Happy New Year everyone. Hope you can join us this Thursday, January 3rd, at Hibachi Grill on Bay Area Blvd. between Highway 3 and Interstate 45 at 11:30am. We have the party room reserved as usual, just tell them up front you are with the NASA retirees group or just come on back and join us.
Larry
HAPPY NEW YEAR
Human Spaceflight News
Monday, December 31, 2012
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Making way for the future at Kennedy Space Center
With shuttles gone, now comes the hard part: Clearing clutter from a 30-year program
James Dean - Florida Today
After assisting in the dramatic deliveries of four orbiters to museums across the country, Kennedy Space Center is close to completing a massive but otherwise unglamorous mission: shutting down the shuttle program. Over 30 years of flight, the program occupied more than 270 facilities at KSC — from small sheds to the giant Vehicle Assembly Building — and accumulated hundreds of thousands of pieces of property, all of which must find new owners or be thrown away.
Popovkin Talks Brightman Flight, State of Russian Space Industry
Doug Messier - Parabolic Arc
Izvestia has published a lengthy interview with Roscosmos Head Vladimir Popovkin, who touched upon issues that included singer Sarah Brightman's planned space tourism flight, upcoming Angara flight tests, American interest in purchasing a new rocket engine, Russia's launch record in 2012, and the general state of the industry. Key excerpts, courtesy of Google Translate, are reproduced here…
Launch indemnification extension goes down to the wire
Jeff Foust – SpacePolitics.com
The federal commercial launch indemnification regime—which protects commercial launch operators against third-party losses that exceed levels they must insure against—expires tomorrow, with no sign that an extension will make it through Congress in time. In November, the House passed legislation that extended the indemnification regime by two years, to December 31, 2014. However, the Senate has not yet acted on that bill.
Orbital Sciences Poised For 2013 ISS Cargo Deliveries
Mark Carreau - Aviation Week
Hurricane Sandy came and went in late 2012, as did many of the start up issues at Virginia's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), elevating the prospects that Orbital Sciences Corp. will complete its NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems program milestones in the New Year and begin lucrative cargo deliveries to the International Space Station. A successful demonstration flight of Orbital's two stage Antares rocket from MARS including an inaugural rendezvous of its Cygnus cargo craft with the six-person orbiting science laboratory targeted for April would bring the Dulles, Va., based company's abbreviated five-year development effort under the COTS initiative to a successful close.
SpaceX backers look to state for help
Christopher Sherman - Associated Press
Texas space aficionados hope rockets will someday be launched into orbit from a beachside site near the U.S.-Mexico border, but a tight state budget and a previously frustrated attempt to land such a rocket launch site could complicate efforts. Backers of a proposal to build a launch site at Boca Chica Beach concede finding more money to lure California-based SpaceX to the state's southernmost tip will be a challenge.
Florida leaders and others compete for SpaceX launch site
Leaders in Puerto Rico, Georgia, and Texas are also competing
WPLG TV (Miami)
Florida leaders are competing with several others to have the new launch site for SpaceX. Leaders in Puerto Rico, Georgia, and Texas also want to attract the commercial spaceport to their location. They're all trying to put together the most attractive packages, but Florida appears to have the edge because of the state's space history and general funding.
Former von Braun team member dies
Associated Press
A member of Wernher von Braun's rocketry team in Alabama has died. NASA says Jesco von Puttkamer died Thursday after a brief illness. He was 79. Von Puttkamer moved to Huntsville in 1962 and worked with von Braun at the Marshall Space Flight Center. He was an engineer. Von Puttkamer transferred to NASA Headquarters in Washington in 1974. He most recently worked as a technical manager for the International Space Station. Von Puttkamer is survived by his wife, Ursula. (NO FURTHER TEXT)
Jesco von Puttkamer, member of original von Braun Apollo team, dies at 79
Leada Gore - Huntsville Times
Jesco von Puttkamer, a member of Wernher von Braun's Huntsville-based rocket team died Thursday. He was 79. Von Puttkamer, an engineer, moved to Huntsville from Germany in 1962 to work with von Braun on the Apollo Program at Marshall Space Flight Center. He later worked at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. as a program manager in charge of deep space manned activities and later as a technical manager for the International Space Station. For more than a decade, he authored the ISS Daily Report chronicling the lives of those on the space station.
Jesco von Puttkamer, Von Braun Rocket Team Member, Dies at 79
Miriam Kramer - Space.com
Jesco von Puttkamer, a NASA engineer who helped launch the first astronauts to the moon, died Thursday (Dec. 27) at the age of 79 following a brief illness. Von Puttkamer joined NASA in 1962 when Wernher von Braun invited him to join his rocket team based at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Von Braun and his team's work led to the development of the mighty Saturn V rocket — the rocket responsible for landing the Apollo 11 astronauts on the moon in 1969.
Space Shuttle Atlantis gets ready for display
Kim Segal - CNN
Encased in 16,000 square feet of shrink-wrap, Space Shuttle Atlantis sits in the middle of a working construction site at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. The plastic coating was placed on the orbiter to protect it from dust and dirt during construction. The museum that will house Atlantis is being built around the orbiter. Last month the vehicle was brought to the Visitor Complex, where it will be put on public display. At that time, three-quarters of the exterior was complete. Only one wall was incomplete, the one Atlantis entered through, and now that's nearly done too. The Atlantis display will be in a 90,000-square-foot facility and cost $100 million to build. It is expected to be open to the public by July 2013.
Actress Kate Winslet Has Free Trip to Space: Report
Space.com
British billionaire Sir Richard Branson has given actress Kate Winslet a free trip to space, according to press reports. Branson, founder of the private spaceflight company Virgin Galactic, gave Winslet a ticket to ride one of his company's SpaceShipTwo suborbital space planes after she rescued Branson's mother Eve from a fire last year, the U.K.'s Telegraph reported. Winslet also recently married Branson's nephew Ned RocknRoll, the paper added.
Winslet's wedding gift from Richard Branson: A trip to space, of course
National Post
Kate Winslet may already be over the moon after her surprise wedding to Ned RocknRoll, but the actress will soon be flying into the stratosphere as Richard Branson, RocknRoll's uncle, has gifted her a free flight to space aboard one of Virgin Galactic's flights. According to the U.K. Sun, Branson intended to gift Winslet a seat aboard the outer space flight after the actress rescued his 90-year-old mother from a house fire at his Necker Island property last year. However, RocknRoll suggested Branson use the ticket as a wedding gift, which the Virgin tycoon has done.
Neil Armstrong's family reveal origins of 'one small step' line
Richard Gray - London Telegraph
It is the most famous and disputed quote in history. Now, three months after Neil Armstrong's death, it has emerged that the first man on the Moon wrote the words to mark the moment he stepped onto the lunar surface months in advance and had always intended to include the notorious missing "a" in the speech. Armstrong, who was 82 when he died in August, maintained he decided on the line after landing the spacecraft on the surface of the moon and had said: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." The millions of people around the world who watched entranced as he stepped off the ladder onto the dusty lunar surface, however, did not hear the crucial "a" in the phrase – sparking decades of debate over its meaning.
Forever Young – A Memoir of 'The Astronaut's Astronaut'
Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org
In the days before his first mission into space, way back in March 1965, John Young was asked by a journalist if he minded flying into orbit with the fiery Virgil 'Gus' Grissom as his Gemini 3 crewmate. Without blinking, the 34-year-old Young replied: "Are you kidding? I'd go with my mother-in-law!" It was an indicator not only of Young's intense dry wit, but of his equally intense devotion to the exploration of the final frontier – an exploration which consumes 400 pages in his long-awaited memoir, Forever Young, co-authored with Auburn University history professor and Neil Armstrong biographer James R. Hansen.
The next steps in space exploration
Mankind's search for extraterrestrial life must go on
Financial Times (Editorial)
Advocates of manned space flight have long argued that propelling people into orbits has a public appeal unmatched by robotic missions. That was true when astronauts were racing to the moon, but since the Apollo programme ended 40 years ago unmanned exploration has provided almost all of our extraterrestrial excitement – at a far lower cost than crewed flights.
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COMPLETE STORIES
Making way for the future at Kennedy Space Center
With shuttles gone, now comes the hard part: Clearing clutter from a 30-year program
James Dean - Florida Today
After assisting in the dramatic deliveries of four orbiters to museums across the country, Kennedy Space Center is close to completing a massive but otherwise unglamorous mission: shutting down the shuttle program.
Over 30 years of flight, the program occupied more than 270 facilities at KSC — from small sheds to the giant Vehicle Assembly Building — and accumulated hundreds of thousands of pieces of property, all of which must find new owners or be thrown away.
On a recent morning, roughly 20 large cardboard boxes provided a sample of what's left.
In box No. 122921, an electric typewriter topped a pile of dusty television sets. Others held scrap metal, pipes, tote trays, foam mats and signs.
"It's not the glory stuff," said George Jacobs, manager of KSC's shuttle closeout effort. "It's the PVC pipes, it's the old TVs. It's everything we needed to do our job to fly the shuttle."
That job ended in July 2011 when Atlantis returned from the International Space Station on the 135th and final mission.
KSC teams shifted their focus to preparing three space-flown orbiters for public display and transportation to their new homes.
Each journey — from Discovery's piggyback flight to the Smithsonian Institution outside Washington D.C. to Endeavour's trip through the streets of Los Angeles — drew throngs of onlookers who stopped cars and gathered on rooftops for a chance to "spot the shuttle."
No one is watching now.
"All the fun stuff that's very visible had been done, and now it's all the stuff that no one really wants to do," said Dorothy Rasco, head of NASA's Shuttle Transition and Retirement program, or "T&R," at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Across NASA, the initiative began with a million line items of property worth $18 billion (including the orbiters), Rasco said, and a team comprised of about 200 civil servants and 1,000 contractors.
Just 150,000 of those line items remain, the majority of which will be transferred to KSC's new contractor for ground systems operations, Jacobs Technology.
By January, the Transition and Retirement team will have shrunk to about 20 civil servants and 200 contractors.
By next month at KSC, the last facilities will be "safed" of hazardous materials and turned over to the center. They include the VAB, Orbiter Processing Facility-2 — the last of three orbiter hangars to be cleared out — a tile shop, logistics warehouse and a solid rocket booster facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The center will decide what to reuse or, in some cases, to demolish.
By late March, months ahead of schedule, the work will be done for all but a few people.
The shuttle shutdown will have cost $400 million, not including another $500 million in pension payments to lead shuttle contractor United Space Alliance.
Cleaning house
"Does anybody want it?" That's what KSC teams were charged with assessing as they sorted through the inventory of shuttle buildings and equipment.
NASA needed some components and facilities for future programs.
The heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket, for example, plans to fly initially with shuttle main engines and shuttle-derived solid rocket boosters. It will be processed in a VAB high bay, carried by a crawler-transporter and launched from pad 39B, all former shuttle infrastructure.
If NASA didn't need the property, it was made available to federal agencies or other potential owners through the General Services Administration. The Navy, for example, snagged landing aids from the shuttle runway.
A partnership with the state transitioned an orbiter hangar to The Boeing Co. as a manufacturing site for commercial crew capsules.
During Transition and Retirement, an average of 6,000 items a month were moved to KSC's excess property site on Ransom Road for pickup by new owners or disposal, up from 1,600 during normal operations.
"This is not rocket science," said Jacobs, a shuttle engineer and manager since 1987. "We're getting rid of stuff."
That's harder than it sounds. Careful thought has been given to whether items should be tossed or kept for future programs, and there's always concern about making mistakes.
The process can be fraught with emotion as specialized, sometimes expensive pieces of equipment are labeled obsolete.
Near the boxed items inside Orbiter Processing Facility-2, a metal-and-Plexiglas frame rested on the floor. It used to protect an orbiter's nose.
Red plastic shells, neatly stacked on a pallet, once fitted together to guard lines in the orbiter's aft section from dings while workers were inside.
A silver, refrigerator-sized machine equipped with dials and hoses measured pressure in the small gaps between shuttle cockpit windowpanes, a test that won't be performed again.
And then there was an apparent keeper: one sealed wooden box was labeled as holding an unidentified "Critical Space Item."
But other items look to have long outlived their usefulness and simply been forgotten about, like the Canon AP350 electric typewriter resting on the pile of TV sets.
"It got put in a corner a long time ago, and we're finding all that stuff," said Angie Brewer, a NASA manager who once was responsible for preparing Atlantis for launch. "We're cleaning house. That's what happens."
The house-cleaning has turned up items older than the typewriter, older than the shuttle itself.
Crews found Apollo-era consoles in a VAB room, evidence of that program's less orderly shutdown in the early 1970s. Someone found a book that pitched the early shuttle concept to Congress, promising a 96-hour turnaround between flights — considerably faster than the five-month reality.
"Dreaming and implementation, that's where the rubber meets the road," said Brewer. "I still think history will be kind to us and show we got a lot for our money from shuttle."
A roped-off section of the VAB's cavernous center transfer aisle serves as another staging area for excess items.
Recently, rows of tall file cabinets and shelves stood in front of a wall-mounted diagram titled "VAB Space Shuttle Processing Flow."
The wheels of a red-cushioned desk chair jutted from one box. Dozens of discarded binders with covers referencing esoteric shuttle jobs filled another.
"Pad Electrical, S&O Cable Project Task 3 (Pad A)," read one, with a picture of a launching shuttle.
A placard perched on an easel showed a rendering of the Space Launch System rocket on a mobile launcher inside the VAB. Its headline offered a positive spin on the shuttle retirement effort, declaring: "Making Way for the Future."
A mockup of NASA's Orion crew exploration capsule sat at the building's opposite end. NASA hopes to launch its first crew in Orion in 2021, four years after astronauts are expected to start flying to the station in private space taxis.
Contractor layoffs have followed each orbiter delivery, each facility closeout that brought the job nearer to its end. USA cut another 119 local employees on Dec. 7, and plans to cut hundreds more positions by next spring.
NASA's civil servant team is dispersing to other assignments.
Brewer, a 29-year shuttle veteran, held back tears remembering the teamwork and pride that contributed to a run of nearly flawless final shuttle missions.
"You'd think I'd be over it by now," she said. "Every day, we've got more people going out the door. Slowly, our office is drifting apart."
Jacobs, whose shirt bears a logo featuring a sun setting behind a vertical shuttle, will soon assume a new role as deputy director of center operations, an office affectionately said to manage "roads and commodes."
Brewer will stay on, one of the very last KSC employees linked to the shuttle program.
"We'll turn off the lights, I guess," she said.
Popovkin Talks Brightman Flight, State of Russian Space Industry
Doug Messier - Parabolic Arc
Izvestia has published a lengthy interview with Roscosmos Head Vladimir Popovkin, who touched upon issues that included singer Sarah Brightman's planned space tourism flight, upcoming Angara flight tests, American interest in purchasing a new rocket engine, Russia's launch record in 2012, and the general state of the industry.
Key excerpts, courtesy of Google Translate, are reproduced here. All the sections involve translated quotes except for the one on Angara flights.
On Sarah Brightman's Planned Space Tourism Flight
"We are not opposed to training, but so far we have no contract to that effect has been signed. By agreement between Roscosmos and NASA planned extremely long expedition to the ISS crew of two in 2015, people will spend at the station for a year. At the same time, the warranty term of the spacecraft Soyuz in orbit – no more than six months. That is, during the extremely long expedition ship docked to the ISS needs to be changed. Question – how to do it? You can put it in two tourists and 10 days to return back. The second option – to do some expedition. But the 10-day expedition is impractical – in fact it will be hidden in the performance of tourism trained astronauts. You can extend the life of the expedition up to 40 days, but then on the ISS will not be six and nine. All this pulls the start of another cargo ship 'Progress,' and this is serious money we are unlikely to find, as the program up to 2015 is already laid out. Therefore, we have not decided who to put in two free seats. Send our trained astronaut to have it on 10 days to fly there in fact a tourist by the state – perhaps it is not entirely justified. Moreover, our European colleagues have told us that they would like to purchase a vacant chair for her astronaut. Now we weigh all the 'pros' and 'cons.' Plan to take a decision in the I quarter of next year."
On Angara Flight Tests
The rocket is ready to go, but there are some delays in preparing the ground facilities. Workers are aiming to eliminate the backlogs by March, at which time a launch date will be set. Popovkin is confident Angara will be tested in 2013.
On the Future of the RD-193 Engine
"Americans buy RD-180 Energomash production and are now talks with us about the possibility of acquiring promising RD-193.
"Q: How they want to use the RD-193?
"To develop their carriers. They were convinced that the Russian company makes a quality product. Best liquid rocket engines in the world. And it is easier to buy than to catch up in this area. That is why we are extremely important to maintain the NGO 'Energomash' work and ensure its development."
On the Construction of the Vostochny Cosmodrome
"A very important result was the launch of full-scale work on the creation cosmodrome Vostochny in the Amur region. The starting complex and technical segment is made zero cycle: elevated foundation, actively works on creation of supporting infrastructure – power grids, roads and railways. There is no reason to say that we do not have time in 2015 (in the presidential decree on the establishment of the Baikonur East 2015 is designated as the date of the first run with the new spaceport. – "News"). If we can maintain the current momentum – to meet the deadline."
On the 2012 Launch Campaign
"On December 19, we completed the launch campaign for this year. Performed 28 launches and placed 35 satellites in orbit. Unfortunately, due to malfunction of the upper stage Briz-M, the Express-MD2 and "Telkom-3 spacecraft did not go into their proper orbits. In another launch, the Breeze [upper stage] shut off a few minutes early, but the Yamal-402 satellite will be delivered on schedule on January 8 and placed under the control of OAO Gazprom Space Systems. Detailed assessment of the state of the satellite will be done when the Yamal take its position, but it is certain it will be able to work for at least 11 years."
On the Russian Space Industry
"Preliminary results show an increase in the volume of production in the aerospace industry by 14.9% in 2012 compared to the previous year. This growth is largely due to the state armaments program and increased funding under the Federal Space Program.
"Average wage of the industry this year amounted to 33 thousand rubles [$1,087 per month], which is 10% higher than last year."
Launch indemnification extension goes down to the wire
Jeff Foust – SpacePolitics.com
The federal commercial launch indemnification regime—which protects commercial launch operators against third-party losses that exceed levels they must insure against—expires tomorrow, with no sign that an extension will make it through Congress in time.
In November, the House passed legislation that extended the indemnification regime by two years, to December 31, 2014. However, the Senate has not yet acted on that bill, and other efforts, including proposed amendments to the Senate's version of the defense authorization bill, also failed. The Senate will be in session again this afternoon, but the current schedule only mentions a couple of nominations, although with time likely reserved to address any effort to avert the "fiscal cliff."
So what happens if launch indemnification isn't extended?
There are commercially licensed launches coming up in early 2013, including the first test launch of Orbital Sciences Corporation's Antares rocket in February and the next SpaceX Falcon 9 cargo mission to the ISS in late February or early March.
During a commercial space panel at a space law colloquium this fall in Washington, I asked Mat Dunn, director of legislative affairs for SpaceX, what a failure to extend indemnification would mean for the company. "I think the immediate effect would be that insurance rates would probably go up, and that would be negative for the industry from a cost perspective," he said, adding it may deter some other companies interested in performing launches.
SpaceX, though, would perform its launches regardless of the status of the indemnification extension, he said. "We're prepared to execute our launches for our customers if the provision is extended or not."
Orbital Sciences Poised For 2013 ISS Cargo Deliveries
Mark Carreau - Aviation Week
Hurricane Sandy came and went in late 2012, as did many of the start up issues at Virginia's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), elevating the prospects that Orbital Sciences Corp. will complete its NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems program milestones in the New Year and begin lucrative cargo deliveries to the International Space Station.
A successful demonstration flight of Orbital's two stage Antares rocket from MARS including an inaugural rendezvous of its Cygnus cargo craft with the six-person orbiting science laboratory targeted for April would bring the Dulles, Va., based company's abbreviated five-year development effort under the COTS initiative to a successful close.
It also would trigger the start of a $1.9 billion Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) agreement awarded to Orbital by NASA in late 2008. Orbital would join SpaceX to provide the 15-nation station program with the second U.S. re-supply source envisioned by NASA for the post-space shuttle era when COTS program planning began in 2005.
"We would certainly expect, if we go in April with the demo mission, to carry out at least one CRS mission in 2013, but that is really driven by NASA's needs and paced by NASA," Orbital spokesman Barron Beneski says. "Orbital could certainly do two."
As 2012 came to a close, Orbital's inventory included a pair of the Antares boosters. A third pressurized Cygnus, built by Thales Alenia of Italy and based on the flight proven Multi-purpose Logistics Module used by the shuttle to re-supply the station, was about to join the inventory as well.
Orbital also has benefitted from the "lessons learned" provided by Hawthorne, Calif., based SpaceX. NASA's other COTS partner carried out its first CRS mission, under a $1.6 billion NASA contract, in October 2012, five months after its successful rendezvous demonstration mission.
"We talked about the experiences SpaceX was having," said Bruce Manners, the NASA COTS executive assigned to Orbital. "We gave them some direct lessons learned from the first mission with SpaceX that reinforced some of the things we were already doing, like simulations with the operations team. We've worked quite closely."
Both companies have experienced significant development delays, though there are crucial differences in the approaches taken by privately owned SpaceX and publicly traded Orbital. SpaceX chose the 60-year-old Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., as its launch site. Orbital chose MARS, which is newer and closer to its corporate home.
Hurricane Sandy's late October fury bypassed Florida and took aim at the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, interrupting efforts by Orbital to break in a new commercial launch complex, overseen by the state of Virginia and located on NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.
As 2012 ended, Orbital was carrying out a series of countdown dress rehearsals in which fuel was pumped to an Antares first stage. The two-engine first stage, positioned on its MARS launch pad on Oct. 1. was to undergo an independent 29-sec. hot fire test in January.
The workload seemed likely to push a COTS required orbital test flight of the Antares with a Cygnus mass simulator into February 2013, Beneski said. The test flight does not involve a space station rendezvous.
SpaceX carried out a similar test of its Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon mass simulator in December 2010, 18 months later than initially planned. Initially, Orbital envisioned a March 2011 test flight.
Orbital came to the COTS initiative in February 2008, replacing Rocketplane Kistler, which had missed a series of early technical and financial milestones. Like Rocketplane Kistler, SpaceX was a winner in an earlier COTS competition in August 2006.
Orbital and SpaceX were eligible for $396 million and $288 million, respectively, in NASA funding as they completed discrete development milestones. In addition, each was eligible for a $10 million fee for the delivery of cargo to the station on its final COTS rendezvous demonstration.
Cygnus will likely deliver about 1,000 lb. of supplies on its first station flight. The capsule is designed to haul up to 4,400 lb. of supplies. Orbital plans to introduce an extended version of Cygnus that can carry nearly 6,000 lb. after its series of eight commercial re-supply missions get underway.
Unlike Orbital, SpaceX's Dragon was developed to bring station research equipment and hardware in need of refurbishment back to Earth.
Whenever the first unpiloted Cygnus supply craft approaches the space station, Orbital can be assured that two or more astronauts aboard have been trained for the delicate task of tracking, capturing and berthing the capsule with the station's 58-ft.-long Canadian robot arm.
"The date is still in flux, and they are trying to make sure they do it right," said Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who is scheduled to be in command of the station in April and a likely participant in the capture activities. NASA astronaut Kevin Ford, the station's current commander, as well as early 2013 NASA crew members Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy will be prepared as well.
SpaceX backers look to state for help
Christopher Sherman - Associated Press
Texas space aficionados hope rockets will someday be launched into orbit from a beachside site near the U.S.-Mexico border, but a tight state budget and a previously frustrated attempt to land such a rocket launch site could complicate efforts.
Backers of a proposal to build a launch site at Boca Chica Beach concede finding more money to lure California-based SpaceX to the state's southernmost tip will be a challenge.
An underfunded education system and health care reform are just a sample of the issues facing lawmakers in the upcoming session. With the University of Texas Board of Regents also pushing to accelerate creation of a medical school in the Rio Grande Valley, the proposed space venture will not even be the biggest local economic development cause.
Still, some officials think the state's ability to offer a blank canvas for a dedicated commercial rocket launch site in the same state where SpaceX already tests its rocket engines could prove attractive, even if Texas cannot match the money being waved by some competitors.
"There is a point that we're not going to be able to reach and I don't know that we'll ever be able to be as financially competitive as either one of those, Florida or Puerto Rico," said state Rep. Rene Oliveira, D-Brownsville. "I'm also sensitive to the fact that these are taxpayer dollars that we should still be reasonable with how much we offer."
Oliveira recently attended a meeting with staff to discuss creating a fund to promote aerospace businesses picking Texas. He said the state had pledged $3.2 million toward enticing SpaceX. Texas' economic development arm, contained within the governor's office, does not comment on its negotiations. The local economic development council is expected to put up about another $3 million. But Oliveira's heard talk of Florida offering upward of $10 million. A spokesperson with Space Florida, the state's dedicated space agency, did not return a call seeking comment.
"I've told everybody who's asking for money that they're in line with school children, universities, the mentally ill, health care, everybody is in line wanting to get their fair share so it's not going to be easy," Oliveira said. "But we'll do the best we can."
Texas' potential also hinges on an environmental review underway for the Federal Aviation Administration. Preliminary results are expected early next year. And SpaceX is in the early stages of the review process, said spokeswoman Katherine Nelson, adding that Georgia is also in the running.
The company, run by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, currently launches most of its rockets from Florida's Cape Canaveral, but plans to begin some from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base next year. Still, it's looking for additional launch capacity, and not having to compete with the government for launch windows would be an advantage.
"For companies, like SpaceX, who are looking for a place to base operations, Texas holds a strategic advantage over other states by being able to provide commercial payload launch space without over-flight issues or competing with NASA and the Air Force for launch times," said Josh Havens, spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry.
Blue Origin, a company founded by Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, already operates a private spaceport on a sprawling private ranch in West Texas where it is testing a vertical takeoff and landing ship.
There's a difference between a rocket launch site — which is the proposal for the Brownsville area — and a true spaceport. A site has a pad from which rockets launch vertically, and a spaceport has a strip for takeoffs and landings, much like an airport.
Next door, New Mexico officials are wringing their hands as they near completion of a $209 million commercial spaceport that is so far not seeing the traffic and economic development boom they anticipated from their partner Virgin Galactic.
The SpaceX project be an estimated $80 million capital investment and create some 600 jobs, according to Gilberto Salinas, executive vice president at the Brownsville Economic Development Council. He said the rule of thumb would call for putting together an incentive package of grants, in-kind services, workforce training and other carrots totaling about 10 percent of that total.
A decade ago, the Legislature allocated money to a Spaceport Trust Fund, and about $500,000 was distributed in early 2002 to each of three space efforts around the state. But within months staff was recommending the state abolish the Texas Aerospace Commission because the "commercial space industry has declined significantly in recent years." Eventually those responsibilities were folded into the economic development wing of Perry's office.
Oliveira and State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville said resurrecting that fund or one like it is one option.
"Issues of statewide significance will be probably easier to address than those that are district only or regional only," Lucio said. "So I think that we'll be able to convince our colleagues that this will be a good thing for all of Texas."
The shadow of the previous effort could loom over current talks. Rick Tumlinson, a founder and chairman of the private Texas Space Alliance, which promotes space industry development, said the earlier space effort was premature.
"They set up for the game too early and it's unfortunate because now it makes it a harder sell when it's really happening," Tumlinson said.
Tumlinson said he expects SpaceX's demand for launch capacity to grow dramatically in the next few years. The company has told the FAA it would hold 12 launches per year at the site. Earlier this year, it was the first private company to send a cargo vehicle to resupply the space station.
"We're going to regret it forever if they put that spaceport in another state," Tumlinson said.
Florida leaders and others compete for SpaceX launch site
Leaders in Puerto Rico, Georgia, and Texas are also competing
WPLG TV (Miami)
Florida leaders are competing with several others to have the new launch site for SpaceX.
Leaders in Puerto Rico, Georgia, and Texas also want to attract the commercial spaceport to their location.
They're all trying to put together the most attractive packages, but Florida appears to have the edge because of the state's space history and general funding.
SpaceX, which stands for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, is based in California.
Earlier this year, SpaceX became the first company to send a privately built rocket to the International Space Station (ISS).
It delivered 1,200 pounds of food and supplies to the ISS.
A capsule attached to the rocket also carried the ashes of more than 300 people, including actor James Doohan, who played Scotty on the Star Trek series and movies.
His ashes were released into space.
Jesco von Puttkamer, member of original von Braun Apollo team, dies at 79
Leada Gore - Huntsville Times
Jesco von Puttkamer, a member of Wernher von Braun's Huntsville-based rocket team died Thursday. He was 79.
Von Puttkamer, an engineer, moved to Huntsville from Germany in 1962 to work with von Braun on the Apollo Program at Marshall Space Flight Center. He later worked at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. as a program manager in charge of deep space manned activities and later as a technical manager for the International Space Station. For more than a decade, he authored the ISS Daily Report chronicling the lives of those on the space station.
"Jesco was an institution at NASA," said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "His time here spanned almost the entire breadth of the agency's human spaceflight programs. He was a direct link from von Braun's efforts to get people off the ground to the International Space Station and 12 years of continuous human presence. We lost an outspoken advocate for NASA's efforts to explore farther than we ever have gone before."
Von Puttkamer was the recipient of the NASA's Exceptional Service Medal, the highest civilian honor for outstanding service to a government agency. He also received the distinguished NASA Honor Award and was named the German-American of the Year in 2008.
Von Puttkamer was also an accomplished author. He wrote more than a dozen books and his novelette, "The Sleeping God," is included in the "Star Trek: The New Voyages 2" anthology.
He is survived by his wife, Ursula.
Jesco von Puttkamer, Von Braun Rocket Team Member, Dies at 79
Miriam Kramer - Space.com
Jesco von Puttkamer, a NASA engineer who helped launch the first astronauts to the moon, died Thursday (Dec. 27) at the age of 79 following a brief illness.
Von Puttkamer joined NASA in 1962 when Wernher von Braun invited him to join his rocket team based at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Von Braun and his team's work led to the development of the mighty Saturn V rocket — the rocket responsible for landing the Apollo 11 astronauts on the moon in 1969.
"Jesco was an institution at NASA," said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA headquarters in Washington D.C., in a statement. "His time here spanned almost the entire breadth of the agency's human spaceflight programs. He was a direct link from von Braun's efforts to get people off the ground to the International Space Station and 12 years of continuous human presence."
After ending his work at Marshall in 1974, von Puttkamer moved to NASA's headquarters in Washington D.C. to work with the International Space Station team documenting the lives of the residents aboard the ISS.
In addition to his contributions in space science, von Puttkamer also made his mark on the world of science fiction. He served as the technical advisor for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" in 1979, and his novelette, "The Sleeping God," was included in an anthology of work based on the series. He also penned more than a dozen books on spaceflight.
Space Shuttle Atlantis gets ready for display
Kim Segal - CNN
Encased in 16,000 square feet of shrink-wrap, Space Shuttle Atlantis sits in the middle of a working construction site at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. The plastic coating was placed on the orbiter to protect it from dust and dirt during construction.
"We want to make sure that it is safe," said Tim Macy, director of project development and construction. Macy and colleagues had 95% of the work done above Atlantis before the shuttle rolled in, "so we really reduced the risk of dropping anything on her."
Atlantis was the last NASA space shuttle to go into space, and the last to be brought to its museum-style resting place this year. Its landing on July 21, 2011, marked the end of NASA's space shuttle program.
The museum that will house Atlantis is being built around the orbiter. Last month the vehicle was brought to the Visitor Complex, where it will be put on public display. At that time, three-quarters of the exterior was complete, said Andrea Farmer, senior public relations manager at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Only one wall was incomplete, the one Atlantis entered through, and now that's nearly done too.
With a wing-span of about 80 feet, Atlantis was carefully maneuvered through the 82.5-foot back wall of the incomplete building. Work on the viewing platforms, floors and walls continues as Atlantis sits tightly wrapped and suspended from the ceiling.
The goal of the exhibit is for the visitor to have an experience similar to an astronaut's view of what Atlantis looked like while in space, Farmer said. The payload doors will be open and the large wall behind it will project an image of what Earth looks like from space.
There will be more than 50 interactive elements in the exhibit, but touching Atlantis will not be permitted. "It's a priceless artifact," Macy said "We can't let you touch it."
But parts of the shuttle, including the toilet and living quarters, are being taken out and put on display separately, so "you can get a hands on feel for that," Macy said.
The Atlantis exhibit will be an added attraction to the other space-related features on display at the Visitor Complex.
"It will complement what we already have," Farmer said, "including the Apollo Saturn 5 center, which tells the moon program story, and the iconic rocket garden, which talks about early space exploration and how we got there with the vintage rockets on display."
The Atlantis display will be in a 90,000-square-foot facility and cost $100 million to build. It is expected to be open to the public by July 2013.
Actress Kate Winslet Has Free Trip to Space: Report
Space.com
British billionaire Sir Richard Branson has given actress Kate Winslet a free trip to space, according to press reports.
Branson, founder of the private spaceflight company Virgin Galactic, gave Winslet a ticket to ride one of his company's SpaceShipTwo suborbital space planes after she rescued Branson's mother Eve from a fire last year, the U.K.'s Telegraph reported. Winslet also recently married Branson's nephew Ned RocknRoll, the paper added.
Tickets for flights aboard Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo are set at $200,000 per seat. The company has been putting its first SpaceShipTwo vehicle, dubbed the VSS Enterprise, through a series of trials and is expected to begin rocket-powered test flights soon.
The SpaceShipTwo spacecraft is designed to fly eight people, six passengers and two pilots, into suborbital space 60 miles (100 kilometers) up and then glide back to Earth. The flight promises to give passengers amazing views of Earth, the blackness of space and a few minutes of weightlessness, Virgin Galactic officials have said.
Virgin Galactic will launch SpaceShipTwo from a high-altitude carrier plane, the WhiteKnightTwo, that will take off from the New Mexico-based Spaceport America.
Winslet is not the only celebrity bound for space with Virgin Galactic. In March, American actor Ashton Kutcher —star of CBS's "Two and a Half Men" —reserved a trip and became the 500th paying customer for Virgin Galactic.
Virgin Galactic officials have said they hope to begin the first passenger flights aboard SpaceShipTwo sometime in 2013 or 2014.
Winslet's wedding gift from Richard Branson: A trip to space, of course
National Post
Kate Winslet may already be over the moon after her surprise wedding to Ned RocknRoll, but the actress will soon be flying into the stratosphere as Richard Branson, RocknRoll's uncle, has gifted her a free flight to space aboard one of Virgin Galactic's flights.
According to the U.K. Sun, Branson intended to gift Winslet a seat aboard the outer space flight after the actress rescued his 90-year-old mother from a house fire at his Necker Island property last year. However, RocknRoll suggested Branson use the ticket as a wedding gift, which the Virgin tycoon has done.
Winslet will join fellow Hollywood stars Ashton Kutcher and Russell Brand aboard Virgin Galactic, as the two actors have already booked tickets with the space-bound service (though perhaps not on the same flight). The voyage will take passengers 60 miles above Earth, and ticketholders will experience weightlessness while viewing the blue planet's curve. Tickets for the journey cost £124,000.
RocknRoll (born Abel Smith) and Winslet tied the knot earlier this month, and have been engaged since last summer. Their wedding was so secret, even their parents did not attend — though actor Leonardo DiCaprio did, to walk Winslet down the aisle. The couple has since confirmed their betrothal to friends and family via Skype, with RocknRoll phoning his stepbrothers and asking, "Would you like to speak with my wife?" before pulling Winslet into the frame, the Sun reports.
It is the second marriage for RocknRoll, and the third for Winslet; the actress had previously been married to directors James Threapleton and Sam Mendes.
Neil Armstrong's family reveal origins of 'one small step' line
The first man on the moon, wrote his famous "one small step" speech long before flying to the Moon despite claiming he thought it up after landing on the surface, according to his family.
Richard Gray - London Telegraph
It is the most famous and disputed quote in history.
Now, three months after Neil Armstrong's death, it has emerged that the first man on the Moon wrote the words to mark the moment he stepped onto the lunar surface months in advance and had always intended to include the notorious missing "a" in the speech.
Armstrong, who was 82 when he died in August, maintained he decided on the line after landing the spacecraft on the surface of the moon and had said: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
The millions of people around the world who watched entranced as he stepped off the ladder onto the dusty lunar surface, however, did not hear the crucial "a" in the phrase – sparking decades of debate over its meaning.
However, a series of new and rare interviews with his family to be broadcast on BBC Two on Sunday have revealed that Armstrong scripted his historic words several months before the launch.
Dean Armstrong, the astronaut's brother, said that Neil Armstrong had asked him to read the famous quote shortly before the Apollo 11 crew left for Cape Canaveral, where they would spend the months before the launch preparing for their journey.
He insisted that the original phrase, handed to him on a piece of paper by his brother as they played the board game Risk, contained the infamous missing "a", although during the interview, even he dropped the letter as he told the story.
He said: "Before he went to the Cape, he invited me down to spend a little time with him. He said 'why don't you and I, once the boys go to bed, why don't we play a game of Risk'.
"I said I'd enjoy that. We started playing Risk and then he slipped me a piece of paper and said 'read that'. I did.
"On that piece of paper there was 'That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind'. He says 'what do you think about that?' I said 'fabulous'. He said 'I thought you might like that, but I wanted you to read it'."
He then added: "It was 'that is one small step for A man'."
The missing indefinite article in the transmission from the surface of the Moon has prompted more than forty years of arguments over what he had actually said. Many accused Armstrong of fluffing his lines while others attempted to read meaning into the phrase.
Without the "a", the sentence refers to "man" abstractly as the whole of humanity in the same way as mankind in the second half of the sentence.
Armstrong himself always insisted he had said "a", but in 1999 admitted that he could not hear it either in audio recordings of the event, and that they were perhaps wiped out by transmission static.
Analysis of Armstrong's words have also suggested that they were spontaneous rather than pre-prepared, but it is now hoped that the revelation by his brother will finally end the speculation over the quote.
Dr Christopher Riley, a lecturer in science and media at Lincoln University who has analysed the lunar landing transmissions and directed the new BBC biopic, said: "Neil always maintained that he'd thought it up after landing, before the walk.
"Dean's story rather suggests that he gave it a bit more thought than that.
"Neil used to play the game 'Mother may I..' when he was young, and would say 'Mother may I take one small step ...' - so maybe this was another source of inspiration for his famous words.
"I think the reason he always claimed he'd thought it up after landing was that he was bombarded by suggestions in the run up to the mission, and found them a distraction to the business of landing on the Moon.
"It was probably easier to just say that he'd thought it up after landing, thus dodging the issue of where the words came from, and who maybe suggested them, or influenced him."
The BBC biopic, titled Neil Armstrong – First Man on the Moon, also provides new insights into why Armstrong shunned the public glare after returning to the Earth from the moon.
Two years after walking on the Moon, Armstrong, a former Navy fighter pilot and test pilot, resigned from Nasa to work as a university engineering lecturer and only rarely made public appearances.
His family suggest that Armstrong was racked with anxiety about how he could top walking on the Moon and how to live up to the expectations placed on him as an international icon.
His son Mark Armstrong also suggests that as a workaholic, his father took on too much, ultimately costing him his marriage to his first wife Janet.
Dr Riley added: "He had this impossible job – to fulfil this role as the first man to walk on another world. If you give a workaholic an impossible job, then they will try to do it. This is what Armstrong did when he came back from the Moon.
"He carries on trying to fulfil everyone's requests. He was seen as this sort of superhuman. He was required to do these impossible things – to bring people together and facilitate impossible projects.
"We all struggle with our work life balance and he was no exception."
Forever Young – A Memoir of 'The Astronaut's Astronaut'
Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org
In the days before his first mission into space, way back in March 1965, John Young was asked by a journalist if he minded flying into orbit with the fiery Virgil 'Gus' Grissom as his Gemini 3 crewmate. Without blinking, the 34-year-old Young replied: "Are you kidding? I'd go with my mother-in-law!" It was an indicator not only of Young's intense dry wit, but of his equally intense devotion to the exploration of the final frontier – an exploration which consumes 400 pages in his long-awaited memoir, Forever Young, co-authored with Auburn University history professor and Neil Armstrong biographer James R. Hansen.
Long-awaited because Young has earned himself a reputation over the past five decades which cannot be surpassed. True, there are astronauts who have flown more times into space than him. True, there are other astronauts who have walked on the Moon, besides him. True, there are astronauts who have commanded more missions and flown longer in space than him. But for sheer longevity within the astronaut business, John Watts Young is unrivaled.
Selected as a member of NASA's second intake of spacefarers in September 1962 – an intake which former chief astronaut Deke Slayton once described as "probably the best all-around group ever put together" – he spent more than 40 years with NASA and flew six times, across three separate programs: Gemini, Apollo and the Shuttle. Even Jerry Ross, who became the first human to record a seventh voyage into space, has described Young as his hero.
Young's upbringing in the Depression era was a difficult one. Born in San Francisco in September 1930, he moved with his parents and younger brother to Cartersville, Georgia, after his father was laid off. "Dad made just a few dollars a day" at a filling station, Young wrote. "All around us were families like us. Kids ran around in ragged hand-me-downs, sometimes in pants or shirts made of old scraps of cloth that had been found on the street. Most everybody was thin as rails because no one ever had enough to eat." This setting of semi-desperation provided the backdrop and inspiration for a quite remarkable life. He remembered home-made tomato sandwiches in the summer and the classes in algebra and physics that he loved and – unusually for the time – the fact that two of his closest friends were black: Nathaniel 'Pretty' Green, who "taught me how to play poker", and Rufus Brown.
If these childhood events helped to shape Young, then it was his father's advice which set him on the path to an education in the engineering sciences which would kick off his aviation career. One day he asked William Hugh Young where he should go to college. "Georgia Tech," came the response. It offered a rigorous curriculum and, with a Reserve Officer Training Corps sponsorship, paid the $6,000 needed for his tuition, books, fees, room and board. "In 1948," Young wrote, "that was a lot of cash – no doubt, more than my dad could have ever paid for me."
It was at Georgia Tech that Young was introduced to the relatively new field of aeronautical engineering, but an interest in aviation had begun much earlier. As a child, he had assembled model aircraft and rockets and it was the latter that he had chosen for a speech to his classmates in the 11th grade. Upon receipt of his degree, with highest honors, coupled with membership of the coveted Anak Society, Young entered the Navy and served as a fire control officer aboard the USS Laws. He served a tour in Korea and a former shipmate, Joseph LaMantia, remembered Young's coolness under duress. "Though only an ensign at the time, he was the most respected officer on the ship," LaMantia noted on the website, www.johnwyoung.com. "When we sustained counter-battery fire and enemy rounds were striking the ship, it was John Young's leadership which kept us cool and focused on returning that enemy fire."
Upon returning to the United States, Young entered flight school and learned to fly props, jets and helicopters, then moved on to fighters as he took to the air in F-9 Cougars from the USS Coral Sea and F-8 Crusaders from one of the Navy's newest supercarriers, the USS Forrestal. Shipmates and aviators alike described as "the epitome of swashbuckling aviators…he exuded confidence coupled with uncommon ability". This ability would carry him far – as far as the Moon and back – but in the spring of 1959 such a goal remained a long way off. He was still starting test pilot school when the Mercury Seven were chosen and would subsequently work through a role as project manager for the weapons system on the F-4H Phantom II fighter, evaluating its armaments, its radar and its bombing fire controls.
His operational duties with the 'Phabulous' Phantom set him in place for Project High Jump in early 1962 and he made a high-altitude flight to 10,000 feet above Naval Air Station Brunswick in Maine on 21 February in just 34.5 seconds and, six weeks later, to more than 80,000 feet in 230.4 seconds from Point Mugu in California. Half a year later, he received a call from Deke Slayton at NASA, inviting him to join the second class of astronauts – the 'New Nine' or 'Next Nine' – which included such luminaries as Frank Borman, Ed White and Neil Armstrong. In March 1965, he became the first of his class to fly into space, aboard Gemini 3, although this assignment came about somewhat serendipitously when the original crew commander, Al Shepard, was grounded by an inner-ear disorder, eliminating himself and the original pilot, Tom Stafford.
Young returned from the five-hour Gemini 3 mission – the voyage on which he famously offered Grissom a corned-beef sandwich – with an eagerness to climb aboard the next available rocket. The duo teamed again as the backup crew for Gemini VI-A, a critical rendezvous mission in late 1965, after which Young received his own command position on Gemini X in July 1966. Together with Mike Collins, he performed rendezvous with no fewer than two Agena targets; one launched specifically for their mission and another still in orbit since Gemini VIII in March.
Project Apollo, the nation's effort to land a man on the Moon, beckoned, but the January 1967 fire which took the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee set the schedule back by almost two years. Young's third space voyage was as command module pilot on Apollo 10 in May 1969, when he and crewmates Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan executed the so-called 'F-mission', staging a full dress-rehearsal for the first lunar landing, in orbit around the Moon. During this time, Young became the first person to fly solo around our closest celestial neighbor. Shortly thereafter, he was named as backup commander for Apollo 13, whose ill-fated six days in April 1970 refocused the world's attention on waning public enthusiasm for manned missions to the Moon.
Under Deke Slayton's three-flight crew rotation system, Young's backup duty on Apollo 13 assured him the command of Apollo 16, although it seemed for a time that this mission might not come to pass, so deep were the cuts to NASA planned by Richard Nixon's administration. The enormous success of Apollo 15 contributed to ensuring that the final two lunar missions remained alive and in April 1972 Young, Ken Mattingly and Charlie Duke flew to the Moon for what would turn out to be humanity's penultimate piloted voyage to another world in the 20th century. Six months later, as backup commander of Apollo 17, Young almost became the first man to land on the Moon twice, when the prime commander, Gene Cernan, suffered a tendon injury and came close to being taken off the flight.
As Apollo entered its final stages, Young's eyes were set on the future and in 1974 he was assigned as chief of the astronaut office, replacing Al Shepard. He spent 13 years at the helm of the most elite flying fraternity in the world, supervising the training of several classes of new astronauts and overseeing the inaugural flights of the Shuttle. It came as no surprise when, in March 1978, he was assigned with Bob Crippen to the reusable spacecraft's maiden voyage. When Columbia eventually flew in April 1981, she became the first manned spacecraft to launch with a crew aboard on her very first mission…making the gutsiness of Young and Crippen truly admirable. Even astronauts who came to dislike Young's management style as head of the office could offer little but praise.
If Young earned fame as one of only a dozen Moonwalkers to date, his stint in command of the first Shuttle mission – and, two years later, in November 1983, at the head of the first international Spacelab flight – truly opened a door to the future. For although Challenger would irreparably ruin the misleading belief that flying in space could ever be routine, the Shuttle era offered the opportunity for more humans than ever before to experience the new frontier and provided the capabilities to accomplish ever more difficult tasks: none more so than launching and repairing the Hubble Space Telescope and building the jewel-like International Space Station.
In fact, if there is one disappointing footnote to make about Forever Young, it is that Young makes hardly a reference to his original assignment, in September 1985, to the 61J Hubble deployment mission, which would have made him the first person to complete seven spaceflights. He fleetingly mentions his departure from the headship of the astronaut office in April 1987, noting that his successor, Dan Brandenstein, "would not have been my choice", but the years thereafter in senior management at the Johnson Space Center offered him the scope to remain involved in its day-to-day business. Other astronauts met him on the interview panel and some flew with him, either in the simulator or aboard T-38 jets. It is clear that Young – like Story Musgrave, who once told this author that "NASA made the decision for me to stop flying. I would have kept going" – would have continued on to other space missions, had he been given the chance. His retirement from NASA in December 2004 brought down the curtain on a truly remarkable 42 years in the space business.
All in all, Forever Young is an intensely enjoyable book. It is right and fitting that Young's "life of adventure in air and space" should have been so eagerly anticipated, for it tells the tale of a man who rose from humble beginnings and achieved truly remarkable things. By the time his flying career ended, he had logged 15,200 hours in the air – nearly double the amount of any other chief astronaut – and Jerry Ross has been quick to stress that, counting Young's liftoff from the Moon during Apollo 16, he still retains the achievement of having seven launches into space under his belt. There will doubtless be other pioneers who will guide us back to the Moon and outward to Mars in the coming decades, and the achievements of today's astronauts are remarkable in their own right, but John Watts Young was one of the trailblazers, providing the inspiration, the leadership and the mentoring for others to follow.
The next steps in space exploration
Mankind's search for extraterrestrial life must go on
Financial Times (Editorial)
Advocates of manned space flight have long argued that propelling people into orbits has a public appeal unmatched by robotic missions. That was true when astronauts were racing to the moon, but since the Apollo programme ended 40 years ago unmanned exploration has provided almost all of our extraterrestrial excitement – at a far lower cost than crewed flights.
Since 1972 people have ventured no further than a few hundred miles up, visiting labs in low Earth orbit, most recently the International Space Station, while robotic missions have made spectacular trips to comets, asteroids, planets and their moons. Latest to catch the public imagination is Nasa's $2.5bn Curiosity rover roaming across Mars. At the same time, space observatories such as Hubble have provided views of the cosmos beyond the capability of Earth-based telescopes.
Curiosity's success so far has at least prompted a follow-up US mission; a new life-seeking Mars rover will be launched in 2020. But after that Nasa's cupboard for interplanetary exploration is bare. More ambitious proposals are needed to keep the excitement up during the 2020s. At the very least, Nasa should be planning to visit the giant planets – Jupiter, Saturn and their fascinating moons – to follow on from the successful Galileo and Cassini missions.
Another project with huge popular appeal would be an advanced planet-hunting space telescope, able to detect extrasolar worlds capable of hosting life. This would go far beyond the present generation of observatories which detect exoplanets by their effect on the parent star, slightly dimming its light when they pass in front of it or inducing a tiny gravitational wobble in its movement.
It would not require a great technological leap to build an orbital observatory that could analyse the atmosphere of planets many light-years away, to discover a balance of gases that could only be generated by living organisms, and even image the planetary surface.
A US-led scientific programme of this sort, capable of inspiring people worldwide, would require either a big – and politically unlikely – increase in space spending by Nasa and international partners as the European Space Agency or a substantial diversion of funds from human space flight – which consumes about half of Nasa's $18bn a year budget – to science, which takes a just a third.
The world need not depend on US government funding to keep people flying into space. For a start, Russia will not give up its proud tradition of rocketry. The Soyuz fleet may be based on 1960s Soviet technology but it boasts a remarkable record of reliability. Partners in the International Space Station can safely count on Soyuz to ferry people into orbit at least until 2020, when the current ISS operating agreement expires.
Then there is China, aggressively pursuing a manned space programme that aims for a permanent presence in Earth orbit and forays by taikonauts to the moon and perhaps beyond, while also developing a range of scientific satellites. The US has so far made little effort to bring the Chinese into international collaboration – and China remains determinedly independent. Both attitudes need to change if the world is to make the most of its space resources, intellectual and financial.
The last – and least predictable – ingredient in the space mix is commercial human flight, promoted by entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk of SpaceX. Mr Musk is convinced that there is sufficient demand from individuals and companies to fund manned missions not just into Earth orbit but to Mars, where explorers would found a human colony. Many will scoff. But if it is going to happen, then surely the private sector should bear the main risk and leave governments to pay for robotic exploration of the solar system.
END
