Commercial human spaceflight: March 2010 Archives

Is it just this blog or is there just not much going on out there at the moment? Maybe it is the Christian festival of Easter that is slowing things down with all that related time off work?

But for those of you that are looking forward to the imminent 2 April Soyuz TMA-18 launch there are pre-flight interviews with the crew at the news webpage of Russia's Federal Space Agency aka Roscosmos

Russian news website RIA Novosti is reporting that the UK and Russia could become high tech partners - is this because of the creation of the UK Space Agency? One doubts any help will be forthcoming on the scale that Russia provided China with for its manned spaceflight programme - click on the hypertext for a 38-slide presentation about the middle kingdom's ambitions, happy Easter!

Here is a 9min 41s clip from NASA administrator Charles Bolden's 23 March appearence at the House of Representatives' Committee on Appropriatons' subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies hearing on NASA. Other Youtube clips of this hearing can be found here care of someone called ISSmania6

For the 24 March NASA hearing for the space and aeronautics subcommittee of the House of Representatives' science and technology committee click here to launch the archived webcast

credit: spacepolicyonline.com / caption: Garver's presentation click on it for a large version in this browser window

So according to NASA administrator Charles Bolden in the Congressional hearing yesterday the US will get back to the Moon before the Chinese - but will they?

As the Constellation programme progressed it was always interesting to dig around for the latest multi-program integrated milestone schedule that would occasionally be available officially or unofficially on the web somewhere. That helpful document showed graphically, in every sense, the inevitable slips of an under funded Moon return programme

Earlier this month NASA deputy administrator Lori Beth Garver gave us a new milestone schedule to scrutinise - even if it has the word notional across it - when she gave a presentation at the American Astronautical Society's Goddard Memorial Symposium (held 9-11 March)

Garver's powerpoint (one assumes) slides - shown in this blog care of a new website called spacepolicyonline.com - show an Obama space plan timeline and a version of the Constellation programme schedule

Looking at the slide above (and Garver's second slide - see extended blog portion - that shows a Constellation timeline) the question that comes to Hyperbola's mind is, if Constellation was an exploration programme that was unexecutable with the available budget why is the Obama plan any more executable?

Congrats to the "Gupmyster" on his video of the WhiteKnight Two-SpaceShipTwo first captive carry flight take-off and landing. You could have earned yourself some cash if you'd sold it to us Gupmyster!

Watch this 22s video of Virgin Galactic's first SpaceShipTwo (SS2) captive carry flight on 22 March 2010 as the WhiteKnight Twi, SS2 vehicles pass over Mojave

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo (SS2) Enterprise could make its first flight today, this morning California time, attached to its carrier aircraft WhiteKnight Two, aka Virgin MotherShip (VMS) Eve, if rumours reaching Hyperbola are true - multiple sources have contacted Hyperbola citing preparations and naming today as the expected first attempt

Already seen last week with aerodynamic testing tufts attached to its fuselage the rocket glider SS2 will undergo captive carry flights for the rest of this year with its first air launch drop for a glide return to a Mojave air and spaceport's runway possible by year's end

SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnight Two developer Scaled Composites has posted results from two WK2 flights made earlier this year, 28 January and 4 March, on its website

If any Mojave residents wish to provide Hyperbola with photos and or video (preferably video) of today's WK2-SS2 take-off and flight then feel free to email me and I can provide further details. This blog does not need minutes of video, <60 seconds is enough but it will be needed quickly

If anything certain emerged out of the US Senate hearing (go here for archived webcast) yesterday it was that no one really knows how long any space transportation programme will take or how expensive it will be

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) president Gwynne Shotwell confidently told the US Senate Commerce Science and Transportation committee's science and space subcommittee hearing that "we can guarantee crew flights to the [International Space Station] for less than $50 million a seat. Three years from the time we intitiate".

However former NASA Comptroller Malcolm Peterson (who worked with the agency's administrator Dan Goldin) had said that he did not expect any US provider to be able to beat the Russian price of $150 million for three seats on Energia Soyuz TMA spacecraft and predicted a per flight cost of around $400 million. Of course SpaceX's Dragon can seat up to seven so they can both be right. SpaceX could offer seven seats, or more likely, six, at a cost of up to $300 million, Peterson's mission cost neck of the woods, while beating the $51 million Russia charges per seat

In SpaceX's defence they do have a rocket, the Falcon 9, whose technology has been tested with successful orbital flights of its smaller predecessor the Falcon 1, and the Dragon spacecraft has been designed to work with the Falcon 9 and it could fly later this year in its cargo configuration. According to SpaceX that configuration differs only from the crew transport in that it does not have seats and a control panel for the pilot. Next month could see the maiden flight of Falcon 9 with a instrumented dummy Dragon on top. Its success or failure will no doubt be used during the ongoing debate

The big question for SpaceX is, will the NASA human rating standards it says it has followed be enough to satisfy whatever rigour the agency applies to a commercial crew programme? And how far will NASA expect any commercial crew provider to go in proving how safe they are?

Care of Spacearium here are two videos of the 13 March Space Exporation Technologies' Falcon 9 Merlin engines test firing

More Congressional NASA hearing fun has reached Youtube and here Republican party Florida senator George LeMieux questions NASA administrator Charles Bolden during the recent Commerce, Science, and Transportation Senate Subcommittee hearing about the agency's fiscal year 2011 budget proposal

Jeff Foust's spacepolitics.com has links to previous reports about the ongoing political debate over NASA, while Congressman Senator Richard Shelby is admitting there will be a fight for votes, as does NASAWatch which links to reports from the space states

Meanwhile the Space Shutle programme is letting it be known what the reality is of continuing use of the world's only reusable spacecraft

And the anti-Obama space plan rhetoric gets louder with a growing number of op-eds and space history experts and even Apollo astronauts coming out against the flexible path vision

This report makes you wonder if Obama will face a Tea party death panel like protest response to his forthcoming 15 April Florida space summit but Fox news does not appear to have decided to back the anti-flexible path coalition yet

Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne test pilot Brian Binnie talks to Aero tv news network about commercial space

Mystery continues to surround the decision to add $300 million to NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services demonstration project (COTS) in the agency's fiscal year 2011 budget request

During the 25 February US House of Representatives' committee on science and technology's space subcommittee NASA FY2011 budget request hearing (click here to watch the webcast) the space agency's administrator Charles Bolden said that they decided more money was needed to realise cargo transport, that there are now companies that have come "in the last few months" that have said they could do it cheaper and that at the beginning of COTS the bidders had only been small firms, adding that "we are going to open a new round" of bidding

Hyperbola contacted NASA to ask about what Bolden had meant and what prospects there were for other companies to become part of COTS. But the agency has only responded with information (see full text of the response in the extended portion of this blog post) that is taken straight from the budget request text but with the caveat that nothing has been decided

However, considering aerospace projects tendency to take longer and cost more than originally projected it is likely that NASA will simply use the money to try to ensure the COTS companies, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Orbital Sciences, deliver on the promised cargo transport capability next year as Space Shuttle is retired this year

SpaceX is already over two years late in the launching of its first COTS demonstration flight. That was planned for 2008 and its third flight was to have taken place by the end of last year. Orbital, which replaced Rocketplane-Kistler in early 2008, originally planned  its demo flight for the fourth quarter of this year but a NASA requirement change for a pressurised cargo module saw that launch pushed back to March 2011; a date which itself could come under threat

So we are left wondering what exactly Bolden meant by his references to a need for more money, a plan for new rounds of bidding, companies that claim they can do it cheaper and a sugegstion that larger aerospace companies could be involved in this apparent new phase