News Summaries for December 3

Chicago Firm Considers Making, Launching Craft at Rickenbacker (Source: Columbus Dispatch)
Forget science fiction. Space tourists could be flying from Rickenbacker Airport if a Chicago company picks Columbus for its primary U.S. operations. "We’re very serious about locating in Ohio," said Chirinjeev Kathuria, chairman of PlanetSpace. "We think it has a good manufacturing environment. Rickenbacker is one of the longer runways in the U.S. There are astronaut training facilities there," he said, referring to NASA’s John H. Glenn Center in Cleveland.

Air Force, Australia Team up to Create Hypersonic Missiles, Space Launchers (Source: DaytonDaily.com)
Air Force researchers here are leading a new international program to develop key technologies for superfast cruise missiles and reusable space launchers. Air Force and Australian Department of Defense officials signed a multinational partnership Nov. 10 in Canberra, Australia for a six-year research program that will include up to 10 flight tests over a vast Australian test range. The $54 million program is the largest science and technology collaboration with Australia the Air Force has ever had. The program is dubbed HiFIRE, for Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation.

Ares I Boosts NASA Glenn, Ohio (Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer)
They're making tuna cans at Cleveland's NASA Glenn Research Center, but not anything like you'd find at the grocery store. These monsters are 18 feet wide, stand taller than LeBron James in a top hat, and tip the scales at 5 tons, even empty. The big steel canisters that Glenn workers have affectionately dubbed "tuna cans" actually are rocket segments. They're the first components of a new launch vehicle called Ares I, which will replace the cargo-toting space shuttle and later will transport astronauts back to the moon. Eventually, Ares I will help take them to Mars.

The completion of a prototype tuna can at Glenn in mid-October - with production models to come next year - is an early sign that NASA's ambitious new exploration plan is moving into high gear. The $34 million project also shows the Cleveland center is back in the thick of the nation's space flight program. Glenn workers have built complex space flight hardware before, including parts of a crew capsule for the old Mercury program and refrigerator-sized science equipment destined for the International Space Station, but never anything of the tuna cans' scale.

Blue Origin Rocket Report from Texas (Source: MSNBC)
The secretive rocket company backed by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin, was planning the second test launch at its sprawling West Texas facility sometime between Thursday and Sunday. Air traffic controllers said that the test didn't go off Thursday or Friday, perhaps due to unacceptable weather - and Sunday they said there were two ignitions, but no liftoff. Because it's Blue Origin's policy not to comment on their tests, we don't yet know whether this was a disappointing fizzle or simply part of the expected testing routine. But stay tuned: Perhaps more information will trickle out.

Business End of a Wyoming Missile Site (Source: Jackson Hole Star Tribune)
Tim Bendel, a former Lockheed Martin propulsion engineer, lives with his wife in the former nerve center of a missile silo, 30 feet underground where access is afforded via what resembles a large drainage pipe. Bendel is president of Frontier Astronautics. He and his business partners hope the company's engines and attitude control systems will help usher in a new era in aerospace history. Frontier Astronautics won't make the rockets themselves, but it will make the engines that power the rockets and the systems that keep them on course. Their engines will be designed for vehicles that can fly several times a day. One client is Masten Space Systems California, which is working on a line of vertical takeoff and launch vehicles for both "space tourism" and unmanned flights. Another is SpeedUp, also from California. The company is attempting to build a flying motorcycle using similar vertical takeoff and landing technology.

SpeedUp said that Frontier Astronautics is unique because the company has its own launch site: "The fact that they are starting up means I don't have to work around existing launch schedules and I can have a lot of flexibility with testing." If all goes well, SpeedUp might be following Frontier Astronautics to the Cowboy State. Bendel thinks an old Atlas missile site is just the place for his business. Here, the company can build rocket engines on a spacious shop floor and test their performance in a flame trench designed for something with enough thrust to propel an object to the moon. The scale on which they're working will require only a fraction of such capacity.

When Bendel and his business partners decided to form Frontier Astronautics, one on their challenges was to find a suitable site for conducting rocket science. "We decided we were going to have to buy some land away from everybody," he said. Colorado, where the partners lived, proved too restrictive, even in rural areas of the state. So they expanded their search to include Wyoming and Nebraska. Unlike Colorado, Bendel said the locals in nearby Chugwater and Wyoming economic development officials rolled out the welcome mat for the rocketmen.