Australia needs space program, says Senate report
The Herald Sun
“The Senate Standing Committee on Economics said Australia is missing out on significant innovation and technology opportunities because it lacks a space agency.
“The committee’s report, Lost in Space? Setting a new direction for Australia’s space science and industry sector, said the government should establish a Space Industry Advisory Council to oversee the creation of a fully-fledged agency.
“The council would be made up of industry representatives, government agencies, defence personnel, and academics and chaired by the federal innovation minister.”
India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar spacecraft released a small sub-satellite on Friday, which crash landed near the Shackelton crater and placed that nation’s flag on the moon for the first time. The Moon Impact Probe (MIP) hit the surface at 8:31 p.m. after a 25-minute descent from orbit.
Former Indian President A P J Abdul Kalam - a rocket scientist who conceived of MIP - was quoted as saying that he hoped the landing will inspire his young countrymen.
“Landing of MIP will kindle a dream in children. In 15 years, I want to see an Indian on the moon. [The] moon will be a strategic and economic complex of India in the near future,” he said.
There’s more here.
ESA PRESS RELEASE
A historic event took place at ESA sites across Europe today - the flag of the Czech Republic was hoisted alongside those of ESA’s other Member States, officially symbolising the country becoming ESA’s 18th Member State.
The Agreement on the Czech Republic’s accession to the ESA Convention was signed on 8 July in Prague, by Jean-Jacques Dordain, Director General of ESA, and Mirek Topolánek, Prime Minister of the Czech Republic.
Continue reading ‘ESA Continues Eastward Expansion as Czechs Join Agency’
NASA to Study Potential of Piloted Suborbital Flight
Space News
“NASA intends to spend up to $400,000 in 2009 studying whether piloted suborbital spacecraft under development by Virgin Galactic and others have the potential to be useful for scientific research….
“[Ed] Weiler said NASA got a poor response to an unfunded request for information (RFI) it put out in spring 2008 to gauge scientists’ interest in taking advantage of suborbital flight opportunities aboard the likes of SpaceShipTwo. ‘There were five or six responses, which was incredibly tiny for an RFI,’ Weiler said Nov. 4. ‘You could look at that and say that frankly, scientifically, they weren’t that excited.’
Continue reading ‘NASA Raids Science Budgets to Study Launching Science Experiments on Tourism Vehicles’
Tests Running On Common Spacecraft Bus
Aviation Week & Space Technology
“The 68-kilogram (150-pound) HTV is a step toward fulfilling what Ames director S. Pete Worden, a veteran of the Air Force’s Clementine minisat mission and fast-paced Responsive Space Program, envisions for quick, cheap missions to the moon, rendezvous with asteroids, Earth observation or any of a dozen other space chores….
“On the private space front, Odyssey Moon Ventures will tap the Common Spacecraft Bus team for technology as it pursues the $30 million Google Lunar X-Prize.”
Drilling Offshore Virginia May Hurt Launches
Dow Jones Newswire
“The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is protesting a proposal to lease offshore Virginia for oil and natural gas development over concerns that drilling would interfere with rockets’ flight patterns.
“NASA fears that giant platforms would interfere with low-altitude suborbital rockets or make missile launchings from its Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. much more difficult, Keith Koehler, a NASA spokesman, told Dow Jones Newswires.”
Fresh back from his orbital joyride to the International Space Station, millionaut Richard Garriott has left struggling NCsoft and the MMO game he helped to create, Tabula Rasa, to pursue “new interests.”
“Many of you probably wonder what my plans are, now that I have achieved the lifelong dream of going to space,” he wrote in a brief note on the Tabula Rasa site. “Well, that unforgettable experience has sparked some new interests that I would like to devote my time and resources to. As such, I am leaving NCsoft to pursue those interests.”
Continue reading ‘Garriott Leaves Struggling NCsoft as Company Announces 50 Percent Drop in Profits’
New director: ‘Federal City’ could save Kennedy Space Center
Orlando Sentinel
“The new director of Kennedy Space Center said Friday that the center will lose thousands of jobs whether the space shuttle is retired in 2010 as planned or the next administration gives it a brief reprieve.
“But Bob Cabana, a former astronaut, said he has an idea that might take some of the sting out of the cuts: turning KSC into a ‘Federal City’ where government agencies, university researchers and big aerospace companies work side by side tapping into the facilities and skilled work force at the landmark site.”
Spaceship Colorado
Colorado Biz Magazine
“The Colorado space business is huge — the nation’s second largest in terms of employment, behind only California. It is also complex — an economic and engineering food web of companies acting as contractors, subcontractors and competitors at the same time. They are all being forced to evolve amid profound changes in the space-business environment.
“The industry that launched in 1955 when the Glenn L. Martin Co. began working on Titan intercontinental ballistic missiles in Jefferson County now employs roughly 55,000 people in this state, according to the Colorado Space Coalition. As of 2007, about 26,000 of them were with private aerospace companies — 120 companies dedicated to the space business and at least 180 that dabble in it.
“That’s more employees than space mainstays Florida, Texas and New Jersey and behind only California, which, with a whopping 250,000 space workers accounts for 20 percent of the global space business, according to the California Space Authority.”
Will Oberstar kill the NewSpace industry?
Taylor Dinerman
The Space Review
“Small NewSpace companies have no reason to be complacent. If the published rumors are correct and Jim Oberstar—the Congressman from Minnesota whose proposal a few years ago to regulate the safety of the space tourism industry as if it were the airline industry failed to gain any traction in the House—becomes Secretary of Transportation, there will be trouble. Suborbital space tourism as it is currently being promoted by Virgin Galactic, XCOR Aerospace, and others, is in its infancy. The first flights of SpaceShipTwo or the Lynx have not yet taken place, but few serious observers doubt that it is going to be a moneymaker for those involved. If, and it is a big if, the government regulates it with a light hand.”
