October 16 News Items

The "Obamanauts" Organize on the Space Coast (Sources: Orlando Sentinel, Obamanauts)
A group of space industry workers who support of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama for president have gotten together to unleash a Space Coast drive with the catch phrase, "I am an Obamanaut." Bumper stickers should start to appear around the area today ahead of a visit to the Space Coast on Friday by Omaba's rival for the presidency, Republican hopeful Sen. John McCain. Editor's Note: Targeting undecided voters who place importance on space issues, the Obamanauts are planning a series of meetings before the election to highlight differences in the space policies of Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain, beginning with an event at the Cocoa Beach Public Library on Oct. 19 at 1:30. They offer a side-by-side comparison of the two candidates' policies at http://obamanauts.org. (10/16)

Space Smells of Steak (Source: The Sun)
The universe also has an aroma of hot metal and motorbike welding, NASA experts said. Astronauts reported the bizarre scents on their suits when they returned from space walks. The space agency has commissioned Steven Pearce of British fragrance firm Omega Ingredients to recreate the smells to help train spacemen. He said: “When astronauts were de-suiting and taking off helmets, they all reported quite particular odors. “We have already produced the smell of fried steak, but hot metal is more difficult. (10/16)

Hobbled Hubble Telescope Revived (Source: Reuters)
The Hubble Space Telescope was in the final stages of recovery on Thursday after NASA successfully bypassed a faulty computer and resurrected an 18-year-old spare from orbital hibernation. The faulty computer, which is needed to collect and process data from science instruments, prompted NASA to delay a long-awaited space shuttle mission to service the telescope. The flight has been rescheduled for February, when the crew will attempt to replace the failed computer. (10/16)

China's Space Capability Could Surpass United States, Panel Warns (Source: Space.com)
The Shenzhou 7 mission and spacewalk should serve as a reminder that China is building space capabilities that could surpass U.S. technological advances and boost China's diplomatic and economic ties with its allies, a panel of experts said. China's success this decade with three human spaceflight missions, including Shenzhou 7 in September, as well as the development of remote-sensing and satellite navigation systems, two satellite export deals and the January 2007 use of an antisatellite weapon to shoot down one of its own satellites punctuate China's broader national interest to become a "comprehensive power," the panelists said. (10/16)

China to Deliver Telecom Satellite to Pakistan (Source: Xinhua)
China will launch a telecommunication satellite, dubbed PakSat-1R, for Pakistan in 2011. The satellite's chief contractor -- China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC) -- said on Thursday that a Long March 3B rocket will be used to put the satellite into orbit. It will launch from the Xichang spaceport in the southwestern Sichuan Province. The company said ground control facilities for the satellite will be delivered to the Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission after it enters orbit. (10/16)

SpaceDev Rated One of the Fastest Growing Global Defense Companies (Source: MarketWire)
SpaceDev is pleased to announce that it has placed sixth on the prestigious "Fast Track 50," an annual ranking of global defense companies published by Defense News Magazine. Defense News evaluated all defense companies in the world regardless of size by their compound annual growth rate over the last five years. The Company also was informed that it has been recognized as the eighth fastest growing technology company in the San Diego area at the recent Deloitte "Technology Fast 50" awards. The Deloitte ranking covers all technology companies regardless of industry by percentage revenue growth over five years. (10/16)

Space Vector Nets $4.9 Million Contract (Source: Birmingham Business Journal)
Space Vector Corp., a subsidiary of Alabama Aircraft Industries Inc., has been awarded a $4.9 million two-year contract to develop and produce tracking units for space rockets. The company will produce GPS Metric Tracking Units for United Launch Alliance of Centennial, Colorado, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin that operates space launch systems. (10/16)

Nelson Blasts McCain's Budget Freeze in Space Coast Ad (Source: Miami Herald)
The Barack Obama campaign launched a 60-second radio ad in the space coast today with a message designed to hit home to space industry employees in hard times: McCain will kill your jobs. Drawing links to John McCain's call for an across-the-board spending freeze, former astronaut and current U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson says a freeze would hurt NASA's spending "so layoffs would loom larger, and NASA would continue to be starved of funds for future exploration." Then in a blatantly pro-spending pitch, Nelson contrasts McCain's plan with Obama's proposal for a "$2 billion increase for NASA" and notes that "McCain's party mocks this proposal as quote, 'Part of a liberal fiscal agenda.'" But the Obama $2 billion promise certainly looms large as a big wish with a questionmark: Where will he find the money? (10/16)

New Mexico County Residents Should Think Twice on Spaceport Tax (Source: Alamogordo Daily News)
New Mexico's political establishment has invested a lot of political capital in the proposed spaceport. Gov. Bill Richardson even visited Alamogordo recently to lend his support for the one-eighth cent hike in the county's gross receipts tax. But while politicians only want you to see the new spaceport, they are downplaying the real risk that the project will be a costly failure, not to mention the economic costs of further increasing gross receipts tax rates.

Residents of Otero County and throughout southern New Mexico have to wonder if their tax money will be wasted. After all, New Mexico's spaceport will be competing to serve a market for private space travel that doesn't even exist yet. Most voters are undoubtedly not aware, for example, that there are already three dozen operational spaceports worldwide. Far from being a sure-fire investment, the spaceport will be just another example of politicians spending your tax money and taking credit for success or disassociating themselves with a failure. Is this really the kind of investment Otero County citizens should be making at a time of tremendous economic uncertainty? (10/16)

ATK, USA Work Out an Agreement (Source: Florida Today)
Alliant Techsystems announced today that it reached an agreement with United Space Alliance to perform subcontractor support to ATK for NASA's Ares I launch vehicle. The companies had been at loggerheads over the contract, with ATK planning to hire engineers to do the work formerly done by USA staff. A formal contract likely will follow in 30 to 60 days, said ATK spokesman George Torres. ATK will likely double its workforce of 30 at Kennedy Space Center. Some 550 USA employees will continue to work part time on projects under ATK's contract with NASA, the equivalent of 180 full time employees. (10/16)

Space Tourism To Soar, Official Says (Source: Aerospace Daily)
The head of the FAA office set up to regulate the commercial spaceflight industry anticipates a rapid rise in paying passengers to space over the next few years. Now the purview of adventurers wealthy enough to pay $20 million-$30 million for a Russian Soyuz ride to the International Space Station (ISS), space tourism will soon expand dramatically as suborbital flights get under way, according to George Nield, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation.

Nield's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (OCST), which licenses commercial space launches and re-entries from the U.S. or by U.S. entities anywhere in the world, is working with a half-dozen companies that are actively developing suborbital space tourism businesses. They include Virgin Galactic, which is already booking flights at $200,000 a ticket; Blue Origin, Armadillo Aerospace, RocketPlane, SpaceDev and XCOR, as well as SpaceX, Orbital Sciences and other companies that hope to develop commercial transportation to the ISS. (10/16)

Ford Named Chairman of NASA Advisory Council (Source: NASA)
NASA Advisory Council Chairman Harrison Schmitt has announced that he is leaving the council. Fellow council member Kenneth Ford will succeed him as chairman effective immediately. The NASA Advisory Council provides advice to the NASA administrator on important program and policy matters related to the U.S. space program. Ford leads the Florida-based Institute for Human & Machine Cognition. He is the author of hundreds of scientific papers and six books. His research interests include artificial intelligence, cognitive science, human-centered computing, and entrepreneurship in government and academia. The Council met in Florida last week. (10/16)

Pentagon to Study Space-Based Missile Defenses (Source: Washington Times)
Congress voted recently to approve $5 million for a study of space-based missile defenses, the first time the development of space weapons will be considered since similar work was canceled in the 1990s. Appropriation of the money for the study was tucked away in a little-noticed provision of the Continuing Resolution passed recently by Congress and followed two years in which Congress rejected $10 million sought for the study. Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican and a key supporter of missile defenses, said approval of the study highlights the need to provide comprehensive protection from the growing threat of missile attack and to limit the vulnerability of vital satellites to attack. (10/16)

Embry-Riddle and Leading Aerospace and High-Tech Employers Host Career Expo (Source: ERAU)
Jobseekers are invited to expand their horizons at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s 2008 Industry/Career Expo, one of the largest of its kind in the nation, attracting top employers in aviation, aerospace, business, engineering, and other high-tech fields. Representatives of more than 100 employers from across the nation are scheduled to participate, including Boeing, the Central Intelligence Agency, Lockheed Martin, NetJets, United Space Alliance, and many others. The Expo will be held Nov. 5-6, in the ICI Center at Embry-Riddle’s Daytona Beach campus, 600 S. Clyde Morris Blvd. The annual event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by Embry-Riddle’s Career Services Office. (10/16)

Oklahoma Spaceport Sticks with Rocketplane Despite Continuing Financial Woes (Source: Journal Record)
When former astronaut John Herrington resigned from Rocketplane Global in January, he was quoted in Wired Magazine saying, “You can only put so much time and effort into something before you decide it’s time to move on.” But the quote that more closely adheres to the feeling held by the remaining staff members at Rocketplane was uttered by inventor Thomas Alva Edison more than 75 years ago: “Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

The question is not “if” Rocketplane will get a reusable, suborbital launch vehicle in the air, but “when,” a Rocketplane official told members of the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority. OSIDA directors asked Rocketplane to send a representative to explain what’s going on at the company, which originally intended to have a finished product by 2007. He said the company's challenges are not technical, but financial.

The biggest difference some of the other new spaceflight companies and Rocketplane is the size of the owners’ bank accounts, he said. Virgin’s founder Sir Richard Branson owns an airline, a record label and a host of other properties; Space X was founded by PayPal creator Elon Musk. Both men are billionaires. “Our entrepreneur, George French, is a millionaire,” Faulkner said. “That’s with an ‘M.’” Visit http://www.journalrecord.com/article.cfm?recid=92969 to view the article. (10/16)

NASA to Fund PSU Research (Source: Daily Collegian)
Penn State will receive at least $7 million for astrobiology research funding, NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) announced recently, making the university the only institution to be continually funded since NAI's inception a decade ago. Penn State was one of 10 research teams to get funding for astrobiology research from NAI, the institute's Web site announced this month. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe. (10/16)

Editorial: It's Time to Retire the Shuttle (Source: Washington Post)
Among the many tough decisions facing the next president is the future of our civilian space program. There are conflicts over how long to fly the space shuttle, which are linked to questions about continued American access to the international space station -- built at the cost of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars -- and whether U.S. astronauts will return to the moon before 2020. The 2003 Columbia Accident Investigation Board, of which I was a member, concluded that the United States should "replace the shuttle as soon as possible as the primary means for transporting humans to and from Earth orbit." Referring to the post-Shuttle "gap", NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has described U.S. dependence on Russia for transportation to space as "unseemly." Indeed it is, but it is preferable to continuing to fly the shuttle past 2010. Another accident could delay or even end the U.S. program of human spaceflight. (10/16)

Orbital Sciences Third-Quarter Net Falls (Source: Market Watch)
Orbital Sciences Corp. said its third-quarter net income fell to $12.1 million, from $15.7 million a year ago. The results met the average estimate of analysts. Orbital, which makes rockets and space systems for military and civilian use, said third-quarter revenue rose to $278.6 million from $275.6 million. (10/16)

India Reiterates Commitment to Peaceful Use of Outer Space (Source: The Peninsula)
India favors peaceful uses of outer space for the common good of mankind, a member of the Indian delegation to the UN General Assembly session said, citing initiatives such as the country’s first unmanned mission to the moon to be launched next week. Tariq Anwar, MP, detailed the advances made by India’s space programme such as the impending launch of lunar mission Chandrayaan-1, and providing remote sensing data and assessment support to the countries affected by natural disasters. “Indian Remote Sensing imagery and support services were made available for post-disaster relief operations after the major cyclone and earthquake that recently struck Myanmar and China respectively,” (10/15)

Internet Millionaire Takes Aim at Mars (Source: Christian Science Monitor)
Every morning, Elon Musk steels himself to once again do battle with gravity. A multimillionaire who made his fortune as cofounder of PayPal, Mr. Musk has spent six years and $100 million of his own money designing rockets for his company, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX). Having passed his first orbital launch-success milestone – or, more accurately, 434 vertical milestones – SpaceX is on a trajectory to revolutionize space transportation. Musk wants to make it more affordable through much cheaper launches. His larger ambition is to transport astronauts in Space X’s rocket capsule, effectively providing NASA with an alternative to the space shuttle, due to be mothballed in 2010.

But his ultimate aim is Mars. “[Musk] really believes in the future of space, believes that humanity needs to be a space-faring civilization in order to survive long term,” says Bruce Pittman, director of flight projects at the NASA Ames Commercial Space Team/Alliance for Commercial Enterprise and Education in Space. He wouldn’t be in it if he weren’t thinking big, and extending life beyond Earth is his goal. “I don’t need to work – I can buy anything I want,” says Musk, who is also chairman of Tesla Motors, the electric sports car manufacturer. “I’m just working because I think this is important.” (10/15)