August 2008 Archives

The official line apparently, if anyone cared to ask NASA, is that "the game is still in development" but for those in the know legal action between the company employed to write the game code and the game-engine provider has frozen progress on a NASA stand alone, single player video game


credit: Virgin

This is not to be confused with the 1986 Virgin Dan Dare video game pictured above or NASA's Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing (MMPORG) project or the recent Glenn Research Center's procurement process; although Glenn's game is very similar to the game held in legal hell

credit: Virgin Galactic

The aerospace industry loves phrases like risk reduction. What they really mean is R&D to try to make sure the damn thing works. But R&D has cost connotations while risk reduction, well, it is like motherhood and applie pie. Reducing risk, how can that be bad? And so Spacedev is to help with SpaceShipTwo's (SS2) propulsion system development, probably to reduce the risk of Scaled employees being involved in another oxidiser flow test explosion incident

NASA Ames Research Center is to study the uncertainty in simulations of Ares launch vehicles propellant tank explosions, in particular the "potential consequences of leakage" through a liquid hdyrogen (LH2), liquid oxygen (LOX) tank common bulkhead with simulations of bulkhead leaks, LOX/LH2 tank drop tests and boiling liquid, expanding vapour explosions (BLEVEs)


credit: NASA

NASA Johnson Space Center had had a requirement for "Lightweight Materials for the CEV Parachute Assembly System (CPAS)" that would be "developed, manufactured, and laboratory and flight tested" for use "in the skirt to shoulder region of the main canopies"


credit: NASA

This was so CPAS would meet the required "launch weight constraints" and parachute compartment volume but now NASA has decided to cancel that procurement

What is going on at the European Space Agency? An agency always with high hopes but never high enough budgets it is planning a number of studies related to reusable launch vehicles (RLV) and runway landings


credit: DLR / caption: DLR's Phoenix demonstrator is dropped over Sweden's NEAT test range

While RLVs have featured as a part of ESA's Future Launcher Preparatory Programme I have personally never believed that a mini-Space Shuttle would be the outcome. Even the Russians with all their experience have never even put the flyback booster Baikal into operation - and that is just for a partially reusable system

Yet studies planned by ESA indicate a readiness to spend hundreds of thousands of euros on technologies that can only be for horizontal landing RLVs

credit: ESA

The European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter's Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC), originally designed to provide images of the ill-fated Beagle lander's separation, is now back in action as the 'Mars Webcam'. Not a scientific instrument it is providing "fantastic views of Mars," according to ESA including crescent views of the planet not obtainable from Earth

Go here for more of the webcam's images

Click on all the images in this blog post to see larger versions in the same browser window

Credit: NASA

According to the 13 August 1964 issue of Flight International NASA test pilot E. P. Hetzel is trying out the paraglider system of spacecraft recovery, then under consideration for Project Gemini flights, in this photo

It is the first manned test of the recovery system at what became NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards, California

More such reports about the development of American, and Soviet, manned spaceflight systems can be found in the Flight archive, a completely free to access archive of every issue ever published since Flight's inception in 1909

credit: NASA

Having announced that DIRECT can't cut the mustard and that NASA's Constellation programme is hamstrung by industrial and political decisions I had said that Hyperbola would put forward its own plan for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit

Not wanting to attempt to tackle this nebulous topic in one blog post I am going to start by setting out some parameters and if I can persuade out in-house artists could have some snazzy pictures in the foreseeable future

So for those of you brave enough to click through to the extended section and read my self imposed constraints, feel free to flame away

credit: JAXA

If you are one of the sub-human fools who thinks that the Apollo Moon landings were faked then you're conspiracy believing days are numbered

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has posted pictures of what it calls the "halo" generated by the Apollo 15 lunar module engine exhaust plume when it blasted off the Moon. The blast area was detected in its SELenological and ENgineering Explorer(SELENE)/Kaguya orbiter's Terrain Camera images

credit: Khrunichev Space Center 9 August 2008

The Khrunichev Space Center mockup first-stage for south Korea's Korea Space Launch Vehicle arrives in the Asian country where it will be checked out at the Naro Space Center

In what is either a misreport or a stunning change of events since my chat with NASA's Ares V man Phil Sumrall in February it appears that the agency is reconsidering ANOTHER stage for the cargo launch vehicle



credit: NASA

credit: NASA / caption: NASA selected 23 proposals for a SBSP study in 1999

The European Space Agency's general studies programme is to assess a laser-based SBPS concept for Earth and for the lunar surface. Small scale science missions' laser power transmissions will also be considered

credit: NASA

The Ares V Earth departure stage (EDS), Altair lunar lander adaptor, visible in this picture has been a cause of concern for NASA because of the extra mass it could represent

credit: NASA

This image is from a video of a compressed air cylinders propelled prototype Modular Common Spacecraft Bus, tested by NASA Ames Research Center. The octagon-like common bus will be used for NASA's 2011 launched Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) orbiter

According to NASA's science mission directorate LADEE will be followed by lander missions for the International Lunar Network (ILN) and now we know that those landers could be nuclear powered

NASA had been planning to create its own massively multi-player online game but its Glenn Research Center's Educational Programs Office has decided to enter the games arena with a request for proposals for a $200,000 contract to develop an interactive educational lunar base design and exploration simulation


credit: NASA / caption: will the LunarSIM Moon base look like this?

NASA Ares V cargo launch vehicle (CaLV) integration manager Steve Creech visibly shook and his voice wavered with a very nervous answer to my question about why, when they already have a 6,000kg payload margin to trans-lunar injection (TLI), they were considering changes to the CaLV to add another 3,000kg of margin?


credit: NASA

Credit: NASA Ares project office

NASA has asked industry for its views about the development of the US space agency's Ares V cargo launch vehicle (CaLV).

In its information package to industry the agency has also identified a series of changes to Ares V that are being studied in the "trade space". They include a common core for PBAN and HTPB fuelled boosters, payload shroud shape optimization (this is the move to an Ogive "bullet" shape), a core-stage six engine layout (with all the engines shown in a circular layout in the full RFI presentation), an on-orbit Loiter Module vs integrated avionics and alternate missions' designs

The presentation NASA released on 9 July provides the cargo launch vehicle's development timetable up to 2020 while the above trade space study subjects were included in an additional presentation slide released on 25 July

click on any of the images in this blog post to see larger versions in the same browser window

NASA has posted a press release about the International Lunar Network (ILN) that the World's major space agencies are discussing

Details about the ILN could be read here in a Flightglobal article back in May

Talking of the Moon go here for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's high-definition video of the Moon taken by its Kaguya probe

Speaking to Flightglobal in an interview here at the Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture event in Oshkosh, Wisconsin Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn said that SpaceShipTwo could make an appearence at the general aviation airshow in 2009


credit: Flight / SS2 underwraps at Scaled on Monday 28 July 2008