The Guardian has a very well-written story based on an interview it conducted with Mike Griffin during his recent visit to London. The paper reports that the NASA administrator, famous for comparing himself to the greatest Vulcan who ever served in Star Fleet, was in a less than chipper mood on the eve of his agency’s 50th anniversary celebrations.
“For some reason, though - perhaps it’s the windowless room in the basement of the US embassy in London, or the entourage of identical suits looking on from the sidelines - Griffin, who was passing through London on the way to a heads of space agencies meeting in Paris, does not seem like a man about to crack open the party poppers.”
In the interview, Griffin comes off sympathetically - a man truly committed to making humanity a space-faring civilization - eve if he is periodically clueless. He urges the British to join America in sending humans to the moon, defends the expected five-year gap between space shuttle and Orion flights, and claims that NASA is well on its way toward accomplishing George W. Bush’s vision despite all the problems you’ve been reading about with the Constellation program.
“We’re on the right path and it is of course fragile, but I think it’s crucial we remain on it,” he told the paper.
Continue reading ‘In Interview, NASA’s “Spock” Comes off as Almost Human’
Another week, another crack in NASA’s Constellation facade….
“Concerned by reports that the Ares rockets and Orion crew capsule are beset by cost overruns, schedule delays and complex technical woes, [Buzz] Aldrin says he wants to create a panel of experts to make sure that Constellation is the right way to go.
“‘We need to stick with the mission but rethink some of the ways we implement it,’ said Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon. ‘It doesn’t pay to stick with a bad idea.’”
Chief Engineer outlines Ares I-X issues - includes Thrust Oscillation
NASASpaceflight.com
“A report from Ares I-X’s Chief Engineer has called for the strengthening of the vehicle’s hardware, due to the red risks associated with Thrust Oscillation near the end of first stage burn - which is also threatening the vehicle’s Flight Termination System (FTS) components.
“The vehicle is also requiring mitigation of other multiple issues and concerns - found during the vehicle’s Critical Design Review (CDR) Phase II meeting, though launch remains on track for the Spring of 2009.”
Henry Spencer takes a look at the increasingly public problems with NASA’s Ares I and Ares V boosters, which are designed to carry the agency’s new Orion spacecraft to Earth orbit and the moon, respectively.
NASA thought it could easily adapt legacy shuttle hardware to the task. Not so much. Considerable upgrades were required, especially after Orion began to gain weight. That, in turn, caused the weight and cost of the rocket to grow as the schedule slipped. Meanwhile, Ares V might not be as cost effective to fly as NASA has stated.
Spencer believes that NASA’s savior could be its investment in the COTS program, which is providing funding to Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corporation to develop commercial transportation to the International Space Station. SpaceX is developing a human and cargo-rated versions of its Dragon spacecraft, which Musk says could also fly to the moon. Orbital’s program is building a robotic freighter.
“If COTS works out well and Ares continues to blunder on, I expect that Congress will quickly run out of patience and force NASA’s hand by cutting off Ares funding,” Spencer writes.
“The one ray of hope for NASA is that with the White House about to change hands, there will almost certainly be a new NASA administrator next year. Immediately upon assuming office, he or she might declare the Ares programme a write-off and order a major change of direction, blaming the problems on the previous administration. But this would have to be done quickly, while it’s still plausible to blame his or her predecessor.”
NASA’s Orion spacecraft apparently has a viable escape engine should its underpowered Ares rocket be able to lift the capsule off the ground. NASA’s full press release follows.
HAMPTON, Va. - NASA completed a full-scale rocket motor test on Thursday, July 17, to further development of the Orion jettison motor, which will separate the spacecraft’s launch abort system from the crew module during launch. Orion, the Constellation Program’s crew exploration vehicle now under development, will fly to the International Space Station and be part of the spaceflight system to conduct sustained human exploration of the moon.
NASA and Aerojet successfully fired the jettison motor at the Aerojet facility in Sacramento, Calif. The demonstration is part of a series of developmental tests that pave the way for delivery of the motor to be used for the first full-scale test of the launch abort system at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico late this year.
Continue reading ‘Well, the Escape Engine Works at Least….’
Hamilton Sundstrand protests NASA contract
Associated Press
“Hamilton Sundstrand has protested NASA’s selection of a Texas company to supply the space agency’s next-generation space suit. The subsidiary of Hartford-based United Technologies Corp. and a partner company filed the protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office on Monday. Company officials do not believe they got adequate information from NASA about why Hamilton Sundstrand lost out, the company said in a statement.
“The contract was awarded June 12 to Houston-based Oceaneering International Inc., best known for providing deep water services and products to the oil and gas industry. Hamilton Sundstrand and its partner, ILC Dover of Frederica, Del., have supplied the space suits since the 1960s.”
Congratulations are apparent due to NASA Administrator Mike Griffin. He is now the proud father of a five pound bouncing baby year gap in U.S. human spaceflight.
Doug Cooke, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration, confirmed this week that the space agency has given up on its Quixote like efforts to get its new Orion spacecraft flying by 2013. However, he still expects they will be able to launch its new human space vehicle in March 2015 - almost five years after it retires the space shuttle.
The main problem: money. NASA has not been getting enough of it under George W. Bush - who proposed the program in the first place. His plan to send humans back to the moon and on to Mars has been apparently limping along like Tiny Tim since he announced it four years ago.
With the economy slipping, banks failing, mortgages defaulting, inflation accelerating, gas prices rising, the dollar sinking, unemployment increasing, the national debt soaring, and two wars a-waging, the next President already has his hands tied trying to find more money for NASA. And without the extra funding, the schedule will likely slip even further as engineers struggle to overcome numerous technical problems with the Orion capsule and its shuttle-derived Ares boosters.
As for the technical difficulties, Cooke’s reaction is pretty much what you’d expect: it’s all normal for projects like this, nothing to see here, please move along. “What you’re seeing is sausage-making,” he told Newsweek. “I’m really satisfied with the work that’s getting done.”
Could be a pork product. Or the chickens - in the form of Mr. Griffin’s mission architecture - are coming home to roost and crapping all over everything.
NASA has released the schedule for its remaining ten space shuttle missions. The plan includes nine flights to the International Space Station and a Hubble servicing mission in October. Endeavour is set to close out the shuttle era beginning on May 31, 2010 - about 10 months short of the 30th anniversary of the program’s inaugural mission on April 12, 1981.
Meanwhile, NASA has ramped work on the shuttle’s successor, Constellation. In lieu of actual test flights (which won’t begin until next year), the space agency has created a really snazzy video showing how Constellation will place us on a path back to the moon beginning in 2013….or 2015.
And how is work going on the Ares rockets and Orion capsule? Officially, everything’s coming up Milhouse. In fact, you can read about how well things are going on NASA’s official Constellation website. Or read this story about Ares in the Houston Chronicle.
Others aren’t so sure.
Continue reading ‘Space Shuttle to Remain Forever 29; Successor Program Going Great…or Not’
NASA Eyed Management In Spacesuit Selection
Frank Morring, Jr.
Aviation Week & Space Technology
“NASA picked a team headed by Oceaneering International Inc. (OII) to build its next-generation spacesuits because it felt the team’s systems engineering and management plans are more likely to get the job done than those proposed by veteran suitmakers Hamilton Sundstrand and ILC Dover.”
Harris will build next-generation space suit radios
David Hubler
Washington Technology
“Harris Corp. will provide the radio communications and navigation system for NASA’s next-generation spacesuit under a seven-year contract with a potential value of $58 million.”
NASA Awards Contract for Constellation Spacesuit for the Moon
Press Release
Paragon Space Development Company
NASA Administrator Mike Griffin was in New Jersey last week, promoting his agency’s efforts at exploring and settling space as the ultimate way of ensuring humanity’s survival in the face of a likely global holocaust, NJHerald.com reports.
Speaking before an audience at the County College of Morris, Griffin played a video narrated by physicist Stephen Hawking that showed the Earth shrinking into the vast cosmos. “Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers,” Hawking intoned ominously. “I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go into space.”
Griffin heartily agreed, saying that if a picture is worth a thousand words, then the video is worth “a thousand pictures.” He then proceeded to make a pitch for why it’s also worth billions in tax dollars for his space agency’s efforts to explore and settle Earth orbit, the moon and Mars.
“People ask me why we’re going back to the moon. Haven’t we already been there?” Griffin said. “Well, yes, we have. But using that critereon, then Spain should have stopped colonizing the New World. We’re returning to the moon both to learn how to go further and for the science we can learn about the moon, on the moon.”
Continue reading ‘Mike Griffin’s New Math: 1 Video = 1,000,000 Words + 17,614,000,000 Dollars’
NASA needs to make a number of crucial improvements in its Exploration Technology Development Program (ETDP) if it wants to land humans on the moon and Mars, according to a new National Research Council report.
In an interim report released on Friday, a NRC review committee said that NASA is underfunding research in key areas and has left “mission critical tests” out of its schedule due to budgetary and time constraints.
“Although near term budgetary pressures are clear, the need for adequate testing is a recurrent theme in program failure reports and should be addressed,” the reviewers wrote.
The committee found that NASA was focusing too much of its technology development on getting astronauts back to the moon. “The committee did not find evidence that the extensibility of technologies to the exploration of Mars is a routine consideration. A possible consequence is the development of technologies that will not be extensible to the full VSE,” the report states.
Continue reading ‘NRC: NASA Should Beef up Tech Development for Lunar, Mars Missions’