May 19, 2019

Spaceport America Vision at the Edge of Paying Off Big (Source: Albuquerque Journal)
They sealed the deal 14 years ago with a handshake in the New Mexico desert. Sir Richard Branson and then-Gov. Bill Richardson had flown by helicopter to a site marked with a scaffolding pole at what is now Spaceport America, about 50 miles north of Las Cruces. “Build us a world-class spaceport and we’ll bring you a world-class space line,” Branson recalled telling Richardson. It was a huge gamble for both men – one Branson says was based on vision and trust. New Mexico’s side of the deal carries a price tag in excess of $220 million, while Branson and other investors have pumped more than $1 billion into the effort.

That gamble may be on the verge of paying big dividends. Branson, Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced this month the company is ready to move the rest of its flight operations – another 100 personnel including engineers, mechanics, flight crews and pilots – from Mojave in California to New Mexico. The time is right, Whitesides says, because after successful test flights of Virgin Galactic’s mothership and spaceship Unity in December and February, the company is ready to take the final steps to launching civilian tourists into space.

“New Mexico is becoming the first place to regularly launch humans into space on flights conducted by a private company,” Branson said. While Whitesides emphasizes the difficulty of the task and says there is still “work to do,” there are hints the initial flight could take place within a year. If and when it happens, it will be a historic event with the entire world focused on New Mexico. The opportunities to capitalize on this and take long-term, game-changing steps to restructure our economy are unlimited. Lujan Grisham gets it, and it will be up to her and others to ensure we take advantage. (5/18)

Air Force's Space 'Think Tank' Studies Future of Conflict Beyond Earth (Source: Military.com)
Within the Air Command and Staff College here resides a unique task force that has one core mission: to be America's think tank for space. Lt. Col. Peter Garretson is deputy director of the Schriever Scholars program, as well as the director of the Space Horizons Task Force at the college. Garretson teaches a number of space courses for the scholars program. The space horizons course specifically looks at the long-term strategic perspective of space and information policy, feeding into a broader, university-wide space research task force.

"We're trying to take the best space operators and tacticians and turn them into the world's best strategists," Garretson said during an interview in his office. "We're also interested in, how does great power competition evolve over time? How do we ensure a balance of power favorable to our allies and our goals? How do we attempt to set the norms that mitigate conflict? And of course, if we fail … what do we need to be thinking about to ensure we would prevail." The Schriever Scholars program is the first of its kind. Its inaugural class began last August, with students -- mostly majors -- scheduled to graduate next month. (5/17)

O’Neill Colonies: A Decades-Long Dream for Settling Space (Source: Astronomy)
Last week, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos revealed his spaceship company’s new lunar lander, dubbed Blue Moon, and he spelled out a bold and broad vision for humanity’s future in space. Faced with the limits of resources here on Earth, most fundamentally energy, he pointed to life in space as a solution. “If we move out into the solar system, for all practical purposes, we have unlimited resources,” Bezos said. “We could have a trillion people out in the solar system.” And while colonies on other planets would be plagued by low gravity, long distances to Earth (leading to communication delays), and further limits down the road, those weaknesses are avoided if the colonies remain truly in space.

To that end, Bezos instead suggested people consider taking up residence in O’Neill colonies, a futuristic concept for space settlements first dreamed up decades ago. “These are very large structures, miles on end, and they hold a million people or more each.” Gerard O’Neill was a physicist from Princeton University who teamed up with NASA in the 1970s on a series of workshops that explored efficient ways for humans to live off-world. Beyond influencing Bezos, his ideas have also deeply affected how many space experts and enthusiasts think about realistic ways of living in space.

“What will space colonies be like?” O’Neill once asked the Space Science Institute he founded. “First of all, there’s no point in going out into space if the future that we see there is a sterile future of living in tin cans. We have to be able to recreate, in space, habitats which are as beautiful, as Earth-like, as the loveliest parts of planet Earth — and we can do that.” Of course, neither O’Neill nor anyone since has actually made such a habitat, but in many ways, the concepts he helped developed half a century ago remain some of the most practical options for large-scale and long-term space habitation. (5/17)

SpaceX Sues the Federal Government but Asks to Keep Details Under Wraps (Source: GeekWire)
SpaceXfiled a lawsuit against the federal government, apparently protesting a contract bidding process — but asked the court to keep the proceedings under seal and covered by a protective order. The company said the details had to be kept out of the public eye because they include “confidential and proprietary information and source selection information not appropriate for release to the public.” This isn’t the first time SpaceX has filed a bid protest against the federal government: The best-known case came in 2014 when SpaceX sued the government over the Air Force’s decision to order 36 rocket cores from ULA. Editor's Note: Bid protests are not unusual, and though they technically are "suing the government" they are often an anticipated part of the process for complex, closely competed and high-value procurements. (5/18)

19 Former GOP Lawmakers Back Suit Against Trump’s Grab For Border Wall Funding (Source: HuffPost)
Nineteen former Republican representatives have filed a friend of the court brief backing a lawsuit that challenges Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to fund his border wall without the support of Congress. The amicus brief, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, supports a suit by Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan nonprofit challenging Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the U.S. southern border in February and his demand for funding to erect a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

“I could do the wall over a longer period of time ― I didn’t need to do this,” Trump said in a televised speech at the time. “But I’d rather do it much faster.” The former GOP representatives filed the brief just after the Pentagon, under orders from Trump, informed Congress this week that it would redirect some $1.5 billion earmarked for retirement accounts, a missile defense system and the war in Afghanistan to pay for a section of the border wall. That’s on top of an earlier $1 billion wall commitment from the Pentagon.

“The separation of powers is fundamental to our democracy,” noted the amicus brief, adding that the Constitution gives Congress the authority to appropriate funds. “The president’s emergency declaration is an unconstitutional attempt” to usurp that power, and “would deprive Congress of its most basic constitutional duty,” the brief argued. “The framers considered ‘the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, judiciary, in the same hands’ to be the ‘very definition of tyranny,’” the brief continued. (5/17)

Moon Mining Could Actually Work, with the Right Approach (Source: Space.com)
Earth's moon taunts. A growing chorus of experts views this "eighth continent" as a nearby world of natural resources sitting there at the edge of Earth's gravity well, ready for the picking. Visionary zeal aside, clarity is step one. Wanted is the right combination of vision, gobs of moon moolah, make-it-happen technologies and the political willpower to unlock the moon's wealth.

A recent report — "Commercial Lunar Propellant Architecture: A Collaborative Study of Lunar Propellant Production" — has cut to the chase, detailing what's needed and what happens next. This appraisal by industry writers, NASA, lunar scientists and space lawyers focused on extracting water from the moon's permanently shadowed regions for use as rocket fuel. The report explains that, combined with reusable upper stages and landers, a space-based supply of propellant has long been seen as the key that could enable cost-efficient access to much of the inner solar system.

Moreover, the recent confirmation of lunar polar volatiles provides an access point to a supply line of in-space propellant. Refueling can "linearize" the rocket equation, the study suggests. Thanks to the moon's shallow gravity well, the paper argues, those water-derived products can be exported to fuel entirely new economic opportunities in space. (5/15)

Will NASA's Rush to Land Astronauts on the Moon Get Us to Mars Any Faster? (Source: Space.com)
A mission to the moon may be a good "steppingstone" for sending humans to Mars, but the experts are divided over whether NASA's new push to put humans on the moon in 2024 will help get the agency to Mars by the 2030s.  The agency has said that it plans to land astronauts on Mars in the 2030s, following President Obama's request in 2016. The following year, Trump requested a nongovernmental,  independent report about the possibility of launching humans to Mars in 2033 in his NASA Authorization Act of 2017.

Although Bridenstine has said that NASA wants to achieve a landing in 2033, he hasn't offered a new timeline for Mars based on the moon mission just yet. In February, the independent report from the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) concluded that NASA will not be able to land astronauts on Mars until the late 2030s — regardless of how much funding is available. That report was published before Pence announced NASA's accelerated timeline, and it doesn't account for the newly adjusted budget request. But according to the report, no amount of money can put astronauts on Mars by 2033, because there simply isn't enough time to develop, build and test all the technologies needed for that kind of a mission.

Despite the findings of that report, however, Hoppy Price, chief engineer of NASA's robotic Mars exploration program, said here at the Humans to Mars Summit that he still thought a crewed lunar landing in 2024 could lead to human mission to Mars in 2033 "if sufficient funding was available." Price suggested NASA could build an infrastructure in Mars orbit similar to the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway that the agency intends to put in orbit around the moon. That gateway could serve as a "home base" for the first human missions to Mars, and astronauts would complete only short-duration missions to the surface using a separate ascent/descent vehicle. (5/17)

NASA Dives Into Habitation Prototypes Testing (Source: Interesting Engineering)
NASA is getting serious about returning to the moon. Earlier this week they asked for more money from Congress to keep developing the required vehicle technology and this week they kick off several months of testing of deep space habitat prototypes. The space agency will test five unique designs presented by private enterprises. The prototypes offer an insight into what life might be like aboard The Gateway, the spaceship intended to orbit around the moon. The testing won’t result in a single design being picked and developed further, rather NASA says it plans to use the testing of the five designs as a way to evaluate the design standards and possible risks heading into deep space might present. Click here. (5/18) https://interestingengineering.com/nasa-dives-into-habitation-prototypes-testing

Omega Celebrates 'Iconic Hours' of Apollo 11 with New Speedmaster (Source: CollectSPACE)
A new chronograph captures the time, 50 years ago, when the first wristwatch was worn on the surface of the moon. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin became the second human to walk on the moon — and the first to wear a watch while doing so. Now, half a century later, the maker of that well-traveled timepiece has included that detail on the face of a new, limited edition watch created to commemorate the mission's 50th anniversary. "The 9 o'clock subdial shows Buzz Aldrin climbing down onto the lunar surface." (5/18)

Olis Robotics Wins $50K from Air Force to Study Options for Satellite-Servicing Robots (Source: GeekWire)
Seattle-based Olis Robotics says it has received a $50,000 grant from the U.S. Air Force to lay out a plan for using its AI-driven software platform to control satellite-servicing robots in orbit. The initial SBIR grant could set the stage for as much as $1.5 million in future Air Force funding, depending on how the plan is received. Olis is a five-year-old spinout from the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory. It specializes in the development of semi-autonomous control software that’s suitable for underwater remotely operated vehicles as well as space robots. (5/17)

China’s Rover Finds Mysterious Minerals on the Far Side of the Moon (Source: Engadget)
China's Chang'e-4 lunar lander and its rover, Yutu-2, may have detected the first signs of lunar mantle material. If the minerals it found prove to be part of the moon's mantle, the discovery could help scientists better understand how both the moon and the Earth formed. Chang'e-4 intentionally landed inside the moon's Von Kármán crater, one of the largest known impact structures in the solar system. If scientists are going to find lunar mantle material anywhere, that's a good place to look. Yutu-2 reportedly found two minerals: low-calcium (ortho)pyroxene and olivine. Those align with predictions of what the moon's upper mantle might contain. (5/17)

SpaceX Considering SSTO Starship Launches from Pad 39A (Source: NASASpaceFlight.com)
As SpaceX continues to make steady progress on multiple Starship test vehicles at their Boca Chica launch facility, the company’s CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that they are also constructing a Starship vehicle in Florida. The Florida-based Starship is expected to launch from one of SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral based facilities, as opposed to the company’s launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. One facility under serious consideration is historic Launch Complex 39A at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport.

SpaceX hopes to use the Starship spacecraft to return humans to the moon and colonize Mars. Multiple sources have indicated that the company is hoping to perform orbital test flights of the Starship prototypes. What level of testing remains an open question, as Elon Musk noted on Twitter that using SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) test launches – where just the Starship launches without the Super Heavy booster – wouldn’t allow the vehicle to be reusable. This leaves the Starship launches solely for testing the vehicle, as they are planning from the Boca Chica site.

At LC-39A, Starship may also be able to capitalize on existing ground infrastructure including the LOX tanks at the pad. However, Starship will use methane instead of kerosene like Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. Therefore, the installation of methane tanks will be a requirement. There is room for such hardware including the area once used to store hydrogen for the Space Shuttle. (5/18)