NASA Rumors

Rumors abound ahead of NASA's teleconference scheduled Thursday afternoon at 1630 UT, within hours, hopefully, after the arrival of "the Rolls Royce of LEO transfer vehicles," ESA's Jules Verne ATV at ISS.

Ostensibly, the teleconference is set to discuss mitigation, the "easy fixes," to predicted Ares 1 first stage SRB separation "vibration" believed life-threatening for the crew of Orion tasked last September.

The Tiger Team charged with coming up with fixes will report simple fixes are available, but more than one blogger's reputation is on the line, at federal budget time, after having made confident predictions Ares 1 will be scrapped, and the workforce-in-place maintenance priority, NASA's investment in plant and equipment soon to be left over from the Shuttle program, will soon get the word they are, as they say in the UK, "redundant."

What better source is there than Pravda, after all, which in a brief blurb very early this morning reported 8,000 personnel are on the chopping block at KSC.

Depending on whom you believe credible, NASA is ready to scrap the Ares 1 altogether, but not because of any needed quick fixes. More than one claiming to be "in the know" believes a third hybrid of Ares 1 and 5, to carry crew and cargo, including Altair, to LEO is to be announced. Curmudgeon even goes so far as to suggest an "Ares 5N," with a nuclear powered upper stage designed by the U.S. Air Force has proven itself in testing, and is in the offing.

If so, it's hard to imagine - especially in light of the remarkable successes of Cassini at Saturn, remembering those loud protests that surrounded the launch of the RTG powered probe when piggy-backing a ride to an LEO way point on the Shuttle many years ago - that protests won't be sounded over the use of a nuclear powered booster in the upper atmosphere.

(Keep in mind, this is where engineering meets perception. NASA operates not just in the real world of physics but in the fundamentally irrational world of politics.)

We await NASA's word, preferring their word on such rumors, though reports are now surfacing of another bent flex hose, this time during a closer post-flight inspection of Endeavour, and something only a little different than the "clean Orbiter" found on STS-123's return, last week.

No big problem, but finding a way to film what might be causing this repeated problem during launch of STS-124 Atlantis, just a week ago rolled back to May 31, might add a day or two or more to the launch manifests.

Listen for some headlines, though I doubt you'll be hearing about an Ares-5N from Marshall this week. Despite the single second of time separating "May 31st" and "June," you can expect breathless headlines of "more shuttle delays."

Then again, NASA's PR has improved greatly in recent years. The engineeracracy has always had little stomach for that sort of thing, nevertheless, perhaps they've hired some experts who know how to use a real headline (such as a redesign) to blur a non-headline, such as a delays in launching a still-highly experimental and complex Space Shuttle designed thirty years ago.

And it is budget time, with NASA already shuffling stories about extended hibernations and $4 million cuts in operating expenses at JPL, and others elsewhere. Some agencies are better at crying havoc than others, when Congress is about to start hearings, which it will also be doing this week.

Perhaps NASA has learned to lead rather than be lead by the newscycle. One can only hope.

And JPL, many forget, is at-core older even than NASA. The old non-news of radiation dangers for manned missions outside the Earth's magnetic fields, such as any manned mission to Mars must risk, in one way or another. We were reminded of the zero-sum emnity between manned and unmanned space exploration advocates again yesterday, this time on FoxNews.

It would be a mistake to think any of these stories are accidental, even if they are "news" only to those with absolutely zero or rudimentary knowledge of our home star's variable temperament.