Time Names Ares One of Best Inventions of 2009

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1934027,00.html>

The Best Invention of the Year: NASA's Ares Rockets

By JEFFREY KLUGER Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009





NASA

Metal has no DNA; machines have no genes. But that doesn't mean they don't have pedigrees — ancestral lines every bit as elaborate as our own. That's surely the case with the Ares 1 rocket. The best and smartest and coolest thing built in 2009 — a machine that can launch human beings to cosmic destinations we'd never considered before — is the fruit of a very old family tree, one with branches grand, historic and even wicked.

There are a lot of reasons astronauts haven't moved beyond the harbor lights of low-Earth orbit in nearly 40 years, but one of them is that we haven't had the machines to take us anywhere else. The space shuttle is a flying truck: fine for the lunch-bucket work of hauling cargo a couple of hundred miles into space, but nothing more. In 2004, however, the U.S. committed itself to sending astronauts back to the moon and later to Mars, and for that, you need something new and nifty for them to fly. The answer is the Ares 1, which had its first unmanned flight on Oct. 28 and dazzled even the skeptics.

From a distance, the rocket is unprepossessing — a slender white stalk that looks almost as if it would twang in the Florida wind. But up close, it's huge: about 327 ft. (100 m) tall, or the biggest thing the U.S. has launched since the 363-ft. (111 m) Saturn V moon rockets of the early 1970s. Its first stage is a souped-up version of one of the shuttle's solid-fuel rockets; its top stage is a similarly muscled-up model of the Saturn's massive J2 engines.

If that general body plan doesn't exactly break ground, that's the point. NASA tried breaking ground with the shuttles and in doing so broke all the rules. Shuttle astronauts sit alongside the fuel — next to the exploding motor that claimed Challenger, beneath the chunks of falling foam that killed Columbia. And when you fly a spacecraft repeatedly as opposed to chucking it after a single use, there's a lot of wear to repair.

When NASA engineers gathered to plan the next generation of America's rockets, they thus decided to go back to the future — way back. The Saturn V was the brainchild of Wernher von Braun, the German scientist whose bright genius gave the U.S. its finest line of rockets — and whose dark genius gave Hitler the V2 missile that rained terror on London. Von Braun had, in turn, drawn insights from American rocket pioneer Robert Goddard. Goddard built on the work of 17th century artillery innovator Kazimierz Siemienowicz, a Pole.

The Ares 1 is a worthy descendant of their rockets and others, with lightweight composites, better engines and exponentially improved computers giving it more reliability and power. The Ares 1 will launch an Apollo-like spacecraft with four crew members — perhaps by 2015. Alongside it, NASA is developing the Brobdingnagian Ares V, a 380-ft. (116 m) behemoth intended to put such heavy equipment as a lunar lander in Earth orbit, where astronauts can link up with it before blasting away to the moon. Somewhere between the two rockets is the so-called Ares Lite — a heavy-lift hybrid that could carry both humans and cargo and is intended to be a design that engineers can have in their back pockets if the two-booster plan proves unaffordable.

The new rockets could take astronauts to some thrilling places. The biggest costs — and risks — associated with visiting other celestial bodies are from landing and taking off again. But suppose you don't land? An independent commission appointed by the White House to make recommendations for NASA's future recently returned its 154-page report and made strong arguments for bypassing the familiar boots-in-the-soil scenario in favor of a flexible path of flybys and orbits.

Under the new thinking, astronauts could barnstorm or circle the moon, Mars and Mars' twin moons, deploying probes to do their rock-collecting and experiments for them. They could similarly sample near-Earth objects like asteroids. They could also travel to what is known as the Lagrange points — a scattering of spots between Earth and the moon and Earth and the sun where the gravitational forces on the bodies are precisely balanced and spacecraft simply ... hang where they are. These would serve as ideal spots for deploying probes and conducting cosmic observations.

Troublingly for Ares partisans, the same commission that called for such creative uses for the new rockets also called into question how affordable they are, arguing that it might be better simply to modify boosters now used to carry satellites and put a capsule on top. Maybe — but there's the question of safety too. NASA designers say the Ares line will be 10 times as safe as the shuttle and two to three times as safe as competing boosters.

There's no way of knowing if those projections are too rosy, but if history teaches us anything, it's that the space program's grimmest chapters — the launchpad fires and shuttle disasters — unfold when policy planners lean too hard on engineers. The finest moments occur when the bureaucrats give the designers a clean sheet of drafting paper and let them dream. There's genius in knowing how to create a truly big invention — and there's wisdom in knowing how to recognize it and use it.

See pictures of the Ares rockets launching.

Someone had to say it

And Michael Griffin did.

He has the intelligence to cut through the bull, the boldness to push the bull aside, and the ability to effectively communicate his thoughts concisely and directly.

Here are his thoughts on the Augustine Commission's report. It's entertaining to see so many in the media call his letter sour grapes. That shows how little they understand one of the best administrator's that NASA had. A resource difficult to replace.

I stand aside and allow him to push aside the curtain...

From: "Michael D. Griffin" To: XXXXXXXXXX

1) It is clarifying to see a formal recognition by the Commission that, based upon budgetary considerations, "the human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory". Given that the Constellation program was designed in accordance with the budget profile specified in 2005, yet has since suffered some $30 billion of reductions to the amount allocated to human lunar return (including almost $12 billion in just the last five fiscal years) this is an unsurprising conclusion, but one which provides the necessary grounding for all subsequent discussions.

2) Since NASA's budget as outlined in 2005 was hardly one of rampant growth (only a slight increase above inflation was projected even then), and since the Commission did not report any evidence of substandard execution of the Program of Record - Constellation - one wonders why the Commission failed to recommend as its favored option that of simply restoring the funding necessary to do the job that has, since 2005, been codified in two strongly bi-partisan Congressional Authorization Acts. Of all the options considered, this is the most straightforward, yet it was not recommended. The so-called "less constrained" options merely provide partial restoration of budget authority that was removed within just the last few years. The most obvious conclusion to be drawn from the Commission' report is this: put it back.

3) The continual reference to the supposedly planned cancellation and deorbiting of ISS in 2016 is a strawman, irrelevant to consideration of serious programmatic options. While it is certainly true that Bush Administration budgets did not show any funding for ISS past 2015, it was always quite clear that the decision to cancel or fund the ISS in 2016 and beyond was never within the purview of the Bush Administration to make. In the face of strong International Partner commitment to ISS and two decades of steadfast Congressional commitment to the development, assembly, and utilization of ISS, it has never been and is not now realistic to consider cancellation and deorbiting of ISS in 2015, or indeed on any particular date which can be known today. The fact that some $3+ billion per year will be required to sustain ISS operations past 2015 is, and has always been, a glaring omission in future budget projections. Sustained funding of the ISS as long as it continues to return value - certainly to 2020 and quite likely beyond - should have been established by the Commission as a non-negotiable point of departure for all other discussions. Failure to do so, when the implications of prematurely canceling ISS are well known to all, is disingenuous. The existence of future exploration programs cannot be traded against sustenance of the ISS on an "either-or" basis, as if the latter option was a realistic option. If the nation is to lay claim to a viable human spaceflight program, the requirement to sustain ISS while also developing new systems to go beyond low Earth orbit is the minimally necessary standard. If the nation can no longer meet this standard, then it should be so stated, in which case any further discussion of U.S. human exploration beyond LEO is moot for the next two decades.

4) Numerous options are presented which are not linked by common goals or a strategy to reach such goals. Instead, differing options are presented to reach differing goals, rendering it impossible to develop meaningful cost/schedule/performance/risk comparisons across them. These options possess vastly differing levels of maturity, yet are offered as if all were on an equally mature footing in regard to their level of technical, cost, schedule, and risk assessment. This is not the case.

5) "Independent" cost estimates for Constellation systems are cited. There is no acknowledgement that these are low-fidelity estimates developed over a matter of weeks, yet are offered as corrections to NASA's cost estimates, which have years of effort behind them. No mention is made of NASA's commitment to probabilistic budget estimation techniques for Constellation, at significantly higher cost-confidence levels than has been the case in the past. If the Commission believes that NASA is not properly estimating costs, or is misrepresenting the data it has amassed, it should document its specific concerns. Otherwise, the provenance of NASA's cost estimates should be accepted, as no evidence has been supplied to justify overturning them.

6) The preference for "commercial" options for cargo and, worse, crew delivery to low Earth orbit appears throughout the Summary, together with the statement that "it is an appropriate time to consider turning this transport service over to the commercial sector." What commercial sector? At present, the only clearly available "commercial" option is Ariane 5. Launching a redesigned Orion crew vehicle is a valid choice in the context of an international program if - and only if - the U.S. is willing to give up independent access to low Earth orbit, a decision imbued with enormous future consequences. With an appropriately enlightened USG policy there may one day be a domestic commercial space transportation sector, but it does not presently exist and will not exist in the near future; i.e., substantially prior to the likely completion dates for Ares-1/Orion, if they were properly funded. The existence of a prudently funded USG option for cargo/crew delivery to ISS is precisely the strategy which allows the USG to take reasonable risks to sponsor the development of a viable commercial space sector. The Commission acknowledges the "risk" associated with its recommendation, but is not clear about the nature of that risk. If no USG option to deliver cargo and crew to LEO is to be developed following the retirement of the Space Shuttle, the U.S. risks the failure to sustain and utilize a unique facility with a sunk cost of $55 billion on the U.S. side, and nearly $20 billion of international partner investment in addition. The Russian Soyuz and Progress systems, even if we are willing to pay whatever is required to use them in the interim, simply do not provide sufficient capability to utilize ISS as was intended, and in any case represent a single point failure in regard to such utilization. To hold the support and utilization of the ISS hostage to the emergence of a commercial space sector is not "risky", it is irresponsible.

7) The Commission is disingenuous when it claims that safety "is not discussed in extensive detail because any concepts falling short in human safety have simply been eliminated from consideration." Similarly, the Commission was "unconvinced that enough is known about any of the potential high-reliability launcher-plus-capsule systems to distinguish their levels of safety in a meaningful way." For the Commission to dismiss out of hand the extensive analytical work that has been done to assure that Constellation systems represent the safest reasonable approach in comparison to all other presently known systems is simply unacceptable. Work of high quality in the assessment of safety and reliability has been done, and useful discriminators between and among systems do exist, whether the Commission believes so or not. To this point, the Commission's report is confusing as regards the distinction between "reliability" and "safety", where the issue is discussed at all. The former is the only criterion of interest for unmanned systems; for manned systems, there is an important difference due to the existence of an abort system and the conditions under which that abort system can and must operate. Nowhere is this crucial distinction discussed.

8) "Technical problems" with Ares-1 are cited several times, without any acknowledgement that (a) knowledgeable observers in NASA would disagree strongly as to the severity of such problems, and (b) Constellation's "technical problems" are on display because actual work is being accomplished, whereas other options have no problems because no work is being done.

9) The recommendation in favor of the dual-launch "Ares-5 Lite" approach as the baseline for lunar missions is difficult to understand. It violates the CAIB recommendation (and many similar recommendations) to separate crew and cargo in whatever post-Shuttle human space transportation system is to be developed. Further, the dual-Ares-5 Lite mission architecture substantially increases the minimum cost for a single lunar mission as compared to the Ares-1/Ares-5 approach, a recommendation which is difficult to understand in an already difficult budgetary environment. Finally, the Ares-5 Lite is nearly as expensive to develop as the Ares-5, but offers significantly less payload to the moon when used -- as will be required -- in a one-way, single-launch, cargo-only mode. (The LEO payload difference of 140 mt for Ares-5 Lite and 160 mt for Ares-5 masks a much greater difference in their lunar payload capability.) All parties agree that a heavy-lift launcher is needed for any human space program beyond LEO. Because of the economies of scale inherent to the design of launch vehicles, such a vehicle should be designed to lift as large a payload as possible within the constraints of the facilities and infrastructure available to build and transport it. This provides the greatest marginal improvement in capability at the lowest marginal cost.

10) The use of "fuel depots" as recommended in the Summary appears to be a solution in search of a problem. It is difficult to understand how such an approach can offer an economically favorable alternative. The Ares-5 offers the lowest cost-per-pound for payload to orbit of any presently known heavy-lift launch vehicle design. The mass-specific cost of payload to orbit nearly always improves with increasing launch vehicle scale. The recommendation in favor of an architectural approach based upon the use of many smaller vehicles to resupply a fuel depot ignores this fact, as well as the fact that a fuel depot requires a presently non-existent technology - the ability to provide closed-cycle refrigeration to maintain cryogenic fuels in the necessary thermodynamic state in space. This technology is a holy grail of deep-space exploration, because it is necessary for both chemical- and nuclear-powered upper stages. To establish an architecture based upon a non-existent technology at the very beginning of beyond-LEO operations is unwise.

11) Finally, the Commission did not do that which would have been most valuable - rendering a clear-eyed, independent assessment of the progress and status of Constellation with respect to its ability to meet goals which have been established in two successive NASA Authorization Acts, followed by an assessment of what would be required to get and keep that program on track. Instead, the Commission sought to formulate new options for new programs, treating these options as if their level of maturity was comparable to that of the baseline upon which NASA has been working now for more than four years. This approach completely ignores the established body of law which has guided NASA's work for the last four years and which, until and unless that body of law is changed, must serve as the common reference standard for any proposed alternatives to Constellation as the program of record for the nation's existing human spaceflight program.

Quite Prescient

This was brought to my attention this morning. It's a commentary from Jim Slade, with ABC when he wrote it exactly 18 years ago, 12 August 1991. It's strong enough to speak on it's own.

Jim Slade Commentary, ABC radio August 12, 1991

Kennedy Space Center, August 12: This is a special place. It is so special that people will come here someday to see where an evolutionary change in human history began.

Our ABC broadcast facilities sit on a mound about a half mile to the right of the big hangers and control rooms where the shuttles are groomed and then fired into orbit. It is easy to forget now that this is the same place where Neil Armstrong and the others stepped off for the moon.

The launch pads themselves are about 3 and a half miles out there toward the ocean. You can see them clearly across the acres of tropical scrub and swamp. Birds tumble, squawking, out of those bushes whenever a rocket bellows. But the rockets only sing once in a while compared to the birds and so far, the birds have always come back.

It's a busy place. This is Monday. Yesterday, space shuttle Atlantis dropped out of the sky here and was led back to the barn, still warm and sweating. This morning, a big tractor carried Discovery out to the same launch pad Atlantis used ten days ago. They hope to launch Discovery in mid September with a huge satellite in its hold that will study how the ozone layer is being depleted and what we humans have to do with it. That is important public business, the kind the shuttles ought to be doing.

As soon it's ready, Atlantis will be re-serviced and used to launch a missile-warning satellite sometime in November. That's important too.

Nobody has to tell the people here that their work is important, though. If you didn't have the spirit to work in this place, you would hate it. It takes a lot of pride to stand up to the pressure, some of, not very fair.

There is a cynical tendency to jeer whenever a big, visible program doesn't work right. Impatience, leavened with the idea that lots of money ought to mean perfection, leads us down that road. The fact of the matter is that non-destructive delays here are a sign of perfection. When a high speed computer stops the clock because it sees trouble in a tiny little gizmo buried among thousands of other tiny little gizmos, I find that nothing short of a miracle. The bottom line here is that no shuttle flies unless everything works at the time of liftoff. Something might break on the way "up the hill," but at that most crucial moment the spacecraft is a hundred percent or it doesn't go. Given the millions of parts and miles of wire in a shuttle, that's saying more than any other engineering or science program has even been able to say.

If you want to know what's wrong with NASA, you will have to dig back in your history book ten to fifteen years ago when neither the White House nor the Congress could decide if the space program was fish, fowl, or tinker toy. Funding was inadequate to the job and shortcuts were were taken that are showing up only today in projects like the Hubble Space Telescope. More importantly, though, the space agency was getting no direction. No political leader had the interest or the courage to say "this is what we ought we ought to do with the things we have learned," and, as a result, NASA drifted into one enterprise after another, trying to do all there was to do at once. Some great things happened, like Voyager's journey to Neptune by way of the other planets. Some terrible things happened too, like Challenger.

And i don't think things are much better now, although there has been one commission after another making a study of what the US should be doing in space in the next fifty years. Usually, they say the same thing: go back to the moon and on to Mars. And so far, there has been a lot of political talk about it. But if you look closely, what you still see is drift.

You want to go to space? The people here can do it. Somebody has to say go, but nobody wants to be the one.

When those people visit this place in the future, I wonder if that's what they'll remember.

Happy Birthday, Neil Armstrong

Happy birthday, Mr. Armstrong. I hope it is a grand one and that you have many, many more. Thank you for all your service to our country. Thank you for sharing yourself with us during NASA’s 50th anniversary and Apollo 11’s 40th anniversary.

If I were to meet you, I’d want only to shake your hand and to thank you. So many only seek to get from you. I’d like to be able to give, little as I would have to give.

I see why you crave privacy. People are astounding in their desire to “own” someone who is a public figure, as if they have a right. However, thank you for working with James Hansen on the excellent book, “First Man”. You wanted to be known for something more than being first on the moon. The book is a wonderful presentation of all you are. And still, as much as you don’t wish to be looked so highly to, the book gives so many reasons. Apart from Apollo 11, you are still a true American hero and a man of strong character. I’m glad to know the person you are and all your achievements.

Thank you, Mr. Armstrong.

Who Put the I in ISS?

The crew of STS-127 did a grand job. So did all the support personnel on the ground. And don't forget the ISS crew. There's so much to say, but for the moment I'll leave the profound things and just 'wow' over the fact that there were 13 people in orbit on the same vehicle for the first time. And let's not forget the diverse coverage of countries included in that baker's dozen. That is profound enough on its own.

I have become, recently, a fan of old time radio programs. The big box that people listened to for entertainment before television became ubiquitous. (Sidebar, but interesting: a coworker returned a few weeks ago from a mission trip to Eleuthera. His team worked to repair a tiny shack damaged by hurricane winds in 2008. Yeah, the man had been waiting that long for help. However, to the point. Jon said the man had no bathroom in the house and no outhouse, but he did have cable TV!)

These radio programs are interesting to me for reasons other than only entertainment. They are social commentaries as well, and I am a student of society. Of course my favorite programs would be the science fiction episodes. And the overwhelming majority of them (remember the time frame) paint a very pessimistic picture of humanity's future. Many of them present a world destroyed by nuclear war or under heavy threat of it breaking loose any moment. I'd say 80+% of them present such a future, a hopeless one. That's the most interesting part to me.

Fast forward over half a century. Talks are going on to reduce nuclear arms further. And 13 people from seven nations lived and worked together in the same station for just less than two weeks. Was it perfect harmony? I doubt it. Did everyone drop all their prejudices? I doubt that too. After all, we are imperfect humans. And imperfect humans can destroy each other. However, imperfect humans can agree to disagree, bury differences for a time, and work together to a common goal. And that is one of the important lessons of the International Space Station.

Yes, there is the United Nations, which has worked hard to bring nations together and bring peace to the world. Give it the credit it is due, but also see reality. Again, imperfect humans.

Rise above the demographic boundaries where the earth looks borderless...and the atmosphere seems so thin and fragile. No presidents or ambassadors or councils to debate issues.

Space is the great equalizer. It sees no color or nation or politics. Everyone has the same need, to survive. Thirteen people worked to survive and to explore and to build.

There are great opponents of the ISS, for many reasons. There are those that say it serves no practical purpose, and some say no scientific purpose.

I say they are all quite incorrect.

International Space Station, the real UN.

40 years

Today is the 40th anniversary of the splashdown of Apollo 11, bringing to an end man's greatest technological achievement and man's greatest exploration. One of the things that slips by on the recognition of the first moon landing is that the entire mission was eight days. That's a slightly lengthened week off from work. A quarter of a million miles to the moon in four days, and the same distance back in a like time. Of course gravity helps a great deal. Once the moon's gravitational influence on the craft exceeded the earth's, the pull of the moon was essentially doing all the driving. Or as Bill Anders of Apollo 8 said, I think Isaac Newton is doing most of the driving now."

A great deal of celebrating has taken place this week, and rightfully so. The great dream of so many people through a couple of centuries, and years of devoted and demanding work by a wide range of Americans, was fulfilled on July 20, 1969. Only twelve astronauts have stood on the surface of a body other than the earth. It's a tremendous accomplishment.

It's sad, however, that at the same time we are celebrating, the nation's space program suffers doubts, fading support and is in a state of confusion. The state of confusion being the limbo we float in while awaiting the Augustine commission to finish its study and issue a report. And beyond that how much longer will we have to wait for the new administration to make a decision and direct NASA, and hopefully provide the funds to support the direction?

The morale at the building where I work is high this week because of the celebration, but when the yelling is over and we go back to work on Ares, and read the hazing from media and blogs alike, reality sets in. It's true that NASA has made mistakes. I don't deny it or try to justify it. Fourteen people have died in the shuttle program. But unlike Apollo, there is no forgiveness. Apollo 1 was a terrible tragedy. NASA pulled itself together and two and a half years later landed on the moon. Well, after (no pun intended) going the distance, Apollo 1 was remembered but forgiven. NASA had redeemed itself with Apollo 11.

The shuttle program has flown for 28 years and 127 flights. Any one death is dreadful. Even with mistakes eliminated there will be failures because no system is perfect. (Let's not belabor statistics on how many people die every day in cars, in plane accidents. Humans aren't perfect. Neither are the products of their minds and hands.) Great achievements have been made during the shuttle era. However, lack of coverage and lack of appreciation or understanding on the part of the public blunts these accomplishments severely. So, not only are these things ignored, there is no tall pole at which to point, as with the moon landing (at least from the point of view of lay people), and say NASA has redeemed itself.

As a friend from work told me so very recently, we (NASA) are serving our country and we are making sacrifices to serve our country. We do because we give up a lot of personal time and energy to do our jobs. We miss many event things in personal time to do this job. I know that so many people have this vision of government workers with feet on desks and reading newspapers. There are rotten apples in every bunch. However, the largest part of people that I work with are busting tail and making sacrifice. It's another way NASA is ignored. The only way NASA gets coverage is if something goes wrong. Funny how the media doesn't always follow up on the bad news to tell the resolution. But that is another story.

To tie this all together, NASA is still capable of doing great things. We need a supportive administration. It would be nice to have a supportive populace. However, that is a luxury. A supportive administration is essential. If NASA doesn't achieve great things, do not always chalk it up to "incompetent" NASA.

Happy 40th to Apollo 11, and great going to the crew of STS-127 and the ISS. The space program has not reached its perigee. We are still climbing to apogee. But we do need a supportive gravity to pull us into orbit...of whatever program we are directed to pursue.

The Same Ol' Story

After three launch attempts for STS-127, and three scrubs, the same ol' people begin the same ol' litany. After all these years, you'd think they'd get tired of it themselves, realizing it needs something new added. The same answers are given...and pass through the same ol' dull heads. I suppose that's why "they" need to ask the same questions again, rant the same rant.

Why does NASA have so many problems? Why can't they ever launch on time? Don't they know what they are doing? Why is this so hard?

Well, whoever said that launching a space vehicle was easy? If a launch attempt goes flawlessly on the first try, that is not blind luck. It is the result of a great number of people having done their jobs correctly and thoroughly. And because a launch scrubs does not mean that these people didn't do their jobs. It doesn't mean that they don't know what they are doing.

One thing that NASA has taken a hit for in recent years is...safety. And then when they correctly apply all safety systems and requirements and those all work, then NASA takes a hit for that. I must be missing something. Which way do "they" want it? Should NASA be safe, or should NASA relax safety so a launch can go on time. That is if the vehicle makes it off the pad.

Because that is what is at stake, people. Safety doesn't just mean that the vehicle makes it off the pad. It also means seven astronauts made it off the pad too, and will come home safely...if NASA continues to correctly practice safety.

Yes, there was a problem with the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate (GUCP), which led to a hydrogen leak. It took two tries to correctly repair the problem. But this is not only about a hardware failure. It is also about leak monitors in place and working and engineers monitoring them to realize there is a leak, and engineers making the correct and safe decision to halt a launch because that concentration of hydrogen is a fire/explosion risk. If there were a big pocket of hydrogen around the vehicle and the engines ignited, so would that hydrogen. That is the rocket engine fuel. Can you say BOOM?

Holding up a launch to check out the electrical system after a lightning strike hit the lightning mast on the tower is safety, people. That's to be certain that nothing electrical got blown out by the fields generated. Oh, right...explanation needed. If the lightning didn't strike the shuttle...then what is the problem??? Because lightning generates electrical fields that affect things around the object it strikes. Yes, the lightning protection system protects the vehicle from direct strikes, but unless the vehicle is totally encased in protection, the fields can't be stopped. Why doesn't NASA do that then? Well, then you'd have to move the vehicle out of the protection. Sort of like rolling it out of the VAB. Once you stick the vehicle on the pad, you have to accept some risk. You cannot protect it from everything when it's out there in the open air environment. And don't forget, there was no damage to Endeavour's electrical system.

And lastly, I really don't think I need to explain the scrub with thunderstorms moving into the launch pad area. Apollo 12 was hit by lightning shortly after it lifted off the pad. There are several places where you can read about this. Wikipedia has a good summary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_12 Yes, Apollo 12 was able to recover and finish its mission, but I think this summary demonstrates that putting a vehicle in direct danger of a lightning strike is dangerous and not safety wise.

It's safety, people.

Fly the frienly skies

Today's post comes from a NASA staff pilot, Triple Nickel, who had his first taste of flying the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft when Atlantis was recently returned to the cape from Edwards. I'll let him tell his own story.



On Behalf Of Triple NickelSent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 9:34 PMSubject: (JSCAS ) Shuttle Carry

All,

Well, it's been 48 hours since I landed the 747 with the shuttle Atlantis on top and I am still buzzing from the experience. I have to say that my whole mind, body and soul went into the professional mode just before engine start in Mississippi, and stayed there, where it all needed to be, until well after the flight...in fact, I am not sure if it is all back to normal as I type this email. The experience was surreal. Seeing that "thing" on top of an already overly huge aircraft boggles my mind. The whole mission from takeoff to engine shutdown was unlike anything I had ever done. It was like a dream...someone else's dream.

We took off from Columbus AFB on their 12,000 foot runway, of which I used 11,999 1/2 feet to get the wheels off the ground. We were at 3,500 feet left to go of the runway, throttles full power, nose wheels still hugging the ground, copilot calling out decision speeds, the weight of Atlantis now screaming through my fingers clinched tightly on the controls, tires heating up to their near maximum temperature from the speed and the weight, and not yet at rotation speed, the speed at which I would be pulling on the controls to get the nose to rise. I just could not wait, and I mean I COULD NOT WAIT, and started pulling early. If I had waited until rotation speed, we would not have rotated enough to get airborne by the end of the runway. So I pulled on the controls early and started our rotation to the takeoff attitude. The wheels finally lifted off as we passed over the stripe marking the end of the runway and my next hurdle (physically) was a line of trees 1,000 feet off the departure end of Runway 16. All I knew was we were flying and so I directed the gear to be retracted and the flaps to be moved from Flaps 20 to Flaps 10 as I pulled even harder on the controls. I must say, those trees were beginning to look a lot like those brushes in the drive through car washes so I pulled even harder yet! I think I saw a bird just fold its wings and fall out of a tree as if to say "Oh just take me". Okay, we cleared the trees, duh, but it was way too close for my laundry. As we started to actually climb, at only 100 feet per minute, I smelled something that reminded me of touring the Heineken Brewery in Europe...I said "is that a skunk I smell?" and the veterans of shuttle carrying looked at me and smiled and said "Tires"! I said "TIRES??? OURS???" They smiled and shook their heads as if to call their Captain an amateur...okay, at that point I was. The tires were so hot you could smell them in the cockpit. My mind could not get over, from this point on, that this was something I had never experienced. Where's your mom when you REALLY need her?

The flight down to Florida was an eternity. We cruised at 250 knots indicated, giving us about 315 knots of ground speed at 15,000'. The miles didn't click by like I am use to them clicking by in a fighter jet at MACH .94. We were burning fuel at a rate of 40,000 pounds per hour or 130 pounds per mile, or one gallon every length of the fuselage. The vibration in the cockpit was mild, compared to down below and to the rear of the fuselage where it reminded me of that football game I had as a child where you turned it on and the players vibrated around the board. I felt like if I had plastic clips on my boots I could have vibrated to any spot in the fuselage I wanted to go without moving my legs...and the noise was deafening. The 747 flies with its nose 5 degrees up in the air to stay level, and when you bank, it feels like the shuttle is trying to say "hey, let's roll completely over on our back"..not a good thing I kept telling myself. SO I limited my bank angle to 15 degrees and even though a 180 degree course change took a full zip code to complete, it was the safe way to turn this monster.

Airliners and even a flight of two F-16s deviated from their flight plans to catch a glimpse of us along the way. We dodged what was in reality very few clouds and storms, despite what everyone thought, and arrived in Florida with 51,000 pounds of fuel too much to land with. We can't land heavier than 600,000 pounds total weight and so we had to do something with that fuel. I had an idea...let's fly low and slow and show this beast off to all the taxpayers in Florida lucky enough to be outside on that Tuesday afternoon. So at Ormond Beach we let down to 1,000 feet above the ground/water and flew just east of the beach out over the water. Then, once we reached the NASA airspace of the Kennedy Space Center, we cut over to the Banana/Indian Rivers and flew down the middle of them to show the people of Titusville, Port St.Johns and Melbourne just what a 747 with a shuttle on it looked like. We stayed at 1,000 feet and since we were dragging our flaps at "Flaps 5", our speed was down to around 190 to 210 knots. We could see traffic stopping in the middle of roads to take a look. We heard later that a Little League Baseball game stop to look and everyone cheered as we became their 7th inning stretch. Oh say can you see...

After reaching Vero Beach, we turned north to follow the coast line back up to the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF). There was not one person laying on the beach...they were all standing and waving! "What a sight" I thought...and figured they were thinking the same thing. All this time I was bugging the engineers, all three of them, to re-compute our fuel and tell me when it was time to land. They kept saying "Not yet Triple, keep showing this thing off" which was not a bad thing to be doing. However, all this time the thought that the landing, the muscling of this 600,000 pound beast, was getting closer and closer to my reality. I was pumped up! We got back to the SLF and were still 10,000 pounds too heavy to land so I said I was going to do a low approach over the SLF going the opposite direction of landing traffic that day. So at 300 feet, we flew down the runway, rocking our wings like a whale rolling on its side to say "hello" to the people looking on! One turn out of traffic and back to the runway to land...still 3,000 pounds over gross weight limit. But the engineers agreed that if the landing were smooth, there would be no problem. "Oh thanks guys, a little extra pressure is just what I needed!" So we landed at 603,000 pounds and very smoothly if I have to say so myself. The landing was so totally controlled and on speed, that it was fun. There were a few surprises that I dealt with, like the 747 falls like a rock with the orbiter on it if you pull the throttles off at the "normal" point in a landing and secondly, if you thought you could hold the nose off the ground after the mains touch down, think again...IT IS COMING DOWN!!! So I "flew it down" to the ground and saved what I have seen in videos of a nose slap after landing. Bob's video supports this! :8-)

Then I turned on my phone after coming to a full stop only to find 50 bazillion emails and phone messages from all of you who were so super to be watching and cheering us on! What a treat, I can't thank y'all enough. For those who watched, you wondered why we sat there so long. Well, the shuttle had very hazardous chemicals on board and we had to be "sniffed" to determine if any had leaked or were leaking. They checked for Monomethylhydrazine (N2H4 for Charlie Hudson) and nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4). Even though we were "clean", it took way too long for them to tow us in to the mate-demate area. Sorry for those who stuck it out and even waited until we exited the jet.

I am sure I will wake up in the middle of the night here soon, screaming and standing straight up dripping wet with sweat from the realization of what had happened. It was a thrill of a lifetime. Again I want to thank everyone for your interest and support. It felt good to bring Atlantis home in one piece after she had worked so hard getting to the Hubble Space Telescope and back.


Triple Nickel
NASA Pilot

Follow the Money

I never cease to be amazed, though after all these years I should expect it, how little the average person understands NASA. It's not all rocket science, and it's not all difficult to explain.

The most recent in the category I have in mind was last week in a comment left by a person who said that NASA wastes trillions of dollars, and that if their budget was eliminated, it would leave so much money to spend on things to help people on earth. I hear such things even from people I think are well informed and well read.

NASA's budget is not in the trillions, so even if it's money were a waste, it would not be in the trillions. NASA's budget peak was in the Apollo era and hardly reached 5% of the federal budget. In 2008 NASA's "tremendously huge, unreasonable" budget was a whopping 0.6% of the entire federal budget. Not even a full 1%. Doubt it? There it is at the top of the column. Oh, that comes from the budget department for the government. You can look further for yourself at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy08/browse.html

I think that is enough evidence to demonstrate that NASA's budget is not as huge as the average person thinks, and that it is quite small compared to say, Social Security and Medicare. NASA is hardly taking resources from "things that help people on earth."

And let's examine that part of the argument further. I know it's a huge surprise to the same doubters that NASA does something more than shoot useless space craft into space. People may point to Teflon and Velcro as products that were developed by or for NASA. But those are two products that were around before NASA. That doesn't mean that NASA has no earthly use however.

The research entered into by NASA scientists and engineers creates a treasure trove of products and services which help make life better for people all over the globe right now. I will mention some specifics, but let me also list the web site so that you may find out more for yourself. www.techbriefs.com

Example: "Crashworthy Seats Would Afford Superior Protection
Adjustments enable optimization of support for different body sizes and shapes. Seats to prevent or limit crash injuries to astronauts aboard the crew vehicle of the Orion spacecraft are undergoing development."

This affects everyone who drives a car. Better protection coming to you, courtesy of NASA.

Example: "Trans-Skull Ultrasound Scanner for Diagnosis of Rhino-Sinusitis

This system eliminates the need for CT or x-ray imaging.Rhino-sinusitis, or sinus infection, is an inflammation of the paranasal sinuses, which can be caused by different conditions (bacterial, fungal, viral, allergic, or autoimmune). Bacterial rhino-sinusitis is currently assessed by puncture or imaging techniques (x-ray or CT) in in order to detect the presence of an air-fluid level within the paranasal sinuses. The absence of this level is significant enough to rule out bacterial infection. The system presented in this innovation provides a reliable, non-invasive, and low-cost procedure to evaluate the presence of fluid inside the paranasal sinuses by means of an ultrasound scan."

Do you have allergies or sinus problems? Better diagnostic capabilities, courtesy of NASA.

Example: "Further Development of Scaffolds for Regeneration of Nerves
Scale-up toward clinically significant dimensions has been partially completed."

Repaired nerve damage, courtesy of NASA.

Example: Using Fluorescent Viruses for Detecting Bacteria in Water

A method of detecting water-borne pathogenic bacteria is based partly on established molecular-recognition and fluorescent-labeling concepts, according to which bacteria of a species of interest are labeled with fluorescent reporter molecules and the bacteria can then be detected by fluorescence spectroscopy.

Cleaner water, courtesy of NASA.

And these are only from the biomedical area. The list is encyclopedic by now. I invite you to explore NASA Tech Briefs and see for yourself what you are paying for when you pay for NASA's budget. You are paying to make life better here on earth.

But, as much as "those people" may not like to admit it, there is a drive in humans that pushes them to explore. There are strong practical reasons to explore. There are even reasons that have no economic basis at all. And no matter how much the naysayers deny it, they know it to be so. It's simply that their drive is not to space. Inside there is a drive that pushes them to explore something unknown. Even if you think, despite all reasonable presentations to the contrary, that NASA is a waste of money, I invite you to read the following, and not just to read, but to think about it. Think about it deep inside where your own longing is. We explore because we are human.

The Real Reasons We Explore Space

by Michael Griffin

I am convinced that if NASA were to disappear tomorrow, if we never put up another Hubble Space Telescope, never put another human being in space, people in this country would be profoundly distraught. Americans would feel that we had lost something that matters, that our best days were behind us, and they would feel themselves somehow diminished. Yet I think most would be unable to say why.

There are many good reasons to continue to explore space, which most Americans have undoubtedly heard. Some have been debated in public policy circles and evaluated on the basis of financial investment. In announcing his commitment to send the country back to the moon and, later, on to Mars, President Bush quite correctly said that we do it for purposes of scientific discovery, economic benefit, and national security. I’ve given speeches on each of those topics, and these reasons can be clearly shown to be true. And presidential science advisor Jack Marburger has said that questions about space exploration come down to whether we want to bring the solar system within mankind’s sphere of economic influence. I think that is extraordinarily well put.

But these are not reasons that would make Americans miss our space program. They are merely the reasons we are most comfortable discussing. I think of them as “acceptable reasons” because they can be logically defended. When we contemplate committing large sums of money to a project, we tend to dismiss reasons that are emotional or value-driven or can’t be captured on a spreadsheet. But in space exploration those are the reasons—what I think of as “real reasons”—that are the most important.

When Charles Lindbergh was asked why he crossed the Atlantic, he never once answered that he wanted to win the $25,000 that New York City hotel owner Raymond Orteig offered for the first nonstop aircraft flight between New York and Paris. Burt Rutan and his backer, Paul Allen, certainly didn’t develop a private spacecraft to win the Ansari X-Prize for the $10 million in prize money. They spent twice as much as they made. Sergei Korolev and the team that launched Sputnik were not tasked by their government to be the first to launch an artificial satellite; they had to fight for the honor and the resources to do it.

I think we all know why people strive to accomplish such things. They do so for reasons that are intuitive and compelling to all of us but that are not necessarily logical. They’re exactly the opposite of acceptable reasons, which are eminently logical but neither intuitive nor emotionally compelling.

First, most of us want to be, both as individuals and as societies, the first or the best in some activity. We want to stand out. This behavior is rooted in our genes. We are today the descendants of people who survived by outperforming others. Without question that drive can be carried to an unhealthy extreme; we’ve all seen more wars than we like. But just because the trait can be taken too far doesn’t mean that we can do without it completely. A second reason is curiosity. Who among us has not had the urge to know what’s over the next hill? What child has not been drawn to explore beyond the familiar streets of the neighborhood?

Finally, we humans have, since the earliest civilizations, built monuments. We want to leave something behind to show the next generation, or the generations after that, what we did with our time here. This is the impulse behind cathedrals and pyramids, art galleries and museums. Cathedral builders would understand what I mean by real reasons. The monuments they erected to the awe and mystery of their God required a far greater percentage of their gross domestic product than we will ever put into the space business, but we look back across 600 or 800 years of time, and we are still awed by what the builders accomplished. Those buildings, therefore, also stand as monuments to the builders.

The return the cathedral builders made on their investment could not have been summarized in a cost/benefit analysis. They began to develop civil engineering, the core discipline for any society if it wishes to have anything more than thatched huts. They gained societal advantages that were probably even more important than learning how to build walls and roofs. For example, they learned to embrace deferred gratification, not just on an individual level, where it is a crucial element of maturity, but on a societal level, where it is equally vital. The people who started the cathedrals didn’t live to finish them. The society as a whole had to be dedicated to the completion of those projects. We owe Western civilization as we know it today to that kind of thinking: the ability to have a constancy of purpose across years and decades.

It is my contention that the products of our space program are today’s cathedrals. The space program satisfies the desire to compete, but in a safe and productive manner, rather than in a harmful one. It speaks abundantly to our sense of human curiosity, of wonder and awe at the unknown. Who can watch people assembling the greatest engineering project in the history of mankind—the International Space Station—and not wonder at the ability of people to conceive and to execute the project? And it also addresses our need for leaving something for future generations.

Of course the space program also addresses the acceptable reasons, and in the end this is imperative. Societies will not succeed in the long run if they place their resources and their efforts in enterprises that, for whatever reason, don’t provide concrete value. But I believe that projects done for the real reasons that motivate humans also serve the acceptable reasons. In that sense, the value of space exploration really is in its spinoffs, as many have argued. But it’s not in spinoffs like Teflon and Tang and Velcro, as the public is so often told—and which in fact did not come from the space program. And it’s not in spinoffs in the form of better heart monitors or cheaper prices for liquid oxygen for hospitals, although the space program’s huge demand for liquid oxygen spurred fundamental improvements in the production and handling of this volatile substance. The real spinoffs are, just as they were for cathedral builders, more fundamental.

Anyone who wants to build spacecraft, who wants to be a subcontractor, or who even wants to supply bolts and screws to the space industry must work to a higher level of precision than human beings had to do before the space industry came along. And that standard has influenced our entire industrial base, and therefore our economy. As for national security, what is the value to the United States of being involved in enterprises which lift up human hearts everywhere? What is the value to the United States of being a leader in such efforts, in projects in which every technologically capable nation wants to take part? The greatest strategy for national security, more effective than having better guns and bombs than everyone else, is being a nation that does the kinds of things that make others want to do them with us.

What do you have to do, how do you have to behave, to do space projects? You have to value hard work. You have to live by excellence, or die from the lack of it. You have to understand and practice both leadership and followership. You have to build partnerships; leaders need partners and allies, as well as followers.

You have to accept the challenge of the unknown, knowing that you might fail, and to do so not without fear but with mastery of fear and a determination to go anyway. You have to defer gratification because we work on things that not all of us will live to see—and we know it.

We now believe that 95 percent of the universe consists of dark energy or dark matter, terms for things that we as yet know nothing about. Is it even conceivable that one day we won’t learn to harness them? As cavemen learned to harness fire, as people two centuries ago learned to harness electricity, we will learn to harness these new things. It was just a few years ago that we confirmed the existence of dark matter, and we would not have done so without the space program. What is the value of knowledge like that? I cannot begin to guess. A thousand years from now there will be human beings who don’t have to guess; they will know, and they will know we gave this to them.

NASA and Art

That's an interesting combination, and one that many people don't expect. Not that anyone should be surprised an artist may be inspired by the space program, but that NASA would fund an art program. Generally the public is not cognizant of the NASA art program. On finding out, there is a mixture of surprise and delight for the most part, at least in my experience.

Over the weekend, I saw the currently-traveling exhibit "NASA Art: 50 Years of Exploration". I had purchased the book last year, and was astounded. Even though I was familiar with some of the more well publicized paintings, there were many that I'd never seen. It was a great journey of discovery. However, seeing the canvases before one is quite a different experience. The camera cannot catch so many things. And one of the biggest surprises is the sheer size of some of the works. That alone can overwhelm, particularly with a close look at attention to detail, among other concepts. It was an event I doubt will fade much in my memory. I intend to reinforce it with a return visit before the exhibit moves on.

Having briefly given my impression of the magnificent display, I'd like to address another side of this. Particularly in a time of economic distress, the reaction of some people to the NASA art program is quite negative. It's a great waste of money, according to them. I won't bother to cover the recession era funding of such a program, but simply address the existence of it in general.

The art of a society is not, as some think, a luxury. It's not necessary for absolute existence, true. However, as all artists of all media know, art is necessary for their own existence. It's also a measure of a culture, not just aesthetically, but also emotionally, intellectually...and all other "ally"s that you can list. It also demonstrates the health of a culture, perhaps not physically, but psychologically and mentally. Art is for its own sake, but there are absolutes as well, as much as some artisans may feel looking at it that way makes art bourgeois. However, it is true, and we all have different ways of perceiving anything. Therefore, art has value even to those who cannot appreciate the aesthetics.

This is as much a way of recording the history of space travel as video and film and commentary. Artists bring their unique perspective, and challenge ours. They will compel us to step outside our boundaries to view any object or event in a way that probably has never occured to us. Even a technological thinker like James Webb, the NASA administrator who intiated the NASA art program, recognized the value of art, and what it would mean not just to us but to future generations as they studied and thought about the achievements of NASA.

A waste of money? Hardly. The news commentator who most recently pronounced it as such merely shows her lack of imagination, lack of historical thought and lack of aesthetic sense with that declaration. Before any person lays such a claim out for public consumption, s/he should spend a couple of hours soaking in the traveling exhibit. Not a fast walk through. At least two hours, with a knowledgeable docent. Afterwards, if that person feels the same, s/he is to be pitied.

Informative and insightful

I want today to point readers to another blog. I thought about composing my own parallel, but this article stands on its own. Read and consider.

Eight Ridiculous Things Bigger Than NASA's Budget

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/05/27/8-ridiculous-things-bigger-than-nasas-budget/

From here, whither?

What a picturesque landing at Edwards Air Force Base by Atlantis. It was a marvelous end to a spectacular mission. There are varied and rich reasons why the operation was so exciting. I’d like to focus in on one in particular that I think is important not only for STS-125 and Hubble, but for manned space flight’s future.

The ability to work in space will determine how successful any manned undertaking is in low earth orbit, on the moon, or Mars, anywhere off the earth’s surface. The servicing missions to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) were designed to replace modular units referred to as orbital replacement units (ORU). That would make the tasks simple. Unfasten the ORU, slip it out, slide another in and fasten. Done. No task in zero g is simple if one has done them in 1 g all his or her life. However, this planning and design would make the tasks as simple as possible for the astronauts. Since one last mission to HST had been worked into NASA’s schedule, scientists and engineers wanted to do all they could to extend the life as much as possible.

That being the case, there were some elements that needed to be replaced which were not ORUs. They were not modular for the fast out-and-in fix. This presented engineers with the challenge of designing tools and work tasks that the astronauts could do, particularly in their bulky pressurized suits. (If you don’t think the suits make a difference in how one works, take the time to find out more by reading up on astronauts who’ve done EVA.) And then the mission specialists had to test the tools and procedures in suits in neutral buoyancy (as close as one can get to zero g on the ground for any length of time).

The end result is that the HST repair EVAs were not just more of the same thing. Some of their tasks were, but they there were those that had never been intended to be done by ‘nauts in space. Yes, there were snags and slip ups. Come on, how perfect is it on the ground in 1 g with all the tools and extras of everything not far from hand? But if one compares the unexpected with the whole end results, the uh-ohs pale in comparison to the great accomplishments of humans in space. Every task was accomplished, and the last EVA ended ahead of the time line, even with the difficulties involved in the mission.

That speaks volumes for the ability of humans, their adaptability and ability to problem solve. Perhaps we were created to live in 1 g, but this demonstrates that humans have a long range of malleability. Perhaps earth is our cradle, but as Tsiolkovsky said, one cannot stay in the cradle forever.

I think that STS-125 marks a certain point in our travel through space exploration at which humans can point to show we are able to live and work in space, wherever our space program takes us. If we can repair a telescope in orbit, what else can we do? Only the decision makers hold us back.

Hubba Hubble

STS-125 has been an amazing mission, once again for NASA. It shouldn't be a surprise. Challenging EVAs and real-time problem solving with fixed resources is becoming ordinary business for the agency and the astronauts and the EVA support teams on the ground. Rather than seeing snags and difficulties as a bad thing, these have pushed NASA to new heights as the men and women seek solutions rather than giving up and coming home, tailed tucked firmly between legs. This is the side of the story that most of the media and a good deal of people do not see. If a solar array sticks and tears, then it’s a horrible failure that shows how incompetent NASA is, so “they” say. How many times on earth do mechanical things fail…like your car perhaps. Does your inability to start your car mean you are dim or unable to understand how to turn the key and press the gas? If your car has a problem due to normal wear and tear in everyday use, does that mean the people who built it don’t know what they are doing? But that is the reaction to EVAs that do not happen with perfection.

Let us take a new perspective and see just how enterprising, hard working and determined that NASA engineers and scientists can be. They aren’t able to run down to Home Depot or even step next door to borrow a tool. Astronauts must work with what is in the shuttle or the space station. They have a limited tool box and supplies. Remember how amazed so many were when the crew of Apollo 13 built the air canister adapter from flight check list cards, tape and other found things on the space craft? Why have we lost that sense of wonder?

The crew of STS-125 performed five incredible EVAs. They were not flawless, but did anyone really expect them to be? That would be naïve. Not only did they overcome adversity and find fixes for the problems, they made repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope that were never meant to be done in space by suited men and women. And despite the snags, they finished ahead of the timeline. Where’s the wonder over that?

In a day when we need heroes, some of the most able and obvious are being relegated to a rubbish heap of screw ups instead of celebrated for their ingenuity and determination.

Hoorah for the crew of STS-125, the tool makers, the EVA planners, the men and women who get the shuttle ready to fly and the engineers who analyze the vehicle to be certain that it flies safely.

I am rarely impressed with people, being the great cynic that I am. But I am impressed, greatly. This brings back my sense of wonder. And it really makes me miss working on the shuttle, being involved in a current flight program. But it also gives me renewed enthusiasm for the Ares program. With the difficulties we are meeting and the crushing criticism, we need the model and the lesson of determination and ingenuity. The next generation launch vehicle can be as awe inspiring as the shuttle, the station and Hubble.