Fwd: Astronaut performance jeopardized by sleep deprivation

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: August 11, 2014 10:59:08 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Astronaut performance jeopardized by sleep deprivation

 

Ars Technica 

Astronaut performance jeopardized by sleep deprivation

Astronauts working on ISS missions sleep just over six hours a night.

by Katie Collins Aug 9, 2014 12:00 pm UTC

Ever since the Apollo 11 headed to the Moon in late 1969, astronauts have complained of sleep deprivation. Now a study has shed light on the extent of the sleep deprivation and fatigue suffered by those who travel into space.

In accordance with official NASA flight schedules, astronauts are ordered to get 8.5 hours of sleep every night. But after tracking the sleep patterns of 85 crew members aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and space shuttles, researchers have discovered that astronauts on shuttle missions sleep for under six hours per night on average and just over six on ISS missions.

Crew members on modern space missions sleep in quiet, darkened chambers and three quarters of astronauts take sedatives—yet the problem still prevails. It was not only that astronauts failed to get the required amount of sleep, however. In the three-month pre-flight training period, sleep was also found to be significantly disturbed. During this time crew began to build up a long-term sleep deficiency, averaging less than 6.5 hours while in training.

The number of astronauts taking sleep medication has also been highlighted as a particular concern, after the study discovered that three quarters of ISS crew take sleep medication at least once during their stay and that 78 percent of shuttle crew members used medication on more than half of their nights in space.

"The ability for a crew member to optimally perform if awakened from sleep by an emergency alarm may be jeopardised by the use of sleep-promoting pharmaceuticals," warned Laura K Barger from Brigham and Women's Hospital, who is lead study author. Taking sedatives and hypnotics has also widely been found to impair performance and physical activities, which is why many such medications carry warnings against operating heavy machinery or vehicles after ingestion.

The ten-year study has seen more than 4,000 nights of astronauts' sleep on Earth and over 4,200 nights of sleep in space be recorded, and has concluded that more action needs to be taken to help optimise performance of astronauts.

"Because chronic sleep loss leads to performance decrements, our findings emphasise the need for development of effective countermeasures to promote sleep," write the authors in the study's abstract.

Sleep deprivation has been found to be highly detrimental to an astronaut's performance both during training and space flight. Closer to Earth, around 15-20 percent of fatal airline crashes caused by human error are thought to be a direct result of pilot fatigue. There is no consensus yet on what countermeasures should be implemented, but they could include scheduling modifications and the teaching of behavioural strategies.

 

 

© 2014 Condé Nast. All rights reserved

 

 

 

 

Nasa reveals astronauts suffer from 'chronic sleep loss' and are over-dependent on sedatives

More than three-quarters of astronauts in the study used sleeping pills in more than half of the nights spent in space

James Vincent

Monday 11 August 2014

 

A new report into the sleeping habits of astronauts has revealed that when it comes to getting some shut eye, even the peace and quiet of space doesn't help.

Astronauts commonly suffer from sleep deprivation according to the 10-year study published in The Lancet, with crew members aboard the now-retired space shuttle sleeping for less than six hours a night on average while those crewing the International Space Station (ISS) managed just over six hours of kip.

This is far less than 8.5 hours of sleep that Nasa orders astronauts to get every night and less than the average of six and a half hours achieved by UK and US sleepers.

The study, which used a special wrist watch to study the sleeping habits of 85 different crew members between 2001 and 2011, also highlighted a worrying dependence on sleeping pills, with more than the three-quarters of astronauts using sedatives such as Ambien on more than half their nights in space.

"The ability for a crew member to optimally perform if awakened from sleep by an emergency alarm may be jeopardised by the use of sleep-promoting pharmaceuticals," wrote lead author Laura Barger of Brigham and Women's Hospital at the Harvard Medical School.

The sleeping troubles didn't just happen in space either. As well as studying 4,200 nights of sleep off-Earth, the study looked at 4,000 nights of sleep at home, finding that even during the astronaut's three month pre-flight training period they averaged only 6.5 hours of sleep.

"Because chronic sleep loss leads to performance decrements, our findings emphasise the need for development of effective countermeasures to promote sleep," wrote the authors in the paper's abstract.

For astronauts on board the ISS there's no such thing as a 'natural' sleeping pattern, with the station running on Coordinate Universal Time (the same as GMT) but with the sun rising and setting every 90 minutes.

Crew members bunk down in dedicated 'sleep stations' where they climb into sleeping bags tied to a wall. The lack of gravity means they don't have to worry about a pillow to support their neck but the study suggested that extra measures (such as the exposure to specific wavelengths of light) might be necessary to ensure astronauts can say 'Goodnight Earth' and mean it.  

 

© independent.co.uk

 

 

U.S. Space Walk of Fame Museum

https://www.facebook.com/SpaceWalkOfFame


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Fwd: Shuttle stainless monument

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: August 10, 2014 9:48:01 AM CDT
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Shuttle stainless monument

Thanks to Charlie for sharing the pictures and the story behind them     very cool tribute!

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Mars [mailto:cmars@cfl.rr.com]
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2014 9:15 AM

Saturday we had our move crew at Space View Park to raise the Shuttle stainless.  Went without a hitch.  Thanks to our chief engineer, Warren Lackie. and the move crew.  Will try and get them all down.  Karan, Murphy, Eric, Dan, Glenn, Chriss, Bill, Mike, Frank, Mayor Tulley, and obviously one or two I forgot.

 

Many thanks to Jeff Grey of Vector Works who is always there for us. 

The stainless was off loaded from the transporter to one of his trailers until we could get it to the monument site.  The crane is the same one, and driver, we used for Apollo.  Rented it from the same company in Cocoa.

 

Notice the black granite base on the monument.  The story board panels will be installed over the next couple of weeks.

 

The pylon is the one from the TFNG that Jon Mcbride arranged with his class.  The third side is for the Columbia and Challenger crews.

 

We are all excited and proud to have this milestone accomplished

 

Monument dedication is scheduled for October 18th, 2014     More to

follow when we get the details worked out.

 

Check our face book page for more photos.  You can go to     

spacewalkoffame.com  and select facebook from there.

 

Charlie

USA needs this capability!

Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Friday – August 8, 2014 and JSC Today

http://keeptheshuttleflyingc.blogspot.com/2014/08/fwd-nasa-and-human-spaceflight-news_8.html


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Fwd: SpaceX Might Win in Court, But Can It Beat the Pentagon’s Procurement Culture?

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: August 8, 2014 2:38:38 PM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: SpaceX Might Win in Court, But Can It Beat the Pentagon's Procurement Culture?

 

 

 

SpaceX Might Win in Court, But Can It Beat the Pentagon's Procurement Culture?

By Sandra I. Erwin

While SpaceX continues to fight a legal battle to gain access to the military rocket launch market, it remains in doubt whether the company's commercial business model can coexist with the Pentagon's highly regulated procurement system.

Rocket manufacturer Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, is suing the U.S. government for the opportunity to challenge the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of The Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin that has had a near monopoly on military and intelligence agency satellite launches for more than a decade.

Although Defense Department officials made it clear they dislike being sued, especially by a company that wants their business, they are moving to make SpaceX eligible to compete in future launch programs. They insist it has been their plan all along to open up the market to newcomers, especially now that budgets are coming down and commercial players like SpaceX claim they can put satellites in orbit for a fraction of ULA's cost.

The obvious financial benefits of free-market competition, however, are not the only forces at play in this contentious battle where billions of dollars worth of future launches are at stake. Of concern to nontraditional companies like SpaceX are cultural and institutional pressures that drive the government to do business as usual with established government contractors.

The Air Force said it is investing $100 million in engineering reviews and other regulatory procedures that are necessary to qualify SpaceX to compete for a portion of the launches that are currently performed by ULA's Atlas V rockets. The certification process began in 2007 — SpaceX entered the launch market in 2002 — and is expected to be completed next year.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk did not mince words in his court filing. "The Air Force has entered into an unlawful contract for rocket launches with the United Launch Alliance," reads a protest filed in May with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

The Air Force's deal with ULA, the complaint states, "defers meaningful free competition for years to come, costing taxpayers billions of dollars more."

Regardless of the outcome of the suit, the Air Force might not be ready to take the leap of faith that would be needed to turn over billion-dollar satellites to commercial vendors, analysts suggest.

The government needs to find a way to better adapt commercial technology, said Randall Garber, partner at A.T. Kearney public sector and defense services. "That means enabling nontraditional entrants."

In the past, military technology development led the way, and now it is the opposite, said Garber. "If our competitive advantage relies on technology, we have to be able to adapt commercial systems more readily than we do today."

It is always difficult for a new player to break into an established market, Garber said. Whether suing its best customer turns out to be a smart move for SpaceX remains to be seen, he said. A more daunting concern for the company — or for any commercial vendor that is pursuing big-ticket military contracts — is that the Pentagon still prefers to pay higher prices if it means zero risk of a launch failure. "Mission assurance and risk issues are really big," Garber said, especially when the government is shooting billion-dollar satellites that take years to build.

What happens with SpaceX in the military market over the coming years will be a test case of how cutting-edge technology intersects with arcane government contracting.

Some experts and policy makers are skeptical. "It seems that the Air Force is still stuck in the old contracting mindset," said Paul Hamill, chief operating officer of the American Security Project, a Washington think tank. "ULA has been fantastic for the Air Force. But they need to develop products without government backing. They have to develop their own rocket with their own money," Hamill said. "We are in a different era now. We need public-private partnerships."

House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., is a frequent critic of Pentagon procurements. He doubts the Defense Department can reform its hidebound ways. "The apparatus at the Pentagon is geared to protect our legacy systems," he told a Brookings Institution forum. "We're geared to protect the things we've all been trained on for years. We are geared to say, 'Let's have zero risk' and just salute."

Pentagon officials insist they are committed to opening up the space market. "Companies on their own have started building launch capabilities," said Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Frank Kendall. "We are trying, despite what you read in the press, to move to as much competition as we can, as quickly as we can."

The rub is that the commercial market cannot fully replace government-run programs in sensitive national security projects such as space launches, Kendall noted. "The department can't just hope the commercial world will provide products. It has to make sure those products are there," he said. "We have to have the capacity to put satellites into orbit on the schedules we plan."

The shift to a commercial approach will take time, he said. "We have to work our way through all this. ... We want to have the benefits of what is happening in the commercial world." The rise of commercial competitors such as SpaceX creates a dilemma for the Defense Department, Kendall recognized. "We want competition, but we also have to have assured access to space," he said. "The commercial model does not fly all the time."

A Pentagon budget crunch and the SpaceX lawsuit could be the catalysts that force the government to accept a new business model, said Charles Miller, president of the consulting firm NexGen Space.
"You want industry to have some skin in the game. You need competition," he said.

Before ULA was formed in 2005, the Defense Department had been more open-minded about turning over space projects to the private sector, Miller noted. Both the Atlas V and the Delta IV boosters were developed by Lockheed Martin and Boeing under fast-track procurements that gave contractors authority to make key decisions on how to build rockets. Government bureaucracies are now less inclined to do that, Miller said. SpaceX will have a chance to make its case in court, but it also has to prepare for another tough fight against the government's business approach. The problem for SpaceX is that the government cares more about reliability than about cost, Miller said. "That's the dirty little secret."

The Atlas V and Delta IV rockets were built to be "affordable" and to compete in the commercial market, but the government loaded them up with layers of oversight and regulatory requirements that made them uncompetitive, Miller said. "Defense Department requirements for mission assurance drove the costs through the roof." The red tape and oversight grew out of concern that the government could not afford to lose a spacecraft. "It's a burdensome process to squeeze out any error that might seep into the system, and it drives up cost," said Miller. "There are huge armies of people looking over each others' shoulders. It's very process intensive."

Reliability is a legitimate issue, he said. The United States launches hugely expensive satellites with no backup and can't afford for it to fail. The government is usually willing to spend an extra $100 million per launch to eliminate any chance of error, Miller said. Commercial operators manage risk differently. They have backup satellites so if there's a mishap they're not out of business, and buy insurance against launch failures. Commercial launch providers prove their reliability by flying a lot.

How the government deals with that issue could put SpaceX in a tough spot, Miller said. Once the company is certified to compete against ULA, will the government pile on reliability requirements? "I would be scared that suddenly they will be buried in process," said Miller. "I assume SpaceX is scared, too, that its low-cost rocket would no longer be low cost." Musk has said his cost per launch would be one-third or less than what ULA charges. The company, though, is not willing to "bury itself in paperwork and armies of oversight people," Miller  said. "That may be the source of some friction between the SpaceX way of doing things and the Defense Department's mindset about how to achieve reliability."

SpaceX executives declined to comment for this story, citing the pending lawsuit.

Another potential headache for SpaceX is the contracting approach the Air Force chooses to apply to future launches. By law, the Pentagon is directed to buy space launch services under Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 12, which iapplies to commercial services. But the latest multiyear deal with ULA for the evolved expendable launch vehicle (EELV) program was under FAR Part 15, which allows the government to audit the company's operations and obtain full cost and pricing data. Commercial firms reject Part 15 contracts as anathema to their business model.

The EELV program started in 1995 with the expectation that Boeing and Lockheed would go head to head. The government later decided it would be more efficient to merge the two into what became ULA.

Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Alan Estevez told lawmakers that the decision to go with Part 15 for the EELV contract was prudent given the program's history of cost overruns. The contracting approach "has to be weighed acquisition by acquisition," he said during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "There are benefits to having that full cost and pricing that have been helpful to us."

Estevez was grilled by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who has criticized Pentagon leaders for not creating a level-playing field in the launch market. "We're committed to the competitive course," Estevez said. "We are aggressively pursuing to get SpaceX certified so that they can launch our satellites."

The Air Force said it would set aside seven launches that would be open for SpaceX bids once the company's Falcon 9 booster is certified. A "full and open competition" for all launches would start in 2018.

A potential wildcard that could play for or against SpaceX is ongoing tensions between the United States and Russia. The Atlas V rocket uses the RD-180 engine made in Russia by NPO Energomash, which is owned and controlled by the Russian government. In its protest, SpaceX charged that "each instance in which the Air Force procures an Atlas represents significant U.S. taxpayer money flowing to Russia's military industrial complex." SpaceX manufactures its own line of rocket engines.

A Rand Corp. study said an interruption in the RD-180 engine supply would cause a "significant disruption in EELV launch operations, because a large number of Atlas V launches are scheduled in the next few years."

How to potentially replace the RD-180 rocket engine is now the subject of much study and debate within the U.S. government. ULA has 15 engines on hand. Two more are scheduled to be delivered in August and three in October. Six more would be ordered next year.
So far, it is "business as usual," said Air Force Gen. William Shelton, chief of U.S. Space Command. If the situation with Russia deteriorates, the Pentagon is preparing contingency plans to deal with engine shortages, said Shelton. If and when engine supplies might be disrupted is still unknown.

ULA announced in June it has signed commercial contracts with multiple American companies to investigate next-generation liquid oxygen/hydrocarbon first stage propulsion concepts. "ULA has a number of very promising alternatives, and we are working with the very best propulsion companies in America," George Sowers, ULA's vice president of advanced programs, said in a statement.
 
Pentagon officials said they have not yet settled on a plan for how to develop and acquire a new engine. The effort could be government-run or some form of public-private partnership. Miller, of NexGen Space, said a new engine program gives the government an opportunity to tap into massive investments that are being made by private companies. "This is the heyday of rocket engines," he said. Besides SpaceX, other startups have shown they can build advanced rocket engines. Blue Origin, founded by Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, developed a new engine for commercial rockets. "Lots of small startups are developing lots of technology," Miller said. "Industry has capability."
 
Credit: Falcon 9 (SpaceX photo)

Posted at 1:43 PM by Sandra Erwin 

 

 

 

© 2014 National Defense Industrial Association \ 2111 Wilson Blvd., Suite 400 \ Arlington, VA 22201

 

---

 

Fwd: NASA to wrap up look into 'close call' spacewalk incident

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: August 9, 2014 12:51:20 PM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: NASA to wrap up look into 'close call' spacewalk incident

 

NASA to wrap up look into 'close call' spacewalk incident

James Dean, FLORIDA TODAY 12:15 p.m. EDT August 8, 2014

 

A year after one of its scariest spacewalking incidents, NASA on Monday hopes to prove it is ready to resume normal spacewalk activity outside the International Space Station.

 

Officials will meet at Johnson Space Center in Houston to review measures taken to prevent problems like the spacesuit water leak that could have drowned Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano during a July 16, 2013, spacewalk.

 

The spacewalk was aborted when Parmitano reported water sloshing around his helmet, making it difficult for him to see and breathe. He returned to an airlock to safely conclude what a NASA mishap report later called a "high-visibility close call."

 

Since then, astronauts have completed several unplanned or "contingency" spacewalks to repair critical station systems, with new precautions in place including a sponge and snorkel in suits should another leak occur.

 

But no planned spacewalks could proceed until the root cause of the malfunction was determined and the proposed changes implemented.

 

Monday's review is expected to conclude with a go-ahead to resume normal spacewalking operations from Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA's human spaceflight programs.

 

The readiness review had been scheduled shortly before two U.S. spacewalks planned for later this month.

 

But that "extra-vehicular activity" was put off until the fall after an unrelated issue cropped up with a spacesuit battery. The spacewalks will wait until after new batteries are flown up on SpaceX's next resupply mission, targeted to launch from Cape Canaveral no earlier than mid-September.

 

Two Russian cosmonauts, who use a different type of spacesuit, are scheduled to work outside the outpost Aug. 18.

 

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