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RED MOON: Well, this is hardly news. What I want to know is, will this spur the U.S. into doing something more than just going around in circles? While I would not like to see another “moon race” (ie: a dash to the moon and back, instead of the establishment of a permanent and growing presence), the reestablishment of a competetive environment in the space arena would force the U.S. to reevaluate its goals and methods.
One hopes that this would result in the hobbles being removed from the private sector, rather than another Big Program.
MISSED ANNIVERSARY: I was out of town on July 4th and so entirely missed the fifth anniversary of the Pathfinder/Sojourner landing on Mars. SpaceDaily has a good article on the anniversary, the mission, and how it has affected the design of future Mars missions.
OUTAGE: Yeah, Blogger was down all weekend. The posts from Friday and Saturday have suddenly appeared, so hopefully all is back to normal — for now, anyway.
OOPS: This doesn’t look like good news for the Russian inflatable reentry vehicle demonstrator.
As an aside, something in the UPI article is a little confusing to me:
Demonstrator-2 is small in size — the folded-up vehicle measures less than 3 feet in diameter making it the most compact space vehicle ever made.
Hello? Are we talking just size, or component density here?
GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS: It looks like the Shuttle fleet is going to be grounded until the fall, over this flowliner cracks issue. The bad news is, well, the fleet is grounded for a few months, meaning no flights at all at a time when the launch rate was already being minimized to (supposedly) save costs, etc.
The good news is twofold. First, the problem does not appear to be too difficult or expensive to repair in a reasonable amount of time, which means that there will not be a protracted, post-Challenger style stand-down. This would have made it somewhat difficult to resupply the station and rotate crews on schedule, not to mention giving the station a periodic reboost to maintain proper altitude. Second, it is one more data point on the record, showing why a single launch system (and single launch services provider) is not a good idea — were there alternatives to Shuttle, the fleet grounding would have much less impact on ISS and other schedules, and the engineers involved could take more time in analyzing and fixing the problem instead of working under the gun.
NEW APPROACHES: A Russian submarine has launched a test version of a new type of inflatable reentry vehicle. It is hoped that the new technology could be used to quickly and inexpensively return experiment packages and possibly even astronauts from the ISS. The article only briefly describes the test article, but the “inflatable reentry vehicle” idea has been kicked around before.
The Encyclopedia Astronautica article suggests in an aside that an SLBM-launched “personal reentry craft” could be the basis for a new extreme sport…and given the Russians’ gung-ho attitude towards promoting space tourism, it’s certainly something to watch for in the near future if the technology actually pans out. Whether or not it ever gets deployed in reality, the idea sure would make for a great special effects sequence in a science fiction movie.
MARTIAN CONCRETE: An abstract on ISRU concrete production for use on the Moon and Mars.
An unfortunate snag in the use of ISRU concrete is the heavy machinery required to produce cement on a large scale, as detailed here.
While small “starter” units could be built for use on Mars — self-contained units small enough to be launched from Earth in one go — the smaller size could become a limiting factor on the rate at which an initial settlement could grow. The same could be said of the equipment required to produce steel and other primary materials. A Martian settlement will likely find itself bootstrapping from these small imported factories, using their outputs to first build larger facilities capable of producing these materials on an industrial scale for use in settlement construction. Either way, the availability of primary materials will be a bottleneck for the construction of early settlements, one that doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention in the usual literature.
WHAT’S RUSSIAN FOR “FLAGS AND FOOTPRINTS”? If you liked the International Space Station, you’ll love Russia’s proposal for an international Mars mission:
Anfimov said two spacecraft could be sent to Mars, one carrying a six-person crew and the other the expedition’s supplies. The mission would take about 440 days to complete, he said, with three astronauts visiting the surface of the planet for a period of two months.
Hello? Two months? Have you not been listening to the Mars Society or other Mars-advocacy groups?
Okay, so I do appreciate the effort and the attention this is bringing to the idea of Mars exploration — several normally-disinterested friends have brought up this proposal in conversation in the past few days, so the idea has struck a chord. I just worry that an ill-considered architecture like this could be picked for the next Big Project, thereby setting back real progress by decades.
Now, maybe if they planned to send paying tourists to Mars instead…
ZUBRIN INTERVIEW: Must have missed this earlier — a SpaceDaily interview with Bob Zubrin, from last December.
A good recap of MS objectives and current activities.
HOLIDAY BREAK: I’m out until Monday. Happy Independence Day!
Read this, and this, and maybe this (ooh, wayyy back), or this. That ought to keep you busy for a while…
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