NASA and the Private Sector - Page 64

On July 21 2015 04:46 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
There are several dragons not just one.

On July 21 2015 05:01 oBlade wrote:

I didn't imply otherwise. The video of the accident didn't look very survivable with all that debris, especially since the uncrewed Dragon has no abort system.

The race to deliver the internet from space isn't primarily playing out in engineering laboratories and among rocket scientists. Instead, most of the fireworks are happening in federal registries as lawyers spar over regulatory issues.

Two companies, SpaceX and OneWeb, are trying to launch an array of satellites capable of delivering fiber-level speeds to any point on Earth. SpaceX is the presumptive favorite, as Elon Musk's company has proven itself capable of making its own way to space, and it's got $1 billion from Google and Fidelity to play around with. OneWeb, started by industry veteran Greg Wyler, is no slouch either: It's got backing from Virgin CEO Richard Branson and the largest launch deal of all time, sponsored by a German company called Arianespace. It's also got money coming in from Intelsat, one of the largest satellite manufacturers in the world.

That last deal is where things get interesting: Earlier this month, Intelsat filed an "informal complaint" with the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to prevent SpaceX from launching two experimental satellites to test the technology.

Intelsat said in the complaint that SpaceX's satellite communications could interfere with Intelsat's existing infrastructure and said that it's possible SpaceX's satellites could collide with Intelsat’s as they are making their way to geostationary orbit, which is a higher orbit than the low Earth orbits both OneWeb and SpaceX plan on using. Intelsat also demanded that the FCC reject SpaceX's request to keep specific details of its experimental plan confidential.

NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star. This discovery and the introduction of 11 other new small habitable zone candidate planets mark another milestone in the journey to finding another “Earth.”

The newly discovered Kepler-452b is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the habitable zone -- the area around a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet -- of a G2-type star, like our sun. The confirmation of Kepler-452b brings the total number of confirmed planets to 1,030.

"On the 20th anniversary year of the discovery that proved other suns host planets, the Kepler exoplanet explorer has discovered a planet and star which most closely resemble the Earth and our Sun," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “This exciting result brings us one step closer to finding an Earth 2.0."

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Air Force contends United Launch Alliance needs as many as 22 RD-180 rocket engines to compete against SpaceX for dozens of national security launches that start going out for bid later this year, according to a U.S. senator.

ULA has ordered 29 RD-180 engines from Russia for its Atlas 5 rocket. Fifteen of those engines are for Air Force launches already under contract. The remaining 14 are what ULA has said it needs to import in order to compete for military launches until its next generation rocket, known as Vulcan and powered by a U.S.-made engine, is ready around 2020.

The Air Force plans to begin soliciting bids later this year for an initial batch of nine missions, all of which Air Force officials say Atlas 5 is suited to launch. A further 28 missions will be put out for bid starting in 2018, with 25 of those suited to the Atlas 5.

Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee in April that ULA needs to be allowed to buy 18 RD-180 engines for missions not already under contract in order to ensure the government receives competing bids when it buys launch services over the next several years.

But the Air Force now appears to be revising that estimate upward, complicating its quest for relief from a 2015 law barring the RD-180’s use for future military launches.

On July 28 2015 23:00 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:
Ordered from Russia? What happened to the sanctions?

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Air Force may need to guarantee SpaceX and United Launch Alliance a set number of national security launches if the service hopes to have to two financially viable families of rockets available in the future, according to a report completed in April.

The report, formally known as Broad Area Review 15 and led by retired Gen. Larry Welch, a former Air Force chief of staff, raises anew a persistent question about the U.S. national security launch market: Is there enough business for two companies?

The report was commissioned by Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James in January following delays to the Air Force’s certification process for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. The process, which had been expected to be completed by the end of December, dragged on until June, when Falcon 9 was cleared to carry military payloads.

The dramatic failure of a test flight by Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket last October cost the co-pilot his life and left the pilot severely injured. New data from investigators suggest that the pilot survived in part because the craft essentially came apart around him.

Pilot Peter Siebold told the National Transportation Safety Board that when the flight went wrong, he heard a loud bang, and then what sounded like "paper fluttering in the wind" — believed to be the sound of the spaceship's cabin disintegrating.

The next thing he can recall, Siebold told federal investigators, was finding himself in a free fall, miles above Earth's surface. He was in a roughly stable position — not tumbling. But to see the planet's horizon, he had to look up, because he was facing downward toward a vast desert landscape.

SpaceShipTwo broke apart soon after it reached supersonic speeds and an altitude of around 50,000 feet, the result of a series of events that officials blame on human error. Its debris was scattered over a 5-mile area near California's Koehn Dry Lake, in a setback to Virgin Galactic's plans for space tourism.

SpaceX recently powered up its Crew Dragon avionics test bed at its facility in Hawthorne, California, by simulating a crew flight to the International Space Station. During the avionics functionality check, engineers were able to make sure the spacecraft’s hardware and software worked well together in a flight-like environment. The avionics are known as the brains of a spacecraft, controlling all the critical automated operations of a flight.

“It may not sound exciting, but it’s a really, really important tool. We can basically fly the Crew Dragon on the ground — flip the switches, touch the screens, test the algorithms and the batteries – all before testing the avionics system in flight,” said Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of mission assurance for SpaceX. “It’s important to get the avionics right before putting it into the capsule.”

The SpaceX avionics test bed is similar to the Shuttle Avionics Integration Lab, or SAIL, in Houston, which was used throughout NASA’s Space Shuttle Program to test the interaction of hardware and software before modifying code on the vehicles for flight.