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?’
There are a few new profiles of folks who are pouring millions of dollars they made off software development into space ventures.
Space Racer Takes Off
Forbes.com
A profile of 38-year-old John Carmack, of “Doom” and “Quake” fame, who founded Armadillo Aerospace.
A cheap shot at space - if it ever gets off the ground
The Guardian
An interview with 37-year-old SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who seems undaunted by three successive failure of his Falcon 1 launch vehicle.
For gaming guru Richard Garriott, space trip will be a working vacation
Austin American Statesman
Millionaut Richard Garriott, 46, discusses the scientific experiments and educational projects he will undertake during his 10-day trip to the International Space Station in October.
Going to Space? First Stop: Eight Months of Grueling Training in Russia’s Star City
Wired
This story about Space Adventures’ millionauts focuses largely on Garriott and his backup, Australian-born playboy Nik Halik. An interesting tidbit here: Garriott would have been the first space tourist instead of Dennis Tito if not for the big dot.com bust back in 2000-01. And, oh yes, Garriott is prone to using that endearing California term, “dude,” when crashing a Soyuz landing simulation. Fascinating stuff, really.
SpaceX says that it has discovered the cause of the failure that doomed its Falcon 1 rocket on Saturday. The new Merlin first-stage engine that founder Elon Musk praised as the major achievement of the failed flight may have performed a little too well.
The new engine added a more thrust to the first stage than the one used on the previous flight. This caused the first stage to ram into the second stage after the two segments separated at 2 minutes and 20 seconds into the flight, Space.com reports.
“We have quite a definitive understanding of what went wrong on the last flight,” Musk told reporters in a teleconference, adding that the timing error was on the order of seconds. “If we were to increase that gap by even a second or two, this problem would not have arisen.”
Yep, that’s all it takes. A mere second to destroy a multimillion-dollar rocket and consign its payloads to a watery grave. Musk and his team are now learning the difficult lessons that every other rocket pioneer has learned before them.
Continue reading ‘Upgrade an Engine, Wreck a Rocket’
Saturday’s failure of SpaceX’s Falcon 1 launch vehicle did more than destroy three small satellites. It also sent the ashes of Mercury astronaut Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr., Star Trek actor James “Scotty” Doohan and 206 other people into the Pacific Ocean instead of orbit.
The remains were placed aboard the rocket through a Texas-based company called Celestis. A spokeswoman, Susan Schonfeld, told The New York Times that the company would re-fly the remains of all 208 people using backup samples.
This launch marked the second effort to send Doohan’s and Cooper’s ashes into space; last year, they were launched aboard an UP Aerospace suborbital rocket in New Mexico. The payload containing the ashes was lost for about three weeks in the rugged mountains before being recovered in good shape.
One of Doohan’s seven children, Ehrich Blackhound, said he has had enough. He wrote an eloquent piece on Boing Boing saying that each launch opens an unhealed wound.
Continue reading ‘Falcon 1 Crash Sent Gordo’s and Scotty’s Ashes into the Pacific’
Below is the text of Elon Musk’s statement concerning the failed Falcon 1 launch. The SpaceX founder did not speak the media after the accident; the statement was read during a brief teleconference with reporters by Diane Murphy, SpaceX’s vice president for marketing and communications.
“It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit on this flight [Falcon 1, Flight 3]. On the plus side, the flight of our first stage, with the new Merlin 1C engine that will be used in Falcon 9, was picture perfect. Unfortunately, a problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to be held together. This is under investigation and I will send out a note as soon as we understand exactly what happened.
“The most important message I’d like to send right now is that SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward. We have flight four of Falcon 1 almost ready for flight and flight five right behind that. I have also given the go ahead to begin fabrication of flight six. Falcon 9 development will also continue unabated, taking into account the lessons learned with Falcon 1. We have made great progress this past week with the successful nine engine firing.
“As a precautionary measure to guard against the possibility of flight 3 not reaching orbit, SpaceX recently accepted a significant investment. Combined with our existing cash reserves, that ensures we will have more than sufficient funding on hand to continue launching Falcon 1 and develop Falcon 9 and Dragon. There should be absolutely zero question that SpaceX will prevail in reaching orbit and demonstrating reliable space transport. For my part, I will never give up and I mean never.
“Thanks for your hard work and now on to flight four.”
–Elon–
Correction: An earlier version of this story indicated that Musk had sent the statement as an email to employees. Apparently, he did make the statement directly to employees.
UPDATE: Space.com has an email that Elon Musk sent to employees. It reads in part:
“It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit on this flight. On the plus side, the flight of our first stage, with the new Merlin 1C engine that will be used in Falcon 9, was picture perfect. Unfortunately, a problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to be held together. This is under investigation and I will send out a note as soon as we understand exactly what happened.”
Earlier Updates:
SpaceX has suspended its webcast of the Falcon 1 launch and posted the following message on its website:
Posted August 2, 2008 - 20:38 PDT
“We have heard from launch control that there has been an anomaly. More details will be posted to the website as available.”
The last report on the vehicle came 2 minutes and 20 seconds after liftoff at 8:33 p.m. PDT:
“Vehicle switching to inertial guidance mode. 1050 m/s, altitude of 35 km.”
There is also this report from Space.com:
“A video camera mounted on the rocket appeared to show some oscillations during the ascent. Whether that was normal or a sign of trouble is not yet clear.
“About two minutes, 20 seconds into the ascent, the video broadcast provided by SpaceX was abruptly terminated. A company spokesperson then said there had been ‘an anomaly’ with the launch vehicle.”
SpaceX will try to launch its Falcon 1 rocket from the Kwajalein Atoll at approximately 5:55 pm. PDT (00:55 UTC). They’re webcasting the launch.
This is the third launch attempt for Elon Musk’s rocket. The first launch vehicle exploded shortly after takeoff. The second failed to attain orbit. This third rocket is carrying the following payloads:
- The Trailblazer satellite developed by SpaceDev of Poway, Calif., for the Jumpstart Program of DoD’s Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) Office, as a test platform to validate the hardware, software and processes of an accelerated microsatellite launch.
- Two NASA small satellites: PRESat, a micro laboratory from NASA’s Ames Research Center; and NanoSail-D, which will unfurl an ultra-thin solar sail, developed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, in collaboration with NASA Ames Research Center.
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.”
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.”
Falcon 1 lifts off on its second test flight. Credit: SpaceX
Third Time’s the Charm?
Geoffrey Little
Air & Space Magazine
“For [Elon] Musk, it’s a critical moment in his second career. A co-founder of PayPal with a personal fortune estimated at more than $300 million, the South African native has sunk more than a third of that amount into his 470-person space company. This is not a hobby; SpaceX’s manifest lists 14 launches through 2011, all with customers who have contracted for low-cost launches on Falcon 1 and the much larger Falcon 9, which is being built and tested for launch early next year.
“Musk aims to use these rockets and their variants to smash the current price to reach orbit. A Falcon-1 launch costs under $8 million, about half the industry average; the Falcon 9 goes for less than $37 million to lift 7,700 pounds to low Earth orbit; a planned Falcon-9 Heavy will be able to lift 62,000 pounds for $94.5 million.”