March 2 News Items

Air Force Funds Boeing and Lockheed Martin to Retain EELV Rocket Availability (Source: ERAU)
Boeing and Lockheed Martin will receive contract modifications totaling over $518 million to "maintain uninterrupted support" for the companies' Delta-4 and Atlas-5 launch vehicles. Boeing will receive the majority of the new funding, just under $308 million, with some additional tasks. Boeing will use $20 million for "pre/post mission engineering and critical components...supply chain management and technological improvement tasks" for the Delta-4 launch system.

Candidates' Views Differ on Space Exploration (Source: NPR)
Advocates of NASA's plan to return to the moon are concerned that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has said he will raid NASA's budget to fund education. While the issue of space exploration hasn't gotten much attention this campaign season, it is a topic on which the candidates do differ. Visit http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87829747 to hear the radio news segment.

Launch Site Opposition Focuses Mainly on Northern Option (Source: ERAU)
Opponents of NASA's concept for allowing a new commercial launch complex to be built on KSC are most concerned with the northernmost site among the two options identified. The northern site is on relatively undisturbed land and its development and operations would impact public use of the Mosquito Lagoon, a wildlife sanctuary and nearby beaches. The southern site is adjacent to existing Space Shuttle launch pads, is located within KSC's current security area, and would not impact public access to wildlife areas. Advocates hope the strong opposition to the northern site expressed at recent public meetings will not prevent the development of the southern site. Click here to view a map of the two sites.

Florida Legislators Introduce Space Diversification Bill (Source: ERAU)
The Florida Legislative Session begins this week in Tallahassee and multiple space-related bills will be considered. Rep. Thad Altman and Senator Bill Posey (who is seeking Dave Weldon's seat in Congress) have introduced HB-1055 and SB-2526, respectively. The "Space Technology Research and Diversification Initiative Act" would establish a multi-university space initiative.

According to the bills: "The anticipated impacts of NASA's retirement of the Space Shuttle program reveal an underlying lack of diversification in Florida's space industry...resulting in an economic reliance on launch-related programs. The Legislature finds that the state should expand statewide involvement in space research and technology development programs involving multiple universities, industry, NASA, and the military." Visit http://www.myfloridahouse.com/SECTIONS/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?BillId=38817& for information.

New Use For NASA's Ceramic Thermal-Protection Tiles Saves Some Jobs at KSC (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Ceramic heat-protection tiles -- for three decades, a fragile symbol of the space-shuttle era -- have gained an unexpected new lease on life. Long assumed to be destined for the engineering garbage can as NASA abandons the shuttle for a new spaceship, the tiles have made a comeback as part of the thermal-protection system of the Orion space capsule that is supposed to return astronauts to the moon in 2020. Even better for the beleaguered workforce at KSC -- which expects to lose thousands of jobs when the shuttle is retired -- the tiles will be manufactured and applied to the sides of the Orion capsule at KSC. But only as few as 10 tile technicians will remain, down from an estimated several hundred today.

Fighting to Launch Cosmic-Ray Detector (Source: New York Times)
In a recent report to Congress, NASA offered two contradictory statements: a $1.5 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) intended for the space station was on track for a 2009 launch, but it had no intention of actually launching AMS into space. Once upon a time the AMS was to be the scientific centerpiece of the space station. The 15,000 pound detector would look for evidence of antimatter or the mysterious dark matter that accounts for 25 percent of creation. The brainchild of MIT physicist and Nobel laureate Sam Ting, the detector was built by a collaboration of scientists from 16 countries, including China and Taiwan.

NASA agreed in 1995 to give it a ride to the space station and then reneged 10 years later after Columbia's loss, saying the remaining flights between now and 2010's shuttle retirement were all spoken for. This dismayed many physicists who thought the space agency should keep its word and was being a bad international partner. “It’s a pity that NASA is living up to its commitment to finish the Space Station, but not to its commitment to use it for something scientifically interesting,” said Steven Weinberg, himself a Nobel physicist. But Dr. Ting has supporters in Congress, including Sen. Bill Nelson, who vowed to file legislation adding a shuttle flight for the detector if NASA did not change its mind. A recent NASA report on the status and prospects of the AMS reveals that NASA has not changed its mind.

In order to fly AMS before Sep. 2010, the shuttle end date, either “critical space station hardware” would have to be bumped from a flight, or an additional flight would have to be booked at a cost of some $300-400 million and additional risk. Extending the shuttle operations into 2011, they said, would cost $3 billion or more and have a “significant negative impact” on NASA’s new exploration program. Moreover, it takes 18 months to get ready for a flight, so the decision to fly the experiment has to be made (and presumably the funds provided) by a year from now.

What about launching the experiment on another unmanned rocket? That could cost as much as $1 billion and couldn’t happen before 2013 or 2014, which raises a final problem: Dr. Ting’s spectrometer is supposed to work for three years, but the money for space station operations, according to the report, is currently scheduled to run out in 2016. Dr. Ting declined to comment on the NASA report. But he said by e-mail that the detector, being assembled at CERN, the European physics laboratory outside Geneva, was now complete.

Editorial: Location, Location, Location (Source: ERAU)
The idea of building a new commercial launch complex on Kennedy Space Center has caused many opponents to suggest locating it on Air Force property. This may be feasible, but it defeats the intent. The two currently proposed sites on KSC may not be perfect, but they have a huge advantage over an Air Force location: no Air Force. The KSC sites would allow a greater role for the FAA and a state- or county-empowered spaceport authority, including streamlined processes for commercial access, and potentially the use of an FAA-approved range safety system instead of the notoriously complex Eastern Range. This airport-like approach was envisioned nearly two decades ago when the state established the Spaceport Florida Authority, but the Air Force never embraced the concept. The Air Force's resistance to change is the reason new commercial--and even new military--launch programs avoid the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and the Eastern Range.