News and Commentary on Space
After spending most of last week running a working group tasked with re-configuring the forward (parachute) bay, I really have to wonder how the Apollo guys did it. Especially without the convenience (in a manner of speaking) of CAD models.
I wish I could have seen the Apollo configuration team at work.
Although Keith warns that the story is premature and may not be correct in its particulars, this Science Insider preview of the Obama administration’s revised space policy (particularly regarding Constellation) indicates that it might include some longed-for Christmas presents…including (and especially) the cancellation of Ares I.
I can’t say that I’m thrilled at the possibility of handing off Altair and the hypothetical lunar base to international partners, given the distortions that imposed on the ISS (e.g.: the higher-inclination orbit that allowed Soyuz to reach ISS from Kazakhstan). Nor am I especially enthusiastic about the possibility of accelerating the development of the unneeded Ares V, but I do recognize that it would be a political necessity to appease Sen. Shelby (R-Huntsville Makework Jobs) should Ares I actually get the long-overdue and well-deserved axe. Nor am I thrilled that NASA may be given $1-4B more, given the waste that has already plagued Constellation (Ares-1X, MLAS, and Ares I design mitigations, for example).
The potential stocking stuffers in this story, though, are the appearance that commercial cargo to ISS is finally being taken seriously as a part of NASA’s operations, and (personally, since I work on Orion) the possibility that Orion could switch to riding an EELV as it should have from the beginning. If true, the former will be a big boost to a true commercial space transportation industry, and the latter will make our design job on Orion a heck of a lot easier through more benign launch and abort environments and mass margins (not to mention the stack won’t look like a corndog any more — that’s just embarrassing). While the rumored policy update does nothing to address what I consider to be the root problem — NASA shouldn’t be doing this stuff in the first place, but rather (if anything at all) encouraging through tech transfer and incentives the growth of robust private sector space industries — it would at least be a step towards a somewhat more sensible way of doing what the agency has been tasked with doing.
Whatever else good eventually comes out of the ISS, demonstrating VASIMR — and then using it to routinely reboost the station — might just be its best sci/tech achievement.
[h/t: Instapundit]
Now we’ll never be able to move to an EELV.
UPDATE: Here’s video…
Pity they didn’t show the ignition and initial liftoff from the onboard camera – that would have been fun to watch.
But as Rand says: “Another SpaceX could have been founded and another Falcon 9 developed for the cost of that test. Which tells you all you need to know about the cost effectiveness of the NASA jobs program.”
Ares 1-X is set to launch on Tuesday, weather permitting.
Finally found some time yesterday to put together four more then-now comparisons using my grandparents’ old slides from early 1965 and some pictures I took last month while at KSC on business.
This one shows the access road into LC-14, the Atlas site from which (among other things) John Glenn’s first orbital mission was launched. The foliage has obscured the view of what remains, but if you go down the road to where it curves to the right, you can still see the blockhouse and the launch mount/tower foundation (dead center in the lower image). As I recall, the tower and gantry are preserved (albeit on the ground and in sections) at the rocket park near LC-17.
This comparison of LC-34 is almost perfect, but for the strange discrepancy of perspective (the blockhouse looks much further away in the old slide). What’s really disappointing here is that the small image doesn’t show all the interesting details I can see in the originals – specifically, the fact that the two road signs on the right of the access road are still there and identical, as near as I can tell, at least one of the flame diverters in the “parked” location is visible in both pictures, and in the old slide, one of the umbilical towers at nearby LC-37 is visible (the tiny dark line sticking up above the trees near the left side of the older image). I can’t really be sure, but some of the telephone poles in the new photo might even be original (hard to tell, since the crossmembers are somewhat different now).
The two Delta-II pads at LC-17. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough similarity between then and now in the tower design to be certain that I was even close to having the same view – the old slide may even be from the coastal side of the towers, while the new image is taken from the inland side (the inland image was a better gut-feel match than the coastal images I took, though). The angle here is completely different because I took the new image on a different day, when I didn’t have the old image to use as a guide.
This was a surprisingly difficult view to match – in part because (I realized after I’d gotten home) the printed copy I was using as a guide cut off the right side of the image at about the right-hand side of the blockhouse mound. Obviously, the receding lines aren’t going to match up when you’re actually a few feet to one side of where you should be. I also had trouble with the height – judging from the crossbar on the monument, I didn’t crouch down far enough to simulate a chest-height slide camera. The people next to the monument are strangers, but the guy on the left looks a lot like my father – I sure would like to know what happened the pictures he was apparently taking at the time.
There are three more old slides that I couldn’t match up, unfortunately. Two are similar views on rocket row, showing two identical service towers emerging above nearby foliage…I could never figure out for certain which towers they were (Titans, I believe, but it’s not clear which pads), and there’s not enough other detail in the slide to figure out where to go nowadays to replicate the shot. The third image was of the second crawler-transporter under construction (mostly done, with the treads missing)…I was able to find several shots of the area from different angles in NASA’s Moonport history document, but nothing showing for certain where the crawler and nearby buildings were relative to still-existing structures. I suspect they were in the area near OPF3 where the TPS shop and Ares MLP construction area are today.
UPDATE: Actually, the two identical towers might have been LC36A/B. The shape of the service structure certainly looks right.
Yes, that’s all I have to say about Mr. X’s post on the future of Orion. Interesting.
John Scalzi takes on the bad science/design of the Star Trek franchise.
I actually used to like ST:TNG when it was first broadcast. Nowadays, I find any manifestation of the franchise insufferable. Bad acting, lazy writing, trite speechifying, cross-episode amnesia re:new discoveries/innovations, Patrick Stewart, etc.
That said, I caught a bit of Star Wars: Episode I in the hotel on Monday evening. I thought it was pretty weak when I saw it in the theater, but seeing it again made me cringe over how godawful it really was. The “Ewan MacGregor Jinx” was strong with that one.
I’ve only had time this week to put together two comparison shots between my grandparents’ 1965 slides from KSC and my own from last week, but here they are. Unfortunately, I’m going to be too busy this coming week to do the rest any time soon – suffice to say there’s a couple more interesting ones, like LC-34 and LC-14 (with the Mercury monument).
The VAB, as seen from halfway through the turn onto the street leading into the complex. As I was driving, I had to make do with a shot somewhat further back rather than risking it during the turn with other cars present. The low office building on the right is used by the Shuttle program.
The crawlerway between the VAB and OPFs 1 and 2. In the “today” picture, the highbay on the left is used for storage and staging of ETs and SRBs (and contained components of Ares-1x when I visited last week), and the one on the right is the “safe haven”.
For the first time in twelve years of working various manned space programs, I finally made my first business trip to KSC last week.
The second-best part? Having extra time after meetings were over and a suitable facility pass to drive around to the various facilities and get lots of pictures.
The best part? Getting up-close to all three orbiters while all three are still in operational condition.
I’ll post a sampling here as soon as I get the pictures sorted and uploaded to Flickr, including shots of SpaceX’s pad, Ares-1X, and a couple of before/after comparisons with my grandparents’ slides from their visit to KSC in 1965.
