DIY Space Suit Chosen For
Suborbital And Supersonic Flights (Source: Popular Science)
Tourists, no need to worry about picking an outfit for your suborbital
flight—this flexible, comfortable suit has you covered. Final Frontier
Design (FFD), a private design firm based in Brooklyn, has partnered
with Starfighters Aerospace to further develop and optimize its 3G
space suit for intra-vehicular activity (meaning launch, re-entry, and
cabin activities) on Starfighters' F-104 supersonic jets that also fly
suborbital missions. The sleek, single-layer 3G suit won a Popular
Science Invention Award in 2013. Currently, Starfighters' jets only go
on research and training sessions, but commercial flights aren't too
far away.
Traveling to space was once an experience reserved for selected
astronauts only. With Virgin Galactic recently cleared by the FAA for
commercial space flights, a recreational trip to the vacuum is no
longer an unreachable dream. But tourists, who pay big money for their
tickets to space, have thus far had limited space suit options. Most
modern suits are heavy, bulky, and expensive—about $200,000 each.
Since meeting at a 2007 astronaut glove design competition, costume
fabricator Ted Southern and space-suit builder Nikolay Moiseev have
worked together to build lightweight, reliable, and relatively cheap
space suits for suborbital flights. The duo launched a Kickstarter
campaign—successfully funded in July 2012—to help them complete a
prototype for the 3G space suit, which has passed NASA's flight
certification test. (6/6)
Senate Committee Offers
Poison Pill for Commercial Crew (Source: Houston Chronicle)
If its language is approved by the full Senate, and reconciled with the
U.S. House budget bill, the Senate's NASA appropriation bill would
require Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada to provide detailed cost and
financial information about their spacecraft. This represents a wholly
new wrinkle in a contracting process NASA originally devised to allow
private companies to develop spacecraft much more cheaply than they
otherwise could have.
According to four-time astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who heads up
the Commercial Spaceflight Federation: "This was introduced by Senator
Shelby, and to comply with this you have to have an infrastructure in
place in your company to do that, which a company like Boeing certainly
has, but SpaceX certainly does not have. More importantly if it became
law on Oct. 1, and they hadn’t awarded the commercial crew contract by
then, they would probably have to recompete it."
Re-issuing the contract would mean up to another year’s delay in the
program, buying another six Soyuz seats from the Russians for half a
billion dollars, not to mention the geopolitical implications. Shelby
said the language was not intended to punish a company like SpaceX.
“That’s not true,” he said. “We’re looking for transparency.” But
Lopez-Alegria said: "It’s just inefficient. The whole idea behind the
commercial crew program is to not do a lot of the stuff that we have
traditionally done only because we have always done it that way. It
would be nice to be a little forward leaning, and to save taxpayer
money... It’s just bad policy. (6/6)
Space Contractors Fear
Senate NASA Bill May Hamper Them (Source: Florida Today)
Advocates of commercial space companies say new language inserted in
the Senate's version of a NASA funding bill would make it harder for
companies to compete in the commercial crew program -- and delay the
U.S. in its goal to stop relying on Russia to transport astronauts to
space. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-AL, has created a provision that would
require commercial crew contractors to adhere to what the industry says
are cumbersome rules in traditional NASA contracts requiring the firms
to give the government pricing and cost data. (6/5)
Why Safe Is Not An Option
(Source: PJ Media)
As Rand Simberg explains, the culture of ) NASA is much more sclerotic
than its 1960s-vintage “Right Stuff” era, in which the feats that put
Man on the Moon in the space of a decade could never be repeated today.
These days, as Rand notes, instead of treating astronauts like the
military test pilots being assigned to orbit the earth, NASA considers
them as being akin to “national treasures.” According to Simberg:
“Safety Cannot Be The Highest Priority In NASA Spaceflight.” Click here.
(6/6)
NASA Selects Minority
University Teams for 2014 Microgravity Research Flights
(Source: NASA)
NASA has selected 13 undergraduate teams from minority-serving
institutions across the US to test their science experiments in
microgravity conditions. The teams will travel on a Reduced Gravity
Education Flight (RGEF) during the week of July 7. Editor's Note: Among
the selected teams is one from the University of Miami. (6/6)
FAA Space Office Fares
Better in Senate Appropriations Bill for FY2015 (Source:
Space Policy Online)
The FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) gets its full
FY2015 request of $16.605 million in the Senate Appropriations
Committee's version of the FY2015 Transportation-HUD (T-HUD)
appropriations bill. By comparison, the House committee approved a
small cut. AST is responsible for facilitating and regulating the
commercial space transportation industry. For the current fiscal year
(FY2014), the office received $16.011 million. (6/6)
NASA Unfazed by Report
Saying Current Path Won’t Reach Mars (Source: Space News)
A blue-ribbon panel’s finding that NASA is not on a path to put humans
on Mars drew nods from space policy experts and a pair of influential
lawmakers, but not so much as a flinch from the space agency, which
somehow saw affirmation in the highly critical 300-page report.
Study co-chairmen Jonathan Lunine of Cornell and former OMB Director
Mitch Daniels characterized NASA’s current capabilities-based approach
— building destination-agnostic rockets and spacecraft suitable for
numerous deep-space missions but optimized for none — as a dead end.
Landing on Mars, the committee concluded, is the only mission that
justifies the decades and hundreds of billions of dollars it will take
to continue human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.
NASA said “the NRC report complements NASA’s ongoing approach,” which
the agency has been pursuing since 2010, the year after U.S. President
Barack Obama assumed office. “We are pleased to find the NRC’s
assessment and identification of compelling themes for human
exploration are consistent with the bipartisan plan agreed to by
Congress and the Administration in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010
and that we have been implementing ever since,” NASA said in the
statement. (6/6)
Would You Be Willing to
Pay More Than 25 Cents a Year to Understand the Cosmos? (Source:
LA Times)
Now the study of "exoplanets" is a rich field of research
that addresses fundamental questions surrounding our own origins. Much
of that knowledge comes from telescopes in space. This priceless
knowledge is a result of the dedicated effort of thousands of people
over several decades. It could not have been achieved without the
resources and forward-thinking mentality that NASA enables. Today,
however, our country's political climate has put this groundbreaking
work in jeopardy.
We estimated that NASA was operating many of its space science missions
at a level that was below 2% of the initial construction and launch
expenses. Standard management practice suggests that 10% of the initial
construction cost is a reasonable annual budget for operating a
facility. We had to work with a total of $75 million. That is what the
government spends roughly every 10 minutes. It is less than a third of
the L.A. Dodgers' payroll in 2014, and represents a contribution of a
little less than 25 cents per American each year. (6/6)
Lockheed Back in the Game?
(Source: Aviation Week)
With its focus on U.S. government programs, Lockheed Martin Space
Systems (LMSS) Co. hasn't been a serious contender in the commercial
satellite market for more than a decade. Well-known for its work on the
Pentagon's AEHF, MUOS and SBIRS military communications missions,
Lockheed recently lost its status as preferred satellite-builder for
SKY Perfect JSAT when the Tokyo-based fleet operator selected rival
Loral to build its next three JCSat communications birds.
Michael Hamel, a retired U.S. Air Force general who runs LMSS Co.'s
Commercial Ventures unit, admits the company has lost ground to rival
satellite manufacturers in the U.S. and abroad. But he says the
division is planning a comeback, in part through a technical refresh of
its venerable A2100 satellite bus, which will offer a more flexible and
affordable platform that can be produced in less time. (6/6)
NASA's Prolific Kepler
Begins New Search for Alien Worlds (Source: Space.com)
NASA's hobbled Kepler spacecraft is once again seeking out strange new
worlds under a new 80-day mission to hunt for alien planets. NASA
officials recently approved the new Kepler spacecraft mission (called
K2) after the exoplanet-hunting space probe suffered a major
malfunction last year. Two of Kepler's reaction wheels, which are used
to keep the spacecraft precisely pointed in its orbit, failed,
effectively ending the telescope's mission. Now, scientists are still
using the spacecraft to search for distant worlds, albeit in a
different way.
Because K2 missions will last about 80 days, a relatively short amount
of time, some scientists want to hunt for alien planets orbiting a
certain class of stars that are smaller and dimmer than the sun. The
new mission could target planets around these dim stars (known as M
dwarfs) because the orbital period of the planet is shorter, making it
easier to see in the span of 80 days. (6/5)
Sierra Nevada's Dream
Chaser Takes Shape as a Real Space Taxi (Source: NBC)
Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Space Systems operation, headquartered in
Colorado, is making progress on its winged Dream Chaser mini-shuttle.
"We've had a busy few months," said Mark Sirangelo, head of SNC Space
Systems. "The program is moving along quite rapidly." Last month,
Sierra Nevada Corp. finished wind-tunnel testing for the Dream Chaser
orbital design. "Getting all the aspects of wind tunnel testing done is
about as close as you can come to flying in orbit," Sirangelo said.
(6/6)
Solar Orbiter's Shield
Takes Sun's Heat (Source: Space Daily)
ESA's Solar Orbiter mission has undergone its latest major test: its
protective shield has been subjected to concentrated sunlight to prove
it can cope with the fierce temperatures close in to our parent star. A
'structural-thermal' version of the craft's sunshield was recently
exposed to an artificial Sun for two weeks in Europe's largest vacuum
chamber at ESA's Technical Center in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. (6/5)
FCC Workshop on GPS
Receivers Alarms GNSS Community (Source: Inside GNSS)
Leading navigation experts are worried an upcoming workshop on GPS
receivers being organized by the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) is an attempt to initiate design mandates for user equipment that
could potentially undermine the GNSS community.
“There is currently planned an FCC workshop that is going to, among
other things, address certification and standards for receivers,” said
Brad Parkinson, the acting chair of the National Space-Based
Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Advisory Board and a former
chief of the NAVSTAR GPS Joint Program Office. (6/6)
Bolivia Receives China's
Bidding to Build Satellite (Source: Xinhua)
The Bolivian Space Agency (ABE) said Thursday that it has received a
bidding from China to build an exploration satellite for the country,
which would be Bolivia's second satellite. Bolivia's first
communications satellite, made by China Aerospace Science and
Technology Corporation (CASC), was launched on Dec. 21 last year.
ABE Director Ivan Zambrana told reporters that six transnational firms
from China, Russia, France, England, Spain and the United States have
formally expressed their interest in making an exploration satellite
for Bolivia. The satellite would carry out territorial surveys
including soil studies and natural resources explorations, such as
water and minerals that are near the earth's surface. (6/5)
Eutelsat Chief Worried
About Glut of National Telecom Satellites (Source: Space
News)
The proliferation of national telecommunications satellites in Africa,
Asia and Latin America is a waste of resources that will introduce
unhealthy pressure on the global satellite industry, Eutelsat Chief
Executive Michel de Rosen said. He said some nations are buying
telecommunications satellites as if they were high-end sports cars.
“Satellites are considered as prestigious,” de Rosen said. “Some
countries are tempted to have their own satellites. This is a waste of
money, of spectrum resources, of energy and it creates unfair and
unnecessary competition for the other satellites.” Recognizing that it
is powerless to stop the trend, Eutelsat — the world’s third-largest
commercial fleet operator by revenue — has struck partnerships with
Nilesat of Egypt, Turkey’s Turksat and, more recently, with the
government of Afghanistan, which has signaled that it, too, wants its
own telecommunications satellite. (6/6)
Want to Design a Mars
Base for NASA? Now's Your Chance (Source: WIRED)
Makerbot has launched a competition tailored for you then, in
collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory: MakerBot Mars Base
Challenge. It wants you to deliver inspiration for a human base on
Mars, considering future visitors will have to combat extreme
temperatures, radiation spikes, dust storms and the whole
you-can't-breath-on-Mars thing.
The task is to design, with all these considerations in mind, "a
utilitarian Mars base that can withstand the elements and maybe even
make you feel at home, despite being 140 million miles away from Earth,
on average". And if you win, they'll give you a MakerBot Replicator 2
Desktop 3D Printer. Click here.
(6/6)
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