Griffin’s “exit interview”

Jeff Foust
Space Politics

While working on a recent article about Charles Bolden’s nomination to be NASA administrator, I checked out the latest report by the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), the independent review panel that Bolden has been a member of the last few years. There wasn’t much in the panel’s findings that could be directly tied to Bolden, but there was something else interesting in the 2008 report, published a little over a month ago: a memo from then-administrator Mike Griffin. The memo, dated November 10, 2008, responded to a set of questions posed by ASAP on “agency transition issues prior to the presidential transition” and could be, in a sense, be considered something of an exit interview by Griffin (although at the time he was still hoping to be retained by the incoming administration.)

Perhaps the most interesting question posed by ASAP is their request for the top five goals for the next administrator, since, as it turns out, ASAP’s membership included the person picked to be the next administrator. Griffin’s response, summarized:

Read the Article HERE.

China v. US: space race or miscommunication?

Jeff Foust
Space Review

It would be difficult for one to be familiar with current events in space over the last few years, or even the last few months, and not be aware of the perception that the United States and China are, or will soon enter, a full-fledged space race against each other. On more than one occasion in the last several months NASA administrator Mike Griffin warned that he believed that China would land humans on the Moon before the United States returned (see “Defending Constellation”, The Space Review, February 4, 2008). After Griffin discussed his interpretation of Chinese capabilities at a hearing of the House Science and Technology Committee last month, one committee member, Congressman Nick Lampson (D-TX), drew parallels to the launch of Sputnik, saying, “I believe personally that we may be in a greater period of challenge today than we were in 1957; we just don’t hear the beeps.” One presidential candidate, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), even made a tangential reference to China’s growing capabilities—and a potential loss of American capabilities—in a campaign speech last week in Houston: “I don’t want to be sending Americans into space on a Chinese or Russian manned vehicle.”

On the surface, these concerns are understandable and even reasonable. China has marked a number of major space milestones in recent years, from the launch of its first manned mission, Shenzhou 5, in 2003 to the launch last year of Chang’e-1, its first robotic lunar orbiter. China is also undergoing a dramatic economic revolution that can be called miraculous with little risk of hyperbole, becoming a massive exporter of all varieties of goods and enriching hundreds of millions of Chinese. If China has the ability to transform its society so radically, many argue, there’s little reason to doubt it can become a dominant power in space as well, if the nation’s leaders so desire.

Read the Analysis HERE

Sense, nonsense, and pretense about the destruction of USA 193

James Oberg

SPACE REVIEW

I’m sorry, but I just hate the phrase “satellite shoot down”. It’s not just because, in fact, hitting a satellite with a missile—like last February 20—doesn’t really knock it out of the sky. It’s because trying to bend “earthside” words around the unearthly, unfamiliar reality of outer space is a bad fit—and if it fools us into thinking the words are proper, then our clear thinking about the events will be crippled.

“Shoot-down” implies that a physical attack has destroyed a characteristic of the target that previously had enabled it to remain aloft. For an aircraft, it could be its wings, or engine, or pilot; for a flying animal, it might be its very life. Once attacked, the object can no longer fly, and it falls to the ground.

But for a satellite in orbit around the Earth, the physical principle that keeps it “up” is not its own power or guidance, but merely its forward speed—the so-called “orbital velocity”. An attacker that does not substantially change that velocity cannot drive the satellite out of orbit. No matter how much physical damage it does, it cannot “shoot down” the target or even the fragments of it that remain after the attack.

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Google’s moonshot

Jeff Foust
Space Review

Even since SpaceShipOne captured the $10-million Ansari X Prize almost three years ago, many in the space community wondered what the X Prize Foundation would do as an encore. The success of the competition—not only in technical development of a vehicle that could meet the prize requirements but also the creation of a new industry that has garnered investment many times the value of the prize—generated a lot of interest in prizes as a means of incentivizing innovation. NASA created the Centennial Challenges prize program in response to the X Prize and has organized a number of competitions, from lunar lander analogues to astronaut gloves. Those prizes, though, have been smaller and lower profile than the original X Prize, and the overall program has had problems getting even a sliver of the overall NASA budget. At the other extreme, Robert Bigelow created the $50-million America’s Space Prize for a vehicle capable of carrying crews to his planned inflatable orbital habitats. However, the tight schedule—the prize expires January 10, 2010—and a strict prohibition on the use of government funding led Bigelow himself to conclude last year that it’s highly unlikely anyone will be able to claim that prize. (See “Bigelow Aerospace’s big day at the rodeo”, The Space Review, July 24, 2006.)

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