Budget (27)
Commissions (61)
Concepts (33)
Editorials (61)
Events (10)
Missions (13)
News Releases (59)
Prometheus (12)
Property Rights (7)
Rumors (7)
Russia (11)
Weblog News (8)
"To send astronauts back to the moon, NASA is planning to begin by making maximum use of existing U.S. and foreign rockets as launching systems. Vehicles under consideration may use updated propulsion systems that could blast a flotilla of spacecraft from the Earth to the vicinity of the moon."
+ Read Article (SpaceDaily)
From Lori Garver (former NASA Associate Administrator and National Space Society Executive Director, as well as prospective space tourist)
"Please don't write-off the Kerry-Edwards camp on space. The Bush initiative is simply hot-air and has made it impossible in an election year for Kerry to say much on space. What he has said -- will support increased funding for NASA R&D;, will support Prizes, a more genuinely international effort, etc... is already more than most Presidential Candidates. It took Bush 3.5 years and a tragic Shuttle accident to come up with a policy. Democrats will be able to pull-off a better record -- if not rhetoric!
Totally agree on futility of ISS as pharmacy source and need to retire Shuttle -- Kerry can be convinced of this, but perhaps not in the campaign.
The Moon-Mars Blitz was a good way for Congress to see citizens supporting space -- always a good thing."
+ Read Article (KerrySpace - Yahoo! Groups)
Editor's Note: While I would like to keep this blog non-partisan and focused on space issues, in case you are wondering: I will be most likely be voting for Libertarian Michael Badnarik, a symbolic vote for me because he values the U.S. Constitution and would favor many of the Moon-Mars commission's recommendations, as I do. But I will always welcome readers of all stripes to participate in this community.
"NASA issued this week a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) focused on what's needed in human and robotic technology to put into high gear any Moon, Mars, and beyond space exploration.
As part of a sweeping roster of needs, NASA is asking for proposals in the fields of artificial gravity, inflatable structures, as well as living-off-the-land machinery."
+ Read Article (Space.com)
"Inside NASA, planners have begun to assemble teams that are looking deep inside President George W. Bush's new vision of space exploration. Their goal: define the characteristics of the first new piloted spaceship since the space shuttle, and establish the initial steps and stages by which these new craft will attempt a series of moon landings.
Inside NASA's Exploration Mission Directorate, a requirements group is busily working to put substance into the new assault on the moon."
+ Read Article (UPI)
Part Two of a series on CEV design & launch concepts
Kevin Waldroup expands on the ideas for Shuttle-C and discusses the possibilites of variants and space station applications using the external tank and other components of the existing shuttle infrastructure.
Part One of a series on CEV design & launch concepts
Mike Majeski postulates an international effort to build the next human spacecraft among the U.S., Russia, Europe, and Japan. He discusses both capsule and winged designs for an International Space Transport vehicle.
"Constellation Services International (CSI) envisions Russian Soyuz spacecraft used for fly-me-to-the-Moon passenger service. The entrepreneurial firm unveiled their plan for the first time during a recent Return to the Moon conference, sponsored by the Space Frontier Foundation.
CSI "is in early discussions with potential partners to find out if there is interest in a commercial lunar flight in the 2009 time frame," said Charles Miller, President and CEO of the firm in Alexandria, Virginia.
+ Read Article (Space News)
Tomorrow ProjectConstellation.US will begin a three part series of articles focusing on CEV design & launch concepts. The series will offer contributed articles from readers Mike Majeski and Kevin Waldroup, as well as a feature from James Burk, the editor of ProjectConstellation.US.
If you have an ideas for the implementation of the CEV, including its design or how it can be launched to Low Earth Orbit, the Moon, Mars, or Beyond, please Contact Me.
"Earlier this year, the agency attempted to jumpstart the proposed Centennial Challenges program by redirecting $2 million of this year’s $15.4 billion budget toward the prize initiative. However, U.S. lawmakers who oversee the space agency’s budget shot down NASA’s request to kick off the initiative on the grounds that Congress had not yet approved the new program.
NASA is making a second attempt in the hope that this time lawmakers will approve the request. However, the agency's 2025 budget request is not faring too well in the House and this once again casts a shadow on the program's chances."
+ Read Article (Space News)
"It has been six months since President George Bush announced at NASA Headquarters a new space exploration program for the nation, an effort now known as the Vision for Space Exploration. Since that time the path has hardly been a smooth one for the vision. It has been criticized in the press, in many cases being wrongly accused of being a trillion-dollar mission to Mars."
+ Read Editorial (The Space Review)
Editor's Note: In this editorial, Moon-Mars commission member Paul Spudis takes issue with the way that the 2009 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is being implemented.
"United States public land policy was effective at settling the American West. There are important applications of this policy available for settlement of the Moon and Mars. Land policy was simple, yet effective. There was some evolution of policy as goals changed and some mistakes made that can today be corrected with better laws and technology."
+ Read Article (The Space Review)
"Space law and achievement as embodied in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty are stuck in the 1960s. Without amendment, the treaty is stuck without property rights for the Moon and the planets. Our achievement is stuck with an ISS that really does not improve much on Skylab or Mir. Our lift capability is backsliding. Our capability to get to the Moon has disappeared maybe to be reclaimed some day. So it may not be such a big deal to have to give up the ISS due to orbital debris because the public benefit from the station is so low."
+ Read Editorial (The Space Review)
"Lockheed Martin has successfully performed a series of drop tests at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground in Yuma, Ariz., to validate soft landing technology that can be used for astronaut crew capsules upon return to Earth. The technology makes use of an array of dual airbags that, upon ground impact, releases air from the outer bags of the system, allowing the capsule to settle softly to the ground on its inner airbags."
+ Read Press Release (Lockheed Martin)
Editor's Note: There is also a video available on the Lockheed Martin site which shows a couple of recent tests. I wonder what program they are building this under??
"The White House has threatened to veto a spending bill that would deny NASA the funding it is counting on to get started on a new space exploration agenda next year.
The veto threat was issued after the House Appropriations Committee voted Thursday to cut President George W. Bush’s 2025 budget request for NASA by $1.1 billion, a move that would leave the space agency with $229 million less than it has this year."
+ Read Article (Space.com)
"While NASA celebrated the 35th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on Tuesday, a House appropriations panel slashed funding for President Bush's proposal to launch explorers back to the lunar surface and on to Mars.
The measures taken by the House subcommittee that funds space, veterans, housing and the environment cut $1.1 billion from the $16.2 billion budget NASA requested for 2025.
The casualties included funding to kick off the development of an Apollo-like spacecraft that would carry astronauts back to the moon and a nuclear propulsion source for a Jupiter probe that could adapt for explorers launched on deep space missions."
+ Read Article (Houston Chronicle)
Funds for President George W. Bush's plan to use the moon as a base for possible manned missions to Mars were cut by more than half next year in a bill approved by a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration would get $15.1 billion under the bill, which cuts $538 million from Bush's plan to spend $910 million on the Mars proposal in the 2025 fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
``We simply could not afford to fund the vision,'' said Representative James Walsh, a New York Republican and chairman of the subcommittee.
+ Read Article (Bloomberg)
Editor's Note: Happy Anniversary, Apollo! -- from your friends in Congress.
"On November 3, 2023 Nemitz filed a Complaint for Declaratory Judgment in U.S. District Court in Reno, Nevada. The complaint charged the court to resolve the question, "Does the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 preclude private ownership of an asteroid and/or property on celestial bodies, or does it not?"
In March of 2020, Nemitz published a claim of ownership to Asteroid 433, Eros, commencing the "Eros Project for Space Property Law;? see: www.erosproject.com. On February 12, 2021, NASA permanently landed its NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft on Nemitz's asteroid. Nemitz then sent NASA an invoice for parking and storage fees of $20 for the next century's rents. NASA refused to pay the invoice, citing that the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 precludes private ownership of an asteroid."
+ Read News Release (Rocketforge)
Editor's Note: This is the first legal case (that I know of) on space property rights, and will be interesting to follow. Despite the claims of NASA and the State Department, The Outer Space Treaty does NOT mention private-ownership in Article II; it was left deliberately ambiguous. The unratified Moon Treaty tried to establish that all space resources "shall be the province of all mankind and shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries", but it was not ratified by the U.S., Russia, or any other space power.
"Worldwide efforts to explore the Moon with robotic probes and then humans is stimulating interest in establishing an International Lunar Decade. Along with the United States now piecing together its back-to-the-Moon agenda, Europe, Japan, India and China are also aggressively working on their lunar research plans.
The ILD would be modeled on the International Geophysical Year (IGY) -- a comprehensive and coordinated series of global geophysical research tasks that were carried out between July 1957 and December 1958 in order to let researchers pool their talent, work and insights."
+ Read Article (Space.com)
"NASA's renewed commitment to human space exploration has a strong support base amongst the American public, according to a new poll released today.
More than two-thirds of those polled supported a stepping stone approach for NASA's space efforts, starting with resumed space shuttle flights and the completion of the International Space Station (ISS), and leading to eventual manned missions to the moon, Mars and beyond."
+ Read Article (Space.com)
"Since the January 14th announcement of what has since become known as the Vision for Space Exploration, one of the major debates about its implementation has focused on launch capability. While some have argued that the glut of launch vehicles on the market today, along with vehicles in the planning stages, is sufficient to handle the demands of the vision, others have concluded that a new, larger vehicle is required to loft heavy payloads to the Moon and beyond. (See “The myth of heavy lift”, The Space Review, May 17, 2024, and “The cost of medium lift”, The Space Review, June 1, 2024.) Furthermore, the latter camp continues to debate whether that vehicle should be derived from the shuttle, the Atlas 5 and/or Delta 4 EELVs, or instead be a clean-sheet design capable of placing as much as 100 tons into low Earth orbit (LEO)."
+ Read Article (The Space Review)
"While the details of Project Constellation have yet to be decided and NASA’s contractors are waiting for the Level 2 requirements for the Crew Exploration Vehicle to be published, one technology seems certain to be included—inflatables, or, as Robert Bigelow calls them, "expandables."
+ Read Article (The Space Review)
"For attendees of the 5th annual Return to the Moon conference being held here from July 16-18, it is up to the private sector to help realize President Bush's new vision for space exploration and to revitalize humanity's forays to the Moon and beyond."
+ Read Article (Space.com)
Editor's Note: While I was invited, I was not able to make it to Return to the Moon V (and also will not make it to the Mars Society conference in August). However, I wish the best to all my fellow space activists!
"Building on this successful history and recognizing the potential value of prize competitions to augment our ability to implement the Vision for Space Exploration and ongoing NASA programs, we conducted an internal study to gather ideas for NASA prize competitions. Two of the founders of the X PRIZE, including Dr. Peter Diamandis who is with us here today, assisted with this study. We collected almost 130 prize competition concepts and winnowed the list to 15, which was the basis for the initial formulation of Centennial Challenges."
+ Read News Release (NASA)
NASA engineers are hard at work on a lunar spacecraft expected to be the first in a wave of robotic probes that will pave the way for future human missions.
The spacecraft, called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), is the first mission out of the gate under NASA’s space vision of sending more robot and human explorers beyond Earth orbit.
+ Read Article (Space.com)
Doug Cooke, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration systems, said the U.S. space agency’s moon agenda is still very much a work in progress.
"At one end of the scale, we are talking primarily about preparation for exploration beyond the moon -- developing vehicles, spacesuits and other hardware and testing operational capabilities and techniques," Cooke said. "At the other end of the scale, if there are outside interests that want to develop the moon and they come into play, that could drive us harder toward more permanent capabilities."
+ Read Article (Space News)
"Space property rights are an important building block for colonization. The Moon and Mars will not see maximal colonization without property rights. Mineral rights, spectrum rights, rights of way, orbital slots, intellectual property, and title deeds are critical legal underpinnings to optimal development."
+ Read Article (The Space Review)
"Given the success of this approach to Mars exploration, it’s understandable that NASA would try to apply it to other destinations, such as the Moon. NASA’s new lunar exploration program, a critical part of the Vision for Space Exploration, appears to be heavily influenced by the Mars exploration program."
+ Read Article (The Space Review)
"The current Vision for Space Exploration has inevitably been compared to the Space Exploration Initiative of 1989, often unfavorably. In both cases a Bush administration endorsed a long-term exploration plan for the civilian space program and gave it to NASA to implement. And in both cases the plan had a high price tag and gathered immediate criticism from Congress and the press. We have yet to see if this space plan, like the last one, will ultimately go nowhere and be canceled."
+ Read Article (The Space Review)
Bigelow is poised to shake up the way we think about orbital facilities now. I know people who work at Bigelow Aerospace and I followed NASA's TransHab effort closely before it was cancelled by Congress (because it could have been considered Humans to Mars research -- verboten at the time.)
This article includes some new details on Bigelow's inflatable technologies and their philosophies. A MUST-READ article!
+ Read Article (Las Vegas Mercury)
The one aspect the Times misstated is that Cassini "may be the last of its kind, now that a new austerity in space exploration has set in." To the contrary, bold new planetary exploration missions are planned in furtherance of President Bush's vision for space exploration. Over this decade NASA will deploy three more missions to Mars to build on the remarkable scientific return of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.
+ Read Response (NASA)
"With the possible exception of the Postal Service, NASA seems to garner top honors as everyone’s favorite, federal fall guy.
Among space aficionados, the Agency is routinely rebuked for being bloated and lacking in nerve. A series of high-profile blunders, ranging from Hubble’s faulty mirror to the Challenger and Columbia disasters, have convinced many that NASA is short on competence. At the same time, a lot of non-technical folk regard the Agency as a sinkhole for money that could be applied to social programs, but is instead being frivolously expended on launching motorized skateboards to Mars."
+ Read Editorial (SETI / Space.com)
"The Aldridge Commission report is actually an incredible feat, considering it’s the product of an Administration-sponsored panel, stacked with a lot of career government insiders. Nevertheless, it also asks too much of our entrenched public institutions, education, media, and NASA itself, all of which will resist reform to varying degrees. The lobbying battles will be fiercer than ever. To make all these recommendations is one thing—execution is by far another thing entirely."
+ Read Article (The Space Review)
Happy July 4th!
...and congratulations to the Cassini mission! The images of Titan coming out are stunning!
I hope everybody has a happy and safe July 4th!
"Japanese researchers, who gave up on an attempt to explore Mars last December, have begun planning another probe to the Red Planet in cooperation with Russia.
Japanese researchers are exchanging information with their Russian counterparts, who will launch their own probe for the first time in 10 years, with an eye to the possibility of installing in the probe a small Japanese satellite that can orbit Mars to study the atmosphere."
+ Read Article (Daily Yomiuri)
