NASA and the Private Sector - Page 157

On February 22 2018 01:24 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
He's been making a lot of appearances at every place except SpaceX. Wonder why.

BROWNSVILLE, RGV – Members of Congress visited the STARGATE at UT-Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville on Friday, interested in the program and the group’s collaboration with SpaceX.

Congressman Filemon Vela said many people in his district – he represents Brownsville – were dubious that SpaceX would follow through on its plans to send rockets up to space from a launch pad on Boca Chica beach.

Dr. Rick Jenet, founder and director of STARGATE, responded that he was 100 percent sure SpaceX would be active in South Texas.

He later told the Rio Grande Guardian: “I am not a spokesperson for SpaceX but we can see the signs in the public statements that SpaceX are making. It is very clear that SpaceX has every intention of moving forward with the Boca Chica launch facility and in a recent conference in Silicon Valley, there was a presentation by SpaceX and you could see on the map a SpaceX facility, the Boca Chica space launch facility.”

STARGATE stands for Spacecraft Tracking and Astronomical Research into Gigahertz Astrophysical Transient Emission and is a radio-frequency (RF) technology facility currently under development in south Texas.

Within minutes of the discussion between Jenet and the members of Congress, James Gleeson, as senior communications manager at SpaceX sent the Rio Grande Guardian a quote about its commitment to South Texas. The timing was purely coincidental.

“SpaceX is committed to building the world’s first commercial launch complex in South Texas. We have invested millions into the project, hired new full-time employees and contractors, conducted extensive engineering and geotechnical surveys, and performed soil surcharging and drilling in preparation for the build,” Gleeson said.

“Last year, shipped from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and mounted on concrete foundations, SpaceX installed two ground station antennas at our South Texas launch site to track Crew Dragon missions to the International Space Station and beyond beginning in 2018, as well as for tracking flights from South Texas.”

On February 27 2018 05:30 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
SO far, Musk and SpaceX has delivered on everything that they said they would. I see no reason to doubt them now. Holding out for the Crew Dragon launches and manned flights, but so far, they're running away with this.

I think he's being naive on the encryption not being hackable. If it is built, there is a way to break it.

On March 01 2018 06:24 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
Read somewhere that NASA is saying that Starman could potentially contaminate Mars with Earth germs. Like uh...seriously NASA?

On March 01 2018 06:24 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
Read somewhere that NASA is saying that Starman could potentially contaminate Mars with Earth germs. Like uh...seriously NASA?

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — As Blue Origin continues tests of its BE-4 engine, United Launch Alliance is keeping quiet about when it might select that engine or an alternative for its Vulcan rocket.

Blue Origin started testing of the BE-4 in October 2017 at its West Texas test site. The company has disclosed few details about the status of that test program since then, but a company official said at the 45th Space Congress here Feb. 28 that the company was making “good progress” on tests of the engine.

“We’re getting longer duration burn times. We’re going though validating the turbomachinery very closely,” said Jim Centore, group lead for orbital mission operations at Blue Origin, during a panel discussion on launch systems at the conference.

Centore didn’t disclose many details about those tests, such as thrust levels or the burn times, either of individual tests or cumulatively. “We’re continuing to make good progress,” he said. “We’ll continue that for the next several months.”

Blue Origin is developing the BE-4 for its own New Glenn launch vehicle, with seven engines in the rocket’s first stage and one in its second. That vehicle, which will be manufactured at a factory the company recently built adjacent to the Kennedy Space Center, will be able to place up to 45 metric tons into low Earth orbit as 13 metric tons into geostationary orbit. The BE-4 engines themselves will be manufactured in a separate facility in Huntsville, Alabama.

BE-4 is also under consideration by ULA for use in the first stage of its Vulcan rocket. Company officials have long indicated that that the BE-4 was its preferred choice, but would wait on making a formal decision on whether to use the BE-4 engine until it completed a series of tests.

That decision was widely expected some time last year, but the company has not announced a decision yet. That’s raised questions about when the Vulcan itself will be complete.

Gary Wentz, vice president for government and commercial programs at ULA, said development of Vulcan remained on schedule. “We’re on target for our first flight in mid-2020,” he said during the panel discussion.

He declined later, though, to say when the company had to make a decision on an engine in order to keep on that schedule. “We’re in a competitive procurement, and we’re really not at liberty to discuss the details of what’s going on,” he said.

The choice of engine has implications for the overall design of the rocket as well as ground systems, in large part because of different propellants used. BE-4 uses methane and liquid oxygen (LOX), while Aerojet Rocketdyne’s AR1, the other engine under consideration for Vulcan, uses a refined version of kerosene known as RP-1 along with liquid oxygen.

That difference in fuels does create some complications, Wentz acknowledged. “Customers are always concerned about going from the traditional LOX/kerosene, LOX/hydrogen systems into a LOX/methane system,” he said. ULA’s Atlas 5 uses liquid oxygen and kerosene in its first stage, while the Delta 4 uses liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. “It also introduces challenges with the ground systems and compatibility.”

“The team, through the design process, has kept an open mind,” he said. “In a lot of the systems, we’re actually building a methane-compatible system in parallel with the traditional Atlas system. We’re just working through the details, working through the design and keeping the options open until we prepare to make that downselect.”

Elon Musk projects a Mars spaceship will be ready for short trips by first half of 2019 Elon Musk projects a Mars spaceship will be ready for short trips by first half of 2019
5 Hours Ago | 00:56
Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk told an audience at South by Southwest that his timeline for sending a space vehicle to Mars could mark its first milestone early next year.

The privately-funded venture, announced in September 2017, aims to send a cargo mission to the Red Planet by 2022. SpaceX's ultimate objective is to plant the seeds to put a human colony on Mars.

Musk held a surprise question and answer session at the annual technology and culture festival in Austin, Texas on Sunday. The billionaire told attendees that "we are building the first Mars, or interplanetary ship, and I think we'll be able to do short trips, flights by first half of next year."

Mindful of elevating expectations too high, Musk hedged a bit. "Although sometimes, my timelines are a little, you know..." he said to laughter.

SpaceX's BFR rocket system is expected to have capabilities for interplanetary travel, and be fully reusable. A flight will cost less than the initial Falcon 1 flights, which Musk pegged in the $5 to $6 million range.

He hopes if BFR launches, others will believe Mars travel is possible, and follow suit.

"The biggest thing that would be helpful is just general support and encouragement and goodwill," Musk said. "I think once we build it we'll have a point of proof something that other companies and countries can go and do. They certainly don't think it's possible, but if we do they'll up their game."

In the immediate term, Mars will need Glass domes, a power station, and an assortment of basic living fundamentals, he cautioned. After the infrastructure is complete, "then really the explosion of entrepreneurial opportunity [will begin], because Mars will need everything from iron foundries to pizza joints," he said.

In a wide-ranging series of remarks, Musk regaled the audience with anecdotes about several of his other ventures, including Tesla and the Boring Company, with the billionaire joking he tweets about the latter more than he actually spends time working on it.

Jeff Bezos wants to make space travel as dynamic and entrepreneurial as the internet.

“The price of admission to space is very high,” Bezos said Saturday night in New York, accepting the Buzz Aldrin Space Exploration Award at the Explorers Club Annual Dinner. “I’m in the process of converting my Amazon lottery winnings into a much lower price of admission so we can go explore the solar system.”

Bezos previously said he’s funding rocket company Blue Origin LLC to the tune of $1 billion a year through the sale of Amazon stock. His comments at the event suggest that may be only the start of his financial commitment to the project, which is developing reusable rockets. His net worth is $131 billion, with $125 billion of that in Amazon stock -- and that “keeps on going up,” his mom, Jackie Bezos, said during the cocktail hour. His fortune has grown more than any other on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index this year.

The Amazon chief executive officer wasn’t the only billionaire at the glitzy event at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. West Coast industrial real estate tycoon Ed Roski and Frederik Paulsen, a Swedish pharmaceutical titan and pole explorer, perused the tarantula, cockroach and roasted iguana appetizers amid 1,200 guests including James Lovell, the first person to journey twice to the moon, on Apollo 8 and Apollo 13.

Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk’s palpable love for flame throwers may be rivaled by just one thing: his passion for outer space. Through his private aerospace company, SpaceX, Musk has said he hopes to gradually increase the caliber of craft able to land on Mars, with the eventual goal of sending human explorers, and colonizing the planet. At South by Southwest this weekend, Musk issued an update on SpaceX’s Mars progress, telling the crowd that the first Mars-bound SpaceX ship is currently in production, and he hopes it will be able to complete brief “up and down” flights during the first half of next year. “People have told me that my timelines historically have been optimistic,” he said. “And so I'm trying to recalibrate to some degree here.”

For all Musk’s talk of space travel, he finds a formidable rival in another Silicon Valley billionaire: Jeff Bezos. While Musk has the functioning infrastructure in place and is working to create a viable business with SpaceX, which he said on Sunday is “alive by the skin of its teeth,” Bezos has nearly unlimited assets to devote to his aerospace company, Blue Origin. Previously, the Amazon C.E.O. said he would fund his space exploration enterprise through the sale of Amazon stock, and on Saturday night, while accepting the Buzz Aldrin Space Exploration Award at the Explorers Club Annual Dinner, he confirmed his commitment to the project. “The price of admission to space is very high,” he said. “I’m in the process of converting my Amazon lottery winnings into a much lower price of admission so we can go explore the solar system.”

Though Bezos declined to detail just how much his “winnings” are worth, both he and Musk epitomize the trend toward private space ventures. Governments, including the Trump White House, have indicated their interest in space exploration; in the 2018 budget, the president requested more than $800 million in funding for NASA moon missions. But even that request pales in comparison to the record amounts of cash V.C.s are pouring into space travel—in 2017, overall investment in space start-ups by venture capitalists reached a record $2.8 billion. Tokyo-based start-up ispace raised more than $90 million last year, and is aiming to land rover vehicles on the moon by 2020. “What’s going to happen next is a kind of land grab,” said ispace C.E.O. Takeshi Hakamada told Bloomberg. “It’s going to be first-come, first-served.”

The various rivalries suggest that the next space race won’t be fought between countries, but between billionaires pouring money into private ventures. So far, prospects for intergalactic profit may be limited—as Carolyn Belle, an analyst at Northern Sky Research, pointed out, “there isn’t a large potential customer base.” But the mission retains its urgency for Musk, who said at SXSW over the weekend that “It’s important to get a self-sustaining base on Mars because it’s far enough away from Earth that [in the event of a war] it’s more likely to survive than a moon base. If there’s a third world war, we want to make sure there’s enough of a seed of human civilization somewhere else to bring it back and shorten the length of the dark ages,” he added. But using another planet as a backup is reportedly “unmotivating” for Bezos. “We have sent a lot of probes to every planet in this solar system. Believe me, this is the best one,” he said. “The world that we live on is an absolute gem.”

WASHINGTON — Blue Origin has added a fourth customer to its launch manifest for the still-in-development New Glenn rocket.

“We are honored to have SKY Perfect JSAT as a customer for an early New Glenn launch,” Bob Smith, Blue Origin’s chief executive, told SpaceNews. “They are the biggest commercial satellite operator in Asia and highly respected. The whole team at Blue thanks SKY Perfect JSAT for placing its trust in us to take them to orbit.”

The Jeff Bezos-owned company also announced March 12 that mu Space, a Thai startup, finalized its agreement for a geostationary telecom satellite launch, converting a previously announced memorandum of understanding into a binding contract.

“We are looking forward to taking mu Space’s satellite to [geostationary transfer orbit],” Smith said. “They are an innovative company who shares our vision of opening up space for all.”

Sky Perfect JSAT of Tokyo joins mu Space, French fleet operator Eutelsat, and low Earth orbit startup OneWeb in booking New Glenn launches. Counting OneWeb’s five reserved launches, Blue Origin now has eight commercial missions lined up for its New Glenn rocket slated to debut in 2020.

Like Eutelsat’s contract, Sky Perfect JSAT’s contract doesn’t specify what satellite will launch on New Glenn.

Mu Space has yet to select a manufacturer for its satellite, but on March 12 announced a capacity contract on two SES satellites — SES-8 and the yet-to-launch SES-12 — to start providing satellite broadband services in Thailand.

With seven BE-4 engines on its first stage and one vacuum-optimized BE-4U for its second stage, New Glenn is being designed to carry up to 45 metric tons to LEO or 13 metric tons to GTO.

Blue Origin is designing the two-stage New Glenn to provide more lift capacity than SpaceX’s Falcon 9, Arianespace’s Ariane 5, and International Launch Services’ Proton — the three rockets that orbit the majority of the world’s commercial telecom satellites. New Glenn will also have more lift capacity than Europe’s next generation Ariane 6, which debuts in 2020. Only the Falcon Heavy, United Launch Alliance’s Delta 4 Heavy and China’s Long March 5 have larger GTO lift capacities.

Blue Origin is designing New Glenn to be reusable, building on the progress the company has made with the suborbital New Shepard launch vehicle.

Blue Origin is upgrading Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 36 to support New Glenn launches, not far from the Florida factory Blue Origin is opening to build the rockets. The company plans to land the vehicle’s first stage on a seafaring drone ship similar to what SpaceX uses to recover its Falcon 9 boosters.