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The crew of Shenzhou 7 returns (already?!) from China’s first spacewalking mission.

SpaceX gets a Falcon 1 (finally) to orbit. Good. Hopefully this is the first of many successful launches, and helps to drop the “giggle factor” regarding commercial access to space down another big notch.

That has to irk the Chinese a little, their own achievement being overshadowed by the success of an American private company. Heh. (But admittedly only a little, since the two events are apples and oranges.) But I suppose it’s too much to ask for Musk not to let this successful launch make him cocky:

“This is one of the greatest days of my life,” Musk said. Clearly buoyed by the huge win tonight, he also talked about their Falcon 9 rocket development program, “We are going to be taking over for the Space Shuttle when it retires.” You could hear the pride at the huge accomplishment of a U.S. company getting to the point where they could say that. [emphasis added]

It depends on what capabilities currently provided by the Shuttle he means, of course. It’s probably too much to expect the manned version of Dragon to be completed and tested to NASA’s satisfaction by 2010 (assuming that’s when Shuttle actually gets retired), and likewise for it’s launcher, the Falcon 9. It’s not that SpaceX couldn’t finish the hardware in that time, for Bigelow perhaps, it’s that it’s expecting an awful lot from NASA to upend its culture in only two years and allow its astronauts to actually fly on a non-NASA vehicle.

And speaking of NASA, one can’t help but wonder what sort of pressure, if any, this will put on Constellation. SpaceX has probably spent less getting this far than NASA plans to pay for the development and initial procurement of the Ares I instrument unit alone. With all the Ares I dirty laundry in the news and the blogs in the past couple of weeks, surely someone in Congress has to be asking how SpaceX seems to be doing on the cheap what NASA can’t seem to get done with a budget an order of magnitude larger.

Posted on September 29th, 2008 under Chinese Space, Constellation, Space Commerce, Space Policy. Comments: 1

Reading excerpts from the time-warped Chinese press release about the launch of Shenzhou 7, I was reminded of the strange similarity between their official propaganda and – of all things – bodice-ripper romance novels:

After this order, signal lights all were switched on, various data show up on rows of screens, hundreds of technicians staring at the screens, without missing any slightest changes …

‘One minute to go!’

‘Changjiang No.1 found the target!’…

The firm voice of the controller broke the silence of the whole ship. Now, the target is captured 12 seconds ahead of the predicted time …

‘The air pressure in the cabin is normal!’

Ten minutes later, the ship disappears below the horizon. Warm clapping and excited cheering breaks the night sky, echoing across the silent Pacific Ocean.

Hmmmm…

He raised his trembling hand over the warm, smooth console.  His heart fluttered but his body was still, poised for action. The gaze from his bottomless black eyes traced the gentle curve of the status display panels like a lover’s caress, watching, waiting for the subtle signs of readiness he knew so well.

There – right there. The wink of a light. The subtle shift of an indicator. The unmistakeable signal: she was ready at last.

With a violent thrust, he pressed his finger to the glowing red button.

From what seemed like miles away came a deep, throaty groan, the dangerous but rapturous echo of barely-restrained energies being released at long last.  The sweat of overwhelming anticipation dripped from his brow as the long, firm shaft rose into the sky. 

“Liftoff!” the flight controller cried out in ecstasy. “Oh, God! Yes! Liftoff! Liftoff!”…

Posted on September 27th, 2008 under Chinese Space, Space Policy. Comments: 1

Elon Musk:

With a successful Falcon 1 mission, Musk plans to start lobbying for a follow-on contract to develop the Falcon 9-Dragon to transport space station crews.

“We haven’t pushed hard yet, even though I think it’s like blindingly obvious as the thing to do because we’re hoping to get to orbit and then on the back of getting to orbit and push hard … because otherwise our detractors have too much ammunition,” Musk said. “They’d say, ‘How can you trust the future of the American space program to a company that hasn’t gotten to orbit?’ That’s the obvious attack. So we hope to get to get to orbit and then they can’t use that attack.”

Musk said he’s expects fierce opposition from companies who stand to gain financially from the shuttles’ continued operations, mainly United Space Alliance, NASA’s prime shuttle contractor.

Okay, so that’s what he expects if the next launch succeeds.

Soooo…..what if it fails? Is that “line of attack” from his “detractors” then a fair criticism?

Posted on September 24th, 2008 under Space Commerce, Space Technology. Comments: 1

…interesting…

Posted on September 24th, 2008 under Uncategorized. Comments Off

The Japan Space Elevator Association is planning to build (obviously enough) a space elevator:

Now the finest scientific minds of Japan are devoting themselves to cracking the greatest sci-fi vision of all: the space elevator. Man has so far conquered space by painfully and inefficiently blasting himself out of the atmosphere but the 21st century should bring a more leisurely ride to the final frontier.

For chemists, physicists, material scientists, astronauts and dreamers across the globe, the space elevator represents the most tantalising of concepts: cables stronger and lighter than any fibre yet woven, tethered to the ground and disappearing beyond the atmosphere to a satellite docking station in geosynchronous orbit above Earth.

Up and down the 22,000 mile-long (36,000km) cables — or flat ribbons — will run the elevator carriages, themselves requiring huge breakthroughs in engineering to which the biggest Japanese companies and universities have turned their collective attention.

Sure. And they’ll use Klipers to build out the space infrastructure, while the workers lounge at orbiting space polyps hotels on their days off.

Posted on September 23rd, 2008 under Japanese Space, Russian Space, Space Commerce, Space Technology, Useful Technology. Comments: 1

Let’s hope NASA can actually make something of this project – NASA Eyes Nuclear Reactor for Moon Base:

Supported at a cost of about $10 million a year, the Fission Surface Power Project this week awarded two contracts for power conversion units, used to turn the heat of nuclear reactions into electricity…

The converter design by Sunpower Inc., of Athens, Ohio, uses two opposed piston engines coupled to alternators to produce a total of 12 kilowatts of power. Barber Nichols Inc. of Arvada, Colo., is developing a closed Brayton cycle engine that uses a high-speed turbine and compressor coupled to a rotary alternator. It also generates 12 kilowatts.

The ground system would not use any nuclear materials, said project manager Lee Mason.

“Our goal is to build a technology demonstration unit with all the major components of a fission surface power system and conduct non-nuclear, integrated system testing in a ground-based space simulation facility,” he said.

These contracts appear to be related to the initiative discussed in this earlier Mars Blog post on NASA nuclear power initiatives.

Posted on September 16th, 2008 under Settlement, Useful Technology. Tags: electricity, mars, moon, nasa, nuclear, power, Settlement, space. Comments Off

Rob Coppinger links to the August issue of JSC’s Roundup magazine, which covers the unveiling of the Orion aft bay low-fidelity mockup.

Posted on September 7th, 2008 under Orion. Comments: 2