Space: September 2006 Archives

"Hello! My name is Japanese F***ing B***h," the transvestite screamed down the microphone at Chinese restaurant come raucous karaoke bar, Lucky Cheng's, in New York. At this point I knew that my choice of seating, behind a long table, against the wall, was a wise choice to avoid any "audience participation" the 6ft wig-wearing drag queens aiding Japanese F***ing B***h (JFB) dreamt up for this Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Galactic press trip dinner.


And audience "participation" there was with Virgin Atlantic's corporate comms chief being stripped half naked, simulated sex acts and the airline's chief pilot having to give a lap dance and my RBI (our publishing company) colleague from Travel Weekly having his head trapped between JFB's thighs while she, he, gyrated above him. Twelve hours earlier, on Wednesday morning, I had woken up in my room, for want of a better word, in the "trendy" Hudson Hotel on 58th street.

It was good news and bad news for Orbiter provider Boeing this week with another successful Space Shuttle mission but a gloomy horizon for the company's hopes of gaining work on NASA's Orion crew vehicle launcher Ares I.
Shuttle Atlantis's STS-115 assembly mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is the first in four years and 2006 is the first year since 2002 that NASA has flown more than one mission in a year.
The last assembly mission was to install the Port one truss, which STS-115's Port three, Port four truss was attached to last week.
If NASA successfully launches Shuttle Discovery on 14 December for STS-116 the space agency can face 2007 with renewed vigour.
Considering NASA regularly launched shuttles six or seven times a year in the 1990s the schedule for the reusable spaceplane's last four years, of about four missions a year, is achievable.
While retirement for Shuttle is beginning to look like a smooth wind down Boeing's hopes of winning NASA's Ares I upper stage contract must have withered when they heard about the competition.
The announcement of the team of Ares I first stage integrator ATK, Orion crew and service module prime contractor Lockheed Martin and upper stage main engine provider Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne must have had Boeing executives putting their heads in their hands.
The ATK led Lockheed, P&W dream team simply isn't going to be beaten by anyone. Two of the companies already have contracts with NASA for Ares I and the space agency announced earlier this year that its Lockheed managed Michoud Assembly Facility will build Ares I upper stage structures.
Despite the pride Boeing can feel about its Orbiter its longer term place in the space industry is looking decidedly weak.

If you were to look back at the US space programme, especially with the Space Shuttle, there are two things you would be very careful about making statements on, timetables and safety.

From the earliest days of manned spaceflight declaring something would launch at a certain time was a hazardous affair, almost as hazardous as the launch itself.

John Glenn's orbital flight's10 delays caused immense embarrassment, as one Mercury and Apollo veteran, still exasperated at the problems they had had forty years ago, admitted to me recently.

In a surprise move NASA has chosen Lockheed Martin over the Northrop Grumman, Boeing team that represented the legacy companies that built the US space programme's previous manned spacecraft. Boeing bought Rockwell International, the Shuttle's developer and manufacturer in the 1970s and 1980s, in the 1990s.
Today Boeing provides the manned Orbiter vehicle and integrates it with the Lockheed Martin shuttle external tank and the ATK solid rocket boosters for NASA. It's also an equal partner in the Shuttle ground operations joint venture, United Space Alliance, with Lockheed. Few companies like Boeing can boast over 30 years of manned spacecraft operation experience.
One former Boeing Shuttle engineer ranted at me about the decision, reminding me of all the NASA missions that have gone wrong with Lockheed's involvement. 
Lockheed's involvement in NASA's Mars Polar Lander, which disappeared upon landing on the red planet; and the Genesis capsule that crashed to Earth; and the abandoned single stage to orbit X-33 vehicle all added to a quiet industry consensus that the winner was likely to be Northrop/Boeing.
The Lockheed choice therefore suggests a NASA strategy to abandon the industrial arrangement it has had for three decades for Shuttle.This is probably because Shuttle represents an expensive programme and NASA has been given a presidential policy of going back to the Moon, but with no substantial increase in its budget. Since the 2004 president George W. Bush vision for space exploration announcement about the return to the Moon NASA officials have emphasised the life cycle cost factor as foremost in their analyses.
Another Shuttle programme veteran was concerned about the impact on job losses. Admitting that Shuttle had been a "jobs programme" for way too long he thought a Northrop win would have made a lot of people feel better about the future.
Interestingly NASA suddenly said earlier this year that the Orion launching Ares I's upper stage and the Ares V's Earth departure stage, would be made at its Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF). This is managed for NASA by Lockheed. Following the contract win Lockheed has announced it will build major Orion structures at MAF.
There is a possibility that NASA is looking to place its entire space transportation system with one company in an attempt to drive down costs.When NASA administrator Michael Griffin is ready to say that the transition from Shuttle to Orion is the agency's biggest challenge, the choice of Lockheed is a bold move.