| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Tech Transfer Services for You
- Managed Elevated Privileges Continues - Organizations/Social
- Join the NASA-wide Fitness Challenge: NASA MOVES!
- Starport Adult Sports Leagues
- HUNCH Design Fair
- JSC Weight Watchers at Work Open House
- JSC HSI ERG - Pesentation and Monthly Meeting
- IEEE EMC Mtg: Validation of Computational Emag
- JSC Toastmasters - Wednesday Nights - Jobs and Training
- Job Opportunities - Community
- Lost in Space Camp
- Summer Underwater Robotics Camps |  |
| Headlines - Tech Transfer Services for You
Stop by the Technology Transfer table in the Buildings 3 and 11 cafés to pick up copies of NASA Spinoff and NASA Innovation magazines. You can also meet members of the Technology Transfer Office, who will share details about the importance of new technology reporting and will answer your questions about other tech transfer-related services such as patenting and patent licensing, software release and more. Mark your calendars! While you grab lunch, you can find out how your work may be even more beneficial to NASA, JSC and society than you imagined. The Tech Transfer Booth schedule is as follows: Building 11: Monday through Thursday, May 19 to 22, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Building 3: Tuesday through Friday, May 27 to 30, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. - Managed Elevated Privileges Continues
On Tuesday, May 20, Managed Elevated Privileges (MEP) continues with the EA Engineering Directorate Offices and begins in EC. MEP controls admin rights (Elevated Privileges, or EP) on NASA computers and allows users to request EP when needed. Users must complete SATERN training before submitting any requests for EP. All users, especially those scheduled for MEP deployment, are strongly urged to complete the SATERN training for "Basic Users" (Elevated Privileges on NASA Information System - ITS-002-09). Users can coordinate with their supervisor, OCSO or organization IT point of contact to determine the level of EP they may need beyond "Basic User" and any additional training required. The next scheduled deployment date is May 27, which will continue with the EC1 through EG org codes. For more information, go to the MEP website or contact Jannet Johnson at x36394. Organizations/Social - Join the NASA-wide Fitness Challenge: NASA MOVES!
The NASA Office of the Chief Health and Medical Officer at NASA Headquarters is sponsoring a two-week, agencywide fitness competition called NASA MOVES! from Sunday, May 18, through Saturday, May 31. All NASA employees (civil service, contract, temporary and part-time) are encouraged to join the JSC team. To participate, you must sign up online and enter your activity steps. A wide range of physical activities can be converted into steps -- not just walking -- so everyone can participate. This initiative is designed to get people moving, but it is also a competition between centers, and we want to win! The winning center will be calculated by taking their recorded steps divided by workforce population. That means we need everyone to sign up. Only at JSC -- You will be entered to win one of 10 Fitbits when you sign up! Visit the link below to sign up and find out more information about how to count your steps. - Starport Adult Sports Leagues
Come join the Starport Athletics adult sports leagues. We offer a plethora of leagues that range from men's and co-ed softball to even dodgeball. Come check us out! Right now our summer season registration is starting to open for most sports. Hurry and take advantage of the great leagues we offer here at Starport! - HUNCH Design Fair
High School Students United with NASA to Create Hardware (HUNCH) students will present their projects for possible use aboard the International Space Station at a design fair located in the Gilruth Alamo Ballroom on Wednesday, May 21, from 9 a.m. to noon. All NASA civil servants and contractors are welcome to attend. - JSC Weight Watchers at Work Open House
Would you like to lose weight, learn to live a healthier lifestyle and possibly make some new friends doing it? JSC Weight Watchers at Work will be hosting an open house TODAY, May 19, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. This open house will provide information and registration for the next 17-week session, which begins later this month and runs through September. Meetings will be Mondays during lunchtime. We have our meetings in Building 12, a more central location that is also close to the cafés. We need at least 15 active participants to continue having at-work meetings here on-site, so if you've been thinking about joining, now is a great time! Event Date: Monday, May 19, 2014 Event Start Time:11:30 AM Event End Time:12:30 PM
Event Location: Bldg. 12, Rooms 148 & 150
Add to Calendar
Jason Morrow x42234
[top] - JSC HSI ERG - Pesentation and Monthly Meeting
The Human Systems Integration (HSI) Employee Resource Group (ERG) is proud to host Dr. Barrett Caldwell for a presentation and discussion tomorrow, May 20, at 11:30 a.m. Caldwell is a professor of industrial engineering at Purdue University, where he directs the GROUPER Lab—a research lab focused on group information flow, knowledge-sharing and task coordination for applications on Earth and in space. Caldwell also leads the Indiana Space Grant Consortium, which funds student opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math, including scholarships, fellowships and internships. His talk and discussion will include these topics, as well as his recent work in human-automation interaction and systems engineering. We hope you can join us for a stimulating discussion! Caldwell will be visiting JSC from May 19 to 20. If you are interested in meeting with him to discuss his work or potential collaboration opportunities, please contact Beto Sanchez. - IEEE EMC Mtg: Validation of Computational Emag
Dr. Alistair Duffy, a reader in Electromagnetics at De Montfort University in Leicester, Great Britain, will present "Validation of Computational Electromagnetics." Computer simulation of electromagnetics is widespread thanks to the continuous improvement in computational resources and the increased efficiency of the software tools themselves. Easy-to-use interfaces make it easier for non-experts to use the tools, so care must be taken over the validation of those tools. This talk discusses the work the IEEE EMC Society is doing to provide a framework to undertake that validation and developments in the heuristic comparison technique, FSV, that is used to quantify the comparison data as part of the standard itself. Duffy is a fellow of the IET and a board member of the IEEE EMC Society. Lunch is available for $8. Please RSVP indicating lunch or no lunch. Event Date: Thursday, May 22, 2014 Event Start Time:11:30 AM Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Discovery Room - Gilruth Recreation Center
Add to Calendar
George May 281-226-8543
[top] - JSC Toastmasters - Wednesday Nights
Looking to develop speaking and leadership skills? Ignite your career? Want to increase your self-confidence, become a better speaker or leader and communicate more effectively? Then JSC Toastmasters is for you! Members attend meetings each Wednesday from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Gilruth Center Longhorn Room. JSC Toastmasters weekly meetings are learn-by-doing workshops in which participants hone their speaking and leadership skills in a pressure-free atmosphere. Membership is open to anyone. Jobs and Training - Job Opportunities
Where do I find job opportunities? To help you navigate to JSC vacancies, use the filter drop-down menu and select "JSC HR." The "Jobs" link will direct you to the USAJOBS website for the complete announcement and the ability to apply online. Lateral reassignment and rotation opportunities are posted in the Workforce Transition Tool. To access: HR Portal > Employees > Workforce Transition > Workforce Transition Tool. These opportunities do not possess known promotion potential; therefore, employees can only see positions at or below their current grade level. If you have questions about any JSC job vacancies or reassignment opportunities, please call your HR representative. Community - Lost in Space Camp
San Jacinto College Aerospace Academy is offering a summer camp for students ages 14 to 18 years old. Camp experiences will include geocaching, GPS tracking and mapping of the International Space Station, basic electronics instruction, tours of JSC, professional speakers and much more! All who are interested in our Lost in Space camp will be required to complete our application and essay forms. The application deadline is May 28. A small number of scholarships will be awarded for this camp. - Summer Underwater Robotics Camps
San Jacinto College Aerospace Academy's Water-Bot camps explore the underwater world of remote-operated vehicles (ROVs) and the real-world applications of this exciting field. The exploration continues in three different levels based on experience. The beginner camp will offer basic electronics and robotic construction. The intermediate camp will build upon beginner skills and add complex engineering design. The advanced camp will be a two-week master class in constructing algorithms in scripting languages and working with advanced electronics and hardware design. Camp dates are in June and July. Please visit our website for more information. If you would like to volunteer as a guest speaker or advanced team mentor, please visit V-CORPs to sign up! | |
| |
| JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters. |
NASA and Human Spaceflight News
Monday – May 19, 2014
Morpheus:
A father-son chat leads to first-of-its-kind NASA spacecraft
Thom Patterson – CNN
HEADLINES AND LEADS
SpaceX Dragon returns to Earth from space station
Marcia Dunn - AP
The commercial cargo ship Dragon returned to Earth from the International Space Station on Sunday, bringing back nearly 2 tons of science experiments and old equipment for NASA.
U.S.-Russia tension could affect space station, satellites
Ralph Vartabedian, W.J. Hennigan – Los Angeles Times
The escalating tension between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine has reached a new altitude: space.
Save the ISS
Op-Ed- Houston Chronicle
Russia threatens the space station's future, but so do U.S. budget cuts.
The international crisis in eastern Ukraine took to low Earth orbit last week with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin's announcement that his country has set a 2020 end date for the International Space Station. Apparently the United States is an "unreliable partner" for "major high-technology projects."
Adrift
Eric Berger – Houston Chronicle
As NASA seeks next mission, Russia holds the trump card
As an uncommonly brisk night fell over Houston last week a tiny Russian spacecraft, bathed in blinding sunlight, re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and plunged toward a dusty steppe in Kazakhstan.
Declare space independence from Russia: Column
Rand Simberg – USA Today
But Congress doesn't seem to think the space program is important enough.
For the past two decades, NASA has partnered with the Russians on the International Space Station, as a result of the decision by the early Clinton administration to make it a joint venture after what was thought to be the end of the Cold War. The idea was to give Russian space engineers an alternative to selling their services to bad actors such as North Korea and Iran (some wags called it "Midnight Basketball for the Russians").
European Mars mission caught in US-Russia tensions
Jeff Foust – Space Politics
Since the start of the Ukraine criss, the United States and Russia have exchanged space-related sanctions and other measures in recent weeks. Canada, meanwhile, pulled several small satellites that were scheduled to launch in June on a Soyuz. (Russia has subsequently delayed the overall launch for "organizational reasons.")
U.S. Sanctions, Russian Response Fraying Once-strong Space Ties
Warren Ferster – Space News
Escalating tensions between Moscow and Washington threaten to upend the cooperative relationships, forged nearly two decades ago following the Soviet Union's breakup, that today are integral to some of America's most important civil and military space activities.
Fed's cuts are adding concern at NASA Glenn
Chuck Soder – Crain's Cleveland Business
Local officials and union leaders worry job losses are next
The cuts have stopped NASA Glenn from pumping tens of millions of dollars into two big high-tech projects — projects that could help protect the center at a time when the broader federal agency is looking to jettison resources it doesn't need.
Colorado Springs astronaut sees bright future for manned space flight
Tom Roeder - Colorado Springs (CO) Gazette
Col. Jim Dutton has a simple message for Air Force Academy cadets who ask him about his time as an astronaut.
Astronaut returns home to U of I to give commencement address
Juan Perez Jr. – Chicago Tribune
Forgive U.S. Air Force Col. Michael Hopkins if he seems a bit rushed.
NASA's Asteroid-Capture Mission May Test New Method to Defend Earth
NASA's bold plan to park an asteroid near the moon may also test out a new way to protect Earth from dangerous space rocks.
COMPLETE STORIES
SpaceX Dragon returns to Earth from space station
Marcia Dunn - AP
The commercial cargo ship Dragon returned to Earth from the International Space Station on Sunday, bringing back nearly 2 tons of science experiments and old equipment for NASA.
SpaceX's Dragon splashed into the Pacific, just five hours after leaving the orbiting lab.
"Welcome home, Dragon!" the California-based company said via Twitter.
After a one-month visit, the SpaceX cargo ship was set loose Sunday morning. Astronaut Steven Swanson, the station commander, released it using the big robot arm as the craft zoomed more than 260 miles above the South Pacific.
"Very nice to have a vehicle that can take your science, equipment and maybe someday even humans back to Earth," Swanson told Mission Control.
The SpaceX Dragon is the only supply ship capable of returning items to Earth. The others burn up on re-entry. This was the fourth Dragon to bring back space station goods, with 3,500 pounds aboard; it came down off Mexico's Baja California coast.
NASA is paying SpaceX and Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. to make station deliveries. Orbital is next up, next month. Russia, Europe and Japan also make occasional shipments.
SpaceX also is competing for the right to ferry station astronauts, perhaps as early as 2017.
The Dragon rocketed to the space station on April 18 with a full load and arrived at the orbiting lab two days later.
U.S.-Russia tension could affect space station, satellites
Ralph Vartabedian, W.J. Hennigan – Los Angeles Times
The escalating tension between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine has reached a new altitude: space.
In the aftermath of the Cold War, the two superpowers set aside their mistrust and agreed to build a massive orbiting outpost as a symbol of a new era of cooperation in space exploration. But now that partnership is under serious strain.
After Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin this week said his nation might no longer allow U.S. astronauts access to its launch vehicles and may use the International Space Station without American participation, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee pressed NASA for answers about the how the U.S. could respond.
Since the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet, Russia has provided launches for U.S. astronauts, at $71 million each.
"Dropping out of ISS is a high-profile move on Russia's part," said Marco A. Caceres, space analyst for the aerospace research firm Teal Group Corp. of Fairfax, Va. "They're pulling the rug out from under the Americans. It's a move of national pride that plays well in Russia."
Indeed, after railing against U.S. sanctions in response to Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region, Rogozin, chief of the Russian space and defense sectors, suggested that "the U.S.A. ... bring their astronauts to the International Space Station using a trampoline."
Rogozin's threat is too significant for the U.S. to ignore, said Loren B. Thompson, an aerospace and defense expert at the Lexington Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
"The central assumptions of the Obama administration space policy are no longer valid," he said.
The space station is just one example of how the trouble in Ukraine is undermining aerospace trade between the two leaders in space travel. Russia has threatened to suspend exports of rocket engines, which are used to help launch U.S. Air Force satellites. And it has threatened to suspend cooperation on navigational systems that depend on outposts in Russia.
The U.S. helped fund the Russian program in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. And when the shuttle Columbia burned up on reentry in 2003, killing seven, the Russians agreed to help ferry U.S. astronauts back and forth to space.
The $100-billion orbital outpost, often cited as the most expensive machine ever built, has a series of modules and power systems, some Russian, some American and others from a range of international partners. The U.S. hardware produces most of the station's electricity, but the Russian propulsion system helps keep the station in orbit.
Now, that combination of hardware could cause a major headache. Under legal agreements, the U.S. has an upper hand in controlling the space station, but Rogozin said his nation could operate its modules independently of the United States.
In a House hearing at the end of March, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said the agency's partner is not Russia itself, but rather the Russian space agency, a distinction that many analysts dismissed.
The House science committee sent a letter to Bolden on Thursday seeking an assessment of a Russian withdrawal from the space station program after 2020. Though the partnership is not yet broken, the committee wants to know what options the U.S. has if Rogozin's threats become reality.
The issue involves broad engineering and legal issues that may be new: Could the space station be separated into two parts? Who owns key systems? What would happen to life science research, and how would such a breakdown in cooperation affect political support for human space flight?
When the U.S. and Russia agreed to build the station in 1993, neither country had the political will to construct such an ambitious project by itself. For years the space station has been considered a symbol of how cooperation among nations may yield bigger results than any single effort.
But that was then.
"This is a step back toward the Cold War days," Caceres said of the current climate. "It's the beginning of a freeze on a great relationship that's been forged over the last two decades."
NASA ultimately wants private companies to take astronauts to the station by 2017, but that hardware is still in development.
Officials with NASA said they did not yet have a response to the committee's letter but issued a statement, which said in part:
"NASA has not received any official notification from the government of Russia on any cessation or changes in our space cooperation at this point. Operations on the ISS continue on a normal basis with the safe return of the Expedition 39 crew May 13 and the expected launch of another crew in two weeks."
Separately, Rogozin has said Russia intends to stop supplying the U.S. with rocket engines that are used in launching military satellites into orbit.
United Launch Alliance, a joint rocket venture of aerospace giants Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp., uses a Russian-made engine on its Atlas V rocket.
The RD-180 engine provides the main thrust for the rocket, which launches the government's pricey, school-bus-sized national security satellites for spying, weather forecasting, communications and experimental purposes.
In the wake of Russia's seizure of Crimea, the Pentagon asked the Air Force to review United Launch Alliance's use of the engine.
United Launch Alliance said it was not aware of any restrictions. But even if an embargo on selling the engines takes effect, the company says it has stockpiled a two-year supply. It also has another family of rockets, called Delta IV, which uses all U.S.-made rocket engines.
"We are hopeful that our two nations will engage in productive conversations over the coming months that will resolve the matter quickly," said Jessica Rye, a company spokeswoman.
Save the ISS
Op-Ed- Houston Chronicle
Russia threatens the space station's future, but so do U.S. budget cuts.
The international crisis in eastern Ukraine took to low Earth orbit last week with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin's announcement that his country has set a 2020 end date for the International Space Station. Apparently the United States is an "unreliable partner" for "major high-technology projects."
This builds on Rogozin's tweet after the first U.S. sanctions for Russia invading Crimea, in which he threatened the United States' reliance on Russia to deliver astronauts to the space station: "I suggest U.S. delivers its astronauts to the ISS with a trampoline."
Considering that NASA has not received any formal word about changing relations, Rogozin's crowing may prove to be empty threats. Politicians around the world rely on bluster, and Rogozin is no different. But Russia does not have to do much of anything to end the ISS; limited budgets and established timelines will doom the station on their own. And Houston will feel the consequences.
With our manned space program indeterminately postponed, the Johnson Space Center's key remaining duty is to serve as ground control for the ISS. If the station ends up on the ocean floor at the end of the decade, JSC might as well follow, along with all the support contractors, thousands of Houston-area jobs and the entire concept of Space City.
Houston cannot allow the International Space Station to fail.
Ever since the retirement of former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Johnson Space Center has been wanting for a powerful advocate in Washington. Like the ISS itself, Houston needs a diverse group of representatives to unite in common cause.
The White House has been working to extend the ISS' mission to 2024, if not longer. Adding a few more years of life may up the monetary ante, but the ISS represents an important investment in space exploration that we shouldn't merely abandon because of arbitrary end dates. Humanity's only outpost beyond our planet serves as an important testing ground for deeper missions into space, and letting it fall for want of funding would be a sad step backward for scientific progress.
Perhaps instead of the usual congressional junkets around the world — or Iowa and New Hampshire — our local representatives could take a trip down Interstate 45 and see firsthand what we have at stake.
NASA engineers have been making slow and steady progress on the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, which is supposed to serve as our next vehicle to orbit the moon and beyond. At the same time, private companies like SpaceX and Sierra Nevada have been building and testing their own manned spacecrafts.
But both public and private enterprises have suffered from severe budget cuts to our national space programs.
Our engineering and innovation is being stifled for want of funding while nations like China rush to catch up and maybe even surpass us.
Houston's economy should not be allowed to suffer because of poor politicking, and space should not be abandoned to some other nation.
The world has come a long way since the Apollo-Soyuz projects of the 1970s, when it seemed like space was the only refuge from the politics of the Cold War. Now Putin's cronies are trying to turn those international handshakes into strangleholds. Texas' congressional delegation would not hesitate to protect one of Houston's economic crown jewels from being crushed by a dictatorial fist, but few elected officials seem ready to save the Johnson Space Center from themselves.
Adrift
Eric Berger – Houston Chronicle
As NASA seeks next mission, Russia holds the trump card
As an uncommonly brisk night fell over Houston last week a tiny Russian spacecraft, bathed in blinding sunlight, re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and plunged toward a dusty steppe in Kazakhstan.
Of the three astronauts inside one was American, Rick Mastracchio, returning from a 188-day stay aboard the International Space Station. His arrival was closely watched in Houston, where Johnson Space Center has responsibility for U.S. human operations in space.
Here, in mission control, photographs of astronauts old and new line long halls. They offer a palpable reminder that these people have managed every Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle flight. Houston flight directors guided the moon landings, saved Apollo 13 and repaired the Hubble Space Telescope.
Over time, short-sleeve button-downs have given way to full dress shirts and blue blazers. Cigar chomping and fast talking have been replaced by purified air and hushed tones. And women, including the NASA flight director for Mastracchio's return, Dina Contella, have joined the ranks.
Yet until recently one thing had remained constant. Those within the photograph lined walls called the shots. They made the life and death decisions for astronauts soaring in the heavens above.
No longer. During last week's Soyuz landing, Contella could only spectate as the drama played out, in a different language, half a world away, aboard a spacecraft emblazoned with a Russian flag.
Such is today's space Realpolitik that, while the United States paid for most of the $140 billion space station, launched nearly all of it into orbit, and controls most of its day-to-day operations from Houston, Russia still holds the trump card: access.
"They have us right where they want us," said three-time NASA astronaut Mike Coats.
The mounting Ukraine crisis has highlighted the space agency's vulnerability, but this state of affairs is not new. Russia began embracing NASA in a bear hug right after the space shuttle retired in 2011.
Since that time Russia has substantially hiked the price of a trip to the International Space Station, to $71 million per seat. Less well recognized is the disparity in station crews. Before the shuttle stopped flying, an equal number of American and Russian crew members lived on board. But afterwards the bear began squeezing. For every two NASA astronauts that have flown to the station, three Russians have gone.
NASA doesn't advertise this, of course. It's an embarrassing reminder to the country's political leadership of how their legislative vagaries have cast the space agency adrift.
But that makes it no less real to those toiling in mission control. Before retiring at the end of 2012, Coats lived with this reality on a daily basis while running Johnson Space Center for seven years.
Sitting in his stately home a few miles from the space center, Coats is immaculately dressed in a suit, his white hair trimmed as neatly as one would expect from a former astronaut, aerospace executive and Navy pilot who flew 315 Vietnam combat missions. Having landed on an aircraft carrier hundreds of times Coats isn't easily rattled. He also doesn't sugarcoat things.
"Astronaut to cosmonaut, scientist to scientist, engineer to engineer, we've had a wonderful working relationship with the Russians," he said. "But politically, if they see an opportunity to exercise an advantage they have to do it. It's in their makeup. They view weakness as something to be taken advantage of.
"It's difficult dealing with Russians from a position of weakness, and we're doing that."
This weakness was amplified in April when the U.S. State Department required NASA to cut off contact with the Russian space program except for station business. Around the same time Russia's deputy prime minister over the country's space program, Dmitry Rogozin, was among the first seven Russians sanctioned by President Obama.
But Rogozin holds the trump card in space, and he's playing it. Perhaps, he said last week, Russia will no longer be interested in running the space station after 2020 as the United States wants. And if America doesn't like it? Too bad, he told his Twitter followers earlier this month.
"After analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest to the USA to bring their astronauts to the International Space Station using a trampoline," Rogozin tweeted in Russian.
"After analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest to the USA to bring their astronauts to the International Space Station using a trampoline," Rogozin tweeted in Russian
A taunting trampoline tweet.
During the 1960s America taught the Soviet Union a thing or two about spaceflight, and in the process helped establish democracy as superior to totalitarianism in the global mind.
Four decades after crushing the Soviet space program, however, the urgency reflected in the race to the moon has dissipated. Now, NASA is reduced to timidly paying Russia about $300 million annually for the privilege of flying its astronauts, packed like sardines, in cramped Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station. During their nearly three years of training for an ISS mission, U.S. astronauts now must spend as much as half that time away from home, principally in Russia.
It didn't have to be this way.
NASA has had a litany of programs -- including the Shuttle-C, Orbital Space Plane, JSC Shuttle II, Delta Clipper and X-34 -- to replace the shuttle before its retirement. All failed. Space program critics inside and outside government variously blame either inadequate funding from Congress, lackluster Democratic and Republican Presidential leadership, or poor NASA management.
During a widely hailed speech at NASA's Washington D.C. headquarters in 2004, President George W. Bush gave the space agency a vision to go back to the moon and settle space. This became known as the Constellation Program, and called for retiring the shuttle and building a new rocket, the Ares V, and spacecraft, Orion, to carry humans deeper into the cosmos. But Constellation never got the funds it was promised and development lagged.
Five years later, when President Obama came into office, there was already going to be a gap between the shuttle and a follow-on spacecraft for U.S. astronauts. Obama endorsed the quickest and cheapest means of filling the gap: paying U.S. companies to develop space taxis to reach the station. Obama, however, gave NASA almost no guidance on where its human program should go.
Congress didn't approve, so it underfunded the "commercial crew" plan advanced by Obama by more than $1 billion, and instead of having U.S. spacecraft flying astronauts to the station next year, commercial transportation won't be available until 2017 at the earliest.
During a subcommittee hearing earlier this month the subject of Russia's space related sabre-rattling came up. Sen. Richard Shelby asked NASA administrator Charles Bolden whether more money could help the U.S. commercial launch industry get astronauts to the space station within a year.
Space industry observers on Capitol Hill couldn't help but be struck by the inherent ironies: Shelby and his brethren in Congress on both sides of the aisle, they said, have caused many of NASA's problems by fully funding their own parochial interests, which they have turned into jobs programs for their districts and states, while neglecting the overall health of American space endeavors.
"It's a good question," Bolden said, demonstrating what undoubtedly struck many in the hearing room as the patience of Job.
The failure by the American government to prepare for the shuttle's inevitable retirement, and to articulate a plan for what was to come next, is for Chris Kraft an unmitigated disaster. He just might know. As America's first flight director, he is the man for whom mission control is named.
During his nine decades Chris Kraft has observed the entire arc of U.S. and Russian history in space, from the early days of desperately trying to catch the Soviets in space, to beating them to the moon, to now hitching rides to the space station on Russian capsules and being threatened by Russian officials.
"The cancellation of the space shuttle may be the biggest blunder ever made by the United States," Kraft said. "It's fairly obvious that no one in the government thought through what they were about to bring about when they made that decision."
Kraft isn't alone. A Houston scientist who studies the moon, Paul Spudis, served on a Presidential Commission tasked with implementing President Bush's vision in 2004. What has happened since then, he said, is appalling.
"I've never seen such a screwed up mess in my life as the way NASA is right now," he said.
With the shuttles in museums, the station is NASA's only operational piece of human spaceflight hardware, and will likely remain for at least a decade the only place for astronauts to go in space. Both Russia and the United States know that, without the station, they effectively have no human spaceflight program.
Only this lab, then, stands between the world's two historic space powers and obsolescence.
The space station is the most expensive single object ever built. There are critics, many of them, who say it is a white elephant. But in many ways the station was the logical next step for NASA in the late 1990s.
Practically, it provided meaningful work for the space shuttle, which brought pieces of the station to orbit in its payload bay. Politically, it offered President Clinton the opportunity to improve relations with post-Soviet Russia. And now that it's fully built, the station is finally hitting its stride as a unique science laboratory.
The station is also a useful waypoint for exploration beyond low-Earth orbit. Astronauts are working out the kinks in technologies, such as water recycling, essential for long trips from Earth. And by taking careful vital signs physicians are learning how to prepare astronauts for long duration missions in space.
Microgravity does all kinds of mysterious things to the human body. Some are harmful, such as a flattening of the eyeballs. Spaceflight physicians are very concerned about the potential for impaired vision on long-term flights. Space also makes some astronauts as much as 1 or 2 inches taller. During his flight, using a portable machine, Mastracchio underwent ultrasounds of his spine to help doctors understand why this occurs.
After Mastracchio returns home to his neighborhood, a subdivision in northern Clear Lake, he will return to his normal height.
He, like NASA's 42 other active astronauts, live scattered around Clear Lake, which was marsh and wilderness before NASA chose the site in 1961 for its new manned spaceflight center and turned it into one of Houston's largest suburbs. Less well known than the famous Apollo moonwalkers, today's astronauts blend into a community that celebrates their presence but does not impose on their lives.
With fewer flight opportunities now -- there's room for only four or five U.S. astronauts on the station in any given year compared to as many as 40 space shuttle berths a year -- the astronaut corps is shrinking. And without the station even this limited opportunity for NASA astronauts would go away. Houston's claim as home of the astronauts is not certain to endure.
This is one reason why NASA's desire to extend the station's life to at least 2024 is critical for Johnson Space Center, and why Russia's threats to abandon it earlier are so menacing. America simply can't operate the station on its own. For a variety of systems, such as keeping the station pointed in the right direction, there are essential pieces under separate Russian and American control.
"The station was designed to be operational with both crews, both mission control centers, working in conjunction," said Leroy Chiao, who commanded the space station a decade ago. "One side can't operate the station by itself."
During a private exchange of e-mails in August 2012, less than a month before he died, Neil Armstrong and a handful of other Apollo vets were grumbling about NASA's lack of a clear goals. They invoked a Yogiism describe the space agency, "If you don't know where you are going, you might not get there."
After Apollo 11, Armstrong left Houston and moved back to his native Ohio. But his imprint remains here.
Near the entrance to Johnson Space Center stands a grove of live and red oak trees planted to honor astronauts who have died, both in accidents and to natural causes.
Last year, at the base of a particularly large oak, the space center Armstrong called from the moon placed a concrete replica of boot prints he left in the lunar soil.
Today the breathtaking speed of the Apollo program seems almost incomprehensible. Engineers in Houston and around the country with comparatively rudimentary technology built three generations of spacecraft, a massive rocket and all of the equipment needed to explore the moon in less than a decade.
How did it do this? Armstrong knew. He left bootprints on the moon because NASA had a razor sharp vision and the funding to match it. America was going to the moon, President Kennedy said, and it was by God going to beat the Russians there.
NASA recognizes the importance of vision. Bolden, the agency's administrator, recites the proverb on the wall of the hearing room where he has testified before the House Science Committee: "Where there is no vision, the people perish."
For decades, stretching from Presidents Nixon to Obama, NASA's vision has been sending humans to Mars. But like his predecessors, Obama has failed to identify a series of missions NASA would need to fly to get there, establish a timeline for those missions, and provide the funds to do so. NASA presently is building a big rocket, the Space Launch System, to reach Mars. But the rub is that the rocket costs so much NASA has no money to actually fly missions anywhere close to Mars.
If everything goes really well, in about a decade, NASA might be able to send a robotic spacecraft to capture a small rock, tow it back to a location near the moon, and fly some astronauts to visit it. The White House wants this mission. Congress sees no value in such an exercise and has tried to block funding for it.
"Let me be very candid," Bolden said. "I am not baffled by opposition to anything that the President puts forward. Very blunt. Republicans don't like the President. They have stated very clearly that will oppose anything he puts forward, that they will not allow anything to go forward that gives him credit for anything, and I think that's very unfortunate. But that's politics."
With divided masters, uncertain funding and vague goals, NASA is left to tread water. In some cases literally, such as at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab about five miles from Johnson Space Center.
The buoyancy of water mimics the lack of gravity in space, and astronauts have trained in pools since the beginning of spaceflight. But as NASA contemplated a station none of its pools were big enough to practice the multitude of spacewalks required to build the orbiting laboratory. To build the station NASA would eventually undertake more than 150 spacewalks, more than doubling the number done to date in all of human spaceflight.
NASA began using the 202-foot long, 40-foot deep Neutral Buoyancy Lab in 1996. And up until the shuttle's retirement it was chock full of astronauts.
A partial mock-up of the station remains submerged here, but with station construction complete astronauts are far less frequent visitors.
Earlier this month NASA proudly tweeted photos of veteran astronauts Stan Love and Steve Bowen in the pool, testing tools and spacesuits that would be needed for the asteroid expedition the White House wants NASA to do. But the photos are far more revealing for what they didn't show.
They didn't show the large section of the pool that's cordoned off, which NASA has leased to oil-services companies to help keep the lights on at this historic facility. In a pool once used exclusively by astronauts, oil rig workers now practice survival techniques in the event their helicopter has to ditch in the ocean.
The photos also didn't show the remains of party that had been held the night before. The company Tracerco used the famous pool as a backdrop for a crawfish boil to fete attendees of the Offshore Technology Conference and show off its subsea scanning technology.
Thus NASA has its astronauts training for missions it won't do for at least a decade, and that it probably won't ever do. And the space agency is doing so in a pool it can't entirely afford any more.
Mastracchio's unglamorous return home last week in a Soyuz capsule has been described by some veteran astronauts as akin to going over Niagara Falls, in a barrel, on fire.
Around the world, in Houston, mission control could only watch for critical signs of success, such as parachute deployment, listen to Russian flight directors and review the data being relayed from Kazakhstan.
When he finally reached the ground Mastracchio remained far from home, but at least it was spring, and the landing spot on. All Soyuz astronauts undergo two nights of winter survival training in case their spacecraft landing goes awry, and they're stranded in the central Asian hinterlands for a couple of days. It's a far cry from the handshake with the NASA administrator on a sunny Florida runway that awaited most shuttle astronauts.
Having flown for 188 days in space, Mastracchio still had one more long flight, for the better part of a day, aboard a NASA Gulfstream III from Karaganda in Kazakhstan to home.
Then, at last, Houston was again in charge.
Declare space independence from Russia: Column
Rand Simberg – USA Today
But Congress doesn't seem to think the space program is important enough.
For the past two decades, NASA has partnered with the Russians on the International Space Station, as a result of the decision by the early Clinton administration to make it a joint venture after what was thought to be the end of the Cold War. The idea was to give Russian space engineers an alternative to selling their services to bad actors such as North Korea and Iran (some wags called it "Midnight Basketball for the Russians").
The initial cooperation was in building the facility itself (the Russians provided the initial module for construction in the late nineties). But during the two-and-a-half year gap in Shuttle operations after the loss of the Columbia in 2003, and now with the retirement of the Shuttle fleet itself almost three years ago, we have been totally dependent on their Soyuz launch system and capsule for astronaut access to and from it, and lifeboat services in the event of an emergency.
Since the Russian intervention in Ukraine began weeks ago, the nation's space agency has been whistling past the graveyard of potential implications for human spaceflight. In a news conference back on March 4, NASA administrator Charles Bolden declared: "I think people lose track of the fact that we have occupied the International Space Station now for 13 consecutive years uninterrupted, and that has been through multiple international crises," implying that this one would be no different. Both the U.S. (and Japanese and European) crews and the Russian crews are dependent on each other for the system to function. NASA has comforted themselves with the knowledge of how much pride Russia has historically taken in its space activities. The agency has repeatedly insisted that deteriorating relations on the ground wouldn't extend into orbit, and reportedly, they haven't done so yet.
But events took a turn for the worse on April 29th, when Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin made a veiled threat to cut off ISS access to the U.S., following the announcement of new State Department sanctions against Russia, including the potential cut off of satellite exports for them to launch. It wasn't a formal warning, but rather a tweet that NASA might want to consider using "a trampoline" to get its crews to the station. On Tuesday, he upped the ante, declaring that Russia would end the ISS partnership in 2020, which could effectively end the program, though NASA had previously announced an extension of it to 2024.
Rogozin, an unrepentant Stalinist (he reputedly once hung a picture of "Uncle Joe" on his office wall), oversees the Russian space program. He is considered by many to be an attack dog for Vladimir Putin. It may be bluster, or it may be a real threat. If it's the latter, it's not one that we should have to tolerate, except for ongoing bipartisan fecklessness from Congress.
There is only one realistic way to end our dependence on the Russians for space transportation: accelerate the Commercial Crew Program established by the Obama administration as a follow-on to the successful Cargo Resupply Services contracts initiated in the Bush administration (a CRS flight launched a couple weeks ago and is at the ISS currently). For over four years, the administration has been requesting the funding needed to get at least one, and preferably more than one provider capable of delivering crew to and from orbit. Every year, Congress has refused to adequately fund the program, instead diverting funds to the Space Launch System, a rocket with no defined mission other than keeping some of what remains of the former Shuttle work force employed. As administrator Bolden lectured them a few weeks ago in hearings on the Hill, their failure to provide requested funds has slipped the operational date from what would have been next year, out to at least 2017.
Instead, Congress continues to tell NASA to "save money" by narrowing down from three competitors to a single one immediately, using typical socialist arguments (from Republicans and Democrats alike) of the "inefficiency" of multiple providers. This, of course, ignores the fact that twice during the Shuttle program we were unable to get astronauts to orbit for over two years, because there was no backup to it after the Challenger and Columbia accidents, and that cost reduction comes only from ongoing competition.
But even that funding level wouldn't be necessary if Congress didn't have such skewed priorities. It is needed because of congressional insistence on changing from the successful CRS program model, which provided results at much lower cost than traditional NASA procurements, to go back to the standard NASA procedures that increase costs and delay schedule, ostensibly in the name of "safety" (despite the fact that those procedures themselves resulted in the loss of two orbiters and the deaths of 14 astronauts in the Shuttle program). In fact, in the NASA authorization bill marked up by the House space subcommittee on the same day as Rogozin's initial threat about trampolines, the phrase "safety is the highest priority" explicitly appears in reference to commercial crew. That implies, of course, that actually getting crew to orbit is a lower one, and that the priority can be achieved by not flying at all. Had it been the motto in the sixties, we'd have never gone to the moon.
There's an old story about a man who arrives late at a hotel, and is informed by the desk clerk that there are no rooms available. "Well," he asks,"what if I were the president? What would you do then?" The clerk avers that, in that circumstance, he might be able to accommodate him. "OK, then give me the room you'd give him."
Astronauts are paid to risk their lives. They accept it as part of the job. We have invested decades and many tens of billions of dollars in a space station that we cannot currently get to without buying rides from an adversary in a renewed Cold War with temperature rising. If it were really important to end our dependence on them, you can bet that NASA would figure out a way to do it and quickly, by rapidly modifying a SpaceX Dragon like that currently at the ISS. And in fact, on the same day that Rogozin tweeted his threat, Elon Musk of SpaceX responded with his own: "Sounds like this might be a good time to unveil the new Dragon Mk 2 spaceship that @SpaceX has been working on w @NASA. No trampoline needed." He announced that he will do so at the end of May.
But in its actions, Congress sends a clear message that it is not important. They could fix that, though, with a simple amendment to that bill when it gets to the House floor. Replace the word "safety" in that absurd phrase, and make it "having multiple means of getting Americans to orbit on American launch systems is the highest priority." And tell Rogozin to get his own trampoline.
Rand Simberg is an aerospace engineer and author of the forthcoming Safe is Not an Option.
European Mars mission caught in US-Russia tensions
Jeff Foust – Space Politics
Since the start of the Ukraine criss, the United States and Russia have exchanged space-related sanctions and other measures in recent weeks. Canada, meanwhile, pulled several small satellites that were scheduled to launch in June on a Soyuz. (Russia has subsequently delayed the overall launch for "organizational reasons.")
Europe has not followed, though, in part because of its closer ties with Russia's space program, such as the joint ExoMars program that features a 2016 orbiter mission and a 2018 rover mission. Speaking at the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) meeting in Washington on Tuesday, Rolf de Groot of the European Space Agency said that, so far, the crisis has not affected that cooperation. "Our member states have not instructed us to tone down on our cooperation with Russia," he said. "It might obviously be different if the European Commission started intervening in this process, but for now, there's no pressure."
However, US-Russia actions are having an effect on the 2016 orbiter, he said. The State Department is reviewing all export licenses to Russia, which has the potential to delay the mission's US-provided components, a complication for a mission that currently has limited slack in its schedule. "The effects of this on ExoMars are still to be determined," he said, adding that ESA is working with NASA's international relations office to convince the State Department to approve the license. "This needs to be resolved within a few weeks because that's all the margin we still have in the schedule. We hope that with a little bit of help from NASA, we can find a solution for the 2016 mission."
Ironically, this became an issue only because of NASA's decision in 2012 to terminate its original partnership with ESA on ExoMars. That forced ESA to turn to Russia to become a partner on the mission.
U.S. Sanctions, Russian Response Fraying Once-strong Space Ties
Warren Ferster – Space News
Escalating tensions between Moscow and Washington threaten to upend the cooperative relationships, forged nearly two decades ago following the Soviet Union's breakup, that today are integral to some of America's most important civil and military space activities.
The situation could still diffuse itself, U.S. experts said, but it nonetheless offers a cautionary tale about reliance on other countries for key strategic capabilities.
In retaliation for U.S. sanctions imposed following its incursion into Ukraine, Russia announced May 13 that it would end its participation in the international space station program after 2020 and prohibit the use of Russian-built rocket engines in launches of U.S. national security satellites.
Russia also announced that it would shut down 10 GPS signal-reception stations located throughout the country for scientific applications including seismology and geodynamics. This move, which would be effective June 1, is in response to U.S. stalling on Russia's proposal to place ground stations for its own Glonass satellite navigation system on U.S. territory, according to Russian officials, who added that it would have no impact on navigation capabilities.
The pronouncements on space station and rocket engines are far more serious, at least to the extent that Russia intends to follow through. The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama this year announced its intent to extend operations of the space station, the centerpiece of the U.S. human spaceflight program, from 2020 to 2024. The Russian-built RD-180 engine, meanwhile, powers the first stage of United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rocket, one of two main satellite-launching workhorses for the U.S. military space program.
The reprisals were announced by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and Oleg Ostapenko, head of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos. Rogozin, who oversees Russia's space activities, is one of 11 senior Russian officials singled out by the U.S. government for sanctions.
"We've repeatedly warned our colleagues at the political and professional levels … that sanctions are always a boomerang," Rogozin said, according to an English-language translation posted on the Russian government's official website. "They always come back around and are simply inappropriate in such sensitive spheres as cooperation in space exploration, production of spacecraft engines, and navigation, not to mention manned space flights."
In a separate announcement May 13, Russia said it plans to invest the equivalent of $52 billion into its space industry over the next six years. The money would go toward activities including infrastructure modernization, reorganizing and invigorating Russia's space industrial base, maintaining and replenishing existing satellite constellations, and laying the foundations of the nation's lunar and deep-space ambitions beyond 2020, according to Roscosmos.
Whether Moscow's tough talk will translate into action is unclear, however. Experts said Russia has a lot to lose by pulling back on cooperation with the United States, in large part because these activities are an important source of hard currency for its space industrial base.
"I think there is a large degree of bluster involved, particularly with respect to the ISS," said John Logsdon, founder and former director of the George Washington University's Space Policy Institute here.
In an emailed response to questions, Logsdon noted that 2020 is six years away — Rogozin made clear that Russia intends to fulfill its commitments to station until then — and that the Russian government is not necessarily of one mind on the matter.
"It is one, albeit highly placed, Russian, likely upset because he is the target of U.S. sanctions," Logsdon said. "What is more important is the messages Russia sends via confidential diplomatic channels, and at this point we do not know if they are saying the same thing privately that Rogozin is saying publicly."
The U.S. government was careful to exempt the space station and selected other activities from the sanctions, which otherwise bar trade in U.S. military and other high-tech goods and services with the named entities.
Russia built the station's core module, operates the facility jointly with NASA and currently provides the only means of transporting U.S. astronauts to and from the outpost.
NASA expects to restore independent U.S. access to station in 2017, but it is unclear whether the agency would — or could — continue operating station without Russian participation. Logsdon said it might be technically possible but likely would require expensive modifications to the facility.
Opinions seem to differ on whether Rogozin's announcement might complicate U.S. efforts to persuade station's other international partners to participate beyond 2020.
"The decision on whether or not to maintain the space station after 2020 is likely to turn on a large number of factors, of which the behavior of the Russian government is a small element," said Howard McCurdy, a professor of public affairs and public administration at the American University here and an expert on space policy.
But Logsdon said Rogozin's announcement presents a problem since station's European and Japanese partners are lukewarm at the prospect of extending their participation beyond 2020. "The whole issue of ISS extension is something that needs more top-level political attention among the U.S., Russia, and the other ISS partners," he said.
In a prepared statement, NASA spokesman Allard Beutel said space cooperation has long been a hallmark of U.S.-Russian relations, even during the Cold War, and that space station operations are continuing on a normal basis. "We have not received any official notification from the Government of Russia on any changes in our space cooperation at this point," he said.
More worrisome, according to Logsdon, is the prospect of new Russian restrictions on the use of the RD-180. These restrictions make sense from Moscow's strategic perspective and argue in favor of an accelerated program by the United States to develop an alternative engine, he said.
The Atlas 5 and Delta 4, both built and operated by Denver-based ULA, are used to launch the vast majority of U.S. national security payloads. The Atlas 5 also is used to launch civil space payloads, and could be used to launch astronauts to the space station starting in 2017.
Rogozin's ban on military use of the RD-180 may have been prompted by a recent U.S. federal court order that temporarily blocked ULA from purchasing the engines out of concern that such transactions might violate the sanctions. The court order, which was lifted after just a few days, was issued in the context of a lawsuit filed by rocket-maker Space Exploration Technologies Corp. that challenges U.S. Air Force plans to order 36 rocket cores from ULA on a sole-source basis.
In a statement, ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye said neither ULA nor the RD-180's Russian manufacturer, NPO Energomash, is aware of any specific restrictions on the use of the engines. "However," she said, "if recent news reports are accurate, it affirms that SpaceX's irresponsible actions have created unnecessary distractions, threatened U.S. military satellite operations, and undermined our future relationship with the International Space Station."
Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX is pushing hard to get into the U.S. national security launch business and has repeatedly cited ULA's dependence on the RD-180 as a liability.
Rye expressed hope that the United States and Russia will work together to quickly resolve the matter. She also said the Air Force and ULA, which is a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture, have contingency plans to deal with an interruption in RD-180 deliveries.
Roger Krone, vice president of Boeing Network and Space Systems, said any restrictions on the use of the RD-180 would not affect ULA's ability to fulfill the terms of its Air Force contract for 36 rocket cores. Between the RD-180 engines already on hand — ULA said it has a two-year supply — and the Delta 4, ULA can handle all of the missions called for under that contract, Krone told reporters here May 13.
Nonetheless, U.S. reliance on the RD-180 is increasingly being called into question by Congress, and the Pentagon is studying the feasibility of developing a U.S. alternative.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said May 14 that the committee will address the RD-180 issue during its scheduled May 21 markup of the defense authorization bill for 2015. The House version of that bill recommends that the Air Force spend $220 million next year to develop a U.S. alternative to the RD-180.
U.S. and Russian space activities became intertwined following the 1990-1991 breakup of the Soviet Union as part of a U.S. initiative to engage a key segment of the Russian military industrial complex that otherwise might have been inclined to sell its wares and knowhow to America's enemies. Russia was invited to join a space station program that was struggling with delays and cost overruns, while American space companies, with encouragement from Washington, sought to take advantage of proven Russian capabilities, especially in rocket hardware.
Logsdon said that engagement policy served the United States well for more than 15 years. "But it is time to reassess the degree of dependence the United States should be willing to accept, given the resurgence of Russian nationalism," he said.
Logsdon also said the current situation underscores the danger of reliance on other countries for key capabilities, especially given the often-stated U.S. desire to remain the world leader in space. "We have been trying for too long to have a leadership program on the cheap," he said.
Fed's cuts are adding concern at NASA Glenn
Chuck Soder – Crain's Cleveland Business
Local officials and union leaders worry job losses are next
The cuts have stopped NASA Glenn from pumping tens of millions of dollars into two big high-tech projects — projects that could help protect the center at a time when the broader federal agency is looking to jettison resources it doesn't need.
In response, local officials are trying to help NASA Glenn win federal funding for at least one of those space technology projects.
Because without that money, there's a real risk that more work could be moved from NASA Glenn to larger NASA centers in other states, according to officials from the Greater Cleveland Partnership and the union representing scientists and engineers at NASA Glenn.
That's bad news for the center's 3,300 employees and contractors, given how many other costs NASA Glenn already has cut in recent years, according to Nick Gattozzi, vice president of government advocacy at the Greater Cleveland Partnership, which is the region's chamber of commerce.
"There's only so much you can cut. At some point, you're going to get to employees," he said.
The Brook Park-based center has a lot of expertise related to aeronautics and technology development, but much of the work it does related to space travel — the biggest piece of NASA's budget — is doled out by other NASA centers.
Not having a leadership role on a marquee space technology project could make NASA Glenn's budget vulnerable to more cuts, according to Sheila Bailey, president of the Lewis Engineers and Scientists Association, a union at NASA Glenn.
For one, a NASA committee is trying to figure out how the overall federal agency can reduce the number of facilities it uses and cut other costs. It would be easier for that committee to move certain functions and projects if they are led by other centers, Bailey said.
That prospect should concern employees at some of the NASA's smaller, research-focused centers, she said.
"I think there are a lot of people ... at Glenn and Ames and Langley that are worried about that," she added.
Falling into a gap
Not having a lead role on a marquee project also makes it easier for Congress to shift money from NASA Glenn to larger centers with more political influence — or for larger centers to simply stop sending work to NASA Glenn, Bailey said.
Congress certainly hasn't been kind to NASA Glenn lately. For a few years now, lawmakers have blocked the White House's efforts to give more money to the center. Instead, NASA Glenn's budget has dropped by $126 million, or 18%, over the past five years.
Granted, Glenn is still slated to get about $581 million during this fiscal year, which is roughly in line with its budgets from 2008 and 2009. But the White House wanted the center to receive a lot more money, especially for its space technology budget. Congress, however, hasn't followed the Obama administration's lead.
It started when the administration said Glenn should get $126 million for space technology during the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2013. Congress didn't listen. So instead, Glenn got $54 million. And then the gap widened: For the current fiscal year, the administration upped its proposal to $168 million. Instead, the center's space technology budget was set at $33 million.
The lack of funding pushed Glenn to severely scale back the ambitions of its two biggest space technology projects. One of the project teams — which is developing a way to transport super-cold fuels through space — is slated to get just $7.5 million during the current fiscal year. That's 10 times less than what the White House proposed. So instead of testing the technology in flight, they'll have to do it on the ground.
Here comes the sun
Another team developing a solar-powered space propulsion system should get $12.6 million this fiscal year, a third of the proposed amount.
That propulsion system is especially important to NASA Glenn's future, according to the union and the Greater Cleveland Partnership. They're pushing hard to help the project win $62 million in federal funding next year, which is about five times what it receives now.
And Bailey said she's optimistic they could succeed. The NASA Glenn union — a chapter of the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers — has been lobbying Congress with the help of other NASA IFPTE chapters. The group got "a good response" from members of the U.S. House of Representatives, she said. The budget bill going through the House would give the federal agency slightly more money in fiscal 2015, and the way the bill allots the money comes close to what the union chapters asked for, Bailey said.
The bill doesn't say how much money NASA Glenn would receive, but Bailey said there's reason to believe Ohio would be treated well. Three Ohio representatives sit on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, including Marcy Kaptur, D-Toledo, whose district includes both NASA Glenn's main campus and Plum Brook Station, near Sandusky. Plus, last month, Bill Johnson, R-Marietta, was named to the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, which sets NASA policy.
Spheres of influence
The Senate is another story. The chamber, which has yet to propose a budget for NASA, typically provides more money for NASA than the House does, but no one from Ohio sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee. Other NASA centers have much more influence: The chair of the committee, Barbara Mikulski, fights hard for Goddard Space Flight Center, in her home state of Maryland; the vice chair, Alabama's Richard Shelby, does the same for Marshall Space Flight Center. They make it hard for centers like NASA Glenn to compete for funding and projects, according to Gattozzi, of the Greater Cleveland Partnership.
"It matters when ... the agency administrator is sitting at a hearing table, and that (committee) member is asking specific and direct questions that are important to that member's center or state," he said.
Gattozzi said he believes that NASA Glenn has the technical expertise to lead the development of the solar propulsion system and other high-tech projects. But if the center doesn't take on more of a leadership role when it comes to space travel projects, he fears that more work will leave Glenn for other states. If that keeps happening, it would be easier, politically, to close NASA Glenn, Gattozzi said.
"We want to avoid the death-by-a-thousand-cuts scenario," he said.
BRAC to the future?
NASA is in cost-cutting mode. Last year, the agency's inspector general issued a report reiterating that NASA has too much property, too much redundant equipment and too many old buildings. The report noted that NASA may need to put together an outside group similar to the Pentagon's Base Realignment and Closure Commission in order to consolidate or eliminate facilities.
For now, NASA's internal Technical Capability Assessment Team is assessing the problem itself, and Bailey prefers it that way. She doesn't think anyone at NASA is going forward with efforts to create a Pentagon-style BRAC commission.
That internal committee is designed to help NASA leadership "make informed decisions on investing/divesting strategically within the budget," according to information Bailey forwarded from an internal NASA web page.
It's unclear whether that committee would recommend closing down many facilities, or whether it would go so far as to recommend closing an entire NASA center.
That idea is unpopular, but it keeps coming up, Gattozzi said.
"Every couple of years, buried in a document, is a phrase that talks about shuttering ... centers," he said.
Colorado Springs astronaut sees bright future for manned space flight
Tom Roeder - Colorado Springs (CO) Gazette
Col. Jim Dutton has a simple message for Air Force Academy cadets who ask him about his time as an astronaut.
"Everything is better in space," the academy engineering professor who once piloted a space shuttle tells them.
America's manned spaceflight programs have been on hiatus since the shuttle program was shelved in 2011, but Dutton thinks cadets who want to become astronauts have a bright future.
"I think their timing is great," he said.
NASA is working on new vehicles to fill the gap left by the shuttle. The largest is Orion, designed to take astronauts beyond Earth's orbit. Other vehicles in the program are commercial alternatives to what was once the realm of governmental efforts.
The commercial crew program has drawn efforts from two Colorado companies, Sierra Nevada Corp. of Louisville and Denver-based United Launch Alliance.
Sierra Nevada is developing its Dream Chaser spaceplane and ULA is working on a version of its Atlas V rocket to launch manned capsules.
"By 2024 to 2034, we ought to be flying these vehicles and going to destinations," Dutton said.
Dutton says it's no surprise the future of America's space program is heavily vested in Colorado, home to the nation's second-largest aerospace community, trailing only California.
"This is a mecca for where space is going," he said.
After his 1991 graduation from the academy, Dutton aimed his career at the stars. He trained as a test pilot and helped to develop the F-22 stealth fighter.
He said efforts in space have been a boon for other civilian industries that have learned new manufacturing methods, developed new materials and invested in raw science that pays off in orbit and on the ground.
As NASA builds toward a manned mission to Mars aboard the Colorado-built Orion spacecraft, more innovation is certain, Dutton said.
"The design challenges of going to Mars are leaps and bounds beyond going to the moon," he said.
Dutton piloted a shuttle that hauled building materials and supplies to the International Space Station. He was the last rookie to fly the shuttle, which had only veterans aboard its final four flights.
He was in orbit for two weeks.
Dutton says he sees a growing American appetite for space exploration as orbital spaceflight moves to commercial firms.
"We're going to see the role of government is exploration beyond Earth orbit," he said.
Selected as an astronaut in 2004, Dutton quickly learned that the demands of the space shuttle program are massive.
"I was drinking from a proverbial fire hose for the next year," he said of his introduction to shuttle training.
But six years of hard work paid off in one launch.
It's an experience he hopes his cadets can repeat.
"It's hard to beat," he said.
Astronaut returns home to U of I to give commencement address
Juan Perez Jr. – Chicago Tribune
Forgive U.S. Air Force Col. Michael Hopkins if he seems a bit rushed.
A printout of today's schedule is tucked into his pants pocket, detailing the events the NASA astronaut must tackle before he travels to deliver tomorrow's graduation address at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. The aerospace engineer's mind is already planning how to make it to his next destination on time. Turns out the rush of Michigan Avenue presents a different challenge from his hours-long spacewalks to repair a faulty pump outside the International Space Station.
"I can get into space, but I can't get a cab in Chicago," the 45-year-old jokes.
Hopkins has traveled millions of miles — more than 70 million — since he graduated from the University of Illinois in 1991. The Missouri native and two cosmonauts launched from a Kazakh spaceport in September and spent 166 days in space — completing 2,656 orbits of Earth, and yes, traveling more than 70 million miles aboard the International Space Station.
Sometimes it's hard to keep a normal perspective from that altitude, he said.
The sight of Caribbean beaches from that altitude "just takes your breath away," he said. "Those waters are stunning."
Hopkins watched sand spray off windswept Saharan dunes, and how they contrasted with the green circles of American cropland. The polar vortex that battered the region this winter certainly looked different from the cabin of a climate-controlled space station.
"The way the snow sat on the land made for interesting pictures," he said.
Then there was the sight of home, near Lake of the Ozarks, Mo., and the emotion of "knowing that your wife and kids are right there as you're passing over."
"You don't see any borders," Hopkins said. "We're all living together as one planet."
Then he landed. Learned to walk on solid ground again. Churned through a whirl of physical rehabilitation, debriefings, data collection, psych exams. Now there's a public tour of interviews and autographs, culminating with Saturday's keynote commencement address at his alma mater, on the football field where he started as a practice squad walk-on and ultimately became a team captain.
His graduation message will be simple, he said. Everyone is special in his or her own way. All can define their own happiness."It's about the graduates, it's not about me. It's about them going on into the world," Hopkins said.
"You don't have to be an astronaut, you don't have to be famous, to be happy."
When this is over, Hopkins will stand at the back of a line of dozens of NASA astronauts eligible to strap themselves to the end of a rocket and blast into orbit. The country's space administration is taking its next steps, too, preparing to launch astronauts into space from American soil again. Then perhaps an asteroid, or a return to the Moon. Someday, maybe even Mars.
NASA needs to get itself back into Earth's orbit, though. Hopkins wants to go back.
"Floating in space was the icing, it was the icing on the cake," he said.
That will have to come later. Hopkins has a cab to hail.
NASA's Asteroid-Capture Mission May Test New Method to Defend Earth
NASA's bold plan to park an asteroid near the moon may also test out a new way to protect Earth from dangerous space rocks.
Last year, the agency announced that it intends to tow a near-Earth asteroid into a stable lunar orbit, where it could be visited repeatedly by astronauts for research and exploration purposes. NASA officials are still ironing out the details of the mission, which may bag up an entire small space rock or snag a boulder off the surface of a large asteroid.
If NASA decides to go with the boulder option, the asteroid-capture mission will also include a planetary-defense demonstration, providing the first in-space test of a so-called "enhanced gravity tractor," officials said.
Given enough lead time, asteroids on a collision course with Earth can be safely deflected using a handful of methods. One of these is the gravity tractor technique, in which a robotic probe flies alongside a space rock for months or years, gradually nudging it off course via a slight gravitational tug.
The greater the shepherding probe's mass, the stronger its gravitational pull is. And poaching a boulder off a potentially hazardous asteroid would allow a deflection mission to increase its mass significantly without having to pay any additional launch costs.
"We'd go into this enhanced gravity tractor position after we retrieve the boulder and demonstrate that we have even more gravity attraction capability by doing that," Lindley Johnson, program executive for NASA's Near-Earth Object (NEO) observations program, told reporters in March.
NASA has identified about a dozen promising candidates for the asteroid-capture mission, Johnson added — six or so for each of the two options. The best target for the boulder-grab mission may be Itokawa, a 1,750-foot-long (530 meters) space rock that was visited by Japan's Hayabusa probe in 2005.
The space agency wants astronauts to visit the redirected asteroid by 2025, to meet an exploration deadline set by the White House. In 2010, President Barack Obama directed NASA to get people to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 and then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s.
The asteroid-capture mission remains in a "preformulation" phase at the moment, as NASA is still gathering data and sorting through ideas. The space agency hopes to have a basic mission concept in place by around the end of the year, officials have said.
In addition to the gravity tractor method, incoming space rocks could also be knocked off course with a direct hit by a "kinetic impactor," researchers say. (These techniques could also be combined in two coordinated space missions, slamming an asteroid with an impactor probe and then sending a gravity tractor out to finish the job.)
More extreme measures might be necessary for extremely large asteroids and space rocks detected with little warning time. In such cases, a nuclear bomb might be humanity's best — and perhaps only — option.
END
No comments:
Post a Comment