October 2009 Archives

Does this video show a revolutionary new propulsion system or is the rotation simply a byproduct of convection?

The British National Space Centre's technology and industrial policy deputy director has told Hyperbola that 2010 could see a workshop on the Emdrive to bring together the expertise to tackle the "underlying physical phenomena" that is seen in the video above

The video purports to show the microwave propulsion system known as the Emdrive produce enough static thrust to rotate a mass on an air bearing but other phenomena may be involved

Below is a presentation about Emdrive that is similar in its content to the presentation given by Emdrive's inventor Roger Shawyer yesterday here at the CEAS 2009. The two differ in that the presentation below gives information on Chinese and US interest in Emdrive, which Shawyer declined to answer questions on yesterday, while the presentation shown at CEAS had information about a vertical take-off and landing vehicle flight test programme   

Watch this video from the International Astronautical Congress in Daejeon, Korea where the future of the International Space Station was discussed by the ISS partners 

Go here for more IAC2009 videos

Videos from what used to be called the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight and is now the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight have been posted online care of Spaceport Sweden. Above is a video with Commercial Spaceflight Federation chairman and New Mexico Spaceport Authority executive director Steve Landeene and the other videos can be found here. The ISPCS took place this year from 21-22 October

Hyperbola Hyperbola and Flightglobal will report further on this Emdrive propulsion system and its applications later this week but for now here is a picture of the spaceplane proposed by Emdrive's UK inventor

Hyperbola is to address the Augustine panel final report in a series of posts in the coming weeks - as we're not going to see any Obama spaceflight policy decision anytime soon - but to kick off this blogs analysis here are a few interesting words from spacedaily.com contributor Jeffrey Bell, over to you Jeff; 

"Having read the whole report, my view is that it is strongly slanted towards the status quo and the real situation with the "Program of Record" is far worse than the Commission was prepared to admit publicly. 

[T]he worst example of this is the manipulation of financial data.  For instance, they always use the "GDP Deflator" as their inflation index for projecting program costs forward and backward in time.  As I showed over two years ago this index grossly understates the real increase of space project costs over time. NASA calculates their own "NASA New Start Index" which is higher than the GDP deflator and even higher than the Consumer Price Index you see in the news.

Watch this video from the Internatonal Astronautical Congress in Daejeon, Korea first plenary session where heads of the world's major space agencies discuss the future

Go here for more IAC2009 videos

Watch this video of the Internatonal Astronautical Congress in Daejeon, Korea where Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn, Sierra Nevada vice president Mark Sirangelo, the FAA's head of commercial space transportation George Nield and New Mexico space grant consortium director Pat Hynes spoke about private access to space

Go here for more IAC2009 videos

This week Hyperbola will be reporting from the European air and space conference 2009 being held in the UK city of Manchester

Organised by the Council of European Aerospace Societies the conference has presentations on satellite servicing robotics, space debris, Mars sample return rover designs, space situational awareness, the future of satellites, European launcher development and European Space Agency, European Defence Agency cooperation

Don't forget you can follow Hyperbola on twitter @flighthyperbola and get sneak previews of flightglobal.com stories to come, breaking news facts and figures and see how events unfold through pictures from the very occasion Hyperbola is reporting from. How much is the Indian manned space programme going to cost or what mission does the European Union see as a priority for its exploration vision? Find the answers @flighthyperbola

credit Reaction Engines / caption: Skylon rendezvous with ISS

Reaction Engines' Skylon single stage to orbit vehicle is shown here in close proximity to the International Space Station. The UK SSTO is undergoing changes with greater payload bay detail, Hyperbola will make public more info soon

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In the above video European Commission (EC) president José Manuel Durão Barroso, recently appointed for a second term, extolls the virtues of space for society at 'The Ambitions of Europe in Space' conference held on on 15 and 16 October. But its the timing of this conference that speaks louder

This conference, which apparently brought together members of the European Parliament, EC, Council of the EU, agencies, industry, research entities, [satellite?] operators, financing institutions and the media - Hyperbola was in Korea at the time - has occured just before the 1st EU - European Space Agency international conference on human space exploration that is being held on 23 October in Prague - Hyperbola is attending this

Since 2003 the EU has been developing its space policy with green papers and white papers and agreed a joint European space policy with ESA in 2007. The green and white papers mentioned human space exploration but it was never included in the policy - under which "space councils" are held for coordination between the two organisations

The EU has funded research carried out on the International Space Station and ESA would be very happy with another source of funding for its activities. One beneficiary of this new relationship could be the Advanced Re-entry Vehicle (ARV) cargo return capable spacecraft. Starved of the €300 million in funds it was originally thought to need for a 2011 go-ahead for a 2016 entry into service this spacecraft could be the basis for "Europe" to pay for its astronauts to work on the ISS from 2016 to 2020 and beyond

After the ESA member states failed to stump up the cash the EU, which is awash with money not spent for its largest programe, agriculture (so much so it is paying for Galileo satellite navigation programme cost overruns with some of it) it could provide the missing €260 million

On Monday 12 October Flightglobal reported that NASA administrator Charles Bolden said that a heavy lift vehicle was necessary for exploration and that a vehicle was being costed

Talking to sources within the Ares V project and close to the Space Shuttle programme office's Shuttle-derived Heavy Lift Vehicle team it has become clear that while Bolden' choice of words suggested a single vehicle concept was under study, the reality is that HLV is still in the running

Bolden's comments on what he thinks is needed, a heavy lift rocket for exploration and commercial vehicles for LEO access within a constrained budget (Bolden mentioned that he would need to organise "overguides", additional funding requests for the FY2011 budget, for the likes of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, a replacement for which - after its launch failure - has not been budgeted for), pointed to a decision by the administrator that the Augustine panel's second option and its designated "Ares V lite" heavy lift vehicle had been selected

On Friday 16 October at the International Astronautical Congress in Daejeon, Korea NASA's Charles Cockrell, associate director at the agency's Langley Research Center's systems engineering directorate, said that the Ares V project office was working on "trade studies of Ares V variants to feed that [human spaceflight policy] decision making process"

However sources close to the HLV team tell Hyperbola that "Yes the shuttle derived side mount, HLV, is one of the heavy lift launch vehicles being considered"

As Bolden is an ex-Shuttle astronaut it is perhaps not surprising that he might be open to the Shuttle programme office's ideas and so this blog asks the question, will anything of Constellation survive this review?

Despite NASA declining to confirm that Space Shuttle Discovery's mission STS-133 will leave the Italian designed and built Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Raffaello at the station and the latest mission information echoing comments made to Hyperbola by the space agency's ISS programme manager, the Space Shuttle programme manifest below shows that STS-133's payload is being referred to as PLM, the acronym for the Permanent Logistics Module project. This involves modifying Raffaello for its permanent attachment to the space station

The manifest also shows that Shuttle's last mission, STS-133, occuring in September but during NASA administrator Charles Bolden's interview with this blogger on Monday 12 October at the International Astronautical Congress in Deajeon, Korea he said that Shuttle would retire in 2011. Bolden is a former Shuttle astronaut and like many close to the programme probably expects slippage in the busy 2010 launch schedule

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Senior China space programme officials spoke at the 60th International Astronautical Congress' "Late breaking news" session on the morning of 15 October, giving an insight into the country's planning for long term space missions and manned flights beyond low Earth orbit

In the above video an overview of the history of the Chinese manned programme is given as well as details about future missions including a 60,000kg space station in 2020. There are also brief references made to concept studies for a manned lander, presumably lunar, exploration mission

Read this story for more details about the three-crew space station and manned Moon mission planning

Go here for more IAC 2009 videos

Inflatable domes, laser lights, a sunset and documentary film makers could all be features of Virgin Galactic's Monday 7 December roll-out of its SpaceShipTwo at Scaled Composites' Mojave air and spaceport hangars in California - above SS2 is filmed by Hyperbola on 28 July 2008 at Scaled's facility

credit: CMSE / caption: this is a three module station

These Chinese space station concepts were presented by China Manned Space Engineering deputy general designer Wang Zhonggui at International Astronautical Congress in Daejeon, Korea on 15 October. The space station would be about 60tons and would be operational from 2020 with Shenzhou providing crew transport and cargo spacecraft that will use structural technology from China's rednezvous and docking test vehicle Tiangong that will be launched in 2011. Zhonggui also explained to Fligthgloal that a Chinese manned Moon mission was under discussion by the space programme's scientists though no timeframe for any mission had been discussed 


credit CMSE / caption:

NASA had told Hyperbola its administrator Charles Bolden was not going to be available here in Daejeon, Korea but a bit of persistence goes a long way and over a few minutes after the heads of agency plenary session Bolden gave away some interesting details about his thinking on the future of US human spaceflight policy

What was surprising was the degree to which Bolden had clearly already decided that Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles were not going to be a part of that future. Despite this journalist's prodding about the interest shown in EELVs during the Augustine review Bolden was very clear, they were not man rated and multiple launch scenarios with LEO rendezvous and docking was just a no-no; so this was one former two-star US Marine Corp general this blogger decided it was not worth arguing with

But even before the EELVs were outright rejected Bolden was adamant beyond LEO exploration needed a heavy lift vehicle. One wonders what heavy lift vehicle exactly is being costed by the agency, Bolden was guided away by his minders at this point, but the other elements that Bolden was describing match very closely the Augustine summary report's option two; making the heavy lift vehicle the Ares V lite

And of course this also means propellant depots are unlikely to see the light of day evey 45min either

To date this blog has been expecting a decision on US human spaceflight policy before Christmas so that the new policy could be incorporated into the FY2011 budget. Remember when the FY2010 budget request talked of a second budgetary submission to Congress following the review? But if a decision is months off - well there is universal health care and a new Afgan war strategy to sort out first - then appropriations specifically for this new policy may not appear until FY2012. And what does that mean for the Augustine committee's $2.5 billion commercial crew proposal, or any commercial transportation initiative? 

So "Yes we can" now has less immediacy to it and for NASA it's now more of "Yes, in due course"

credit NASA

Can the heads of programme and heads of agency meetings shown above and described as TBC for their December and June 2010 dates really come about or will president Barack Obama end it all?

This diagram is from the joint NASA, ESA presentation for the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) 2009 in Daejeon, Korea about the outcomes of the International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG) workshops. The ISECG was formed as a forum for the world's space agencies to plan out a common lunar exploration future

But will the recommendations the new NASA administrator Charles Bolden will give to his president before the end of the year permanently postpone a truly international lunar exploration plan? This week's IAC might deliver the answers

credit JAXA / caption: Has Fig.6-1 spilled the beans?

Has the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency given the game away with this diagram from an International Astronautical Congress 2009 JAXA International Space Station plans presentation?

Is that a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy with Orion I see before me and what's with the human lander demonstration in 2025?

Is this the new plan, broadly speaking? Has the grapevine network between the different space agencies led the Japanese to broadly sketch out how they expect human Moon exploration to evolve after friendly email banter with their NASA counterparts?

It's certainly intriguing but then it could just be JAXA's plan and that Orion like spacecraft could be a JAXA vision vehicle for a 2020-era Japanese manned transportation system. Then again the human lander demo reference could explain the mysterious March International Space Exploration Coordination Group statement that indicated Altair may not be the only crewed lander - I never did get any sense out of the agencies about who this statement referred too. Stay tuned for more info about the international lunar exploration plans this week

credit: IAF/KARI

So Hyperbola has finally touched down in Daejeon in south Korea, after a scorching reentry from the Oort cloud, or was that just the effect of the Korean spicy Kimchi pickle and the even more spicy red pepper paste, Kochu Chang, they put on most of their food?

Either way it is a countdown now to the start of the 60th International Astronautical Congress and the space agencies' plenary session, so expect pictures and pithy comment from this blog as the week unfolds with everything from grand human exploration visions to suborbital tourism

But it won't end with Hyperbola's Asiana flight out of Seoul next weekend, oh no, the international space theme continues with the AIAA/DLR International hypersonics and spaceplanes conference in Bremen, Germany next week

Hyperbola is launching to the Oort cloud for a week's R&R from today and will be returning via Daejeon, Korea from the 12 October. In Daejeon Hyperbola will be blogging from the International Astronautical Congress, where the world's space community meets. And yes there may even be Virgin Galactic news there...

Khrunichev Space Center has successfully fired its Angara family Universal Rocket Module-1 again. Go here for more information and pictures

The comments system on Hyperbola is now up and running again and all the comments placed on hold are now published. Thanks for your patience 

Much of the media coverage (linked too here and here) about the Government Accountability Office report on NASA's Constellation programme has focused on the funding angle and cost estimates but Hyperbola found buried on page nine the following:

"We have reported on several occasions that within NASA's acquisition framework, the preliminary design/non-advocate review--the hurdle marking transition from program formulation to program implementation--is the point at which development projects should have a sound business case in hand. NASA's Systems Engineering Policy states that the preliminary design review demonstrates that the preliminary design meets all system requirements with acceptable risk and within the cost and schedule constraints. NASA realized that the Orion project was not ready to complete the preliminary design review process as planned and delayed its initiation from summer 2008 to summer 2009. Furthermore, although NASA officially closed the Ares I preliminary design review process in September 2008, it deferred resolution of the thrust oscillation issue until the Constellation program preliminary design review in March 2010." 

And the GAO report's conclusion says "the failure to establish a sound business case has placed the program in a poor risk posture to proceed into implementation as planned in 2010." 

This journalist's question for NASA was, "why did the Constellation programme think that it could close its vehicles' PDR processes when so much remaining technical uncertainty meant that by other government definitions the space agency could not claim to have mitigated enough risk to confidently plan for the programme's next stages so they could meet budget and first flight targets?"

Flightglobal's story on this can be found here. Click through to the extended portion of this blog post to see NASA's full answer

Congressional support for NASA's return to the Moon Constellation programme can now be seen to have made a material impact on efforts to get commercial ventures underway, in this story on flightglobal.com

Back in April Hyperbola reported how the $150 million for commercial would likely be spent and in an answer to this journalist's question during a 7 May 2009 Space Operations Mission Directorate budget telecon SOMD head William Gestenmaire explained what accelerating out-year cargo flights meant for the human rating work for possible commercial crew

And with the announcement of the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) programme in the thrid quarter, along with the earlier publication of the $150 million figure, the future looked bright for private transportation

But looking back at open sources on what went on from May to September, while everyone was focused on the Review of US human space flight plans committee, it can be seen that commercial crew and cargo has had a rough time

·      Below is NASA's answer to Hyperbola's question about multiple efforts for docking systems that seemed to be springing up everywhere

As well as progress with the Orion crew exploration vehicle's LIDS NASA has informed Hyperbola that $15 million is to be spent on docking system work for the agency's commercial crew and cargo programme and last week the European Space Agency explained to this blog that it too was co-operating with NASA on a docking system that is called the Common Berthing and Docking Mechanism 


"[Low Impact Docking System] is the baselined docking mechanism for Constellation/Orion.

·         ISS has assumed responsibility for building a new docking adapter for the US [International Space Station segment]

o   Replaces the existing Pressurized Mating Adapter (PMA) based [Androgynous Peripheral Assembly System (APAS)] docking system used for Shuttle

o   ATLAS (remember that ATLAS stands for APAS to LIDS Adapter System) has been transferred from Orion to ISS and integrated into new project called Common Docking Adapter (CDA)

o   CDA Project has been asked to develop a new International Docking Standard, which would identify key technical requirements that would allow many different designs for docking spacecraft. If an agreement can be reached and the agency implements the standard on ISS, LIDS may be slightly modified to interface with the standard [emphasis added].

·         $15M in [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 2009] funding is being used to develop requirements for a new docking adapter and building components for a demonstration International Docking Standard

 ·         The docking standard is being worked by an international group including [Canadian Space Agency], ESA, [Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency], NASA, and [Rocket and Space Corporation] Energia; the intent is to provide a standard for use by any nation or commercial company to provide the ability to dock spacecraft."