NASA and the Private Sector - Page 86

SpaceX, the company run by Elon Musk, reached out to me to ask if I would create a space suit. I didn’t know what SpaceX was and I thought it was a film. Then I realized it’s an actual space program. They were looking to get a suit built for Elon to look at for the program. They had two weeks to present the suit to him and I told them I couldn’t do a full suit in two weeks but that I may be able to do a helmet.

There were four other companies working on bids as well and at the end of the process, he hated everything except the helmet. I worked with him for six months and at the end of that, we created a suit that they are now reverse-engineering to make functional for flight. The look they are going to unveil in the next few months is something we created here in the studio.

He wanted it to look stylish. It had to be practical but also needed to look great. It’s pretty bad ass. He kept saying, “Anyone looks better in a tux, no matter what size or shape they are,” and when people put this space suit on, he wants them to look better than they did without it, like a tux. You look heroic in it. It’s an iconic thing be a part of.

On May 05 2016 03:49 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Launch delayed for 24 hours due to Weather.

Also the ExoMars rover has been delayed by two years. Meaning SpaceX is the only group planning a Mars visit in the next 2 years as NASA and Russia/ESA face aim for 2020.

On January 01 2011 10:37 BlackJack wrote:
I never understood why people care so much about the deaths of astronauts. Millions and millions of people have died doing their jobs to get us where we are today. What is there to complain about when it is essentially safer for us to explore other planets than it was for our ancestors to explore their own country?

As the U.S. continues to shift away from space travel conducted by its government-funded entity, NASA, the agency has decided to put its advanced researched technologies to better use. Today, NASA announced it has released 56 of its formerly-patented technologies into the public domain.

While anyone can theoretically utilize this research through NASA’s public domain database, which now includes a collection of more than 1,000 technologies, the most likely beneficiaries are private space companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

“By making these technologies available in the public domain, we are helping foster a new era of entrepreneurship that will again place America at the forefront of high-tech manufacturing and economic competitiveness,” Daniel Lockney, NASA’s Technology Transfer program executive, says in a press release. “By releasing this collection into the public domain, we are encouraging entrepreneurs to explore new ways to commercialize NASA technologies.”

For all that rocket science gets a reputation for being complicated, it all boils down to some simple concepts. You burn stuff, and spew the resulting gases out a nozzle. Those gases coming out at high speeds push the rocket in the opposite direction.

Of course, it does get more complicated than that. The BE-4, a rocket engine that Blue Origin is developing, uses a preburner to set up that big combustion reaction that generates all those flames and propulsive gases. Basically what the preburner does is it burns a small amount of fuel, and uses the steam from that to drive some pumps that move the fuel—methane and oxygen—into the combustion chamber.

The problem is, that preburner reaction can get hot. Very hot. Like 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hot enough to melt a lot of rocket parts. In an email to a mailing list, Blue Origin and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos explained how Blue Origins works around that. It involves a lot of computer modeling.

Basically, the company has to cool down the steam coming from the pre-burner to about 700 degrees Fahrenheit, otherwise it might melt the turbines that power the pumps that dump fuel into the combustion chamber. To cool it, they mix unburned oxygen gas into the steam. And to make sure the oxygen mixes in thoroughly and there aren't any hotspots, they use a fancy computer modeling system.

The first flight of the newly updated Antares rocket — the premiere vehicle of private spaceflight company Orbital ATK — will take place sometime in July, the company announced today according to Space News. The flight will send cargo and supplies to the International Space Station, as part of Orbital's commercial partnership with NASA. It also marks the first launch of the Antares after a previous version of the vehicle exploded during a space station resupply mission in October 2014.

Since the accident, Orbital has spent nearly two years redesigning the Antares. The biggest change has been replacing the engines in the rocket. Originally, the Antares flew on two AJ26 engines, refurbished Soviet-era engines manufactured by US company Aerojet Rocketdyne. But Orbital claims the engines were responsible for the accident and decided to replace them. An investigation by Orbital found that a defect in the turbopumps of one of the AJ26 engines caused an explosion that ultimately destroyed the rocket. That puts the blame on Aerojet for not making the engines correctly.

Not everyone is in agreement about what caused the accident, though. Aerojet claimed that the explosion was actually caused by foreign debris found in the engine, according to Reuters. And an investigation by NASA couldn't conclusively say if the explosion was caused by defective turbopumps or foreign debris. Regardless, Orbital still decided to replace the AJ26 engines with RD-181s — engines developed by Russian company NPO Energomash.

Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, never one to rest on his laurels, recently laid out the opening move in his long-term quest to land people (himself included) on Mars.

The plan begins with a Dragon capsule, similar to one of the cargo ships now parked at the International Space Station, blasting off for Mars aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket as early as 2018.

The Falcon Heavy, which will have 27 first-stage engines, compared to the nine aboard SpaceX’s current Falcon rocket, is scheduled for its first flight before the end of this year. Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful U.S. rocket to fly since NASA’s Saturn 5 moon rockets of the 1970s.

NASA, which was an early supporter and primary customer of Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, was quick to respond to his Mars announcement with a statement of support and the disclosure of an agreement offering technical support.

NASA, after all, has successfully landed spacecraft on Mars seven times.

SpaceX, which has multibillion-dollar contracts with NASA to fly cargo and crew to the space station, won’t be getting financial support from NASA for its debut Mars mission, known as Red Dragon.

The prospect of SpaceX’s self-financed journey to Mars, one which Musk clearly intends to develop to the point of landing people, casts new light on NASA’s own Mars program. The project costs NASA about $4 billion per year and does not yet include development of a habitat for deep-space travel or a vehicle to land and then take off again from the surface.

For now, the agency is focused on developing the multipurpose deep-space Orion capsule and a heavy-lift rocket, known as the Space Launch System. The capsule and launcher will be tested together for the first time during an unmanned flight around the moon in November 2018. A follow-up test flight with astronauts aboard is targeted for 2023, setting the stage for a human mission to Mars in the mid-2030s.

Which begs the question: Will SpaceX be there first?