Space News Roundup January 10, 2011

• The Las Cruces Sun-News things Virigin Galatic, Spaceport America, and private space in New Mexico in general is a good thing for everyone.
• Three travel agencies in Florida have been authorized to sell seats on Virigin Galatic. WSFL has the story with cool shots of VSS Enterprise.
• NASA Administrator Charles Bolden is a moron. He says that in order to survive political wrangling, they must be affordable, sustainable and realistic. In other words they must be things we have done. To survive politics space travel must be new and exciting and commercial.
• Rick Homans, former director of Spaceport America, says that the new Governor, Susana Martinez, must declare her support or the project may slow or stop in its tracks.
  
• It only took 40 years, but NASA proved the Moon has a core using data from Apollo.
• NASA is currently stuck in bureaucratic hell, waiting on the congress and the president to figure out the budget. They have found $40 million more for the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program since the beginning of the fiscal year (October).
• It is an odd felling, but I am proud that commercial space tourism has become mainstream enough to be actively attacked my environmentalists.

Space News Roundup January 5, 2011

• NASA researchers have found that they can cut the weight of some components by 20% and still achieve safety goals.
• New Mexico's new governor, Rep Susana Martinez, is auditing Spaceport America to make sure tax dollars are spent the right way.
• Long term space flight may impact your ability to have children.
• India is building their own GPS type system, the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS).
• The James Webb Telescope may be pushed back 8 years due to cost over runs. The current launch date is now 2022.

ULA to Government: Don't Force Compeition

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) that is the product of the Boeing and Lockheed Martin merger is laying off 19% of its workforce to reduce overlap in the Atlas and Delta rockets. That isn't what caught my attention, though.

[ULA Chief Operating Officer Dan Collins] urged the government not to force a competitive environment on an industry that may be ill suited to it.

"I'm not saying no to competition, I'm just urging us to be judicious in its use," Collins said. "Our success will be judged not on how widely we used the tool of competition, but ... on how wisely we used the tool of competition."

For some odd reason I thought competition was the natural state of the market until the government starting screwing with it. They acknowledged that SpaceX is really there only current competition due to ITAR.

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, after talking about switching from a cost-plus to fix-price contracts, said:

"The Air Force has erected enormous barriers to entry at least in the launch market, and made it really very difficult to get in," Musk said. "It's sort of strange that we have over 30 missions on contract for Falcon 9 — which is a vehicle that has more capability than the Delta 4 Medium — but not one of those is with the Air Force. Why is that?"

So Mr Collins, no need to worry. The government isn't going to let, um I mean force any competition on you.

Update: Original story

Space News Roundup January 4, 2011

• NASA announced they had purchased data packages for $500,000 from three (3) Google Lunar X-Prize contestants: Astrobotic Technology Inc (Pittsburgh, Pa., USA), Moon Express Inc. (Mountain View, Calif., USA) and the Rocket City Space Pioneers (Huntsville, Ala., USA).
• The Universe lets us know once again, we really have no clue what is going on: Vast Solar Eruption Shocks NASA and Raises Doubts on Sun Theory

Also if you didn't realize it, The Space Review came out yesterday:

Space challenges for 2011

Peace

What’s in a number?

Reviews: Envisioning the universe

Space News Roundup January 3, 2011

• Canada is looking to build and launch their own rocket. To be honest, I understand their desire to reach an important space milestone, but I think they would be better served by building the infrastructure for launches and buying launches from private companies, such as Boeing and SpaceX. Of course ITAR is always an issue...
• NASA's Mars rover Spirit is still not talking.
• Some band I've never heard of wants to play in space aboard Virgin Galactic.
• NPR has a roundup of NASA's plans for manned space.

2011 The year of Private Space?

Leonard David believes 2011 is the year private space (or new space) will take off. Here's crossing our fingers.

SpaceX Makes NASA Look Bad

Robert Block at the Orlando Sentinel thinks SpaceX's ability to launch a cheese-manned capsule into orbit and recover it for $800 million is "raising some serious questions about NASA." Meanwhile, NASA is spending $500 million in six months on a program that no longer exists.

Top Space News of 2010

Clark Lindsey has his list of the top space related news of 2010.

This is my top three. It is completely based on my own (rational) self-interest. In other words, things that I believe help get my wife and I into space.

3. Bigelow Aerospace signed a deal with Boeing (of all people) to launch space stations into orbit. Apparently, six countries are interested in leasing their very own space station.

2. Scaled Composites/Virgin Galactic had a successful glide test of VSS Enterprise and Eve.

1. It is hard to argue that SpaceX had the best year of any new-space company. They closed it out with a successful launch and re-entry of the Dragon capsule carrying a wheel of cheese on December 8. They also signed the largest commercial launch contract in history with Iridium.

Obama Pushes Private Space Ferries

The Obama administration, in one of its few nods to private industry, is asking NASA to fund private companies on the order of $3.5 billion to develop private transport to orbit. It is rumored that they may add $1 billion to NASA's budget begging in October of 2010.

This is good news to companies like SpaceX, who are already set to receive $1.6 billion to develop and test their Falcon 9 rocket under the COTS program.

They are also, not surprisingly, seeking international support in developing rockets to land on the Moon and Mars.

Like the old Vulcan proverb, Only Nixon can go to China...

Virgin Galactic wants to Branch Out

Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn says that space tourism is just the beginning. He sees Virgin Galactic moving into space science, servicing space server farms and replacing long-haul flights.

Masten Space B-750 Engine Test Video

Masten Space has released a video of their B-750 engine test. Enjoy!

Hybrid Rockets May Never be Cheap

Virgin Galactic President, Will Whitehorn, says that while SpaceShip2 prices may get down to $100,000 a person, they will likely never reach $10,000.

RLV and Space Transport News argues that liquid reusable transports are the way to get to space on the cheap.

Astronauts Get It

In an interview with Jeffrey Hoffman, MIT professor and former space shuttle, MIT News ask him about the shuttle retirement. He said he thinks it is time to retire the shuttle and get on with exploration. With respect to the private space industry, he said:

The only thing we need a spaceship for during the next few years is to get up to the space station, but the Russians will do that for us, and maybe even Elon Musk [founder of SpaceX, which is building the privately-funded Falcon 9 rocket] will do that for us. In fact, I'd love to see private industry take over maintaining the low-Earth orbit infrastructure. If private industry could support that on the basis of tourist travel and however else they can make money, then NASA could buy their services at the marginal cost of doing business instead of maintaining the whole infrastructure. I mean, NASA spends a third of its budget just supporting a transportation infrastructure, and if that could be obtained from the private sector, NASA would save a lot of money, which could be used for exploration, which is what I think NASA's real goal should be in the future, not running a transportation system.

Exactly.

Rocket Boy Loves SpaceX

Homer H. Hickam Jr., author of Rocket Boys, is spoke in Waco, TX last night. He was also given a tour of the Space test site and said "[Space X is] one of the great hopes for the American space program.”

SpaceX Launch Postponed

SpaceX has postponed the launch of a Malaysian satellite due to concerns about vibration. The flight was scheduled for Monday. The exact date of the new launch has not been set, but according to the Malaysian government, it will take about six weeks.

The satellite, RazakSat, is designed for Earth imagining.

White Knight 2 Video

Wire has a video of the White Knight 2 in Flight.

Virgin Galatic in "Advanced Discussions" with UAE on Spaceport

Virgin Galactic, the space tourism wing of Virgin Group, is in what the company describes as "advanced discussions" with the United Arab Emirates to build a spaceport in Dubai. While the company is also in talks with Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, they discussions with the UAE is the farthest along. Virgin Galactic wants a port in the middle east to support people with the means and desire to go into space, but who want a local supplier. UAE is also interested in using the port for scientific research.

Twitter Interview with Sir Richard Branson

The LA times travel section are conducting an interview with Sir Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Group, at 8:20 PST (10:20 CST). You can view it at live on @latimestravel and @virginamerica.

COTS-D Gets Started with Stimulus Money

The COTS-D program, the human flight phase of the COTS program, has been given $150 million of the $400 million allocated to NASA for human spaceflight in the stimulus package.
SpaceX and Orbital Science are currently competing on the COTS-A and COTS-B phases, but only SpaceX has negotiated rights to try for all COTS phases.

The $150 million is divided into $80 million for a "crewed launch demo," $42 million for a docking system to the international space station, $20 million for a cargo transportation demo and $8 million for miscellaneous costs, such as human rating.

The remaining $250 million will go to NASA's constellation program.

White Knight 2 Set to Debut at EAA AirVenture 2009

White Knight 2, the carrier plane for the much anticipated Space Ship Two, will make its public debut at the EAA AirVenture 2009 in Oshkosh Wisconsin. The event is set for July 27-Aug. 2 at Wittman Regional Airport.