NASA and the Private Sector - Page 57

The future of the International Space Station is a little clearer this week, following a statement from Russia supporting an extension of the orbiting complex through 2024. The move aligns the Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos, with NASA—which already said it would continue station operations through the same period.

Following a meeting of the Roscosmos Scientific and Technical Council, or NTS, a statement was released describing a plan to add new modules to the ISS but then remove them around 2024 to create a new Russian space station.

"The concept involves the use of the ISS until 2024,” said a translated version of the statement, “and then to create a Russian space base on the basis separated from the ISS modules."

In a statement provided to The Planetary Society, NASA’s response was measured and did not mention Russia directly.

"The Obama administration is committed to extending operation of the International Space Station to at least 2024,” NASA said. "The space station is providing a unique environment for human health research and space operations that will be necessary for conducting human missions deeper into space and for expanding commercial activity in low-Earth orbit. We welcome continued cooperation from our ISS partners in support of this extension and look forward to working with them on the ISS until at least 2024."

Until now, NASA was the only agency that had signaled it would keep the station operating beyond 2020. A decision on continued involvement from Europe, Japan and Canada may not come until next year.

Faced with mounting pressure from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the United Launch Alliance’s new chief executive said Monday he has been re-configuring the company in order to compete, slashing the cost of national security launches and developing a new launch system.

In an interview with Washington Post reporters, Tory Bruno said that since he was named CEO of ULA last summer his job has been “to literally transform the company,” and he also took a jab at his upstart competitor, saying it was risky to rely on Musk’s relatively new space company for national security launches.

For years, ULA, the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, had it made. It had the backing of two of the most powerful defense contractors in the world, and no one to challenge its dominance in the lucrative field of launching national security satellites into space.

But in recent months, the Colorado-based company has faced two very big challenges. First, Musk’s startup space company sued the Air Force, saying that it should be able to compete with ULA for the launches. The company recently settled the suit, and the Air Force has pledged to certify it, perhaps within a few months, so that SpaceX can compete for upcoming contracts.

ULA's second hurdle is its Russian-made RD-180 engine. Musk has criticized ULA for using the engine at a time of strained relations between the U.S. and Russia over the crisis in the Ukraine. And late last year, Congress imposed a ban on the RD-180, which the ULA uses in its Atlas V rocket, by 2019.

To end dependence on the Russian engine, ULA recently announced a partnership with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space company to build a new, American-made engine. (Bezos also owns The Washington Post.) ULA is also partnering with Aerojet Rocketdyne on a new engine, but that company is further behind on development, Bruno said.

The Blue Origin engine, the BE-4, won’t be ready for test flights until 2019 at the earliest, Bruno said. And it could be 2022 or 2023 before it would be certified by the Pentagon for national security launches.

Lugging groceries and supplies to the astronauts on the International Space Station may not be as cool as ferrying the astronauts themselves into orbit. But the NASA contract to fly cargo to the station in unmanned rocket ships has attracted bids from high-profile companies in what analysts say is another indication of commercial spaceflight’s recent renaissance.

It appears that at least five space firms have submitted proposals for the work, including giants such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which didn't bother to bid on the work the last time. In a new sort of space race, the contract has touched off an intense competition between stalwart defense contractors and new space start-ups that have, in just a few years, shown they can compete.

Years ago, NASA implemented a plan to outsource transportation to the space station in low Earth orbit, saying that, with a tight budget, it needed to be focused on bigger targets, such as Mars.

Some members of Congress and others criticized the decision, saying that private industry could not be trusted with such high-stakes work and that the business of spaceflight should be left to NASA. But in the years since, NASA’s decision to rely on commercial companies helped ignite the commercial space industry, which, backed by new infusions of cash and with more launches to its credit, has grown more robust.

For the past few years, two companies have been resupplying the space station, taking supplies and experiments to the orbital laboratory. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX won a $1.6 billion contract, and so far has had five successful trips, and is scheduled for a sixth in April.

The private space industry has been buoyed by billionaires, such as Musk, Richard Branson, who owns Virgin Galactic, and Jeff Bezos, the Amazon.com founder who owns Blue Origin (as well as the Washington Post).

But now others are looking to invest in space as well. On a recent trip to Silicon Valley, Eric Stallmer, the president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, said many other investors had a palpable fear-of-missing-out vibe.

“Tell me the companies I need to be looking out for,” he said they asked. “Never have we seen this level of investment come in.”

In January, SpaceX announced it had received a $1 billion infusion from Google and Fidelity. Planet Labs, which builds and operates satellites, also announced this year that it had received $95 million in funding.

The money, or interest, in space wasn’t there just a few years ago.

At the time of the last cargo contract, “the environment looked different,” said Marco Caceres, an analyst with the Teal Group. “It wasn’t clear that this new paradigm shift was going to work. A lot of people were saying this is wrong; NASA has to have its own rocket.”

SpaceX’s successful launches not only propelled the once obscure start-up into the mainstream but demonstrated, even to the large, traditional defense contractors, that there is money to be made in space.

“We’re really moving quickly away from that old paradigm where NASA dominates,” Caceres said.

Boeing Space Exploration is offering a stripped-down version of the CST-100 commercial crew vehicle as a candidate for the second round of NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-2) space station cargo contract, proposing a largely reusable vehicle that swaps seats and other crew hardware for station supplies.

The cargo CST-100 also would offer unpressurized "upmass" to the International Space Station (ISS) in its throwaway service module, using space freed up by the removal of launch-abort engines and other hardware that would be unnecessary in the absence of a crew. A win in the CRS-2 bidding would lower the cost of both the crew and cargo versions of the commercial space capsule, Boeing says.

NASA’s newest space habitat looks sort of like a kids’ moon bounce, a big, shiny, inflatable sphere that could be lots of fun to play in.

Soon astronauts on the International Space Station could get the chance to try. The expandable habitat made by Bigelow Aerospace recently passed NASA’s rigorous certification requirements and is scheduled to be flown to the station in September.

Called the BEAM (and acronym for Bigelow Expandable Activity Module), the habitat would be attached to the space station, where it would stay for two years. While there, it would be tested to see how it handles the rigors of space — the radiation, the station’s movement and even how it stands up to the debris flying around in orbit.

The private Las Vegas company, founded by millionaire real estate mogul Robert Bigelow, won a $17.8 million contract from NASA to provide the module to the space station.

“Today is the first step, but it’s a big step,” said Bigelow’s George Zamka.

Bigelow plans to send bigger inflatable habitats to space, which could replace or augment the space station. It also hopes to build the habitats on the moon. Its B330 module would be even bigger, with 330 cubic meters of internal space. The modules could be connected, creating research facilities, the company says, or even space hotels.

On March 11 2015 09:57 A3th3r wrote:
I'm with the cohort that says that SpaceX is great & that private industry seems to be more efficient than NASA is with government money. NASA needs to cut costs, big-time!

A new, inflatable addition to the International Space Station is ready for its close-up.

NASA officials viewed Bigelow Aerospace's Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) at the company's facility in Las Vegas on March 12. BEAM is scheduled to depart later this year for NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and then blast toward the station atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster.

BEAM's time attached to the orbiting lab should provide a key test for expandable space habitats, which represent a dramatic departure from traditional metallic designs.

"We're fortunate to have the space station to demonstrate potential habitation capabilities like BEAM," Jason Crusan, director of Advanced Exploration Systems at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in a statement. "Station provides us with a long-duration microgravity platform with constant crew access to evaluate systems and technologies we are considering for future missions farther into deep space."

According to Bigelow Aerospace, the demonstration of expandable space habitat technology supports NASA's plans in the realm of human spaceflight, which ultimately lead to putting boots on Mars. Developing a deep-space habitat is an important step along the path to the Red Planet, agency officials say.

Founded in 1999 by entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, Bigelow Aerospace has as a goal the creation of a new paradigm in space commerce and exploration via the development and use of expandable habitat technology. Expandable habitats are viewed as offering dramatically larger volumes than rigid, metallic structures as well as enhanced protection against both radiation and physical debris.

Additionally, expandable habitats are lighter than traditional systems, take up less room in a rocket fairing for launch, and are seen by advocates as a less-costly alternative.

As an example, BEAM will measure just 8 feet (2.4 meters) wide in its packed configuration aboard SpaceX's robotic Dragon resupply spacecraft. Once is deployed and inflated, it will add an additional 565 cubic feet (16 cubic m) of volume — about the size of a large family camping tent — that is accessible to astronauts aboard the orbiting laboratory.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s congressional overseers appear divided over the timetable for weaning the U.S. Air Force from a controversial Russian rocket engine, a matter that sources say likely will not be settled until House and Senate lawmakers meet later this year to finalize the 2016 defense authorization bill.

At issue is the RD-180, the main engine on United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket, which launches the majority of U.S. national security satellites. Denver-based ULA operates two main rockets, the other being the Delta 4, which, though powered by an American-made engine, is 25 percent more expensive and used less frequently than the Atlas 5.

In response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine last year, Congress mandated that the Air Force stop using the RD-180 and begin work on a U.S.-built replacement. That language was finalized late last year in conference negotiations on the 2015 defense authorization bill between a group of lawmakers informally known as the Big Four — the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate armed services committees.

But in recent weeks, the Defense Department and ULA have complained that the law is too restrictive and would hamstring the company in upcoming launch competitions against emerging rival SpaceX. Under the most conservative reading of the law, ULA would have only five RD-180 engines available for the competitions, which are slated to begin this year and could cover nine launches over the next three years.

As was promised, NASA is not abandoning Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) and its Dream Chaser vehicle, despite the spaceplane losing out on the lucrative Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) award last year. An agreement has been was reached for SNC to continue to work with NASA through to the Critical Design Review (CDR) level of maturity for the vehicle.

Building on the success of NASA’s partnerships with commercial industry to date, NASA has selected 12 Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) to advance concept studies and technology development projects in the areas of advanced propulsion, habitation and small satellites.

Through these public-private partnerships, selected companies will partner with NASA to develop the exploration capabilities necessary to enable commercial endeavors in space and human exploration to deep-space destinations such as the proving ground of space around the moon, known as cis-lunar space, and Mars.

“Commercial partners were selected for their technical ability to mature key technologies and their commitment to the potential applications both for government and private sector uses,” said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA Headquarters. “This work ultimately will inform the strategy to move human presence further into the solar system.”

Results from these studies and hardware developments also will help determine the role for international partner involvement, by fully exploring domestic capabilities, and for Orion and Space Launch Systems missions in cis-lunar space. This work also will advance system understanding and define a need for further testing of habitation systems and components on the International Space Station.

The seven NextSTEP habitat projects will have initial performance periods of up to 12 months, at a value of $400,000 to $1 million for the study and development efforts, and the potential for follow-on phases to be defined during the initial phase.

The selected companies are:

• Bigelow Aerospace LLC of North Las Vegas, Nevada
  
• The Boeing Company of Pasadena, Texas
  
• Dynetics Inc. of Huntsville, Alabama
  
• Hamilton Sundstrand Space Systems International of Windsor Locks, Connecticut
  
• Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company of Denver, Colorado
  
• Orbital ATK of Dulles, Virginia
  
• Orbital Technologies Corporation of Madison, Wisconsin
  

Blue Origin recently completed acceptance testing of its BE-3 rocket engine, the first new hydrogen engine to be developed in the United States in more than a decade.

The 110,000-lbf BE-3 will power Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital system, and later, will be modified for upper stage applications.

"The BE-3 has now been fired for more than 30,000 seconds over the course of 450 tests," said Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin founder. "We test, learn, refine and then test again to push our engines. The Blue Origin team did an outstanding job exploring the corners of what the BE-3 can do and soon we'll put it to the ultimate test of flight."

The BE-3 can be continuously throttled between 110,000-lbf and 20,000-lbf thrust, a key capability for vertical takeoff and vertical landing vehicles. The testing profile included multiple mission duty cycles, deep throttling and off-nominal test points.

"Liquid hydrogen is challenging, deep throttling is challenging and reusability is challenging," said Bezos. "This engine has all three. The rewards are highest performance, vertical landing even with a single-engine vehicle and low cost. And, as a future upper stage engine, hydrogen greatly increases payload capabilities."

The BE-3 engine was designed and fabricated at Blue Origin's design, development and production facility in Kent, Wash. Full-engine testing was conducted at the company's facilities in West Texas, while earlier combustion chamber testing was completed at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.