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Looks like the Chinese won’t be our rivals for the Moon, after all, despite the hopes of some for a renewed “space race”.
Maybe we could just sell them the station and kill three birds with one stone: get out from under ISS, removing the need to continue Shuttle operations; discontinue Shuttle operations now, rather than 2010; and handicap potential future space competition from China by removing the need for it to develop from within space capabilities comparable to our own.
Sometime within the next six weeks, MarsBlog will be moving to new digs — as will I, as I will be moving to Denver at the end of this month to start a new job.
I hope the move to a new domain will be smoother than the transfer from Blogger to MoveableType was. And with any luck, the change to a space-infused locale will be more conducive to blogging than the, er, considerably less space-infused environment of New Orleans.
Jeff Foust takes on what he calls the “myth of heavy lift”.
Despite myself, I am coming around to this conclusion myself, and for the reasons Jeff articulates. I still think it would be a shame to simply throw away the “potential” that exists in the decades-long investment represented by the Shuttle and its related manufacturing and launch infrastructure, but it’s getting harder to see exactly what, in practical rather than emotional terms, that potential really is…we ought not build a Shuttle-derived vehicle for its own sake, it has to have something to do, for which no alternative is available. While the former requirement is shaping up, the latter is growing more questionable.
Mark Whittington points to an AFL-CIO ad ridiculing the Moon-Mars plan: Tell President Bush.
Color me unimpressed.
It’s hardly unexpected for the AFL-CIO to use whatever they can to poke at a Republican candidate — the organization typically campaigns for and endorses Democrats, after all. And it seems that in this case, they have found just another issue with which to deride the President.
Note the condescending tone (“Meanwhile, back on earth…”) and the focus on the usual palette of labor interests (jobs, health care, job safety, Social Security, Medicare, education, outsourcing, overtime pay). There is no substance to the ad with respect to the plan — no discussion of its proposed elements, no evaluation of the economic impact, not even a barrelfishingly easy swipe at “subsidies for the military-industrial complex”.
The content is pure boilerplate. By changing just a few lines of text, the site could be used to question any number of Bush policy proposals…as I suspect will happen frequently over the next few months.
(While the AFL-CIO has in effect — if insubstantially — dismissed the Moon-Mars plan, at least one other labor group is supporting it. As to whether that’s a good thing…)
For only having been revealed to the public a bit over a year ago, SpaceShipOne is making fast progress towards the X-Prize:
In a post-flight statement from the company, the SpaceShipOne team reported that their space plane flew to 212,000 feet altitude, almost 41 miles. NASA awards astronaut status to anyone who flies above 50 miles in altitude….
Today’s flight builds upon a progression of 13 shakeout tests, mostly un-powered drop glides along with two engine-thrusting runs. The White Knight took off with SpaceShipOne at around 10:30 a.m. EDT today with the rocket plane landing an the ground a little after 12 noon.
SpaceShipOne’s first powered mission took place on December 17, 2003, with the hybrid motor firing for 15 seconds. A second powered flight occurred on April 8th of this year. In that trek, the motor burned for 40 seconds. A major contractor for the hybrid motor used in the rocket plane is SpaceDev of Poway, California….
The step-by-step SpaceShipOne missions are keyed to winning the Ansari X Prize, a $10 million purse offered by the X Prize Foundation of St. Louis, Missouri. For the cash prize, however, the clock is running as the $10 million purse expires January 1, 2005.
(And check out this pic of SpaceShipOne under power…it looks like something from a science fiction movie.)
…if they plan to make slides available:
Along with four technical reports, the NESC produced a four-page newsletter summarizing the technical activities and some lessons learned. The biggest lesson, Roe said, is to curb the practice of “PowerPoint engineering.” The Columbia report chided NASA engineers for their reliance on bulleted presentations. In the four studies, the inspectors came to agree that PowerPoint slides are not a good tool for providing substantive documentation of results. “We think it’s important to go back to the basics,” Roe said. “We’re making it a point with the agency that engineering organizations need to go back to writing engineering reports.”
Frank Sietzen has an update out on the status of the conceptualization and anticipated development schedule for hardware for the Moon-Mars plan. Nothing in the article is surprising, but there are a few interesting items:
Hecker said NASA would choose two contractors and each would attempt to bring a prototype CEV — along with a separate booster rocket — into space by 2008…..When done, all of the study results would shape NASA’s Request for Proposals for the spaceships themselves, to be issued next year. The RFPs would include design of the rocket that would carry the CEVs.
What a coincidence…there just happen to be two large companies with which NASA has a close working relationship, which just happen to have the capabilities to develop CEV, and which just happen to each have a large rocket capable of launching it.
While this suggestion of a usual-suspects approach is not promising, NASA’s Moon-Mars interests aside from CEV are encouraging:
According to Lyles, NASA would place special emphasis on CEVs with system and subsystem components that are common to their Mars-bound future versions. He added that both the crewed rocket and the cargo version should have maximum common elements and compatibility as well.
Together with their industry partners, NASA also will attempt to identify equipment and systems that astronauts will need to live and work on other worlds. First and foremost will be new atomic powerplants that can provide light, heat and electricity, both to a moon or Mars base or to an interplanetary spaceship.
NASA personnel and contractors are studying new types of tools, spacesuits and roving vehicles, along with when to introduce each new technology and how to flight test it.
This is encouraging because it suggests that the agency is taking a ground-up approach, figuring out the practical details involved in performing the planned missions rather than focusing exclusively on the glamorous, high-concept fantasies that never seem to make it beyond the viewgraph stage.
Found this in the April MTU Alumnus magazine:Microwave Magic
As gee-whiz as it is, Hwang’s innovation is not just a high-end parlor trick. The microwave energy reduces the iron oxide to iron, and the electric arc furnace smelts the iron into steel, all in one device.
It’s not intended to be a technology that can be used on Mars (Hwang sees it as a technology that can revitalize the American steelmaking industry), but I wonder if it could be. Granted, one is unlikely to find a supply of coal on Mars, but the planet has plentiful carbon, some of which could be obtained as a byproduct of oxygen production from atmospheric carbon dioxide (unless the coal is only required to provide carbon monoxide to reduce the iron oxide, in which case carbon monoxide byproducts from other ISRU reactions could be used).
Not only is the Aldrige Commission starting to make the case for the Moon-Mars plan, but several aerospace industry and space advocacy groups are aligning their efforts to promote it:
Leading Space Groups Agree:
It’s Time For The Moon, Mars And Beyond
In an unprecedented show of unity, thirteen of the nation’s premier space advocacy groups, industry associations and space policy organizations have teamed up to support the effort to refocus NASA’s human space activities toward exploration, including a return to the Moon and moving on to Mars and beyond.
The organizations involved include: Aerospace Industries Association, Aerospace States Association, American Astronautical Society, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, California Space Authority, Florida Space Authority, The Mars Society, National Coalition of Spaceport States, National Space Society, The Planetary Society, ProSpace, Space Access Society and Space Frontier Foundation.
Continue reading Convergence of Interests
Have they considered the more open-ended possibilities of cloning?
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