November 2008 Archives

Hyperbola has learnt that the minister's advice (a report drawn up by civil servants that sets out the options) that was supposed to reach the then space minister Ian Pearson by October this year, and didn't, could reach the new minister, Lord Drayson in January

Hyperbola has now got its own Youtube channel and that can be found here on Youtube

During the coming weeks many videos previously only found on www.flightglobal.com and previously unseen video will find their way onto Hyperbola's FlightHyperbola Youtube channel

I will be texting to my twitter account at certain events in the future, when I am not able to provide live blogging or even, one day, live video streaming. If you have a twitter account feel free to follow me. The first event I'll be texting from will be the UK's 4th Appleton Space Conference that will take place on 4 December (next Thursday) in Oxfordshire

credit: Xcor Aerospace / caption: Lynx launches an upper stage, another potential use for it 

Hyperbola has learnt the identity of the first customer for Xcor Aerospace's Lynx suborbital vehicle and this blog can say now that

credit: www.esa.int

Watch the European Space Agency director general Jean-Jacques Dordain's 26 November press conference here about the 2008 ministerial meeting that decided his agency's budget and plans for the next three years including ESA astronauts at the International Space Station and the evolution of the agency's resupply ship, Automated Transfer Vehicle

Watch the latest Ares project office quarterely report here or watch more at AresTV (I don't know if this is an official NASA channel) or if you're into Apple's iTunes you can now get the videos free via that service

For commercial space video goodness go through to the  extended section

credit: NASA

Get a closer view of this Orion parachute drop test vehicle in the extended portion of this blog care of one John Gourley

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

credit: NASA

The essentials of the above solid rocket booster (SRB) design are well known as the basis for both the Ares I crew launch vehicle's and Ares V cargo launch vehicle's first stages (Yes NASA is now calling the Ares V SRBs its first-stage)

However, the space agency is known to be considering HTPB as an alternate fuel and filament wound casings for the segments (and this composite SRB version might be expendable) but beyond that, and a nozzle extension for Ares I's first-stage and the oscillation issues, the SRB design seemed broadly frozen. Until now

At the back of the RFI document that can be found via this latest press release it talks about what NASA wants contractors to do regarding the SRBs, and it seems to be a bit more substantial than you might have thought

Upgrade work on the blog hosting software we use here at flightglobal.com is being carried out this morning. This means you will not be able to post comments until it is completed, which is expected to be by 1300h GMT...

credit: NASA / caption: see the Earth through Endeavour's flight deck windows

On 16 November 2008 NASA astronaut Eric Boe, STS-126 pilot, is shown here sitting at the pilot's station on the forward flight deck of Space Shuttle Endeavour during rendezvous and docking operations with the International Space Station. However the pilot's window was soon to feel an impact from what could have been micro meteorite orbital debris

See close-up pictures, post-impact, in the extended section of this blog post

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

credit: NASA

For those of you able to make it all the way through the 3h webcast video of the September lunar exploration industry briefing day there is a bit at the end that makes for interesting what-if pondering

The Altair lunar lander project office deputy manager Clinton Dorris can be heard referring to "marginal" trades when the panel was asked about the idea of using Altair as a hopper to extend sorties far from the outpost

It is unusual, in fact rare, that a Flight publication would ever comment on our US counterpart but even from Hyperbola's rarified orbit the blogosphere is clearly glowing with rage at a recent decision by a management who you would have thought know better

Journalism is a unique business where some unique individuals can become as big as the stories they write. Downsizing is one thing but the letting go of certain writers, hugely high profile in the space industry with decades of experience and contacts throughout the likes of NASA, is surely a direct shot through your own print product's feet?

Whatever will they do next at McGraw-Hill, you have to wonder?

credit: NASA

Thanks to Hyperbola reader Dwayne Day you can watch a 3h Lunar Exploration industry briefing day video with presentations by the leadership of NASA's Constellation programme, its manager Jeffrey Hanley, its Ares project office manager Steve Cook, its Altair lunar lander project office's deputy manager Clinton Dorris and then Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) deputy associate administrator (AA), and now the ESMD AA, Doug Cooke

Watch the video here

credit: NASA

In a surprise move NASA has included studies to assess the human rating of the Ares V cargo launch vehicle's (CaLV) core stage in its draft statement of work (DSOW) for its request for information for the CaLV

Hyperbola has obtained a copy of the DSOW. Is this the beginnng of the end for the Ares I crew launch vehicle (CLV)?

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

credit: ESA Youtube channel

More than any other nation or group of allies, next week's governments' ministers meeting for the European Space Agency should be more influenced by the geopolitical needs of a continent in danger of being eclipsed by Indian and China in the future, than the credit crunch or the idealism of international exploration of the solar system

The European Space Agency's director general Jean-Jacques Dordain has recorded an interview, in English and French, about the challenges facing the agency and in particular in the wake of the worldwide financial disaster

Talk of new manned transportation systems and the Moon has taken a back seat to a focus on the Earth orientated European space policy with its priorities for services for the citizens and orbital infrastructure that will be used for security purposes

But there does still seem to be hope for an evolution of ESA's International Space Station resupply vehicle Automated Transfer Vehicle, into a cargo return craft

credit: NASA / caption: This January 1971 concept image shows an orbital propellant depot

Beyond the yes, commercial can do it mantra of the so-called New Space community another of their tenets is how orbital fuel depots will open up this final frontier

Unsurprisingly, being an openly cynical journalist, I have my doubts about this...

credit: NASA / caption: but when in '09?

The latest Space Shuttle programme manifest shows the Ares I-X launch put back to 11 July 2009, assuming a 12 May date next year for the lift-off of Hubble Space Telescope (HST) servicing mission four (SM4), STS-125

And in a related change the lightning tower seen in the poster above is unlikely now to occur as the planned four lightning towers that will, Russian launch pad-like, stand at each of the "corners" of the Kennedy Space Center complex are already being put in place 

click on the images in this blog post to see a larger version in the same browser window

credit: obama.com

An unfinished war, a huge national debt, an imminent deep recession, a huge tax cutting commitment, a massive fiscal stimulus to be spent, a car industry whose saving might be cheaper than the economic devastation its collapse would bring, and a former president's ambitious plan to return America to the Moon; not too many challenges then for the president-elect (some of them self inflicted admittedly)

Hyperbola thinks the Obama administation should do the following...

credit: Flight

Hyperbola has learnt that Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo has made short runs under its own jet engine power and been shackled to a Mojave air and space port concrete platform test stand so its four Pratt & Whitney 308A engines can be fired up, potentially to full power

While Virgin Galactic's leadership has told Hyperbola that low speed taxi trials had occured it is only now that other Mojave based sources have confirmed the Scaled Composites designed aircraft's progress

For just a few seconds of video footage (cell phone video quality or better) of the WK2 moving under its own power, or having its engines run on the test stand (good sound needed) or, if it occurs soon, the aircraft's first take-off, Hyperbola will give you $100. One hundred dollars for a few seconds work, that's the bounty on offer

The posting of the video on this blog will be completely anonymous so footage from Scaled Composites or Pratt & Whitney (its engineers are helping with the engine's installation, test and flights) employees are welcome and would be treated sensitively

credit: ESA

UK rocket developer Starchaser Industries has a link on its website to the executive summary of the report it produced for the European Space Agency under a €150,000 contract

credit: Flight / caption: Griffin spoke to Flight on a visit to London in December 2006 

The blogosphere has been getting very excited about NASA administrator Michael Griffin's comments at an "all-hands" meeting about the likelihood of his staying on and serving the next adminisration

Hyperbola reported on Griffin's possible departure last July. Hyperbola was present when Griffin told an audience at the Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, about his personal preferences for how he could serve

Griffin accurately points out that it is up to the Obama presidency whether he continues and that historically his position as an appointee of the previous administration leaves him with little choice but to tender his resignation as a matter of course

For those of you rubbing your hands with glee at the prospects of the departure of an administrator who bluntly says what he thinks, the credit crunch and economic downturn is unlikely to see the Obama administration, with its tax cutting and green energy technology revolution agenda, throw huge amounts of cash at NASA to fix what anyone might see as a underfunded programmes  

credit: Swedish Space Corporation

It can't be denied that publicity surrounding the Swedish Space Corporation's (SSC) proposed Spaceport Sweden since January 2007 would have done nothing but good for tourism for that nordic country's most northernmost arctic city, and the port's nearest outcrop of civilisation, Kiruna

But one wonders whether a combination of Swedish legal knots, European aviation rules and US arms trafficking laws won't derail the embyronic spaceport project

credit: Flight/NASA / caption: Brits unlikely to be over the Moon come mid-2009

By mid-2009 the European Space Agency would have selected its next four astronauts and if you believe what you read in the UK media  then one of those could be British but Hyperbola's sources within ESA indicate that short of a miracle a British subject won't have enough of the right stuff, by which I mean government "support" through human spaceflight funding. Instead the fourth astronaut could be Danish... 

credit: NASA / caption: this image is from STS-61

With the NASA Authorisation act 2008 setting the US space agency the challenge of sending the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) instrument to the International Space Station before September 2010, the scheduled retirement for the orbiter fleet, Hyperbola has obtained some details about the work to squeeze the remaining 11 flights in   

Visitors to China's Zuhai air show were able to sit inside a model of the Shenzhou spacecraft and see models and other presentation materials showing the country's plans for lunar exploration including a double lunar rover landing

credit: Khrunichev Space Center

Space Newsbites returns with a few quick items about things spaceflght orientated...

Progress continues with Russia's new Angara rocket (see picture above). Khrunichev Space Center has posted this report about preparations for a test firing of its universal rocket module 

credit: FAA AST

At the 29 October 2008 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) COMmercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) meeting a John Sloan gave a presentation on the FAA's office of commercial space transportation's (AST) international strategy that includes preparations on future suborbital point to point  (SPTP) travel

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

credit: spacefuture.com

On this sort of trajectory if any of you wealthy Hyperbola readers choose to splash your cash on a space tourism flight in the near future you might want to make sure your service providers include g tolerance training so you can avoid g induced loss of consciousness (G-LOC)

At the 3rd International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety conference, held in Rome in October, Worldview Spaceflight  subcontractor cum operations director Andrew Quinn, also an independent consultant to undisclosed space tourism companies, gave a presentation about centrifuge training for space tourism safety purposes

He showed videos of himself using a centrifuge for his masters degree research in May 2006 and then again in 2007, during early partnership discussions between Worldview Spaceflight and UK technology company Qinetiq

Qinetiq's centrifuge in Farnborough, England, was the facility used on both occasions. Quinn says Qinetiq are interested in providing centrifuge services to organisations looking to offer space tourism 

click through to the extended portion of this blog post to watch the videos of Quinn using techniques to cope with 4g and 6g and avoiding G-LOC

credit: Virgin Galactic

Hear Scaled Composites' founder and chief technology officer Burt Rutan talk about SpaceShipTwo's (SS2) flight frequency and alternate applications at the 2008 Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin

In this short clip (truncated due to technical difficulties) Rutan talks about the flight rate he expects from SS2 and the alternative applications such as small satellite launching and Earth observation

click through to the extended portion of this blog post to download the audio clip

credit: obama.com

The Russian Federal Space Agency has a news item from the Russian News and Information Agency on its web site that announces that Medvedev's government has offered membership of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) to communist Cuba

Admittedly not a missile crisis but I thought it was a different take to my US colleagues blog posts here and here about the presidential election

On a more serious note, Flight will be examining what the US aerospace industry can expect from the Obama administration closer to the president-elect's inaugaration

credit: NASA / caption: ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle Jules Verne departs International Space Station

The European Space Agency's final two expendable Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATV) that will resupply the International Space Station in 2013 and 2014 could communicate with mission control using ESA's proposed European data relay satellite system (EDRSS), a constellation of up to three geostationary satellites launched from 2012, if its agreed to at the agency's member states' ministerial meeting, being held from 25-26 November in the Netherlands

The ESA video (watch it in the extended portion of this blog post) doesn't mention this but the EDRSS could be used for ATV operations and act as a dual-use capablity for European defence forces. If approved this November it could also be designed to work with the joint ESA, European Union Kopernikus, global monitoring for the environment and security programme

The full ESA news report about EDRSS will be broadcast this Friday 7 November. For those of you with your own satellite dishes and fancy digital boxes

Reception Parameters for 4.8 degrees East Satellite  Sirius 4 Transponder B28 Centre Frequency 12245.340 MHz Polarisation Offset 0 degrees Polarisation State Vertical FEC Rate 3/4*188/204 Symbolrate 27.5 Megasymbols/s

credit: ESA / caption: This image is from a previous video

Watch an interview with the European Space Agency's Intermediate Experimental Vehicle (IXV) project manager Giorgio Tumino and a new animation of its planned 2012 reentry technology demonstrator. Click through to the extended portion of this blog to watch the video

Or watch the previous video here 

credit: NASA

Back in September I reported about how NASA was considering an electromechanical actuator and provided the schematic above of a system considered in 1993 and now people are wondering about what design Ares will use as the agency identified it as the solution to the lift-off drift of the Ares I crew launch vehicle