Commercial Space
SpaceX Falcon 9 Test Fire Ends with Abort
Screenshot of the Falcon 9 rocket on Tuesday. Credit: Spaceflightnow.com
KSC Workers Rally to Continue Constellation and Extend Shuttle
Supporters at a rally want to continue the Constellation program and extend the shuttle program. Image credit: Alan Walters, awaltersphoto.com. Used by permission.
Photo Gallery: Falcon 9 Now Vertical on the Launchpad
Falcon 9 now vertical on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral. Credit: Chris Thompson/SpaceX
NASA to Invest $75 Million for Suborbital Science Flights
XCOR's Lynx suborbital vehicle. Credit: XCOR
Falcon 9 Flight Hardware Arrives at Cape Canaveral
The Falcon 9 vehicle undergoes final integration in the hangar at the SpaceX launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The vehicle's nine Merlin 1C engines are at far left, and second stage is at far right. Credit: SpaceX
The Faces of the "New Frontier" of NASA's Commercial Space Flight Plan
NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden introduced today five commercial space companies that NASA will use to support transport of crew to and from low Earth orbit as part of the Commercial Crew Development program. The firms were selected in an open competition for $50 million in funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. During the event, Bolden countered the criticism of NASA's new plan proposed by President Obama. "I respectfully disagree if you think we are abandoning human spaceflight. I think we'll get there quicker. This is a fundamental re-baselining and a new ways of doing business to develop a program that is truly sustainable for the long term," Bolden said. "This is a roadmap to even more historic achievements… We are not abandoning human space flight by any stretch of the imagination. We are on a new course, but human space flight is in our DNA."
Panel Pitches Public-Private Partnership for Space Taxis
The presidential panel reviewing the U.S. space program sees little hope for NASA's Ares 1
moon rocket, though it found the program technically sound. The problem, the
board said in its final report, is a question of timing.
To make up for budget shortfalls, NASA delayed development,
postponing the rocket's debut until at least 2017, according to the advisory
panel which was tapped to come up with options for the U.S. human space
program.
By then, the International Space Station will have been
removed from orbit, though the panel also recommended funding the station
through at least 2020. Unfortunately for Ares 1, additional funding for station
likely would delay Ares' debut another couple of years.
NASA Looking For A Few Good Ideas
Think you have a good idea to stimulate commercial space? Tell it to NASA. The U.S. space agency is soliciting ideas from its next round of competitions under the Centennial Challenge program. “The program seeks creative solutions from diverse and unconventional sources,” NASA wrote in an announcement.
So far, competitions have been held to develop technologies for robotic excavation of the lunar soil, super-efficient aircraft, reusable rocket-powered vehicles, wireless power transmission, super-strong materials and improved astronaut gloves. A $2 million lunar lander challenge is currently way.
Will Obama Fly Commercial?
Here’s a word Americans should learn to become very familiar
with: LEO, pronounced just like the zodiac sign, though in this context it’s an
acronym for Low-Earth Orbit, a distance of a couple of hundreds miles above the
planet’s surface, such as where the space station flies.
It’s the only place we’ve been in space since 1972 when the
last Apollo crew returned from the moon and it’s the only place that anyone
else in the world that has managed to send people into space has ever gone.
America had high hopes of breaking out of LEO after the
shuttle program ends, going back to the moon, maybe out to an asteroid and then
eventually on to Mars, the holy grail of human space exploration. NASA got
started on the job with great enthusiasm and due diligence, racking up a $7.7
billion tab of the estimated $40 billion needed just to develop a new rocket
and capsule for astronauts to ride in.
Along came our new leader, President Barack Obama, who
decided to take stock. He appointed a panel of 10 wise men and women, headed by
the well-respected former chief executive of Lockheed Martin. They spent three
months listening, studying, assessing, analyzing, debating what the country was
doing, should be doing and could be doing with its human space flight program.
Welcome To The Recession, NASA
A tedious final public meeting of the board reviewing the
country’s human space program concluded with a sobering assessment of the
future, at least for those wishing to see American flags on other bodies in the
solar system. To put it bluntly: It ain’t gonna happen in our lifetimes without
a big boost in NASA’s budget.
