The Gap in U.S. manned spaceflight

The drop tests of the Enterprise Space Shuttle test platform, beginning in 1977 and four years before Columbia finally launched, were dreary teasers of a program long on promises and short on funding. The original manned spaceflight 'gap,' according to David S. F. Portree, colors the end of the Shuttle program with unnecessary dread. The "Gap" of the present day is hardly a gap at all in comparison. The needless dread attaches itself to an all-too-human inability to fully prepare one's self for the "wholly new" [NASA].

David S. F. Portree
WIRED

July 1979 was the busiest month for American spaceflight I could remember, and it was a mixed bag. On the one hand, Skylab fell from orbit, pelting Australia with debris. Where the heck was the Shuttle, which was supposed to have saved it? That was bad. On the other hand, Voyager 2 zipped through the Jupiter system, returning more breathtaking (and freaking weird) views of the planet’s intricate zones and bands and crazy moons. (Voyager 1 had flown by Jupiter earlier in the year, making new data from Voyager 2 eagerly anticipated.) That was terrific.

July 1979 also marked four years since Americans had flown in space, three years since Viking 1 had landed on Mars and found no recognizable life, and 10 years since the first men had walked on the moon. The Shuttle was late, I couldn’t get a date, and the first Star Trek movie wouldn’t be out until Christmas.

Much has been made of the current “gap in U.S. spaceflight.” Some even bemoan “the end of U.S. spaceflight.” Poppycock. You call this a gap? I’ll tell you about a gap. I was in 6th grade when the last crew left Skylab (February 1974). A year and a half later Apollo-Soyuz flew. Then, nothing – no Americans in space at all – until April 1981, when I was a sophomore in college. On the plus side, somewhere in there I got a date.

There was no Internet then and no cable TV. Unless a mission was happening, space news was tough to come by. Heck, even if a mission was happening, it was hard to find out what was going on. NASA published infrequent mission updates on paper, and wasn’t always good about sending them via snailmail to space-cadet teenagers. I remember specific issues of magazines that contained a lot of space news because that made them unusual. They were like freak rain squalls in the space cadet desert.

Being able to remember the Apollo landings made the 1970s gap worse. Even though I had been about to start 2nd grade when Neil and Buzz cavorted on the Sea of Tranquillity, I had sensed that we were at the beginning of something magnificent. I lacked the words to express how terribly wrong it seemed when, just three and a half years later, Apollo 17 returned to Earth and the moon missions ended.

During The Great 1970s Gap, humans continued to fly in space. Soviet cosmonauts worked on board Salyut space stations, but their program was deeply mysterious. They claimed that they had never intended to send men to the moon. We had, they said, spent a lot of money and risked astronaut lives to race ourselves. Many spaceflight opponents repeated that propaganda on the 10th anniversary of Apollo 11.

Skylab’s untimely demise happened 11 days before the 10th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, spoiling the party. Not that anyone threw a party to celebrate Apollo 11′s 10th anniversary; there was nothing like Yuri’s Night in 1979. It seemed that no one mentioned Apollo 11 without also mentioning Skylab, as if the latter had diminished the epic significance of the former. They didn’t mention Voyager 2 much on the Apollo 11 anniversary, as I recall, even though it was inside the Jupiter moon system when Skylab fell. After all, the Voyagers were just machines operated on behalf of goofy scientists (this was before Cosmos and planetary scientist Carl Sagan’s rise to pop culture icon).

Fast forward to April 2012.

Ares I not dead yet...

Ian O'Neill
AstroEngine

You may be forgiven for thinking that President Obama had decided on the future of NASA’s human spaceflight plans yesterday, but in an official (note: official) statement from the White House today, Obama says that he has made no such decision.

In a nutshell, NASA would get an additional $1 billion in funding and start work on a new (yet undetermined) heavy-lift launch system. Good news for NASA, but not-so-good news for the Ares I (and possibly Ares V, although the larger rocket wasn’t mentioned). Also, this magical silver bullet of a “new” launch vehicle would be ready for blast-off in 2018.

Read the Skinny, HERE.

Shuttle Workers fear end of program

“At the end of the day, flying high-technology machines into space is a business in which safety rides on the shoulders of skilled, hard-working folks.”

The Jacksonville Observer

Half of NASA’s shuttle workers are worried about their future after next year’s fleet retirement, an employee survey shows.

Sixty percent are dissatisfied with information they are receiving about the shutdown and NASA’s future.

Three of four might leave for the right opportunity.

But only 5 percent are actively seeking new jobs.

In fact, 80 percent are likely to stay through the six remaining missions. And most supervisors believe they’ll have the right people with the right skills to finish the program safely.

The findings – outlined in NASA employee surveys obtained by Florida Today through the Freedom of Information Act – illuminate a major safety issue.

Losing critically skilled workers is a top risk for the $3 billion-a-year shuttle program, ranking right up there with potential rocket booster or engine failures.

An exodus would raise the chances of catastrophe as NASA aims to complete the International Space Station.

“I can’t think of anything more important,” said Retired Navy Vice Adm. Joseph Dyer, chairman of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, which was created by Congress after the 1967 Apollo 1 launch pad fire.

Read the story HERE.

Bob Crippen weighs in on 'Gap'

Obama must minimize downtime
before NASA's next big project

Houston Chronicle

On July 20, people around the world will celebrate an American triumph. The 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing recalls a period of ingenuity and perseverance that captured the world’s imagination. I was in Houston interviewing with NASA for a spot in the astronaut corps during that phenomenal yet bittersweet moment. Even as humans touched the lunar surface for the first time, we knew we wouldn’t be doing it much longer. The program was winding down because of budget constraints.

The Apollo 11 anniversary this year and the scheduled end of the shuttle program next year evoke many of the same conflicting emotions we felt behind the scenes in 1969. When Apollo missions ended in 1972, thousands of our brightest and most committed became unemployed.

The current plan calls for a several-years-long gap between the end of the shuttle program and the first flight of the Constellation program, NASA’s initiative to return to the moon and beyond. That gap could mean another brain drain as talented, skilled contractors and NASA employees must take their institutional knowledge elsewhere.

We were in that situation when we started the shuttle program — training a new, inexperienced workforce. As one of the few people in the world who has piloted a never-before-flown spacecraft, I’m here to tell you — you want experienced engineers and technicians on your team.

I also witnessed firsthand the economic devastation of the aerospace industry downturn while working at Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the 1970s. The six-year gap between the Apollo and shuttle programs cost America more than 400,000 jobs. The Space Coast, Houston and other cities that thrived on aerospace were hit especially hard. Once again, we face the prospect of thousands of layoffs and the residual economic blow nationwide.

Based on the long-term view of President Obama’s support for America’s space exploration program, my fervent hope is that he will both minimize the gap and build on JFK’s vision, returning America to its greatness as a space-faring nation.

Read Crip's Op-Ed HERE.

Hat Tip to HobbySpace...
RLV and Space Transport News

...for bringing to our divided attentions the "latest issue of Aviation Week" featuring "a couple of interesting items."

Aerospace Corp. sees wider ‘Gap’ with cheaper Delta IV:

"Report on human-rated Delta IV will shape the Augustine panel debate on Ares I "

Because this article required a subscription, and "reports on an Aerospace Corp study of six variations of the Delta IV to fly the Orion capsule," you can follow the story HERE.

Lost in space, rescued by private enterprise

Op Ed by David Kerr
Fredricksburg, Virginia
The Free Lance Star

DURING the first decade of the 21st century there has been a quiet revolution taking place in America's space program. It began in 2004 when Scaled Composites Inc. launched the first-ever privately funded craft to take a human into space.

Before then the business of putting astronauts into space was the exclusive domain of large government organizations. "SpaceShip-One," as this first privately funded manned space venture was called, changed all that.

With surprising ease the private sector has gone from this first flight to the edge of establishing a serious and long-term presence in space. With a flexible and innovative approach to design, the private sector--which now includes several space companies--has managed to develop several new and efficient classes of delivery systems. These are rockets that are strong enough to reach orbit and big enough to carry substantial payloads.

However, space entrepreneurs aren't just building rockets. They are designing and building vehicles that, though intended in the early stages to carry cargo, could rapidly be modified to carry astronauts. With government-built space-delivery systems and vehicles, developments like this normally take far longer.

In 2010, the U.S. will face a crisis in its space-flight program. The shuttle, which first carried a crew into orbit in 1981, is coming to an end. There is nothing waiting to take its place. America has no large-scale delivery systems ready to carry matériel and equipment, let alone humans, into orbit.

NASA is developing its Ares rockets and Orion cargo and crew vehicles, but even on an aggressive development schedule they won't be ready until 2015. Despite the fact that the U.S. funded and--for the most part--built the International Space Station, there will be no way for Americans to get there. Russians can come and go as they please, but the U.S., at least temporarily, is grounded--unless we want to catch a ride with the Russians.

In late 2008, in what can be considered a watershed event, NASA awarded two contracts for Commercial Orbital Transportation Services to supply the International Space Station: to Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and to Virginia's Orbital Sciences Corp. The arrangement calls for 20 delivery flights: These two private companies will provide up to 70 percent of America's equipment and supply requirements to the station. The rest will be carried aboard unmanned Russian cargo vehicles.

This represents a major evolution in the philosophical perspective of the space agency. Orbital Sciences Corp. will launch its resupply missions from several locations, including Wallops Island on Virginia's Eastern Shore. SpaceX will send its payloads into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base and Cape Canaveral.

SpaceX is developing a system to launch a vehicle--called the Dragon--that could easily be modified to carry astronauts, potentially as many as seven of them. The Dragon's maiden flight into orbital trajectory, which will be unmanned, is expected later this year. If the two companies are successful, NASA might be ready to let a private company not only carry cargo into space but carry astronauts as well.

The potential for reinvigorating our space program is immense. By turning delivery systems and orbital operations over to the private sector, NASA will have the opportunity to do what it excels at, and that is to explore space. This could be the beginning of an entirely new approach to manned space flight.

David Kerr of Stafford County works on Capitol Hill.

Boeing: Contrators face layoffs unless NASA moves faster on Constellation

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

Colorado Springs - March 31 (Reuters) - A senior Boeing official said March 31 American contractors working on manned spaceflight capabilities will have to lay off up to 10,000 workers unless NASA accelerates orders for Constellation.

"The Gap," the period between the end of the Shuttle program in late 2010 and the follow-on Constellation program's first flight in 2015 is a challenge for the companies involved, said Brewster Shaw, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space Exploration.

Shaw said the five biggest contractors in the sector faced combined layoffs of 8,000 to 10,000 workers, the largest among them Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Alliant Techsystems, United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and United Space Alliance (a Boeing-Lockheed joint venture.

The companies and their smaller suppliers were urging lawmakers and NASA to accelerate work on Ares 5, the cargo heavy-lift booster, as well as Altair, the Constellation's lunar lander., Shaw said.

Read the Story HERE.

What "Gap?"

With retirement for the Space Shuttle only eight (possibly nine) missions away, in late 2010, and with its ostensible replacement Orion Block One stretching into "the out years," with manned launches unlikely before 2016, talk of "The Gap," which began in space industry conferences years ago is just now reaching down to the level of conventional wisdom.

Fortunately NASA, ESA, JAXA, Roscosmos and the United States' commercial space industry all are already apparently moving on, in ways unimaginable to less attentive observers. News late last year, for example, only temporarily stayed by appeal, that SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation had been awarded 20 autonomous transfer vehicle cargo flights in support of ISS went largely unreported.

With barely more notice from America's "legacy media" the outstanding mission of the European Space Agency's ATV Jules Verne didn't make the radar, even as the ESA's ATV performed exceptionally parking, docking and even boosting ISS orbit. What were whispers of the ESA ATV graduating into a service module for crew rotations suddenly became loud and proud policy.

Both SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are equally confident their American ATV's will eventually make the same leap, as Russia and ESA announced they will partner to launch the new generation of Soyuz and Progress vehicles from ESA's equatorial launch site at Kourou in French Guyana.

By the time congressional planners intend Orion to begin cargo and crew rotations to ISS in 2016, or so, it's likely that phase in its development as "replacement for the Space Shuttle" will no longer be needed. American scientists and crew will have already arrived at ISS, perhaps on American vehicles. Orion can "get ahead" supporting the next scientific outpost in Space by rotating crews and cargo to and from the Moon.

Hat Tip tp Spaceports for casting a light on ESA's growing confidence in a man-rated ATV, posted on YouTube, HERE.

"Snow Storm" Revived to "save NASA?"

Buran rescued from the children's park, the One Orbit Wonder, returns, to fill the Gap left by the retirement of the Space Shuttle?

So says Russia Today. One of the Soviet's mini-shuttle test pilots goes on the claim the vessel was built to salvage the remains of Skylab, though the dates don't exactly add up.

Two decades ago the Soviet space shuttle Buran blasted off on its first and only orbital flight. Just a few years later, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the programme was shelved.

The Buran was the Soviet Union's answer to NASA’s space shuttle programme. On November 15, 1988, the shuttle was propelled out of the Earth’s atmosphere by the specially designed Energia booster rocket from the Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan.

Pavel Sharov from Cosmonauts News Magazine explains the advantages the Soviets had over their rivals in the U.S.

“The USSR surpassed the Americans in technology - U.S. shuttles can only be landed by humans, while the Buran lands automatically,” Sharov said.

Magomet Talboev was one of the pilots who test-flew the shuttle without going into orbit. He said the Soviet authorities had high hopes for the multi-billion dollar spacecraft.

“The Energia-Buran programme was started to get the capability to attack the United States, just like the shuttle was able to attack the USSR. We also wanted to take the Skylab space station from orbit. Buran was supposed to put it in its cargo bay and deliver it back to Earth for studies,” Tolboev said.

But the project was scrapped before these plans could be fulfilled. They sank aalong with the Soviet regime. The Energia-Buran became one of the Soviet Union's last super-projects. Billions of dollars were invested and more than a 1.5 million people worked to design and build it. Nevertheless, the Buran went into orbit only once before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The rest of the story HERE.

Thirteen Shuttle Flights 2010-2015

From a hardware standpoint, the space shuttle fleet could technicallyfly until 2015, involving up to 13 extra flights - that's the result of the opening findings from the on-going extension assessment.

Several options - all based around flying two orbiters past 2010, with the support of an ISS "lifeboat" - have been created, although the forward plan of extending the Iran/North Korea/Syria Agreement (INKSA) waiver, to utilize the Russian Soyuz, remains the favored approach.

Read more HERE.