With U.S.-Russian relations continuing to deteriorate over the conflict in Georgia and other issues, American officials seem to have finally woken up to the potential nightmare that the Russian government could cut off U.S. access to the International Space Station.
The Russian Soyuz vehicle would be the only way to access the station if NASA goes ahead with its plan to end shuttle flights in 2010. The shuttle’s successor, Orion, might not be available for 5 years. Complicating matters even further, NASA needs a waiver from Congress in order to purchase additional Soyuz flights. A 2000 law bars U.S. agencies from signing contracts with countries like Russia that are providing support to Iran.
Florida Senator Bill Nelson says that any waiver is dead for now. “In an election year, it was going to be very difficult to get that waiver to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to an increasingly aggressive Russia,” Nelson told AFP. “Now, I’d say it’s almost impossible.”
Vincent Sabathier, a human space exploration expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, noted that Russia suddenly reduced the flow of oil to the Czech Republic after that country signed an agreement to host an American missile defense tracking radar facility on its soil.
Continue reading ‘America & ISS: What to Do? What to Do?’
Probably feeling a bit overshadowed, Richard Garriott surfaced two days after the WhiteKnightTwo rollout to remind everyone that, unlike Virgin Galactic’s customers, he won’t have to wait another two years for a brief 300-second taste of space travel.
In fact, the son of Skylab’s Owen Garriott will only have to wait another two months before he flies to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft on October 12. Instead of spending $200,000 for five minutes of weightlessness aboard SpaceShipTwo, the millionaire software developer will spend $3 million per day for the 10-day trip into orbit.
In this update from MSNBC, Garriott explains how the $30 million joyride will eat up the “majority” of the fortune he’s accumulated developing medieval fantasy games. Since “majority” can mean anything from 50.01 to 99.99 percent, that really doesn’t tell us very much. It’s highly likely the millionaut will make a good amount of that back in terms of publicity, speaking fees and the like.
The other interesting piece of news: Garriott will carry “the immortality drive” to the space station. The article describes it as “a computer project that will include a list of humanity’s greatest achievements, digitized human DNA and personal messages from Earthlings. The program will be stored on the space station in case calamity were to one day wipe out Earth.”
Continue reading ‘And Now for a Brief Word From That Other Richard…’
The always candid and occasionally bewildering Mike Griffin made an appearance in Osh Kosh, Wisconsin last week at the AirVenture 2008 air show. Despite being overshadowed by Richard Branson’s Super Terrific Happy Hour (a.k.a., WhiteKnightTwo), the NASA administrator still managed to create controversy while giving our nation’s school children a South Park-style lesson in blame shifting.
The comments involved a possible five-year gap between shuttle and Orion flights. Aero-News.net has this account:
“A common thread throughout the hour-plus discussion was the logic, or lack thereof, of discontinuing the Space Shuttle until a replacement vehicle was in operation. According to NASA’s website, the current plan includes phasing out the Space Shuttle in 2010 and using Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft to shuttle astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) until a US replacement is developed. ‘The US and its partners have invested $100 billion in the [ISS],’ said Griffin, ’so it does seem short-sighted to not spend the $3 billion a year to maintain the Shuttle.’
And who does the NASA leader blame for this problem? It ain’t Canada.
“Directing his comments to the children in the audience, ‘Sometimes Washington does silly things.’”
This comment speaks for itself, really.
In a possible blow to NASA’s own COTS program, the space agency is considering purchasing the Japanese HTV cargo freighter to aid in the resupply of the International Space Station, The Yomiuri Shimbun reports.
“The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration has begun unofficial negotiations with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on purchasing units of the H-2 Transfer Vehicle (HTV), an unmanned cargo transfer spacecraft developed in Japan, as the successor to its space shuttles, which are to retire in 2010, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Saturday.
“Behind the move is NASA’s concern that the retirement of its space shuttles will make it difficult for the United States to fulfill its responsibilities to deliver water, food and materials for scientific experiments to the International Space Station.”
Space X and Orbital Sciences Corporation are currently developing commercial ISS resupply vehicles under NASA’s COTS program. It’s possible that NASA’s efforts are part of a contingency plan to guard against delays in the COTS effort.
UPDATE: NASA has released a statement denying the story:
“Contrary to news reports, NASA has not officially or unofficially been discussing the purchase of H-II Transfer Vehicles (HTV) — uninhabited resupply cargo ships for the space station — from the Japanese Space Agency, or JAXA.
“NASA is committed to domestic commercial cargo resupply to the space station and does not plan to procure cargo delivery services from Japan. As part of our original agreements as compensation for common system operating costs NASA has limited cargo capability on the Japanese and European cargo vehicles. NASA has recently issued a request for proposal for the cargo needs of International Space Station beyond those supplied by our current international agreements. NASA has chosen to depend on commercial resupply of cargo delivery to the station.”
Guy Bujold, Canadian Space Agency president; Jean-Jacques Dordain, European Space Agency director-general; NASA Administrator Michael Griffin; Anatolii N. Perminov, Russian Federal Space Agency head; and Keiji Tachikawa, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency president. Credit: ESA/S. Corvaja
The Heads of the Five Families Space Agencies met in Paris this week to discuss ending the Mob war, dividing up the narcotics trade, and bringing Michael Corleone back from Sicily the future of the International Space Station.
Among other things, the meeting produced this statement supporting their own efforts on - of all things - the International Space Station, which they have spent the last 20 years building.
Heads of Agency International Space Station Joint Statement
PARIS — The heads of the International Space Station (ISS) agencies from Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States met at European Space Agency (ESA) Headquarters in Paris on July 17, 2008, to review ISS cooperation. As part of their discussions, they noted the significantly expanded capability that the ISS now provides for on-orbit research and technology development activities and as an engineering test bed for flight systems and operations that are critical to future space exploration initiatives. These activities improve the quality of life on Earth by expanding the frontiers of human knowledge.
Continue reading ‘Heads of the Five Space Agencies Meet; Is Bloody ISS Turf War Finally Over?’
Writing in the WaPo Sunday Outlook section, Micheal Benson suggests sending the International Space Station to infinity and beyond. Or at least the moon and Mars:
“The only problem with this $156 billion manifestation of human genius — a project as large as a football field that has been called the single most expensive thing ever built — is that it’s still going nowhere at a very high rate of speed. And as a scientific research platform, it still has virtually no purpose and is accomplishing nothing….
“The ISS, you see, is already an interplanetary spacecraft — at least potentially. It’s missing a drive system and a steerage module, but those are technicalities. Although it’s ungainly in appearance, it’s designed to be boosted periodically to a higher altitude by a shuttle, a Russian Soyuz or one of the upcoming new Constellation program Orion spacecraft. It could fairly easily be retrofitted for operations beyond low-Earth orbit. In principle, we could fly it almost anywhere within the inner solar system — to any place where it could still receive enough solar power to keep all its systems running.”
Update: WaPo has published this rebuttal, It’s a Station, Not a Ship, by Jeff Volosin, a former NASA engineer and current space agency contractor. The title pretty much says it all.
Space Adventures, a company that has made millions selling orbital joyrides to people worth billions, is trying to ensure that its wealthy clients get a bit more respect.
The Virginia company that pioneered space tourism is rebranding its elite clientele as “space explorers,” pointing to the experiments that they conduct while vacationing aboard the International Space Station. In the process, the company is trying to leave its label as a “space tourism” outfit behind.
“Space tourism isn’t the right word for what we do,” Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson told Popular Mechanics. “It’s something more. What we’re doing is opening a new frontier. … We’re no longer exclusively a space tourism company, we’re a space mission company.”
Space Adventures kicked off its rebranding effort in earnest last week with the announcement that it would begin charting Soyuz flights to ISS beginning in 2011. The company currently flies tourists as the third passenger on regularly scheduled, government financed missions to the orbital outpost. The charter flights would be commercially funded, carrying a commander and two paying customers.
Google Founder Sergey Brin will likely be aboard the inaugural 2011 flight. He invested $5 million in Space Adventures, money that serves as a downpayment on a flight and makes him the charter member of the brand new Orbital Mission Explorer’s Circle. This exclusive club will have only seven members.
The rebranding effort has been ongoing for some time. Space Adventures’ client Anousheh Ansari, who flew to the space station, gave an interview to Space Future back in April in which she bristled at the label of “space tourist.” Ansari believes the six months of training made her more than just a tourist, even though she is not a professional astronaut.
Space Adventure’s plan to fund a private Soyuz tourism flight to the International Space Station still requires consultation with and approval by the United States and other station partners, the Associated Press reports.
“NASA space station manager Kenny Todd said that consultation hasn’t taken place. He said that since NASA is a primary partner in the space station, ‘it certainly wants to have an understanding of how that’s going to happen and what all would be involved’ in the private flight.”
Top among the concerns: that Russia will not be overburdened building Soyuz spacecraft required to transport crews to the orbiting outpost. After two recent hair-raising re-entries, this is not a trivial concern.
Continue reading ‘AP: Private ISS Flight Still Requires Consultations, Approvals from Partners’
The space shuttle Discovery has departed the International Space Station and is preparing for a Saturday landing back at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA reports that the mission is going well.
Meanwhile, officials say that the shuttle launch caused so much damage last week that it has knocked the launch pad out of commission. WESH-TV reports that the pad was a “ticking time bomb.” Hundreds of square feet of walls were damaged, with bricks puncturing a fence one-half mile away. The CBS affiliate reports there are fears that bricks could damage the fragile shuttle during a future launch, although another report said this fear was unfounded.
The Orlando Sentinel reports that a 200-square-foot section of the flame trench wall came loose. NASA is probing the launch pad for structure weaknesses, and it hopes to have the facility repaired by October. Work has been hampered by the presence of dangerous asbestos, which can cause deadly lung diseases.
Image above: STS-124 Commander Mark Kelly works inside the Quest airlock with Expedition 17 Commander Sergei Volkov. Photo credit: NASA TV
NASA MISSION UPDATE
Mission specialists Mike Fossum and Ron Garan are scheduled to kick off STS-124’s first spacewalk at 11:32 a.m. EDT. During the 6-½ hour excursion, the pair will retrieve a shuttle inspection tool, service and inspect components of a solar alpha rotary joint and prepare the largest component of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kibo laboratory for installation on the International Space Station.
The spacewalkers’ first task is to transfer the Orbiter Boom Sensor System (OBSS) from the station’s truss to space shuttle Discovery. The OBSS, which attaches to the shuttle’s robotic arm for detailed inspection of the shuttle’s heat shield, was left at the station for STS-124 during the previous shuttle mission to provide room for the giant Kibo module in Discovery’s payload bay.
Next, the spacewalkers will prepare Kibo’s Japanese Pressurized Module (JPM) for installation. After inspecting the common berthing mechanism on the Harmony Node’s left side and opening a window cover, Fossum and Garan will work together in the shuttle’s cargo bay to remove contamination covers from the JPM’s docking surfaces. Fossum will also disconnect heater cables and remove locking bolts from the shutters of the JPM’s forward window.
Continue reading ‘Discovery Docks at Station, Astronauts Prepare for Spacewalk’