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A4H Bruce Davis at the Presidential Space Summit

by Space Tweep Society on Apr 23, 2010 • No Comments

A4H’s very own Bruce Davis was among the select few invited to attend the Presidential Space Summit held at the NASA Kennedy Space Center on April 15, 2010. At the event, President Obama outlined his new strategy for human spaceflight, which includes the expanded support for commercial space transportation systems – the same systems that will also enable the nascent suborbital and eventually orbital science research community.

Bruce, who is pictured here with Norm Augustine, shared his impressions and photos from the event on his website spacedavis.com.

Astronauts4Hire founders on The Space Show

by Space Tweep Society on Apr 23, 2010 • No Comments

On April 12, 2010 Veronica Ann Zabala-Aliberto revealed Astronauts4Hire on The Space Show alongside her impressions from the Space Access conference.

Listen to it here: http://thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=1342

On April 20, 2010, Amnon I. Govrin called in and discussed Astronauts4Hire.

Listen to it here: http://thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=1347

More info at www.astronauts4hire.org

Yuri’s Night in Boulder, CO

by Space Tweep Society on Apr 22, 2010 • No Comments

On April 10th, about an hour before the festivities officially began, I drove the short 10 mile distance from my home to Boulder, parked and walked to The Lazy Dog on the Pearl Street Mall. About ten people were busy decorating the place, emptied from tables apart from side booths. Ryan Kobrick (a fellow Astronauts4Hire founder) was orchestrating everything, from helping the first band get ready to decorations. Also present from A4H was Laura Stiles, and it was cool to meet a few of the people interested in space and more specifically, some of the members of Astronauts4Hire (Chad Healy came in later as well).

Read all about who was there from the space industry and what went on with pictures on http://www.spacepirations.com/2010/04/yuris-night-in-boulder-co.html

Discovery Lands Upon America’s Space Coast

by Space Tweep Society on Apr 20, 2010 • 2 Comments

(Cape Canaveral, FL) — The
space shuttle Discovery left earth orbit this morning and glided home
across America’s heartland with a sunrise landing upon America’s Space
Coast.

Discovery
returned home following fifteen full days in space which saw the
orbiter docked to the International Space Station for ten day’s during the resupply
mission.

As NASA’s
oldest active space shuttle returned to Florida, she and her crew of
seven crossed over the United States beginning over Northern Idaho;
over Helena, Montana; southeastward to Little Rock; down to Montgomery
and into northern Florida.

Discovery’s main gear touched down upon runway 33 at the Kennedy Space Center at 9:08:35 am EDT, at a speed of 206 mph.

Commander
Alan Poindexter then lowered the nose of the orbiter down allowing it
to hit the runway twelve seconds later. Pilot James Dutton deployed the
drag chute just prior to the nose touchdown to slow the orbiter as she rolled to
a stop after traveling 6,232,235 miles since liftoff on April 5th.

Wheels
stop occurred at 8:09:33 am, giving NASA’s 131st space shuttle mission a
flight duration of 15 days, 2 hours, 48 minutes and 8 seconds,
according to Mission Control.

It was the 74th landing by a space shuttle at Kennedy, and was the 38th space flight by Discovery.

Discovery’s
crew includes Poindexter, Dutton and Mission Specialists Rick
Mastracchio, Stephanie Wilson, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Japanese
astronaut Naoko Yamazaki and Clayton Anderson.

As
the spacecraft flew 223 miles above the northern coastline of
Australia, Discovery fired her twin orbital maneuvering engines for 2
minutes, 57 seconds beginning at 8:02:55 am.

The burn slowed the ship down by 205 miles per hour, decreasing her orbital velocity to allow the craft to drop out of orbit.

At
8:26 am, both Poindexter and Dutton were surprised at one point as the the forward
jets of the orbiter began firing to maneuver the ship for her entry
interface minutes later.

Reentry
of Discovery back into the earth’s atmosphere began at 8:27 am as the
orbiter flew 399,800 feet over the northern Pacific Ocean, flying
at a speed of 16,900 mph.

At this point, Discovery was 2,005 miles ahead of the space station.

The mission flew with several high points and a few low points.

Moments
after reaching orbit, the crew experienced a glitch with the ship’s
high gain television antenna known as the KU-band. The mission had to
be reworked since the crew were not able to use the antenna for
television downlink or high data speed-related transmissions.

The
crew also had to wait until after docking with the space station to
downlink the thermal protection system survey which was performed on
day two of the flight.

A
nominal docking on day three of the mission lead to the start of the crew off
loading 8,000 pounds of fresh supplies and new equipment from the
Leonardo module to the orbital complex.

Astronaut
Wilson used the station’s robotic arm to reach into Discovery’s bay and
pluck out the cargo module and dock it to the station. It stayed docked
to the Harmony module for eight days.

On
the third and final spacewalk of the flight, an issue arose with the
nitrogen valve on the newly installed ammonia tank assembly located on
the starboard truss segment of the station.

The
issue remains on going and space station controllers are continuing to
look into what can be done to repair the valve on the cooling system of
the station’s avionics.

Discovery’s
next mission is scheduled for September on a flight which will likely
shift from the final flight of a space shuttle to the second from final
flight soon due to a payload issue with a summer shuttle flight.

Discovery soars over America's spaceport on April 20, 2010.

Discovery lands at the Kennedy Space Center today. (NASA)

Images via NASA/ KSC

A Layman’s View of President Obama’s Space Plan—The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

by Space Tweep Society on Apr 19, 2010 • 8 Comments

The President came to town this week. That’s a pretty big deal. Whether you support his policies or not, it’s not often that we get to have the leader of the free world in our own backyard. He was here to lay out his vision for the future of space exploration in America. That’s another pretty big deal…especially since we are the Space Coast.

While I am not directly involved in the wondrous work that takes place just a few miles from my front door that puts astronauts and satellites into space, I am very concerned. Many of my friends, family members and clients earn their living by doing this work. As a long-time resident of Brevard County and a property owner, I am concerned for our future. I’m worried that people I know and care for will soon lose their jobs and may have to leave our area. I’m afraid that our property values, which have fallen dramatically over the last few years, will take yet another major hit.

It’s frustrating to me that in today’s political environment, the reaction to the President’s plan seems to be, like everything else, determined by which side of the political fence you fall on. While trying to learn more about what the plan may actually mean to our area, I mostly learned that Democrats think the plan is a positive step for our country. Republicans think it’s a terrible idea. So, what follows is a layman’s interpretation of what I heard the President say in his brief visit.

The Good

The President’s plan called for an extended life for the International Space Station. Under President Bush’s plan, the U.S. was scheduled to start withdrawing from the ISS this year. The new plan extends the life of the station to 2020, or later. I believe that after the billions of dollars spent, and the international cooperation that has occurred, we should stay involved.

The plan also called for a revival of the program to build the Orion crew capsule. Originally part of Project Constellation (along with Ares I and Ares V), which was going to get us back to the moon, Orion was completely withdrawn from the first version of the President’s budget proposal in February. Although we won’t see the two Ares vehicles, at least Orion is back in the picture…albeit a downsized version. It is expected to create anywhere from 400 to 1000 jobs…right here at KSC.

The Space Coast would remain the Space Coast. The President’s plan makes Kennedy Space Center the program headquarters for the $6 billion Commercial Crew Development program. I think this provision provides a two-fer benefit. First, our area would benefit from the jobs needed to create a viable commercial space program. And two, I believe that in the long-term, it will be better for private industry to provide the transportation systems needed for future space exploration.

We could become the “Silicon Valley of Space.” Instead of just providing launch services, the plan broadens KSC’s role into research and development. This will hopefully lead to the creation of new and better jobs.

The Bad

The time frame of the plan leaves a lot to be desired. While calling for the development of a heavy-lift rocket, there will be no decision on design until 2015. Also, I was a bit surprised to learn that our next stop in space may be an asteroid. After that, Mars. But the plan is to reach the asteroid in the 2020s and we won’t get to Mars until the 2030s.

As usual, politics muddy up the picture. Even if President Obama serves a second term, the decision on the heavy-lift rocket will not come until near the end of his administration. And we certainly know that things can, and I’m sure will, change between now and then.

I know that unfulfilled campaign promises probably don’t surprise anyone any longer, but the President doesn’t seem to be living up to the ones he made while visiting our area prior to his election. He said that “we cannot cede our leadership in space.” He derided the previous administration for not giving NASA the support it needed to reach its stated goals and said that by not providing the support “that after the Space Shuttle shuts down in 2010, we’re going to have to rely on Russian spacecraft to keep us in orbit.” Additionally, he offered to extend the shuttle program, speed up the development of its successor, and make sure that our space industry workers would not lose their jobs because “we cannot afford to lose their expertise.” It appears that those statements may have won votes, but will fall into the category of unfulfilled promises.

The Ugly

The most obvious is that we did not get the extension of the shuttle program that we were all hoping for. After three more missions, the program that has done so much over the last 30 years will come to a halt. That means that at least 8000 space shuttle workers will be in danger of losing their jobs. That’s ugly.

It’s true that the plan calls for a $40 million initiative, led by the White House and several other agencies, to develop a plan for “regional economic growth and job creation.” Call me a skeptic, but with the bureaucracy of many different agencies involved, I’m not sure $40 million will have much positive impact for our workers. And the worst part is that the President asked for the plan to be on his desk by August 15th. That doesn’t leave us much time or wiggle room. The last shuttle launch is scheduled for September 16th.

And finally, this is just the President’s plan. Congress has control of the purse strings. What finally materializes after it goes through the legislative process could, and probably will, look a lot different than what the President proposed to us.

But…could that be a good thing?

Open Source Engineering for Space Flight

by @jdpsyntelos@twitter on Apr 15, 2010 • No Comments

Today the President of the United States stands with NASA, the ISS
partners, and private industry to further NASA’s mission to extend the
space frontier for all of us.

Ultra light space flight
projects cap spending at many orders of magnitude less than that
required for human and public sector space flight missions.

We
have been studying and learning how to do this work in ways compatible
with, and complementary to other parts of our lives and sectors of our
societies.

We recognize the role that open source engineering
has played in everyone’s lives online, and the similar potentials it
may have for the expanding space economy.

An open letter to the White House – Reach for the stars!

by Space Tweep Society on Apr 14, 2010 • No Comments

Apparently the White House wants to hear from
me. So, I thought I would give my personal opinion on the state of
things.

We’re in a recession. We have a huge amount of debt. There really no
end in sight, at least not one that I can see. America has gone from
innovating and creating industry to consuming and, well, just consuming.
It is time for us to stand up and lead the world once again. Lets
create a new economy, a new industry and a new beginning for ourselves.

It is time for a grand vision that will spur the workforce,
invigorate the economy and build a new industry that we will lead. We’ve
done this before with the computer revolution and again with the
Internet revolution. We can do it once more, but this time it should be a
revolution of galactic proportions.

Let us once again explore the galaxy. Not just robots, but lets put
humans on Mars. Lets put humans on Near Earth Objects. Heck lets go to
Enceladas and other interesting moons too! We can develop the new
infrastructure, the new propulsion and the new way of thinking that goes
along with it.

The Earth only has so many resources. Eventually, maybe not today,
but eventually we will run out. Water, precious metals and the building
blocks of just about everything are all resources that will eventually
expire. Today the resource we need the most is energy. We need good,
clean and affordable energy. By using Space Based Solar Power, or even
technology simply developed for long-duration space flight we can become
a producer of energy that the world would buy from. We would switch
from a consumer of foreign oil to a producer of clean, affordable
energy. When fresh drinking water becomes more scarce, we would be ready
with our space inspired water refinement. Not only would we convert
back to a production society, but we could also mine near Earth objects
to help greatly reduce the national debt.

Some of the near Earth objects we have floating nearby (relatively
speaking of course) are worth
an estimated $20,000,000,000,000.00 dollars. That’s $20 trillion if
you lost track of the 0’s there. The current estimated US debt is
around $12 trillion dollars or just over 1/2 of the value of just one
near Earth object. Lets assume that it takes $10 trillion to develop all
of the technology and infrastructure required to mine one of these
asteroids. That reduces our national debt to around $2 trillion which
means that by mining two asteroids we would have a national credit
of $8 trillion. I think National Credit sounds a lot nicer
than National Debt, don’t you? That healthcare no one is sure
how to pay for? Paid in full. Social Security? Secure.

Flexible path is not the path. I know we have a lot of people that
support it, but we should go all out when it comes to space. We should
be setting aggressive timelines. We should be producing new vehicles and
trying out cutting edge ideas. We should be laying the groundwork for
private industry to bring mere mortals to Mars, the Moon, and other
places across our solar system where we can find new jobs, new resources
and a new way of living. We should be leading the planet on the
greatest journey humans have ever undertaken.

It will take a charismatic leader, a lot of optimism, patience, money
and vision to make a plan like this come together. We had this in the
60’s for a brief moment and have yet to see it again. Do we have what it
takes 50 years later to pick up the dropped baton and unite the planet
in our greatest adventure ever? Make no mistake, this is a very
difficult series of events to line up perfectly. It is completely
possible that the 60’s were our one shot, and it is now gone, forever. I
certainly hope that is not the case.

I’m clearly bias towards space. Heck, I host a space web site! But I
do so out of my own pocket because it truly is something I believe in. I
don’t make a living working in the space industry. I’m not employed on
the space coast. Heck, I work in IT for a real estate company in the
middle of Minnesota, nowhere near any cool space companies like Boeing
of Lockheed. I believe in this because I believe space is our way out.
It can solve our recession, our economic problems, our environment
problems, our energy problems and any resource problems that may crop up
along the way. We just need to look at space in new and innovative ways
to see that while it may look empty, in all actuality space is full of
everything required to solve almost all of the problems we have today.

I would like to see us extend our reach to the stars in a big, bold
move. The White House asked me to be succinct, include metrics of
progression, suggest who could lead the project and techniques used to
accomplish the goals stated. I really did none of those things.
Fortunately I do not believe I am the only one who believes in this
vision. I invite all those who believe that our destiny is among the
stars to chime in here. What metrics of progression would we have? Who
would lead it? NASA? How would we accomplish these goals in a timeline
that wouldn’t bore the American people (which generally means under a
decade)? Make your voice heard along with mine. It’s time to leave this
planet and build a whole new beginning for the human race.

Genesis of a Space Junkie

by Space Tweep Society on Apr 12, 2010 • No Comments

STS-1 When I was in Grade Five, my mom said to me, “You and your sister can stay home this morning from school if you want.”

I was confused. It was a Friday morning, and I felt fine. So did my sister. So I asked why.

Mom explained that there was going to be a news special on TV — that they were going to launch a rocket into space. It was going to be the first one of its kind — it would go up like a rocket and come down like an airplane — and Mom felt it was important that I watch a part of history.

It was April 10, 1981, and Columbia was sitting on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center. The mission was called STS-1. Krista and I stayed home and watched…and waited…and watched.

Well, I learned a new word that day: “scrubbed.” The launch was postponed for the rest of the day due to some sort of computer problem, so Krista and I headed off to school, getting there about halfway through the morning.

When I told Miss White why I was late, she snapped, “Well, I could have told you this morning it wasn’t going to go.”

Everything about that day is burned into my memory. I settled into my seat feeling chastised and disappointed, but at that moment, the launch of that rocket ship became personal. It had to fly.

I spent the rest of Friday and all of Saturday asking my mother if she knew when the rocket was going to go. And on Sunday morning, April 12, 1981, at 8:00 AM AST, I was firmly parked in front of the television when Columbia’s engines lit and that beautiful white bird rose from the launch pad. I couldn’t breathe — I have tears in my eyes right now, just thinking about it. I watched until we couldn’t see her anymore, and then I immediately wanted to watch it again.

(By the way — don’t be too hard on Miss White: On the following Tuesday, she rolled a television into the classroom so we could watch Columbia land successfully in California — I wouldn’t have experienced the happy ending of the mission without her.)

It’s been twenty-nine years since Columbia took to the sky. Since then I’ve watched numerous shuttle launches. Listening to the communication between the cockpit and Mission Control is something I always enjoy doing, and the sequence has become almost as familiar to me as the words to “O Canada.” But I hadn’t seen the launch of STS-1 again since I was eleven years old, so one day last week I looked for it on YouTube:

I was mesmerized. Hearing now-familiar phrases like “Max Q”, “Go for SRB-Sep,” and “Go for Main Engine Cut-Off” and realizing that was the very first time they were said for a shuttle launch gave me chills.

And, as in 1981, I had to watch it again, and again, and again.

Happy birthday to the Space Shuttle Program, and happy birthday to my space geek self who roared to life along with the space shuttle’s engines. I will never forget you, Columbia.

(originally posted on My Created Life: April 12, 2010)

And Now, for Something Completely Different…

by Space Tweep Society on Apr 4, 2010 • 5 Comments

The Monty Python movie And Now, for Something Completely Different, which contains sketches from the group’s Flying Circus TV show, is in my opinion a classic example of ADHD-like symptoms – do something, lose focus and switch to something else - in a series of confusing segues. It’s been 2 months since Obama dropped the proposed axe on Constellation, and after reading, hearing and watching a lot of opinions about it, I’m left with a feeling that this is just one more jerking motion of a space policy in a series of other jerks and twists that can be labeled as the U.S. ADHD space policy.

Read the rest of my idea on Spacepirations – http://www.spacepirations.com/2010/04/and-now-for-something-completely.html

I invite you to share your comments – Is the new policy the best thing since sliced bread in space? Is it the worst? Does it stand the chance of surviving different administrations or will the space policy ADHD continue?

STS-131 Space Tweep informal tweetup

by @flyingjenny@twitter on Apr 4, 2010 • 1 Comment

For tweeps in the Space Coast area, we are having a very casual, informal tweetup today at 2:00. We will be meeting at Fishlips at Port Canaveral, upstairs. Come by if you can- meet and hang out with other tweeps in a fun, relaxed atmosphere. Hope to see you there. Directions to Fishlips

Global Month of Astronomy, an opportunity for sharing the Sky.

by Space Tweep Society on Apr 2, 2010 • No Comments

April 2010 has been selected as the Global Month of Astronomy.
Following the unprecedented success of IYA’s 100 Hours of Astronomy,
astronomers around the World are gathering together to share with the
public the wonders of our Universe during a whole month devoted to it.

Come join us in the largest astronomical event of the year. Plan activities or join our live events: from remote telescope sessions to live interviews via web with Astronomy Legends.

Remember: sharing the sky with everyone will increase not only the knowledge but will open the mind’s eye in those that will become our future!

Oscar Vannini is ready for GAM. Are you?

One People, One Sky!

Dr. Love at the Southwest Research Institute

by Space Tweep Society on Mar 25, 2010 • No Comments

On March 18th 2010 I visited the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) to see the facility here in Boulder and attend a talk by Dr. Stanley G. Love – a NASA astronaut that flew on STS-122. Founded in 1947, employing over 3,000 people in several states, SwRI is a very prolific multi-disciplinary institute, headquartered in San Antonio, Texas (for more information about the SwRI, visit its facts page). SwRI has a fairly large office (about a hundred people) in downtown Boulder Colorado. If you live, work or ever visited Boulder you’d appreciate the prime location, close to many of the restaurants and atmosphere unique to Boulder.

After the fascinating talk I got a tour of the Boulder office, which seems more like a startup company than an office of a large company (and I mean that in a good way), and I got invited to join Stan and several SwRI employees for lunch at an Indian restaurant, where conversation about a number of space related issues continued. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed this short time amongst researchers, an astronaut and space topics. This was my first time attending one of the SwRI Boulder Colloquia, which occur about once a week and revolve around space – science, missions, technology and findings. These meetings are free, open to the general public and I highly recommend attending – I know I’ll come back for more.