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’
Two astronauts explore the moon from NASA’s Altair Lander. Credit: NASA
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER PRESS RELEASE
San Diego, CA – With major implications for long-duration space travel, a study from the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University Medical Center demonstrates that the high-energy radiation found in space may lead to premature aging and prolonged oxidative stress in cells. The findings suggest that astronauts may be at increased risk of colon cancer due to exposure to the high linear energy transfer (LET) radiation found in space.
“Radiation exposure, either intentional or accidental, is inevitable during our lifetimes,” says Kamal Datta, M.D., assistant professor at Lombardi and the study’s lead author. “But with plans for a mission to Mars, we need to understand more about the nature of radiation in space. There is currently no conclusive information for estimating the risk that astronauts may experience.”
The kickoff of Project Constellation – NASA’s program to return humans to the moon and travel to Mars – has led to increased scrutiny of radiation exposures during space travel. A 2004 report from the National Academies suggested that cancer incidence may be higher in the astronaut population as compared to the general U.S. population, and the National Research Council published a report last month that recommended increased research into the radiation exposures experienced by astronauts during space travel, as well as development of new radiation shielding technologies.
Current risk estimates for radiation exposure rely exclusively on the cumulative dose a person receives in his or her lifetime. The Lombardi study suggests that a more accurate risk assessment should include not only dose, but also the quality of radiation.
Continue reading ‘Study: Long-Duration Astronauts at Greater Risk for Cancer, Premature Aging’
The Government Accountability Office’s report on the NASA Constellation program has some interesting information about the space agency’s efforts to send astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars. GAO found that:
- NASA has already spent more than $7 billion on the program since its inception in 2004 - with nearly $230 billion projected over the next 20 years.
- Engineers must close significant knowledge gaps and refine many requirements in order to conduct preliminary design reviews on Ares and Orion scheduled for August and September.
- The space agency’s efforts involve a high-risk strategy of “concurrent” technology development - working on different systems at the same time and integrating them later.
The General Accountability Office’s review of NASA’s Constellation lunar program is in and…things aren’t looking up at the moment. GAO examined technical and programmatic risks for the still-evolving Ares rocket and Orion spacecraft. It’s a preliminary progress report because the space agency is still in the process of defining the program.
“The challenges NASA is facing pose risks to the successful outcome of the projects. For example:
- Both vehicles have a history of weight issues;
- Excessive vibration during launch threatens system design;
- Uncertainty about how flight characteristics will be impacted by a fifth segment added to the Ares I launch vehicle;
- Ares I upper stage essentially requires development of a new engine;
- No industry capability currently exists for producing the kind of heat shields that the Orion will need for protecting the crew exploration vehicle when it reenters Earth’s atmosphere; and
- Existing test facilities are insufficient for testing Ares I’s new engine, for replicating the engine’s vibration and acoustic environment, and for testing the thermal protection system for the Orion vehicle.
Continue reading ‘GAO: Ares/Orion Overweight, Underpowered and Potentially Deadly’
Massive job cuts in space program likely
Associated Press
“More than 8,000 NASA contractor jobs in the nation’s manned space program could be eliminated after the space shuttle program is shut down in 2010, the agency said Tuesday.
“The number of civil servants is expected to remain roughly the same, but dramatic job cuts are possible among private contractors as NASA transitions to the Constellation program, which is developing the next-generation vehicle and rockets to go to the moon and later to Mars.”
NASA faces job flight
Daytona Beach News-Journal
NASA: Michoud’s Employment Future Cloudy
Associated Press via Yahoo News
More than 1,000 jobs may be lost at Michoud
New Orleans Times-Picayune
Marshall jobs ‘pretty stable’
The Huntsville Times