October 9 News Items

Self-Sufficient Space Habitat Designed (Source: Cosmos)
Australian-led scientists have designed a new space habitat that might one day allow astronauts on the Moon or Mars to be 90 to 95 per cent self-sufficient. The development of such as system could save billions of dollars in shuttle trips to re-supply lunar or space colonies and brings closer the vision of a human habitat on Mars. The technology could also have applications on Earth to develop more sustainable farming techniques and improve recycling processes. Visit http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1646 to view the article.

NM Spaceport Authority Votes to Place Welcome Center in Hatch (Source: Las Cruces Sun-News)
The New Mexico Spaceport Authority approved a resolution Friday that favors placing a Spaceport America welcome/visitor's center in the village of Hatch. NMSA Chairwoman Kelly O'Donnell said the vote taken during the authority's meeting in Truth or Consequences does not ensure the town of 1,600 will get the center but it makes it far more likely. The resolution means that the visitor's center in Hatch will be "a budget priority for us," O'Donnell said. Spaceport America is expected to be built in southern Sierra County at a cost of $198 million. As part of the project, officials have included plans for up to two visitor's center, with Doña Ana and Sierra counties as the potential hosts.

In NASA’s Sterile Areas, Plenty of Robust Bacteria (Source: New York Times)
Researchers have found a surprising diversity of hardy bacteria in a seemingly unlikely place — the so-called sterile clean rooms where NASA assembles its spacecraft and prepares them for launching. Samples of air and surfaces in the clean rooms at three NASA centers revealed surprising numbers and types of robust bacteria that appear to resist normal sterilization procedures. The findings are significant, the researchers report, because they can help reduce the chances of stowaway microbes contaminating planets and other bodies visited by the spacecraft and confounding efforts to discover new life elsewhere.

Microbes Can Survive 'Deep Freeze' for 100,000 Years (Source: New Scientist)
Microbes can survive trapped inside ice crystals, under 3 kilometres of snow, for more than 100,000 years, a new study suggests. The study bolsters the case that life may exist on distant, icy worlds in our own solar system. Living bacteria have been found in ice cores sampled at depths of 4 kilometres in Antarctica, though some scientists have argued that those microbes were contaminants from the drilling and testing of the samples in labs. And in 2005, researchers revived a bacterium that sat dormant in a frozen pond in Alaska for 32,000 years (see Ice age bacteria brought back to life). Now, physicist Buford Price and graduate student Robert Rohde, both at University of California in Berkeley, US, have found a mechanism to explain how microbes could survive such extreme conditions.

Rebutting the Regulatory Myth (Source: Space Review)
In his “Space Myths” essay, Wayne Eleazer brings up some interesting points about the regulation of the commercial airline industry and compares it to the regulation of space launches. He suggests that airlines are regulated in everything while space missions have only one issue to deal with. While I appreciate the differences in regulating both industries, I wish to correct some of the misconceptions that his article presents. Perhaps the US Air Force does not need to worry about anything other than hurting the uninvolved public. I can tell you that from a commercial side I have plenty of regulations to deal with, thank you, and from a myriad of governmental agencies. Visit http://www.thespacereview.com/article/975/1 to view the article.

Weaponization of Space: Who’s to Blame? (Source: Space Review)
Like children drawing glee in poking a stick into an anthill to see the turmoil they can cause, some elements of the Western news media seem to evince diabolical delight in seeing just how they can inflame good old fashioned Russian paranoia about “enemy threats”, especially from the United States. Regardless of the rationale, such exercises leave measurable scars on the international diplomatic scene. In Moscow, Colonel General Vladimir Popovkin, commander of the Russian “Space Troops”, has warned that US plans to base weapons in space might lead to war.

Accuracy and consistency has never been a hallmark of this kind of space journalism. It’s been a year now since a White House space policy paper announced the US intention to “deny use” of foreign space assets to interfere in US freedom of action in space, but from the very beginning, major Western media (and the outraged Russian officials who echoed them) have shrieked about an American declaration to “deny access to space” for anybody the US doesn’t like. (Nevermind that the policy makes it clear to anyone who actually reads it that the US has no problem with any other country doing the same things in space the US reserves for itself also to do.) Visit http://www.thespacereview.com/article/976/1 to view the article.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Plans Held Up by Testing Accident (Source: Flight International)
Work on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo (SS2) is in a hiatus while the investigation into July's fatal Scaled Composites accident continues. A California Occupational Safety and Health report is expected by Jan. 26. The Mojave, California accident involving nitrous oxide, which was Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne's (SS1) oxidizer, killed three employees of SS2 designer Scaled Composites and injured three more. SS2 work had reached the stage where the prototype has been partially assembled and was ready for on-board systems to be fitted. But instead of work continuing with that, development of the SS2's carrier aircraft White Knight II is moving ahead.

Virgin Galactic's chief operating officer Alex Tai said "we are waiting for the [accident investigation] report. We are still a few years away from operations." Although work on the rocket glider is suspended, automatic main propulsion cut-off in case of non-nominal trajectories and an auto pilot are under consideration. Tai added that the SS2 simulator is now working and said that it had "stunning visuals". A launch and entry suit is also being designed, but there is no final decision on whether cabin crew and passengers will wear them. Tai explained that the customer's training is to be considered part of an "informed consent package" and that at different stages the passengers' ability to cope with the flight conditions would be measured. Under US law spaceflight participants must give informed consent before they fly.

NASA Plans To Form New Lunar Science Institute (Source: NASA Watch)
On Tuesday night NASA Science Mission Directorate Associate Administrator Alan Stern announced that NASA plans to form a NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) patterned on the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI). Speaking at the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Orlando, Stern said that the initial selection would be done of 4 to 5 lead teams at a cost of $1-2 million each. As is the case with the NAI, the NSLI would be managed by NASA Ames Research Center.

Russian Banks May Finance Would-Be Space Tourists (Source: Interfax)
Russian banks could offer low- interest loans to people wishing to go into space as tourists, Roman Popov, the president of the First Russian-Czech Bank, said. "If space tourism develops, we are prepared to combine efforts of three or more banks to issue five-year low-interest loans to a future space tourist," Popov said at a press conference dealing with prospects of space exploration.

Roscosmos Hopes for Resumption of Proton Launches After Oct 10 (Source: Interfax)
Head of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) Anatoly Perminov hopes that the Kazakh government will permit the launch of Proton rockets from Baikonur space center in the near future. At a Tuesday press conference in Astana he predicted that Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Masimov may make such a decision after visiting Baikonur on Wednesday.