Using Lunar Rock For Future Moon Bases

Staying up with comprehensive Colony Worlds is a challenge, much the same as keeping up with Fraser Cain in British Columbia, and all the others of the Carnival of Space; the 42 "Geeks," so far. Since that niche appears to be pragmatic discussion of the challenges of permanent habitation of the Solar System, I think we have a lot in common.

The Faraday-Kletke dynamo shield, and the more obvious and efficient advantages of simply living underground, on the Moon, in particular.

Selenology is my game, first and foremost. I'm willing to let my life pass by without a trip to Mars, and beyond. I'm unwilling to settle for a tumble in LEO, but when it comes to the a return and stay on the Moon, you don't have to "count me in." I've been a political warrior within government and without of the resumption of NASA's primary mission since 1972, and Apollo 17.

Soon, I will have to introduce the world to a true genius whose time has finally arrived.

Dr. Jerry Kletke, who I met while studying Advanced Drinking with a minor in Astronomy at the University of South Florida, was a student of Biochemistry. While I've since learned much more than I knew at the time about electrical fields, Maxwell's equations and Faraday, Dr. Kletke and I, along with the essential help of my friend since 1970 Larry F. Scott (with whom I bonded forever at the age of 13 when he saved me from Junior High School bullies) first followed up on my thought experiments regarding "personal" SSTO spacecraft.

That was in 1976.

Today, I am administrative assistant working for the leadership of North Carolina's General Assembly, Larry is an acknowledged expert with technical writing and the art of children and even grandchildren near Columbia, SC, while Dr. Kletke is apparently living somewhere in North Miami Beach, still in Florida and still selling convincing stories that can only be the product of bi-polar, "borderline" Schizophrenia. Of the three of us, I have the least grey hair.

While drawing up plans with Larry for a space ship we called "Trip," Jerry, my roommate at Fontana Hall, decided to lift his hoary head from his Advanced BioChem text books to chime in with the still-outrageous idea that we had no need of Newtonian propulsion. Now, someone who suffers from bi-polar disorder can sound very plausible. But as he explained what are now simple concepts such as "the Right-Hand Rule" when it comes to the movement of electrons through space, he stopped and suddenly began a facinating lecture of one of the side benefits of his theoretical "electric space ship." Shielding, not unlike that afforded Earth by the presense of a strong natural magnetic field (with it's perpendicular acceleration of electons).

The team went on to perform dubious experiments with Hydrogen-powered 1971 Oldmobile 98's, lucky never to have particularly dramatic explosions. Our first "hybrid" Hydrogen and gasoline powered car proved to be a bust, as was our aborted trip to become exhibitors at an Energy Fair in Fort Worth, Texas in the killing heatwave of July 1980. But much later, Dr. Kletke sat me down in my kitchen in Alexandria, Virginia during a odd visit to Washington the following Winter, and he explained his further study building upon the work of Faraday and Maxwell. I was still a student of Radio, having just come to grasp with how electo-magnetism can be used to propagate a self-perpetuating wavefront through empty space. And for the first time, working together, we understood how "it" could be made to work.

In the end, however, Dr. Kletke took what it known in the field as a "vacation" from his meds, and before my eyes and within days, Jerry was quite mad. Before that process came to its predictable conclusion, however, we determined the device we had on paper was, to say the least, beyond the material science of the day. This was before the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity, remember, and much else that would make our own application less than the size of a football field and seathed in the most efficient conductors known at the time, and, thus, too heavy and expensive by tonnes for an electric field to overcome the thing's inertia. Nevertheless, that's another story.

I'm going to have to talk this over with Dr. Kletke thirty years on, to see how materials research and cheap and very fast and light computers might have changed things. And yet, however these developments might have "changed things" thirty years on, the sheilding properties of high gauss fields still have some unknowns that have to be worked out to make them practical or essential components in the face of an approaching Coronal Mass Ejection.

Survival on the Moon will require water and oxygen, both of which can be refined from the rocks and soil, let alone by harvesting the dirty cometary slurry that may or may not exist in sufficient abundance in the permanent shadow of Lunar north and south pole craters. And as building material? The sheilding available might make the construction of bricks without straw for shelter a viable option. Occam's Razor still applies for me, personally, and I tend toward just barrowing underground, while finding a way to insure the resulting tunnels will hold pressurized atmosphere.

That said, for the moment, I defer to the experts in the conversation, put together today on Colony Worlds, the link to which can be found below:

http://www.colonyworlds.com/2008/02/using-lunar-rock-for-future-moon-bases.html

With NASA preparing to send humans once more to the Moon, many people have been envisioning humans creating lunar space bases out of metals either mined from our Earthen cradle or from the asteroids far away.While building with such materials may add to the beauty of a lunar home, it would also add to the cost, raising the price tag of us settling lunar side. In order to help keep costs down (and the vision from being potentially killed) it may be better for humanity to choose lunar rocks and dirt instead.

While building with such materials may add to the beauty of a lunar home, it would also add to the cost, raising the price tag of us settling lunar side. In order to help keep costs down (and the vision from being potentially killed) it may be better for humanity to choose lunar rocks and dirt instead.

• (Universe Today) As it turns out, lunar regolith has many useful properties for construction on the Moon. To complement lunar concrete (as introduced earlier in Part 2), basic building structures may be formed from cast regolith. Cast regolith would be very similar to terrestrial cast basalt. Created by melting regolith in a mold and allowing it to cool slowly would allow a crystalline structure to form, resulting in highly compressive and moderately tensile building components. The high vacuum on the Moon would greatly improve the manufacturing process of the material. We also have experience here on Earth in how to create cast basalt, so this isn't a new and untested method. Basic habitat shapes could be manufactured with little preparation of the raw materials. Elements like beams, columns, slabs, shells, arch segments, blocks and cylinders could be fabricated, each element having ten times the compressive and tensile strength of concrete.

Using lunar rock as a main building block for lunar bases may not only reduce the overall cost of us setting foot abroad, but also help protect ourselves from cosmic radiation (as it would be much easier and cheaper than powering artificial magnetic fields).While these thick lunar walls may be able to resist being penetrated by tiny incoming space rocks from above, it may be wise for NASA to consider "insulating" the walls with inflatable material as an extra precaution.

Telescopes on the Far Side of the Moon

A follow up to the series, such as it is, by Washington Post staff writer Marc Kaufman

"Since the beginning of the space age, astromers have dreamed of putting telescopes and other instruments on the far side of the moon, and now with NASA planning to send astronauts back to the moon sometime after 2019, those dreams of a radio telescope looking out through the galaxies from the protected side of the moon have been revived."

Readers Joined Kaufman on Tuesday for a discussion about the latest news, which he reports in the Monday Science Page story.

A transcript follows.

SpaceX completes qualification testing of Merlin Regeneratively-Cooled engine for Falcon 1 Booster

Roger G. Gilbertson

media@SpaceX.com

(310) 363.6446

Final Production Design Cleared for Next Falcon 1 Flight in Spring 2008:

First new American booster engine in ten years, and only the second in over a quarter century

Hawthorne CA – February 25, 2008 – Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) announced today that it has completed the qualification testing program of its Merlin 1C next generation liquid fueled rocket booster engine for use in the Falcon 1 rocket.

Tests were conducted at the SpaceX Texas Test Facility near Waco, TX, on a Merlin 1C configured for powering the first stage of a Falcon 1 rocket. After completing development testing in November of 2007, the qualification program began to verify the final design features on an actual production engine, clearing the way for full-scale manufacturing.

“Our propulsion and test teams finished the qualification program with a record-breaking day that included four full mission duration firings on the engine,” said Tom Mueller, Vice President of Propulsion for SpaceX. “This marathon run brought the total operating time on a single engine to over 27 minutes, which is more than ten complete flights. The engine meets or exceeds all requirements for thrust, performance and durability.”

“This was the final development milestone required for the next Falcon 1 flight,” said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX. “In the coming weeks we’ll begin qualifying Merlin for the higher thrust and performance levels required by our Falcon 9 rocket, keeping us on track for delivering the first Falcon 9 vehicle to Cape Canaveral by year end.”

The single Merlin 1C will power SpaceX’s next Falcon 1 mission, scheduled to lift off in Spring of 2008 from the SpaceX launch complex in the Central Pacific atoll of Kwajalein. The far larger Falcon 9 uses nine Merlins on the first stage, and a single Merlin in vacuum configuration powers the Falcon 9 second stage.

The Merlin 1C is an improved version of the Merlin 1A ablatively cooled engine, which lofted the Falcon 1 on its first flight in March 2006 and second flight in March 2007. The regeneratively cooled Merlin 1C uses rocket propellant grade kerosene (RP-1), a refined form of jet fuel, to first cool the combustion chamber and nozzle before being combined with the liquid oxygen to create thrust. This cooling allows for higher performance without significantly increasing engine mass.

In its Falcon 1 configuration, Merlin 1C has a thrust at sea level of 78,000 lbs, a vacuum thrust of 90,000 pounds and a vacuum specific impulse of 301 seconds. In generating this thrust, Merlin consumes 300 lbs/second of propellant and the chamber and nozzle, cooled by 90 lbs/sec of kerosene, are capable of absorbing 10 MW of heat energy.

The Merlin engine is the first new American booster engine in ten years and only the second in over a quarter century. The prior two American engines were the RS-68 developed in the late nineties by Pratt & Whitney’s RocketDyne division, used in the Boeing Delta IV launch vehicle, and the Space Shuttle Main Engine developed in the late seventies, also by RocketDyne. With a production rate of one engine per week by late 2008, SpaceX will produce more rocket booster engines than the rest of US production combined and more than any country except Russia.

About SpaceX
SpaceX is developing a family of launch vehicles intended to reduce the cost and increase the reliability of both manned and unmanned space transportation ultimately by a factor of ten. With its Falcon line of launch vehicles, powered by Merlin engines, SpaceX is able to offer light, medium and heavy lift capabilities to deliver spacecraft into any inclination and altitude, from low Earth orbit to geosynchronous orbit to planetary missions.

As winner of the NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services competition, SpaceX will conduct three flights of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft for NASA. This will culminate in Dragon berthing with the International Space Station and returning safely to Earth. When the Shuttle retires in 2010, Falcon 9 / Dragon will have the opportunity to replace the Shuttle in servicing the Space Station.

$2 million Sunshine Bonus to X-Prize winner for launch from Florida

Space Hobby:
Space Florida Announces Strategic Partnership with the X PRIZE Foundation to Make Florida the First Preferred Launch Site for the Google Lunar X PRIZE Competition

Grand Prize Winner will receive $2M Bonus Prize for Successful Florida Based Launch

Kennedy Space Center, FL – Space Florida, the principal organization charged by the Florida Legislature with promoting and developing Florida’s aerospace industry, today announced that it will be a new preferred partner and Florida will become the first preferred launch site for the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE competition. Each preferred partner offers additional prizes or strategic services at a discounted rate to all competition teams.

As the first preferred launch site, Space Florida will award an additional prize of $2 million to the Grand Prize winner of the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition, provided the winner launched the winning flight from the State of Florida and upon confirmation that the winner has complied with all competition rules.

Space Florida was created by the Florida Legislature to sustain Florida's position as the global leader in space exploration and commerce, and is the principal organization charged with promoting and developing Florida's aerospace industry.

The Google Lunar X PRIZE is an unprecedented international competition encouraging privately funded teams to land a robotic craft on the Moon. The craft must be capable of completing several mission objectives, including roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending video, images and data back to the Earth. More information can be found at: http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/

“We are delighted to be associated with the Google Lunar X Prize competition,” states Space Florida President, Steve Kohler. “Every US mission to the Moon has launched from the State of Florida and this agreement creates a powerful incentive for any Google Lunar X PRIZE competitor to launch their entry from the State of Florida and will allow the State to become the future hub for commercial projects, ultimately attracting a wide variety of small and large business entrants in various locations across Florida.”

“America’s first steps to the Moon launched out of Florida,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation. “As teams head back to the Moon in pursuit of the Google Lunar X PRIZE, I imagine that they will once again look towards the Florida Spaceport. We greatly appreciate the enthusiasm and financial incentives Florida is providing to the competition and teams around the world.”

Human spaceflight operations are a critical part of Florida’s economy – bringing $1.68 billion into the State annually and employing 30,000. But as NASA plans to retire the current Space Shuttle program by 2010 and unique and progressive partnerships such as the one signed today with the X PRIZE Foundation, will leverage the State’s expertise and reputation in the aerospace industry while establishing new and robust economic opportunities.

Space Florida drives aerospace economic development in Florida and serves as a catalyst for space-related business development, education, spaceport operations, research and development, workforce development, and financing.

“2008 will prove to be another exciting year for raising the level of awareness of the importance of space to our state,” continued Kohler. “Diversification of the Florida aerospace industry – a critical path for bringing in new business and job opportunities - is a key area of Space Florida’s focus and we are thrilled to be working with nonprofit, public and private partners to make this happen for Florida.”

ABOUT SPACE FLORIDA

Space Florida was created by the Florida Legislature to sustain Florida’s position as the global leader in space exploration and commerce, and is the principal organization charged with promoting and developing Florida’s aerospace industry. Created as a unique special district, Space Florida serves as the single point of contact for aerospace with federal agencies, military, State agencies, universities, and the private sector. As part of its mission, Space Florida promotes aerospace economic development across Florida, and drives industry-related education and workforce development initiatives, expanded and upgraded spaceport operations, innovative research and development, and financing. If your future is in space, your next step is to contact Space Florida. For more information: http://www.spaceflorida.gov/

ABOUT THE X PRIZE FOUNDATION

The X PRIZE Foundation is an educational nonprofit prize institute whose mission is to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. On October 4, 2004, the X PRIZE Foundation captured world headlines when Mojave Aerospace Ventures, led by legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, built and flew the world’s first private vehicle to space twice in two weeks to win the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE. The X PRIZE Foundation has since launched the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE and the $10 million Archon X PRIZE for Genomics, and will continue to offer new prizes for breakthroughs in the areas of life improvement, exploration, equity of opportunity and sustainability. The Foundation is widely recognized as the leading model for fostering innovation through competition. For more information, please visit http://www.xprize.org/ or email prcontact@xprize.org.

Poster answered by Knight Tracker on Farside LARC

LNEDNOTE: The poster below obviously isn't looking very hard for the news about MIT's Farside Radio Astronomy project, and from what follows appears also to have failed even to read MIT's original News Release: LARC is tentatively planned as strikingly simple, robot-deployed project. Also, the final $1 Billion price tag picked from thin air, apparently, is based on the development of the kind of robot that will eventially be needed throughout the field of Selenology, and in the immediate future. It is also less than the cost of a single Shuttle flight. (Anyone for Mass production, perhaps on the Moon itself? It would certainly be cheaper than lobbing them up and out of Earth's Gravity Well.)

Put more simply, Farside radio astronomy is coming, sooner or later. LARC will be only the beginning of what is bound to become a intregral part of a new, incredibly sensitive and practical space-based, Earth-based and Moon-based Ultra-Ultra Long Baseline Interferometry and new Deep Space Network.

ORIGINAL POST: MIT has a press release out saluting itself for winning part of a $500,000 grant to scope out a plan by some of its astronomy and physics professors to install, on the quiet side of the moon (away from civilization’s electromagnetic cacophony), a scattering of radio receivers. It’d be LARC, for Lunar Array for Radio Cosmology. There they would pick up long wavelength emissions left over from the early universe’s dark ages. That’s the span between the fading of the big bang’s explosive glow and the appearance of starry galaxies. One might learn clues to how early mass fluctuations organized themselves on a large scale.

This would neatly fill a hole in astronomy’s instrument lineup. Not many outlets, so far, have picked it up - and there’s no big reason to give such a tentative exploration of a possible project big play. The Tracker could find but two stories, each just this side of a brief.

But those of us of suspicious mind might enjoy some deeper inspection of this plan, one of several proposals knocking about and given longterm analysis money by NASA recently. The question is whether the proposal in any way would depend on, or just benefit from, astronauts as construction workers and maybe as technician-repair crews. Which is to say, is there any way such a worthy, if costly (estimated $1 billion) project’s prospects will get tangled up in NASA’s Constellation program to get people back on the moon? It is an ambition that seems sure to get reinspection upon arrival of a new administration in less than a year. More generally, the whole, winding and roundabout way that NASA’s mega-dollar projects go from blue-sky idea to launch pad could use a little more, if only occasional, media attention.

Read the Screed

Boston Herald Mike Underwood ; Wired John Borland ;
MIT Press Release ; NASA Press Release on full, recent round of long range study contracts.

And MIT's Knight Science Tracker sets the record straight well today HERE.

Indiana business news touts Hometeam

An effort to put a rover on the moon by 2012 is being headquartered in Indiana. Anderson-based AirBuoyant, LLC President and Chief Executive Officer Pete Bitar is the leader for Team LunaTrex.

Read the Blurb

Telescopes on Lunar FarSide 'Revived'

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer

"Not only would that avoid all the distortions and disturbances caused by Earth's turbulent atmosphere, but equally important, the moon's mass would block the noisy torrent of radio signals emanating from Earth. Only in the moon's radio "shadow" could the farseeing radio telescopes envisioned for the future pick up the extremely faint signals left over from the early universe, signals that would otherwise be drowned out by the broadcast barrage from Earth."

LNBLOG EDITORS NOTE: Some of us never stopped thinking about the Farside's "radio-quiet" as the place to begin direct and 400,000 kilometer long baseline interferometry. How, then, is this concept "revived?" And weren't Farside landings well within the capabilities of the Apollo Program, perhaps at Coriolis and other likely Farside equatorial spots? The problem of how to relay the data from such a site and the limitations placed on the instrument package by weight, 1969 sophistication and size would have presented quite a quandary. And high-end frequency communication we take for granted in the GHz range was barely the stuff of Extra-Class ham radio experiments at the time. Imagine, however, where the state of both radio astronomy and perhaps Lunar exploration might have been if this unoriginal idea had been followed through, at the expense of trusting experimental landings to astronauts with buggy, unimaginably slow computers without the aid of Houston's watchful eye. Though admittedly difficult, and a likely cause very high groundside anxiety, it still seems a Farside landing might well have been within the realm of possibility for Apollo -if it had been a priority.

As future problems arise (such as sticky questions like how to retrieve and restore the Apollo 11 ascent stage blow-over of the original American Flag placed at Tranquillity by Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin in July 1969, without disturbing those historic first foot prints) Lunar Networks will be asked to review present day news to discover such dilimia. In the case of the long-acknowledged distinctly anthropomorphic radio-quiet for radio astronomy on the Lunar Farside, how much of a problem will the inherently unstable orbits and spurious emissions from LPS/Cellular satellites needed for exploration of the Moon become for the planned (and important) Deep Space Radio Telescopes, and their controllers?

Answers to such questions are welcome.

Meanwhile, read the remainder of this late article from today's Washington Post.

Exoskeleton shows running best on Moon

NewScientist.com news service
David Shiga, Cambridge

Video Available

Future astronauts should run, not walk, across the lunar surface to conserve energy, new laboratory tests suggest. The tests were done using an MIT-built exoskeleton that mimics the experience of moving around in a spacesuit.

Astronauts move differently on the Moon than on Earth because of the Moon's weaker gravity and the constricting properties of spacesuits. So Christopher Carr and Dava Newman of MIT in Cambridge, US, have devised a way to simulate that motion in the hopes of designing better spacesuits and planning future lunar activities.

They reasoned that walking inside a pressurised spacesuit is like wearing an air-filled balloon. Like balloons, the suits resist bending and tend to want to return to their original shape, making it harder for Moon-walking astronauts to bend their legs at the knee.

So the researchers built an exoskeleton to simulate this, based on a design by another MIT scientist, Hugh Herr, who creates devices to aid people with disabilities. The exoskeleton consists of fibreglass rods that run the length of the wearer's legs and clip into modified cycling shoes.

Like a pressurised spacesuit, the exoskeleton resists bending at the knee, applying a force that tends to straighten the leg again. Intriguingly, this spring-like property makes running more efficient than walking for an exoskeleton-clad person. That's because the extra springiness helps to recover a higher percentage of the energy put into each stride while running.

The researchers believe that the same effect makes running the more efficient choice for space-suited astronauts on the Moon, something they had already suspected from watching videos of Apollo lunar missions. "The spacesuit is storing energy," Carr says, explaining that the air-filled spacesuit legs act like springs.

Less restrictive

Indeed, Apollo astronauts have reported such experiences. "It seems like I could run forever on the Moon and my legs would not get tired," wrote Alan Bean in a book describing his 1969 visit to the lunar surface. And Harrison Schmitt, the last Apollo astronaut to set foot on the Moon, said he skied across the surface, becoming "the fastest man on the Moon."

Knowing that running is more efficient than walking could help future astronauts explore the Moon or Mars, Carr says. "If you're out somewhere stuck in your spacesuit, running low on oxygen, and you have to get back to base, you should run, not walk, because the energy per unit distance is lower for running," he told New Scientist.

It is also an important consideration for mission planners designing safety rules for astronauts, he says. In the Apollo missions, NASA had rules about how far astronauts could venture from the safe haven of their lunar lander, based on how far they could safely walk before their spacesuit oxygen would run out.

"It turns out that walking is not the most efficient way," Carr says. "If you knew that you could run back, then potentially you could be less restrictive in your mission."

For the full effect of Moon walking, the laboratory Carr and Newman used for their research can also simulate lunar gravity. By tying the exoskeleton-clad person to a cord that runs up to the ceiling and is attached to a spring, the researchers can adjust the downward force to match the Moon's surface gravity, which is one-sixth that of Earth.

Exoskeleton Study

Hale and farewell

Dwayne A. Day, at the always circumspect Space Review, spends some time showing appreciation for the right man at the right time, the equally circumspect Wayne Hale. After handling the Space Shuttle's return to flight, Hale has been transfered within Johnson Space Center.

Last week there were two related bits of news that should cause those who are interested in the human space program to take pause and think a bit. The first was the announcement that Space Shuttle Program Manager Wayne Hale was leaving his position to take a new job at Johnson Space Center. The other was the announcement of a new, traveling “Columbia Safety Exhibit” displaying several pieces of debris recovered from the Columbia accident. The creation of that exhibit was due to Wayne Hale. And nobody should be surprised by that.

During the Columbia flight, Hale had tried unsuccessfully to gather more data on the effects of a foam strike on the shuttle’s wing. For many of those who worked for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), Hale was “one of the good guys” and was widely admired (see “Wayne Hale: one of the good guys”, The Space Review, September 25, 2006). There were plenty of people at NASA who had seriously screwed up and who had rather appalling attitudes towards safety. After one impact test on the foam, I remember one NASA engineer loudly bragging about how tough his foam was and how it was not responsible for the accident—exuberance that seemed badly misplaced, if not outright offensive. Although Hale may not have fit the mode of Gene Kranz in the movie Apollo 13, he was really the ideal NASA role model: competent, smart, and thoughtful.

Read the Rest about one of the Best HERE.

NASA & BNSC collaborate planning for Lunar Cellular Network

With a horizon only two miles away, the notion of a lunar surface with sufficient cellphone towers to prevent the frustrating "dead zones" experienced on Earth, as tall needed or tall as necessary and could be built in low gravity, brings to mind Doug Bradley in full "Pin Head" make-up and ready as always to "play."

Nevertheless, as attention naturally continues to focus on the Nearside rim of the massive and ancient Aiken Basin, which has within it's wide realm much of the southern Farside, the Lunar South Pole while peaking out into sight from Earth, for a primary permanent habitat on the Moon, NASA and the British National Space Centre (BNSC) are already planning a cellular phone network.

Most attention is clearly on the complexities of a stable constellation of satellites in "Goldilocks" orbits, neither too high or low and in orbits as unaffected by lunar MassCons and the Moon's inherent lack of mass homogenaity; flying cell towers, beginning with two and with testing using an underground relay beginning as soon as 2012.

There will be towers, to be sure, here and there - perhaps on Malapert, for example.

Malapert has the distinction of being high-ground situated close to the South Pole but never quite slipping out of line-of-sight from Earth with the Moon's libration. On Malapert the sunset is seasonal but Earthset never quite happens. Instead Earth rises less than 10 degrees up and falls to kiss the horizon, sometimes dipping low enough that only Earth's southern hemisphere remains visible, while the rest of the Universe wheels about with the Sun.

Malapert does not qualify as a "mountain of perpetual sunlight," as is may exist nearer to both poles, but as an Earth observation post, with proximity to the South Pole only some 50 kilometers and 180 degrees south of an observer, it is particularly well-situated for a microwave wireless power distribution node and to relay communications between Earth, the Lunar South Pole and for Farside satellite and optical fiber head-ins. The mountain also appears to be a good location for nesting underground or in close-by permanent shade from X-Class Massive Coronal Eruptions.

In fact, as NASA and others, including myself, have long-noted Malapert seems to be one of many ideal and even strategic locations on the Moon for a lot of Human activity.

But NASA working with BNSC envisions most Lunar cellular phone and realtime data traffic around the Moon handled a small swarm of satellites much like the GPS systems dancing around Earth. It also may resemble the high ground swarms flown for satellite phone traffic on Earth, and both LPS and cell exchange may eventually ride together.

Traffic for such a proposed cellular system might be light at first, but it may well be absolutely critical, also. Whether planners can overcome problems with Lunar perturbations and its possible effect on orbital timing for predictable hand-overs, both Lunar-centric Positioning Systems for orbital traffic control, navigation and mapping and for local communications more reliable than what consumers often have on Earth today may be needed sooner than most of our fellow "ground-pounders" can yet imagine.

Report from Silicon.com

Joint ESA And Russian Team In Moscow Ready To Support Jules Verne

ESA
When the Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) is launched in early March it will use several key spacecraft hardware items such as the docking and refuelling systems, and the Kurs radar, procured in Russia. European and Russian engineers have worked together to adapt them from their previous use on the Russian spacecraft Progress and Soyuz to the much larger 20-tonne ATV vessel.

Several weeks after launch from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, Jules Verne will reach the International Space Station (ISS) orbiting about 400 km above our heads, and rendezvous and dock with the Russian segment of the ISS. Jules Verne and the Russian Service Module will then form an integrated European/Russian complex that will have to function as one vehicle for up to 6 months.

The ATV and the Russian Service Module will not only support together critical functions such as refuelling in orbit and re-boosting the ISS, but they will also share numerous interfacing systems like power, data handling, thermal and life support systems.

Obviously this requires close links between European and Russian engineering communities, throughout the entire Jules Verne mission. To meet this need, in 2004 ESA set up a small Engineering Support Team (EST-MO) co-located at Moscow Control Centre.

The main function of this group, varying from 8 to 15 people, is to monitor the behaviour of Jules Verne in relation to its Russian components or Russian interfaces, and to interact with the local ISS Russian engineering representatives on any matters requiring direct technical exchanges.

This support group also has to work in close coordination with the main ATV Engineering Support Team based at the ATV Control Centre in Toulouse (ATV-CC).

Experts to monitor Jules Verne's flight
At the ATV-CC, next to the Flight Control Team in charge of the ATV operations, sits the main Engineering Support Team which includes experts from ESA and prime contractor EADS-Astrium, constantly monitoring the data and daily operations planning, and ready to support the flight controllers if anything unexpected happens with the ATV systems.

Since they know all the hardware and systems, they are able to propose quick corrective measures in case of an anomaly or failure.

The official language during ATV operations is English, including communications with Moscow and Houston, but the EST-MO group can also switch to Russian when both parties are Russian. EST-MO experts do not speak directly to flight controllers nor send commands to the ATV.

This complex setup, about to be put to the test for the first time with Jules Verne, has of course required a thorough training programme. Since July 2007, the EST-MO team members, from both ESA and RSC-Energia, have participated in a series of Joint Integrated Simulations (JIS), involving all three main Control Centres in Toulouse, Moscow and Houston.

The JIS programme has covered both nominal and off-nominal mission scenarios. "One example of what the future EST-MO role could be was when the 'trainer' suddenly ordered a failure scenario with the interruption of the docking system probe retraction, shortly after the ATV was captured by the ISS.

At the same time, an unexpected simulator behaviour added further complexity to this training session. This was eventually resolved because the ATV docking system experts were able to establish a direct technical exchange with their ISS counterparts sitting in the next room", said Massimo Cislaghi, ESA's EST-MO Leader.

Although the main EST-MO working location has been and will be the ESA Moscow Support Room (EMSR) located inside the Moscow premises, some of the EST-MO training has taken place directly at ATV-CC in Toulouse, in order to allow the team to get acquainted with that working environment and with their colleagues based there. During actual flight operations they will coordinate mainly through voice exchanges.

At the end of the EST-MO training programme all ESA and RSC-Energia Russian Systems specialists are ready to face the various situations practised in the training exercises.

"At the same time, their wide experience and know-how accumulated through dozens of Russian vehicle rendezvous, docking and attached operations, represent a guarantee of their ability to face unforeseen events that can never be excluded for such a challenging programme," added Cislaghi.

During the Jules Verne mission, the ATV will perform automated manoeuvres which are closely monitored by almost 60 controllers in Toulouse, Houston and Moscow. For the first time in history, three space centres will interact from different sides of the world.

Reaching for the stars … from a humble spare room in Bearsden

TORCUIL CRICHTON: on space
Glasgow Daily Herald

DAVID WOODS does this wee space trick with a mini football, about eight inches in diameter, and a two-inch sponge ball, which, by happy coincidence, are the proportional size of planet Earth compared to our moon.

He asks you to take the small, tennis-ball-sized moon and guess how far it should be from the football Earth. About the length of a desk you might guess, maybe six feet? He keeps asking you to walk backwards until you are a good 20ft away. That, he says (and he's almost shouting), is the relative distance of the moon from Earth, on average about 238,000 of our human miles.

It's a demonstration that works at two levels - showing how incredible the solar system and our place in it are and displaying the staggering achievement of the Apollo space mission in getting men on to our nearest celestial satellite.

Woods uses the analogy and many others in what is simply a good book that does what it says on the cover - How Apollo Flew To The Moon. During the day Woods is a post-production editor at BBC Scotland, a kind of mission control that rescues TV directors from themselves, and that's how I first met him. But at night, his head is in the stars.

David has written a book in his spare time, compiled from his extensive research into the manned space missions. The book he's produced is a composite mission that follows a virtual flight to the moon from launch to splashdown. There's a human dimension, the day-to-day concerns of how you go the toilet or shave while in space, with stories that capture, like the tennis ball at the end of the room, the sheer audacity of the achievement.

"It's the kind of book I hope the space geeks will give to the newbies to start them off," he says. "I certainly wish I'd had it when I started getting back into Apollo in a big way in 1995." Of course, David Woods's fascination with the moon flight began long before then.

Woods is of that generation of baby boomers who saw space flight move from science fiction to science fact right in front of their eyes. "It's an enchantment that happens when you're 10 years old and never goes away. Family, work and life come along but that magic never fades. I see it in the eyes of other people my own age. I feel blessed to have lived in an age when such dedication to science could do what it did."

Woods is no ordinary space geek. His enthusiasm for lunar travel transcends science and the grubby politics of the moon missions. He's managed to write a scientific book about the moon that is science-packed, but actually very easy to read. He may not be Tom Wolfe, but when it comes to typing words in order, a fair definition of journalism, he has the right stuff.

In 1997 Nasa gave him a medal for the work he'd done on archiving Apollo missions on the internet, and when you go to see the documentary In The Shadow Of The Moon, you'll find his name is in the credits. He supplied the production with sound archive of the Apollo 11 mission that he had stored on an MP3. I know, most people his age have Spiders From Mars on their MP3 players; David has the audio track of the Apollo 11 mission.

Along with other space enthusiasts, like Glasgow's David Harland, he can't wait for man to go back to the moon. It's just a pity that there won't be any Britons aboard future space missions. The government's space strategy, drawn up recently by the British National Space Centre, sets out to double the number of UK companies involved in the space business but it doesn't aim to put one British astronaut on the moon. There was a historic decision in the 1960s to opt out of manned space flight, but several key groups, the Commons Science Committee among them, have urged the government to think again, not least because Britain will miss the opportunity to inspire a whole other generation of scientists.

Meanwhile it's left to authors such as Woods to re-ignite our fascination with moon travel. His book has been well received among the international space community but it deserves to be a cross-over success. A BBC colleague managed to slip a copy into Tom Hanks's hands after interview in London. The star of Apollo 13 didn't take his nose out of the book from the moment he was handed it. "I'm going to read this for pleasure, this book," said Hanks, walking out of the room still leafing through the pages.

After an endorsement from an A-list Hollywood celebrity, how much higher could an author's star rise? Well, about as far as a book signing in Milngavie Book Shop tomorrow evening and a small launch party at his house in T- minus six days from now.

Woods is fittingly modest about his achievement - yet there he is, published author, consultant to space documentaries, honoured by Nasa, and shaken hands, actually shaken hands, with men who've walked on the moon. And he arranged it all from his spare room in Bearsden. He's quite an inspiration.

"You just go on with your dreams and those things you are passionate about and they kind of come true, it's a very strange but very wonderful thing," says Woods. Spoken like a true spaceman.

David Woods will splash down at Milngavie Book Shop on Monday, February 25 at 7pm to talk about the Apollo missions.

Ten teams bid for Moon prize

Ten teams have lined up to begin the ultimate flying race - the first private mission to the Moon. The competitors, including one based in Britain, have all signed up to try to win $30 million in prize money from sponsors Google.

from Skymania

NASA to Release Enhanced Radar Imagery of Lunar South Pole

NASA scientists have obtained the highest resolution terrain mapping to date of the moon's rugged south polar region and will discuss the imagery Wednesday, Feb. 27, at the 3rd Space Exploration Conference in Denver.

Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., generated the imagery using data collected with the facility's Goldstone Solar System Radar. The news media briefing is scheduled for noon MST in Room 506 of the Colorado Convention Center.

Panelists for the briefing are:

-- Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator, Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington
-- Scott Hensley, principal investigator, Lunar Image Team, JPL
-- Eric de Jong, principal investigator, Solar System Visualization, JPL

For reporters who are unable to attend, a call-in line will be available. Call-in information is available by contacting Stephanie Schierholz at 202-834-0548.

At noon MST on Feb. 27, terrain maps of the moon's south pole and other images will be available online at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/mmb/022708.html

China to launch Chang'e-II in 2009

AFP Beijing
China hopes to launch its second moon-orbiting satellite in 2009, state media reported Friday, as the country steps up its space programme.

The news came after scientists regained contact with the country's first lunar satellite Chang'e-1 following a four-hour blackout, Xinhua news agency said.

Ye Peijian, the chief commander of Chang'e-1, did not elaborate on his announcement of the follow-up mission.

Change'e-1 is currently making a three-dimensional survey of the moon, and collecting data on the make-up of its surface, the report added.

The control centre lost contact with the satellite for four hours on Thursday, as it moved into a shadow area caused by Earth blocking out the sun, the report added.

In November, Premier Wen Jiabao hailed the first photo from the probe as evidence of China's rise as a space and technological power, and said it showed the country's dream of flying to the moon was beginning to materialise.

Chang'e-1 is the first stage of a programme that aims to land an unmanned rover on the moon by 2012 and put a man there by about 2020.

Beijing said it planned to launch a record number of spacecraft this year, state media reported Tuesday.

Lunar Networks: Hyde County Moon Port?

North Carolina has surfaced in commercial space industry rumor mills again as a site for future private spacefaring. Several locations are under scrutiny in secret negotiations with North Carolina's Department of Commerce, and sources indicate the private consortium "Lunar Networks" has narrowed it's search for a site to develop an east coast space port to three locations near the Pamlico Sound.

"North Carolina has several things in its favor," a representative of the developers said. "It's the last place on the eastern seaboard that hasn't been completely taken over by development. The sites were examining all have a wide arc of eastern window, making them prime locations for launching into the orbital plain of the International Space Station to both ascending and descending nodes."

After the abandonment by NASA of the Single-Stage-to-Orbit (SSTO) concept several years ago North Carolina's aggressive promotion of two relatively low populated "inner banks" launch sites to Lockheed Martin for the now-defunct X-33 and VentureStar came to an abrupt end. The region inside the more famous Outer Banks and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore has suffered from high unemployment and isolation indemic to geology and geography since before Blackbeard and the days of Colonial North Carolina, and a century earlier the famous Lost Colony of Roanoke Island.

North Carolina has been more friendly to business moving in from outside the state, offering special incentive programs to Dell Computers and Google, including decades of sales and property tax exemptions. Reliable sources indicate "the consortium" is in intensive and very closed-door negotiations with North Carolina's Department of Commerce, the state's Port Authority and legislative leaders and staff.

This site is dedicated to reporting on these developments, without spoiling the deal.

Much of the success of the venture, code named "ascending note" depends on political developments after the 2008 election. In 2007, Google and the N.C. Department of Commerce reached a complex deal behind closed doors to build a server farm in the similarly economically distressed Caldwell County, in western North Carolina, the details of which began to leak out before the Internet online application giant was ready, and "heavy handed threats" to legislative staff, some say, came out in Emails leaked to the press.

The clam tight secretive "Lunar Network" consortium is working hard but with tactical patience. Local county commissioners have been approached cautiously, with "zero promises" made on either side.

The "Consortium" representative, who works for a well-connected Raleigh legislative lobbying firm, denied the "rump organization" was connected to Google or involved in contending for Google's recent "X-Prize" competition, offering $30 million to the first private company to land and return a robotic spacecraft from the Moon.

"They are looking at the Moon," he said. "In fact, their calling them the Consortium in Raleigh, but amongst themselves, they call themselves Lunar Networks." But their representatives in Raleigh and along the Inner Banks are, he said, "are definitely taking the long view."

Among three North Carolina locations for what may be the second Moon Port constructed on the U.S. eastern seaboarn, 800 miles "as the Shuttle flies" from Merritt Island and Pad 39 is what many contend is the largely failed "Global TransPark," a "field of dreams" contructed to move eastern North Carolina mainstay agricultural products to world a decade and a half ago. The TransPark is considered to be the most striking example of wasted taxpayer-funded economic incentive money in the state.

Adjacent to the borderline commercial Kinston Regional Jetport, the TransPark might well be one of the cheaper alternatives for development of a Space City, but the local population is relatively concentrated and encroaching from all directions; a bad place for a catastrophic spacecraft accident. Instead, the Inner Banks also host North Carolina's largest, lowest populated and poorest of the state's 100 counties, the only truly dry land anywhere more than 150 miles from the busy, prospering Interstate 95 with its many attendant Road Cities.

Hyde County, site of one of the two locations studied by Lockheed-Martin to build a launch site for the VentureStar, is losing population in 2007's fastest growing state.

"The Global TransPark," the LN spokesman said, "is not really their favorite spot. The insiders who introduced North Carolina to the Lunar Network people had the TransPark in mind, looking for a way for the state to unload what they believe is a notorious White Elephant. But the Department of Commerce people are still holding out hope that the TransPark will live up to the huge investment the state has paid out, and is still paying. So a lot of this is science fiction that depends on what the voters decide in November."

This reticent representative of something called "Lunar Networks" wouldn't deny they were looking "around Hyde County," but said "we don't want to sell anyone false hope. There's a rumor that's hung on for a generation or more out that way that Disney had plans on building another park there. Lord knows how that got started. Maybe they were planning on it once. Maybe they are still. It may be one big bean field surrounded by poor commercial fishermen now, but who knows what the southern Great Dismal will look like 100 years from now.

"And they may end up moving offshore. There's a strong contengent that insists they should move below the 30th parallel, farther south than Kennedy, where they can directly intersect the plain of lunar orbit, without using fuel to line up at the nodes.

"The ISS certainly passes almost directly overhead in North Carolina once or twice a day, with it's fifty one degree inclination to the equator, but the Moon's orbit never comes this far north.
"Then again, these guys and gals are all-America folks, who don't want to be at the mercy of some tin-pot dictator or regime with a whole army with its hand out. What they have in mind is very long-term, something that will be in operation, in harmony with the host community and a good neighbor for the next century or more.

"When you think about it," he said, revealing nothing and, perhaps, everything, "a whole lot of what may happen in a whole lot of lives depends on how people vote who haven't got, and will not have, a clue as to what's at stake for them and their grandchildren."

I pressed him, after this, to tell this North Carolina voter, who lives directly on the hundreds of miles of the quiet Inner Banks which Party works best with the secret vision of the Lunar Networks consortium, he said, "a little of both, I guess."

But after tapping his fingers in silence, as we meditated over our lunch at Raleigh's Player's Retreat, he spoke. "I'll tell you this much. Let's just say there are people in the present leadership of the legislature, and the Administration, who are being, shall we say, a little shortsighted and stubborn."

North Carolina's Governor cannot run for re-election, and both Republicans and Democrats are jostling to take his seat in 2009. The Governor's Mansion, the entire Counsel of State and both houses of North Carolina's General Assembly are up for election this year.

MIT To Lead Development Of New Radio Telescope Array On Lunar Farside

by David Chandler
MIT News
Boston - NASA has selected a proposal by an MIT-led team to develop plans for an array of radio telescopes on the far side of the moon that would probe the earliest formation of the basic structures of the universe. The agency announced the selection and 18 others related to future observatories on Friday, Feb.15.

The new MIT telescopes would explore one of the greatest unknown realms of astronomy, the so-called "Dark Ages" near the beginning of the universe when stars, star clusters and galaxies first came into existence.

This period of roughly a billion years, beginning shortly after the Big Bang, closely followed the time when cosmic background radiation, which has been mapped using satellites, filled all of space.

Learning about this unobserved era is considered essential to filling in our understanding of how the earliest structures in the universe came into being.

The Lunar Array for Radio Cosmology (LARC) project is headed by Jacqueline Hewitt, a professor of physics and director of MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Science. LARC includes nine other MIT scientists as well as several from other institutions.

It is planned as a huge array of hundreds of telescope modules designed to pick up very-low-frequency radio emissions. The array will cover an area of up to two square kilometers; the modules would be moved into place on the lunar surface by automated vehicles.

Observations of the cosmic Dark Ages are impossible to make from Earth, Hewitt explains, because of two major sources of interference that obscure these faint low-frequency radio emissions. One is the Earth's ionosphere, a high-altitude layer of electrically charged gas. The other is all of Earth's radio and television transmissions, which produce background interference everywhere on the Earth's surface.

The only place that is totally shielded from both kinds of interference is the far side of the moon, which always faces away from the Earth and therefore is never exposed to terrestrial radio transmissions.

Besides being the top priority scientifically for a telescope on the moon, this low-frequency radio telescope array will also be one of the easiest to build, Hewitt says.

That's because the long wavelengths of the radio waves it will detect don't require particularly accurate placement and alignment of the individual components. In addition, it doesn't matter if a few of the hundreds of antennas fail, and their performance would not be affected by the ever-present lunar dust.

The new lunar telescopes would add greatly to the capabilities of a low-frequency radio telescope array now under construction in Western Australia, one of the most radio-quiet areas on Earth. This array, which also involves MIT researchers, will be limited to the upper reaches of the low-frequency radio spectrum, and thus will only be able to penetrate into a portion of the cosmic Dark Ages.

According to prevailing theory, this unobserved span of time in the universe's infancy includes a period when dark matter--an unknown component of the universe that accounts for a majority of all matter--collapsed from a uniform soup of particles into clumps that formed the scaffolding for all the structures that emerged later, from stars and black holes to entire galaxies.

All astronomical observations made so far only reveal the results of that whole formation process--except the cosmic background radiation, which only shows the raw material before the process began. The whole gestation and birth of all the kinds of objects seen in space today, which all took place in the Dark Ages, has so far been hidden from view.

The new observations could test current theories about how the universe formed and evolved into its present state, including the theory of cosmic inflation first proposed by MIT Professor Alan Guth.

In addition to their primary mission, the new telescopes would also be useful for studying huge eruptions from the sun, called coronal mass ejections, which can sometimes disrupt communications and electrical grids on Earth. They could also study space weather, the radio emissions from other planets and emissions from collisions between galaxies.

The present plan is for a one-year study to develop a detailed plan for the telescope array, whose construction would probably not begin until sometime after the year 2025, and is expected to cost more than $1 billion.
The project to develop the plan is led by MIT's Hewitt, with a team that includes MIT professors Jeffrey Hoffman of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Maria Zuber, chair of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, as well as others from MIT and scientists from Harvard, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the University of California at Berkeley, University of Washington and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
To develop this detailed plan, NASA is awarding a grant of $500,000, to be divided between the MIT-led team and a second team that is independently developing a similar proposal, headed by scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory.

Chandrayaan 1 Schedule Delay

Bangalore - Chandrayaan-1, India's first mission to Moon, scheduled to be launched in April, is likely to be postponed to June, an Indian Space Research Organisation official said on Tuesday.

The much-awaited mission was originally scheduled to be held on April nine or April 23 from India's spaceport of Sriharikota.

"Now, it looks doubtful in April. We are working on a (different) PSLV mission for March-April which is important. Chandrayaan-1 is likely to be postponed to June," an ISRO official told PTI here.

The official, however, said a final call on the launch date would be taken later this month.

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.

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NASA's EIS for Constellation

Washington DC NASA issued an environmental impact statement for the Constellation Program Jan. 10. NASA's Constellation Program is developing a space transportation system that is designed to return humans to the moon by 2020. The Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement concludes that localized and global environmental impacts associated with implementing the program would be comparable to past or ongoing NASA activities.

The National Environmental Policy Act requires federal agencies to prepare an environmental impact statement for major federal actions that may significantly affect the quality of the human environment. Federal agencies consider potential environmental impacts of their proposed actions before deciding whether and how to proceed.

The statement examines the effects of development, testing and operation of spacecraft and support systems associated with Constellation Program activities through the early 2020s. NASA plans to use multiple government and contractor facilities in implementing the program. The program components to be developed include the Orion crew exploration vehicle, the Ares I crew launch vehicle, the Ares V cargo launch vehicle, the Altair lunar lander and other cargo systems. Orion will launch atop the Ares I and be capable of docking with the International Space Station or with cargo launched to low Earth orbit by the Ares V for transit to the moon, or future missions to Mars.

Because the Constellation Program will be based largely upon components and facilities used by the Space Shuttle Program, the potential environmental impacts are expected to be similar. The principal activities associated with Constellation that could result in potential environmental impacts include rocket engine tests, rocket launches, construction of new facilities and modifications to existing facilities.

In preparing the statement, NASA published a notice of intent in the Federal Register on Sept. 26, 2006. NASA held public scoping meetings to invite comment on environmental concerns of program alternatives on Oct. 18, 2006, in Cocoa, Fla., on Oct. 20, 2006, in Washington; and on Oct. 24, 2006, in Salt Lake City. NASA also solicited comments from federal, state, and local agencies and other interested parties. The public scoping period ended Nov. 13, 2006. NASA also published a draft environmental impact statement and took public comment on the draft in August and September 2007.

Publicly identified issues resulting from the scoping meetings include the economic impact of the Constellation Program on local jobs near NASA centers, risks to the public through launch and reentry of the Orion spacecraft, noise associated with launch events and impacts to animals in the Kennedy Space Center, Fla., area from construction and launch activities. Other issues included the socio-economic impacts of decommissioning the space shuttle and implementing the Constellation Program.

The Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement contains an appendix that lists public comments and NASA's responses. NASA expects to provide a formal record of decision for the Constellation Program in late spring 2008.

Keeping it Cool: CEV Heat Shield MDU Arrives

Tanya Nguyen, Staff Writer
NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center

NASA is teaming up technology developed for the space shuttle and designs used for the Apollo Program to produce elements of the next spacecraft destined to deliver astronauts to the moon.

An early sign of that combination has made its way to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in the form of a prototype heat shield, which is the same size and dimensions of the one planned to protect the Orion spacecraft as it enters Earth's atmosphere on the way back from the International Space Station or the moon.

The arrival of the heat shield stirred up excitement from workers on the Constellation Program as they were able to see for the first time one of the first pieces of Orion's full-scale test hardware.

"When (it) got here at the end of November, it was very exciting because it is the first piece of hardware," said Joy Huff, a NASA shuttle orbiter thermal protection system engineer who is spearheading Kennedy's work on the Orion heat shield. "Not flight hardware, but it is flight-type material. And just to see the full size, it really gives you a scale of the size of it."

At five meters in diameter, the heat shield is the largest one of its kind ever built. The prototype was built largely just to prove it could be done, Huff said.

Also known as a manufacturing demonstration unit, or MDU, the prototype was also created by the need to develop heat shield evaluation, inspection and handling procedures, said Jim Reuther, project manager of the Crew Exploration Vehicle thermal protection system at NASA's Ames Research Center.

Although parts of Orion's thermal protection system, which serves as a barrier against the heat upon re-entry into Earth, will use shuttle tile materials, the base of the heat shield endures the most heat and will burn away or "ablate" as it descends through the atmosphere at more than 25,000 mph.

The use of ablative materials mirrors that of the Apollo Program's approach, in which the entire entry capsule was covered with an ablator, Reuther said. The Orion heat shield also uses techniques perfected for the shuttle's thermal protection system, particularly the bonding method used to attach the segments of ablative material to the base heat shield. But since the area to be protected is much smaller than that of the shuttle, and because the base of Orion's heat shield will not be reused, its design is simpler in respect to the number of parts and reusability.

The prototype heat shield is made of the leading candidate material called PICA, which stands for phenolic impregnated carbon ablator material. The PICA material was previously used for the base heat shield of Stardust, a small robotic spacecraft that successfully completed its mission of obtaining comet samples and returned to Earth in January 2006.

Because Stardust was less than 3 feet in diameter, it was possible to cast its heat shield in a single piece as opposed to the many pieces needed to make Orion's heat shield. At 16.5 feet in diameter, Orion's heat shield will require up to 200 pieces of PICA blocks.

"The actual final number of PICA blocks will be determined by both manufacturing and thermal-mechanical design constraints,"Reuther said. "However, when compared to the roughly 24,000 tiles used on the shuttle, the final number of blocks will be very manageable."


The blocks on the heat shield share the same delicate characteristics as the shuttle's tiles. Designers also plan to include gap fillers between blocks, just as with the shuttle.

NASA chose an ablative heat shield that slowly burns off because it can handle higher temperatures than the shuttle's reusable tiles. A spacecraft returning from a lunar mission is expected to encounter temperatures as high as 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, compared to about 2,300 degrees for a space shuttle re-entry.

Because of this, the Orion heat shield can only be used once, Huff said. The prototype heat shield rests in Hangar N at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station where will it undergo several months of nondestructive evaluation testing, or NDE, that mainly includes laser scans and X-rays. The tests will be used to reveal flaws purposely built into the heat shield.

"We want to get it into the X-ray facility to use X-rays to look for these known flaws," Huff said. "That's part of the NDE task to come up with standards, so when you get a flight unit, you know what you're flying."

But before any NDE testing can be performed, the team at Kennedy has to learn the best way to move and handle the heat shield. Because of the size of the prototype, they also will have to test and develop new handling standards that will be applied to the actual flight heat shields.

Backup procedures call for using a crane to handle the prototype, but Huff said she hopes to see an adaptor made that will allow a forklift to be used instead. The forklift would make it easier to handle the prototype inside buildings and as it undergoes testing procedures.

"The materials (for the adaptor) have been ordered, (so we) should be fabricating (it) within the next few weeks, get that built and then we'll put the MDU on the adaptor and start NDE testing," Huff said.

She's looking forward to a special milestone to take place by late summer: turning all handling and NDE testing results over to Lockheed Martin.

And when that happens, the Constellation Program's mission of putting man on the moon and beyond will be one big step closer.

BACK TO THE MOON

BACK TO THE MOON:

Paul Grayson of Control Engineering, a cutting edge pub touching on the often overlooked and essential field of Robotics has tipped his hat to Team FredNet. The latter are heavily involved with the Google Lunar X Prize and may be among the first teams announced next month. Reading his column turned out to be one of those "Manifest Deja'vu" experiences, as when you discuss Elvis with someone, hang up your cellphone, and "Are You Lonely Tonight?" is the next very next song you hear when you turn up the radio.

East Carolina University with it's exceptional pioneering use of robotics in surgery is eliminating a lot of grossly traumatic open thorastic proceedures and replacing them with sometimes hands-free bilateral rib operations, an obviously far less invasive snip snip than "the old Black and Decker," as Jerry Lewis once described it.

This is happening at East Carolina University's Biomechanics and Robotics Exploration for Information Technology Literacy and Skills Project, an outreach to the engineers who will likely one day be replacing your liver over the Internet. Right in the operating room, my daughter Valerie tells me, is the Uncle of a friend who contracted Hepititis C while ever-learning to become one of the most skilled chest men on Earth. Rather than allow that set-back, which banned him from the operating room, stop him, he instead became devoted to remote procedures, which is akin to watching real surgery online, except he is actually performing this surgery online. He might yet be in the next room, but some procedures he's partnered with already over the web, and at great distances. As much as we are talking about the future of health care in politics these days, whether to socialize or about "single-payer" insurance, etc., few are talking about the advancements, which are astounding.

The grand debate over Internal Improvements in the early United States, whether Charleston Teriffs collected as federal revenue should pay for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, for example, is long over. Whether governments should facilitate commerce, by building roads rather than concentrating on agenda-driven regulation, is not discussed any longer. That's why we need Libertarians and Liberals, particularly to remind us of what matter and what doesn't.

In lunching as I do weekly with Lobbyist X, always rotating the location to some great and some common locations, I discussed these things with him in the context of my own experience with getting completely off pain medications to treat symptoms related to facet arthrothopy, which I have written about elsewhere. He reminded me about ECU, with that wink that is not a wink that indicates he is giving me yet another clue about what his secretive clients are up to. That it involves Space Exploration, Earth's relatively large natural satellite the Moon, and North Carolina obviously means it involves robotics.

Their interest in eastern North Carolina makes more sense yet agan. As my former employer and good friend Patrick Ballantine once said, the "economic engine that drives" the feeble "economy" of my home region "is the" boom city "of Greenville, home of ECU" and as excellent a hospital in Pitt County Memorial Hospital as can be found on the planet.

I'm assured by Lobbyist X that none of those he is working for are "officially" (he repeated that twice) involved with the Google X Prize, always insisting "they're going for a different magilla."

The weekly meetings are becoming more interesting, and the latest venue was also telling. We ate lunch yesterday surrounded by virtual dinosaurs and other state government administrative types at the rooftop cafeteria in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. You can't miss it. It's firectly in front of North Carolina's General Assembly, where, in the interests of full disclosure, I work for House Republican Leader Paul Stam.

Once again, I should point out because of the Post-Speaker Black ethics legislation that Lobbyist X and I always split the tab. He never pays for my lunch or gasoline nor anything else when we meet. We also have yet to discuss passed, pending, or possible legislation, directly or indirectly, outside the formal settings of the General Assembly's proper facilities. Although I've known LX since 1999, we talk only about the future, and he feeds me information which I share here about his employers activities. While he's said his clients are talking with NC's Department of Commerce, I have no idea what that might be about or why. I can guess, sure. But I don't.

We share an interest, LX and I, in amateur astronomy and the history of space exploration. And being too stupid to know how, I haven't profited and probably never will from our conversations except in life experiences.

And yet, it's very much like when you're driving down the road and a street light blinks off as you drive under it when talk turns to robotics at ECU and within a few minutes you are Emailed an article from a friend hundreds of miles away and in another state and who wouldn't know LX from "Adam's housecat" where Paul Grayson, an expert in the subject, is talking about Team FredNet and Destination Moon.

"Quite a world," said David Ossman, wrapping it all up and tying the package with a red ribbon.

SpaceX conducts first multi-engine firing of Falcon 9 rocket

Roger G. Gilbertson

media@SpaceX.com

(310) 363.6446

McGregor TX – January 18, 2008 – Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) conducted the first multi-engine firing of its Falcon 9 medium to heavy lift rocket at its Texas Test Facility outside McGregor. The engines operated at full power, generating over 180,000 pounds of force, equivalent to a Boeing 777 at full power, and consuming 700 lbs per second of fuel and liquid oxygen during the run.

“This is a major hardware milestone for our company," said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX. "It marks the first time that we have simultaneously fired two engines on the same stage. No significant problems were encountered transitioning from single engine testing in November, which suggests that we will be able to ramp up rapidly to a full complement of nine Merlin engines. Our propulsion and test team has done a remarkable job.”

This two engine test was the largest to date on the BFTS (Big Falcon Test Stand). The next run, scheduled for February, will use three engines operating for a full first stage mission duty cycle of three minutes. When operating in flight, the first stage will accelerate the 180 ft long Falcon 9 vehicle to more than ten times the speed of sound in that short period of time. Following stage separation, the Falcon 9 second stage continues accelerating the payload to a final change in velocity that may be in excess of Mach 30 for missions beyond low Earth orbit.

The test series will continue with five, seven and finally the full compliment of nine engines. With all engines firing, the Falcon 9 can generate over one million pounds of thrust in vacuum or four times the maximum thrust of a 747 aircraft. SpaceX has designed its Merlin engine for rapid mounting and change-out. A new engine can be installed in a period of hours, a feature that will provide significant operational efficiency and responsiveness on the launch pad.

The Merlin 1C next generation liquid fueled rocket booster engine is among the highest performing gas generator cycle kerosene engines ever built, exceeding the Boeing Delta II main engine, the Lockheed Atlas II main engine, and on par with the Saturn V F-1 engine. It is the first new American booster engine in a decade and only the second American booster engine since the Space Shuttle Main Engine was developed thirty years ago.

Merlin 1C will power SpaceX’s next Falcon 1 mission, scheduled to lift off in Spring 2008 from the Central Pacific. The first Falcon 9 is scheduled for delivery to the SpaceX launch site at Cape Canaveral (Complex 40) by the end of 2008.

SpaceDev to Develop Payload for International Lunar Observatory

Design to include astrophysics and communications capability for private Moon mission

Poway, CA – SpaceDev, Inc. announced today that it has been awarded a contract by the International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA) of Hawaii to conduct requirements definition and preliminary design of the ILO spacecraft’s astrophysics and communications payload. ILO will perform various astronomical observations from the South Pole of the Moon, and will also engage in commercial communications activities.

“We see this as a critical phase of work for ILO, as it will solidify the mission’s goals and priorities,” said Mark N. Sirangelo, SpaceDev’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “We will determine how to deliver the most valuable and desirable astrophysics data from the surface of the Moon to scientists around the world, while pursuing a design to allow the rapid, low-cost mission development that will be a hallmark of ILO.”

About SpaceDev
SpaceDev, Inc. is a space technology/aerospace company that creates and sells affordable and innovative space products and mission solutions. For more information, please visit www.spacedev.com.

About ILOA
The International Lunar Observatory Association is a Hawaii-based non-profit organization dedicated to expanding human knowledge of the Cosmos through observation from the Moon, via its ILO and ILO Human Service missions. For more information, please visit www.iloa.org.