Open letter to President Obama from Astonaut and Dr. Thomas D. Jones urges "unleash Commercial Space"

Scientist, author, pilot, and former NASA astronaut Dr. Thomas D. Jones has written an open letter to President Obama urging the unleashing of the Commercial Space industry, accelerated space exploration beyong low Earth orbit and the maintenance of the United States as preimminent among the growing number of space-faring nations.

The open letter appears on Popular Mechanics online, and can be read HERE.

Ronald Parise (1951-2008)

Former space shuttle payload specialist Ronald Parise died at his home in Silver Springs, Md., Friday after a three-year battle with brain cancer. He was 56.

An astronomer and computer specialist, Parise was one of the developers of the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope. He flew on two space shuttle missions in 1990 and 1995 that used the telescope to study stars and other celestial objects.

He was born May 24, 1951, in Warren, Ohio. He earned a bachelor's degree in physics from Youngstown State University and master's and doctorate degrees in astronomy from the University of Florida.

Always interested in science and technology, he first earned his amateur radio license at age 11 and remained active in radio using the call sign WA4SIR, his wife, Cecelia, said Sunday.

As a teenager, he became active in the Mahoning Valley Astronomical Society and built two telescopes. He also learned to fly and enjoyed piloting small aircraft until his disease became advanced, his wife said.

In 1984, he became a NASA payload specialist, working on several technical projects in addition to spending 614 hours in orbit and traveling 10.6 million miles in space. He spent 12 years with NASA before moving on to several other space, astronomy and computer-related jobs.

He and the former Cecelia Sokol met at Youngstown State University and married in 1973. Their son, Nicholas, is in the Air Force. Their daughter, Katherine, lives in Silver Springs.

The funeral is scheduled for 10 a.m. Friday at Resurrection Catholic Church in Burtonsville, Md., with burial at Burtonsville Union Cemetery under the direction of Collins Funeral Home in Silver Springs, Md.

His family requested that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to the Youngstown State University Foundation's Dr. Ronald A. Parise Scholarship fund, One University Plaza, Youngstown, Ohio 44555.

richard.stewart@chron.com

Patterns

It takes little discernment to see when certain patterns are emerging in NewSpace.

Just as reaffirmations recently of ESA's Spaceplane plans from 2005, the confident expansion of Virgin Galactic to Spaceport Sweden and further affirmation of Richard Branson's intentions to launch suborbital tourism very soon, by way of Scaled Composites' SpaceShip Two from Spaceport America, it's dawning upon even casual observers that, barring catastrophe, a new generation of Alan Shepherds will soon be claiming credit for traveling higher than 100 kilometers to experience freefall, and a relatively brief period of "zero gravity."

The days of the "vomit comet" may be coming to an end, except for those unable to pay the first hefty fares, for a suborbital arc. Personal space travel, such as it is, may soon become ordinary, and for hundreds of thousands.

ESA's Hermes may lead to the beginning of a permanent presence of that agency in Russia and cooperative development of Klipr, which may be a small commercial Orbiter and soon world's avenue to ISS, as successor to Progress-M, and before Orion is launched by NASA.

Meanwhile, the past few weeks have seen more than one nation sending out word canvassing interest in their astronaut corps. First, the U.K., after a long period of austerity, has had their own floating of the idea turn up 50,000 preliminary applications, and NASA is still accepting applications. Now JAXA has made the news.

AFP reports: Japan on Tuesday began recruiting astronauts for the first time in a decade in the wake of a successful mission to carry Japan's maiden space laboratory to the International Space Station.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will pick three candidates using screening procedures such as aptitude tests, medical checks and interviews.

JAXA said it would announce its selections in February 2009.

The successful candidates will take various training programmes at NASA for two years before being certified as astronauts.

Three out of 864 applicants passed astronaut certification during the agency's last recruitment in 1998 and 1999.

Japan has an increasingly ambitious space programme. The US space shuttle Endeavour returned on March 26 after beginning to set up Japan's first space laboratory, "Kibo."

With its installation, Japan gains a foothold on the International Space Station alongside the United States, Russia and Europe.

(ESA also indicates Japan may partner with that agency and the Russians on Klipr, perhaps explaining why JAXA gave up plans for its own space plane some time ago.)

Read more HERE.

NASA is Recruiting New Astronaut Class

Ed White
Air Force Space Command Public Affairs

Peterson AFB CO Only 12 human beings have set foot on the moon. You could be the thirteenth ... if you make the cut. NASA's current recruiting effort for a new class of astronaut candidates specifies that the International Space Station and the return to the moon are part of the agency's goals, and this class will be the first to be trained to achieve them.

Interested?

This new focus is different according to Jeff Ashby, NASA liaison to U.S. Air Force Space Command. Mr. Ashby is also a former astronaut with three space flights under his belt.

"There were classes in the past that did the first space flights. Others did the first trips to the moon. My class built the International Space Station," he said. "This class will be the first one to go back to the moon for renewed exploration, and they will begin to build the permanent site, the lunar base."

Competition is stiff though.

"You have to ask yourself, who are the most important people to pick for these return missions to the moon," Mr. Ashby said. He believes medical doctors, engineers and those with a lot of aircraft test experience would be the most desirable candidates. "And anyone who has more than one of those, in my mind, is highly competitive," Mr. Ashby said.

NASA usually gets around 3 or 4,000 applicants for each new astronaut candidate class. Of these, the board interviews about 120. Once the interviews are complete NASA chooses between 10 and 20 people for the class.

The training lasts 18 months. At the end of the training, the fledgling astronauts are given a job at NASA in line with their skills. It could be robotics, design of the next space vehicles, or working on space medicine issues.

"At this point, they are doing astronaut training 25 percent of the time and working on their technical job for the other 75 percent," Mr. Ashby said.

Space flight does not immediately follow the training either. "The bad news for this class," Mr. Ashby said, "is that it is going to be seven to ten years before they get to fly in space. The good news is that when they do get to fly, it is either going to be a six-month mission to the International Space Station or it is going to be a two- or three-week mission to the moon. This is very significant," he added.

Why the moon? The simple answer is that it will allow humans to get to Mars. The long version is that human exploration of space and expansion off this planet could be a benefit to the species.
Michael D. Griffin, NASA administrator said in a December 2007 address to the Royal Astronomical Society that he agrees with Stephen Hawking and other distinguished scientists who have pointed out a basic truth: "The history of life on Earth is the history of extinction events, and human expansion into the solar system is, in the end, fundamentally about the survival of the species."

The U.S. Congress gave teeth to the concept of off planet movement in the 2005 Authorization Act for NASA. "The Administrator shall establish a program to develop a sustained human presence on the moon, including a robust precursor program, to promote exploration, science, commerce and United States preeminence in space, and as a stepping-stone to future exploration of Mars and other destinations."

These astronauts, continuing the tradition of the earliest space explorers, will lead the way for the proposed ultimate movement of humans to other planets as explorers and colonists. However, it is a stepping-stone process and those lessons learned on the ISS, and those to be learned from staying on a lunar base will provide the knowledge to get this nation to Mars.

Getting to the moon is not just an American initiative. According to Mr. Ashby, there are currently 16 nations involved in operating the ISS, a total of 11 languages spoken, and this will serve as the model for NASA's efforts to return people to the moon. Lessons learned from the cultural, political and technical aspects of running the ISS will roll over to the movement to the moon. In an independent effort, China is also engaged in a lunar exploration program that may include landing humans on the moon sometime after 2015.

The class of astronauts to be chosen may be able to fly to the moon more than once in their careers as astronauts. "I would guess that over a ten- to fifteen-year career, they will have one or two and maybe as many as three opportunities to fly in space," Mr. Ashby said.
At the end of a NASA career, the majority of military astronauts retire from their respective service. The one exception to this is the Air Force.

"Several notable astronauts have come back into service with the Air Force, and they provide great value when they come back," Mr. Ashby stated. Two notable returnees are Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, commander, U.S. Strategic Command and former AFSPC commander, and Brig. Gen. Susan J. Helms, commander, 45th Space Wing at Patrick AFB, Fla.

The Air Force has been in the space business since the beginning. According to a recent article in the journal of the Air Force Association, there have been more than 80 Air Force astronauts who have participated in the Mercury and succeeding Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz, space shuttle, and International Space Station missions.

The space program has made amazing progress in the last 50 years, and the Air Force astronaut corps has played a key role in that evolution. In the beginning, Lt. Col. Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, one of the seven Mercury astronauts selected by NASA in April 1959, piloted the "Liberty Bell 7" spacecraft on a flight that lasted 15 minutes and 37 seconds. Today, General Helms has logged 5,064 hours in space flight. In the future, Air Force volunteers may have the opportunity to spend months at a time on orbit and possibly go back to the moon ... and beyond.