The heroes this week are those involved with the space station Genesis I, a private venture:

A prototype module for a private space station has passed an orbital milestone after completing its 10,000th trip around the Earth.

Genesis 1, an inflatable module built by the Las Vegas, Nev.-based firm Bigelow Aerospace, passed the 10,000-orbit mark as it nears the beginning of its third year of unmanned operations, its builders announced late Thursday.

Bigelow Aerospace launched Genesis 1 atop a converted intercontinental ballistic missile on July 12, 2006 to test its ability to self-inflate and operate in Earth orbit.

Now, more 660 days later, the spacecraft's exterior cameras have taken some 14,000 images that include snapshots of all seven of Earth's continents. Its solar panels have also continuously powered electrical systems for about 15,840 hours, Bigelow Aerospace officials said.

Pretty cool, huh?

My hack this week is the military junta in Burma:

BANGKOK — The United Nations suspended relief supplies to Myanmar on Friday after the military government seized the food and equipment it had already sent into the country but said it would resume the aid flights on Saturday.

The United Nations World Food Program said it would send in two relief flights as planned on Saturday, while negotiations continued with the government about the distribution of supplies.

Earlier, in a statement, Myanmar’s military junta said it was willing to receive disaster relief from the outside world but would not welcome outside relief workers, a key demand of aid agencies who want to coordinate and control their own aid.

So wrapped up in trying to stay in power that they let their own people suffer. Horrible.

Labels: Hero/Hack, Space

Posted by Ryan S. at 12:04 PM | Permalink | |

To Mars!

(CBS) NASA is serious, very serious, about launching the most difficult mission ever attempted by the human race - putting an astronaut on Mars. The voyage will cover hundreds of millions of miles and take two-and-a-half years roundtrip. It sounds like science fiction.

To make it scientific fact, the United States needs to first flex its deep space muscles again on familiar terrain - the moon.

It’s been nearly 40 years since Neil Armstrong took one giant leap for mankind and almost as long since the American public was truly captivated by the space program. You may not know it, but as 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon reports, the journey to send humans back to the moon and beyond has already begun.

It's a shame we ever stopped exploring with actual humans.

Labels: NASA, Space

Posted by Ryan S. at 11:46 AM | Permalink | |

Could Mars exploration become an issue in the 2008 presidential election? The Mars Society wants it to be:

It's barely 8 a.m. as Chris Carberry stands in the middle of a field in the early morning sunlight, shivering slightly. He's waiting for Barack Obama, who is due to speak in about two hours. Obama volunteers are wary. Could Carberry be a researcher from the Clinton campaign? Or a dangerous nut? No, Carberry is a motivated man determined to see through his mission: to find out where each of the presidential candidates stands on Mars.

Carberry is the political director of the Mars Society, a nonprofit group that pushes relentlessly for human exploration and settlement of the red planet. He's the point man for Operation President 2008, in which Mars Society members lie in wait for presidential candidates at campaign stops in the early primary states, then leap out to pop the question: As president, would you send a man to Mars?

Hopefully all the candidates answer emphatically "yes."

I would consider voting based solely on space if there weren't so many other important issues out there that take precedence in my mind.

Labels: 2008 Watch, Space

Posted by Ryan S. at 12:51 PM | Permalink | |

Wired:

Armstrong and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin left the Apollo 11 command module (piloted by Michael Collins) in orbit and performed a landing in the lunar module Eagle. At 4:18 p.m. EDT, Armstrong announced to a watching and waiting world that "The Eagle has landed." Six-and-a-half hours later, he stepped onto the powdery surface with the words, "That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Aldrin soon followed Armstrong down the ladder to become the second man to stand on the moon.

It is one of the pinnacles of human achievement. To have gone to another body in the universe, to attempt to quench the thirst Man feels to see what it around the next corner.

Buzz and Neil left this plaque behind:

Also, it reminds me I need to buy this t-shirt.

(Hero/Hack will be up in a couple hours.)

Labels: History, Space

Posted by Ryan S. at 9:28 AM | Permalink | |

Popular Mechanics has a great article on the coming of weaponizing space, stemming from China's destruction of a satellite in January. Check it out:

Every industrialized country relies on satellites every day, for everything from computer networking technology to telecommunications, navigation, weather prediction, television and radio. This makes satellites especially vulnerable targets. Imagine the U.S. military suddenly without guidance for its soldiers and weapons systems, and its civilians without storm warnings or telephones.

Some satellites, however, are at greater risk than others. Most spacecraft — including spy sats — are in low Earth orbit, which stretches 1240 miles into space. As the Chinese test proved, such targets could be hit with medium-range missiles tipped with crude kill devices. GPS satellites are far higher, orbiting at about 12,600 miles. Many communications sats are in the 22,000-mile range. Destroying them requires a much more powerful and sophisticated long-range ballistic missile — yet it can be done. "You'd need a sky-sweeping capability to comprehensively negate a space support system that is scattered all over," says John Pike, a space analyst at GlobalSecurity.org. "You'd need ICBM-size boosters — hundreds of them."

Such an all-out satellite war would render space useless for decades to come. "There'd be so much debris up there," Clark says, "that it wouldn't be safe to put anything up in space."

It's a fascinating article, and the ruining of the usefulness of space would be a dark day indeed.

Labels: China, Space

Posted by Ryan S. at 9:53 AM | Permalink | |

New York Times:

Equally troubling is what we put in place of Apollo. The $38 billion developmental cost of the shuttle has gotten us nowhere in the solar system fast. And the International Space Station could have been built with only half a dozen Saturn V launchings instead of the more than two dozen shuttle trips that will be required to finish it. The bottom line: a colossal misuse of funds and a disheartening lack of progress and loss of time.

The termination of the Saturn V program also had a stifling effect on the robotic exploration of other planets. In essence, we lost the ability to deliver larger, and in some cases faster, payloads elsewhere in the solar system.

Popular Mechanics:

With the iconic Space Shuttle nearing retirement, the pressure is on NASA to design a new manned vehicle — one that will deliver us safely to the lunar surface by 2020 before building a lasting lunar base. From ensuring a safe launch to getting the vehicle back on the ground, here's an inside look at some of the toughest challenges Orion's engineers are now confronting.

Labels: Space

Posted by Ryan S. at 4:25 PM | Permalink | |

Excerpt:

We have a very interesting conundrum at NASA, and we have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about it. In national polling, NASA as an American institution enjoys a hugely positive approval rating, broadly in the range of 65-75%, an amazing result for a government agency. But when you ask people why, they are not really sure, or at least cannot express it clearly. When you ask people what we do, beyond the broad category of "space", again they aren't quite sure. And if you ask them what we're planning to do, they're even less sure. But they know that they love NASA. So NASA has what in the marketing discipline would be called very strong brand loyalty, even though people are not familiar in detail with what we do or why they like it.

I have been trying to understand why this is so, because it is important to our agency's future. If we don't have public support that is both strong and specific, the things we want to do, and believe to be important, will not survive. There are many competing priorities for public funding, and always will be. So it really is important for us to communicate to the public how we're spending the fifteen cents per day that the average American contributes to NASA, because there are other places where that money can go.

I've reached the point where I am completely convinced that if NASA were to disappear tomorrow, if the American space program were to disappear tomorrow, if we never put up another Hubble, never put another human being in space, people would be profoundly distraught. Americans would feel less than themselves. They would feel that our best days are behind us. They would feel that we have lost something, something that matters. And yet they would not know why.

I think this is very interesting, and I like Mike Griffin's style of administration. It will be interesting to see where Orion takes us.

And no, this isn't turning into a space blog, and the next post won't be about NASA. Still working on a quality 2008 field post. Let me know of anyone I might be leaving out, and thoughts.

Labels: Space

Posted by Ryan S. at 4:33 PM | Permalink | |

Space.com:

In addition to remembering the Apollo 1 crew, NASA will honor the last shuttle crews of both the Challenger and Columbia orbiters.

A rocket booster seal failed 73 seconds after Challenger lifted off on Jan. 28, 1986, causing the vehicle’s destruction and killing its STS-51L commander Francis “Dick” Scobee, pilot Michael Smith, mission specialists Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, payload specialist Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe—the first teacher to launch towards space [image].

“Christa was, is and will always be our first teacher in space,” said astronaut Barbara Morgan, who as a teacher from Idaho trained as McAuliffe’s back up and later became NASA’s first educator astronaut.

After more than 20 years of preparation and training, Morgan has a mission of her own with NASA’s STS-118 spaceflight set to launch towards the ISS on June 28. As both an educator and mission specialist, Morgan will help wield the ISS and shuttle robotic arms, adding that she remained committed to flying in space despite the Challenger disaster.

“There was a lot of thinking going on, we needed to think about what it is that we did wrong and the question about whether this was worth it,” Morgan told reporters this month, adding that her drive to educate children has been a constant guide. “For me, I can’t think of anything more important than our young people, and so the decision to continue was not difficult at all.”

NASA’s most recent shuttle tragedy - the 2003 loss of Columbia during landing—led to the loss of STS-107 commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool and mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, David Brown, payload commander Michael Anderson and Ilan Ramon—Israel’s first astronaut [image].

After more than two years of recovery efforts, NASA resumed shuttle flights in July 2005, following that up with three orbiter missions to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2006. The space agency plans to retire its remaining three orbiters—Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour—after ISS assembly is completed by September 2010.

“We have an opportunity to show once again that NASA can do what it says it’s going to do,” NASA chief Michael Griffin told space agency employees this month during an agency-wide update.

Labels: Anniversaries, Space

Posted by Ryan S. at 3:40 PM | Permalink | |

We remember that forty years ago today, three brave men perished in the horrific accident of Apollo I while doing a simple test. Those men were Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee.
Because the cockpit was filled with pure oxygen, all three men were dead within 17 seconds of the first call of fire.

"During a simulated countdown for mission AS-204 on January 27, 1967, an accident occurred in CM 012. This was a manned test with the prime astronaut crew on board. A fire occurred inside the command module resulting in the death of the three astronauts and as yet undetermined damage to the command and service modules." -Joseph F. Shea, Manager of the Apollo Space Program Office

With these words, the nation's space program was split into two classifications: Pre-Fire and Post-Fire.

They should be remembered as heroes. All three men signed up to be astronauts after being test pilots, and saw the astronaut role as a service to their country. They understood the risks, and rather than back down, accepted it as part of the job.

If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life. -Virgil I. Grissom, after the Gemini 3 mission, March 1965

Grissom was one of the "Mercury 7," the original astronaut group, and had been the second American man in space. He and White each had each flown a Gemini mission, and Ed White was the first American to perform an EVA (spacewalk). Apollo I would have been Roger Chaffee's first spaceflight.

The Fire and the resulting investigation (led by anti-NASA crusader Senator Walter Mondale) almost crippled NASA and prevented the Apollo Program from meeting the 'end of the decade' Kennedy deadline. However, it was not political pressure that probably caused the most strain on NASA, but the impact felt by the other astronauts, the engineers, and the administrators. They each felt the lives of Grissom, White, and Chaffee on their hands, and several felt personally responsible for the deaths.

I believe that astronaut Col. Frank Borman summed up the cause of the accident the best when he described it as a "failure of imagination." Failure to imagine that such an accident would occur on Earth and not hundreds of miles from a fire station. It is important to remember not for the mistakes made, but how we ultimately recovered from them.

The Apollo Program continued with Apollo 7 in October of 1968, and then Apollo 8 circling the moon in December.

They should be remembered always.

There is a wealth of Apollo 1-related information here:

• Original New York Times article
• Original Senate Report
  
• Air & Space Museum
• NASA
• Apollo 1 Foundation (Dedicated to a living memorial)
• I would also recommend the Apollo 1 episode of the excellent Tom Hanks/HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon

Labels: Anniversaries, Space

Posted by Ryan S. at 2:11 AM | Permalink | |

BBC:

"Energy security is the most important of the emerging dimensions of our strategic partnership," Mr Singh said as he and Mr Putin signed a memorandum of understanding on the new nuclear reactors.

"Russia's position as a global leader on energy issues is widely recognised."

He also thanked Russia for its support "in lifting international restrictions on nuclear co-operation and assisting India in the expansion of our nuclear energy programme".

The Indian ministry of external affairs press said the four new reactors would be built at Kudankulam (in southern India) and at other sites.

It says the two countries have also signed a series of agreements on scientific, space, aviation and economic cooperation, including giving India access to Russia's satellite navigation system, Glonass.

Russia is already helping India build two nuclear reactors to meet its growing energy needs.

Reacting to China's satellite-destroying weapons test earlier in the week, the two leaders called for a "weapons free outer space".

"The fundamental position of the Russian Federation is that outer space should be absolutely weapons free," Mr Putin told a joint press conference in Delhi.

I'd rather have them in alliance than either with China.

Labels: China, India, Space

Posted by Ryan S. at 7:37 PM | Permalink | |