NASA and the Private Sector - Page 93

US government agencies are working on temporary rules to allow a private company to land a spacecraft on the moon next year, while Congress weighs a more permanent legal framework to govern future commercial missions to the moon, Mars and other destinations beyond Earth’s orbit, officials said.

Plans by private companies to land spacecraft on the moon or launch them out of Earth’s orbit face legal obstacles because the US has not put in place regulations to govern space activities, said industry and government officials.

“We do not have formal authority today to deal with what happens on orbit or on other planetary terrestrial bodies. That’s the issue that we’re wrestling with,” said George Nield, head of the Federal Aviation Administration’s office of commercial space transportation.

“What is being looked at right now is a Band-Aid fix because the system is broken,” Nield said at an American Bar Association space law forum in Washington on Wednesday.

A 1967 international treaty obliges the US and other signatories to authorize and supervise space activities by its non-government entities. But no US agency has authority to regulate commercial space activities outside of rocket launches, spacecraft re-entries into the atmosphere and operations of telecommunications and remote sensing satellites in Earth orbit.

The issue is coming to a head in part because of a request by Florida-based Moon Express for permission from the US government to land a spacecraft on the moon in 2017. So far, only government agencies have flown satellites beyond Earth’s orbit.

Ever since Elon Musk founded a start-up space company 14 years ago, the goal has always been the same: Establishing a colony on Mars. Now he’s finally beginning to reveal how he plans to get there.

Starting as soon as 2018, Musk’s SpaceX plans to fly an unmanned spacecraft to Mars. The unmanned flights would continue about every two years, timed for when Earth and Mars are closest in orbit, and, if everything goes according to plan, build toward the first human mission to Mars with the goal of landing in 2025, Musk has said.

But in an interview with The Post this week, Musk laid out additional details for the first time, equating the spirit of the missions with the settlement of the New World by the colonists who crossed the Atlantic Ocean centuries ago. And he acknowledged the immense difficulties of getting to a planet that is, on average, 140 million miles from Earth.

The months-long journey is sure to be “hard, risky, dangerous, difficult,” Musk said, but he was confident people would sign up to go because “just as with the establishment of the English colonies, there are people who love that. They want to be the pioneers.”

Before those pioneers board a rocket, though, Musk said the unmanned flights would carry science experiments and rovers to the planet. The equipment would be built either by SpaceX, or others. The early flights also would serve to better understand interplanetary navigation and allow the company to test its ability to safely land craft on Mars.

“Essentially what we’re saying is we’re establishing a cargo route to Mars,” he said. “It’s a regular cargo route. You can count on it. It’s going to happen every 26 months. Like a train leaving the station. And if scientists around the world know that they can count on that, and it’s going to be inexpensive, relatively speaking compared to anything in the past, then they will plan accordingly and come up with a lot of great experiments.”

The mission is all the more audacious in that SpaceX is a private company without the resources of a government agency. NASA has previously said it would provide “technical support” for the 2018 mission, though not financially, in exchange for what it said was “valuable, descent and landing data to NASA for our journey to Mars, while providing support to American industry.” NASA is planning its own manned Mars mission with the goal of landing in the 2030s. But some in Congress have indicated they are inclined to steer the agency back toward a moon mission first.

On June 11 2016 22:21 micronesia wrote:
One difference between being the first colonists on Mars and the first colonists to come from Europe to North America in the 1400s: how do you sustain yourself on Mars? You can survive in North America without constant and regular supply missions from Europe (for the most part). Colonists on Mars will be dependent on those supply missions every 26 months or they will die. If something goes wrong and stuff is needed sooner than 26 months, they probably won't be able to get it. Not everyone has Matt Damon's fictitious luck.

As President Barack Obama's second term comes to an end, Congress is reconsidering the country's space priorities. The idea of a return trip to the moon is increasing in popularity.

The Obama administration's space policy has long favored an asteroid mission by 2025 followed by a mission to Mars in the 2030s, as Ars Technica reported. But during the appropriations process, the House instructed NASA to cease the asteroid mission and instead "develop plans to return to the Moon to test capabilities that will be needed for Mars, including habitation modules, lunar prospecting, and landing and ascent vehicles," as Ars reported. The moon-before-Mars plan has seen bipartisan support in the House.

"There is no better proving ground than the Moon for NASA to test the technologies and techniques needed to successfully meet the goal of sending humans to Mars by the mid 2030s," Rep. Mike Honda (D) of Calif., a major proponent of the new approach, told Ars.

Prioritizing the moon over the asteroid program would represent a major shift in NASA's priorities. NASA says the asteroid mission will give them experience in human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit and allow them to test technologies that would be necessary in a Mars mission. NASA said a human mission to Mars could help address the question of whether life exists beyond Earth.

"Mars is a rich destination for scientific discovery and robotic and human exploration as we expand our presence into the solar system," NASA said on its website. "Its formation and evolution are comparable to Earth, helping us learn more about our own planet's history and future."

The administration's asteroid program has come under increased scrutiny in recent years, as it has drastically lessened in scope, with the current plan to obtain a small boulder off an asteroid's surface and return it to a location near the moon where astronauts can visit it to fulfill the president's goal, Ars reported.

NASA asked for $66.7 million to work on the mission this year, but the House legislation would deny that request and insist on lunar exploration. The House legislation needs to go to conference with the Senate, but Ars reports it is unlikely to be challenged there. Even if vetoed by Obama, the legislation would show the next president Congress' space preferences.

When you walk into the place where Seattle software billionaire Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch Systems is building the world’s biggest airplane, it feels as if you’re stepping into the Starship Enterprise’s construction zone.

“It’s jaw-dropping when you walk into that hangar,” said Chuck Beames, Stratolaunch’s executive director and president of Vulcan Aerospace, during a rare tour last week.

The plane’s wing, taking shape inside a 103,000-square-foot hangar at the Mojave Air and Space Port, stands three stories off the ground and measures 385 feet from tip to tip. That’s three times longer than the distance of the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight in 1903. If the Enterprise is ever built to its “Star Trek” TV dimensions, now or in the 23rd century, the starship would be only a few dozen feet wider.

It doesn’t take long for the numbers – and the view – to boggle the mind. But there’s another side to the Stratolaunch saga: What’s Paul Allen up to? Stratolaunch is designed to serve as a flying platform for sending satellites into orbit, but who will provide the air-launched rockets? What niche will Stratolaunch fill alongside SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and other space companies?

Like the plane, Paul Allen’s vision isn’t quite ready for its full reveal. But five years after its founding, Stratolaunch Systems is providing glimpses behind the veil.

In a statement, Allen said Stratolaunch and other efforts to expand access to low Earth orbit hold “revolutionary potential” similar to that brought by the PC revolution in the 1980s and the rise of the Web and smartphones in the 1990s.

“When such access to space is routine, innovation will accelerate in ways beyond what we can currently imagine,” the Microsoft co-founder said. “That’s the thing about new platforms: When they become easily available, convenient and affordable, they attract and enable other visionaries and entrepreneurs to realize more new concepts.”

Beames emphasized that Stratolaunch is meant to be a money-maker as well as a manifestation of Allen’s technological vision. He said the air-launch system would be “especially valuable” for sending up hundreds of small networked satellites for communication or Earth imaging.

WASHINGTON — Blue Origin has broken ground on the orbital vehicle manufacturing complex it expects to open just outside the gates of Florida’s Kennedy Space Center in December 2017.

Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos emailed reporters June 28 to share new renderings and photos of ground-clearing activities at the site. “It’s exciting to see the bulldozers in action — we’re clearing the way for the production of a reusable fleet of orbital vehicles that we will launch and land, again and again,” he wrote.

Bezos announced plans for the factory last September during a Cape Canaveral press conference attended by Florida’s governor.

In his June 28 email — the latest in a series of emails he sends out to provide short updates on Blue Origins’ activities — Bezos described the 750,000 square foot rocket factory as “custom-built from the ground up to accommodate manufacturing, processing, integration and testing.

“Among other things, the facility hosts large scale friction stir welding and automated composite processing equipment,” he wrote. “All of the vehicle will be manufactured in this facility except for the engines. Initial BE-4 engine production will occur at our Kent facility while we conduct a site selection process later this year for a larger engine production facility to accommodate higher production rates.”