toward retirement. The average age of these judges is 59. Two out of three will be eligible to retire in 2016, the GAO says.

 

Since the job pays especially well by federal standards, many of the agency's 1,500 judges serve well beyond the retirement age. But the retirement rate is creeping up, and Reginald Wells, the SSA's human resources chief, said the agency is already feeling the effect. "We're losing more judges than we're replacing," he said.

 

A surge in disability claims with fewer judges to handle appeals of rejected ones has created a backlog, with wait times of 375 days on average, according to government audits. About 90 judges have retired so far this year, and not all their posts will be filled, Wells said.

 

* * *

 

With no government-wide plan in place to deal with projected retirements, individual agencies have been making their own preparations, and the GAO has found alarming inconsistences.

 

Angela Bailey, the Office of Personnel Management's chief human capital officer, said it's crucial for every agency to put a priority on training up-and-coming managers. "No matter what your budget is, you've got to set aside dollars to invest in the current workforce to make sure they're operationally ready to succeed into leadership positions."

 

But to achieve the 5 percent budget cuts required by sequestration, almost every agency made reductions in training and hiring. Many zeroed them out.

 

Some agencies have done a much better job of planning for retirements than others. NASA, for instance, gets high marks from personnel experts for reinvigorating its recruitment campaign. Engineers who can design and develop unmanned rockets are in demand, replacing the flight engineers and payload specialists who worked on shuttles.

 

The Department of Housing and Urban Development, meanwhile, has come under repeated criticism from GAO auditors for its haphazard planning. The agency's most recent plan for hiring, training and developing talent expired in 2009. The GAO said in March that the lack of planning is jeopardizing the department's mission of promoting affordable housing.

 

A HUD official said that department officials are responding to the criticism by ramping up their planning for staffing vacant positions — but that not every opening can be filled.

 

"Maybe people had one thing in their portfolio before," Karen Newton Cole, deputy chief human capital officer, said. "We now need to train them to have two or three things."

 

To encourage seasoned employees to stay on the job, Congress approved a "phased retirement" policy 18 months ago. For the first time, retirees could continue working half-time while they receive a partial annuity. In return, they would mentor and train potential successors.

 

The rules are still awaiting approval.

 

Canada should be inspired by a new plan to explore space, including the moon

 

Toronto Star (Editorial)

 

A Canuck on the moon? Humans on Mars? Why not? Canada is backing a bold international plan that could lead to both. It's all part of an ambitious "roadmap" for interplanetary exploration developed by 14 space agencies, and it's entirely appropriate that we take part.

 

The multi-stage plan envisions construction of a space station orbiting the moon. It would serve as a base for a series of missions to the lunar surface, cumulating in creation of a human settlement dedicated to scientific experimentation and resource exploration. Knowledge gained from this decades-long endeavor would eventually be put to use for a mission to the Red Planet.

 

It's the stuff of science fiction, but members of the International Space Exploration Coordination Group are determined to make it a reality. Canada has a substantial contribution to offer, especially given this country's proven expertise in robotics. And that could, eventually, lead to a Canadian astronaut on the moon.

 

There's no way this country could afford such an undertaking on its own. But working in conjunction with the European Space Agency, NASA and space agencies from countries including Russia, China, and Japan, this adventure enters the realm of the practical.

 

Indeed, it would be a shame if Canada failed to rise to the challenge posed by humanity's next great leap beyond the surly bonds of Earth. These planned lunar installations and space explorations promise to bring nations together in the service of goals above and beyond political boundaries. New scientific insights would result and technological innovation would be stimulated — as would the human imagination.

 

Earth's safety would even be enhanced. Some of the planned research outlined in the interplanetary roadmap involves watching for major asteroids that could collide with our planet, "capturing" a small near-Earth asteroid, and testing techniques that could mitigate damage wrought by the impact of these rocks.

 

Canada's role in space received a welcome boost earlier this year as astronaut Chris Hadfield captivated people across the planet through his tweets and videos, photos, music, and — above all — his exuberant passion for a job that's out of this world. Given the new "roadmap" to the moon and Mars, Canadian kids with dreams of going into space now have something more to fire their imagination. The final frontier is theirs to explore.

 

END