The President of Free Space, Part 2: Legacy of George Bush

September 02, 2008

The inertia that defines the George Bush presidency may be a blessing for the space program. I’m not saying that facetiously. For all I know, Bush’s passivity (some may say willful blindness) may be a skill he
has honed throughout his life, like a parent practicing patience. The Iraq flak at least should have taught him the dangers of going off half-cocked.

I refer to presidential candidate John McCain’s request for Bush to suspend the shutdown of the space shuttle program, pending further study (post election.) McCain is listening to folks who are 1) scared of losing their jobs; and/or 2) outraged that America, the leader of the free world, the king of off-planet pursuits, will soon be in the unseemly position of depending on foreigners for rides to space.

Personally, if McCain is such a maverick and really concerned that riding in Russian spaceships is poor form, especially with Russia thumping its neighbors, I think he should look into using Chinese spaceships to taxi crews to the space station. I’d bet that would get the Russians attention.

The fact is that unless the military has a secret space plane, or someone in the commercial sector lets loose a fly-pod, there will be five or more years when this country will have no means to launch people into orbit. That’s the price we pay for choices already made. It may be of some consolation to know that the people who FLY the shuttle for a living believe it is in the country’s best interests to let it die. It’s become a Terri Schiavo.

Chances are, the Bush space legacy will be a boon for whoever wins the presidency. All Bush has to do is do nothing and the shuttle shutdown will continue undisturbed. If it gets too uncomfortable in the gap -- the years between the shuttle’s retirement in 2010 and the debut of a replacement ship in 2015 or so -- the new prez can honestly claim it’s not his fault, though the last thing we need in this country is another poster child for victim mentality.

Finally, rather than mooning over the past and trying to delay the inevitable, McCain could rally around space workers who have taken the plunge into new careers and explain how their big brains and disciplined behaviors are now helping businesses create new economic engines to drive this country out of recession. It happened once before after the Apollo program. Obama has been making good use of its progeny to wind McCain’s clock. It’s called the digital revolution.

The President of Free Space, Part 1

(George Bush waves good-bye to a television picture of astronauts in orbit after a congratulatory phone call. White House photo by Paul Morse.)

No Rest for the Myth-Makers

August 28, 2008

This is probably a bad thing for a Discovery Channel columnist to admit but I don’t watch TV much. I was curious, however, to see how the guys on Mythbusters were going to tackle a rather irritating contention that the United States never landed on the moon.

Parts of the show are pretty goofy, but I enjoyed watching a chop-chop version of the scientific process in action. I hope I’m not ruining the ending for anyone who missed it last night and wants to catch a re-run, but Mythbusters says the only hoax going on is the one put forth by people who say the moon landings are a hoax.

Unfortunately, this probably won’t make a whit of difference to anyone who doesn’t ascribe to rationality and logic -- the foundations of science, even science-lite like Mythbusters -- and it’s concerning that these attributes have waned faster than the bull market.

Leaving aside the really big issues like creationism/intelligent design vs. evolution (Hey, Mythbusters: will you take THAT on??), let’s ponder for a moment the renewed call to keep the space shuttles flying so we don’t have to depend on those pesky Georgia-stomping Ruskies for rides to the space station.

Although it’s nice to see presidential candidates caring enough about space exploration to squeeze it into their busy days, the latest volley by John McCain seems a bit like a soft-boiled egg.

His call to President Bush to suspend plans to retire the shuttle (at least until after the election, says my sardonic side) because we just don’t know if we can trust our Russian partners pretty much misses the fact that we’re already beyond wedded. We’ve merged. Whether Russia flies our astronauts or not really doesn’t matter since that house in space can’t be divided.

For example, we can go on flying the shuttle to the station until the next accident, but it won’t change the fact that the spaceships standing by to transport crewmembers home in case of an emergency are Russian-made, Russian-operated, Russian-owned. The United States made the decision years ago to leave lifeboats to the Russians.

The new ships being developed to replace the shuttle CAN be used as lifeboats too, though the primary design driver is to get them to the moon.

These decisions were not made lightly. They stemmed from the highly acclaimed work of the board that investigated the 2003 Columbia disaster, which went above and beyond the call of duty by not only proving the equipment breakdowns that triggered the accident and the blind spots in managers’ mindsets that nurtured false assumptions, but also recommendations on what to do next. Topping the list? Retire or recertify the shuttle. The board determined NASA had been flying the ships without keeping up on how real-world conditions, as opposed to engineering models and simulations, were affecting them.

Like most of us individually, NASA learned the hard way. Being of sound mind and limited budget (recertification was estimated to be about as expensive as creating new ships), NASA pushed for the shuttles retirement so it could use the funds for a new endeavor.

Rational, logical --- and, unfortunately, becoming passé.

(Photos: NASA)

Let's Steal the Soyuz

June 11, 2008

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 ….

The Long Kiss Good-Night

March 17, 2008

With the addition of Japan to the growing abode in Earth orbit, it’s taking longer and longer for International Space Station crew to say hello and good-bye to ground control teams every day.

First there’s the wakup call from Mission Control in Houston. Then, the radio link passes to the U.S. science ground control team in Huntsville, Alabama.

A hop across the ocean brings Europe’s flight control center in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany in queue for an orbital tag-up, and then it’s on to Russia’s Mission Control Center in Korolev, a suburb of Moscow. Last up is the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Tsukuba Space Center, located outside of Tokyo.

At each stop around the world, flight controllers chat with the crew, giving instructions for the day, asking about developments and providing news from home. At night, there’s another round of talks to settle things down for the day and prepare for tomorrow.

NASA Comes of Age

February 18, 2008

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.

Terra firma

January 16, 2008

A humble and soft-spoken Korean computer expert slated to be the first from his country to fly in space had a press debut on Tuesday at a briefing televised from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Ko San was at the end of a lineup of Russian and U.S. fliers, most rookies like himself, and all of whom will be heading to the space station in the next few months.

He spoke about the long training at Star City in Russia and how honored he was to have been selected to fly: “I think I was not the best one, but I am the luckiest,” were Ko’s gracious words. But what really echoed were the man’s wish for his divided country to rejoin and the poignant gesture he plans from orbit.

“I’m going to bring the soil of North and South Korea. I’m going to mix them up in space,” Ko said.

He launches in April with two Russian cosmonauts on a Soyuz rocket. South Korea is paying Russia about $28 million for Ko’s ride and 10-day stay on the station.