Tag: NASA

Report finds NASA spacesuit development over budget, behind schedule, and inadequate

7:29 pm

Government in action! A NASA inspector general report has found that NASA’s program for developing new spacesuit is behind schedule, over budget, and unable to provide the necessary spacesuits needed for the agency’s future projects.

NASA’s spacewalking suits are in short supply, and a replacement is still years away despite the nearly $200 million spent on new technology, the space agency’s inspector general reported Wednesday. A next-generation suit for spacewalking astronauts is needed for future space travel, including trips to Mars. But a lack of a formal plan and destinations has complicated suit development, according to the report . At the same time, NASA has reduced funding for suit development, putting more priority instead on space habitats.

According to the report, NASA is dealing with a variety of design and health risks associated with the spacewalking suits used by astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The suits were developed more than 40 years ago and intended for 15 years.

More here. Essentially, the suits NASA presently uses on ISS don’t work well, there aren’t enough of them left, and they are difficult to maintain because they were designed for transport up and down on the space shuttle. At the same time NASA’s entire program to replace these suits has been mismanaged so badly that no replacement suits are anywhere on the horizon,even after spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

I predict that the next new spacesuit Americans use will be built in less than five years for a tenth the cost, by private companies.

5 comments

Latch blamed for Webb vibration test issue

6:03 pm

A latch that hadn’t closed properly has been identified as the cause of the anomaly that halted vibration testing of the James Webb Space Telescope in December.

At the committee meeting, Smith said the problem was tracked down to a latch designed to hold in place one of the wings of JWST’s primary mirror, which consists of 18 hexagonal segments. Those wings are folded into place to fit within the payload fairing of the Ariane 5 that will launch JWST, then deployed into place once in space. The latch, he said, consists of two plates with serrated teeth a few millimeters in size. “The thought is that the teeth, when they closed it, they didn’t quite seat,” he said. “So during the vibe [test], the teeth clapped together on the order of a millimeter or two, and that was what made the noise.”

Engineers were able to replicate the noise by placing the plates slightly out of alignment in the lab and subjecting them to similar vibrations, giving them confidence that was the cause of the anomaly.

I love how the Webb program manager also says that Webb is “on budget and on schedule.” That claim could only be true if you make believe that the budget was always $9 billion and the launch date was always supposed to be 2018 instead of the original $1 billion and 2011 launch date.

4 comments

NASA to rely more on private space for deep space missions

12:52 pm

Capitalism in space: NASA officials stated this weekthat they plan to rely more on private space companies for its future deep space missions.

NASA’s statement is the most direct agency indication so far that projected U.S. government funding may need to leverage private-sector investments and commercial expertise in order for crews to fulfill the agency’s target of reaching Mars by the late 2030s and establishing settlements there by the 2040s. NASA said it also expected to persuade some foreign governments to participate in crewed voyages to Mars.

William Gerstenmaier, the head of NASA’s human-exploration office, wrote to the inspector general that efforts to use private cargo rockets as part of the overall drive to send crews to Mars “are continual and will also be reflected in the exploration road map” slated for delivery to Congress at the end of 2017.

This story is merely noting NASA’s response to the recommendations of the NASA inspector general report [pdf] that came out earlier in the week that noted the delays and costs of SLS/Orion and suggested alternative approaches. What that response indicates is that NASA is increasingly bending to the cost pressures that they face with SLS/Orion, and are now more willing to consider private and less expensive and quicker alternatives.

The Inspector General (IG) report is itself a sign that the agency and the executive branch is beginning to see the light about the ineffectiveness of SLS/Orion. Previous IG reports in the past five years have tiptoed around the delays and gigantic cost of SLS/Orion. If anything, they were written to allow NASA to prepare Congress and the public for more delays and larger budgets. This report however was much more blunt and critical, and went out of its way to outline alternatives to SLS/Orion.

Another sign that the political winds are shifting is this story about a request by 20 House members to the Air Force to expand its program encouraging the development of competing private launch systems. In the past some of these same House members had tried to force particular companies and products on the Air Force and on ULA. Now they seem more willing to let the Air Force put out the bids competitively and allow the chips to fall where they may.

More important is this quote about two members who did not sign the letter request:

Absent from the list of members who signed the [letter] are Reps. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the chairmen of the full House Armed Services Committee and its Strategic Forces Subcommittee, respectively. In February, the two sent a letter to Acting Secretary of the Air Force Lisa Disbrow and James MacStravic, performing the duties of the under secretary of defense for acquisition, calling on the government to have “full access to, oversight of, and approval rights over decision-making about any engine down-select for Vulcan (assuming they will be requesting government funding).”

In the letter, they argued that since ULA is accepting government funding to support the development of Vulcan, the government should also have insight into that process, “especially where one of the technologies is unproven at the required size and power.” That was a reference to Blue Origin’s BE-4, which will be the largest rocket engine developed to date using methane as a fuel, rather than the kerosene used by the RD-180 and AR1 engines.

Thornberry has since backtracked on the comments in that letter, telling reporters last month it was not his intent to micromanage subcontracting decisions.

Rogers, in a recent SpaceNews interview, said he was not satisfied with the pace of development of an RD-180 replacement, but also praised the capabilities of commercial launch companies. “My subcommittee, our full committee, this Congress, is committed to not stop until we have an American-made engine that can get our national security space assets launched,” he said. [emphasis mine]

That these congressmen appear to be backing off from pushing their favorite rockets or insisting that the Air Force micromanage the development of these private rocket engines is a positive sign. It appears that there is increasing political pressure to support private development, free of government control.

3 comments

Court allows lawsuit against NASA agent who detained elderly couple

12:06 pm

A court has ruled that an elderly couple can sue NASA and the agent that detained them for possessing a tiny Moon rock that had been given to the woman’s deceased previous husband for his work at NASA in the 1960s.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Joann Davis, the widow of an engineer who worked with NASA, was entitled to show that her detention was “unreasonably prolonged and unnecessarily degrading.”

The federal agent “organized a sting operation involving six armed officers to forcibly seize a Lucite paperweight containing a moon rock the size of a rice grain from an elderly grandmother,” Chief 9th Circuit Judge Sidney R. Thomas wrote for a three-judge panel.

Read the whole story. It is another example of NASA overreach in its false believe that owns all moon rocks from the Apollo missions, even those that had been given away during that time. I hope this woman bankrupts the agent for what he did. I also hope she sues NASA as well, as their policy is wrong.

2 comments

Audit finds SLS unlikely to launch in 2018

4:00 am

A NASA audit has found that it is unlikely that the first SLS test flight will take place as scheduled in 2018, and that the first manned flight is also likely to be delayed from its 2021 launch target.

“NASA’s first exploration missions — EM-1 and EM-2 — face multiple challenges that will likely delay their launch,” the report states. The missions “are not likely to launch by 2018 or 2021, respectively,” it continues.

When might a crew launch? Hard to say.

The report says incomplete NASA information makes it “more difficult for both the agency and external stakeholders to gain a full understanding of the costs of that mission or to assess the validity of the agency’s launch date assumptions.”

If the first manned flight happens in 2023, as now expected, it means that it will occur 20 years after George Bush first proposed the Crew Exploration Vehicle (Orion) and the heavy lift rocket to put it into space. The total cost to fly this one mission will be approximately $43 billion.

Let me repeat that: $43 billion and 20 years to fly a single manned mission. Does no one in government see something wrong with this picture?

Posted from the West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit.

7 comments

ULA gets three launch contracts

8:41 pm

Capitalism in space: ULA last week won three launch contracts, two from the Air Force and one from NASA.

Both rockets are part of the existing EELV Block Buy between the Air Force and United Launch Alliance. The mission assignments were announced Friday by the Pentagon. The missions exceed the lift performance of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets that has been certified by the Air Force for national security payloads, making ULA the only provider available to execute these heavy launches.

In other government-launch news, NASA said last month that the second satellite in the next-generation era of U.S. civilian weather observatories will be launched atop an Atlas 5-401 rocket. The Atlas 5 beat out the Falcon 9 in a competition to win the rights to launch the Joint Polar Satellite System spacecraft No. 2 in 2021 from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

For SpaceX to truly compete with ULA they need to get the Falcon Heavy flying.

2 comments

SLS faces more delays

5:34 pm

Delays by ESA in the construction of the service module for Orion, plus the tornado damage at the Michoud facility in Louisiana, could force NASA to delay the first unmanned test launch of the SLS rocket, presently planned for late in 2018.

NASA is also considering delaying the flight further should the agency decide to make this first unmanned test flight a manned one. They also say they will need more money if they have to put people on the first flight. I guess $43 billion and almost 15 years wasn’t enough.

By the way, it took less than four years to win World War II. From Kennedy’s speech to the Apollo 11 landing was only eight years. One wonders when we, as a nation, will finally wake up and realize that SLS is not a rocket to the Moon, but an never-ending jobs program unable to accomplish anything in space.

12 comments

A NASA Image and Video library, available to all

10:13 pm

NASA has unveiled a new image and video library website that allows anyone to search through more than 140,000 NASA images, videos, and audio files.

I just tested it, putting “Apollo 8” as much search words. The site immediately made available a pretty nice collection of just under 300 images from that mission. The collection was far from complete (And I speak from experience, since when I wrote Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 I looked at every one of the images taken during the mission as well as most of the images taken by NASA’s press office as well as numerous others by every news source, including Life magazine.) but it was a start. It appears NASA intends to keep adding images with time.

1 comment

Another NASA authorization bill this year?

9:20 am

Less than a day after President Trump signed the first NASA authorization bill since 2010, it appears that two major players, one in industry and one in Congress, would like to revisit this bill again this year.

The first story summarizes and quotes from a series of tweets sent out by Elon Musk reacting to the bill, of which the most important noted ““changes almost nothing about what NASA is doing. Existing programs stay in place and there is no added funding for Mars,” and adding, “Perhaps there will be some future bill that makes a difference for Mars, but this is not it.”

The second story describes comments made by Cruz at a Commercial Spaceflight Federation breakfast on March 22, where he noted that in 2017 Cruz hoped to do it all over again, with a different focus: “In this coming Congress, I hope to take up another commercial space launch piece of legislation, and a longer-term NASA authorization.”

I suspect that both want and expect some changes in how NASA has been doing things, and the just-signed authorization did not accomplish that. The bill was written last year, as Cruz also noted in his remarks, and thus could not reflect any policy changes we can expect from Trump. I also suspect that both Musk and Cruz want to influence that policy, which is not yet determined. I am hoping that Capitalism in Space, which their offices have both received, is having some of its own influence here, even if it is tiny.

7 comments

Trump signs NASA authorization

9:16 am

President Trump today signed the NASA authorization bill, initially written and sponsored by Senator Ted Cruz.

The most significant aspect of this authorization is what is not in it. The bill outlines what Congress wants NASA to focus on, and makes literally no mention of any Earth science research at all. Essentially, it tasks NASA to focus on space exploration, and space exploration only.

In many ways this is merely a symbolic act, since it is the budget that really determines what NASA will do, and the budget that Trump put forth last week only cut NASA’s Earth science budget by 5%. Nonetheless, the authorization bill gives us a sense of where the politics are heading. I expect that by the time Congress gets done with NASA’s budget there will be more cuts to that Earth science budget.

5 comments

Parachute tests for Boeing Starliner

8:45 am

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has successfully completed a parachute test at New Mexico’s Spaceport America.

Uniquely, this test wasn’t conducted via the use of a helicopter of an aircraft – as seen with other vehicles, such as the Orion spacecraft. Boeing was not able to fit the Starliner test article into the hold of a C-130 or C-17 aircraft, so they instead used a 1.3-million-cubic-foot balloon, which is able to lift the capsule to its intended altitude.

The test went well, with Starliner released from the balloon, deploying two drogue parachutes at 28,000 feet to stabilize the spacecraft, then its pilot parachutes at 12,000 feet. The main parachutes followed at 8,000 feet above the ground prior to the jettison of the spacecraft’s base heat shield at 4,500 feet. Finally, the spacecraft successfully touched down.

The article once again makes note of NASA’s fake concern over the Atlas 5 rocket. The concern isn’t that the rocket isn’t reliable. The concern is that Boeing hasn’t yet gotten NASA’s certification that it is reliable. In other words, because NASA hasn’t signed a piece of paper stating the obvious fact that the Atlas 5 is safe, Boeing’s Starliner cannot be considered safe.

0 comments

House approves NASA authorization

5:56 pm

The NASA authorization act that the Senate passed on February 21 was approved by the House today.

As I discussed in reviewing the act on February 21, the bill’s overall focus is to shift NASA from running “a space program” to facilitating the success of competing private enterprise. It also eliminates all of NASA’s climate budget so that the money can be spent instead on space exploration.

Trump is expected to sign it. Then will come the hard work, actually writing the budget for NASA.

2 comments

The tampering of climate data at NOAA and NASA

11:35 am

data tampering at NASA

Last week there was the another Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington. One presentation there by several important climate skeptics outlined in detail the data tampering that has been going on at an increasingly outrageous manner at both NOAA and NASA in recent years. The slides presented by Tony Heller (available here [pdf]), many of which I have highlighted previously here at Behind the Black, are especially educational and damning.

To the right is just one of Heller’s slides, the one that I find the most damning of all. It shows how the surface data issued by NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), the two green lines, does not match the satellite data at all. While the satellite data shows no warming this entire century, the GISS data shows steady rising in the surface data. Other slides by Heller show that this rise comes solely from data adjustments and the extrapolation of imagined temperature data in places where no data exists, neither of which has been explained in any manner by the scientists at GISS.

What is most damning however is the change Heller documents between GISS’s November 2016 and December 2016 data sets. For reasons that are simply unjustified by any scientific measure, GISS somehow found it necessary to adjust its entire data set upward in one month about 0.03 of a degree. The only reason I can find for such a change in such a short period of time is a desire by the scientists at GISS to create the illusion that the climate is warming, and warming fast. They don’t have any real data to show this, so they make it up.

Make sure you look at all of Heller’s slides [pdf]. It is also definitely worthwhile to spend the time to watch the entire CPAC presentation, available at the first link above.

42 comments

Bigelow advocates his space stations for lunar missions

11:08 am

The competition heats up: Robert Bigelow today advocated using his privately built inflatable space station modules as a tool for launching future American lunar missions.

Bigelow’s company is eager to put a space station depot in lunar orbit, from which such activities and others can be initiated, as well as support onboard research. “We do not have the technologies, and there is zero business case for Mars. We do have a business case for the moon. And that’s why the moon absolutely makes the best sense,” Bigelow said. “And we can do the lunar activities far sooner than we can with Mars, which stretches out to, NASA’s views are Mars may be in the 2040s.”

His “New Space” company, Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas, designs space habitats, including a fully self-contained space station with 330 cubic meters of living and working space, which he said is ready for a lower-Earth orbit or, in about three years given the expected advancements in rocketry, for lunar orbit.

The key statement above is the comparison between lunar missions and Mars missions, at this time. The Moon has the chance to be profitable in the near future. Mars does not. If you had money to invest (even if it is taxpayer dollars) which would you invest it in?

2 comments

Heading Home

10:22 pm

Today we completed our last caving trip in Belize. I and many of the expedition’s participants head home tomorrow.

Because our cave trips take so much time, I have not had time to post anything these last few days. I will try to post tomorrow during my return home, but expect full posting to resume on Thursday.

Also, though I will comment then in greater length about SpaceX’s announcement on Monday that they plan on sending two tourists around the Moon by 2018, I want to note here that this announcement is clearly Elon Musk’s response to the effort by NASA to delay the launch of commercial crew because of so-called safety issues so that SLS/Orion might fly first. Musk is telling the world that NASA’s safety concerns are crap (to which I generally agree) and he intends to prove this with his own lunar manned mission.

11 comments

New auto-destruct system to increase launch rate

7:12 am

The competition heats up: A new auto-destruct system operating by computer, using GPS, and installed on each rocket should allow the launch rate in Florida to ramp up significantly.

Up until now it took several days to reconfigure the ground-based radar facilities. This system, first used on the most recent Falcon 9 launch, does not require this. It also involves fewer people to operate it. They expect that they will soon be able to launch up to 48 missions per year, some on the same day.

6 comments

NASA signs technology development contracts with eight companies

10:23 pm

The competition heats up: NASA today announced the award of contracts to eight small companies to develop new technologies for the advancement of smallsat launch capabilities.

The contracts cover a wide range of launch concepts, from testing new imaging technology for spotting asteroids to new rocket engine development to new rocket designs. The key component however of all these contracts is this:

These fixed-priced contracts include milestone payments tied to technical progress and require a minimum 25 percent industry contribution, though all awards are contingent on the availability of appropriated funding. The contracts are worth a combined total of approximately $17 million, and each have an approximate two-year performance period culminating in a small spacecraft orbital demonstration mission or the maturation of small launch vehicle technologies.

In other words, the companies have to provide some of the funding, since the technology being developed will benefit them. They also will only be paid once they meet certain milestones, and any cost overages will be their responsibility. The result? The U.S. has the chance of giving birth to eight new space companies, all with cutting edge technology that can compete in the new launch market. And the country gets this for a measly $17 million.

1 comment

Senate passes NASA budget that slashes environment spending

11:41 am

While keeping NASA’s overall budget the same, the Senate has passed a NASA budget bill that will slash NASA’s environmental spending and pass the money to other programs within the agency.

The budget zeros out all budget items dedicated to climate research. The budget also outlines a number of important space policy approaches that are now endorsed by Congress:

  • Commercial crew and cargo are fully supported
  • Privatizing ISS is encouraged
  • Congress reaffirms its support of SLS and Orion
  • NASA is asked to prep Orion for ISS flights, using other rockets
  • NASA is tasked to create a roadmap for reaching Mars
  • The Mars roadmap is not restricted to using SLS or Orion
  • An alternative to Obama’s asteroid redirect mission is requested
  • Funding is provided to pay for astronaut health needs
  • NASA science is to focus on astronomy, planets, exoplanets, asteroids, aviation, and space technology

It is expected that the House will also pass the bill, and that Trump will sign it.

I also expect that most of NASA’s climate work will now be shifted to NOAA, under new management. Thus, the climate budgets are adjusted, and the people in charge are changed. A nice way to drain the swamp.

11 comments

ULA lets the press see part of SLS

9:38 am

Link here. The upper stage of SLS is undergoing its final testing in Michoud prior to shipment to Florida, and ULA had a press event to show it off.

“This is the first piece of integrated flight hardware for the SLS system to be shipped down to the Cape in preparation for our very first launch,” said Jerry Cook, Deputy SLS Program Manager for NASA. Cook noted that the ICPS test article is currently undergoing stress and load tests at Marshall.

The completion of the ICPS is yet another landmark in SLS’ development, though some contend it’s still a drawing-board vehicle. John Shannon, Boeing’s Vice President and General Manager of the SLS Program, disagrees. “The SLS has, in various forms, been called a paper rocket […] and, if I think you look to your right, you’ll see that absolutely is not true,” stated Shannon. “If you had the opportunity to go to the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where we’re putting the bigger core stage together, you would also see that it is not true because we are putting hardware together as we speak.”

This upper stage engine is a brand new design and has never flown before, and the rocket it is part of has yet to be assembled. Yet NASA is considering flying humans on it during its first test flight, even as it harasses SpaceX and Boeing about using the Falcon 9 and Atlas 5 rockets, both proven repeatedly in operational flights, for their manned ISS missions.

The article also gives an update on the situation at Michoud since it was hit by a tornado on February 8. It appears that the facility is operating again, but not fully.

1 comment
1 … 68 69 70 71 72 … 116