December 19, 2017

Sorry America, We're Not Going Back To The Moon (Source: Forbes)
Trump made a promise that should sound familiar to American citizens, as many incoming presidents (including Obama and both Bushes) have made similar space exploration plans and proclamations. Like all plans, to bring this one to fruition will require a tremendous investment of resources: in people, in equipment and facilities, in research and development, and in terms of money as well. With no plans for adequate, additional funding to support these ambitions, these dreams will simply evaporate, as they have so many times before.

If you look at the percent of the federal budget currently being invested in NASA, you'll find that you have to go all the way back to 1959, the first full year of NASA's existence, to encounter a time where we invested less in the agency than we do today. When we chose to go to the Moon, it was accompanied by a tremendous increase in the resources we devoted to the endeavor: up to nearly 5% of the federal budget. Today, that figure sits at just 0.4% of the budget (0.11% of our GDP), or less than one-tenth of what we invested in NASA the last time we sent humans to the Moon.

NASA's crewed spaceflight missions since the end of Apollo have focused on low-Earth orbit. But if the goal is to explore the Universe, and to take humanity deeper and farther into the cosmic sea than we've ever gone, a return to the Moon won't accomplish that. The vision of the Trump administration, laid out earlier this year, involves a shocking proposal, to build a lunar space station orbiting the Moon. In no way, shape, or form does a lunar space station prepare us or aid us in going to either the Moon or Mars. (12/19)

Travel to Mars Without Leaving Florida (Source: Florida Today)
White-hot flames lick the windows as your capsule plummets through Mars' thin atmosphere to a sky crane-assisted touchdown, landing with a thud in a cloud of dust. From there, strapped into a rover, you rock and lurch over steep, bumpy terrain toward your base camp, marked on a display by a distant yellow circle whose coordinates you radio to teammates in Mission Control.

Inside this new simulator at the Kennedy Space Visitor Complex, your training to become a Mars astronaut has begun. The new ATX is located on the Visitor Complex’s main campus, where Early Space Exploration and the Angry Birds Space Encounter used to be. It will replace programs now hosted across the river at the former site of the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame. Those programs were based on the space shuttle. Given that NASA retired the shuttle in 2011, they were in need of an update. (12/19)

Tourists to Space Coast Love KSC, Spend $1,500 Per Family (Source: Florida Today)
We may be the Space Coast, but tourism is a big part of our economy, too. And new research shows just how big. A Florida Institute of Technology survey of 519 travel parties from the United States that stayed at a Brevard County hotel or other short-term rental showed that a typical family spent about $1,500 while here at hotels, restaurants, attractions, retail stores, gas stations and other places.

Tourists were particularly fond of beach activities and venues, as well as the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Out of 12 activities they were asked to rate on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent), if they participated in those activities, they were most satisfied with Kennedy Space Center (4.55). (12/19)

County OKs Plan to Borrow Money for Blue Origin's $8 Million Incentive (Source: Florida Today)
Brevard County commissioners narrowly approved a plan that would allow the county to borrow money to pay for an $8 million economic incentive to rocket manufacturer Blue Origin. The vote was 3-2, with Chair Rita Prichett and Commissioners Jim Barfield and Curt Smith supporting the proposal. Vice Chair Kristine Isnardi and Commissioner John Tobia voted against the plan.

Brevard County Clerk of Courts Scott Ellis told commissioners he plans to go to court to challenge the legality of the county borrowing money to finance the grant to Blue Origin. The cash grant to the company was approved in 2015 by the County Commission and the North Brevard Economic Development Development Zone board.

In return, Blue Origin agreeing to create at least 330 jobs paying an average of $89,000 a year by 2026, and to make a $160 million capital investment. Blue Origin already has added 90 local jobs and made a capital investment of more than $200 million. That puts the company ahead of its required hiring schedule. As part of the incentive deal, Blue Origin said it would create 145 jobs in Brevard by the end of 2018, another 145 by the end of 2022 and another 40 by the end of 2026. (12/19)

Pentagon’s Former UFO Hunter: ‘We May Not Be Alone’ (Source: HuffPost)
The military intelligence official who led the initiative is speaking out on one of the universe’s greatest mysteries. “My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone,” Luis Elizondo told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday night.

Elizondo, who ran the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program during its tenure from 2007 to 2012, said he no longer works for the U.S. government. The Department of Defense says it shut down the initiative in 2012, but the Times reported that some backers say the program is still operating.

“I will tell you unequivocally that through the observation ― scientific methodologies that were applied to look at this phenomenon ― that these aircraft ... are displaying characteristics that are not currently within the U.S. inventory nor in any foreign inventories that we are aware of,” he added. (12/19)

Navy Pilot Describes UFO Encounter (Source: Washington Post)
Fravor says he is certain about one thing: “It was a real object, it exists and I saw it,” he said in a phone interview on Monday, as he described the sighting, on Nov. 14, 2004. Asked what he believes it was, 13 years later, he was unequivocal. “Something not from the Earth,” he said.

Fravor was the commanding officer of the VFA-41 Black Aces, a U.S. Navy strike fighter squadron of F/A-18 Hornet fighter planes doing an exercise some 60 to 100 miles off the coast between San Diego and Ensenada, Mexico. An order came in for him to suspend the exercise and do some “real-world tasking,” about 60 miles west of their location, Fravor said. He said he was told by the command that there were some unidentified flying objects descending from 80,000 feet to 20,000 feet and disappearing; he said officials told him they had been tracking a couple dozen of these objects for a few weeks.

When they arrived closer to the point, they saw the object, flying around a patch of white water in the ocean below. “A white Tic Tac, about the same size as a Hornet, 40 feet long with no wings,” Fravor described. “Just hanging close to the water.” The object created no rotor wash — the visible air turbulence left by the blades of a helicopter — he said, and began to mirror the pilots as they pursued it, before it vanished. (12/19)

Take the Driver's Seat on Sea Level Science (Source: NASA JPL)
A new NASA sea level simulator lets you bury Alaska's Columbia glacier in snow, and, year by year, watch how it responds. Or you can melt the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and trace rising seas as they inundate the Florida coast.

Computer models are critical tools for understanding the future of a changing planet, including melting ice, rising seas and shifting precipitation patterns. But typically, these mathematical representations -- long chains of computer code giving rise to images of dynamic change -- are accessible mainly to scientists. Click here. (11/30)

Trump Removes Global Warming From List of National Security Threats (Source: Daily Hampshire Gazette)
President Donald Trump removed climate change from the list of worldwide threats menacing the United States on Monday, a shift that underscores the long-term ramifications of the “America first” world view he laid out in his new National Security Strategy. It makes no mention of what scientists say are the dangers posed by a warming climate, including more extreme weather events that could spark humanitarian crises, mass migrations, and conflict.

It’s a significant departure from the Obama administration, which had described climate change as an “urgent and growing threat to our national security.” And it demonstrates how Trump, despite struggling to push his own agenda through a Republican-controlled Congress, has been able to unilaterally dismantle one of his predecessor’s signature efforts. (12/18)

Space Prominent in Trump National Security Policy (Source: Space News)
Space plays a prominent role in the Trump administration's new national security policy, formally released Monday. The new strategy commits the U.S. government to partnering with private industry to explore space and defend U.S. assets there. It makes the promotion of space commerce a national security priority, with plans to revise regulations "to strengthen competitiveness," according to the document. The strategy casts China and Russia as sly, stealthy rivals that quietly are working to undermine U.S. advantages, including in space. (12/19)

Space is Not a “Global Commons,” Top Trump Space Official Says (Source: Quartz)
The US is now dedicated to “long-term exploration and utilization” of the moon, but in practice that goal will be shaped more by a scramble of private companies than any mission executed by NASA alone. Countries like the United States that want to encourage private activity in space are changing their own laws to create a regulatory framework for making money in orbit and beyond. Trump’s space advisers say they will clear the path for space business.

“It bears repeating: Outer space is not a ‘global commons,’ not the ‘common heritage of mankind,’ not ‘res communis,’ nor is it a public good,” Scott Pace, the executive director of the US National Space Council, said in a speech last week. “These concepts are not part of the Outer Space Treaty, and the United States has consistently taken the position that these ideas do not describe the legal status of outer space.”

Pace says the Trump administration will work with other governments and international organizations to develop fair rules for space, but that the goal is for the US to become “the most attractive jurisdiction in the world for private-sector investment and innovation in outer space…the task for the United States, if it wishes to influence how space is developed and utilized, is to create attractive projects and frameworks in which other nations choose to align themselves and their space activities with us, as opposed to others.”(12/19)

Blue Origin to Suborbital Tourism Flights a Year Away (Source: Space News)
Blue Origin says it should be ready to start flying people on its New Shepard suborbital vehicle in about a year. In a speech Monday at a suborbital research conference, Jeff Ashby, director of safety and mission assurance at the company, said that schedule is based on the progress it plans to make with upcoming test flights, adding it would be one and a half to two years before researchers could fly with their experiments on New Shepard flights. The company will start selling tickets for those flights once the versions of the propulsion module and crew capsule that will carry people are delivered, some time next year. (12/19)

Virgin Galactic to Fly Italian Research Mission on SpaceShipTwo (Source: Space News)
Virgin Galactic announced an agreement Monday with the Italian space agency ASI for a dedicated SpaceShipTwo research flight. The letter of intent covers a flight of the SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle from Spaceport America in 2019, carrying Italian experiments and an Italian payload specialist to operate them. The flight will test payloads that ASI later plans to fly on ESA's Space Rider experimental orbital spaceplane. The second SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity, remains in flight tests, and company CEO George Whitesides said Monday that Virgin Galactic is "looking forward to having a full 2018 with powered test flights" of the vehicle. (12/19)

Cygnus Cargo/Research Craft Ends Mission with Pacific Splash (Source: Orbital ATK)
A Cygnus cargo spacecraft ended its mission Monday with a destructive reentry over the South Pacific. The OA-8 spacecraft, also known as the S.S. Gene Cernan, launched to the station last month to deliver cargo. It departed from the station Dec. 6 to carry out secondary experiments, including the deployment of cubesats, prior to its reentry. The Cygnus took with it from the station about 2,900 kilograms of garbage for disposal on reentry. (12/19)

Improved PSLV Ready for January Return to Flight (Source: New Indian Express)
The return to flight of India's PSLV next month will incorporate a number of improvements. The head of India's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre said in an interview that the rocket will incorporate several modifications involving its payload faring, which failed to separate during the PSLV's last launch in August. The Indian space agency ISRO has not yet released the results of the investigation into that failure, which resulted in the loss of a navigation satellite. (12/19)

SpaceX Beats India to Launch Korea's Lunar Experimental Orbiter (Source: Korea Times)
The state-run Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) has selected SpaceX's Falcon 9 transporter rocket to launch its experimental lunar satellite by 2020, the researcher said Tuesday. SpaceX and India-based Antrix participated in the bidding for KARI's rocket. The Falcon 9, a two-stage rocket, will carry a payload of KARI's Pathfinder installed with high-end cameras, measuring and communication equipment into the moon's orbit. (12/19)

Marijuana Biologist Wants to Grow Vegetables on Mars (Source: Motherboard)
University of Guelph biologist Mike Dixon is developing technologies to grow edible crops, like lettuce and tomatoes, in space. Astronauts will need fresh produce to live off-Earth, he explains. With no manned Moon or Mars missions on the horizon, he’s using this same tech in the meantime to grow marijuana here on Earth, which will be legalized in Canada in 2018.

Dixon has spent the last year researching and developing a chamber, “The Fridge” as he calls it affectionately, that serves as a controlled environment for growing marijuana plants. This chamber is a version of what would be sent into space to allow astronauts to grow their own plants there. “All the technologies required to [grow fresh food in space] are being deployed in the service of growing really good marijuana,” he said. (12/19)

Where, But Not How or When (Source: Space Review)
Last week, President Trump signed a space policy directive that formally made a human return to the Moon part of national policy. Jeff Foust reports that, beyond that directive, there are still few details about how and when NASA astronauts will set foot on the Moon. Click here. (12/18) 
 
Black Ops and the Shuttle (Source: Space Review)
The decision to end the HEXAGON film-collection spysat program, and not use shuttle capabilities to extend its lifetime, had long-term implications for military operations. Dwayne Day describes how nothing has quote replaced what HEXAGON could do. Click here. (12/18)
 
The Emerging Field of Space Economics (Source: Space Review)
Is it time for a distinct subfield of economics devoted to space? Vidvuds Beldavs and Jeffrey Sommers argue that such studies are required to understand if, and how, a self-sustaining space economy can be created. Click here. (12/18)