Hyperbola

VIDEO: Planetary defence 101

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:33:53 +0000

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."

Will Ares be part of the flexible path?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:15:08 +0000

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"

VIDEO: UK students aim for balloon launched rocket

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:54:39 +0000

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.

European mischief makers?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:46:14 +0000

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

Shuttle derived still hanging in there, ET tooling move delayed

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:27:15 +0000

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

The next US human rated spacecraft's docking system

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:35:53 +0000

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?

Russia searches, seeks and explores its space station future

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:01:24 +0000

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

Hyperbola off to the Oort cloud

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:02:29 +0000

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

PICTURES: Tiangong model, cargo spacecraft, station in-orbit assembly

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:58:16 +0000

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

EXCLUSIVE PICTURES: Virgin Galactic LauncherOne designs revealed

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:32:41 +0000

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

Can commercial spaceflight solve the exploration dilemma?

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:19:03 +0000

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

VIDEO: More Galactic Suites fantasy

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:52:09 +0000

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

Head of China's astronaut systems talks to CCTV-9

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:09:47 +0000

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

VIDEO: controversial Emdrive to be investigated by UK govt

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:18:40 +0000

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

EMDrive presentation at Space 08 conference, Barbican, London

View more presentations from A. Rocketeer.

VIDEO: #iac2009 Space agencies talk ISS future

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:10:27 +0000

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