Sorry for the late news. been kinda busy yeah sure J!!~!
| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Tonight: An Expedition Special Event
- Reminder: Innovation 2014 - Future of Exploration
- Celebrating Sally Ride: Special JSC Event
- Making the Move: Meet-Me Line to Instant Meeting
- June is Vision Health Awareness Month
- Global Rescue Medical Evacuation
- Who Has Been Safe, Not Sorry (SNS)? - Organizations/Social
- Brother Outsider - The Life of Bayard Rustin
- Lunch with High School Aerospace Scholars
- Men's Mental Health
- RSVPs for the JSC NMA Luncheon Due Today
- Last Day to Purchase Circus Tickets
- Last Chance to Order the Apollo 45th T-Shirt
- Starport Summer Camp: Limited Spots Open (June 23)
- Parent's Night Out at Starport - June 20 - Jobs and Training
- ISS EDMS User Forum - Community
- Why I Don't Donate Blood - Fear of Needles
- Ozone Action Days Around Houston |  |
| Headlines - Tonight: An Expedition Special Event
Tonight at 7:30 p.m., join your colleagues at the Space Center Houston Theater for the International Space Station Expedition Special Event. This event is free and open to JSC employees, contractors, friends, family and the public, and will feature awards, slides, a video presentation and Q&A session. Who will be there? See Koichi Wakata, Expedition 38 flight engineer and Expedition 39 commander; Oleg Kotov, Expedition 37 flight engineer and Expedition 38 commander; Mikhail Tyurin, Expedition 38/39 flight engineer; Rick Mastracchio, Expedition 38/39 flight engineer; Sergey Ryazanskiy, Expedition 37/38 flight engineer; and Michael Hopkins, Expedition 37/38 flight engineer. Event Date: Wednesday, June 18, 2014 Event Start Time:7:30 PM Event End Time:9:00 PM
Event Location: Space Center Houston
Add to Calendar
Samantha Nehls x27804
[top] - Reminder: Innovation 2014 - Future of Exploration
Don't forget, the continuation of the Future of Exploration Series is today at noon in Studio B (behind the Teague Auditorium). The discussion will be focused on the design of the trajectories for the Asteroid Redirect Crewed Mission. Seating is limited, so please get there about 10 minutes early to get a seat. The event will also be streamed live. - Celebrating Sally Ride: Special JSC Event
Thirty-one years ago today, Dr. Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. Celebrate her life with a special event on June 27 in the Teague Auditorium as JSC Director Dr. Ellen Ochoa welcomes special guests author/biographer Lynn Sherr, sister Bear Ride and Sally's life partner Tam O'Shaughnessy. The event will be followed by a book signing with Sherr for her biography of Sally Ride, which is available in the Buildings 3 and 11 Starport Gift Shops. - Making the Move: Meet-Me Line to Instant Meeting
With the move from current "Meet-Me" lines to NEW "Instant Meeting" conference dial-in numbers, meeting hosts and moderators will want the 411 on Instant Meeting features. Live, instructor-led training sessions are available for meeting hosts and moderators to learn about the new Instant Meeting features. To register for instructor-led training, go to the CSO Training Information page, scroll down and click the link below the training schedule to register. If you have questions or need additional information, please contact NASA Teleconferencing at 1-877-857-NASA (857-6272), Option 1. - June is Vision Health Awareness Month
June is vision health awareness month for us here on Earth. Have you heard about the vision problems affecting some astronauts? Not to worry, with this potentially serious issue, NASA has got lots of "eyes" on the subject. - Global Rescue Medical Evacuation
NASA provides medical emergency assistance for civil servants on international TDY. Enrolling in this coverage is required prior to your international TDY trip. Please talk to your directorate or division secretary for enrollment instructions. - Who Has Been Safe, Not Sorry (SNS)?
An SNS award goes to Tracy Dyson. In the recent Challenges to the Technical Leader course, the visiting instructor nearly tripped on a service hatch that was propped partially open in the floor. The hatch door had a number of electrical and computer cords coming through it to facilitate the computer being used for the training. Dyson, one of the training participants, noticed when the instructor's foot caught on the hatch door. She went to the front of the class, kneeled on hands and knees and stuffed the cords down in order to fully close the hatch door. She then used the heel of her palm to press the door flat. Without hesitation, Dyson took the time to reduce the hazard to the instructor and other class participants who might also trip on the door. Thanks to Dyson for being Safe, Not Sorry! Organizations/Social - Brother Outsider - The Life of Bayard Rustin
Tomorrow! 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Building 30 Auditorium The African-American and Out & Allied Employee Resource Groups proudly present a film chronicling the amazing life and work of Bayard Rustin, the visionary activist who inspired Martin Luther King and numerous others in the quest for American civil rights. The architect of the 1963 March on Washington, Rustin dared to live as an openly gay man during the fiercely homophobic 40s, 50s and 60s. In a nation still torn by racial hatred and bigotry against homosexuals, Rustin's life story evidences the important contributions a gay man made to ending segregation in America. Will you please join us? Event Date: Thursday, June 19, 2014 Event Start Time:11:30 AM Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Building 30 Auditorium
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Robert F. Blake x42525
[top] - Lunch with High School Aerospace Scholars
Have lunch with NASA's future workforce and share: • YOUR NASA story • YOUR college advice • YOUR career suggestions This summer, JSC will host nearly 270 students during the 15th anniversary of High School Aerospace Scholars. The brightest students in Texas want to benefit from your experience. These informal lunch-chats are a valuable opportunity to connect our workforce with the next generation of NASA employees. Wednesday Summer Schedule - Building 3 Café
- Noon to 1 p.m.
- June 18 and 25
- July 9, 16, 23 and 30
- Men's Mental Health
When it comes to health care, many men are very uncomfortable discussing mental health—yet statistics show that men are affected by mental health problems at rates equal to those of women. What puts men more at risk of serious consequences is that they often put off seeking help until their symptoms have reached a crisis level. The result is needless suffering and a delay in potentially lifesaving care. Education is key to reducing stigma and encouraging men to seek help sooner. Please join Takis Bogdanos, MA, LPC-S, CGP, with the JSC Employee Assistance Program, and learn what contributes to the reluctance and what you can do to make a positive difference. - RSVPs for the JSC NMA Luncheon Due Today
Have you RSVPed yet for this month's JSC National Management Association (NMA) chapter luncheon on June 25 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.? If not, please go online before 3 p.m. today so you can be counted! The luncheon will feature our own JSC Joint Leadership Team action teams as they report out. Come hear David Cazes discussing JSC Expected Behaviors, Mike Kincaid presenting on Communications and Jose Garcia speak on the Importance of Civil Servant/Contractor Relationship. Location: Gilruth Alamo Ballroom Members get in FREE! The cost for non-members is $20. Select from three great menu options: - Herb chicken with asparagus
- Turkey scaloppini and bruschetta topping
- Vegetable lasagna
- Last Day to Purchase Circus Tickets
Today is the last day to purchase Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey tickets at Starport. See seating and prices below: - Saturday, July 12, 7:30 p.m., Section 101, Rows AA-BB - $13
- Sunday, July 13, 3:30 p.m., Section 101, Rows AA-BB - $13
- Saturday, July 19, 3:30 p.m., Section 138, Rows N-Q - $28
- Sunday, July 20, 1:30 p.m., Section 136, Rows L-M - $28
- Saturday, July 26, 3:30 p.m., Section 102, Rows K-M - $22
- Sunday, July 27, 1:30 p.m., Section 102, Rows H-J - $22
Seating is not guaranteed. A limited number of seats for each section are available. Additional tickets sold will be in the next best available section/row. Take the family out for some old-fashioned fun and save at Starport! - Last Chance to Order the Apollo 45th T-Shirt
June 22 is the last day to order your Apollo 45th anniversary T-shirt for just $7 (sizes youth medium to adult XL) and $8 (sizes 2X to 4X). Order your shirts online and select TX-JSC-Starport as your delivery option to pick up your shirts at Starport (distribution dates and locations to be announced), or have them shipped to your home for an additional fee. Wear your shirt any Friday through Oct. 31 to receive a 10 percent discount on store merchandise (standard exclusions apply). Order yours today, save on the shirts and save on your purchases while showing your support for NASA and commemorating the legendary Apollo Program! - Starport Summer Camp: Limited Spots Open (June 23)
Starport is offering summer camp for youth at the Gilruth Center all summer long. We have tons of fun planned, and we expect each session to fill up, so get your registrations in early! Weekly themes are listed on our website, as well as information regarding registration. Ages: 6 to 12 Times: 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Dates: June 9 to Aug. 22 in one-week sessions Fee per session: $140 per child | $125 per sibling Register for all sessions and receive a DISCOUNT! Register online or at the Gilruth Center information desk. - Parent's Night Out at Starport – June 20
Enjoy a night out on the town while your kids enjoy a night with Starport. We will entertain your children with a night of games, crafts, a bounce house, pizza, a movie, dessert and loads of fun! When: Friday, June 20, from 6 to 10 p.m. Where: Gilruth Center Ages: 5 to 12 Cost: $20/first child and $10/each additional sibling if registered by the Wednesday prior to event. If registered after Wednesday, the fee is $25/first child and $15/additional sibling. Jobs and Training - ISS EDMS User Forum
The International Space Station (ISS) Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) team will hold the monthly General User Training Forum tomorrow, June 19, at 9:30 a.m. in the new ISS Conference Facility (1800 Space Park Drive, Suite 200). Lync meeting and telecom to also be provided. If you use EDMS to locate station documents, join us to learn about basic navigation and searching. Bring your questions, concerns and suggestions, and meet the EDMS Customer Service team. Find the agenda here. Community - Why I Don't Donate Blood - Fear of Needles
Here are some tips to help you make it through your first donation. Make yourself familiar with the blood-donation process, and feel free to ask questions. You don't have to look at the donation procedure. Bring a music player with you, read a book, talk with the staff or just close your eyes and relax. When you arrive for your blood donation, tell the person who greets you that you are afraid of needles. The staff will be there to talk with you and assist you during your donation. Many donors enjoy donating with a friend, both for the moral support and for celebrating the good they've done together. You can donate today, June 18, and tomorrow, June 19, at one of the following locations: - Teague Auditorium lobby - 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- Building 11 Starport Café donor coach - 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- Gilruth Center donor coach - Noon to 4 p.m. (Thursday, June 19, only)
- Ozone Action Days Around Houston
The summer heat is here, and that means there is potential for Ozone Action Days. On these hot, still days, sunlight reacts with air pollutants, creating high levels of ground-level ozone that can cause harmful health effects. Take action during summer months to reduce emissions of ozone-causing pollutants by reducing your electricity consumption during the day, refueling vehicles after dusk, limiting engine idling and using environmentally friendly cleaning chemicals and paints with low or no Volatile Organic Chemicals. Cleaning and painting in evenings, instead of during the day, also helps. Every effort helps make a healthier and more sustainable environment at home and at work. | |
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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. |
NASA and Human Spaceflight News
Wednesday – June 18, 2014
International Space Station:
At the start of the World Cup, the crew sent down a special message to wish good luck to all the players and teams as they compete in World Cup 2014 in Brazil until the final match July 13.
The video created significant media attention for the space station, giving a total potential audience of more than 76 million a chance to see space station news on June 12 when the video was posted.
Space station and World Cup news has been shown on more than 500 television broadcasts since June 12.
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Steve Swanson and ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst take a break to watch ten minutes of live World Cup matches between science experiments while living and working aboard the International Space Station.
HEADLINES AND LEADS
White House: NASA bill would raise costs, cause delays
Ledyard King – USA Today
The Obama administration is concerned that a provision in a NASA funding bill being debated on the Senate floor this week would add costs and delays to the program that will replace the mothballed space shuttle with private rockets.
U.S. Senate Provision on NASA Seen as Hurting SpaceX
Jonathan D. Salant – Bloomberg News
A U.S. Senate proposal tied to the NASA spending bill may thwart efforts by Elon Musk's space venture while aiding Boeing Co. (BA), the government's No. 2 contractor, a trade group president said today.
Boeing Preparing Layoff Notices in Case of Commercial Crew Loss
Irene Klotz – Space News
Hoping for the best, but preparing for defeat, Boeing will send out about 215 potential layoff notices to employees currently working on its NASA CST-100 Commercial Crew program.
Boeing: Brevard employees could be laid off
James Dean - Florida Today
The Boeing Co. this Friday will notify about 45 local employees that they could be laid off within 60 days if the company does not win a contract from NASA's Commercial Crew Program, a spokesman confirmed.
With eyes on NASA, Mars, Elon Musk still dreams big
Karma Allen – CNBC
Even with NASA and Mars on SpaceX's horizon, serial entrepreneur Elon Musk says he plans to stay put at electric carmaker Tesla.
Rivals in 'knife fight' for Pentagon cash
Megan R. Wilson – The Hill
The United Launch Alliance is caught in a "Beltway knife fight" with SpaceX for some of the most lucrative contracts at the Pentagon.
Elon Musk's Aerospace Argument Just Took A Hit
Armin Rosen – Business Insider
Elon Musk's biggest aerospace rival just reversed one of its most controversial practices, and plans to no longer use Russian-made engines in its rockets starting in 2019.
White House, Washington Times both criticize Senate commercial crew language
Jeff Foust – Space Politics
It's rare to get the Obama Administration and the conservative editorial page of the Washington Times in agreement on something. Yet, both have spoken out in opposition to report language in the Senate's Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill—due to be considered by the full Senate this week—regarding cost and pricing data for commercial crew and cargo providers.
Tech Startups With Federal Purse Strings
John McLaughlin - Huffington Post
Startups can live or die by the depth of their investors' pockets, but some have stumbled on what can often be the most reliable source of funding -- contracts with the federal government.
Sherr's Book Reveals Details Of Astronaut Sally Ride's Personal Life
NPR
Linda Wertheimer talks to journalist Lynn Sherr about her friendship with the late Sally Ride. Sherr has written a book, Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space.
A Rare Look at the Space Shuttle's Successor Space Launch System
AP
Three years after the retirement of the space shuttle, there are measurable signs of progress on its successor at National Aeronautics and Space Administration centres across the United States
Five years after Augustine: How does the panel feel about NASA's Space Launch System?
Eric Berger – Houston Chronicle
In 2009 President Obama asked Norm Augustine, and other luminaries such as the late astronaut Sally Ride, to review the state of NASA's human spaceflight program. Five years ago, today, the commission held its first public meeting. Their final report came out in the fall of 2009 (see .pdf). In Fairfax, Colvin Run students talk with astronauts on space station
T. Rees Shapiro – The Washington Post
Students at Fairfax County's Colvin Run Elementary made an unusual long-distance phone call Tuesday, connecting with NASA astronauts orbiting Earth aboard the International Space Station.
Effects of spaceflight found to mirror onset of Type 2 diabetes: study
Ivan Semeniuk - The Toronto (CAN) Globe and Mail
Initial results from a study of Chris Hadfield and other astronauts who spent months aboard the International Space Station have turned up changes like those seen in someone developing Type 2 diabetes on Earth.
NASA's Futuristic Spacesuits Made for Mars Walkers
NASA is thinking hard about what the first boots to set foot on Mars will look like.
Three educators chosen for prestigious NASA summer institute
The Brownsville Herald
Three Brownsville Independent School District teachers have been chosen for the prestigious LiftOff Summer Institute to be held July 7-11 at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Dark Matter Mystery Deepens
Irene Klotz – Discovery News
New results from the particle detector attached outside the International Space Station show something else beside ordinary matter is generating cosmic rays, the lead researcher said Tuesday.
NASA Dark-Energy Mission Could Spot 3,000 New Alien Planets
A mission NASA is designing to probe the nature of mysterious dark energy could discover thousands of alien planets as well.
Attention, Star Trek fans: 3-D printer headed to space station
Lisa Suhay - Christian Science Monitor
New 3-D printer boldly goes into zero gravity, where no 3-D printer has gone before
By clearing a 3-D printer for launch to the International Space Station (ISS), NASA may have taken a step closer to the "Star Trek" world of "replicators" and self-sustainability on the station.
COMPLETE STORIES
White House: NASA bill would raise costs, cause delays
Ledyard King – USA Today
The Obama administration is concerned that a provision in a NASA funding bill being debated on the Senate floor this week would add costs and delays to the program that will replace the mothballed space shuttle with private rockets.
As part of a $17.9 billion spending bill to fund NASA in fiscal year 2015, the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this month approved the $805 million for the commercial crew program that will ferry astronauts to the International Space Station.
As a condition, the committee required firms in the NASA-supervised competition to develop the next generation of space taxi to submit "certified cost and pricing data" similar to what's required in traditional contracts NASA uses for other services.
The bill also included a similar provision for the commercial cargo program that uses private rockets to transport supplies and equipment to the orbiting lab. Senators, led by Republican Richard Shelby of Alabama, said it would add an important layer of accountability.
The Office of Management and Budget, which reviews and comments on legislation on behalf of the White House, issued a statement Tuesday in support of the overall appropriations bill. The measure also includes billions for the programs in the Justice and Commerce departments.
But while OMB applauded the committee for approving what would be a record amount for the commercial crew program, the statement warned the Shelby-authored conditions "would seek to apply accounting requirements unsuitable for a firm, fixed-price acquisition, likely increasing the program's cost and potentially delaying its schedule."
In an effort to keep costs down and speed development, NASA has opted to use Space Act agreements instead of traditional contracts for both crew and cargo programs.
Under the agreements, NASA pays companies to achieve certain milestones but leaves details largely to the contractor. It costs less, but the firms get to keep the intellectual property rights of their products, and there's a risk a problem could go undetected until later in the development process.
Advocates of the arrangement say it means companies can more nimbly — and cheaply — meet contract targets. But skeptics like Shelby say there's little oversight and the government has little control over costs.
OMB's concerns echo those aired by commercial space interests. Alex Saltman, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, has called the provision "a step in the wrong direction" at a time when the U.S. is trying to end its dependence on Russia — at $70 million a ride — to ferry U.S. astronauts to the space station.
He said it would likely force NASA to restart the procurement process and push back the program as long as a year. That would not only inflate the cost of the program but require paying Russia hundreds of millions more dollars for rides to the station, he said.
Commercial space advocates say it would cost only about $20 million for each astronaut's seat.
The full Senate could vote on the measure as early as this week. It would then have to be reconciled with a House version, which does not include the provision.
Shelby's provision in the Senate version wasn't the administration's only misgiving about the bill. OMB said it also does not provide enough for space technology. And it's concerned about prematurely specifying elements of future science missions while they are in a very early stage of development.
U.S. Senate Provision on NASA Seen as Hurting SpaceX
Jonathan D. Salant – Bloomberg News
A U.S. Senate proposal tied to the NASA spending bill may thwart efforts by Elon Musk's space venture while aiding Boeing Co. (BA), the government's No. 2 contractor, a trade group president said today.
The seven-line provision would require companies seeking contracts to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station to file detailed financial reports justifying their costs. The Senate bill for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 includes $805 million for the program.
Newer contractors such as Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin LLC will be at a disadvantage, Michael Lopez-Alegria, president of the Washington-based Commercial Spaceflight Federation, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The measure would increase their costs because they would have to expand accounting staffs to do the work, he said.
The smaller companies don't have "quite the army in place to do those calculations," while Boeing is probably "best equipped" because it's so large, he said.
The space organization represents companies such as Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX and Kent, Washington-based Blue Origin. Boeing, which is also competing for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's commercial crew program, isn't a member of the federation.
Shelby's State
The proposal was introduced by Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee. It's contained in a committee report attached to the spending bill, which later would have to be reconciled with the House version.
Shelby has said he'd rather see more funding directed to a space launch system that's designed to carry astronauts to the moon and beyond. That project is being managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in his home state. Boeing is a lead contractor on the system.
The issue reached the full Senate today as lawmakers began consideration of the fiscal 2015 spending bill.
The Commercial Spaceflight Federation and member companies are trying to persuade House and Senate negotiators to quash Shelby's provision before it gets into the final bill.
If the measure cleared Congress, contracts may be delayed or even re-bid as companies such as SpaceX are tasked with providing the reports, Lopez-Alegria said.
'More Efficient'
"We are trying to be more efficient," Lopez-Alegria said in an interview. "Part of that efficiency is relieving some of the burdens that are in normal contracting law."
In a statement today addressing the provision, the White House said it has "concerns about language that would seek to apply accounting requirements unsuitable for a firm, fixed-price acquisition, likely increasing the program's cost and potentially delaying its schedule."
A SpaceX spokesman, John Taylor, declined to comment. Also declining to comment were representatives for Blue Origin and Chicago-based Boeing.
'Welfare Program'
Shelby has been skeptical of NASA's decision to pay private companies to develop spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts to the station. At a 2010 hearing, he called commercial crew a"welfare program for the commercial space industry."
"NASA is spending billions to help private companies develop a launch vehicle, but has little to no access to the books and records associated with its investment," Shelby said at a May 1 hearing. "The fact is there is no transparency into the true total investment in these vehicles."
Since retiring its space shuttle fleet in 2011, NASA has depended on Russia to taxi crews to and from the station orbiting 260 miles (418 kilometers) above Earth.
Lawmakers have asked NASA how the U.S. can continue using the station if Russia doesn't extend its participation beyond 2020, as Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told reporters last month in Moscow.
Four companies want to take American astronauts to and from the space station: SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing and Sparks, Nevada-based Sierra Nevada Corp.
Boeing Preparing Layoff Notices in Case of Commercial Crew Loss
Irene Klotz – Space News
Hoping for the best, but preparing for defeat, Boeing will send out about 215 potential layoff notices to employees currently working on its NASA CST-100 Commercial Crew program.
The 60-day notices, required under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), are due to be distributed on June 20 to about 170 employees in Houston and 45 in Florida in case Boeing is not selected for an upcoming Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract, Boeing spokesman Adam Morgan told SpaceNews.
"It's just a standard way … to minimize potential business impact," added John Mulholland, Boeing Commercial Crew program manager.
The CST-100 capsule is one of three spaceships being developed by private companies in partnership with NASA, which lost the ability to fly astronauts when the U.S. space shuttles were retired in 2011.
The effort to develop a lower cost and safer U.S. alternative — and break Russia's monopoly on station crew transport in the process — is expected to conclude in late August or September when NASA selects one or more space taxi designs for development and test flights.
Competing against the Boeing CST-100 are Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s Dragon capsule and Sierra Nevada Corp.'s winged Dream Chaser.
"I think it would be hard to close a business case without that backstop of NASA development funds," Mulholland said.
Along with the WARN notices, in case of a win Boeing is making contingency offers to about 15 employees in Houston to transfer to Florida, where the CST-100 program will be based. The company also will post 75 expected new jobs in Florida, Morgan said.
Mulholland said "several hundred" employees currently work on the CST-100 program, including just under 100 in Florida.
Sierra Nevada currently is not preparing any WARN notices to its Dream Chaser workforce, said company Vice President Mark Sirangelo, who oversees the project.
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, United Launch Alliance, which has agreements to fly both the CST-100 and the Dream Chaser on its Atlas 5 rockets, is preparing to build a crew access tower at its Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch pad.
Contingent on Boeing winning a CCtCap award, the addition to Launch Complex 41 is slated to begin Sept. 1. So far, all of the design work on the tower has been focused on the CST-100, ULA's Chief Operating Officer Dan Collins said.
Boeing: Brevard employees could be laid off
James Dean - Florida Today
The Boeing Co. this Friday will notify about 45 local employees that they could be laid off within 60 days if the company does not win a contract from NASA's Commercial Crew Program, a spokesman confirmed.
NASA plans to award one or more contracts in August or September that aim to resume launches of astronauts from Florida to the International Space Station on U.S. vehicles by 2017. Boeing is competing with SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corp.
If it wins a contract, Boeing plans to move its commercial crew program office from Houston to Kennedy Space Center, immediately transferring 15 to 20 employees and posting about 75 new positions.
The notices going out Friday under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act were first reported by Space News.
Boeing will extend the notices if the contract awards take longer than 60 days, and attempt to limit any job losses by placing affected employees elsewhere in the company.
With eyes on NASA, Mars, Elon Musk still dreams big
Karma Allen – CNBC
Even with NASA and Mars on SpaceX's horizon, serial entrepreneur Elon Musk says he plans to stay put at electric carmaker Tesla.
"I'll continue to be involved with Tesla as far into the future as I can possibly tell...," he said in an interview on CNBC'S "Closing Bell," Tuesday. "I feel good about being able to produce a compelling mass-market car in the next three years."
Tesla shares closed more than 3 percent higher on Tuesday, but edged lower in after-hours trading.
As his other venture, SpaceX, vies against established players such as Boeing for a big NASA contract, Musk said his firm will just keep going, even if the contract falls through. He noted that SpaceX's progression would be slowed down if the U.S. government doesn't choose the company's Dragon V2 as the next crew carrier to the International Space Station.
"It's possible that we may not win the commercial crew contract... we'll do our best to continue on our own, with our own money," Must said. "We would not be where we are today without the help of NASA."
SpaceX, which was just named No. 1 on CNBC's second annual CNBC Disruptor 50 list, recently unveiled the Dragon V2, a spacecraft that it hopes will carry NASA astronauts to the International Space Station as soon as 2016.
For now, Musk says the company is focused on creating technology that with enable large groups of people to travel to Mars.
"I'm hopeful that the first people could be taken to Mars in 10 to 12 years, I think it's certainly possible for that to occur," he said. "But the thing that matters long term is to have a self-sustaining city on Mars, to make life multi-planetary."
He acknowledged that the company's plans were too long-term to attract many hedge fund managers, which makes it hard for SpaceX to go public anytime soon.
"We need to get where things a steady and predictable," Musk said. "Maybe we're close to developing the Mars vehicle, or ideally we've flown it a few times, then I think going public would make more sense."
Musk said he's invested in Vicarious—a start-up that uses artificial intelligence to enable machines to emulate the human brain—but admitted that the growing industry could be potentially dangerous.
"There's been movies about this, like 'Terminator,'" he said. "There's some scary outcomes and we should try to make sure the outcomes are good, not bad."
Rivals in 'knife fight' for Pentagon cash
Megan R. Wilson – The Hill
The United Launch Alliance is caught in a "Beltway knife fight" with SpaceX for some of the most lucrative contracts at the Pentagon.
The alliance, which is made up of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, now has sole dominion over contracts with the Defense Department to launch military and spy satellites into space, as they are the only companies certified to provide the services.
But that could soon change.
SpaceX, a relatively new aerospace company founded by billionaire Elon Musk, argues that Boeing and Lockheed have engineered the system in their favor, and is demanding certification.
The financial stakes couldn't be higher, as one of the projects contracted out to the Alliance — the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), used to send government satellites to the stars — is reportedly the fourth most expensive project at the Pentagon, with a price tag of around $70 billion through 2030.
The competition between the rival companies is becoming one of the biggest lobbying battles in all of Washington.
The United Launch Alliance (ULA) has hired three K Street firms to lobby on its behalf, all in the past month.
Van Scoyoc Associates, which already represents Lockheed, and Shockey Scofield Solutions, which works for Boeing, both retained ULA as a client on June 4.
Both firms have deep ties to appropriators in Congress who hold the keys to the Defense Department's budget.
J.R. Reskovac of lobby firm Capitol Decisions, a former staffer on a House Armed Services panel, will also be working for ULA in a contract with Van Scoyoc.
One observer said the alliance's decision to hire up on K Street is an acknowledgment that SpaceX's bid poses a serious threat.
"I do think the incumbent companies' leadership was taken aback initially by the aggressiveness and scale of SpaceX's advocacy. Contrary to impressions, this is no naïf when it comes to D.C. influence, not to mention the boldness — ULA would say mendacity — of the public claims about cost and performance," said someone in the industry with knowledge of the ULA defense contract.
"Before, all [ULA] had to worry about was keeping the Air Force, their client, happy," he added. "All of the sudden, they find themselves in this Beltway knife fight."
SpaceX, meanwhile, is fighting aggressively to gain a slice of the contracting pie, spending more than $1.1 million on lobbying last year alone.
The company has hired Patton Boggs, Heather Podesta + Partners and the Nickles Group, among other firms; their representatives include members of the lobbying elite, such as former Sens. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and John Breaux (D-La.).
"Lockheed and Boeing are used to trying to stomp on new companies, and they've definitely tried to stomp on us," said Musk during an event at the Newseum in Washington earlier this week that gave members of Congress a chance to step inside a SpaceX spacecraft.
SpaceX already has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to take items to and from the International Space Station. It has been unable to break into the defense space and has taken the Air Force to court over what it calls an unfair contractor monopoly.
In the latest round of EELV buys, the Pentagon decided to purchase the vehicles in bulk sets of 36, which the Defense Department says will save billions, rather than one by one.
But SpaceX is pushing the Pentagon to open up the bidding process, saying the contract is anti-competitive. The Air Force is spending $60 million to get the company certified despite the lawsuit, according to Bloomberg.
"If we're given a chance to compete for this contract, we will deliver value to the American taxpayer. It's not that we think we should get every part of this program, but we should be able to compete," John Taylor, a spokesman for SpaceX, told The Hill.
"Not only is this an un-level playing field, it's a playing field we're not even allowed to enter."
Those associated with the established contractors argue SpaceX has a troubled launch record that includes performance issues in its contract with NASA.
The billion-dollar NASA deal, signed in 2009, requires SpaceX to take 12 trips to the International Space Station and back by the end of 2016. As of June of this year, only three have been completed, with the fourth scheduled to take place in August.
"The concern on the ULA side is that SpaceX is going to get their nose under the tent, and the same thing will happen with the Air Force that happened with NASA — where the leadership has become vested in the success," said the person familiar with the ULA work. "Then, they will get into the 'too big to fail' category, and ULA will get stuck cleaning up the mess."
Large defense contractors argue that higher costs are required to assure quality and dependability, and say Pentagon officials know their product will be delivered as promised and on time.
SpaceX dismisses that claim and say the alliance's exclusive deal has allowed the companies to fleece taxpayers.
"Each launch by ULA costs American taxpayers roughly $400 million — four times as much as a launch by SpaceX, and at least twice as much as any provider in the world," SpaceX said in a release about its lawsuit. "It's a false premise to suggest that a more expensive launch is a more reliable launch. Prices have increased because there is no competition."
Boeing and Lockheed Martin combined in 2006 to form the United Launch Alliance, and the venture's chief executive, Michael Gass, argued in March that the program needs the stability of one provider.
"ULA was formed to enable assured access to space with two separate launch systems, with recognition that the market demand was insufficient to sustain two competitors," he told a Senate panel.
"We went from two competing teams with redundant and underutilized infrastructure to one team that has delivered the expected savings of this consolidation," Gass said.
Elon Musk's Aerospace Argument Just Took A Hit
Armin Rosen – Business Insider
Elon Musk's biggest aerospace rival just reversed one of its most controversial practices, and plans to no longer use Russian-made engines in its rockets starting in 2019.
Musk and his startup SpaceX have accused United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, of colluding with Air Force officials in order to receive contracts for 36 launches without having to go through a competitive bidding process.
One specific ULA policy made the company an easy target for Musk: the company bought engines for the first stage of its workhorse Atlas V rocket from Energomash, a Russian company.
Russia's annexation of Crimea and continued meddling in Eastern Ukraine have caused a major fallout in relations between Putin's government and the west, a rift that culminated in Russia's expulsion from the G8 this past March.
This new state of play cast U.S. and Russian space cooperation into doubt. With the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011, the U.S. has no manned spaceflight capability and depends on Russia's Soyuz rockets and capsules to ferry American astronauts to the International Space Station. This dependency extends even to U.S. military launches, for which ULA is the sole contract holder.
For decades, space policy has actually been a notable point of cooperation between two countries whose interests are seldom completely aligned. In 1975, for instance, Apollo and Soyuz modules docked in space, marking the first time two countries' spacecraft had linked up in orbit — despite ongoing Cold War tensions. A coordinated space policy was an important component of pre-Ukraine crisis U.S.-Russian cooperation.
But Musk and SpaceX sensed a vulnerability after the escalation of events in Ukraine, and Musk slammed ULA for its reliance on Russian-made components during Senate testimony in March. It was a line of attack that seemed to resonate with national security officials and members of Congress. And it convinced the Air Force to review whether ULA's use of Russian engines posed any potential danger to national security.
Today's news shows that ULA isn't going to wait for the Air Force to tell them to drop Russian engine-makers. It also takes away one of Musk's arguments for awarding future contracts to SpaceX — contracts that are likely to be more closely contested. Musk's startup probably won't be certified for Air Force launches until 2017. ULA's all-American rockets will debut in 2019 at the earliest. And there are numerous government launches to be awarded in coming years with the planned replacement of the U.S.'s aging GPS satellite fleet.
ULA, like SpaceX, might be looking towards the next round of launch competition. And their announcement couldn't have come at a more opportune time, as Russian-supported militia groups in Ukraine now have tanks and anti-aircraft weaponry that they couldn't have gotten without Moscow's help.
White House, Washington Times both criticize Senate commercial crew language
Jeff Foust – Space Politics
It's rare to get the Obama Administration and the conservative editorial page of the Washington Times in agreement on something. Yet, both have spoken out in opposition to report language in the Senate's Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill—due to be considered by the full Senate this week—regarding cost and pricing data for commercial crew and cargo providers.
"Requiring private spaceflight contractors to calculate this additional, irrelevant set of numbers would consume thousands of man hours to calculate the complex, esoteric cost-plus system," argues the Times in its editorial, referring to the "certified cost and pricing data" those companies would have to provide NASA for commercial crew and cargo contracts. Several commercial space advocacy groups have spoken out against the language in the CJS report requiring that information.
The Times editorial also includes a dig at the Space Launch System (SLS). "Launching this 'Rocket to Nowhere' will cost taxpayers at least a half-billion dollars every time it lifts off — if it ever does," the editorial argues. "It's only fair, and in the long run more efficient, that private firms get a fair opportunity to compete for America's space business."
Tuesday morning, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued its Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) on the Senate CJS appropriations bill. "The Administration appreciates the Committee's support for the Commercial Crew program," it states in the NASA section of the SAP, "but has concerns about language that would seek to apply accounting requirements unsuitable for a firm, fixed-price acquisition, likely increasing the program's cost and potentially delaying its schedule."
The SAP also addresses a couple of other issues with the CJS bill. The administration is "concerned," it states, about the reduced funding for NASA's Space Technology program, which gets $580 million versus the administration's request of $705 million. It also criticizes the Senate for specifying that any future Europa mission use the SLS as the baseline launch vehicle, and warns that the Senate's "proposed approach to a follow-on Landsat mission is not feasible within the bill's proposed cost cap of $650 million."
Tech Startups With Federal Purse Strings
John McLaughlin - Huffington Post
Startups can live or die by the depth of their investors' pockets, but some have stumbled on what can often be the most reliable source of funding -- contracts with the federal government.
The types of startups attracting interest from the U.S. are diverse and range from transportation-related companies to early-stage learning websites. Read on for a closer look.
Transportation
Transportation-related technology startups were the biggest beneficiaries of federal government contracts in 2013, according to a survey conducted of tech companies on industry website CrunchBase.
About 56 percent of the $1.1 billion federal dollars spent in 2013 in dealings with tech startups, classified as companies started after the year 2000 that have raised at least one round of funding from investors, went to companies specializing in transport -- often space transport.
Which company attracted the most investment? Tesla Founder Elon Musk's SpaceX, a space transport services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California, received a mammoth $594 million in federal government contracts in 2013, according to information obtained through public filings available on USAspending.gov. That's up from $256 million in 2012 and $195 million in 2011.
Overall, SpaceX has received over $1.3 billion in federal funds since 2008.
The money came primarily from NASA, which has awarded SpaceX contracts to design and demonstrate launch systems to supply cargo to the international space station. While SpaceX has numerous contracts with companies in the private sector, government contracts represent a large chunk of its funding.
On its next mission, SpaceX is slated to deliver cargo, including equipment for science experiences, imaging software, spare parts, food, provisions and clothing to the crew of the international space station.
Enterprise and Biotech
Enterprise and biotech-related startups received the second and third largest sums of money from the federal government, respectively, with enterprise contracts up by almost 2000 percent, from $13.2 million in 2009 to $243 million in 2013. Biotech startups received $101 million in contracts in 2013, up from $59 million in 2009.
Indeed, enterprise startups received approximately 21 percent of all federal funding since 2000, or $700 million of $3.35 billion in total funds, according to public filings, while biotech startups received 14 percent, or $467 million.
The biggest recipient of funds in the enterprise software startup arena in 2013 was little-known startup Digital Management, a company specializing in cyber security and enterprise mobility. Founded in May 2002, Digital Management raised one round of funding worth just $1.7 million in 2010 and two debt rounds totaling $2.54 million before going on to win government contracts totaling $499 million over the last three years.
In 2013, Digital Management received $237 million in federal funds, up from $163 million in 2012 and $98 million in 2011.
Those contracts include one signed in 2011 to support the advancement of Trusted Computing Technologies for the Air Force Research Laboratory.
Digital management provides software development support for the Aviation Resource Management System, an online system that supports commanders, aircrew supervisors, and managers, providing operations management information to support implementation of air force flight management policies.
The biggest winner in the biotech sphere in 2013 was Carestream Health, a provider of dental and medical imaging systems and healthcare IT solutions for life science research and drug discovery and development. Carestream received $22 million in funding, primarily from the Department of Veteran Affairs, in 2013.
Analytics
Analytics-related startups ranked low on the list of government contract recipients, receiving just $34 million in contracts in 2013, but $32.6 million of that sum was awarded to one company: Palantir Technologies, the big data company whose clients have included the NSA, the FBI and the CIA.
Since its founding, Palantir has received a total $120 million in government contracts, according to public data.
The data-mining giant compiles and interprets intelligence-related data, breaking global issues like human trafficking and disaster response into digestible formats like maps and graphs, and counts Condoleezza Rice and former CIA director George Tenet among its advisors. It's even been credited with helping to catch Osama Bin Laden.
Early-Stage Startups
It's not all big business. The federal government is doing deals with small startups, too.
Notable small firms receiving government contracts include Anybots, an 11-year-old Silicon Valley-based Y-combinator-funded company which makes remote-controlled telepresence robots. It received a total of $58,646 between 2010 and 2012 from the United States Navy and NASA.
And General Assembly, an education platform for technology, design and entrepreneurship, which provides training for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, received $10,750 in federal training contracts in 2013, according to public data.
The Broad View
All in all, government spending with startups is increasing very quickly. In 2013, federal contracts with startups accounted for $1.1 billion, up from $661 million in 2012, and $514 million 2011. A total $3.35 billion in federal contracts has been awarded to startups since 2000.
Approximately 4 percent of companies listed on CrunchBase had financial dealings with the federal government.
In almost in every industry, it appears the companies winning government contracts are those that were designed purposefully to do so. For the most part, those companies are not consumer-facing, and it's likely many people will not have heard of them.
With the exception of consumer-facing startups like Anybots, or General Assembly, which only receive minor payouts from the federal government, most of the companies securing major government deals, such as SpaceX, were built for the purpose of interfacing with government agencies.
In other words, don't expect the federal government to come knocking on your door unless you've worked with a federal agency since inception.
Sherr's Book Reveals Details Of Astronaut Sally Ride's Personal Life
NPR
Linda Wertheimer talks to journalist Lynn Sherr about her friendship with the late Sally Ride. Sherr has written a book, Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space.
LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:
It was 31 years ago this month that astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space. When the space shuttle Challenger exploded on takeoff, killing all on board. Ride played a major role in finding out why, and after leaving NASA she founded a company to encourage girls to go into science. But when Sally ride died from cancer two years ago at the age of 61, little-known details about her personal life emerged, including a long-term relationship with another woman. Journalist Lynn Sherr was covering NASA when she met Ride and the two became friends. Sherr has written a comprehensive biography "Sally Ride: America's First Woman In Space," and she says she did not check her journalism credentials at the door when she decided to write about her friend.
LYNN SHERR: I did it because - exactly because I knew her as well as I did because I thought I could tell the right story. I also did it because there were things about her I didn't know, and when I learned about them right after she died, I realized this was an investigation I wanted to undertake. That my friend had withheld certain things from me and from the world and I thought it might be interesting to see how that added to her character - because by the way that's the way we lived our lives. She was my friend the whole time I was reporting on her and I never compromised my ability to be a good journalist while I was reporting on her.
WERTHEIMER: One of the things that was not out there, was her very private life, the fact that she had a - what was it? - a 27-year relationship with another woman, and that amazingly according to the way you tell the story, it was not generally known.
SHERR: Sally and Tam O'Shaughnessy, her partner, did have friends that they would socialize with, but for the most part it wasn't. Tam prefers the word private; I think you could use the word secret. But she was concerned about the impact on NASA, which we only know because she said something about that right before she died. She also was concerned when she and Tam started their company, Sally Ride Science, that two women in a lesbian relationship might have difficulty raising money to support this extraordinarily wonderful company that was going to get girls interested in science and math. I am very sorry that our culture and our society was one in which there was some shame and fear - although with Sally you would have never really known that because there's always a smile on her face and she doesn't to have been downtrodden by this.
WERTHEIMER: Let me ask you, on page 44 you do one of the sort of journalistic tricks. And that is to ask a person to define themselves. So could you just read us - there's a paragraph at the bottom I think of page 44?
SHERR: (Reading) And if you woke up Sally Ride in the middle of the night and asked her what one word best described her, a question I often posed to size someone up, she would say according to everyone who knew her best. Physicist. She liked the fact that only 90 some naturally occurring elements comprise everything from a grain of sand to the furthest star. That physics means being precise not arbitrary, that it dwells in the real world with natural law. These were Sally's most comfortable coordinates.
WERTHEIMER: Was Sally Ride really a serious scientist?
SHERR: Sally was absolutely a serious scientist. And, you know, I had a conversation with one of the few of her students whom she mentored, and he had a wonderful way to describe her. He said she was a physicist who took a detour through space.
WERTHEIMER: (Laughing) Well, one of the most interesting things about Sally Ride, I thought, was the extraordinary thing that happened to her when Challenger fell. It changed her life. It changed her feelings about NASA, which had been, like, the firmament in which she moved.
SHERR: And she went from saying, I'm going to get in line for my next flight like everybody else, all I want to do is fly, fly, fly, to reassessing and going back to a plan that had somewhere been in the back of her mind, which was she was only going to stay at NASA for X number of years and then get back to physics research. Challenger was a moment when the scales fell from all of our eyes, but what was revealed after the Challenger explosion and the faulty decision-making of some of the managers - not everyone, but some of them - was a crime. It was absolutely a crime, and Sally saw it that way, too. And Sally then came up with the evidence, the first critical evidence which we now only now know about - did not know until she died. That NASA had tested the material in those O-rings, those giant, rubber gaskets.
WERTHEIMER: Everybody who remembers Challenger will remember that.
SHERR: The gaskets that were holding together the segments of the solid rocket boosters. She was slipped a piece of paper which proved that some in management knew that the rubber in the O-rings would not withstand those super cold temperatures. Challenger happened in January of 1986. Sally resigned from NASA in 1987.
WERTHEIMER: And she never flew again.
SHERR: She never flew in space again.
WERTHEIMER: When do you think Sally became a feminist?
SHERR: I think Sally was born a feminist. When she found that NASA was looking to recruit women, she knew she was the beneficiary of the women's movement, she always said that. Her mother had the great line, after Sally flew, everybody rushed around saying, what do you have to say? What do you have to say? And she said, how about God bless Gloria Steinem?
WERTHEIMER: Well, now, for those of us who remember the day that Sally Ride flew into space, it's like remembering the day that Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro to be his vice presidential candidate. Those are milestones certainly in my life but what is her impact? Did she reach all the way out into generations who are still young?
SHERR: Youngsters may not know exactly who she was or exactly what she did, but they feel her impact. There is no question about it. At the time, as you remember, she was the most famous person on the planet. She was on the cover of every magazine; Half a million people lined the rivers and the coastline at the Kennedy Space Center to watch her lift off. Millions of people, mostly women, mostly young women, looked at her bold journey and translated it into their own tickets to success. If she can do that, they said, I can do anything. This was the ultimate glass ceiling, and Sally Ride had crashed right through it.
WERTHEIMER: Lynn Sherr's book is called "Sally Ride: America's First Woman In Space." Thank you very much.
SHERR: Thank you Linda.
WERTHEIMER: It's Morning EDITION from NPR News. I'm Linda Wertheimer.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
A Rare Look at the Space Shuttle's Successor Space Launch System
AP
Three years after the retirement of the space shuttle, there are measurable signs of progress on its successor at National Aeronautics and Space Administration centres across the United States.
Engineers at George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville are testing the avionics of the Space Launch System.
Here a scale model of the Space Launch System, or SLS, is being prepared for a test of the launch pad's sound suppression water system, which will protect the orbiter and its payloads from being damaged by acoustic energy reflected from the platform during lift-off.
Douglas Counter, a Space Launch System engineer explains the importance of rigorous testing.
"Past experience has shown that without this scale model testing, there could be not only problems with the design loads, with the environment, components could fail. So, this is very critical in proving out what the design loads, qualifications, the environment that the vehicle will actually see, the effectiveness of the water and whether your water suppression system -- as designed -- actually did what it was supposed to accomplish."
Another Space Launch System Engineer Curt Jackson describes the flight computers being assembled in the system integration laboratory in Huntsville as the rocket's brain and nervous system.
"This is essentially the brain and nervous system of your rocket. The flight computers are your brain. The various data systems, the various sensors, data from the different boxes -- kind of like your nervous system flow -- to the brian. Your brain is giving, sending out signals through your nervous system to the different parts of your body for, to tell it what to do. And, to tell how things are going."
Jackson agrees that early testing is essential for a smooth test launch.
"And, the whole goal of being able to do this testing as early as possible is, when we get down to the Cape, when we push that button and see the rockets fire, we want to assure that everything is going to work correctly and that the crew is as safe as possible. So, we try to do this testing as early and often as we can and all, so."
Engineers at John C. Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Miss. are assembling 200-foot-tall engines.
Recently, the United States of House of Representatives Appropriations Committee recommended $17.9 billion USD in funding for NASA in 2015 -- $435 million USD more than requested by the White House. The proposal includes additional funding for SLS and Orion.
But all the same NASA is being thrifty in its reuse of materials as Gary Benton RS-25 Engine Test Project Manager explains.
"Well, what we have here in the building is RS-25 engines that are getting ready to be tested and eventually fly. We've got 16 RS-25 engines left over from the shuttle program. And, since the engine was highly reliable and reusable, we're able to take these engines and use them for the first four flights of SLS."
There is recycling going at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Miss. as well, where an Apollo-era test stand is being renovated ahead of a test of the rocket's core stage.
Richard Rauch is the B-2 Test Stand Project Manager.
"Well, the stand was originally designed in the Apollo era to be very flexible and you could see there's a lot of old equipment up there from the previous testing of the Saturn S-IC and the shuttle main propulsion test article. And, what we're doing is repurposing some of that old hardware -- some of that structural hardware -- a lot of the propellant and cryopiping, to make it adaptable to what's required for the SLS core stage."
Ahead of the first test flight of the SLS, in 2017, engineers at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans have started to weld sections of the massive heavy-lift rocket.
Jackie Nesselroad, a Boeing Company production operations director at the Michoud facility says "The United States is the leader in the industry. We're the leader for the world. We're providing that next level, that next generation exploration to space, not only for the United States, but, for the world."
According to NASA, the Space Launch System will provide an entirely new capability for science and human space exploration beyond Earth's orbit.
"The Space Launch System will give the nation a safe, affordable and sustainable means of reaching beyond our current limits and open new doors of discovery from the unique vantage point of space," NASA said. "The Space Launch System, or SLS, will carry the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, as well as important cargo, equipment and science experiments, to deep space. The Orion spacecraft will carry up to four astronauts beyond low Earth orbit on long-duration, deep space missions and include both crew and service modules and a launch abort system to significantly increase crew safety."
Earlier this month, a congressionally mandated report from the National Research Council recommended that the United States pursue a disciplined "pathway" approach that encompassed executing a specific sequence of intermediate accomplishments and destinations leading to the "horizon goal" of putting humans on Mars.
The success of this approach would require a steadfast commitment to a consensus goal, international collaboration and a budget that increases by more than the rate of inflation, the National Research Council said.
Five years after Augustine: How does the panel feel about NASA's Space Launch System?
Eric Berger – Houston Chronicle
In 2009 President Obama asked Norm Augustine, and other luminaries such as the late astronaut Sally Ride, to review the state of NASA's human spaceflight program. Five years ago, today, the commission held its first public meeting. Their final report came out in the fall of 2009 (see .pdf). The Augustine committee found that NASA's existing program, Constellation, had fallen significantly behind schedule, and that there simply wasn't enough money in the budget to build a big rocket and new space capsule. But their overriding recommendation was this: Once and for all, they implored lawmakers, give NASA a clear goal and the funding to support it.
Democrats and Republicans in Congress promptly ignored this, and implemented the construction of the Space Launch System. But they didn't actually provide the funds to use the SLS. Obama had moved on to health care by then. So NASA was left to muddle along with an expensive rocket, ambitious goals but nary the means to achieve them.
As part of the human spaceflight series I'm writing, Adrift, I've had a chance to interview a number of the Augustine commission members, including Augustine himself, about what they think about the political decisions made in the wake of their report.
Here are some of their responses.
NORM AUGUSTINE
Augustine knows a thing or two about aerospace and government. The former chairman of the aerospace behemoth Lockheed Martin, the government's biggest defense contractor with about $40 billion in annual work, it was Augustine's second time to lead a blue ribbon panel to review NASA's human spaceflight plans.
During an interview Augustine lamented the fact that NASA is still being asked to take on ambitious goals: build a big expensive rocket, space capsule and send humans to Mars in the 2030s, without having nearly enough resources to accomplish this.
"From what I've seen we appear to be falling into the same old trap of having one objective plan and separate funding plan," Augustine said in an interview. "That's not a healthy thing."
So can the SLS succeed?
"I'm always an optimist," he said. "But it all boils down to what the Congress and OMB want to put in this in terms of funds. If we shortchange it we'll be right back where we were. There will be a third commission for somebody to run. But I think I'll go into retirement on space commissions."
LEROY CHIAO
Chiao, four time astronaut and a commander of the International Space Station in 2004 and 2005, brought an astronaut's perspective to the panel. He said a key issue with the SLS was its cost, which, because it is so high, will not allow the rocket to fly very often.
"It's difficult to see how this is going to be sustainable," Chiao said. "You're building an SLS that even the government analysis says is only going to fly very few times. How do you make a sustainable rocket program that flies so infrequently, just from the standpoint of preserving your processes or people, and launches reliably?
"Beyond that is the cost of the SLS. Is the political commitment there to fully fund it? So yeah, everybody in the business looks at it with some skepticism, I would say. It came down from Congress. These Congressmen and women were interested in protecting their districts, and jobs. And that's understandable, but it's difficult to see how the ends are going to meet."
The aftermath of the Augustine commission, during which Congress ordered NASA to build the SLS, was unfortunate, Chiao said.
"That was a big disappointment to most of us, probably all of us, on the committee. They did exactly what we asked them not to do, which was don't partially fund it, and say you want to do everything."
JEFF GREASON
Greason is a rocket scientist, and provided some of the technical expertise to the Augustine commission. He's chief executive of XCOR, a company attempting to build a suborbital spacecraft.
Greason, in an interview, said NASA simply can't afford to both build the SLS and use it to fly meaningful missions.
"The one thing that was clear that could not be done was to carry forward this approach with the existing budget, and that's exactly what they're doing," he said.
The country, with NASA's budget, doesn't have the funds to build a large rocket that will fly infrequently and cost as much as $2-$3 billion a year to maintain, Greason said.
"It's hard for me, I personally haven't been able to find a scenario in which a government funded and operated launch system, for which the government is the only customer, is a rational approach given the current budgets.
"Is that because I'm against big rockets? Of course not. But maintaining rocket production lines is a very expensive proposition. Trying to open another production line for a rocket that has almost no customers is a difficult thing for me to explain. The one argument I have heard that, if it were true, I would buy, is that there are no other ways to explore. I would buy that, but I don't think it's true."
For more on Greason's views why he doesn't think that's true, I recommend this speech, from 2011, given at a key space conference. This will also be the subject of the next installment in the Adrift series.
In Fairfax, Colvin Run students talk with astronauts on space station
T. Rees Shapiro – The Washington Post
Students at Fairfax County's Colvin Run Elementary made an unusual long-distance phone call Tuesday, connecting with NASA astronauts orbiting Earth aboard the International Space Station.
The video conference was part of a NASA effort to promote science in schools and allowed 19 curious students the rare opportunity to pose questions about the effects of gravity, or lack thereof, to the astronauts as they floated upside down in space.
Or at least upside down from the youngsters' perspectives inside the Colvin Run gym in Vienna, as flight engineer Reid Wiseman explained to the students that because there is no gravity in space, there is no "up" or "down" either. Wiseman pointed out that he even sleeps "on the ceiling" of the space station.
"Without the effect of gravity, even eating M&M's becomes difficult," Wiseman said, noting that he trained for more than two years to prepare for his space mission. Once he arrived and experienced the disorienting lack of gravity for the first time, "it was as if I had never trained for anything."
Space station commander Steve Swanson helped demonstrate to the students how a paper airplane doesn't so much as fly in space as float. Wiseman described how the astronauts aboard the station had recently grown heads of lettuce and onions in space.
Through a special phone hookup at the school, sixth-grader Mia Parnaby was able to ask the astronauts about how low gravity affects human bone density and muscle mass.
The astronauts pointed out that being in such a low-gravity environment forced them to work twice as hard to stay in shape, exercising two hours a day to keep their muscles from losing strength.
As the two astronauts spoke, they told the students they were hurtling above the planet at 17,500 miles per hour. Swanson and Wiseman each performed flips in the air as they talked to the students, sometimes taking their hands off their microphone, letting it hover near their lips as they spoke.
"It's just like being a kid and finding the best playground on the planet and getting to live there," Swanson said.
Principal Ken Junge said that preparations for the event, which lasted about 30 minutes, began a month ago. He said the school applied for the special chance to talk with the astronauts by promoting Colvin Run's ample science programs and laboratory work. Junge said that students build Lego robotics models in class, "experiencing science the way it's meant to be: hands-on."
The Colvin Run students also met Dan Tani, a former NASA astronaut who had hands-on experience on the space station. Tani, a Great Falls resident who lives close to Colvin Run, spent four months in 2007 and 2008 on the station.
He said he completed multiple space walks, known as an extravehicular activity, totaling about 36 hours outside of the station.
"Inside the space suit, you are your own satellite equipped with everything you need for hours," Tani said. "The view is spectacular. But I just kept thinking 'Don't screw this up.'"
After duties during the day, Tani said he relaxed by watching DVDs of the old "Get Smart" spy series and reviewing the 1,000 pictures he'd take daily from space.
Speaking to the students, he said, was exciting "to hear how young minds think through the questions they ask."
Sixth-grader Kavye Vij, 12, said that it was neat to talk to someone in space from Earth. He wants to pursue a career in medicine, but he's unsure if he'd like to be an astronaut.
"The scarier part would be going up in space," Vij said. "They said its like a roller coaster, and they kind of freak me out."
Effects of spaceflight found to mirror onset of Type 2 diabetes: study
Ivan Semeniuk - The Toronto (CAN) Globe and Mail
Initial results from a study of Chris Hadfield and other astronauts who spent months aboard the International Space Station have turned up changes like those seen in someone developing Type 2 diabetes on Earth.
The results, to be presented at an international meeting in Waterloo, Ont., on Tuesday, are evidence for yet another deleterious effect of spaceflight that could impact long-duration voyages, such as a trip to Mars. It also demonstrates the close parallels between life in space and a sedentary lifestyle in Canada and elsewhere, where diabetes has become a growing problem for an inactive population.
"Is it a surprise? Not completely," said Richard Hughson, director of the University of Waterloo lab that led the study. In the confined, zero-g environment of the space station, astronauts experience almost none of the daily physical demands required by normal life on the ground. "They are the most sedentary working population that you can find."
He and his team observed elevated levels of insulin and other related blood factors in four astronauts, though none has diabetes symptoms. They are now busy testing blood samples gathered from five other astronauts. Those samples were returned to Earth just three weeks ago.
The preliminary finding suggests that an increase in blood sugar due to inactivity could play a role in stiffening arteries, another change Prof. Hughson has been studying. He has now applied to do a followup study to explore the connection and see if astronauts shed the diabetes-like indicators they've acquired after they've spent time back on Earth.
Prof. Hughson's findings are part of a special one-day symposium during the meeting that will explore how living in space is like an accelerated form of aging.
"In a month of spaceflight you see about the same change in bone that you see in a year in a postmenopausal woman," said Scott Smith, manager for nutritional biochemistry at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "It's like doing time-lapse photography."
Martina Heer, a professor in nutrition physiology at the University of Bonn and a meeting co-chair, said astronaut studies can shed light on aspects of aging that are hard to disentangle in a heterogeneous elderly population and also aid in the quest for countermeasures that would help people age in a healthier way.
Other new findings that will be presented at the symposium include an MRI study of a group of German researchers who spent more than a year at the South Pole on a research trip. The study showed that after a year of isolation and confinement, they experienced shrinkage in brain regions related to working memory and decision-making and a marked decrease in a neurological factor known as BDNF. "These data are very much in line with what you see in patients with dementia," said study leader Alexander Stahn of the Center for Space Medicine in Berlin.
During a session on Monday, Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk described an unexpected problem he and another crew member experienced: They found themselves becoming farsighted while on board the space station in 2009. They conducted ultrasound exams on each other's eyes while NASA sent up glasses so they could continue to perform their tasks.
The problem, related to a swelling of optic nerves, is now thought to affect about 20 per cent of astronauts. Dr. Smith has been studying a possible genetic link that may indicate susceptibility to the condition.
The experience offers a caution that some effects of spaceflight on the human body may still be undiscovered, said Dr. Thirsk, who is set to become chancellor at the University of Calgary on July 1. "The lesson is, whenever we push the envelope in terms of human activity in space, we're going to encounter a new medical challenge that's out there."
The meeting, hosted in Canada for the first time, has drawn about 150 experts in gravitational physiology from North America, Europe and Japan.
NASA's Futuristic Spacesuits Made for Mars Walkers
NASA is thinking hard about what the first boots to set foot on Mars will look like.
Getting astronauts to the Red Planet is the chief long-term goal of the agency's human spaceflight program, so NASA is developing many technologies to help make that happen. For instance, there's the Space Launch System mega-rocket, the Orion crew capsule and a new line of prototype spacesuits called the Z-series.
"So, everything that's done to develop this suit is headed for a Mars mission, even if there is an asteroid mission or a lunar mission prior to that," Stampinato said during a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations working group on June 4.
A new type of suit
NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station currently don a bulky suit called the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) whenever they need to venture outside the orbiting lab. The EMU has performed well for decades, but its utility is pretty much limited to operations in microgravity.
"It's a very, very poor walking suit," NASA spacesuit engineer Amy Ross said in a video released by the space agency.
"We're trying to design [the new suit] to accommodate both improved microgravity EVA [extravehicular activity] capability as well as surface capability," Ross said.
For example, new bearings in the Z-1's shoulder, waist, hip, upper leg and ankles allow for increased leg movement and fine foot placement, she said.
The EMU has upper and lower portions, which wearers don separately and then link up at the waist. But astronauts crawl into the Z-series suits from the back, through a hatch.
"We think it's less prone to [causing] injury, especially shoulder injury," Ross said of the new entry design. "And then also, it provides support for some other exploration technology, like a suitport."
Suitports are an alternative to airlocks, potentially allowing astronauts to enter and exit habitat modules, rovers and other structures quickly and easily without bringing dust and other contaminants inside.
Suitport interface plates are being developed right along with the Z-series spacesuits, in case NASA decides to go with this technology for its manned Mars missions, Stampinato said.
"They're going to be suitport-compatible," he said.
A ways to go
ILC Dover delivered the Z-1 spacesuit to NASA in 2011, and it was named one of the best inventions of the year by Time magazine in 2012.
The Z-2, which should be ready for testing by November, is different from its predecessor in several key ways. For example, the Z-1's upper torso was soft, whereas the Z-2's is made of a hard composite, improving the suit's durability. The Z-2's boots are also closer to flight-ready, while the materials used for the newer suit are compatible with the conditions that exist in the vacuum of space, NASA officials said.
But that doesn't mean that astronauts will wear the Z-2 — or its successor, the Z-3, which is expected to be built by 2018 or so — to explore the surface of Mars. The suits are prototypes — testbeds that should help bring a bona fide Red Planet spacesuit closer to reality.
"Each iteration of the Z-series will advance new technologies that one day will be used in a suit worn by the first humans to step foot on the Red Planet," space agency officials wrote about the Z-2 in April, when announcing the results of a public competition to choose a design for the suit's protective outer layer. (The futuristic-looking "Technology" option won, giving the Z-2 a "Tron"-like new look.)
While spacesuit designers are focused on the future — NASA aims to get people to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s — they're also looking to the past for inspiration. The Apollo astronauts, after all, accumulated many hours of experience on the surface of another world during six landed moon missions from 1969 to 1972.
"We've read through all the debrief comments; we've talked to the crewmembers multiple times," Ross said. "We are very aware of what they did like, didn't like, were capable of, weren't capable of. And so, we do take that into consideration."
Three educators chosen for prestigious NASA summer institute
The Brownsville Herald
Three Brownsville Independent School District teachers have been chosen for the prestigious LiftOff Summer Institute to be held July 7-11 at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Della V. Benavidez from Besteiro Middle School, Claudia Cortez from Faulk Middle School and Fabian Salcedo from Brownville Early College High School, were chosen for the institute from among a nationwide pool of applicants.
LiftOff is a collaborative effort of Texas Space Grant Consor-tium, NASA, and industry. Workshops will be organized around the theme Let's Engineer It! The program combines the strengths of collaborators to enrich teaching and learning of science, mathematics, technology and engineering. Benavidez said 52 educators were chosen for the institute.
"The whole idea is to go absorb as much as possible based on the STEM model," she said. "What we'll be able to bring back will be invaluable. ... We're going to engineer something. We're going to meet astronauts and go to hands-on workshops every day. ... Now kids that have never been to Houston will gain exposure to what they do at the NASA Space Center."
The institute features a series of workshops, hands-on activities, field trips, and presentations by NASA scientists and engineers working on various missions.
Educators "will conduct experiments, tour facilities, and network with other educators while sharing innovative lesson plans and ideas. They will return to their respective districts, train other educators, and use new materials in the classroom. ... The workshops provide teachers the rare – and for most, unique – opportunity to spend a week working with professional scientists and engineers at the cutting edge of space exploration," NASA says in the news release about the institute.
Dark Matter Mystery Deepens
Irene Klotz – Discovery News
New results from the particle detector attached outside the International Space Station show something else beside ordinary matter is generating cosmic rays, the lead researcher said Tuesday.
More cosmic ray detections are needed before scientists will know for sure if they're seeing telltale fingerprints of dark matter colliding or if they've found particles generated by highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars known as pulsars.
"We know something new has happened, but we still do not know the origin," Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Sam Ting, lead researcher of the 600-member Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer science team, said at a space station research conference in Chicago.
"In a short time, we'll really be able to resolve the mystery," he said.
Unlike visible or ordinary matter, dark matter cannot be directly detected by electromagnetic radiation. Yet scientists believe its gravity is responsible for keeping the galaxy -- and the universe for that matter -- together.
Dark matter and its even stranger, anti-gravity cousin, dark energy, which is credited with speeding up the universe's expansion, comprise about 95 percent of the known universe.
Since being installed on the station in May 2011, the AMS particle detector has logged 50 billion cosmic ray hits and relayed information about their energy, direction and contents to physicists for analysis.
Of particular interest is how many positrons -- the antimatter counterpart to electrons -- are detected relative to the overall number of positrons and electrons. Last year, the AMS team reported a proportionally higher number of positrons, though there was not enough data yet to see if the ratios reconciled at higher energy levels, a possible sign of dark-matter collisions.
"The rate of the increase and where you cut off depends on the mass of dark matter," Ting said.
The new data show the ratio of positrons to the total population of electrons plus positrons has "changed its behavior from increasing, to becoming energy independent," Ting wrote in an email to Discovery News.
"This increase indicates it cannot come from ordinary cosmic ray collisions," Ting said.
"We have also measured the positron flux accurately," he added. The flux increases up to 10 billion electron volts of energy, flattens out at up to 35 billion electron volts and then increases again," Ting said.
"These two behaviors show that the origin of positrons in the cosmos is quite mysterious," he added. "It is too early to say they are definitely from dark matter."
NASA Dark-Energy Mission Could Spot 3,000 New Alien Planets
A mission NASA is designing to probe the nature of mysterious dark energy could discover thousands of alien planets as well.
NASA's proposed Wide-field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission aims to help researchers better understand dark energy, the puzzling stuff that makes up about three-quarters of the universe and drives its accelerating expansion.
But WFIRST — which is tentatively scheduled to launch in the early to mid-2020s — should also prove to be an adept planet hunter, complementing the activities of the space agency's prolific Kepler space telescope, researchers say.
"We predict WFIRST will have 3,000 individual planet detections, the same order of magnitude as Kepler," Scott Gaudi, of Ohio State University, said in April during the Space Telescope Science Institute's Habitable Worlds Across Time and Space Symposium in Baltimore.
Gravitational microlensing
Scientists detect planets around other stars using several different methods. Kepler notes the tiny, telltale dimming of light that occurs when a planet crosses, or transits, the face of its host star from the spacecraft's perspective. But WFIRST would rely on gravitational microlensing.
In this technique, astronomers watch what happens when a big object passes between Earth and a background star. The foreground object's gravity bends and amplifies the light from the background star, acting like a magnifying glass.
If the foreground object is a star, and it has planets, the planets can affect the magnified light, creating a signal that astronomers can detect. The process behind this strategy was laid out in 1936 by Albert Einstein, based on his general theory of relativity.
Earth-based telescopes have already detected more than 20 exoplanets using microlensing. WFIRST will be a space-based telescope, which opens up greater detection abilities, researchers said.
"If you go to space, you can do a lot of great things," Gaudi said.
Because microlensing requires the correct lineup of foreground and background stars, the ability to follow up on WFIRST's finds will be limited. However, the process will expand the population of known alien planets, aiding scientists aiming to determine how rare Earth-size planets might be.
"This will dramatically improve our yield of planets," Gaudi said.
A census of worlds
WFIRST should provide a wealth of information about what types of planets exist, allowing stronger statistical conclusions to be drawn, researchers said. Such work would be a nice follow on from Kepler, which has discovered thousands of candidate exoplanets, many of them in solar systems very different than our own.
"If every solar system looked like ours, Kepler would have found very few or no planets," Gaudi said. "The solar systems we're learning about with Kepler are very different from our own."
Kepler has had a great deal of success spotting planets that orbit relatively close to their stars (because they transit frequently). WFIRST, on the other hand, will be more sensitive to larger bodies farther from their suns, researchers said.
In addition, WFIRST should be able to detect smaller distant planets, as well as free-floating "rogue planets" that have been ejected from their systems. Together, Kepler and WFIRST will cover virtually the entire plausible spectrum of planets in mass and orbits.
WFIRST will be able to capture information about Earth-size planets that lie farther from their suns than Earth does, as well as unbound planets the size of Mars. According to Gaudi, in favorable cases, the instrument should be able to detect a terrestrial moon orbiting a distant Earth, or a gas-giant satellite as large as Ganymede (Jupiter's largest moon), though both observations would be challenging. Unbound moons, like unbound planets, would also be detectable.
Of the 3,000 new planets expected to be found by WFIRST, scientists think about 300 will be Earth-size worlds and 1,000 will be "super-Earths," possibly rocky planets up to 10 times the mass of our own. Such predictions are based on present-day understanding of the distribution of types of planets, knowledge that may be either strengthened or challenged by the wealth of data that WFIRST will bring.
With WFIRST, Gaudi said, "we'll measure the galactic distribution of the planets."
At present, the observatory is in the pre-formulation stage, where it will remain until 2016. In addition to creating a statistical catalog of exoplanets, WFIRST will also directly image previously confirmed planets, study black holes, and hunt for clues about dark energy.
Attention, Star Trek fans: 3-D printer headed to space station
Lisa Suhay - Christian Science Monitor
New 3-D printer boldly goes into zero gravity, where no 3-D printer has gone before
By clearing a 3-D printer for launch to the International Space Station (ISS), NASA may have taken a step closer to the "Star Trek" world of "replicators" and self-sustainability on the station.
In the Star Trek universe, a Replicator could make food, machine parts, clothing, or other objects by using transporter technology to dematerialize matter and then rematerialize that matter in another form.
While the company behind the 3-D printer, Made In Space, isn't exactly handing astronauts a magic box, this device is boldly going into zero gravity, where no 3-D printer has gone before.
3-D printing is an innovative process whereby an object is built up layer by layer using printing technology or lasers. Some 3-D printers can extrude plastic, metals, ceramic powder, and many other materials.
The Made In Space 3-D Printer is geared to handle the challenges of space and builds objects layer by layer out of polymers and other materials, according to a press release from Made In Space.
The 3-D printer is designed specifically to function in zero gravity to produce spare parts, crew tools, and components for cubesats, a mini satellite for research, according to the press release.
The first printer will reach the space station in September, after an August launch aboard SpaceX CRS-4.
If this tech lives up to expectations, it will also be a fail-safe for the station and a source of extra-terrestrial industry.
"Think of Apollo 13 when parts failed," Lowery says. Rather than a McGuyver fix, the crew aboard the ISS could 3-D print what they need, when they need it. "No more duct tape, or square pegs into round holes in a panic," he says.
This also saves on shipping costs to make the station less dependent on resupply trips, remove the need for shipping redundancies, and, in the process, makes deeper space exploration more feasible.
It's a joy to every Trekkie each time technology meets a sci-fi benchmark, and this seems to be one of those times.
"Because this felt so much like a 'Star Trek' development, we recently had Rod Roddenberry, son of 'Star Trek' creator Gene Roddenberry, here to see our printer recently, for that very reason," says Grant Lowery, marketing and communication manager for Made In Space, which is partnering with NASA to bring a 3-D printer to the space station.
What did Mr. Roddenberry have to say about this latest advancement in space station tech?
"Tea. Earl Grey. Hot," is what he said directly to one of the printers, according to Mr. Lowery. "It was an amazing moment for everyone on the project."
If the printer performs well in this initial test, the ISS will welcome a second, larger model in 2015 and establish a permanent 3-D printing station called the Additive Manufacturing Facility, according to Lowery.
Made In Space and NASA hope to create a commercial partnership with businesses that want to have their products 3-D manufactured aboard the ISS.
"If you want to build a satellite, you would e-mail your [design] files, which we would of course modify and then print your satellite to order," Lowery says. "No more waiting months while it's built on Earth and then launched into space. When it's built on the space station, they will just release the satellite."
It's still a long way from "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot," but it would seem that it's getting bigger in the window of possibility.
END
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Steve Swanson and ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst take a break to watch ten minutes of live World Cup matches between science experiments while living and working aboard the International Space Station.HEADLINES AND LEADSWhite House: NASA bill would raise costs, cause delaysLedyard King – USA TodayThe Obama administration is concerned that a provision in a NASA funding bill being debated on the Senate floor this week would add costs and delays to the program that will replace the mothballed space shuttle with private rockets.U.S. Senate Provision on NASA Seen as Hurting SpaceXJonathan D. Salant – Bloomberg NewsA U.S. Senate proposal tied to the NASA spending bill may thwart efforts by Elon Musk's space venture while aiding Boeing Co. (BA), the government's No. 2 contractor, a trade group president said today.Boeing Preparing Layoff Notices in Case of Commercial Crew LossIrene Klotz – Space NewsHoping for the best, but preparing for defeat, Boeing will send out about 215 potential layoff notices to employees currently working on its NASA CST-100 Commercial Crew program.Boeing: Brevard employees could be laid offJames Dean - Florida TodayThe Boeing Co. this Friday will notify about 45 local employees that they could be laid off within 60 days if the company does not win a contract from NASA's Commercial Crew Program, a spokesman confirmed.With eyes on NASA, Mars, Elon Musk still dreams bigKarma Allen – CNBCEven with NASA and Mars on SpaceX's horizon, serial entrepreneur Elon Musk says he plans to stay put at electric carmaker Tesla.Rivals in 'knife fight' for Pentagon cashMegan R. Wilson – The HillThe United Launch Alliance is caught in a "Beltway knife fight" with SpaceX for some of the most lucrative contracts at the Pentagon.Elon Musk's Aerospace Argument Just Took A HitArmin Rosen – Business InsiderElon Musk's biggest aerospace rival just reversed one of its most controversial practices, and plans to no longer use Russian-made engines in its rockets starting in 2019.White House, Washington Times both criticize Senate commercial crew languageJeff Foust – Space PoliticsIt's rare to get the Obama Administration and the conservative editorial page of the Washington Times in agreement on something. Yet, both have spoken out in opposition to report language in the Senate's Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill—due to be considered by the full Senate this week—regarding cost and pricing data for commercial crew and cargo providers.Tech Startups With Federal Purse StringsJohn McLaughlin - Huffington PostStartups can live or die by the depth of their investors' pockets, but some have stumbled on what can often be the most reliable source of funding -- contracts with the federal government.Sherr's Book Reveals Details Of Astronaut Sally Ride's Personal LifeNPRLinda Wertheimer talks to journalist Lynn Sherr about her friendship with the late Sally Ride. Sherr has written a book, Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space.A Rare Look at the Space Shuttle's Successor Space Launch SystemAPThree years after the retirement of the space shuttle, there are measurable signs of progress on its successor at National Aeronautics and Space Administration centres across the United StatesFive years after Augustine: How does the panel feel about NASA's Space Launch System?Eric Berger – Houston ChronicleIn 2009 President Obama asked Norm Augustine, and other luminaries such as the late astronaut Sally Ride, to review the state of NASA's human spaceflight program. Five years ago, today, the commission held its first public meeting. Their final report came out in the fall of 2009 (see .pdf).In Fairfax, Colvin Run students talk with astronauts on space stationT. Rees Shapiro – The Washington PostStudents at Fairfax County's Colvin Run Elementary made an unusual long-distance phone call Tuesday, connecting with NASA astronauts orbiting Earth aboard the International Space Station.Effects of spaceflight found to mirror onset of Type 2 diabetes: studyIvan Semeniuk - The Toronto (CAN) Globe and MailInitial results from a study of Chris Hadfield and other astronauts who spent months aboard the International Space Station have turned up changes like those seen in someone developing Type 2 diabetes on Earth.NASA's Futuristic Spacesuits Made for Mars WalkersMike Wall – Space.comNASA is thinking hard about what the first boots to set foot on Mars will look like.Three educators chosen for prestigious NASA summer instituteThe Brownsville HeraldThree Brownsville Independent School District teachers have been chosen for the prestigious LiftOff Summer Institute to be held July 7-11 at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.Dark Matter Mystery DeepensIrene Klotz – Discovery NewsNew results from the particle detector attached outside the International Space Station show something else beside ordinary matter is generating cosmic rays, the lead researcher said Tuesday.NASA Dark-Energy Mission Could Spot 3,000 New Alien PlanetsNola Taylor Redd, - Space.comA mission NASA is designing to probe the nature of mysterious dark energy could discover thousands of alien planets as well.Attention, Star Trek fans: 3-D printer headed to space stationLisa Suhay - Christian Science MonitorNew 3-D printer boldly goes into zero gravity, where no 3-D printer has gone beforeBy clearing a 3-D printer for launch to the International Space Station (ISS), NASA may have taken a step closer to the "Star Trek" world of "replicators" and self-sustainability on the station.COMPLETE STORIESWhite House: NASA bill would raise costs, cause delaysLedyard King – USA TodayThe Obama administration is concerned that a provision in a NASA funding bill being debated on the Senate floor this week would add costs and delays to the program that will replace the mothballed space shuttle with private rockets.As part of a $17.9 billion spending bill to fund NASA in fiscal year 2015, the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this month approved the $805 million for the commercial crew program that will ferry astronauts to the International Space Station.As a condition, the committee required firms in the NASA-supervised competition to develop the next generation of space taxi to submit "certified cost and pricing data" similar to what's required in traditional contracts NASA uses for other services.The bill also included a similar provision for the commercial cargo program that uses private rockets to transport supplies and equipment to the orbiting lab. Senators, led by Republican Richard Shelby of Alabama, said it would add an important layer of accountability.The Office of Management and Budget, which reviews and comments on legislation on behalf of the White House, issued a statement Tuesday in support of the overall appropriations bill. The measure also includes billions for the programs in the Justice and Commerce departments.But while OMB applauded the committee for approving what would be a record amount for the commercial crew program, the statement warned the Shelby-authored conditions "would seek to apply accounting requirements unsuitable for a firm, fixed-price acquisition, likely increasing the program's cost and potentially delaying its schedule."In an effort to keep costs down and speed development, NASA has opted to use Space Act agreements instead of traditional contracts for both crew and cargo programs.Under the agreements, NASA pays companies to achieve certain milestones but leaves details largely to the contractor. It costs less, but the firms get to keep the intellectual property rights of their products, and there's a risk a problem could go undetected until later in the development process.Advocates of the arrangement say it means companies can more nimbly — and cheaply — meet contract targets. But skeptics like Shelby say there's little oversight and the government has little control over costs.OMB's concerns echo those aired by commercial space interests. Alex Saltman, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, has called the provision "a step in the wrong direction" at a time when the U.S. is trying to end its dependence on Russia — at $70 million a ride — to ferry U.S. astronauts to the space station.He said it would likely force NASA to restart the procurement process and push back the program as long as a year. That would not only inflate the cost of the program but require paying Russia hundreds of millions more dollars for rides to the station, he said.Commercial space advocates say it would cost only about $20 million for each astronaut's seat.The full Senate could vote on the measure as early as this week. It would then have to be reconciled with a House version, which does not include the provision.Shelby's provision in the Senate version wasn't the administration's only misgiving about the bill. OMB said it also does not provide enough for space technology. And it's concerned about prematurely specifying elements of future science missions while they are in a very early stage of development.U.S. Senate Provision on NASA Seen as Hurting SpaceXJonathan D. Salant – Bloomberg NewsA U.S. Senate proposal tied to the NASA spending bill may thwart efforts by Elon Musk's space venture while aiding Boeing Co. (BA), the government's No. 2 contractor, a trade group president said today.The seven-line provision would require companies seeking contracts to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station to file detailed financial reports justifying their costs. The Senate bill for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 includes $805 million for the program.Newer contractors such as Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin LLC will be at a disadvantage, Michael Lopez-Alegria, president of the Washington-based Commercial Spaceflight Federation, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The measure would increase their costs because they would have to expand accounting staffs to do the work, he said.The smaller companies don't have "quite the army in place to do those calculations," while Boeing is probably "best equipped" because it's so large, he said.The space organization represents companies such as Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX and Kent, Washington-based Blue Origin. Boeing, which is also competing for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's commercial crew program, isn't a member of the federation.Shelby's StateThe proposal was introduced by Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee. It's contained in a committee report attached to the spending bill, which later would have to be reconciled with the House version.Shelby has said he'd rather see more funding directed to a space launch system that's designed to carry astronauts to the moon and beyond. That project is being managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in his home state. Boeing is a lead contractor on the system.The issue reached the full Senate today as lawmakers began consideration of the fiscal 2015 spending bill.The Commercial Spaceflight Federation and member companies are trying to persuade House and Senate negotiators to quash Shelby's provision before it gets into the final bill.If the measure cleared Congress, contracts may be delayed or even re-bid as companies such as SpaceX are tasked with providing the reports, Lopez-Alegria said.'More Efficient'"We are trying to be more efficient," Lopez-Alegria said in an interview. "Part of that efficiency is relieving some of the burdens that are in normal contracting law."In a statement today addressing the provision, the White House said it has "concerns about language that would seek to apply accounting requirements unsuitable for a firm, fixed-price acquisition, likely increasing the program's cost and potentially delaying its schedule."A SpaceX spokesman, John Taylor, declined to comment. Also declining to comment were representatives for Blue Origin and Chicago-based Boeing.'Welfare Program'Shelby has been skeptical of NASA's decision to pay private companies to develop spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts to the station. At a 2010 hearing, he called commercial crew a"welfare program for the commercial space industry.""NASA is spending billions to help private companies develop a launch vehicle, but has little to no access to the books and records associated with its investment," Shelby said at a May 1 hearing. "The fact is there is no transparency into the true total investment in these vehicles."Since retiring its space shuttle fleet in 2011, NASA has depended on Russia to taxi crews to and from the station orbiting 260 miles (418 kilometers) above Earth.Lawmakers have asked NASA how the U.S. can continue using the station if Russia doesn't extend its participation beyond 2020, as Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told reporters last month in Moscow.Four companies want to take American astronauts to and from the space station: SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing and Sparks, Nevada-based Sierra Nevada Corp.Boeing Preparing Layoff Notices in Case of Commercial Crew LossIrene Klotz – Space NewsHoping for the best, but preparing for defeat, Boeing will send out about 215 potential layoff notices to employees currently working on its NASA CST-100 Commercial Crew program.The 60-day notices, required under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), are due to be distributed on June 20 to about 170 employees in Houston and 45 in Florida in case Boeing is not selected for an upcoming Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract, Boeing spokesman Adam Morgan told SpaceNews."It's just a standard way … to minimize potential business impact," added John Mulholland, Boeing Commercial Crew program manager.The CST-100 capsule is one of three spaceships being developed by private companies in partnership with NASA, which lost the ability to fly astronauts when the U.S. space shuttles were retired in 2011.The effort to develop a lower cost and safer U.S. alternative — and break Russia's monopoly on station crew transport in the process — is expected to conclude in late August or September when NASA selects one or more space taxi designs for development and test flights.Competing against the Boeing CST-100 are Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s Dragon capsule and Sierra Nevada Corp.'s winged Dream Chaser."I think it would be hard to close a business case without that backstop of NASA development funds," Mulholland said.Along with the WARN notices, in case of a win Boeing is making contingency offers to about 15 employees in Houston to transfer to Florida, where the CST-100 program will be based. The company also will post 75 expected new jobs in Florida, Morgan said.Mulholland said "several hundred" employees currently work on the CST-100 program, including just under 100 in Florida.Sierra Nevada currently is not preparing any WARN notices to its Dream Chaser workforce, said company Vice President Mark Sirangelo, who oversees the project.SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.Meanwhile, United Launch Alliance, which has agreements to fly both the CST-100 and the Dream Chaser on its Atlas 5 rockets, is preparing to build a crew access tower at its Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch pad.Contingent on Boeing winning a CCtCap award, the addition to Launch Complex 41 is slated to begin Sept. 1. So far, all of the design work on the tower has been focused on the CST-100, ULA's Chief Operating Officer Dan Collins said.Boeing: Brevard employees could be laid offJames Dean - Florida TodayThe Boeing Co. this Friday will notify about 45 local employees that they could be laid off within 60 days if the company does not win a contract from NASA's Commercial Crew Program, a spokesman confirmed.NASA plans to award one or more contracts in August or September that aim to resume launches of astronauts from Florida to the International Space Station on U.S. vehicles by 2017. Boeing is competing with SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corp.If it wins a contract, Boeing plans to move its commercial crew program office from Houston to Kennedy Space Center, immediately transferring 15 to 20 employees and posting about 75 new positions.The notices going out Friday under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act were first reported by Space News.Boeing will extend the notices if the contract awards take longer than 60 days, and attempt to limit any job losses by placing affected employees elsewhere in the company.With eyes on NASA, Mars, Elon Musk still dreams bigKarma Allen – CNBCEven with NASA and Mars on SpaceX's horizon, serial entrepreneur Elon Musk says he plans to stay put at electric carmaker Tesla."I'll continue to be involved with Tesla as far into the future as I can possibly tell...," he said in an interview on CNBC'S "Closing Bell," Tuesday. "I feel good about being able to produce a compelling mass-market car in the next three years."Tesla shares closed more than 3 percent higher on Tuesday, but edged lower in after-hours trading.As his other venture, SpaceX, vies against established players such as Boeing for a big NASA contract, Musk said his firm will just keep going, even if the contract falls through. He noted that SpaceX's progression would be slowed down if the U.S. government doesn't choose the company's Dragon V2 as the next crew carrier to the International Space Station."It's possible that we may not win the commercial crew contract... we'll do our best to continue on our own, with our own money," Must said. "We would not be where we are today without the help of NASA."SpaceX, which was just named No. 1 on CNBC's second annual CNBC Disruptor 50 list, recently unveiled the Dragon V2, a spacecraft that it hopes will carry NASA astronauts to the International Space Station as soon as 2016.For now, Musk says the company is focused on creating technology that with enable large groups of people to travel to Mars."I'm hopeful that the first people could be taken to Mars in 10 to 12 years, I think it's certainly possible for that to occur," he said. "But the thing that matters long term is to have a self-sustaining city on Mars, to make life multi-planetary."He acknowledged that the company's plans were too long-term to attract many hedge fund managers, which makes it hard for SpaceX to go public anytime soon."We need to get where things a steady and predictable," Musk said. "Maybe we're close to developing the Mars vehicle, or ideally we've flown it a few times, then I think going public would make more sense."Musk said he's invested in Vicarious—a start-up that uses artificial intelligence to enable machines to emulate the human brain—but admitted that the growing industry could be potentially dangerous."There's been movies about this, like 'Terminator,'" he said. "There's some scary outcomes and we should try to make sure the outcomes are good, not bad."Rivals in 'knife fight' for Pentagon cashMegan R. Wilson – The HillThe United Launch Alliance is caught in a "Beltway knife fight" with SpaceX for some of the most lucrative contracts at the Pentagon.The alliance, which is made up of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, now has sole dominion over contracts with the Defense Department to launch military and spy satellites into space, as they are the only companies certified to provide the services.But that could soon change.SpaceX, a relatively new aerospace company founded by billionaire Elon Musk, argues that Boeing and Lockheed have engineered the system in their favor, and is demanding certification.The financial stakes couldn't be higher, as one of the projects contracted out to the Alliance — the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), used to send government satellites to the stars — is reportedly the fourth most expensive project at the Pentagon, with a price tag of around $70 billion through 2030.The competition between the rival companies is becoming one of the biggest lobbying battles in all of Washington.The United Launch Alliance (ULA) has hired three K Street firms to lobby on its behalf, all in the past month.Van Scoyoc Associates, which already represents Lockheed, and Shockey Scofield Solutions, which works for Boeing, both retained ULA as a client on June 4.Both firms have deep ties to appropriators in Congress who hold the keys to the Defense Department's budget.J.R. Reskovac of lobby firm Capitol Decisions, a former staffer on a House Armed Services panel, will also be working for ULA in a contract with Van Scoyoc.One observer said the alliance's decision to hire up on K Street is an acknowledgment that SpaceX's bid poses a serious threat."I do think the incumbent companies' leadership was taken aback initially by the aggressiveness and scale of SpaceX's advocacy. Contrary to impressions, this is no naïf when it comes to D.C. influence, not to mention the boldness — ULA would say mendacity — of the public claims about cost and performance," said someone in the industry with knowledge of the ULA defense contract."Before, all [ULA] had to worry about was keeping the Air Force, their client, happy," he added. "All of the sudden, they find themselves in this Beltway knife fight."SpaceX, meanwhile, is fighting aggressively to gain a slice of the contracting pie, spending more than $1.1 million on lobbying last year alone.The company has hired Patton Boggs, Heather Podesta + Partners and the Nickles Group, among other firms; their representatives include members of the lobbying elite, such as former Sens. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and John Breaux (D-La.)."Lockheed and Boeing are used to trying to stomp on new companies, and they've definitely tried to stomp on us," said Musk during an event at the Newseum in Washington earlier this week that gave members of Congress a chance to step inside a SpaceX spacecraft.SpaceX already has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to take items to and from the International Space Station. It has been unable to break into the defense space and has taken the Air Force to court over what it calls an unfair contractor monopoly.In the latest round of EELV buys, the Pentagon decided to purchase the vehicles in bulk sets of 36, which the Defense Department says will save billions, rather than one by one.But SpaceX is pushing the Pentagon to open up the bidding process, saying the contract is anti-competitive. The Air Force is spending $60 million to get the company certified despite the lawsuit, according to Bloomberg."If we're given a chance to compete for this contract, we will deliver value to the American taxpayer. It's not that we think we should get every part of this program, but we should be able to compete," John Taylor, a spokesman for SpaceX, told The Hill."Not only is this an un-level playing field, it's a playing field we're not even allowed to enter."Those associated with the established contractors argue SpaceX has a troubled launch record that includes performance issues in its contract with NASA.The billion-dollar NASA deal, signed in 2009, requires SpaceX to take 12 trips to the International Space Station and back by the end of 2016. As of June of this year, only three have been completed, with the fourth scheduled to take place in August."The concern on the ULA side is that SpaceX is going to get their nose under the tent, and the same thing will happen with the Air Force that happened with NASA — where the leadership has become vested in the success," said the person familiar with the ULA work. "Then, they will get into the 'too big to fail' category, and ULA will get stuck cleaning up the mess."Large defense contractors argue that higher costs are required to assure quality and dependability, and say Pentagon officials know their product will be delivered as promised and on time.SpaceX dismisses that claim and say the alliance's exclusive deal has allowed the companies to fleece taxpayers."Each launch by ULA costs American taxpayers roughly $400 million — four times as much as a launch by SpaceX, and at least twice as much as any provider in the world," SpaceX said in a release about its lawsuit. "It's a false premise to suggest that a more expensive launch is a more reliable launch. Prices have increased because there is no competition."Boeing and Lockheed Martin combined in 2006 to form the United Launch Alliance, and the venture's chief executive, Michael Gass, argued in March that the program needs the stability of one provider."ULA was formed to enable assured access to space with two separate launch systems, with recognition that the market demand was insufficient to sustain two competitors," he told a Senate panel."We went from two competing teams with redundant and underutilized infrastructure to one team that has delivered the expected savings of this consolidation," Gass said.Elon Musk's Aerospace Argument Just Took A HitArmin Rosen – Business InsiderElon Musk's biggest aerospace rival just reversed one of its most controversial practices, and plans to no longer use Russian-made engines in its rockets starting in 2019.Musk and his startup SpaceX have accused United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, of colluding with Air Force officials in order to receive contracts for 36 launches without having to go through a competitive bidding process.One specific ULA policy made the company an easy target for Musk: the company bought engines for the first stage of its workhorse Atlas V rocket from Energomash, a Russian company.Russia's annexation of Crimea and continued meddling in Eastern Ukraine have caused a major fallout in relations between Putin's government and the west, a rift that culminated in Russia's expulsion from the G8 this past March.This new state of play cast U.S. and Russian space cooperation into doubt. With the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011, the U.S. has no manned spaceflight capability and depends on Russia's Soyuz rockets and capsules to ferry American astronauts to the International Space Station. This dependency extends even to U.S. military launches, for which ULA is the sole contract holder.For decades, space policy has actually been a notable point of cooperation between two countries whose interests are seldom completely aligned. In 1975, for instance, Apollo and Soyuz modules docked in space, marking the first time two countries' spacecraft had linked up in orbit — despite ongoing Cold War tensions. A coordinated space policy was an important component of pre-Ukraine crisis U.S.-Russian cooperation.But Musk and SpaceX sensed a vulnerability after the escalation of events in Ukraine, and Musk slammed ULA for its reliance on Russian-made components during Senate testimony in March. It was a line of attack that seemed to resonate with national security officials and members of Congress. And it convinced the Air Force to review whether ULA's use of Russian engines posed any potential danger to national security.Today's news shows that ULA isn't going to wait for the Air Force to tell them to drop Russian engine-makers. It also takes away one of Musk's arguments for awarding future contracts to SpaceX — contracts that are likely to be more closely contested. Musk's startup probably won't be certified for Air Force launches until 2017. ULA's all-American rockets will debut in 2019 at the earliest. And there are numerous government launches to be awarded in coming years with the planned replacement of the U.S.'s aging GPS satellite fleet.ULA, like SpaceX, might be looking towards the next round of launch competition. And their announcement couldn't have come at a more opportune time, as Russian-supported militia groups in Ukraine now have tanks and anti-aircraft weaponry that they couldn't have gotten without Moscow's help.White House, Washington Times both criticize Senate commercial crew languageJeff Foust – Space PoliticsIt's rare to get the Obama Administration and the conservative editorial page of the Washington Times in agreement on something. Yet, both have spoken out in opposition to report language in the Senate's Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill—due to be considered by the full Senate this week—regarding cost and pricing data for commercial crew and cargo providers."Requiring private spaceflight contractors to calculate this additional, irrelevant set of numbers would consume thousands of man hours to calculate the complex, esoteric cost-plus system," argues the Times in its editorial, referring to the "certified cost and pricing data" those companies would have to provide NASA for commercial crew and cargo contracts. Several commercial space advocacy groups have spoken out against the language in the CJS report requiring that information.The Times editorial also includes a dig at the Space Launch System (SLS). "Launching this 'Rocket to Nowhere' will cost taxpayers at least a half-billion dollars every time it lifts off — if it ever does," the editorial argues. "It's only fair, and in the long run more efficient, that private firms get a fair opportunity to compete for America's space business."Tuesday morning, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued its Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) on the Senate CJS appropriations bill. "The Administration appreciates the Committee's support for the Commercial Crew program," it states in the NASA section of the SAP, "but has concerns about language that would seek to apply accounting requirements unsuitable for a firm, fixed-price acquisition, likely increasing the program's cost and potentially delaying its schedule."The SAP also addresses a couple of other issues with the CJS bill. The administration is "concerned," it states, about the reduced funding for NASA's Space Technology program, which gets $580 million versus the administration's request of $705 million. It also criticizes the Senate for specifying that any future Europa mission use the SLS as the baseline launch vehicle, and warns that the Senate's "proposed approach to a follow-on Landsat mission is not feasible within the bill's proposed cost cap of $650 million."Tech Startups With Federal Purse StringsJohn McLaughlin - Huffington PostStartups can live or die by the depth of their investors' pockets, but some have stumbled on what can often be the most reliable source of funding -- contracts with the federal government.The types of startups attracting interest from the U.S. are diverse and range from transportation-related companies to early-stage learning websites. Read on for a closer look.TransportationTransportation-related technology startups were the biggest beneficiaries of federal government contracts in 2013, according to a survey conducted of tech companies on industry website CrunchBase.About 56 percent of the $1.1 billion federal dollars spent in 2013 in dealings with tech startups, classified as companies started after the year 2000 that have raised at least one round of funding from investors, went to companies specializing in transport -- often space transport.Which company attracted the most investment? Tesla Founder Elon Musk's SpaceX, a space transport services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California, received a mammoth $594 million in federal government contracts in 2013, according to information obtained through public filings available on USAspending.gov. That's up from $256 million in 2012 and $195 million in 2011.Overall, SpaceX has received over $1.3 billion in federal funds since 2008.The money came primarily from NASA, which has awarded SpaceX contracts to design and demonstrate launch systems to supply cargo to the international space station. While SpaceX has numerous contracts with companies in the private sector, government contracts represent a large chunk of its funding.On its next mission, SpaceX is slated to deliver cargo, including equipment for science experiences, imaging software, spare parts, food, provisions and clothing to the crew of the international space station.Enterprise and BiotechEnterprise and biotech-related startups received the second and third largest sums of money from the federal government, respectively, with enterprise contracts up by almost 2000 percent, from $13.2 million in 2009 to $243 million in 2013. Biotech startups received $101 million in contracts in 2013, up from $59 million in 2009.Indeed, enterprise startups received approximately 21 percent of all federal funding since 2000, or $700 million of $3.35 billion in total funds, according to public filings, while biotech startups received 14 percent, or $467 million.The biggest recipient of funds in the enterprise software startup arena in 2013 was little-known startup Digital Management, a company specializing in cyber security and enterprise mobility. Founded in May 2002, Digital Management raised one round of funding worth just $1.7 million in 2010 and two debt rounds totaling $2.54 million before going on to win government contracts totaling $499 million over the last three years.In 2013, Digital Management received $237 million in federal funds, up from $163 million in 2012 and $98 million in 2011.Those contracts include one signed in 2011 to support the advancement of Trusted Computing Technologies for the Air Force Research Laboratory.Digital management provides software development support for the Aviation Resource Management System, an online system that supports commanders, aircrew supervisors, and managers, providing operations management information to support implementation of air force flight management policies.The biggest winner in the biotech sphere in 2013 was Carestream Health, a provider of dental and medical imaging systems and healthcare IT solutions for life science research and drug discovery and development. Carestream received $22 million in funding, primarily from the Department of Veteran Affairs, in 2013.AnalyticsAnalytics-related startups ranked low on the list of government contract recipients, receiving just $34 million in contracts in 2013, but $32.6 million of that sum was awarded to one company: Palantir Technologies, the big data company whose clients have included the NSA, the FBI and the CIA.Since its founding, Palantir has received a total $120 million in government contracts, according to public data.The data-mining giant compiles and interprets intelligence-related data, breaking global issues like human trafficking and disaster response into digestible formats like maps and graphs, and counts Condoleezza Rice and former CIA director George Tenet among its advisors. It's even been credited with helping to catch Osama Bin Laden.Early-Stage StartupsIt's not all big business. The federal government is doing deals with small startups, too.
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