November 2009 Archives

Congrats to CNET for getting to fly the Altair lunar lander simulator at NASA Ames Research Center (and thanks to Clark Lindsey for the link). Go here and here and here for more Altair related video from previous Hyperbola reports. And find here all of the Hyperbola and Flightglobal Altair reportage 

Care of Roscomos tv NASA administrator Charles Bolden is interviewed while in Baikonur for the launch of Soyuz TMA-16 and the former US Marine Corp aviator reveals that he was a Buck Roger's kid, but perhaps not this Buck Rogers. Find more Bolden videos here and this audio recording of a 24 November interview with the NASA administrator

At 5min 50s into this 10min 53s Federal Space Agency video produced for MAKS 2009 there are details of the new Vostochny cosmodrome that is to be built in Russia's far eastern Amur region. This segment also shows a video of an Advanced Crew Vehicle spacecraft concept that has been seen previously and follows this with a CGI video of the new common core booster Angara rocket family. Then there is information on the new Samara Space Center Soyuz, the Soyuz 2-3 which appears to give a 2011 first flight date

Roscosmostv's Youtube page can be found here. Videos of note include this one about the Russian satellite navigation system GLONASS, all in English and if you're Russian is very good here is an 11min 30s interview with Roscosmos head Anatoly Perminov about Advanced Crew Vehicle

Hyperbola wonders if the personal musical tastes of the respective agencies' heads influenced the music that accompanies this 6min 42s Roscosmos tv video but it starts out with what sounds like traditional Kazahk music and segways into a cover of The Beatles' Back in the USSR (this bloggers favourite Beatles song) and then has what this editorial office's staff think is Marvin Gaye's What's Goin On and then goes for some Russian hard rock - translations welcome



Beyond the video's musical arrangement (and some bizarre singing by the astronauts just prior to boarding the Soyuz) you'll see the preparation and launch of Soyuz TMA-16 to the International Space Station. While during the Moscow mission control sequence you can spot NASA space operations chief Bill Gerstenmaier, Roscomos deputy head Vitaly Davyidov and former NASA astronaut and now Boeing space exploration vice president Brewster Shaw. Otherwise just watch the video for the Baikonur scenery and ponder on the fact that the two heads of agencies are former Generals who once led opposing forces

Is 9 December the day we'll find out who has been awarded funded space act agreements for NASA's $50 million Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) activity, because the November deadline sure looks like its going to be missed?

According to NASAWatch 9 December could see a big announcement from NASA administrator Charles Bolden so this blog is wildly guessing that that day will see the CCDev awards awarded - largely because Bolden has been so enthusiastic about commercial for so long

Getting a free flight for 3min of microgravity for your experiment, even on a rocket that is as experimental as your payload, may have many advantages but it certainly is not entirely without strings

Following the revelation on Blue Origin's infrequently updated website that three science payloads have been selected to fly on the New Shepard rocket Hyperbola contacted two of the three principal investigators

Could they shed light on the plans of what must be the world's most secretive commercial launch programme? Nope

The University of Central Florida's Josh Colwell told Hyperbola: "I'm not at liberty to disclose the schedule milestones for the experiment."

He could tell Hyperbola that he'd be delivering the experiment to the Blue Origin launch site in Texas and interestingly mentioned that it would be an "early flight" for New Shepard - so when is its first?

While Purdue University professor Steven Collicott felt able to go a little further on timing saying, "I'll be delivering the experiment within a year"

Both said that their experiments would be recoverable and that they used on-board video so telemetry was not an issue

Collicott was particularly enthusiastic about the future of microgravity research using relatively cheap and frequent suborbital vehicle flights even if the 3min window New Shepard or Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo would deliver was less than half the 7min NASA's sounding rockets could provide 

NASA has confirmed to Hyperbola that it has started to spend the $1 million of American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funds it has for human rating studies. With human rating being such a divisive topic at the moment - is Atlas or Delta OK, is commercial up to scratch - the synopsis makes interesting reading

NASA told Hyperbola: "[T]he procurement you identified is related to the $1 million of Recovery Act funds allocated for human rating requirements development. The procurement is for only part of the $1 million, not all of it."

How much of the $1 million is being spent is not being disclosed but the synopsis showing that Wyle Integrated Science and Engineering is getting the human rating contract does says "The human system integration requirements developed under this task order shall be based on a review of existing Human Rating requirements".

Go through to the extended portion of this blog post to see the full procurement synopsis text

credit: Rick Newlands / caption: like SpaceShipOne and Two Black cab would have a feathering function

Carrying expendable second and third stages Black Cab would reach an apogee of about 250km (155miles) after coasting following main engine cut off, having released its payload once its indicated air speed had dropped to 40kt (74km/h). Black Cab would have been air launched at about 50,000ft (15,250m) but could make a parachute landing into the sea after a hypersonic glide re-entry at about Mach 6. Depending on its proximity to an air field the vehicle could also make an autonomous return

Newlands' British nanosat launcher presentation that includes data on Black Cab can be downloaded here. Designed for a presentation given at the 2009 UK Space Conference  Newlands has since been contracted to undertake an analysis of expendable and reusable options for LauncherOne

The
The Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) has produced this video about near Earth objects, asteroids or comets in other words, and planetary defence

According to SGAC: "First conceived at the 2008 Space Generation Congress, the intention of the documentary is to convey non-exaggerated facts about the dangers we face from space impacts. It also provides a way for students and young professionals to get involved with planetary defence by promoting the 'Future of Planetary Defence' conference which is planned to be held in Romania in 2011. This conference will precede the 2011 Planetary Defence Conference and will be designed to allow a platform for the younger attendees to openly discuss their opinions."

No, not that Ares but the Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Surveyor, a 6.71m (22ft) wingspan aircraft that would fly through the Martian atmosphere to study its surface chemistry  


credit: NASA / caption: This is a NASA Destination Tomorrow Techwatch video

Ares is to be the subject of a NASA Langley Research Center "assessment [that] is focused on conducting scientific exploration of the planet Mars using Ares"

Martlet 0 ground launch from Cambridge University Spaceflight on Vimeo.

Care of Clark Lindsey's Hobbyspace this blog has been kept up to date over the years on JP Aerospace's high altitude balloon work and various US amateur rocket projects so it was a bit of a surprise to come across some students from the UK's University of Cambridge doing both with a similar aim to the Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA), namely the balloon launched rocket. While ARCA has human spaceflight ambitions the UK students envisage an unmanned flight test capability 

Nova 5 - Close to apogee from Cambridge University Spaceflight on Vimeo.

So the blogosphere is getting all worked up about an article run by Space News and authored by two former senior European Space Agency launcher officials that attacks sub-orbital tourism and hopes for commercial orbital transport

Hyperbola stresses the word former as it is clear that ESA's leadership does not share these views. The organisation has a policy on space tourism that could see ESA provide training, the agency has managed European Union studies about sub-orbital transport and the agency has even gone as far as helping prospective companies with their business plans and declaring that sub-orbit travel has a low (relatively speaking) carbon footprint. Former European astronauts like space tourism too

Despite the recent publicity about more Ares V variants being the subject of NASA studies a little bit of good news for the Shuttle derived heavy lift crowd eeked out this week in the latest edition of Johnson Space Center's 8th Floor News


credit: NASA / caption: can it compete with Ares V lite?

The 8th Floor News says "Briefing included hardware and machining tools at [Michoud Assembly Facility] that are ready for excess.  [External tank manufacturing] Hardware will not be removed until the Agency heavy lift vehicle direction is better understood."

Hyperbola understands that the hardware is now to stay until a notional date of March 2010 but that has no bearing on the actual decision timeframe that the Obama administration will follow

So much for Floridian Senator Bill Nelson's ideas about a late November Obama spaceflight vision announcement

Whatever the next US human rated spacecraft is it is likely it will be able to use the International Berthing and Docking Mechanism (IBDM) that has been under development by NASA and the European Space Agency for more than two years now. The US Congress even directed NASA to develop such a mechanism with all space faring nations


credit: Geert Smet / caption: earlier US work has informed the European studies

Belgian company Verhaert Space is ESA's prime for the European work on this IBDM and at the CEAS 2009 European air and space conference in Manchester, Geert Smet University of Leuven graduate student spoke of his work that contributed to the ESA studies

His presentation revealed that the IBDM's origins is in the cancelled X-38 programme and that now the specification for the mechanism means it can dock or berth together vehicles as "small" as 5,000kg or as large as 80,000kg but the nominal spacecraft mass will be 21,500kg - enough for ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle or the Orion crew exploration vehicle

The planned Chinese space station is to be 60,000kg in mass. Or is it that 80,000kg would nicely suit the modules for a nuclear powered Mars ship?

credit: Roscosmos / caption: MRM 2 was launched before MRM 1

Go here for NASA's picture of the Mini-Research Module (MRM) 2 "Poisk" module that docked with the Russian International Space Station segment Zvezda's zenith docking port on 12 November. In the photo you can only really see the propulsion module

According to the US space agency Poisk is a Russian word that can mean search, seek or explore while you can read about Poisk's arrival and the fact that it it delivered 750kg (1,650lb) of cargo here at the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) website

Go here for a picture of MRM 2 under construction. Roscosmos says of the Poisk, "Its original name was Docking Module 2 (Stykovochniy Otsek 2 (SO-2)), as it is almost identical to Pirs already on the station. It will be added to the zenith port of the Zvezda module, and will serve as an additional docking port for Soyuz and Progress spacecraft and as an airlock for spacewalks. Poisk will also provide extra space for scientific experiments, and provide power-supply outlets and data-transmission interfaces for two external scientific payloads to be developed by the Russian Academy of Sciences."

Poisk will be joined by MRM 1 in May 2010 when Space Shuttle Atlantis delivers it, a mission that was previously scheduled for April 2010 and using the Discovery orbiter. The arrival of MRM2 marks a new phase in Russia's contribution to the ISS

This week Hyperbola is off to the Oort cloud again for some R&R but will return with a fiery re-entry on Monday 16 November

credit Flight / caption: Are we looking at the future shape of China's unmanned cargo resupply spacecraft?

This 1:10 scale model of China's manned space engineering programme's Tiangong spacelab docked to a Shenzhou spacecraft was exhibited at the 60th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Daejeon, Korea in October

While talking to Chinese space programme officials in Daejeon Hyperbola was told about the cargo spacecraft that will be developed from the Tiangong spacelab, of which three could fly over the next ten years. China will use them to test technologies for rendezvous and docking, life support and experiment equipment destined for the space station  

See the cargo spacecraft design and in-orbit space station assembly pictures and video in the extended portion of this blog post 

credit: Virgin Galactic / caption: why the straigth wing and v-tail?

This design for Virgin Galactic's mini satellite launching rocket LauncherOne was shown by the company's small satellite launch general manager Adam Baker at the 60th International Astronautical Congress in Daejeon, Korea in October. For a more colourful LauncherOne design click through to the extended portion of this blog post

This video shows Norman Augustine's remarks at the 22 October 2009  US human spaceflight review final report publication press conference

These few weeks since the US review of human space flight report (overseen by Norman Augustine above) was published have seen commercial's future at NASA just get brighter and brighter, what with a new advisory committee and some shiny comments made by the agency's administrator Charles Bolden - backed up by remarks from his officials on deep background apparently

One wonders how these advisory committees could inform the process for developing the new spaceflight vision that Bolden is charged with giving Obama, at a meeting before year's end or by February 2010 according to this report and this report?

Will these committees engage with the flexible path option that has been getting some good press of late? And what can really be done along that path? To date there has been near Earth objects and Lagrange orbit talk and then Moon and Mars gets a mention - but where is the money coming from for any of these destinations?

Its something to consider if flexible path really is the new way forward because its appearences in the media are not from off the cuff remarks. This report shows that internally NASA has been thinking a lot about what it wants to do, and it started long before it got the final Augustine report

More an exercise in mass media gullibility than engineering as far as Hyperbola can tell Galactic Suites has certainly garnered plenty of press coverage going by its fancy and nebulous website

On a scale of one to ten of "things that will never happen" this project has got to be an eleven. The value of this video above, posted on Tuesday on Youtube, is its apparent new spaceship sequence - this blog hasn't found any earlier videos

So enjoy the Galactic Suites fantasy space tourism and go here for more videos of the same

Go here to see the video of Chen Shanguang, the chief commander and chief designer of China's Manned Space Engineering astronaut system speaking to China's state run English language news and current affairs channel CCTV-9. Go here for more China manned space programme CCTV videos and here for videos related to Shenzhou missions care of Google

Here is Flightglobal's recent Chinese Moon programme story with pictures of the country's latest concept for its space station planned for 2020. Find other Flightglobal stories about China's space programme here and go here for past Hyperbola blog postings about the new super power's orbital endeavours