As the Bush Administration limps toward the finish line, analysts are trying to work out what the American space program should look like in the future. The Space Review has been examining these issues over the last few weeks.
The Vision for Space Exploration and the retirement of the Baby Boomers (part 3)
Charles Miller and Jeff Foust
In part 1 of this series, we made the case that the current plan to achieve the Vision for Space Exploration may well be unsustainable and unaffordable in the face of huge financial pressures created by the coming retirement of the baby boomers. In part 2 of this series, we suggested a Plan B strategy for achieving the goals of the VSE, which is credible even if NASA’s budget is significantly cut in the coming decade….Now, in part 3 of this essay, we make specific recommendations on “how” our nation should proceed to achieve cheap and reliable access to space (CRATS).
Space policy questions and decisions facing a new administration
Eligar Sadeh
The next president will face a number of major issues related to space policy upon taking office next January. Eligar Sadeh examines those issues as discussed at a forum earlier this year.
How to become a presidential hero
Greg Zsidisin
Promising to reexamine NASA’s implementation of the exploration vision, including such vehcles as the Ares 5 (above), could be a winning proposition for a presidential candidate.
The so-so space debate
Jeff Foust
Last Friday representatives of the three remaining major presidential candidates gathered in Washington to discuss space policy. Jeff Foust reports that the discussion ended with many of the questions about the candidates’ policies left unanswered.
The Times of India reports that engineers are making good progress in preparing that nation’s first lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan-1, for launch later this year.
The spacecraft is being assembled at the Indian Space Research Organisation’s facility in Bangalore. Officials report that five instruments from the United States and Europe have been successfully tested.
The launch has slipped a couple of months. ISRO officials have said they expect to send the orbiter off on its mission sometime in the third quarter of the year.
Charles E. Miller and Jeff Foust have put forth Part II of their plan to save George Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration. (If you missed it, here’s the link to Part I.) It’s a little complicated, but their plan basically amounts to pursuing cheap and reliable access to space, whose acronym - CRATS - may well remind you of a domesticated pet, a Broadway musical, or a bodily function.
In the same edition of The Space Review, Greg Zsidisin takes a look at how we can avoid what he calls “another Apollo debacle” - developing massively expensive technology and then tossing it away for something much less useful.
Meanwhile, Rand Simberg analyzes both these posts at his Transterrestrial Musings blog.
NASA PRESS RELEASE
WASHINGTON — NASA invites people of all ages to join the lunar exploration journey with an opportunity to send their names to the moon aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, spacecraft.
The Send Your Name to the Moon Web site enables everyone to participate in the lunar adventure and place their names in orbit around the moon for years to come. Participants can submit their information at http://www.nasa.gov/lro, print a certificate and have their name entered into a database. The database will be placed on a microchip that will be integrated onto the spacecraft. The deadline for submitting names is June 27, 2008.
“Everyone who sends their name to the moon, like I’m doing, becomes part of the next wave of lunar explorers,” said Cathy Peddie, deputy project manager for LRO at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “The LRO mission is the first step in NASA’s plans to return humans to the moon by 2020, and your name can reach there first. How cool is that?”
Continue reading ‘Send Your Name to the Moon with NASA’
NASA is partnering with construction giant Caterpillar to develop a remote-controlled “lunar truck” that will assist in the construction of a human base at the moon’s south pole. Caterpillar has a couple of videos on its website describing the program.
It’s an interesting project, and one that seems to have flown under the radar with the full-time space media since it began in 2006. A shout out to the Journal Star’s Paul Gordon, who wrote about the partnership for the Peoria, Illinois newspaper’s Sunday edition. It’s an excellent story that is worth checking out.
Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson was in Dubai this week, talking up his company’s $265 million spaceport in Ras Al Khaimah and its planned human circumlunar tourism flights, now set for launch in 2012.
Business 24-7 indicates that the $100 million flight will involve a 10-day stay aboard the International Space Station. The mission will require two separate rocket launches, one for the Soyuz and a second for a booster to send the spacecraft off to the moon.
The Soyuz will not orbit the moon but rather fly around it at an altitude of 160 kilometers (100 miles). The Soviets sent several robotic Soyuz-derived Zond missions on similar flights 40 years ago, but they have not flown any similar missions since then.
“We are in serious discussions with some clients from around the world, including Americans, Europeans and hopefully some Emiratis in the future,” Anderson said.
Some updates on plans for sending humans back to the moon, courtesy of Rob Coppinger over at Flight Global….
ESA considers cislunar space station for lunar exploration
“The European Space Agency, Russia and Japan are all considering a cislunar orbital complex that could consist of a habitation section and a resource module that would provide power and fuel and possibly be a safe haven for Orion crew exploration vehicle crews.”
NASA begins work to solve boil-off problem
“NASA has started the contractor selection process for its lunar surface thermal control system study that could find a solution to the biggest hurdle in its plans to return to the Moon: stopping propellant loss.”
ESA in favour of commercial lunar communications
Bernhard Hufenbach, ESA’s human spaceflight directorate’s head of strategy and architecture office, speaks enthusiastically of commercial communications services for a lunar outpost.
Spaceflight Now has a great feature on the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, a NASA mission set for launch in October. LCROSS, built on a relative shoestring budget of $79 million, will guide a spent Centaur rocket stage into the moon in a search for frozen water.
“The Centaur, playing an unprecedented role in a space mission, will be used as a projectile to dive into a crater shrouded in darkness near one of the moon’s poles,” Spaceflight Now’s Stephen Clark writes. “An array of space-based telescopes and ground observatories will be used to analyze the material ejected from deep within the target crater in an effort to determine the extent of hypothesized water ice deposits there.”
The Xinhua news agency reports that Shanghai engineers have built and tested three prototypes of lunar rovers in advance of a planned 2013 landing.
“The Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology had made significant progress in key technologies for the locomotion system,” Xinhau reports.
You can see a picture of one prototype here. The 1.5-meter tall, 200-kilogram rover is designed to travel at an average speed of 100 meters per hour.