NASA's moon landing now out past 2020

Reading in the Guardian today concerning NASA's next planed Moon landing had been moved back to beyond 2020 from an internal date of 2018. Citing severe budget cutback from the previous administration for development of the Aries V heavy lifter, NASA administers say that ongoing and future research can not continue.

From my standpoint at least is is really starting to look like the next person to step on the Moon's surface will not be a NASA astronaut, but one of the other countries competing for the honor. There is every likelihood that it might even be a "private" consortium or company that might pull that hat trick. The Google Prize is still in play - so like the X prize, who is to say that the time for big government funded launches are at an end and the "for profit" business model may be heir apparent.

COMMENT: Obama considering canceling Aries & scaling back Orion?

According to a recent gizmodo article: President elect Obama has sent a very detailed questionnaire focusing on the feasibility of the Aries / Orion space craft. The questionnaire goes as far as asking if NASA could redesign the Orion spacecraft so it could be launched by the European Ariane 5 or the Japanese H2A:

• Estimate the feasibility of designing a resized Orion capsule that could be launched by international launch vehicles such as the [European] Ariane 5 or the [Japanese] H2A.

Now I know some of my comments in the past have been critical of what seem to me to be grave errors in design and engineering. That's because some of the craft design papers show little innovation and an over reliance on what would appear to be 40 year old Apollo tech while throwing out probably the greatest achievements in heavy lift rockets while patching flaws in the present designs with for all intents springs and rubber bands.

I know the president elect is asking the same questions we all are, however I really have to stop at having our space efforts handled by the third party is ludicrous and extremely short sighted. Redesign if we must but keep the US space effort, like any ther countries efforts, in our own hands.

<- Space News ->

NASA's Ares 1 Rocket Could Crash Into Launch Tower

Gizmodo.com floored me with this one! It would appear that the Ares 1 Luna lift assembly is ntly in danger of banging into its own launch tower if there is any cross wind . And it need not be a gale force either, the wind needs only be a gentle 12.7 mph from the south-east to cause problems. Again the problem stems with how the SRB motors causes it to "hop" on ignition. This is not the first time manned Moon landing program has run into difficulties. The "tuning fork" problem (excessive vibration of the manned launch vehicle that could cause the launch to abort) is still a problem looking for a permanent solution and many people asking for a complete redesign of the system. "It's time for a rethink," said Jeff Finckenor, an award-winning NASA engineer who last month quit the Ares program in frustration over the way the program is being managed.

<- Gizmodo -> <- OlandoSentinel article ->

NASA Proposes High-Tech Fix for Shaking Moon Rocket:

You know, when I heard months ago that the new NASA moon launch vehicle had a major problem with vibration, ( So bad in fact that many astronauts have stated unofficially that they would have grave concerns about launch safety.) I remember asking what genius let this one slide through? Now I hear from the Gizmodo blog:

• NASA engineers have announced how they're going to deal with a potentially serious vibration problem in the crew-launched Ares I: springs.

WHAT?!!! Oh yes, you read right. Big springs and weights (oh yes, knowing very well how fiendishly expensive it is to launch anything out of Earth's gravity well and with a wealth of material already available on heavy lift, NASA again is trying to reinvent the wheel. The dichotomy is difficult to understand. They will copy the Apollo crew capsule and then disregard one of the shinning achievements of the Apollo era the Saturn lift system. It's a baby/bathwater event. With the present level of motor technology available, I am sure they could make the Saturn more efficient. But designing a whole new system that has yet to be man rated seems extraordinarily wasteful.

<- read more about the Aries 1 work arounds on Gizmodo -> Plus, Gizmodo's cartoon is funny!

A new Moon Rocket proposal from an unusual source.

It would seem that the ranks are not all that closed among the engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center. The folks who are hard at work on NASA's follow on moon project Aries have defected, well sort of. Over a hundred engineers are convinced that they can do it cheaper, faster and quicker than their big government bosses. The "IT" is a moon rocket project they have dubbed Jupiter. They have created an alternative rocket that would be safer, cheaper and easier to build than the two Ares spacecraft, What makes the Jupiter program rather unusual is that NASA had full access to the project data before it settled on ARIES. However NASA managers admit that with flight tests less than a year away, NASA is too heavily invested in ARIES to consider alternative projects.

So if Jupiter is to work at all it will have to be funded and executed by private investments. hummmm Check out their site Direct 2.0

yahoo news via IO9

NASA awards contract for new suits!

NASA has awarded a contract to Oceaneering International Inc. of Houston, for the design, development and production of a new spacesuit system. The Constellation Program mission requires two spacesuit system configurations to meet the requirements of Orion missions to the space station and to the moon. Configuration One will support dynamic events such as launch and landing operations; contingency intravehicular activity (IVA) during critical mission events; off-nominal events such as loss of pressurization of the Orion crew compartment; and microgravity. Configuration Two will build upon Configuration One and will support lunar surface operations. While preparing to walk on the moon, the astronauts will construct Configuration Two by replacing elements of Configuration One with elements specialized for surface operations.



Image Credits: NASA.