Construction has now begun on NASA’s next Mars lander, set for launch in 2016.
It is nothing but pork: A GAO report says that NASA has been hiding the true and very expensive cost of the SLS/Orion projects by specifically excluding the cost of any actual missions that go anywhere.
NASA so far has put only two SLS missions on the manifest: a late-2017 test launch of an unmanned Orion into lunar space followed by a repeat of the mission in 2021 with crew onboard. NASA officials told GAO auditors it expects to have spent at least $22 billion on SLS and Orion through 2021, an estimate that does not include the cost of building the SLS launcher for the second mission. … Moreover, NASA provided no cost estimate for the more powerful SLS rocket NASA would need to mount a crewed Mars expedition the Obama administration envisions happening in the 2030s. According to NASA’s early plans, such a mission would entail multiple SLS-Orion launches.
The cost estimates NASA has offered so far “provide no information about the longer-term, life cycle costs of developing, manufacturing, and operating the launch vehicle, crew capsule, and ground systems” the agency has identified as crucial to the eventual Mars mission, the GAO wrote in its report.
In other words, they are going to spend $22 billion to launch the thing once. Meanwhile, NASA’s commercial manned space effort is producing three different spacecraft for about $3 billion total. If anyone in Congress had any brains, picking between these two programs would be easy, a no-brainer. Sadly, they have no brains, and really aren’t making their budgetary decisions with the needs of the nation in mind.
The competition heats up: Aerojet Rocketdyne has signed a contract to provide rocket engine’s for the upper stage of Stratolaunch’s air-launched rocket.
This company press release is packed full of new information about Stratolaunch’s rocket. For one, the entire package has been named the Eagles Launch System, with the air-launched upper stage called Thunderbolt. For another, they have a scheduled launch date set for 2018.
The competition heats up: Russia signs a preliminary space exploration agreement with China.
Meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Deputy Prime Minister Wang Yang, in Beijing on Monday, [Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri] Rogozin announced on Twitter that he had signed “a protocol on establishing a control group for the implementation of eight strategic projects.” In a later Facebook post, he said “cooperation in space and in the market for space navigation” were among the projects.
Rogozin and Wang agreed to hold a meeting between the heads of their respective agencies “in the near future,” so that Beijing and Moscow could sow the seeds of a potential space partnership.
Federal Space Agency chief Oleg Ostapanko wants to allow “Chinese colleagues participate in some of the most interesting projects that can replace the ISS,” Rogozin said, adding that they would also discuss “projects such as cooperation in the field of rocket engine development,” and cooperation in the growing market of space applications services — which primarily applies to the development of the Chinese Beidou satellite navigation system and Russia’s Glonass navigation system, both rivals to the U.S.’ GPS.
The article does not give much information about this agreement, but does spend a lot of time discounting it, saying that it really is only a bluff to keep the U.S. from imposing more sanctions against Russia’s profitable commercial space efforts.
The private effort to reactivate ISEE-3, a 1970s NASA spacecraft in orbit around the sun, has successfully detected the spacecraft.
Unfortunately the signal is a little weaker than we expected, and it’s also odd that it fades out toward the end of this capture (it returns and fades in subsequent ones too). Again, this is all very preliminary data done tonight on a rush basis. Much more detail to follow.
They don’t have a lot of time to detect, re-establish contact, and get the spacecraft into the necessary orbit for research. Orbital mechanics give them only through July to do this before it will be too late.
Sources in Russia say that it was human error in the rocket assembly that caused last week’s Proton launch failure.
The next Falcon 9 commercial launch, scrubbed from early May, has now been rescheduled to June 11.
This new date is a significant slip in the schedule, as they originally announced only a two week delay, and this adds on another two weeks. The original announced reason for the scrub was umbilical connection issues, but a commenter here at Behind The Black says it might have been something more serious, “a helium pressurization bottle burst in the stage.”
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada has successfully completed wind tunnel tests a several scale models of their winged spacecraft Dream Chaser.
It appears from these tests that the spacecraft’s design works better than expected during ascent and re-entry.
The article also gives a quick overview of the status of all three commercial companies, and from this it really looks to me as if Boeing is the least aggressive in pursuing its construction effort. This is merely an impression, and not to be taken too seriously, but it really does look like Boeing is playing the public relations game, doing as little work as possible while trying to garner the most publicity while waiting for the award of the contract.
Finding out what’s in it: Two VA patients committed suicide after their treatments were delayed against the wishes of their psychiatrist.
Dr. Margaret Moxness, who says she was employed at the Huntington VA Medical Center in Charleston, W.Va., from 2008 to 2010, told “Fox & Friends” on Monday that she was told to delay treatment even after she told supervisors they needed immediate care. She said at least two patients committed suicide while waiting for treatment between appointments.
Though the story is specifically about the widening scandal involving the Veterans Administration, it also tells us exactly what to expect from Obamacare in the coming years: bureaucracy, bad patient care, long wait times, and corruption by management. This is what one should expect from any monopolistic government-run program that doesn’t have to deal with competition on the open market.
The first preliminary list of candidate landing sites for NASA’s next Mars rover have been proposed.
At the conclusion of the workshop, attendees voted informally on the nearly 30 candidate sites that researchers had presented—ranking the sites as being of high, medium, or low scientific interest. Floating to the top was a site called Northeast Syrtis Major, a terrain at the edge of the Isidis Basin, the remnant of one of Mars’s biggest and most ancient asteroid impacts. Jack Mustard, a planetary scientist at Brown University and an advocate for the site, says material from the impact could offer a precise date for that event. Scientists also want a piece of nearby lava flows, thought to have oozed out and cooled several hundred million years later.
Nothing is even close to being decided yet, however.
In related news, a new study suggests that dozens of microbes might have stowed away on Curiosity when it left for Mars.
Emphasis must be placed on the word “suggests” however.
The competition heats up: The launch failure Thursday of a Russian Proton rocket is putting the squeeze on the commercial satellite industry.
Periodically I am told by launch industry experts that the launch industry doesn’t have sufficient demand or capacity for more launch companies. It was this logic, for example, that prompted Boeing and Lockheed Martin to combine into ULA and do a bulk buy with the Air Force. Otherwise, they claimed, they didn’t have enough business to compete with each other and stay in business.
This article above puts the lie to these claims. Not only is there plenty of demand, companies like SpaceX would probably up their fees if they wanted to because the supply does not even come close to meeting the demand. In fact, satellite companies want to get their satellites into orbit and can’t because of a shortage of launch services.
This shortage is an opportunity, not only for the companies that exist but for any new companies trying to get started, such as Stratolaunch. Rather than sit on their hands, as have Boeing and Lockheed Martin, an ambitious and competitive effort here could win market share and make lots of money.
At least they are finally being honest: The Democrats in the Senate moved this week to introduce a constitutional amendment for limiting the first amendment and the freedom of speech.
Dragon has returned safely to Earth after a month docked to ISS.
Standing up for freedom: A replacement commencement speaker for someone forced out by student protests today strongly criticized the students in his speech today.
William G. Bowen, former president of Princeton and a nationally respected higher education leader, called the student protestors’ approach both “immature” and “arrogant” and the subsequent withdrawal of Robert J. Birgeneau, former chancellor of the University of California Berkeley, a “defeat” for the Quaker college and its ideals.
I would hope more speakers did this. Sadly, I don’t get the impression many are.
Veterans Administration: “How many dead veterans do you need before somebody asks the question within the White House, ‘Maybe this isn’t the best steward of these veterans?’”
More here.
A modern John Deere tractor with 850 horsepower plays tug of war with an 1800s era steam tractor that has about 18 horsepower. Which will win?
Virgin Galactic pretty much admits that SpaceShipTwo will fly to only fifty miles altitude, not 62 (100 kilometers).
The admission came in response to the rumors that say the spacecraft will even have trouble reach 50 miles.
Though the company is making a hard PR effort to dispel the negative rumors that are swirling about in the press, the only way they will really succeed at this is to begin actual test flights, something that has not happened, as they have promised repeatedly since the first powered flight last year.
The competition heats up: The assembly of Boeing’s CST-100 manned spacecraft is expected to begin soon.
Boeing takes over the OPF-3 lease in late June 2014 following an official handover ceremony from Space Florida. Assembly begins soon thereafter. … “The pieces are coming one by one from all over the country,” Ferguson explained. “Parts from our vendors are already starting to show up for our test article. “Assembly of the test article in Florida starts soon.”
Granted, Boeing’s lease for its assembly space at Kennedy has not yet started, but the vagueness of the assembly start date is a bit curious, and suggests that Boeing won’t begin assembly until they know they have won the contract from NASA, the announcement of which is presently scheduled for late summer 2014.
Government dithering: The Air Force has hired the Aerospace Corporation to evaluate how long it will take to replace the Russian engine used by the Atlas 5 rocket.
“I see numbers all over the map,” [Ray Johnson, vice president at Aerospace] said May 14 during the World Space Risk Forum here. “Some people say they could do it in five years. Others estimate it’s going to be longer than that, and that it could be eight.” Aerospace Corp. work evaluating what it would take to develop a hydrocarbon engine to replace the RD-180 — if U.S.-Russia relations sour to the point where the engine is no longer available or wanted — “is literally just a few weeks old,” Johnson said.
Time is critical on this issue. It seems to me a better thing to do would be to immediately issue of Request for Proposals, which would quickly tell the Air Force what the American aerospace industry has to offer. They could then proceed right to construction, rather than studying the issue endlessly beforehand.
Moreover, why isn’t Lockheed Martin doing something about this? It is their rocket that is dependent on the Russians. Why is it the Air Force’s responsibility to save them?
Like a phoenix: NASA has officially approved the new mission for the crippled Kepler space telescope, allowing observations to continue for another two years.
During the K2 mission, Kepler will stare at target fields in the plane of Earth’s orbit, known as the ecliptic, during observing campaigns that last about 75 days each. In this orientation, solar radiation pressure can help balance the spacecraft, making the most of Kepler’s compromised pointing ability, team members said.
Hopefully the application of clever engineering will allow scientists to get data good enough to spot some more exoplanets.
Want to fly into space? All you have to do is “build the future” and win the Hackaday Prize.
You’re probably wondering what you’re actually supposed to build? We’ve been vague up to this point on purpose, because spouting specific categorization stifles creativity. We want you to Build the Future — not fit inside of a tiny box made of disqualifying restraints. … The only requirements you really have to hit are quite simple:
- You must actually build something
- It must involve some type of electronics that are connected to something
- Our main requirements have to do with documentation. This includes lists of parts, schematics, images, and videos. Remember, Openness is a Virtue.
The winner gets just under $200K to buy a ticket on the commercial space carrier of their choice. Or they can cash it in. Numerous additional prizes will also be awarded.
Hat tip to commenter Eric who says he has entered, is not building a rocket engine “that seems to be in demand all of a sudden,” but is building something that is “out there” nonetheless.
That was fast: After it was revealed today that SunTrust Bank was cutting ties with the Benham brothers because it did not like their conservative beliefs and thus threatening their business, it now appears that the bank has backed down and has re-established those ties.
A short seven minute commentary by Bill Whittle explaining why some of us do difficult and challenging things, while others do not.
After concluding eight years of science observations in orbit around Venus, Venus Express is about to begin a series of atmospheric plunges to test the engineering of aerobraking at the extreme.
They plan to dive into Venus’s hellish atmosphere as low as 80 miles, where they hope not only to get data about this little studied region but to also learn more about the engineering of aerobraking. The article also gives a nice overview of the knowledge that Venus Express gathered in the past eight years.
Want to watch some astronomers blow up the top of a mountain? You can!
Seriously, construction crews will in June begin blasting to prepare this mountain top in Chile for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), a gigantic optical telescope that will have a primary mirror 39 meters or 128 feet across and is scheduled for completion sometime in the next decade. To mark the event they will be providing a live stream for everyone worldwide to watch.
Fascists: Students shout down a speaker at Portland State University.
And why did they do this?
Kristian Williams, the panelist who was interrupted, was shouted at because of an essay he wrote last year in which he criticized what he saw as a pattern where those who are survivors of sexual violence are presumed to be the only ones who can talk about any conflict over a given incident.
His piece did not deny that sexual violence is real, but he questioned the way some people have been attacked as perpetrators. “Under this theory, the survivor, and the survivor alone, has the right to make demands, while the rest of us are duty-bound to enact sanctions without question,” he wrote.
He didn’t disagree with the students, only expressed the opinion that everyone should have the right to speak on the subject. For this sin he was violently silenced. Even worse, he was silenced with this shouted madness: “We will not be silenced in the face of your violence.” The protestors will not be silenced? It appears that they are the only ones being permitted to speak. Video below the fold. It is truly horrifying.
» Read more
Fascists: After losing an HBO television show because of their conservative views, Benham Brothers has now had its bank suddenly cut all ties from their business.
SunTrust Banks is cutting ties with would-be reality stars David and Jason Benham after liberal activists attacked them for their conservative views on abortion and gay marriage, The Daily Caller has learned. In a statement provided first to TheDC on Friday, the Benham brothers confirmed that SunTrust Banks has pulled all of its listed properties with the Benham brothers’ bank-owned property business, which includes several franchisees across four states. The move comes just a week after HGTV announced it was canceling a planned home renovation show hosted by the brothers.
“If our faith costs us our HGTV show and our business, then so be it,” said Jason Benham on Friday. “We were caught off-guard with this one,” David Benham said of SunTrust’s actions. “Keeping us off television wasn’t enough, now this agenda to silence wants us out of the marketplace.” [emphasis mine]
It must be emphasized that the only reason for blacklisting these men is because of their personal beliefs, which happen to also be completely irrelevant to how they run their business.
According to a prominent climate scientist, a research paper he co-authored suggesting the threat of global warming from carbon dioxide is exaggerated was rejected for publication for political reasons.
The five contributing scientists submitted the paper to Environmental Research Letters – a highly regarded journal – but were told it had been rejected. A scientist asked by the journal to assess the paper under the peer review process reportedly wrote: ‘It is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of “errors” and worse from the climate skeptics media side.’
Prof Bengtsson, 79, said it was ‘utterly unacceptable’ to advise against publishing a paper on the political grounds. He said: ‘It is an indication of how science is gradually being influenced by political views. The reality hasn’t been keeping up with the [computer] models.
Bengtsson is also the same climate scientist who was forced to resign last week from a skeptical global warming think tank because of threats of blacklisting if he did not.
Working for the Democratic Party: The IRS appears to be stonewalling a Freedom of Information request for all documents relating to communications between that agency and thirteen Democratic elected officials from 2009 to 2013.
Those officials include former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman, former Commissioner Steven Miller, senior IRS official Joseph Grant and former head of tax exempt groups Lois Lerner. Members of Congress named in the request include Sen. Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Reid (D-NV), DSCC Chair Sen. Bennet (D-CO), Sen. Landrieu (D-LA), Sen. Pryor (D-AR), Sen. Hagan (D-NC), Sen. Begich (D-AK), Sen. Shaheen (D-NH), Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO), Sen. Franken (D-MN), Sen. Warner (D-VA), Rep. Braley and Rep. Peters (D-MI).
Since that request was received by the IRS nearly one year ago, IRS Tax Law Specialists Robert Thomas and Denise Higley have asked for more time to fulfill the request six times.
As has been said many times before, it ain’t the crime but the coverup that does the most damage. I suspect the requested documents will be very damaging to these Democrats, as the material will likely show that they colluded with the IRS to use the tax agency to harass conservatives. Delaying their release, however, only means that we will likely get to see these documents closer to the 2014 election.
