Someone GETS it!!!

Writing for Gizmodo, Jesus Diaz,  marvel for a moment of the oft under appreciated on the space walk or EVA:

• I  (Diaz) just came across this 1995 photograph of Michael Gernhardt floating 200-miles over the Earth on a six-hour spacewalk. I zoomed in and looked in awe for a couple of minutes, pondering the chain of events, the Herculean effort that put and kept this man alive in space.

It doesn't happen often, but every now and then someone marvels at the small things that came into existence to allow nay permit humans to survive on one of the harshest environment known to man.  

I am certainly do not intend to put someone down just because they don't have space flight on their mind 24/7.  To be honest also, many today didn't see the photos of Al Shepard doing the sub orbital. Or John Glenn lifting off, or Ed White  floating virtually untethered from his Gemini capsule.  I was floored when I saw the film of White knowing that less than an inch of fabric was all that was keeping him from a grizzly end.

Take a read of Diaz's  Sploid / Gizmodo article.  It is a good read.   HERE

NASA Stll Has Plans for a Manned Asteroid Mission

As you can see in this short video, NASA still hopes to be able to put astronauts on an asteroid in the not to distant future. Plans are to possibly put astronauts on the surface of an asteroid some time in the 2020s.

To view the water tank experiments click HERE

As you can see, people are still training in simulated environment for this extremely difficult mission.

You can read the complete CNN tech article HERE

NASA Testing New Class of Fuel-tank

It is no mystery that the traditional  material for NASA's high pressure cryo-fuel tanks is metal of one type or another.  Metal pressure vessels and fuel tanks are good at what they are designed to do, however the down side is that they invariably have a large weight penalty.

So with this in mind NASA  has begun testing fuel tanks that are made of composite materials.  The aim of course is to significantly reduce the weight of the launch vehicle or other parts of the mission.  Less weight equates to lower costs and larger payloads.  

To use composite fuel tanks, a number of breakthroughs in manufacturing needed to take place. A breakthrough in automated fiber placement which will help eliminate leaks and tooling that will eliminate the heavy bolted joints, which composites perform badly at. 

Below is a NASA film describing the process of manufacture and the ultimate weight savings.

Space X Dragon Resupply Launches

Kallamis noted that Space X's Friday launch of the Dragon resupply vehicle had problems. 

Space X Founder Elon Musk reported a that three out of the four sets of thrusters did not fire. 

Elon stated, as controllers tried to override the Dragon's automated system, that he wants at least two of the thruster pods functional before he oks deployment of Dragon's solar panels. 

The initial launch went according to plan and it wasn't until nine minutes after launch when Dragon separated from the upper stages of the launch vehicle.   This is the first problem that Space X has had since it started launching supplies to the ISS.  Two previous deliveries, last year, went according to plan. 

For more information

SpaceX: http://www.spacex.com

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

7 Minutes of Terror: The Mars Curiosity Landing

They call it 7 minutes of terror, the time it will take the Mars Curiosity Rover to travel from the top of Mars' atmosphere to landing on the planet's surface. As one speaker points out, it will take 14 minutes for the signal to reach Earth, so when they first get confirmation that the rover has encountered Mars' atmosphere it will either be alive or dead, for seven minutes on Mars.

To drive that fact home, they have produced a short video of the landing sequence, which I am sure most of us are familiar with, but in a most entertaining manner. I think you will be entertained, I know I was!

Curosity is due to touch down 10:31-pm pdt August 5 2012 1:30-am on August 6th eastern daylight time.

Long Term Space Missions Lead to Optical lssues in Astronauts

Anchored to the International Space Station's robot arm, STS-123 Mission Specialist Richard Linnehan participates in a spacewalk outside the orbital outpost. Photo credit: NASA

Dvice blog is reporting a study led by doctors from the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston has shown that astronauts performing long duration space flight often report optical abnormalities. Now further research confirms that this does seem to be the case. Problems can range from deformation of the eyeball to swelling of the optic nerves.

Samples of 27 astronauts showed they did indeed have a mix of these problems as well as changes in the pituitary glands. According to the article, these symptoms mimic:

• intracranial hypertension, where pressure inside the skull rises and presses on the brain and eyes. 
• A very rare condition.

More problematic, flattening of the eyes and the optic nerve swelling  left unchecked could cause permanent damage. Even more troubling is that the issues seem to get worse  the longer the stay in space.

The Sydney Morning Herald, EurekaAlert

What is The Air Force Using the X-37B Space Plane For?

Xnewsman sends in a piece from the Huffington Press concerning the highly secretive X-37B Space Plane that is being flown in low Earth orbit. The plane has been in space more than a year, which has raised suspicious speculation of everything from spying on the Chinese spacelab called Tiangong-1, to spy radar focusing on ground based installations. Check out the video....

The QDrive: A Revolutionary Engine for Spacecraft

Boing Boing listed this article about an engine called The QDrive - which is a "radiation pressure imbalance" drive for space travel.

Over at Cannae LLC in Pennsylvania,they describe the QDrive as

• a resonating cavity with design features that redirect the radiation pressure exerted in the cavity to create a radiation pressure imbalance on the cavity. This differential in radiation pressure generates an unbalanced force that creates thrust. The cavity is accelerated without use of propellant.

You know what came to mind first? Remember that old cartoon with Wile E. Coyote and the Road-Runner, where Wile E. puts on skates, ties a water tub to the skates and a outboard engine to his waist with the prop in the tub of water. Pulling the starter string sends him off after the Road-runner. Remember? Even as a child I often wondered first, why the crazy Coyote wasn't dead and second it that rigging could really work! I get that feeling off this Q thing....

I honestly thought I was seeing a new type of electric razor head unit....hah

Is This the End of the Space Age?

Long time listeners to BMU will recognize this sentiment. Even back in the 80s on my tiny little BBS I was saying that we should be looking hard and long as to what the Shuttle really meant in terms of space exploration. Now that even that system will cease to be within day, I have been saying that our glory days are done and now we little more than renters. Now I see that others are raising a hue and cry. I see that Charlie Jane Anders writing for IO9 is voicing valid concerns about what the end of the Shuttle program can mean to the US's presence in space. It is still painfully obvious that the public is confused as to what the question ultimately means. There is talk of probes picking up the slack and of course that will continue. These self same people though should remember that we put some very sophisticated devices on the moon but ultimately nothing replaces a human foot for genuine exploration.

From the IO9 article:

• It is quite conceivable that 36,000km ( 22369.36 miles) will prove the limit of human ambition.
• It is equally conceivable that human space flight, long the stuff of science fiction, will return to fantasy.

To me it was painfully obvious when Apollo 17 came home. We had to make do with the shuttle. The most powerful nation on the planet relegated to high priced furniture movers. Yes, the robotic craft out there are doing spectacular science, but was Apollo our first and only steps on another world? Is travel to other planets once again on the purview of science fiction?

Do you want to have your opinion on the health of space travel on record? Nothing big and fancy, just a yes or no about this - you can go to the economist and vote. [The Economist]

First look at L-M's Orion capsule

Here is a sneak peek of Lockheed Martin's Orion capsule. You may be wondering, WTF! they cut the funding for a moon return so why is this still being built. Well, according to Dvice blog - it's good for lots of other stuff, (like) ISS transport flights. You can plainly see the Apollo influence here. It sure does look like a Control Module on steroids don't it? But the thing to remember is that this thing can crew twice the capacity of an Apollo's 3. A couple of things that Dvice mentions that are a vast improvement over the Apollo craft is: (1) it's got a glass cockpit based on the one in the Boeing 787, and (2) "improved waste-management facilities" Now if that isn't a sign of an aging space effort when your biggest concerns are glasses and taking a dump....sigh....

Read more here in the Dvice article

Good bye Discovery

Well I am sure you know what 3/9/11 is all about. I can't imagine that anyone reading this right now has to have STS 133 explained in detail. However just to put a small cap on it.
From Space.com:

• Discovery landed for the final time here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 11:57 a.m. EST

Having that melancholy moment again are we?

And just so Space.com can nail it home for Discovery one last time:

• after 27 years and 39 flights, Discovery's wheels rolled to a stop for the very last time under the warm sun at the Florida spaceport's Shuttle Landing Facility.

Not to lessen the fact that the shuttle program was fraught with engineering failures, cost over-runs - despite the fact that it was never even close to as fast, cheap or safe as it was promoted as becoming - It still was a damn fine space craft of a fleet of supremely capable machines. The people who designed, maintained and flew the system were and are the best in the world at what they do. I know, it's just a machine, but at the risk of anthropomorphizing it - it was a damn fine one!

Space.com article

For Sale: vehicle w/ extremely high mileage, serious damage

Hey, got a few million bucks available? Have I got a deal for you! Very unique vehicle, Very high mileage, showing serious wear and damage. Are you saying, Hey! Where can I get more info? Or was it...what? Are you serious?! Well actually you would be right on both counts. The auction house Sotheby's in New York will auction the spherical Vostok 3KA-2 Space Capsule. The well used space craft has great historical significance. It is the model used for the final dummy run before Uri Gagarin made his historical flight. ( oh and yes, the article spelled his name Yury...)

Read more in the complete Yahoo article here

Traveling to Barnard's star - Project Daedalus

From Discovery.com via Dvice I again find myself fascinated with the sheer scale and effort of what it would take to field a trip to our nearest stellar neighbor Barnard's Star. Once again I read about Project Daedalus which was a proposal to send a craft 5.9 light years to Barnard's Star. This was a journey which was possibly feasible which could be achieved in about 50 years if the ship could be accelerated to about 70 million miles per hour. This mind numbing speed could only be achieved using a hybrid fission/fusion propulsion system. Yes, Daedalus would have to use for all intents and purposes the same fuel as those found in atomic bombs to achieve the speeds needed. Now you have a matter of scale to house and properly absorb the fantastic pressures developed by this "fuel". The graphic shows a concept of the craft next to the largest lifting system ever assembled by the US, The Saturn rocket. As you can see, Daedalus dwarfs Saturn and the weird thing is Daedalus is only a two stage system! As massive as it would be, Daedalus would only carry enough fuel for less than 5 years, so the bulk of the trip would be a coast. Even so, Daedalus would only spend a short while at it's target. Daedalus would be a fly by and for all it's massive size would only be an unmanned probe.

Ultimately the program, conceived in the 70s, purpose was to determine at 1970s level of tech, could such a project be carried forward. The consensus was that it could, but not easily. Building on the foundation set by Daedalus is Project Icarus. Inspired by Daedalus, Icarus will attempt to re-examine the problem of interstellar propulsion with the benefit of over thirty years of scientific progress and understanding since the original project.

Your Face IN Space!!!

Now here is just something that is fun and cool at the same time. Wana go to space?
NASA wants to put a picture of you on one of the two remaining space shuttle missions and launch it into orbit.

If this sounds like just the thing, or like my wife who did it for me because the last flight is right around my birthday in November, go to the faceinspace page on NASA and follow the instructions for getting your pic on one of the last two shuttle flights.

• The first thing you do is upload your pic and name to NASA
• Then NASA has you Print and save the confirmation page with your flight information
• After the launch, return to the NASA site to print your Flight Certificate

Face in Space Page

Space X launches Falcon 9

Whoooooooo hooooooo talk about a great launch! Here we have Space X launching their Falcon 9 two stage rocket into Earth orbit. According to Dvice the launch from Cape Canaveral was a picture-perfect liftoff. The Falcon 9 launch vehicle carried a payload called the Dragon cargo module. The system is being built by SpaceX with a mission to deliver supplies to the international space station and bring back equipment and experiment samples to Earth. With this successful launch Space X now has a contract of 12 flights first of which is a resupply mission. The system is unique as it is largely reusable which in theory should keep the cost down. Below is the launch with a dummy payload that did make it into orbit.



ABH news article

Dvice article

Space X

Wiki on the Falcon 9 launch system

Rocket Scientists Say We'll Never Reach the Stars

Ouch! I like to think that humanity's future lies among the stars. Sadly for us, rocket propulsion experts now say we may never even get out of the Solar System. At a recent conference, rocket scientists analyzed many of the designs for advanced propulsion that others have proposed for interstellar travel. The calculations show that, even using the most theoretical of technologies, reaching the nearest star in a human lifetime is nearly impossible. The major problem is that propulsion requires large amounts of both time and fuel. For instance, using the best rocket engines Earth currently has to offer, it would take 50,000 years to travel the 4.3 light years to Alpha Centauri, our solar system's nearest neighbor. Even the most theoretically efficient type of propulsion, an imaginary engine powered by antimatter, would still require decades to reach Alpha Centauri. And then there's the issue of fuel. It would take at least the current energy output of the entire world to send a probe to the nearest star, at the very least. More likely it would be as much as 100 times that.

Man that's bleak! But there is more! Read the Wired article.

Space Adventures Charters Entire Russian Spacecraft

Can you believe this?! Yep, seems it is true! According to a recent article in popsci.com: To celebrated its ten-year anniversary Space Adventures, (the group that brokered the first tourist flights to space) announced that it had negotiated a deal with the Russian Federal Space Agency to buy an entire flight to the International Space Station. That's right, not just one seat, but the entire flight will be taken up by space tourists. A professional Russian cosmonaut will command the flight for two ticket-paying passengers some time in late 2011. (Soyuz as you know can only carry three people) From then on, Space Adventures plans to fly one charter flight to the International Space Station a year through the station's operational life. RKA will add new spaceships to its manifest rather than bumping existing flights. (you got to think about this for a second....this puts the vaunted NASA on the same level as Space Adventures, basicly buying seats from the Russians. *sigh*) Indications are that a tourist space walk and trip to the moon are in the planning stages - flown by the Russian Federal Space Agency and brokered by Space Adventures. (I hate to even think this, but with exciting stuff like this happening, NASA appears to be dead and to stupid to lay down. NASA is doing some great science, but leaving this huge gap in their manned program shows that they are event driven, advancing in spirts. The Russians have been steady throughout the last 40 plus years. Simplistic yes, but who is buying seats from whom? )

How to Win the Google Lunar X Prize and Beat NASA to the Moon

The year is 2012. A quarter-million miles from Earth, a small spacecraft is nearing the surface of the moon. When the unmanned craft touches down in a cloud of rocket-blown dust, it becomes the first man-made object to arrive intact on the lunar surface in 32 years. But the logo on the side of the spacecraft doesn't belong to NASA or any other government space agency. Instead the spacecraft reveal a familiar multicolored corporate logo: Google's.

David Noland writing for Popular Mechanics in the June 2008 issue weaves a scenario reminiscent of biblical David and Goliath, where the common man could conceivably take on corporate and governmental giants to be the first private person to land a craft on another world. Click the article title to go to the Popular Mechanic's article

Illustration is PM’s vision of a lunar lander on arrival. (Illustration by Jeremy Cook)

Suborbital Vehicle Expected To Fly Within Two Years

XCOR Aerospace has just unveiled a new suborbital spaceship that will provide affordable front-seat rides to the edge of space. XCOR Aerospace, of Mojave, CA, announced that its two-seat Lynx, roughly the size of a small private airplane, will first take off in 2010 and will be capable of flying several times each day. XCOR says that Lynx will operate much like a commercial aircraft. Its liquid fuel engines will provide the enhanced safety, durability, reliability and maintainability that keep operating costs low, while keeping pollution in the environment much lower than solid or hybrid rocket engines. The big difference is the passenger rides up front and not in the back which will add greatly to the flight experience.