Discovery News: Space Diary

Guess Who's Coming to Visit?

There’s a long list of topics to discuss at the big International Space Station partners meeting in France this week: payloads for the shuttle's last nine flights to the outpost; two mini-research modules Russia wants to attach; bunking arrangements for when the crew size doubles next year -- and my personal favorite: what to do about uninvited guests.

Now I’m being blatantly ethnocentric here and looking at the prospect of visitors solely from NASA’s point of view, which seems a bit like the proverbial housewife putting up with the husband’s relatives. Sure, NASA needs her Russian hubby, particularly since he’s got the only car service running after the shuttle retires, but just how far does this arranged marriage bend?

Russia, which has embraced capitalism as no entity in the U.S. government  has dared, has cut a deal with a Virginia-based firm to supply spaceships and pilots to ferry paying passengers to the station. Russia has been running a small-scale tourist transport service since Dennis Tito forked over $20-plus million for run to the ISS in 2001.

NASA was none-to-pleased with the stunt and begrudgingly “allowed” access to the ISS only when it became apparent that it had no choice. But Tito and the handful of entrepreneurs who followed his footsteps (Skylab astronaut Owen Garriott’s son Richard, millionaire computer game developer, is set to become tourist space flight participant No. 6 in October) hitched rides on Soyuz capsules that were needed to change out resident space station crewmembers. The new gig would add three folks at a time for independent research, educational, commercial or other programs.

Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson tells me he’d like to fly a commercial Soyuz once a year beginning in 2011. (He declined to reveal a target price for each excursion.)

NASA learned of the plan last month the same way most folks did: from a press conference. The initial response was polite, but muted. One program manager did let slip that he thought commercial Soyuz trips marked “a radically different” way of operating.

I’m sure they’ll work things out though, for in this world of uncertainty, NASA has indeed staked a claim in at least one final frontier: There’s no divorce in space.

Caption: Dennis Tito suiting up to become the first fare-paying passenger in space. (Photo: Space Adventures.)

Let's Steal the Soyuz

Well not “steal” it exactly, just do what Japan has done to our automobile industry, China to textiles and India to tech support. Import it, then re-label ‘Made in America.’ It’d be a neat way around the prohibition against buying Soyuz from the Russians, who are being punished -- not really -- for providing technology and dangerous ideas widely available on the internet to Iran, which is next door to Iraq and probably what the Bush Administration was really aiming for when they got us embroiled in the bruhaha over there.

And the U.S. really needs a spaceship because we can’t afford to fly the shuttles and simultaneously develop safer ships that can transport people to the space station as well as beyond low-Earth orbit, which we’ve been going ‘round and ‘round in since 1972, the last moon landing.

Unfortunately it took a national tragedy to buck up to the fact that the shuttles are too expensive and risky to fly forever, wonderful machines that they are. Problem is, it’s going to take five or six years to get the new crafts flying after the shuttles are retired. NASA has taken to calling this period “the gap.”

Leaving aside the fact that right now NASA is banned from purchasing Soyuz after its current exemption expires in 2011, the United State’s plan for staffing the space station during the gap is to get another exemption to buy more Soyuz. We’ll need twice as many as before, in fact because next year the size of the space station’s crew doubles to six. The Soyuz can hold three people.

Now comes the news today that Google co-founder Sergey Brin has plunked down $5 million for his own Soyuz so that he and another tourist can go visit space. (Apparently the Congressional ban doesn’t apply to private companies.) The firm arranging the jaunt will even hire a full-fledged Russian cosmonaut to pilot the rocketeers.

Which brings me to this: Why not import the Soyuz or get a license to manufacture them here? Florida, which just lost out to Virginia to be the launch site for a proposed commercially developed station cargo hauler, would be game. Might even get our Congressional delegation focused on an issue they need to be concerned with, like trade, economics and foreign affairs, rather than deciding if an Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer dark matter device should fly on the shuttle or not.

Just a thought ….

Construction boom

The housing meltdown may have stymied construction in many parts of the United States but work has been thriving aboard the International Space Station. Since the arrival of the Expedition 16 crew, headed by NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, NASA has added three new modules to the outpost.

"It's so large I can actually lose crew members at times," Whitson quipped during an inflight press conference on Tuesday.

Whitson returns to Earth on Saturday as the United States’ most experienced astronauts, having accumulated 377 days in orbit during two long-duration spaceflights. She surpasses the 374 days in orbit wracked up by Michael Foale during six missions, most recently as commander of the space station’s Expedition 8 crew.

The Russians remain the world’s most experienced space travelers. Whitson’s crewmate Yuri Malenchenko returns home as well on Saturday after spending a career-total 515 days in orbit over four missions -- making him ninth on the list. Topping the space endurance record list is six-time flier Sergei Krikalev, who has spent 803 days in orbit.

Hot Air

I think I missed the boat on the story I wrote last week about a test the last shuttle crew ran to inflate some prototype tubes in space. The point of the experiment, which was sponsored by the Defense Department, was to see how structurally sound this alternative space assembly process could be. The idea is that instead of launching satellites with big, heavy antennas, mirrors, and other assorted parts, to design the spacecraft with pieces that can be launched flat and then inflated and stiffened in orbit.

With launching costs running in the neighborhood of $10,000 per pound, it’s pretty obvious what the advantages are. But here’s the point: While NASA and the military are running around inflating little tubes in the shuttle’s cargo bay, a private industry already has launched and is testing two prototype habitats, called Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, in orbit. And in two years, the company, Bigelow Aerospace, plans to launch another inflatable that can house researchers, tourists or anyone else with a penchant and purse to fly in space.

Considering how few shuttle flights are left before the fleet is retired and how much NASA still needs to do on the International Space Station, it seems like the experiment aboard the shuttle was superceded by the passage of time and developments in the commercial world. It probably should have been dropped. Government entities are not really suited to adapt quickly to changing circumstances and they certainly should not be in competition to what private industry can do better.

Left: Experiment on shuttle; Right: Genesis 2 in orbit

Tough Love

Russia yanked flight privileges for South Korea’s first astronaut, a 31-year-old robotics expert with Samsung, three weeks before liftoff because he apparently was reading up about piloting Soyuz spacecraft.

It was the second time Ko San broke the rules and there won’t be a third. He was replaced by his backup, Yi So-yeon, 29, who is scheduled to launch on a Russian Soyuz rocket on April 8, along with a pair of cosmonauts who will serve as the next International Space Station crew.

So-yeon, a nanotechnology engineer, will return with the current station commander, NASA’s Peggy Whitson and Russian flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko on April 19.

“I would like to apologize to the staff at the cosmonaut training center and to all Korean people for what happened,” Ko San, speaking in Russian, said at a press conference last week. “I want to assure you that I had no intention of violating the rules. I simply wanted to learn more about the flight.”

Russian space officials said Ko San had taken pilot training manuals to his dormitory at Star City, outside of Moscow. A manual somehow ended up in a package of Ko San’s personal belongings that was sent back to Seoul.

South Korea is paying Russia $25 million for the flight, which includes a 10-day stay at the station. More than 36,000 South Koreans competed for the chance to fly.

The Not-Quite International Space Station

The International Space Station is in the midst of a construction boom, but not everybody is welcome to buy in.

At a press conference following shuttle Endeavour’s launch on Tuesday, a Chinese journalist ask NASA managers if they’d ever thought about inviting China to join the international partnership.

NASA’s spaceflight chief Bill Gerstenmaier didn’t mince words:

“At this point, we’ve not discussed that or thought much about that,” he said.

Perhaps NASA will change its tune when it finds itself out of the launch business in two years after the shuttle is retired and before its new capsules are ready to fly.

Florida Ups Ante for Moon Prize

If $30 million from Google wasn’t enough to get you motivated to put your genius to work designing a moon rover, the state of Florida has a little extra incentive: a cool $2 million extra if your little robot makes its great lunar leap from the sandy shores of the Sunshine State.

The state’s space development agency said it will pony up the bonus for any winning contestant of the X Prize's latest attempt to commercialize space. The non-profit made history in 2004 when it paid out $10 million for a pair of private suborbital spaceflights which prompted Virgin founder Richard Branson to order up a couple of ships for a new tourism venture. While spaceship builder Burt Rutan toils away, the X Prize Foundation is moving on to the moon.

So far, 10 teams have registered to compete for the prize. They are:

Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA): Based in Valcea, Romania and led by Dumitru Popescu, ARCA registered but never flew for the private spaceflight X Prize. Two of ARCA’s most innovative projects to date have been the Demonstrator 2B rocket and Stabilo, a two-stage manned suborbital air-launched vehicle. The craft the team plans to enter in the Google Lunar X PRIZE will be called the European Lunar Explorer.

Astrobotic: Team Astrobotic, led by William “Red” Whittaker, was formed to coordinate the efforts of Carnegie Mellon University, Raytheon Co., and partners. Carnegie Mellon’s expertise includes autonomous navigation which enables robots to automatically avoid obstacles and select their own route across unmapped terrain. Astrobotic will compete for the prize using their Artemis Lander and Red Rover.

Chandah: Chandah, meaning “moon” in Sanskrit, was founded by Adil Jafry, an energy industry entrepreneur. He now heads Tara, the largest independent retail electricity provider in Texas. Jafry says his goal is to catalyze commercialization of space, and bring advances in space travel, tourism, sciences and technology to the general public at large. The team’s spacecraft will be named Shehrezade.

FREDNET: Headed by Fred Bourgeois this multi-national team of systems, software and hardware engineers intends to bring the same successful approach used in developing open system software (such as the internet, and Linux) to pioneer space exploration.

LunaTrex: Led by Pete Bitar, LunaTrex is a mixed group of individuals, companies and universities from all over the United States that hopes to parlay its experience in the Ansari X Prize competition and other technical endeavors into a moon rover called Tumbleweed.

Micro-Space: Colorado firm headed by Richard Speck has been churning out innovative high-tech products for 31 years, including liquid-fuel rockets, near-hover rockets and an assortment of life-support systems. A competitor in the Ansari X PRIZE as well as the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, Micro-Space’s moon offering will be the Human Lunar Lander.

Odyssey Moon: This private commercial lunar enterprise, founded by Robert Richards and located in the Isle of Man, is developing a series of missions to the moon in support of science, exploration and commerce. Its craft is called MoonOne (M-1).

Quantum3: Led by aerospace executive Paul Carliner, Quantum3 plans to soft-land its Moondancer craft where Apollo 13 settled down in the Sea of Tranquility.

Southern California Selene Group: Led by Harold Rosen, this Santa Monica-based group’s craft, Spirit of Southern California, pairs control and communication systems used in some of the earliest communications satellites with modern electronic and sensor technology.

Team Italia: Based in Italy and led byAmalia Ercoli-Finzi, Team Italia is a collaborative effort by several universities that already is running a prototype. To be determined is whether to build a single big rover or a colony of little probes that could quickly disperse on the lunar surface with cameras and sensors.

NASA Comes of Age

The was something oddly comforting about the participation of NASA administrator Michael Griffin at the Pentagon briefing last week explaining the decision to shoot down a dead spy satellite from orbit.

The civilian space agency, the savior of a nation once terrified of a Soviet nuclear attack, has been floundering for decades, marked by two preventable space shuttle disasters and now mired in a risky and expensive undertaking to build a huge space station in orbit, a task many consider the most complicated engineering project ever attempted by humans.

While that in and of itself is a noble effort, the space station has never stoked public enthusiasm like the Apollo moon program. Maybe NASA was just ahead of its time.

Fifty years after the first forays beyond Earth’s atmosphere, with space well established as a staging ground for communications, reconnaissance and scientific research, NASA shared a dais with the deputy National Security advisor and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, lending its formidable and presumably impartial technical expertise to the unprecedented action the president wants to take to remove a spacecraft from orbit.

It is likely that millions of people who no longer follow the seemingly endless trials and tribulations of space station construction were suddenly aware that a space shuttle crew was in orbit. We were told the shuttle would land before the military strike to prevent the ship from flying through a cloud of wreckage as it re-entered the atmosphere that would result from the satellite’s destruction. We were told the strike would not endanger the space station, which orbits much higher than the planned target zone and which has astronauts and cosmonauts living in it full-time.

It is difficult to imagine Griffin’s immediate predecessors at this type of briefing, having neither the technical stature or political detachment to explain the nuances of rocket fuel toxicity or ballistic re-entry profiles.

Whether or not you believe the Pentagon’s rationale for removing the satellite -- to reduce the already miniscule chance of the satellite endangering populated areas -- or favor one of the alternative explanations -- a controversial and possibly illegal anti-satellite technology demonstration, or to prevent the spread of highly classified technology should intact parts of the satellite be salvageable -- NASA clearly had a seat at the grown-ups table.

A New Home in Space

No one can accuse the Europeans of impatience. With their human space program dependent on the United States and Russia, attempts to place a full-time research laboratory in orbit have been on hold since 2002.

First it was the Russia’s fault, which was having financial problems and couldn’t launch the space station’s main control module on time. Then it was U.S. problems with the space shuttle, horribly exposed by the fatal Columbia accident, that delayed the European lab’s launch.

NASA tried to fly in December, but found itself buzzed by an old problem with fuel sensors. Which brings us to today, launch day … maybe.

NASA’s oldest and most persistent launch detractor is Mother Nature, who plays hard and fast when it comes to weather at NASA’s oceanfront central Florida launch site. Today’s predicament: the cold front that spawned killer tornadoes in the southeastern U.S. is heading our way, stripped of power but with enough of an entourage of clouds and rain to prompt meteorologists’ rather pessimistic 70 percent no-go forecast for a 2:45 p.m. launch try. You can follow today's events on NASA's webcast.

Asked? Answered!

Gee, sometimes the universe is extraordinarily direct. No sooner did I post a sympathetic by whiny blurb about spaceship builder Burt Rutan’s cone of silence, than the man materializes at a posh New York show-and-tell alongside the ever-smiling Sir Richard Branson with blueprints and mockups of the people’s spaceship.

Of course it’s beautiful, as are all Rutan’s winged creatures. After the hubbub, it’s back to work to finish up work on SpaceShipTwo and its carrier ship in hopes of beginning test flights later this year.

Here are some scenes from the event:

And this interview from a very lucky blogger: