Recently in Space Shuttle Category

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

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 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

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 understands that the following will be options in the US Review of human spaceflight plans committee report that is to be about 100-pages long;

• A Space Shuttle extension with more flights beyond any "stretching out" of the current manifest
• The Heavy Lift Vehicle that is a variant of the famous "Shuttle-C" design
• Ares I crew launch vehicle and Orion crew exploration vehicle block one

The key aspect of the first two options is that they fit into the existing budget line. An advantage of HLV is that its cargo carrier could be operated along side the crewed orbiter

Other options Augustine's committee will put forward will require outlying years' budgets to be in excess of what Obama's fiscal year 2010 budget requested. Hyperbola is not aware of any Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle options being included at this time

Various media reports have referred to subcommittees' of the Norman Augustine led review committee being pro-Shuttle extension but Hyperbola understands that the report itself, expected in a month's time, will have an option for continuation of Shuttle

Other media reports have referred to Augustine committee members identifying a likely 2017 start for Orion and Ares I. A fourth quarter 2008 report by the Congressional Budget Office made the same determination

UPDATE: Florida Today's The Flame Trench blog has a transcript of its live blogging output from today's Norman Augustine's "Review of US human spaceflight plans" panel's visit to Cocoa Beach, Florida

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Unsurprisingly despite various reports on the blogosphere that Ares I is dead, or toast as some people like to call it, the rocket is very much still in the running according to Review of US human spaceflight plans committee chairman Norman Augustine in his progress report telecon to the media today

It did seem a bit odd when the first reports started to emerge about Augustine's committee asking for alternatives to NASA's Ares I crew launch vehicle. That was because looking at alternatives to that and the Ares V cargo launch vehicle is the whole point of the review

And we have known about that from the very beginning and at the 17 June meeting DIRECT and Heavy Lift Vehicle and others had their time to make their claims

What Augustine did say seems to repeat what he said to the NASA Advisory Council according to this blog post - link care of Clark Lindsey's excellent Hobbyspace.com - and more

During the 17 July telecon Q&A he started out saying that he expected to be able to give insights "in a couple of weeks" into the constraints his team would consider when drawing up the options they would supply NASA and the White House with

Hyperbola did not get to ask a question during the telecon but the most interesting questions centred around the idea of alternatives to the Ares rockets. Augustine said of the committee's views on Ares I, "It would be completely wrong to say Ares is dead in the water."

Go here to download the update that chairman of the Review of US human spaceflight plans committee Norman Augustine gave to the media on 17 July 2009 and go here to hear the question and answer session

Hyperbola hears on the grapevine that Sally Ride's subcommittee for the Review of US human spaceflight plans is looking at those Space Shuttle extension studies

The review's ISS/Shuttle subcommittee is led by Ride and is charged with looking at the Shuttle schedule and the human spaceflight gap, among other things

While persons on the Space Shuttle Programme (SSP) tell Hyperbola that Florida is largely resigned to losing the orbiter in 2010 the review of extension options will be welcomed by many

However it is more likely that the extension plans' re-examination has more to do with evaluating the SSP Heavy Lift Vehicle proposal. Its advocates suggest the orbiter's final few flights could be stretched out to mitigate contractor capability loss and minimise the gap between Shuttle and HLV