October 7 News Items

Oklahoma's Burns Flat Looks to the Stars (Source: The Oklahoman)
The biggest dream in rural Oklahoma might also be the toughest sell — The Oklahoma Spaceport. Yet if successful, experts think the spaceport won't simply change the sleepy community of Burns Flat (population 1,782), but Oklahoma's entire western region. Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority executive director Bill Khourie saw the potential impact three years ago when he traveled to the Mojave Desert in California. Khourie witnessed American aerospace engineer Burt Rutan sending a privately funded craft into space at the X-Prize Cup Challenge.

The Oklahoma Spaceport has already achieved some major milestones, none more important than its licensing as an official launch site by the Commercial Space Transportation Division of the FAA. The Oklahoma Spaceport, however, will only succeed ultimately if the commercial space industry does. To date, two private companies have partnered with the Burns Flat facility — the Oklahoma City-based Rocketplane Limited, Inc. and the Mesquite, Texas,-based Armadillo Aerospace. Both companies hope to send private aircraft into space from Burns Flat.

From Earth to ... Arizona (Source: Chicago Tribune)
It looks, for all the world, like someplace out of this world, which is pretty much why NASA scientists and engineers recently journeyed here to a remote volcanic cinder field in northern Arizona. In this barren, black moonscape of a place just outside Flagstaff, where NASA's Apollo astronauts trained for the first moon landings more than 40 years ago, history is repeating itself as the nation's space agency tests out concepts for the next generation of systems needed to send Americans back to the moon as soon as 2020. An entirely new inventory of comfortable, flexible spacesuits, as well as remote-controlled vehicles and intelligent robots, must be designed from the nuts and bolts up. And it has to be done quickly. Given the long lead times necessary to allow for production and testing of new space equipment, space agency engineers figure they have only a couple of years to finalize new designs.

JAXA Invites Private Sector to Use ISS Module (Source: Daily Yomiuri)
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is inviting the private sector to utilize the nation's first manned space module, Kibo, the assembly of which is scheduled to start next year on the International Space Station. For a fee, companies, organizations or individuals will have the right to ask astronauts to operate equipment carried on the module for purposes such as shooting movies and TV commercials or offering classes, the agency said. JAXA will start accepting applications for private sector usage from next month.

The module will mainly be used for scientific experiments by the agency and other institutions, such as universities. But the agency also wants to encourage wider use of the module. By inviting the private sector to make use of it, the agency hopes to cover some of the module's operation costs. The agency will accept applications from Japanese companies, organizations and nationals only. The module will be available for private sector use from June 2008 to March 2009. Astronauts will work for up to two hours each day on missions commissioned by the private sector, using cameras and equipment for experiments installed in the Japanese module.

Will We Make it to Mars? (Source: The Star)
First words of advice about Mars Rising, the new six-part documentary series on the challenges involved in making a future mission to the Red Planet possible: you must try to forget the equally splendid dramatic miniseries Race to Mars that just concluded on Discovery. Narrated by William Shatner, Mars Rising stands on its own as a pretty tremendous series on science. Unlike a lot of these types of series, this ambitious exploration of the technology being tested and developed today, and the challenges involved, is relatively easy to digest with few talking heads.

'Black-Hole Universe' Might Explain Dark Energy (Source: New Scientist)
Imagine that we live inside a black hole. That could be the key to understanding the origin of dark energy, the mysterious force widely thought to be causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. Some physicists have previously suggested that dark energy could arise from the quantum bubbling of virtual particles in empty space, but it wasn't clear how. Now Jae-Weon Lee at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study in Seoul and his colleagues are proposing that dark energy is created as pairs of these virtual particles are ripped apart from each other by the expanding edge of our universe. According to quantum theory, even the perfect vacuum of space isn't empty: it is a sea of virtual particles, created as entangled pairs of particles and antiparticles which exist only fleetingly and then annihilate each other.

Commercial Lunar Development Premature - Russian Expert (Source: Interfax)
There is no urgent necessity today to extract helium 3, or other minerals on the Moon, a Russian expert said. "There are no mineral resources, whose commercial delivery from the Moon would be effective, except helium 3. But we have no capabilities right now to enable nuclear fusion - even simpler nuclear fusion than that involving helium 3. Therefore, delivering helium from the Moon would be needless for the next several hundred years," Lev Zelyony, the director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Space Research Institute, said.

Zelyony said he opposed hasty plans to launch commercial development of the Moon. "Many of the American corporations have announced plans to start developing the Moon commercially. But the Moon is a very fragile object. A cloud that formed after a stage from the Apollo spaceship fell on it, remained suspended above the Moon for 20 years," he said. "Anyway, Man will some day return to the Moon and fly to Mars, which would be an act of self-assertion rather than a scientific endeavor," Zelyony said.

Court Bars New Background Checks for JPL Workers (Source: LA Times)
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday issued a temporary injunction blocking a federal government directive that would require new background checks for employees at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A group of 28 JPL scientists to stop the investigations, which they said amounted to a blank check for the federal government to look into such areas as their sexual orientation and consumer histories. The employees had been facing the potential loss of their jobs unless they met a Friday deadline to comply with the directive by filling out questionnaires and signing a waiver allowing the investigations. A U.S. District Court had upheld the background checks Wednesday. "This ruling shows we're not going to let hysterical fear and innuendo undermine the Constitution," said attorney Dan Stormer, who represented the JPL scientists.

Ares I Moving From the Drawing Board to Testing (Source: Huntsville Times)
The next NASA rocket - the Ares I - is moving from computer design drawings to hands-on test hardware being used to gather information about the rocket NASA hopes will carry astronauts to the International Space Station and on to the moon, Marshall Space Flight Center managers said last week. NASA and aerospace industry managers and engineers are working on advanced tests for booster parachute recovery systems and updated engines. They are also working on integrating the Ares I's two stages with the Orion astronaut capsule.