James McLane points out that the shuttle shape is not the only way to build a spaceship.
In an email to me Jim noted that he “is still trying to save NASA.” My response to him was that trying to save NASA right now is more hopeless than Don Quixote chasing a windmill. However, the engineering ideas he outlines in his essay are just the kind of innovative thinking required by the new private companies. And the more ideas the merrier!
The House bill that brings NASA’s budget back to 2008 levels essentially leaves it to NASA to figure out what to cut.
If true, what this means is that NASA itself will have to choose what it considers important. The one problem is that according to this article Congress is still requiring NASA to spend $3 billion on the program-formerly-called-Constellation. which gives the agency less flexibility in doling out the cash.
The shuttle mission has been extended one day.
Interested in caves on other worlds? You might want to attend the First International Planetary Caves Workshop to be held October 25-28, 2011 in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
An evening pause:
The real future: “We’re building spacecraft, not bizjets.”
The space shuttle docks with ISS, for the last time.
After a very short hold at 31 seconds, the space shuttle Atlantis has launched and reached orbit without any obvious hitches.
Clark Lindsey has provided a list of websites where you can watch the shuttle launch live from your computer.
Also, Bill Harwood is updating his reports very regularly.
Dawn continues to approach the large asteroid Vesta. Below is an image taken July 1st from about 62,000 miles. The image has a resolution of 5.8 miles per pixel.
Despite Vesta’s large size, 330 miles in diameter, it is nonspherical. This fact, combined with data that says it is differentiated with a core and mantle, suggests that it is the remains of a larger object that subsequently broke up.
The transition to private space: Sierra Nevada hires former NASA engineers and astronauts.
This ISS status update, dated June 28, explains why the piece of space junk that flew past the station that day was such a surprise. (Hat tip to NASA engineer James Fincannon for pointing this out to me.)
Last night at ~6:00pm EDT, NASA Houston FTC (Flight Control Team) received notification of an upcoming “red threshold” conjunction of the ISS with a piece of orbital debris (Object 82618, UNKNOWN), with a TCA (Time of Closest Approach) this morning at 8:08am EDT, – which was too late to begin planning for a DAM (Debris Avoidance Maneuver). Therefore, FTC and crew made preparations for crew sheltering in Soyuz 26S & 27S. PC (Probability of Collision) at last tracking fix (7:20am) remained in the Red box, at ~0.003, with a miss distance of 0.25 km radial, 0.375 km downtrack, 0.570 m crosstrack. The necessary reconfiguration procedures (USOS hatches closed, etc.) began 1.5 hrs before TCA (6:38am EDT), and the six crewmembers ingressed their Soyuz vehicles. At 8:08am the object cleared the ISS with no impact, and shortly thereafter the crew was given the Go for returning to the ISS. [The late notification occurred because of the high air resistance (drag) of the object (~175 times higher than ISS) which made its trajectory very sensitive to small errors in atmospheric density predictions at the current solar flux. Due to the high drag, there is no chance of a recurrence of Object 82618).] [emphasis mine]
In other words, the piece of junk was probably something like a piece of insulation, very light but with a large area, much like a sail. Thus, as it flies through the thin atmosphere at 200 to 400 miles altitude its velocity and direction can easily change, making it difficult, if not impossible, to predict its future trajectory.
The good news is that these same conditions mean that the orbit of the object will quickly decay (“due to high drag”) so that it poses no future threat to the station.
Unfortunately, there are many other objects like this in orbit, and they all pose a threat, mostly because of the difficulty of reliably predicting their orbits.
