July 25 News Items

Raytheon Says Q2 Profit Falls, Cites Sales of Aircraft Unit (Source: AIA)
Raytheon on Thursday said its second-quarter profit declined from $1.34 million in 2007 to $426 million this year. The company attributed the decline to the sale of its aircraft unit. It also boosted its earnings outlook for the rest of the year. (7/25)

China To Build World-Class Space Industry in Seven Years (Source: Xinhua)
China aims to attain the world level in space technology development by building a comprehensive aerospace industry by 2015, the country's Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASTC) said. According to a blueprint released by the state-owned company, CASTC was to set up four more scientific research and production bases including Tianjin, Inner Mongolia and Hainan. The move would enable China to have eight space industry bases nationwide. At present, it has four bases respectively in Beijing, Shanghai, Shanxi and Sichuan. (7/25)

Neglecting Safety Could Nip Space Tourism in the Bud (Source: New Scientist)
Space tourism operators need to get real about the extraordinary risks they face, the FAA warned last week. George Nield, head of the FAA unit that regulates commercial human space flight safety, said many civil companies presented their efforts as pioneering a "golden age". For example, the X Prize Foundation, which backed the $10 million prize for the first civilian spacecraft to reach sub-orbit, has often likened the race to Charles Lindbergh's 1927 transatlantic flight which set off the golden era of aviation.

"What's going on now represents a very different level of risk," Nield told the Space Frontier Foundation's annual meeting in Washington DC. If you have to draw parallels, he said, look to the early supersonic jets, such as the F-104 Starfighter, dubbed the Widowmaker, which took the lives of 110 pilots of the Luftwaffe alone. Neglecting safety could mean "an end to commercial human space flight before it has chance to get started", he warned. (7/25)

Buzz Aldrin Calls for Reevaluation of Constellation (Source: Houston Chronicle)
Just four years after President Bush announced his vision to send astronauts back to the moon and then on to Mars, legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin is leading an effort to re-examine the whole idea — in particular, NASA's choice of rockets for the mission. It is the latest sign that NASA's Constellation program — intended to replace the space shuttle after 2010 — is in trouble. Concerned by reports that the Ares rockets and Orion crew capsule are beset by cost overruns, schedule delays and complex technical woes, Aldrin says he wants to create a panel of experts to make sure that Constellation is the right way to go.

NASA's proposed Ares-1 and Ares-5 rockets were originally presented as relatively uncomplicated projects that would reuse technology from the space shuttle, Ares is now an almost completely new design. A NASA report made public last week said the agency will probably not meet its own internal goal of launching the rocket in 2013, and may even miss its publicly stated goal of a launch by 2015. However, NASA officials publicly insist the 2015 date is still on track. Aldrin said he wants the panel to look at the Direct 2.0 rocket, a design that would use the shuttle's giant external fuel tank and rocket boosters to launch the Orion capsule into space. Jake Garn, a former Republican senator from Utah and the first member of Congress to fly in space, agrees. "We are not far enough down the road that we shouldn't consider other options while we're working on the current path," he said.

Aldrin compared the Ares situation to the development of the shuttle after the end of the Apollo program. "It was not wisely planned, it was under-funded and we rushed into another decision that left us with a gap," he said. "And the shuttle — as marvelous as it is — has not lived up to its expectations." Some space advocates fear that both Barack Obama and John McCain might latch onto any study as a way to scrap Constellation entirely. Obama has said he would like to postpone Constellation for five years and use the money for the Department of Education. McCain has said that he favors increasing NASA's budget — but also wants to freeze spending except for defense and homeland security.

"We need to stick with the mission but rethink some of the ways we implement it," said Aldrin. "It doesn't pay to stick with a bad idea." He has won some backers, including a prominent Washington think tank and the backers of the Direct 2.0 design created by moonlighting NASA employees. But the space agency — and its allies on Capitol Hill — insists there's no need for more study. Meanwhile, the National Academy of Sciences is currently assembling a 14-member panel for a $400,000 study of the goals and rationale of the U.S. space program. Click here to view the article. (7/25)

Florida Team Considers Google Lunar X-Prize Bid (Source: Space Florida)
A multi-university student-led group called Omega Envoy is planning to pursue the Google Lunar X-Prize, offering $30 million to land and operate a robot on the Moon. University groups interested in supporting the Omega Envoy team will meet on August 1 at Kennedy Space Center, with support from Space Florida. Visit http://www.omegaenvoy.org for information. (7/18)

Asteroid Heading Our Way (Source: Russia Today)
Astronomers are battling to work out the trajectory of an asteroid that will cause havoc if it hits the Earth in 2036. Called Apophis, the giant meteor is hurtling through space at 10km per second. Scientists are warning that an impact would be far more devastating than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of WW2. At the Zvenigorod Observatory near Moscow, space researchers keep watch on cosmic bodies and study known meteorites to understand their size and inner structure. They are tracking the path of the asteroid Apophis as well. They aim to determine how real the danger is but that will only be clear in a decade's time.

Astronomer Sergey Barabanov explains the predicted course of events: “The critical moment will be in 2029, when Apophis passes so close to Earth that it will be visible to the naked eye. The consequence of this fly-by will tell us whether it will come back again and collide with us in 2036,” he said. If Apophis passes through a particular point in space called a keyhole the Earth's gravity may change its course for the worst. (7/25)

Space Rocket Tests Being Done in Central Texas (Source: KCEN)
Central Texas has become a proving ground for a new generation of space flight. NASA has contracted with a company called Space Exploration Technologies or Space-X to build rockets to take cargo and possibly humans to the International Space Station. Those rockets are being tested at a site in the McLennan County town of McGregor. California based space-x is testing a series of rockets like the Falcon 1 to launch satellites into orbit and eventually the much larger Falcon 9 with its 9 Merlin rocket engines to launch other cargo. (7/25)

Teachers' Summer: High-Tech Training (Source: Florida Today)
Carleen Beard is learning valuable lessons this summer; not about recreation and travel, but about technology. The fourth-grade science teacher is learning about life support in space, to be exact, and will bring the lessons back to her Freedom 7 Elementary classroom this fall. Her on-the-job training at Wyle Labs at Kennedy Space Center is part of the Summer Industrial Fellowships for Teachers program, which gives local teachers opportunities to learn about technology in a hands-on fashion.

"When we go out to the industry, we're supposed to capture different experiences that we learn on the job and take back to the classroom," Beard said. The SIFT Program provides teachers with seven weeks of training, from early June to late July. This summer, 27 teachers are participating locally. They work at various local companies such as United Space Alliance, L3 Communications, and United Launch Alliance, among others. At the end of the program, the teachers gather to discuss ways they can use what they've learned in their classrooms. (7/24)

China Aims for Bigger Slice of Satellite Market (Source: Reuters)
China aims to build a leading aerospace industry by 2015, when the country would command 10 percent of the world's commercial satellite market, and 15 percent of the commercial space launch market. Beijing was planning to double the number of aerospace scientific research and production bases to eight, according to a blueprint released by state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASTC). (7/25)

House Committee Seeks Information From FAA on Ending of Aviation Safety Survey (Source: SpaceRef.com)
The House Committee on Science and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight Chairman Brad Miller (D-NC) sent a letter to the Acting Director of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) calling on him to work with NASA to reestablish a program to survey professionals in the air traffic system for better insight into air safety problems. (7/25)