April 14 News Items

Three Florida Schools Among Finalists for Rocket Challenge (Source: AIA)
The Aerospace Industries Association has named 100 finalist teams for the sixth annual Team American Rocketry Challenge national title. The teams will meet in Virginia on May 17 for a final fly-off and a chance to win more than $60,000 in scholarships and other prizes. About 7,000 students on 643 teams from 43 states took part in the qualifying rounds of competition. The contest presents teams with a dual challenge. Teams must launch their rocket as close as possible to an altitude of 750 feet with a flight time of 45 seconds. The payload of two raw eggs must return to the ground unbroken. The three Florida-based finalist teams include one from Kirby Smith Middle School's Challenger Learning Center in Jacksonville, and two from Plantation High School in Plantation. (4/11)

Look! In the Sky. It’s a Rocket Racer (Source: New York Times)
The racers may finally be reaching the starting line. The Rocket Racing League, a long-promised attempt to create a kind of Nascar of the skies, will hold its first exhibition races this year, its founders said. The races are promised as a kind of living video game — but louder — with a virtual raceway laid out in the sky that will be visible on projection screens at the site of each event. Racers in rocket-powered aircraft will fly four laps around a five-mile “track” at anywhere from 150 feet to 1,500 feet above the ground. The planes, designed to fly at 340 miles an hour, will start side by side, two at a time. The pilots include professional test pilots who received their training in the military and a former astronaut.

The engines will come from two companies, Xcor Aerospace of Mojave, Calif., and Armadillo Aerospace of Mesquite, Tex. Armadillo was founded by John Carmack, a high-tech businessman who created successful video games, including Doom and Quake. The first public taste of rocket racing will take place Aug. 1 and Aug. 2 in Oshkosh, Wis., at the annual Experimental Aircraft Association air show. It will involve two of the sleek aircraft developed for the league. The racers will also perform at air shows in Nevada and New Mexico. As pilots follow the course, spectators will be able to see alternate views from remote cameras and the cockpits. The league has signed up six teams so far. (4/14)

Point-to-Point Suborbital Spaceflight and Military Logistics (Source: Space Review)
Can suborbital point-to-point rocket-powered vehicles be commercially viable? Not any time soon, according to several reports. It seems that FedEx did a study a few years ago that came out strongly against the idea. Virgin Galactic may look at this in the future, but they are concentrating their attention on getting SpaceShipTwo operational. Other suborbital RLV firms have talked about this as being one potential market for their vehicles, but nothing concrete has emerged so far. Visit http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1103/1 to view the article. (4/14)

Four California Schools Among Finalists for Rocket Challenge (Source: AIA)
The Aerospace Industries Association has named 100 finalist teams for the sixth annual Team American Rocketry Challenge national title. The teams will meet in Virginia on May 17 for a final fly-off and a chance to win more than $60,000 in scholarships and other prizes. About 7,000 students on 643 teams from 43 states took part in the qualifying rounds of competition. The contest presents teams with a dual challenge. Teams must launch their rocket as close as possible to an altitude of 750 feet with a flight time of 45 seconds. The payload of two raw eggs must return to the ground unbroken. The four California-based finalist teams are from Valley Montessori School in Livermore, Harvard-Westlake High School from North Hollywood, Knight High School from Palmdale, and Oaks Christian School from Westlake Village. (4/11)

Editorial: Stopping MDA Sale Won't Save Canada's Aerospace Program (Source: Welland Tribune)
The Conservative government has boldly gone where none has dared go before, grounding the sale of Canada's premier space-tech company to an American defense conglomerate. Fueled in part by hundreds of millions of Canadian tax dollars, MDA gained international renown for creating the iconic Canadarm robotic marvel on the Space Shuttle. But it was the prospect of the Yanks getting control of one of the world's most sophisticated surveillance satellites, MDA's Canadian-built Radarsat II, which forced the industry minister to hit the off switch on an otherwise private business deal. Politically, it was a no-brainer.

There was also the small matter that Radarsat was built almost entirely with $445 million from Canadian taxpayers who stood to get zip from the Alliant deal, a ready-made Liberal attack ad if ever there was one. (In fairness, we wouldn't be talking about selling Radarsat today if a previous Liberal government hadn't stupidly agreed in 1997 to give MDA ownership of the finished satellite with no strings attached.) By federal law, Alliant has 30 days to convince the minister to change his mind, and anything is possible in a deal with $1.35 billion on the table. But even if MDA's entire space division remains in Canadian hands, then what?

The firm's management and shareholders want out of the space biz, not for financial necessity, but because they have found a way to make more money in a less risky business that doesn't require a launch pad in Borat's home town. Forcing a company to stay in a business it no longer wants to be in can't have a happy ending. Alternatively, finding a Canadian buyer is a long-shot at best. If MDA's near-sale has exposed anything, it is the precarious state of the entire domestic space industry. (4/14)

FY-2010 Budget Limbo: Its Official! (Source: NASA Watch)
According to an OMB memo: "The FY 2010 Budget will be submitted by the next President. In order to lay the groundwork for the incoming Administration, we intend to prepare a budget database that includes a complete current services baseline and to gather information necessary to develop current services program estimates for FY 2010 from which the incoming Administration can develop its budget proposals. [Agencies] are not required to submit a formal budget request in September, and there will be no formal Director's Review or Passback processes this Fall. Most of the policy materials you usually submit in September in support of your budget requests will not be required until after the new Administration or Transition Team is in place. (4/14)

The Vision for Space Exploration and the retirement of the Baby Boomers (Source: Space Review)
Even as space advocates seek to increase NASA's budget, the agency itself and the Bush Administration have claimed that budgets that keep pace with inflation are sufficient for NASA to implement the Vision for Space Exploration. However, as Charles Miller and Jeff Foust argue, even that modest budgetary goal may be impossible to maintain given the fiscal pressures the nation will be facing in the years to come. Visit
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1106/1 to view the article. (4/14)

Obama's Modest Proposal: No Hue, No Cry? (part 2) (Source: Space Review)
While presidential candidate Barack Obama has proposed delaying NASA's Constellation program to pay for an early education initiative, the response from the pro-space community has been surprisingly muted. Greg Zsidisin examines why, given the nature of such organizations, that may be the case. http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1105/1 to view the article. (4/14)

Introducing the Committee for the Advocacy of Space Exploration (Source: Space Review)
One thing the space advocacy movement has been missing for some time is an effective political action committee. Jeff Brooks announces the formation of a PAC for space exploration and how his organization will work to raise the profile of space policy in Washington. Visit http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1102/1 to view the article. (4/14)