NASA and the Private Sector - Page 37

LAS VEGAS — Boeing has seen the future of private human spaceflight, and it is blue. Sky blue, that is.

The aerospace giant on Wednesday (April 30) unveiled its new concept for the cabin of a future commercial spaceliner — a vision based in part on the blue-lit Boeing "Sky" interior of the company's modern airliners, as well as work on the company's CST-100 space capsule to ferry NASA astronauts on roundtrips to the International Space Station.

"As we find ourselves on the verge of commercial flight … we begin to think, 'What does come next? Provided there is a destination for them out there, how will that passenger want to go back and forth?'" said Chris Ferguson, a former astronaut who commanded NASA's final space shuttle mission in 2011 and now serves as Boeing's director of crew and mission operations for the commercial crew program.

To reveal what they think the answers to those questions are, Ferguson joined other Boeing representatives at the Las Vegas facilities of the company now building a possible destination for Boeing's capsule: a private space station under development by Bigelow Aerospace. The Bigelow BA 330 commercial habitatutilizes inflatable modules to provide large living and work spaces for commercial researchers and private individuals.

"Our plan is to have two of our BA-330 modules ready to ship to the launch site by the end of 2016," said Jay Ingham, Bigelow's vice president and program manager for the BA 330. "But the actual launching of those vehicles and the space operations that go on with those is very dependent on us, or us as a country, having a space transportation system to get crew and cargo back and forth to our modules."

On May 15 2014 01:32 Rassy wrote:
The years pass and the decades go by,and we are at the basicly the same point as we where when the sputnik was launched.
In the 80,s of the last century we dreamed about having base on moon and hotel in space.
No doubt we would have them by 2000, but 2000 came and nothing of that, so we all thought:well it will come soon,maybe 2010, else 2020 tops.
And here we are in 2014,having made no progress at all and no progress in sight either.
Space wont be conquired and definatly not by private enterprises.
Communication satelites and frog jumps into space for the rich and thats about it.things we could do 30 years ago already.
A major technical breakthrough is needed but wont be realised as long as we compete instead of cooperate and as long as bankers make 1000 times as much as the most talented engineers and phycicists.

So ya, keep on dreaming.
Sry for this cynical message but its the truth.

Its funny but most of the progress in space has come from communist russia..(and nazi germany) Not from the free west.
Yet people still believe that capitalism will conquire space, lol.

Russia launched another of their Proton-M rockets on Thursday, with the mission tasked with lofting the Ekspress-AM4R telecommunications satellite into orbit. Launch of the Proton-M rocket took place from Launch Pad 39 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 21:42 GMT. However, an unspecified failure was noted during third stage flight. The rocket and satellite are lost.

LOS ANGELES — Billionaire Elon Musk said his private spaceflight company SpaceX has made some progress toward establishing a permanent colony on Mars — a longtime goal in the entrepreneur's push to help make humanity a multiplanet species.

"The reason SpaceX was created was to accelerate development of rocket technology, all for the goal of establishing a self-sustaining, permanent base on Mars," Musk told an audience here after receiving the Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award during the 33rd annual International Space Development Conference on Friday (May 16). "And I think we're making some progress in that direction — not as fast as I'd like."

Musk cited the success of SpaceX's recent reusable rocket test on April 18 as a critical achievement on the road to Mars. During that test flight, SpaceX launched a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket from its Florida pad and then returned the rocket's first stage back to Earth to make a vertical "soft landing" at a target in the Atlantic Ocean, before splashing down. The mission also delivered supplies to the International Space Station using a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

Billionaire Elon Musk's high-flying space venture, SpaceX, has provided fresh details about its plan to test a Dragon capsule that can use retro rockets to make a soft landing on Earth — and perhaps eventually on Mars.

The prototype test project, code-named DragonFly, would be conducted at SpaceX's test facility near McGregor, Texas, according to a draft environmental assessment released by the Federal Aviation Administration. The document is part of the regulatory requirements for issuing an experimental permit for the tests.

In the 76-page FAA document, the DragonFly RLV is described as a 7-ton Dragon capsule equipped with eight SuperDraco thrusters, an integrated trunk and up to four landing legs. The program calls for a series of increasingly ambitious tests, starting with a parachute-assisted landing and proceeding to a full propulsive landing and rocket-powered hops.

True to his word, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will unveil Dragon V2 this Thursday, May 29th at SpaceX HQ to invited guests. SpaceX is calling the Dragon V2 "a next generation spacecraft designed to carry astronauts into space." It was April 29th that Musk tweeted that the "cover drops on May 29. Actual flight design hardware of crew Dragon, not a mockup."

He also tweeted this shortly before the date announcement; "Sounds like this might be a good time to unveil the new Dragon Mk 2 spaceship that @SpaceX has been working on w @NASA. No trampoline needed."

The "No trampoline needed" reference is to a tweet earlier in the day by Dmitry Rogozin, Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, who said "After analysing the sanctions against our space industry I suggest the US delivers its astronauts to the ISS with a trampoline..."

Showmanship aside, the unveiling of Dragon V2, which was hastily organized to meet the May 29th date, is an important achievement for SpaceX and for U.S. commercial crew transportation capability.

Should SpaceX be selected for the next round, phase 2, of funding for the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap), then they and the U.S. would be that much closer to providing U.S. manned access to the International Space Station as soon as 2017.

The report, commissioned by the European Space Agency (Esa), was led by Reaction Engines Limited (REL) of Oxfordshire with help from a range of other contractors such as London Economics, QinetiQ and Thales Alenia Space (TAS).

It looked closely at how an operator of the UK-conceived vehicle might meet the demands of its market.

Those requirements would be primarily to loft big telecoms satellites high above the equator of the Earth, but also to put smaller, Earth-observing spacecraft in Sun-synchronous orbits (a type of orbit around the poles). These are the sorts of jobs the Ariane 5 rocket does today, and which Ariane 6, currently under discussion among European governments, may do from the early 2020s onwards.

Skylon is not in that discussion space at the moment - but it may get there at some point in the future if further technical studies prove positive and the financing can be found to push the concept forward.

The Skylon-based European Launch Service Operator (S-ELSO) study examined some of the hardware the vehicle would need to place satellites in orbit, and aspects of the economic model that would allow the operator to turn a profit. It even looked at how the vehicle could work out of Kourou in French Guiana - Europe's spaceport.