Actually I am a Rocket Scientist

Demanding Design Boosts Shuttle Engine

2010-11-30T08:33:00.002-06:00

A space shuttle main engine burns at 6,000 degrees F, but the outside of the nozzle remains cool to the touch. Prior to launch, sometimes it even frosts over.

The nozzle technology that allows a finger-width of ridged metal to contain and steer flames that would boil iron is just one of the scores of innovations designers came up with for the engines three decades ago.

Such advances were critical if NASA was going to realize its plans for a reusable space shuttle that, unlike the previous rockets, would not use its engines once and then drop them in the ocean.

Some of the others:
- A system that lets the engines be incrementally throttled up and down depending on the needs of the mission
- A hydrogen turbopump that spins 567 times a second with each 2” tall turbine blade generating 700 horsepower.
- A computer that runs 50 health checks on the engine every second using data from 200 sensors
- A system of pipes, or ducts, that withstand pressures as high as 7,000 pounds per square inch- A main combustion chamber strong enough to contain the explosion of 970 pounds of oxygen and 162 pounds of hydrogen fuel every second, continuously for 8 1/2 minutes
- The only heavy-lift booster engine that continuously performs all the way from launch pad to orbit- Engineering and materials that allow the engine to be reused multiple times
- A compact, efficient design that produces 8 times the thrust of a modern high performance jet engine per each pound of weight.

Added together, the innovations became a rocket engine that is more than 99.9 percent efficient, which means that almost all of its hydrogen and oxygen is used to create thrust. For comparison, an automobile engine is about a third as efficient, since most of its energy is created in the form of heat that does not turn the wheels.

"Everything in that engine is a whole science field," said Carlos Estrada, NASA's Main Propulsion Branch chief at Kennedy Space Center. "You look at the materials, you look at the components, you look at the way they designed that engine, how it's all designed for the different stages with the pump and pressures. I mean, every time you look at a component you have all these people with expertise in it."

Three main engines are used to launch a shuttle into orbit, along with help from a pair of solid-fueled boosters that separate two minutes after launch.

The advances did not come easily for designers who, working in the 1970s before computer-assisted design became commonplace, ran many of their calculations on slide rules and used judgments based on the experience they gained building massive engines for the Saturn V moon rocket.

Getting the start sequence correct alone took about a year of testing, fixing and more testing, said Dan Hausman, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne's site director at Kennedy. "We kept burning up the turbine blades, getting temperature spikes. Our analog models weren't that good with the start sequence. We had to figure out how to get it started because everything had an idiosyncrasy."

The idiosyncrasies he talks about are no small matter considering a single main engine creates more than four times the horsepower of the Hoover Dam.

When most people think of an engine, they usually picture a part of the engine called a bell or nozzle. It's the part that everyone sees at launch shooting flames and supersonic exhaust. Although a lot is happening inside the bell, it's one of the least active parts of the machine during launch. The real action is taking place in front of the engine bell in a maze of hidden machinery called the powerhead.

"The powerhead is the meat of the engine," said Stephen Prescott, a Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne engineer specializing in the engine's turbopumps. "The nozzle is what's actually allowing us to gather the thrust, but the powerhead is what actually gives us the thrust."

The powerhead is home to four turbopumps, a robust computer controller and a network of ducts, wiring and valves designed to release 500,000 pounds of thrust without exploding. For as much power as it releases, the powerhead is not imposingly large. Standing above the nozzle in a workstand, the powerhead reaches about six feet from the floor. The high-pressure hydrogen turbopump, the strongest of the four, would fit on a desk.

"You run into some people who think it's easy," Hausman said. "Anybody who thinks it's easy doesn't understand it. Once you understand it, that's a marvel of engineering. It's a marvel that people can build it, and operate it and work it at the high reliability that we've done."

The first space shuttle main engine ignition took place well before Columbia lifted off on April 12, 1981, to inaugurate the space shuttle era. It happened in the mid-1970s at a concrete and steel test stand at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi where engineers and designers could put an engine through its paces without worrying about sacrificing a spacecraft and its payload if something went wrong.

And things went wrong, especially in the beginning. The liquid oxygen turbopump blew up. The hydrogen turbopump blades broke and exploded the whole thing. There was the occasional combustion instability, which is a polite way of saying the controlled exhaust thrust went out of control and, you guessed it, blew the engine up.

In fact, the first engine test Hausman saw in person at Stennis ended with a puff of black smoke and half the engine sitting at the bottom of the stand.

"There wasn't much left, it was all kind of a molten mass of dripping metal because when liquid oxygen eats metal, there's no evidence left because metal vaporizes," Hausman explained. "Twenty milliseconds, 40 milliseconds, 60 milliseconds, the engine's gone. Very fast."

It is that speed that keeps the shuttle engine's mechanics on their toes as they carefully evaluate every engine after a flight.

"We have a line from John Plowden, one our most senior engineers, that’s embedded in the DNA of everyone here: Never turn your back on a rocket engine," Prescott said. "Knowing what this engine can do to itself in a split second is what keeps us focused on knowing you can't just brush off something that you think is fine."

While spectacular malfunctions on the engines were a mark of the early part of the engine development, fixing them effectively and retesting over and over would become a hallmark of the main engine program.

"The key was test, test, test," Hausman said. "In the development program, the best learning we could ever do was have an engine blow up at Stennis, because we could find an issue and go fix it."

"Any part that flew here at Kennedy had a counterpart that operated twice as long at Stennis," Hausman said.

Stennis recorded 2,000 main engine test firings between 1975 and 1992. More firings, including flight certification tests for every engine used on a shuttle, took place until July 29, 2009, bringing the total to over 2,300 engine firings at that one facility.

Hausman credits the careful development work with setting up the engine to successfully cope with problems during a shuttle launch, though there were very few of those throughout the shuttle's 130-plus missions.

A shuttle mission has never failed because of the main engines, though there were a couple close calls. The first came in 1985, when one of Challenger's three main engines shut down during ascent, prompting the crew to fly to a lower orbit. The Spacelab mission still was successful and engineers traced the problem to one of the sensors on the engine that shut down.

A series of failures occurred during the launch of Columbia in 1999, when a pin broke loose inside the main combustion chamber and popped a couple tiny holes in three of the 1,080 hydrogen tubes in the nozzle. There also was a pair of short circuits in Columbia’s electrical system during ascent which resulted in a loss of electrical power on the primary channel to the engines. The redundant safety features designed into the engine allowed the controller to seamlessly transfer control to an alternate channel and continue on with the mission.

Eileen Collins commanded the flight and Columbia was able to reach orbit and deploy the groundbreaking Chandra X-ray observatory just as was planned.

Prescott was watching that launch and listening to the transmissions back and forth between controllers and the shuttle crew.

"We knew something had gone on, but we weren't quite sure just what had happened," Prescott said. "Eileen, that was the most perfect example of what kind of training those astronauts go through, because she was just so calm, cool and collected."

Engineers dove deeply into the engine after Columbia's return to find out what went wrong.

"That was pretty scary," Estrada said. "That was a big deal."

Another engine safety feature was demonstrated during Columbia’s third mission in 1982 when one of the orbiter’s three auxiliary power units shut down late into the launch, resulting in a loss of hydraulic power to one main engine. That engine’s backup electrical control system maintained control and performance until reaching orbit which was then followed by a fail-safe, pneumatically-actuated main engine cut-off.

Hausman said the redundant systems built into the engines paid off during those situations.

A great deal of effort and research went into developing the shuttle's main engines, but maintaining them and keeping them healthy during the shuttle's 30-year career has been equally advanced and careful.

"I came in around 1996, and to me it was amazing to see how much people needed to know to be able to manage such a piece of equipment," Estrada said.

The engines' overseers spend hours peering with one eye shut into a small borescope, basically a long, black, flexible fiber optic hose with a lens at one end and an eyepiece at the other. Doctors use them frequently to examine patients. The engineers are looking for anything amiss, whether it be a weld in one of the turbopump housings, a tiny hole in a pipe, unusual wear or erosion or something they've never seen before.

"Keeping the discipline of what you do and how you do it is critical," Estrada said.

It is repetitive and painstaking work that takes a full shift to complete on each major component of the engine. And that does not count all the other extensive inspections performed before an engine launches again.

"Pretty much everything on this engine is criticality one," Prescott said. "We can’t even so much as lose a fastener and not create a problem because we're pretty close to the limits on everything on this engine."

When the technicians find something amiss, no effort is too much to track it down and fix it.

"It's a three-dimensional puzzle that sometimes, like a Rubik's Cube, you don't even know you’re close to getting it together until all the sudden, the thing's solved in front of you," Prescott said. "We've been known to chase our tails trying to get just perfect alignment and before you know it, there it is, everything can go together."

Throughout the shuttle's operation, designers kept improving the machinery. The sensors were steadily improved to make them more robust, the powerhead was redesigned to reduce pressures inside the transfer tubes and smooth the fuel flow, and the main combustion chamber throat area was enlarged to de-rate the engine and add extra operating margin. The modified heat exchanger eliminated welds and was strengthened.

Perhaps one of the biggest changes came when additional robustness was designed into the high pressure turbo-machinery. Overall, these design changes resulted in an additional 700 pounds of weight, but increased safety by a factor of 3 over earlier configurations. A final engine upgrade was introduced in 2007 when the advanced health management system became active, providing an additional 23 percent safety improvement during ascent.

Why put so much effort into the engines? Hausman credits rocket pioneer and Saturn V developer Werner von Braun with detailing the argument.

"The gist of his discussion was, if you don't build the engine right, anything above it that you put your time and money in is a waste of your time because if you don't build this right, you're not getting into space," Hausman said.

Steven Siceloff
NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center

NASA EPOXI Flyby Reveals New Insights Into Comet Features

2010-11-06T07:34:00.002-05:00

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's EPOXI mission spacecraft successfully flew past comet Hartley 2 at 7 a.m. PDT (10 a.m. EDT) Thursday, Nov. 4. Scientists say initial images from the flyby provide new information about the comet's volume and material spewing from its surface.

"Early observations of the comet show that, for the first time, we may be able to connect activity to individual features on the nucleus," said EPOXI Principal Investigator Michael A'Hearn of the University of Maryland, College Park. "We certainly have our hands full. The images are full of great cometary data, and that's what we hoped for."

EPOXI is an extended mission that uses the already in-flight Deep Impact spacecraft. Its encounter phase with Hartley 2 began at 1 p.m. PDT (4 p.m. EDT) on Nov. 3, when the spacecraft began to point its two imagers at the comet's nucleus. Imaging of the nucleus began one hour later.

"The spacecraft has provided the most extensive observations of a comet in history," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "Scientists and engineers have successfully squeezed world-class science from a re-purposed spacecraft at a fraction of the cost to taxpayers of a new science project."

Images from the EPOXI mission reveal comet Hartley 2 to have 100 times less volume than comet Tempel 1, the first target of Deep Impact. More revelations about Hartley 2 are expected as analysis continues.

Initial estimates indicate the spacecraft was about 700 kilometers (435 miles) from the comet at the closest-approach point. That's almost the exact distance that was calculated by engineers in advance of the flyby.

"It is a testament to our team's skill that we nailed the flyby distance to a comet that likes to move around the sky so much," said Tim Larson, EPOXI project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "While it's great to see the images coming down, there is still work to be done. We have another three weeks of imaging during our outbound journey."

The name EPOXI is a combination of the names for the two extended mission components: the Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization (EPOCh), and the flyby of comet Hartley 2, called the Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI). The spacecraft has retained the name "Deep Impact." In 2005, Deep Impact successfully released an impactor into the path of comet Tempel 1.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the EPOXI mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about EPOXI, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/epoxi and http://epoxi.umd.edu/.

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/.

See the video at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/epoxi/epoxi20101104b.html.

Dead Spacecraft Walking

2010-11-06T07:17:00.003-05:00

This is a great story that speaks to the technological excellence and engineering creativity that NASA has owned for over 50 years.

NASA Science News, October 27, 2010
Dead Spacecraft Walking

A pair of NASA spacecraft that were supposed to be dead last year are instead flying to the Moon for a breakthrough mission in lunar orbit.
"Their real names are THEMIS P1 and P2, but I call them 'dead spacecraft walking,'" says Vassilis Angelopoulos of UCLA, principal investigator of the THEMIS mission. "Not long ago they appeared to be doomed, but now they are beginning an incredible new adventure."

The story begins in 2007 when NASA launched a fleet of five spacecraft into Earth's magnetosphere to study the physics of geomagnetic storms. Collectively, they were called THEMIS, short for "Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms." P1 and P2 were the outermost members of the quintet.

Working together, the probes quickly discovered a cornucopia of previously unknown phenomena such as colliding auroras, magnetic spacequakes, and plasma bullets shooting up and down Earth's magnetic tail. This has allowed researchers to solve several longstanding mysteries of the Northern Lights.

The mission was going splendidly, except for one thing: Occasionally, P1 and P2 would pass through the shadow of Earth. The solar powered spacecraft were designed to go without sunlight for as much as three hours at a time, so a small amount of shadowing was no problem. But as the mission wore on, their orbits evolved and by 2009 the pair was spending as much as 8 hours a day in the dark.

"The two spacecraft were running out of power and freezing to death," says Angelopoulos. "We had to do something to save them."

The team brainstormed a solution. Because the mission had gone so well, the spacecraft still had an ample supply of fuel--enough to go to the Moon. "We could do some great science from lunar orbit," he says. NASA approved the trip and in late 2009, P1 and P2 headed away from the shadows of Earth.

With a new destination, the mission needed a new name. The team selected ARTEMIS, the Greek goddess of the Moon. It also stands for "Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon's Interaction with the Sun."

The first big events of the ARTEMIS mission are underway now. On August 25, 2010, ARTEMIS-P1 reached the L2 Lagrange point on the far side of the Moon. Following close behind, ARTEMIS-P2 entered the opposite L1 Lagrange point on Oct. 22nd. Lagrange points are places where the gravity of Earth and Moon balance, creating a sort of gravitational parking spot for spacecraft.

"We're exploring the Earth-Moon Lagrange points for the first time," says Manfred Bester, Mission Operations Manager from the University of California at Berkeley, where the mission is operated. "No other spacecraft have orbited there."

Because they lie just outside Earth's magnetosphere, Lagrange points are excellent places to study the solar wind. Sensors onboard the ARTEMIS probes will have in situ access to solar wind streams and storm clouds as they approach our planet-a possible boon to space weather forecasters. Moreover, working from opposite Lagrange points, the two spacecraft will be able to measure solar wind turbulence on scales never sampled by previous missions.

"ARTEMIS is going to give us a fundamental new understanding of the solar wind," predicts David Sibeck, ARTEMIS project scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "And that's just for starters."

ARTEMIS will also explore the Moon's plasma wake-a turbulent cavity carved out of the solar wind by the Moon itself, akin to the wake just behind a speedboat. Sibeck says "this is a giant natural laboratory filled with a whole zoo of plasma waves waiting to be discovered and studied."

Another target of the ARTEMIS mission is Earth's magnetotail. Like a wind sock at a breezy airport, Earth's magnetic field is elongated by the action of the solar wind, forming a tail that stretches to the orbit of the Moon and beyond. Once a month around the time of the full Moon, the ARTEMIS probes will follow the Moon through the magnetotail for in situ observations.

"We are particularly hoping to catch some magnetic reconnection events," says Sibeck. "These are explosions in Earth's magnetotail that mimic solar flares--albeit on a much smaller scale." ARTEMIS might even see giant 'plasmoids' accelerated by the explosions hitting the Moon during magnetic storms.

These far-out explorations may have down-to-Earth applications. Plasma waves and reconnection events pop up on Earth, e.g., in experimental fusion chambers. Fundamental discoveries by ARTEMIS could help advance research in the area of clean renewable energy.

After six months at the Lagrange points, ARTEMIS will move in closer to the Moon-at first only 100 km from the surface and eventually even less than that. From point-blank range, the spacecraft will look to see what the solar wind does to a rocky world when there's no magnetic field to protect it.

"Earth is protected from solar wind by the planetary magnetic field," explains Angelopolous. "The Moon, on the other hand, is utterly exposed. It has no global magnetism."

Studying how the solar wind electrifies, alters and erodes the Moon's surface could reveal valuable information for future explorers and give planetary scientists a hint of what's happening on other unmagnetized worlds around the solar system.

Orbiting the Moon is notoriously tricky, however, because of irregularities in the lunar gravitational field. Enormous concentrations of mass (mascons) hiding just below the surface tug on spacecraft in unexpected ways, causing them over time to veer out of orbit. ARTEMIS will mitigate this problem using highly elongated orbits ranging from tens of km to 18,000 km.

"We'll only be near the lunar surface for a brief time each orbit (accumulating a sizable dataset over the years)," explains Angelopoulos. "Most of the time we'll linger 18,000 km away where we can continue our studies of the solar wind at a safe distance."

The Dead Spacecraft Walking may have a long life ahead, after all.

NASA Engineer Helps Chilean Miners

2010-10-14T07:45:00.000-05:00

Clint Cragg is a hero, and he never thought he would be. Nor did he plan to be. But his name is on many lips in light of the rescue of the Chilean miners.

Clint Cragg is principal engineer with the NASA Engineering and Safety Center at Langley Research Center. When the cave-in occurred, two doctors and a psychologist from NASA traveled to Chile to offer advice and assistance because of their knowledge and experience of survival in harsh environments. Cragg went along to see if there was anything else that NASA could offer.

While in Chile, Cragg talked with engineers from the Chilean navy who were discussing and planning a design for a rescue vehicle. He offered assistance in determining the requirements for the vehicle. Cragg was only in Chile for three days. However, the engineers there contacted him by email to accept his offer of assistance.

Cragg relates, “I put together a team of engineers from almost every center around the agency. Over the course of three days we hammered out a 12 to 13 page list of requirements for the capsule and sent that to the Chilean Minister of Health.”

The team suggested about 75 design features. A sampling of the suggested requirements: an oxygen supply, including technology that would reduce friction as the vehicle was traveling up and down the drilled shaft, also that the vehicle be constructed such that a single miner could simply enter and secure himself.

“After we had sent the requirements, I got some communication from one of the Chilean navy commanders intimately involved in the design process of the capsule,” Cragg reported. “He told me that they had incorporated most of the suggestions we had provided to them.

“There are a couple of things I’ll remember most about this whole experience. One is the openness and graciousness of the Chilean people. I thought they were very supportive of our visit and very supportive of the things we recommended they ought to do.

“The other thing I’m taking away from this is our agency really has a lot of exceptional people. The 20 or so engineers who offered to drop everything and work with me for three days to put this requirements list together really exemplify the things that NASA stands for.”

Don't Let the Dream Die

2010-10-04T04:34:00.003-05:00

After seven months of intense and confusing wrangling, the House followed (for the most part) the Senate and voted an authorization bill for NASA. I'm not here to offer opinion of the bill, nor of the political machinations which brought all this on. There is plenty of that on other blogs and sufficient in the news.

I'm here for only one reason. Whatever path NASA is compelled to take, please do not let the dream die. There has been a great deal of hostility and criticism piled on NASA in these last several months. Some of it is credible, most of it is not. I realize that a great many people don't have insight into the workings of NASA, nor the budget process, no the technical insight to grasp why NASA may have seemed slow in the past to produce a follow-on to shuttle. I'm not here to criticize them either.

My one and only desire is to implore, with all my strength and ability, because that seems to be the only way to get through all the impediments. Don't let the dream die. The dream of space flight and exploration. There are reasons aplenty to push outward from the earth. There are practical reasons, such as technology development. There are less pragmatic reasons, such as the human nature to explore the unknown. Also, there are so many other reasons which I haven't breathed. And anyone who truly wants to understand NASA and the reason for its being should assay to comprehend all the reasons. If an individual just doesn't get why any nation would spend billions on space exploration, then this person should work to see the overall picture, not just one image. Though I do understand that there are so many people who do not want to understand, nor be bothered with trying to.

That leaves the burden to push for NASA's continued presence in space to those of us who do get it...and want it and support it. That's what this is about. In a time of splintering because of differing motives and differing political views and differing objectives for the nation's space program, let those of us who do support space exploration come together in support for that objective and keep the dream from dying.

Go outside tonight and look up. Look at the thin crescent moon. Look at Jupiter and Venus shining brightly. See all the stars so far away, so unknown and beckoning. Check http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/skywatch.cgi?country=United+States and watch for the bright light of the International Space Station speeding over your head. We are already a permanent presence in space. There are men and women up there living and working and increasing our knowledge of outer space and inner space...our space. Think about that. What does it mean to you? If it means nothing, then I challenge you to reconsider and visit www.nasa.gov to find out more about NASA and all it has done and continues to do. If the knowledge that people are living in space excites you, then spread the excitement. Let your representatives know how you feel. Take a friend outside and share your excitement. It can be very contagious. And that contagion is life for NASA. Spread it generously.

And don't let the dream die.

Time Names Ares One of Best Inventions of 2009

2009-11-16T05:41:00.002-06:00

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

2009-09-23T05:58:00.003-05:00

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

2009-08-12T05:41:00.003-05:00

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

2009-08-05T08:27:00.003-05:00

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?

2009-08-04T06:29:00.004-05:00

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

2009-07-24T05:51:00.015-05:00

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

2009-07-13T06:49:00.003-05:00

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

2009-06-17T08:13:00.003-05:00

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

2009-06-15T13:26:00.011-05:00

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

2009-06-08T06:17:00.006-05:00

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

2009-05-28T07:54:00.001-05:00

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?

2009-05-24T20:00:00.003-05:00

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

2009-05-19T19:40:00.003-05:00

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.

Saturn's mysteries

2008-11-13T06:34:00.002-06:00

Cassini continues to reveal more and more about Saturn. Saturn has an aurora in the polar region, as you can see. It is unique, even for a planet with an aurora. Earth and Jupiter auroras are a ring of auroras. Saturn's covers a large area across the pole. An aurora is caused by charged particles which travel along the lines of the magnetic field of planet into the atmosphere.

Earth's aurora is caused by particles from the sun becoming trapped by the magnetic field. Jupiter's aurora are caused by non-solar particles and is constant in size. Saturn's main aurora changes size dramatically as the solar wind varies, driving the particle flow into the planet's mag field. Since the aurora and its behavior are so unexpected, explanations are non-existent at present.

Learn more and see more pictures at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini

Creative

2008-11-07T07:39:00.002-06:00

Who says engineers are dry and nerdy and have no personality?

I was on the third floor of the building I work in when I saw this.

NASA rocket scientist geek nerd turns cubical into a real home away from home...complete with A/C and mailbox. Very cool, creative and hilarious. It certainly brightens cube city up a signifcant degree. No, no, no...no goverment resources were harmed in the making of this cool cube.

Other things rocket scientists do

2008-11-06T05:44:00.000-06:00

Our life is but a moment in infinite space.
Time come and passes, gone without a trace.
We will all lose, betting against time in its race.
Time is ahead, we can’t keep up the chase.
Time wins again and we must take last place.
Beaten before we start? Give up the pace?
You may give up, but with me that’s not the case.
Conceited Time marches before and carries the mace,
While I, strolling behind, enjoy Life’s sweet smiling face.

I can't put it better

2008-11-04T05:03:00.003-06:00

I give up my space to a more eloquent voice...

From Space News

Putting NASA's Budget in Perspective

By JEFF BROOKS

"I think we should solve our problems here on Earth before we go into space."

This line, or some facsimile of it, probably has been heard countless times by just about every advocate of space exploration. For many people, it seems to sum up the totality of their thinking on the subject. Not a few politicians invoke it on those rare occasions when space exploration comes up in political discourse.

In October 2006, on the 49th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, CBS News anchor Katie Couric summarized this attitude when she concluded her nightly broadcast by saying: "NASA's requested budget for 2007 is nearly $17 billion. There are some who argue that money would be better spent on solid ground, for medical research, social programs or in finding solutions to poverty, hunger and homelessness ... I can't help but wonder what all that money could do for people right here on planet Earth."

When space advocates hear this argument, it is difficult not to become irritated or even a little angry. When something that one cares about a great deal is treated with such disparagement, getting upset is a natural reaction. However, responding with irritation and anger does not help and, if anything, merely strengthens the other person in his or her belief that space exploration is not something that should be a national priority.

It is important for space advocates to understand that this opinion is held by people not because they are hostile to space exploration, but because they lack sufficient information about it. Thanks to the media, which generally covers space-related stories only when something goes horribly wrong, a general impression has been created that space exploration does nothing more than produce a rather small amount of scientific information, of no practical use to anybody, at enormous cost to the taxpayer. Once people have settled into a comfortable belief about something, getting them to change their opinion is far from an easy task.

It is obvious to those who are knowledgeable about the potential of a robust space program that, far from diverting resources away from efforts to solve Earth's problems, the answers to many of our problems are to be found in space. However, for the purposes of this essay, I shall limit my examination to how the funding for NASA stacks up when compared to the various programs that are often cited as more deserving than the space agency.

According to budget documents obtained from the Government Printing Office, the national budget for 2007 totals about $2.784 trillion. At $16.143 billion, spending on NASA accounts for 0.58 percent of this. Compare this to NASA's allocation during the mid-1960s when, despite the pressures of the war effort in Vietnam and then U.S. President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs, NASA spending made up more than 5 percent of the federal budget.

How does NASA's budget compare with the amount of money the federal government spends on social programs? In the 2007 budget, the funding for social programs (calculated here as the budgets for the departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs, Social Security, Agriculture and Labor) adds up to a whopping $1.581 trillion. For every $1 the federal government spends on NASA, it spends $98 on social programs. In other words, if we cut spending on social programs by a mere 1 percent, we could very nearly double NASA's budget.

The naysayers often speak as if the country's social problems would be solved if only we took the money given to NASA and devoted it to social programs. Does anyone seriously believe that increasing spending on social programs from $1.581 trillion to $1.597 trillion would make any appreciable difference? Note also that we are only talking about federal spending here. Not included in these estimates are the vast amounts of money that state and local governments spend on social programs. Needless to say, state and local government funding of space exploration is negligible.

The idea of NASA money being diverted away from social programs is the most common proposal by those who would divert NASA's funding. But how does NASA compare to other big government expenditures? Compare, for example, the NASA budget with the U.S. defense budget.

The 2007 budget allocates roughly $609 billion to defense, not including the budget for the Department of Homeland Security. This is nearly 38 times the amount of money spent on NASA. If you include funding for the Department of Homeland Security, defense spending adds up to $652.5 billion, which is more than 40 times NASA's budget. While few question the need to maintain a strong military in an uncertain age, some might consider it excessive for the United States to spend more on its military than the next 15 biggest defense spenders put together, especially as most of them are U.S. allies. Furthermore, there certainly are a great number of military programs of questionable value, as well as many sound military programs whose price tags nevertheless raise eyebrows.

For example, consider that each B-2 stealth bomber costs the U.S. taxpayer roughly $2.2 billion. Then consider that the New Horizons robotic mission to Pluto, which will answer fundamental questions about the solar system, was nearly canceled for lack of funds. The total cost of the New Horizons mission, including the launch vehicle, added up to $650 million. In other words, the New Horizons mission to Pluto cost less than a third the cost of a single B-2 bomber.

Then there is the matter of paying the interest on the national debt. As I write this essay, according to the U.S. Treasury office, the United States is in debt to the tune of $8,835,268,597,181.95. Merely paying the interest on this massive load of debt every year costs a fair amount of money. In 2006, the federal government had to allocate about $400 billion to this task, which adds up to more than 23.5 times the amount of NASA's 2007 allocation. As the debt is continually increasing, these interest payments will only continue to grow.

One can argue forever over the merits of government social programs, how much we should be spending on our military, or how much the government should rely on borrowed money. What one can not argue about, however, is that space exploration gets a very, very small slice of the pie. Compared to the behemoths of government spending, NASA is a pigmy. That it achieves so much with such a small share of the federal budget is astonishing.

When you look at the numbers, the notion that we should "solve our problems on Earth before we go into space" is revealed as a blatant non sequitur. Even when assuming that the solving of social or geopolitical problems was merely a matter of allocating sufficient money to those problems - a notion which is highly questionable in itself - it is clear that diverting NASA money to other programs would make little if any difference.

When it comes to funding space exploration, it is time for space advocates to stop playing defense and start playing offense. While not slackening our efforts to protect the funding of critical NASA projects, we also must begin to push for increases in funding for space exploration. We must begin to reframe and recast the entire debate in Washington on this issue, so that the politicians start thinking in terms of "how much can we spend" for space exploration, rather than "how much can we cut" from space exploration.

To conclude with a final observation, recall that NASA spending made up more than 5 percent of the federal budget during the heady days of the Apollo program. If it received 5 percent of the federal budget today, its annual funding level would be $139.2 billion. Imagine what the space agency could do if it had that level of support.

Let's make it happen.

Jeff Brooks is a political activist and advocate for space exploration who resides in Austin, Texas. In addition to space advocacy he has worked on a variety of consumer, environmental and government reform issues. He also writes the blog "Movement for a New Renaissance." This article first appeared in the July 2 issue of "The Space Review."

In time for Halloween

2008-11-03T06:25:00.003-06:00

The Witch Head Nebula, whose name goes without explanation. The nebula is associated with the star Rigel. in the constellation Orion. In the official catalog, the nebula is IC 2118. The blue glow comes from the reflected light of Rigel and from the fact that the dust grains in the nebula reflect blue light more efficiently than red light. This is similar to the timeless question of why our sky is blue...

Messenger to Mercury

2008-10-30T05:30:00.006-05:00

The Messenger probe has arrived in proximity of Mercury. And it's churning out plenty of new data about our small and distant neighbor. The false color image above is colored to discriminate among common minerals. The left most image is closer to what the human eye would see. So far there's not enough data to fully distinguish the color regions down to specific minerals. And Messenger is still far enough away that its instruments aren't able to build up enough exposure time. But not to worry. Once in orbit about Mercury, the full suite of instruments and imaging will be put to full use to further mine (no pun intended) the new wealth of information about Mercury.

Messenger has three years yet to enter Mercurian orbit. It is using gravity-assist from the sun to complete its trip...one of those sneaky secrets of rocket scientists to make the sun work for them instead of against them. That is why it flew close by Mercury but still has three years to catch orbit. And yet those flybys have revealed a great deal about Mercury. Such as, the planet's magnetic moment is very nearly centered and it is strongly aligned with Mercury's rotation axis; just two degrees of tilt. What? Bingo...the model's of Mercury's mag field generated by science are in close agreement with reality.

What does this mean to you and why should you care? It's like looking in on the elderly neighbor down the street. A neighborhood has a life made up of the combination of each person on the street. You can stay in the house and ignore everyone, but what do you miss by that? How much richer is your life by the interactions with people? What do you learn from them and how does it affect you afterwards? Or for me, I like to think of all the stories my grandmother used to tell me. She was an excellent story teller and every story was entertaining and, as I later realized, educational. Even the ones not told for that primary reason still had lessons of life, and lessons of my grandmother, who she was and how she affected the family.

Mercury is our neighbor. We can become enriched and wiser by watching and listening and checking in on it now and then. If you think that's silly or if you pass off the chance to learn, your life will be poorer. How can anyone not be interested?

NASA at Work in Inner Space

2008-10-29T07:21:00.004-05:00

PRP: The Proven Solution for Cleaning Up Oil Spills

(Reproduced from the NASA Spinoff Magazine, 2006)

The Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker exporting millions of gallons of oil, ran aground just after midnight on March 24, 1989 in Alaska, creating what is, to this day, the worst environmental disaster in American history. The affected area of coastal Alaska continues to feel the toxic results of that disaster that killed more than 250,000 seabirds, thousands of marine mammals, and countless numbers of other coastal marine organisms in just its first months. Oil is notoriously difficult to clean from water, and it is still emerging from subsurface reservoirs. Salmon caught in that region are, even now, 16 years later, showing signs of long-term contamination from the devastating oil spill.

While disasters of this magnitude happen rarely, with large spills making up less than 5 percent of the oil spilled into water each year, tens of thousands of smaller oil spills are occurring all around the world. Oil enters the water supply from road runoff; refuse from routine engine maintenance; emptying of boat wastewater and other ship operations; air pollution that settles into bodies of water after rains; and through offshore oil production, which can cause ocean oil pollution from spills, leaks, and routine, operational discharges.

Water can, thankfully, be cleaned or remediated and made safe again for drinking, swimming, fishing, and boating, a task made significantly easier if the oil is caught before it has the chance to settle into the depths. A product using NASA technology is available to consumers and industry that enables them to safely and permanently clean petroleum-based pollutants from the water. It is almost alchemical in its perfection, as it is comprised of beeswax microcapsules that act as a food source that stimulates the indigenous microbes to consume the oil.

The product makes use of NASA microencapsulation technology. Work was done at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to demonstrate the feasibility of encapsulating live cells, while technology developed at the Marshall Space Flight Center for experiments in orbital production of microspheres provides the basic design of the delivery system.

Industry scientists worked with researchers at JPL and Marshall in the early 1990s to develop the microencapsulated wonder, PRP, or Petroleum Remediation Product, for the company Petrol Rem, Inc. In 2004, Universal Remediation, Inc. (UniRemInc), of Pittsburgh, purchased the assets of Petrol Rem, Inc., and has rapidly expanded the uses of the original microencapsulating technology. UniRemInc has broadened production and availability of PRP, making it accessible to more clients and in a variety of different forms.

The basic technology behind PRP is thousands of microcapsules—tiny balls of beeswax with hollow centers. Water cannot penetrate the microcapsule’s cell, but oil is absorbed right into the beeswax spheres as they float on the water’s surface. This way, the contaminants—chemical compounds that originally come from crude oil such as fuels, motor oils, or petroleum hydrocarbons—are caught before they settle.

PRP works well as a loose powder for cleaning up contaminants in lakes and other ecologically fragile areas. The powder can be spread over a contaminated body of water or soil, and it will absorb contaminants, contain them in isolation, and dispose of them safely. In water, it is important that PRP floats and keeps the oil on the surface, because, even if oil exposure is not immediately lethal, it can cause long-term harm if allowed to settle. Bottomdwelling fish exposed to compounds released after oil spills may develop liver disease, in addition to reproductive and growth problems. This use of PRP is especially effective for environmental cleanup in sensitive areas like coral reefs and mangroves.

This ecological wonder has also been packaged for specific uses by UniRemInc to create a variety of different commercial products, including the BioSok Bilge Maintenance System, the BioBoom, the WellBoom, and OilBuster.

One of the most popular uses for PRP is the BioSok Bilge Maintenance System. It allows boaters to clean up small spills. Boats take on water, either from rain, washing, or waves splashing over the sides. This water often mixes with cleaning fluids, and oil and gas from a boat’s motor. The water collects in a bilge, the area inside a boat’s bottom designed to collect and hold the errant water. A bilge needs to be pumped overboard regularly to prevent the boat from taking on too much water. This bilge water, though, is often contaminated.

The BioSok is a small, 3- by 10-inch “sock” with PRP encased in polypropylene that floats in the bilge, absorbing and bioremediating any hydrocarbons, thus, decontaminating the water. Each BioSok can immediately absorb twice its weight and can degrade more than 20 times its weight in oil over time. One BioSok will generally last for an entire boating season. It requires no maintenance or monitoring, and it safely eliminates the pollutants and fumes associated with spilled oil and gasoline.

The U.S. Coast Guard is always on the prowl for any boaters who expel oil-contaminated water from their bilges. Fines are often thousands of dollars, which makes sense, knowing that every year bilge cleaning and other ship operations release millions of gallons of oil into navigable waters from thousands of discharges of just a few gallons each. The BioSok is such an effective antidote to polluted bilge water, that even the Coast Guard has used it on its boats.

UniRemInc also manufactures the BioBoom, essentially a longer BioSok that can be used to enclose larger oil spills. It is especially effective for emergency containment of spilled oil in large areas, like in marinas, ponds, lakes, or open waters; but can also be effective in tanks, storm runoff systems, electrical utility vaults, and anywhere that requires the containment, absorption, and biodegredation of leaking petroleum hydrocarbons. The BioBoom acts as a perimeter around spills and prevents them from spreading. The snake-like tube is 3 inches in diameter and can be produced at any length up to 10 feet.

The WellBoom facilitates groundwater monitoring by absorbing floating petroleum more effectively and less expensively than traditional bailing methods. UniRemInc makes the standard WellBoom by filling a weighted polypropylene sock, 36 inches long and up to 3 inches in diameter, with PRP. The product is then lowered into the groundwater monitoring wells where it absorbs and accelerates the biodegradation of any floating petroleum hydrocarbon contaminants. WellBoom is typically used at petroleum storage facilities, gasoline stations, and other locations where there is a potential for groundwater contamination.

OilBuster is yet another product using PRP that UniRemInc has developed. It is the beeswax PRP mixed with several grades of ground corncob and is for use on land or hard surfaces where no natural microbial population is present. It is ideal for cleaning oil spills that have not yet reached the water and that hopefully never will.

PRP has proven effective in facilities conducting railroad repair, where ballasts, ties, and the ground can be saturated with diesel fuel and oil. It is a safe, costeffective way for these types of contaminated facilities to get quick results that restore the environment and help them avoid the steep U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fines. UniRemInc is continuing to find uses for this amazing bioremediation technology and to supply consumers and industry with safe, natural, and effective ways to keep oil out of our water.

BioSok Bilge Maintenance System™, BioBoom™, WellBoom™, and OilBuster™ are trademarks of Universal Remediation, Inc.

Ballet of Rocketry

2008-10-27T05:21:00.003-05:00

Heavy Lifting

Most crane operators don’t use words like “ballet” and “pirouette” when describing their work. But, most crane operators don’t perform the delicate task of maneuvering a space shuttle several hundred feet in the air, sometimes with only inches to spare.

Before each mission, the space shuttle designated for that flight is rolled from its processing hangar to the center transfer aisle of the massive Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Once there, the process begins to first raise the shuttle to a vertical position, take it up and over a 170-foot high transom, and then carefully lower it into one of two high bays where the external fuel tank and twin solid rocket booster are waiting on one of the mobile launcher platforms.

“It’s a ballet, it really is,” says Del Dewees, a lead mechanical technician and veteran crane operator or ground controller for more than 95 shuttle lifts, “but it’s fun once you’ve done it a couple dozen times.”

The process, which calls for a team of about 16 technicians and normally takes between 20 and 24 hours, requires skill and precision. At the center of the operation are two pairs of crane operators and a ground controller. Once the shuttle is maneuvered into the vertical position using a 175-ton crane, it's disconnected and attached to a 325-ton crane. The operator, located in a tiny cab 467 feet above the floor, begins the lift as the ground controller guides him from below.

While all the focus would seem to be on the crane operators, Dewees says the harder and equally important job is that of the ground controller, who acts as the eyes of the operators.

“Ground control is a lot harder than operating the crane. That’s the hard part, but the fun part too. You’re their eyes.” he says. “Crane operating is one thing, but they’re doing what they’re told to do. But ground control, that’s the guy who really has to coordinate both cranes and they have to do exactly what he tells them, and then he has to fine tune it. You have to pick it up horizontally and you have to rotate it with both cranes. When it comes out great, it looks like there’s nothing to it.”

Dewees assists in certifying the roughly 40 operators trained in the serious work of maneuvering the space hardware high overhead. In addition to the crane operations, the team is responsible for the maintenance and operation of more than 800 pieces of equipment in the cavernous building, including the giant doors, which they must ride to the top for service. Given the scale of the building and the jobs involved, it’s obviously not a place for the faint-hearted.

Certainly a calm and steady hand is required as the crane operator guides the dangling shuttle toward the high bay.

“We take it out in the middle of the bay so we can pirouette it, then bring it back on the mark," says Dewees. “We have to get it perfectly lined up before we lower it down.”

Once inside the high bay, there is little margin for error. “Between the platforms, which are retracted, and the tank, you have interference from the wings, and you have just inches of clearance,” he explains.

With a description like that, many people might think his job sounds stressful, but not Dewees. He grew up near the space center and remembers driving in the truck with his father as they heard the sound of pilings being driven during construction of the Vehicle Assembly Building. He watched as the Mercury astronauts lifted off from Cape Canaveral to pioneer American spaceflight. Even after working around space hardware for almost 30 years, he says simply, “it’s one of those jobs that never gets old.”

Cheryl L. Mansfield
NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center

Exquisite

2008-10-24T05:18:00.005-05:00

The image was taken by the Cassini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Domenico_Cassini) probe (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/). The satellite is on the side of Saturn opposite the sun. This eclipse back lights the limb and rings of Saturn such that the particulars of the rings is apparent in ethereal detail. The faint outermost ring is hauntingly frail and most visible in such a line up of elements. Needless to say, such images help NASA scientists learn more about the rings, exciting on display to Cassini's close-up inspection.

This image is of a vortex at Saturn's south pole. Shadows reveal the topography of the south polar vortex. At high resolution, a new, inner ring of isolated, bright clouds is seen. These clouds are localized regions of convective upwelling, an important clue to understanding how heat energy is transported in Saturn's atmosphere.

The news from Saturn is exciting and fascinating, igniting much new understanding of the planet and of certain of its moons. For more news, great photos and videos visit the Cassini mission page at nasa.gov. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/

What has NASA done for you lately?

2008-10-22T18:36:00.002-05:00

How about this?

NDAnalyzer -- Cancer Detection Device

A medical-related spinoff, the DNAnalyzer, resulted from a NASA/American Cancer Society partnership, the Space Station In-Flight Cytometry Project. To help decipher the medical mystery of why and how microgravity affects the immune system, NASA sought development of a machine that could separate and examine cells rapidly.

The existing device was too large -- the size of a pool table -- to place in an orbiting space station, so the partnership was formed to develop a far more compact flow cytometer. The resulting hardware could support biomedical experiments aboard the space station while advancing medical knowledge in cancer detection and treatment on Earth.

A Miami, Fla., business, RATCOM, Inc., pioneered the new triangular flow cell technology that improves resolution in flow cytometer technology. The cancer-fighting benefits of flow cytometry include the ability to evaluate cancer cells very early and to determine several important features, such as the sensitivity of the cancer cells to different chemotherapy drugs, the ability of the cells to grow, and their capacity for spreading.

The DNAnalyzer allows better understanding of the nature of a patient's tumor, thereby enabling better treatment. Dr. Awtar Krishan at the University of Miami, who was instrumental in defining requirements for the instrument, is carrying out studies on the application of the technology in cancer diagnosis and therapy.

Other potential uses of the new technology involve early detection of leukemia, chemo-sensitivity studies prior to chemotherapy, antibody analysis, and detection of pathogenic organisms.

That's only one benefit that your tax dollars have paid for through research that NASA has conducted...better, faster detection and understanding of potential cancer, leading to faster treatment, which can make all the difference sometimes in survivability.

NASA's budget is 0.6% of the entire national budget. Not even 1%. That's about 15 cents per day per taxpayer. Think of your favorite vice...coffee, chocolate, cigarettes. You spend more on that every day than you spend on NASA. NASA does a great deal more than most people realize. That's one of the purposes of this blog. I will continue to bring updates on such technology spinoffs from NASA research and technology.

Or if you don't want to wait and want to learn more, visit NASA's Spinoff magazine site and peruse the myriad technological products and benefits which NASA brings to our daily life.

http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/Spinoff2008/toc_2008.html

Hello Earth

2008-10-21T05:26:00.001-05:00

Hello Earth, I bid you good day.
You’re looking lovely this morn.
As I see you from my ship far away,
My mind, heart and soul are reborn.
Though physically I have forsaken you,
My heart is always at thy command.
For one day soon I shall bid fair moon adieu
And return once more to your protective hand.

Wow...

2008-10-14T05:23:00.002-05:00

Just wow. Speechless. I received my copy yesterday of "NASA/Art: 50 Years of Exploration". An amazing book overflowing with enough creative energy to propel us back to the moon. I don't have the words to fully describe the book or all that it represents. I've already run out of adjectives from studying the unbelievable art between those covers. One must experience it for oneself to find the full appreciation of the talent, both artistic and scientific represented, which the NASA art program has dared to try to contain. The only thing more I can say is to buy it for yourself and take a slow and relaxed trip through the pages, being certain to note the media and size of these gems. I'm astounded thinking of the hours that must have gone into covering a 120" x 50" canvas, with great detail mind you, and the minutiae and depth of feeling which could be captured by sometimes gross media. These masters make this very rank amateur feel quite meek...

Stunning

2008-10-10T05:32:00.003-05:00

What an image. As one of my good friends says, it doesn't look real. It seems as if from a movie, or an artist's conception. The mind, unfamiliar with the outer reaches of the solar system, retreats to what it is more familiar with...invented images. Saturn and its lovely rings seen from above, image taken by the Cassini satellite. Oh, Cassini? Well, he was a mathematician and astronomer born in the 17th century. You can read about him at Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Domenico_Cassini

And you can read so much more about the Cassini satellite and its mission of exploration of Saturn, and you can enjoy a ton of other amazing photos.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/index.html

ISS sighting

2008-10-09T05:29:00.003-05:00

Last night my dearest friend, better half and I were found in the street before our house, standing and staring into the sky. The advantage of living on a quite unbusy street is the ability to do this without disrupting the flow of traffic. Then there was the cry, "There it is!"

"It" is the International Space Station. That technical wonder that circles above us, occupied for nearly upon ten years now, built by tedious labor of astronauts in hundreds of hours of EVAs made more difficult by the lack of gravity and air. That only makes it more amazing in what they have accomplished.

The ISS has grown more than most people imagine. So many have seen photos of it, but don't truly have the idea of just how big it truly is, particularly inside. At any rate, it is now big enough that it rivals the planet Venus in size and visible magnitude. I'm sure it likely has been ID'ed as a UFO as well.

Though I well understand the orbital mechanics at work, it still amazes me to look up and see the ISS appear just at the time predicted, to watch it gracefully sail over head and disappear rather suddenly as it passes the terminator into, what is for the ISS, night time. And the think that there are three space travelers--scientists--on this light racing across the sky, nearing the end of their six month stay. Have they really been up there so long, and I have seldom noted their passage? I see it on NASA TV and still am rather astounded to see ISS hurry away from my wondering eyes.

NASA maintains a web site listing ISS sitings for locations in the US.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/skywatch.cgi?country=United+States
I recommend experiencing this at least one time. It never ceases to put my mind into consideration of place in universe and life, something that is more needed among all peoples at such a time as this.

The Davidson Center for Space Exploration

2008-10-08T05:28:00.001-05:00

It's an amazing place to visit...one of the few places where one can see actual flight hardware of the Apollo era. The last three flights of the Apollo program were cancelled due to funding cuts. One of the Saturn V launch vehicles from this tragic move on the part of Congress has rested in Huntsville, AL for very many years. Alas, it was left out in the weather to corrode and erode. Until last year that is. That is when the Davidson Center was completed and the Saturn V moved inside in the Rocket Roll. This tribute to our history and technology is now on display in wonderfully restored condition for all to enjoy. It would have been beyond words to allow it to continue to disintegrate.

Standing underneath this behemoth is humbling and awe inspiring. Lifting this baby off the pad was like launching a building. Recall how slowly the thing crawls away from the pad on launch. But it had to generate the power to go a quarter million miles to the moon.

Don't miss the equally incredible mural in the lobby of the Davidson Center. A close up and intimate encounter with the business end of Saturn V at launch, crafted masterfully by Paul Calle.

I would like to add the dimensions of the masterpiece, as reproduced, but honestly, I can't recall it, so taken was I by the effect and the excellent quality of the artwork. But it's probably a good 20-25 feet wide. A Saturn V of the art world.

There's so very much more to see at the space museum, and don't forget Space Camp. But as the newest addition, and the most amazing one, the Davidson Center owned my interest (for days after) and is well worth the visit.

Musing

2008-10-07T05:33:00.000-05:00

The shuttle is a marvel, a technological wonder that has given the US great service. No, it's a flying deathtrap and we're lucky it's lasted this long and hasn't failed more.

I hear both sides of this, at work and away from work, from friends and from people I don't know.

Well, the shuttle is a compromise, and perhaps that's at the heart of the discontent. The shuttle should have been a vehicle built in one design cycle with appropriate test and safety parameters, built to explore low-earth orbit environs from a science and engineering point of view. What the shuttle turned out to be is a vehicle which went through many design iterations, not because the initial design was flawed, but because too many cooks forced a say in the issue. It's very difficult for NASA to pursue any program when it must go through the same budget battle each year and justify its existence and every thing it does. Of course the government has a right to know what NASA does and how it spends its money, but the people of government are not generally engineers. Yet they feel free to tell NASA how to run its programs and set the budget for how they think it should be done. Accordingly, NASA must do what it can with what it is given. Budget overruns? Well, yes, but see it from the inside. If one must redesign a vehicle at a lower performance level than the original design, then the money give to build the vehicle now must be spent to alter the design.

And let us not forget the military fingers that got in the pie. Mostly the Air Force since they view themselves as the rightful owners of the "air" space over this planet, but they were not the only ones who saw use of the shuttle for their own purposes, and compelled NASA into other design changes such that it would launch payloads suitable to military purposes, not scientific ones. And how fast did the military flee the program after the Challenger incident? No, they do not bear all the fault, but they do bear a cut of it for their input to an imperfect design, and when it gave way under the opposing pressures, the military bailed and never looked back.

Also there was the intelligence interests of the US. Spy satellites, another good use of the shuttle. No, this is not strictly the military again. Don't forget the civilian side to that...and their pressure for a vehicle size and payload capacity to serve them.

Where were all these other agencies and organizations when Challenger exploded, when Columbia broke up on re-entry? Most people forgot all these other pressures and demands and cuts and exigencies. NASA stood alone to answer for an imperfect design. Yes, and imperfect people making imperfect decisions, acknowledged. But how different would all that have been if NASA had not been forced into a corner of using solid rockets on a manned vehicle, something that had been anathema to NASA before.

And so, now that we have a flawed vehicle, consider what it has accomplished. Twenty-seven years of service. Satellites launched into earth orbit. Satellites picked up, repaired and released. Hubble launched, and re-gained to be repaired and put back into service. I haven't counted up the hours of EVA activity that has not only repaired satellites, looked closer at the shuttle, done experiments in zero g, built a space station. And what about that...built a space station. The shuttle has ferried up all those parts and brought astronauts to assemble them. The space station has been in service ten years now; something that would not exist, at least in this form, without the shuttle. How many hours of experiments? How many feet of photography of the earth , to better understand it? How many contingency situations which were solved in orbit and tasks complete, proving man's ability to work in space and to problem solve, making use of limited available materials to come up with a fix when unable to run down to Home Depot?

And I could go on and on, but I think the point is made. Whatever you want to say about the shuttle, it is what it is and it is what we have. It's too late to change it now; no amount of complaining or criticizing is going to make it better or different. So let's use it as we can, in its limitations, and celebrate what it is able to do...which is a great deal!

http://www.nasaimages.org/

2008-10-06T06:42:00.001-05:00

This web site is a new addition to the internet. To quote the "about" page...
NASA Images is a service of Internet Archive ( www.archive.org ), a non-profit library, to offer public access to NASA's images, videos and audio collections. NASA Images is constantly growing with the addition of current media from NASA as well as newly digitized media from the archives of the NASA Centers.

This is a great service. NASA has produced miles of film and video footage, photos galore and enough audio to fill many, many iPods. The biggest problem in making it available to the public is manpower. If you think it's hard for NASA to get money to keep the shuttle flying, just consider how they might be able to fund all those unnecessary things, such as staff to establish a web accessible archive. However, now with Internet Archive on the job, this rich melange of NASA history and universal beauty is very accessible. It's easily searched and simple to navigate. You can create a workspace to play in before you make decisions on downloading. For the professional and the amateur, it's a delight and something past due.

So...go, play, enjoy. After all, you helped pay for it. It belongs to you too.

Bravo

2008-10-03T07:14:00.000-05:00

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081002/OPINION02/810020316

The Toledo Blade

Article published October 2, 2008

NASA at 50

America has no choice but to find the will and the money to design and build the next generation of spaceships

THE National Aeronautics and Space Administration turned 50 this week, its five decades marked by both notable achievements and sometimes spectacular failures. As America's space agency enters its sixth decade, it finds itself at a crossroads of sorts: What will the future of American space exploration look like?

NASA was a child of the Cold War, born in October, 1958, in response to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik a year earlier. For its first 14 years it had, essentially, just two missions: close the space gap with the Soviets and be the first to put a man on the moon. NASA scientists met those goals and in doing so put a U.S. stamp on at least our small corner of the universe. And Americans loved it, sitting glued to their TV sets as a procession of heroes from John Glenn to Neil Armstrong went, in the words of a popular television show of the time, "where no man has gone before."

After the last moon landing in 1972, however, NASA's mission changed. "One great leap for mankind" was replaced by the more workmanlike space shuttle and construction of an international space station. It was a worthy goal but lacked the glitz and glitter of the race for the moon.

Predictably, public interest waned and the space program attracted attention only when something went wrong, as it did with the Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003.

Despite contributions made not only to our knowledge of the universe but to the development of GPS navigation systems, cell phones, computers, and a host of other consumer products, not even Mars rovers Opportunity and Spirit - still collecting data four years after scientists thought they'd only be collecting Martian dust - have been able to hold the attention of a public distracted by joblessness, high fuel prices, and record mortgage foreclosures. As a result, even though NASA is again preparing for manned moon missions with an eye toward a permanent lunar station and future manned missions to Mars, Congress wastes almost as much each year on earmarks ($16 billion) as it allocates the space agency ($17 billion), and there is no public outcry to do more.

And yet we must. America has no choice but to find the will - and the money - to design and build the next generation of spaceships, and it must do so even as it solves the current financial mess, reinvigorates the economy, and defends against terrorism.

Otherwise, space will become the province of nations that have the will, nations - like China - whose self interest may not coincide with ours. And if that happens we will not only lose the lead in space exploration but also the technological advantage that has buttressed our standing as the pre-eminent world power.

NASA either turned 50 years old this week or 50 years young. It's up to us to decide.

Confusional

2008-10-03T05:47:00.000-05:00

What a wonderful photograph. The other photos I'd seen were great, historical and exciting in a geeky sort of way. Two shuttles on the launch pad simultaneously. That had only happened once before in 1990 with STS-35 and STS-41 poised on pads A and B at the same time. There had been a lot of build up with in NASA for the Saturday morning arrival of Endeavour at pad B, joining Atlantis in launch position. Pictures have made the rounds and the nerdy rocket scientists all have them as wall paper, in sig files, printed out and pinned to the wall...etc. And then I saw this one on someone's lap top in a meeting. Oh...even more sublime than the full day light photos. Wonderfully beautiful. I can't read the name on the copy of the file that I have, else I'd be most happy to credit the photog and sing praises. Whoever you are, excellent job, and you brought even more joy to geek hearts throughout NASA.

However, the joy faded a little too quickly for us with the news that Hubble is in further trouble. It stopped transmitting data. Long story short...processor problem...which isn't necessarily fatal. There is side B for redundancy. However, this has major effect on NASA's launch schedule, and beyond. After this potential dual launch, pad B was going to be shut down so that modification could begin for the Ares I-X test flight, which was to launch in April, 2009. Since the Hubble repair mission is now an unknown, at least for launch date, that puts all the plans for pad work and test flight launch into a quandary. We mushrooms haven't heard anything yet on what's to happen. Of course that's probably just as much about decision making as not passing information around. But it is having an effect on morale, which is a bit fragile these days what with all the NASA bashing and uncertainty over what will become of NASA after the election. The mushroom employees, in the midst of all this, are in an imbroglio. Perhaps that's the reason for the elation over the 50th anniversary a couple of days ago.

In the meantime, until decisions are made and passed on, enjoy the wonderful photo.

Not your typical rocket scientist

2008-10-02T05:43:00.000-05:00

As I'd said before, I'd like to explore some of my co-workers. They are interesting and entertaining, wise and wise-cracking, fun and annoying. But I have endured worse! Today I present for your consideration a person that everyone likes, bar none. Not only an intelligent person and hard worker but simply a nice fellow as well.

Jonathan W. is a new safety engineer with NASA. He was working with the vehicle integration team as a contractor for Hernandez (now Bastion) Engineering, but a NASA safety position opened and he applied for it. The result is that he is doing nearly the same work with exactly the same people.

Jon seems quiet and unassuming on first glance. He is a tall and thin fellow whose bald pate gleams in fluorescent light, additionally set off by the close-cropped hair around the sides of his head. A quick smile flashes across his face, igniting impish eyes which only show wrinkles when he does smile. Always dressed in perfectly pressed and matched clothing, Jon's appearance belies the fact that he plays in a rock band on the side. That is a fact that only came out over a year after I met him, by carefully prospecting the rich lode of personality that lies just beneath Jon's calm and polished exterior.

This calm facade hides a myriad of complexities and contradictions that one would never guess by a quick observation. Sitting in a meeting, Jon proclaims deep and enduring love for his laptop computer because it frees him to go to any available corner to work. However, when the same (or any other computer or machine proximate to his hearing range) fails to respond properly, Jon mutters with cool malevolence, "I hate computers."

Watching him in a meeting can be entertaining if the meeting runs long or flirts with boredom. Jon can hide everything behind a sphinx mask if he so chooses. Or he can allow his thoughts and feelings to play the stage of his face like character actors emoting at their highest state of motility. Jon's frustration, amusement, anger, even disinterest can clearly be noted in the movement of eyebrows, turn of mouth, glimmer of eye, or blank expression. His calm still in place, he begins to speak what was recently carved in his countenance. His point made, Jon will retreat back to his computer, thoughts or hiding in plain sight. However, a point missed only ignites his passion to share what he knows further. Crossing swords with Jon is taking risk if one hasn't proper knowledge of the subject. Interestingly, once a meeting has adjourned and all issues solved or tabled, Jon can be quite friendly with the people he just hammered for lack of insight or thought.

A fascinating dichotomy.

Happy Birthday NASA

2008-10-01T05:59:00.001-05:00

What an occasion...to celebrate a milestone anniversary of an agency that has done great and amazing things. What is the right thing to say to recognize NASA and the fruits of its labor? Many words have already been spoken by those wiser than I. So I won't try to be clever or profound. I'll just think over my memories of NASA, which date from very early in my life and are responsible for the fact that I now work for this great organization. How far NASA has led us, from a simple sub-orbital flight to the surface of the moon and beyond. Even where people can't currently travel, NASA still sends robots, and peers into the depths of the universe. And it's not only the places they've gone and the things they've seen, though those are unspeakable achievements on their own, it's also what NASA has accomplished on this planet, for let us not disremember the many technologies that pervade our lives which NASA helped distribute from their halls to ours.

But, to take the view of NASA's current administrator, Michael Griffin, there are many ways to justify NASA's existence and programs. However, at the heart of it all is the basic human desire to explore and to know. This NASA has accomplished as the acme. And so, to be succinct and, above all, not to become maudlin, I end this post with an enormous salute to all the men and women who led the way, and now keep that path open, to the stars.

Weather

2008-09-30T05:36:00.000-05:00

Hurricane Kyle...from space. Yet another service provided by the amazing, pragmatic and utile satellites which circle our planet. Of course Kyle was just the little brother to Ike.

The destruction left by Ike was devastating. However, it could have been much worse in human costs if not for the ability of meteorologists to model and observe them, and issue warnings so that people can evacuate the path of destruction. Of course this involves more than NASA, more than a few photos from space. However, that is one part of the equation. From the simple and small Explorer I launched in January, 1958 to today's sophisticated weather satellites, the men and women "rocket scientists" helped blaze the trial to space which reaps so many sublime benefits.

There are so many technologies developed for NASA which have made great contributions to every day life. Ironically the ones that many people name first are not in this category...like Teflon and Velcro. But you can find out for yourself just what NASA has done for you lately by having a look at NASA Spinoff, the stories of successfully commercialized NASA technology.

http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/index.html

The NASA Art Program

2008-09-29T05:27:00.000-05:00

Here is a link. A very interesting link.
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/NASAart_book/

What many...most people don't know is that NASA administrator James Webb instituted the NASA art program in the very early day of the nascent space agency. Mr. Webb had the foresight to see not only how significant the space program would be to the country's science and defense, but also how much it would and could influence our society and culture. Professional artists were invited to NASA facilities and to launches, and they produced magnificent art work, which the majority of the public has never seen or is even aware of the existence. This link takes you to a site that has a very, very small sampling of this wonderful and resplendent treasure. As evocative and beautiful as these selections are, it is only a peek at the rich heritage that art has left NASA, giving the artist's unique interpretation of that which is reported so precisely and mundanely in the news media. In October 2008 a book will hit the stands which is entitled, "NASA/Art: 50 Years of Exploration". It's a 176 page presentation of the history of the NASA art program accompanied by a larger look at the collection. No, this is not a commercial for the book, or even for NASA. This is a desire to share the unseen human soul of NASA and of the men and women who have plumbed the depths of it and of their own souls to find the place where humanity, art and science meet.

But you don't look like one

2008-09-26T05:35:00.000-05:00

I guess you were expecting the stereotypical dweeb nerd sort?

I'm here to break all those stereotypes. I love classical music...oh, you expected that? Well, I love rock too. I paint and draw and write fiction and poetry and edit for an online journal. I just finished an illustration job for a science text. I read voraciously, and not a bit of science fiction, not in a very long time. Mostly I read non-fiction in a wide variety of areas--history, current events, biography, religion, sports... Well, you get the idea. I have a Labrador mix and an Australian Cattle Dog, and neither of them are named after any scientist, engineer, sci-fi writer or astronaut. And I dress up in a bear costume for the kids at church. Not exactly the stereotypical nerdy NASA type.

I work at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama in the Safety and Mission Assurance Directorate. I perform system safety analysis and vehicle integration for the new Ares launch vehicle which will return the US back to the moon. How exciting to get in at the beginning of a new program like this one. Learn all about that at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/ares/

So I want to help bring forward things that aren't well known about NASA, or even those that are well known. I'd like to talk about my job. No, no, not as a self-publicizing thing. I work with some interesting people; people who definitely break the stereotypes and the molds. Let's explore inner and outer space. Wonder as we wander. Entering terminal countdown...