Rocketeers.co.uk - a British view of commercial spaceflight

A message from ZERO-G:

Zero Gravity Corporation Establishes the ZERO-G Weightless Lab
The only commercially available reduced gravity environment for scientific experimentation
Flights scheduled for July and September 2010

Today, Zero Gravity Corporation (ZERO-G) announced the establishment of the ZERO-G WEIGHTLESS LAB. The specially designed two-day program provides the only commercial access to Martian, Lunar, zero and hyper gravity environments for scientific research. The program is open to academic, corporate and government agency applicants.

“The establishment of the ZERO-G WEIGHTLESS LAB demonstrates ZERO-G and Space Adventures’ continued commitment to open the space frontier to all,” said Eric Anderson, President and CEO of Space Adventures/ZERO-G. “The ZERO-G WEIGHTLESS LAB provides open access for commercial and government entities to conduct research in a reduced gravity environment that is not only affordable, but available today. The microgravity laboratory is completely operational; no test flights, development effort, or outside investment is required. Space is open for business!”

The ZERO-G WEIGHTLESS LAB, which was specially designed to meet researcher’s needs, offers clients the availability to charter a section of the plane rather than the entire plane, for the two-day program. The LAB offers a total of 25 parabolas, adequate storage space and a state-of-the-art containment unit for smaller research projects.

“When I traveled to the International Space Station (ISS), my most prized on-orbit activity was the protein crystallization project. The results were just as we predicted and my team has flown another specimen to the ISS since my flight,” said Richard Garriott, Space Adventures’ sixth orbital spaceflight client and the 1st second generation American astronaut. “The ZERO-G WEIGHTLESS LAB is a great first-step in space-based research and its available today. Why wait until other spaceflight options are available? Fly now! Get more time in weightlessness, at a far lower cost!”

All applicants must submit a Research Proposal Package. The proposal will be reviewed by ZERO-G’s Research Staff and its airline partner, Amerijet International Cargo. Upon acceptance, ZERO-G will work to obtain proper FAA approvals for the experiments, including a Test Readiness Review. Past client projects have included studies in biomedical and pharmaceutical research, fluid and fundamental physics, materials science, aerospace engineering, space exploration hardware and human space habitation.

Two ZERO-G WEIGHTLESS LAB flights have already been scheduled. On July 22-23, the plane will fly out of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. and on September 17-18, out of Memphis, Tenn. Upon demand, additional dates and locations can be added.

For flight specifications and detailed application protocol, please visit http://www.gozerog.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Research_Programs.welcome or contact Michelle Peters, Director of Education and Research Programs at info [at] gozerog.com or at +1 703 524 7172 x 210.

About ZERO-G
Zero Gravity Corporation is a privately held space entertainment and tourism company whose mission is to make the excitement and adventure of weightlessness accessible to the public. ZERO-G is the first and only FAA-approved provider of weightless flight to the general public, as well as the entertainment and film industries; corporate and incentive market; non-profit research and education sectors; and government.

Founded in 1993, ZERO-G is led by a world-class team of veteran astronauts and experienced business leaders. The company was co-founded by X PRIZE Chairman and space visionary, Dr. Peter H. Diamandis; veteran astronaut, Dr. Byron K. Lichtenberg, and NASA Engineer Ray Cronise. The team spent more than a decade working to bring the marvel of weightless flight to the public.

Since launching ZERO-G in September 2004, the company has conducted more than 200 weightless flights and flown over 6,000 members of the public, including celebrities and media personalities, corporate charters, science and math teachers, and individuals age eight to 93.

ZERO-G operates under the highest safety standards as set by the FAA (Part-121) with its partner Amerijet International Cargo of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Aircraft operations take place under the same regulations set for large commercial passenger airliners. For more information on the company and the ZERO-G WEIGHTLESS LAB, please visit www.gozerog.com.

Stephen Clark says SpaceX could attempt another static fire this afternoon, but that is a "big maybe," company officials say. Scattered showers and thunderstorms are passing across Central Florida today, but the impact of weather on the Falcon 9 rocket's engine test is unclear.

The strongback will be partially retracted away from the rocket before fueling occurs. See webcam of the pad here.
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Jeff Foust is continuing to post notes on Twitter from the Goddard Memorial Symposium.The new NASA Chief Technologist, Robert Braun, spoke this morning:
/-- Bobby Braun, NASA chief technologist: if NASA is going to work on gamechanging technologies, has to be ok that not all will succeed.
/-- Braun: new NASA Space Technology program designed to provide "technology push" for ideas with broadbased applications.
/-- Braun: mission directorates more focused on "technology pull", working on techs needed to accomplish their specific goals.
/-- Braun: culture at NASA is changing with respect to technology development efforts, driven from the top.

The Constellation program is nominally still active but sounds like it's becoming more hollowed out by the day both at the agency and the contractors: Orion removed from NASA control - MOD positioning for commercial role - NASASpaceFlight.com.
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Shuttle extension efforts:
/-- Fla. lawmakers make push to extend shuttle life, build rocket - Florida Today
/-- One other note about shuttle extension - Space Politics
/-- Posey and Kosmas introduce House version of spaceflight gap bill - Space Politics

SpaceX has posted two pictures from the abbreviated Falcon 9 hot-fire pad test on Tuesday on its Updates page.
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Bigelow is looking to hire ex-astronauts for both ground and flight work: Astronauts Jobs in North Las Vegas, Nevada - Bigelow Aerospace - Career Builder (via Skytland).
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I strongly doubt that the ISS will splashdown in 2020 or even in 2028: ISS Partners Looking out to 2028 - SpaceNews.com.

Speedup static tested a hybrid motor back in February: Hybrid Motor Holds Together - Speedup - Feb.16.10 (via Space Prizes). See video.
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John Hare considers some variations on air launch techniques: VTVL Airlaunched - Selenian Boondocks -Mar.10.10.

SpaceTech 2010 - UK space scientists reveal the many benefits of cutting edge space technology

It’s been a few months since our blog about the Engineering Education Scheme (EES) The aim of the scheme is to provide students aged 16 and 17 with experience in engineering, science and technology in order to make informed decisions about their future education and career.

The students from Farnborough 6th Form College are investigating ways to detect signals in space that offer a precursor to earthquakes. In this respect, it also has something in common with the POISE space experiment that SSTL helped students to develop on behalf of the British National Space Centre (BNSC).

Rhys Llewellyn and Calum Jones working on the satellite model.

In January, despite the unusually heavy snow the students managed to attend a two day workshop at Surrey University. The team had done some broad research into the field, but still had not decided on which technology(s) would be most appropriate for detecting precursors to earthquakes.

Within the first day, they had decided on a combination of a topside sounder that would measure ion concentration in the ionosphere from above, and an infrared camera which has also shown some promising results for earthquake detection. The rest of the time, the team concentrated on building a half-scale model of a Disaster Monitoring Constellation type spacecraft to be used for display purposes.

SSTL’s David Sanderson has been visiting the team roughly every two weeks after work to provide supervision and mentoring. Their model is now certainly looking the part (see photo above) and the team is preparing their report for assessment and celebrations in April.

Messages sent in space to celebrate 50 years of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI)

UK Space industry: in pictures - boldy growing a $30bn business

Distant galaxy clusters mysteriously stream at a million miles per hour along a path roughly centered on the southern constellations Centaurus and Hydra. A new study led by Alexander Kashlinsky at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., tracks this collective motion -- dubbed the "dark flow" -- to twice the distance originally reported. "It takes, on average, about an hour of telescope time to measure the distance to each cluster we work with, not to mention the years required [...]

Discover space in National Science and Engineering Week 12 - 21 March

(NASA) - The Expedition 22 crew of the International Space Station began installing a robotic arm Wednesday while preparing for upcoming spacecraft departures and arrivals. Inside the Japanese Kibo Laboratory, Flight Engineers Soichi Noguchi and T.J. Creamer used the Japanese Kibo laboratory’s 33-foot-long main arm to move a smaller robotic arm, known as the small fine arm, out of Kibo’s airlock and into place for deployment. Over the next two days, the two flight engineers will perform  [...]

(NASA) - The Kepler spacecraft has been performing well since the Safe Mode event of Feb. 2, 2010. Engineers on the anomaly response team are continuing to analyze the telemetry from the event to develop root cause and mitigations. Several mitigations are under consideration and are being prepared for implementation. The mitigations should minimize impact to science activities, should a similar event occur that caused the Feb. 2, 2010 Safe Mode entry. The project team continues to prepare fo [...]

So far, most all of the noise about the administration's space plan has come from politicians from states and districts directly impacted by the Constellation cancellation and the end of the Shuttle program. There has yet to be much input from three other major players: the 95% of Congress that is currently unaware of or unconcerned about the NASA budget turmoil, the general public, and arithmetic.

As I've pointed out several times here, the non-NASA sector of Congress has consistently refused to increase the funding for NASA even during good economic times. It's hard to believe they will boost it now with deficits/debt going through the roof. Yes, the NASA budget is a small percentage of the total budget but if they can't say no to a NASA increase, they can't say no to anyone. (The "discretionary" budget is turning into a collection of mini-entitlements for particular groups.) It's quite possible that Congress will not accept Obama's small boost to the NASA budget and may even cut the agency's funding.

The general public has shown no enthusiasm for greater funding for NASA. See, for example, this recent poll. Its unlikely that any politician outside of a small number of districts and states with big NASA centers and contractors would suffer in any way by voting for the Obama plan or for an even tougher policy for the agency.

As noted in the previous item, the budget arithmetic makes Constellation completely untenable. Continuing the Shuttle is extremely expensive and dangerous. A government launcher, i.e. Ares I/Orion, would be stupendously expensive to develop and operate.

For the Space Summit on April 15th, President Obama may be tempted to offer several expensive modifications to the current plan, e.g. extra Shuttle flights and a heavy lifter project, in hopes of mollifying opposition, especially in Florida. However, this runs the risk that the rest of the country will see him yielding to pressure from a special interest group and committing the country to even more unsustainable spending.

I would suggest he try another approach. First give a clear account of the reasoning behind the new budget and the arithmetic that drove it. Then explain that the only way to save NASA's human spaceflight program is to make spaceflight much less expensive. And the only way to make it less expensive is to encourage commercial companies to compete with innovative approaches. Lower cost spaceflight will not only enable NASA to do great things but also lead to lots of new jobs, new technologies, and new opportunities in space. This approach may not satisfy the local audience but I think it would play well with the broader public and with Congress.
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More space policy items:
/-- A little bit more about the White House space conference - Space Politics - Mar.10.10
/-- STS-131 Shuttle Report | Shuttle leader says extending program still feasible - Spaceflight Now- Mar.10.10
/-- Rep. Frank Wolf and Five Others Will Call on Bolden for 30 Day Study - spacepolicyonline.com- Mar.10.10

Marcia Smith posts a more detailed account of Jeff Greason's presentation on Wednesday at the Goddard Memorial Symposium: No Painfree Options -- "Deal With It" -- Says XCOR's Greason - spacepolicyonline.com - Mar.10.10.

Jeff urged that people face the fact that there "are no good options" and be realistic in looking at where the human space flight program was headed under the previous plan and debate on their merits the issues about its future. Whatever the answer is, it is likely to be painful for someone.
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"Constellation was designed for a budget twice what it got. That's what unexecutable means," he said, adding that it would require "four, five, six billion dollar increases every year for the rest of time" to be successful, including operations.He later pointed out that each Orion capsule alone would cost $500 million.

Concerning commercial crew transport services, He asserted that a "lot of lies are being spun" about the concept of commercial crew and it is "silly" to say that commercial companies cannot provide such services, but it is likely to happen first with established launch vehicles, not entrepreneurial ventures. He expects Falcon 9 and Taurus 2 to be successful someday, but Delta 4 and Atlas 5 already are proven.

Jeff Foust continued posting notes on Twitter for the afternoon sessions at the Goddard Memorial Symposium (see earlier item). Here is a compilation of his postings:

/-- Greason says we need to elevate the level of debate about the new NASA policy. Not hearing a lot if substance so far.
/-- Greason: Constellation showed if you wanted to redo Apollo with Apollo-era tech, also needed Apollo-era budgets, which NASA wasn't getting.
/-- Greason: Sooner or later Constellation was going to be canceled. Regrettable, [but] when you're in a hole, stop digging.
/-- Greason: with FlexPath we can start missions beyond LEO sooner, "start putting runs on the scoreboard" while dev systems needed for Moon.

/-- Brett Alexander, starting comm'l panel: new plan is a leap ahead for human spaceflight. It's about getting the rest of us in space.

/-- Mike Gold: Bigelow has invested >$180M of his own money in Bigelow Aerospace. Needs comm'l crew to get a return on that investment.
/-- Gold: don't need to rely on so-called "untried" companies: a Boeing-built capsule on an Atlas 5 meets our needs.

/-- Larry Williams: thinks a "Netscape moment" is coming for space, but for SpaceX "hope we turn out to be Google and not Netscape".
/-- Williams: "spin start" abort during F9 test firing happens frequently in tests in Texas; "not a big issue". [My emphasis]
/-- Williams: could do Falcon 9 launch as soon as end of this month, but more likely April or May. "We'll launch when we're ready."
/-- Williams: no discussion with NASA about exercising their COTS-D option; assuming they'll do separate competition for comm'l crew.

/-- Gold: expect 1st big market for Bigelow to be biotech, then gov'ts looking to stretch space budgets.
/-- Gold sees the "sweet spot" for pricing for comm'l crew to be somewhere in the $mid-20M range.

guest blogger john hare

I had an interesting conversation with Jon last month about the problems with air launching rocket ships. The various flavors of air launch involve some form of altitude and velocity loss as the rocket ship drops away from the mother ship before it can light it’s engines. In most cases, it also requires wings and other aero surfaces to correct the flight path to the desired vertical. These aero surfaces are not only dead weight from Jon’s point of view, they also induce airframe stresses on the rocket ship that it really doesn’t need.

The most important things for air launch are altitude, attitude, and airspeed, in about that order of importance. A conventional air launch seems to compromise somewhat on all three. Another point Jon didn’t care for is that the rocket cannot light it’s engines until well clear of the mother ship. Ignition or other engine related failure could easily result in loss of vehicle instead of an abort and return to base to examine the problem.

In my opinion, which is not shared by many that I am aware of, the White Knight series are perhaps the best high altitude airplanes in the world by the best designer in the world, but isn’t the optimum mother ship for space craft. The space craft they carry suffer from all the problems mentioned above, with only some mitigation by launching from extreme altitude.

I believe that the best mother ship is one that works for the requirements of the rocket vehicle. The rocket should be able to light the engines and confirm a healthy burn before separation. The release attitude should be such that the rocket ship is vertical or nearly so and doesn’t need any aero surfaces or the loads they impose. And it needs to release from the highest altitude possible at the highest airspeed possible.

I suggest that conventional air launches have been done backwards. The rocket should be lit before separation, and separate from the top of the vehicle at both high subsonic speed, and high altitude. Most of this can be accomplished with a change in operational technique rather than building a brand new super duper mother ship.

The rocket ship is mounted centerline bottom of an aircraft. At 25,000 feet or so, the mother ship has reached maximum altitude at the loaded condition of full tanks and rocket ship payload. The rockets ignite and feed from tanks on board the mother ship as the two vehicles accelerate and begin to climb. By 30,000 to 40,000 feet, the vehicles begin to roll inverted as you would see in a Shuttle launch. At 50,000 feet, the pair is climbing at 70 degrees and high subsonic airspeed. Then the mother ship lights some RATO type rocket engines and the rocket ship throttles back so that they are accelerating at the same rate as they separate. The switch to internal fuel supply for the rocket ship is confirmed stable at separation. With both vehicles accelerating at the same rate, they fly apart in parallel formation so that neither exhaust impinges the other. The rocket ship rolls from a 70 degree climb to vertical while the mother ship rolls from a 70 degree climb to the horizontal.

When sufficiently clear, the rocket ship  throttles back up for the climb with full tanks and 250+ meters per second velocity at extreme (for aircraft) altitudes. The mother ship reaches horizontal at nearly ‘coffin corner’ altitude for a clean ship with low fuel and no load. Coffin corner is the term I believe applies to an altitude where the  aircraft can’t go faster for engine or airframe reasons, and can’t go slower without stalling and falling out of control with a strong possibility of no recovery.

I believe this method would impart considerably improved performance to a rocket ship compared to the conventional approach. It would not require the rocket ship to have aero surfaces.(VTVL friendly) It would allow abort to base in case of rocket engine problems. It would not require developing the best high altitude aircraft in the world.

Heading back home today. We'll be on the road for the next eight hours or so. I'll try to post late this evening. Some misc. items till then:
/-- VIDEO: Space emerges as issue in UK election science debate - Hyperbola
/-- Better Than Apollo: The Space Program We Almost Had - Wired.com
/-- Twitter / BonNovA: New high-performance injec ...
/-- NASA space shuttle gearing up for big phase out - BusinessWeek

Yesterday's first attempt by SpaceX to carry out the Falcon 9 pad test firing sure is getting a lot of attention, e.g. see the many links about it at spacetoday.net. Comments on the articles are pretty amazing. The bumps and hiccups that routinely occur in the course of developing a brand new system don't usually take place in a spotlight in front of a huge crowd. In this case, much of the crowd reminds me of the fans of an opposing team who cheer and jeer, whoop and holler at the slightest miscue by the visiting team, even during the pre-game warmup. One can only imagine the joy and celebration that will erupt if the F9 fails to get to orbit. There will probably be rioting in Titusville...
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More about the efforts to extend the Shuttle program a bit longer: Hanging on to the shuttle - Space Politics

UK Skynet military satellite system extended