US Spaceflight for the future [update]

A new study has shed light on the sun's impact on the Earth's climate, confounding current thinking about solar cycles and how they influence temperatures on Earth.

Previously scientists had thought that radiation reaching the Earth rises and falls in line with the Sun's activity, which during the 11-year solar cycle goes though periods of low and high activity.

But research by Imperial College, London and the University of Colorado in the U.S. examining solar radiation levels from 2004 to 2007 -- a period of declining solar activity -- revealed that levels of visible radiation reaching the Earth actually increased during the period.

Using data collected by NASA's SORCE (SOlar Radiation and Climate Experiment) satellite, which launched in 2003, the scientists were able to scrutinize the full solar spectrum -- x-ray, ultraviolet (UV), visible (VR), near-infrared, and total solar radiation -- and compare it to earlier, less comprehensive data.

Joanna Haigh, leader author of the study published in the journal Nature told CNN: "What the data has shown, rather unexpectedly, is that the decline in ultra-violet radiation is much larger than anticipated. But more surprisingly the visible radiation actually increased as solar activity was declining."

"The decline in ultra-violet radiation is much larger than anticipated. But the visible radiation actually increased as solar activity was declining.

Haigh, a professor of atmospheric physics, says that UV radiation is mostly absorbed in the stratosphere but visible radiation gets through to the earth's surface. The observed increase in VR, despite declining solar activity, may have caused small rises in temperature.

But, as Haigh points out, the research, which covers a short period, comes with some caveats.

"The sun has been behaving very strangely. Its magnetic activity is lower than it has been for several hundred years, perhaps. And so the fact that it's doing strange things in its spectrum is perhaps not that unexpected," she said.

It's also just starting to come out of a very long period (two years) of minimum activity, she says.

As the Sun's activity starts to increase, "it will also be very, very interesting to see if the visible radiation starts to decline," Haigh says.

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But she says the solar cycles cancel each other out, going up and down over roughly an 11-year period.

"They [the solar cycles] are contributing nothing to long-term global warming," she said, "and it has no bearing on what we understand about greenhouse gases and their influence on climate."

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Even during its current life in the main sequence, the Sun is gradually becoming more luminous (about 10% every 1 billion years), and its surface temperature is slowly rising. The Sun used to be fainter in the past, which is possibly the reason life on Earth has only existed for about 1 billion years on land. The increase in solar temperatures is such that in about another billion years the surface of the Earth will likely become too hot for liquid water to exist, ending all terrestrial life.

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Scientists expected to see a slight decline across the spectrum. Instead, they saw a distinct fall in UV output, but an increase in emissions at visible wavelengths.

The UV fall - about six times as big as anticipated - was consistent with changes in ozone concentrations observed with other satellites. Ultraviolet radiation produces ozone in the upper atmosphere.

While these ozone concentrations can affect weather and longer-term conditions at the Earth's surface, so can the unexpected increase in energy at visible wavelengths, which penetrates down through the atmosphere.

Putting these various factors together, Professor Haigh's team calculates that over this three-year period, solar influences produced a net warming - not the net cooling that previous observations and theory predicted.

"It's now emerging that the 'space age' has been a grand maximum; so my view is that the Sun is due to fall out of this and into a 'grand minimum', so I would not be surprised if in 50 years' time we find ourselves in conditions like the 'Maunder Minimum' [of the late 17th and early 18th Centuries] associated with the 'Little Ice Age'."

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It's a glider, so when it stops, it stops, and won't move again unless something tows it. So yes, why add the extra weight and complexity?

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Sabatier is a new system – never before tested in space – that will produce water and methane using excess hydrogen from the Oxygen Generation System (OGS) rack, and carbon dioxide from the Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) – both of which are currently vented into space.

The water will be processed through the Water Recovery System (WRS) Water Processing Assembly (WPA), and the unneeded methane will be vented into space.

Sabatier will reside inside the OGS rack, which is located in Node 3 – along with the CDRA and WRS WPA. Having Sabatier, OGS, CDRA and WRS WPA all working in conjunction with each other will enable Node 3 to become a highly sophisticated regenerative life-support module.

In the long-term, Sabatier will decrease the station’s dependency on water in the post-Shuttle era, and will greatly aid engineers in designing regenerative life support systems for future missions beyond Earth orbit – where resupplies will, at best, be minimal.

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The Direct movement – a group of professionals and non-professional engineers that created an architecture alternative to Constellation’s Ares vehicles – are ready to transition their movement, following the redirection of NASA’s future by lawmakers, which calls for a Space Launch System (SLS) based around a Shuttle Derived (SD) Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (HLV), which they feel justifies their four years of work.

DIRECT Feature Article:

Often bad-mouthed and dismissed, the Direct concept grew from what was a single post on NASASpaceflight.com’s forum by member Ross Tierney. This was not unusual for any messageboard, with debates ongoing at the time

Tierney began to build a team, which included his right hand man, Chuck Longton, a Senior Structural Design Specialist at General Dynamics Electric Boat Corp in Groton, Connecticut where he manages a design group responsible for creating the tools required to build the nation’s nuclear submarine fleet. He brought with him a total of 40 years in structural design, including Pratt & Whitney and the Saturn-V F-1 engine.

“My recollection was that after Ross posted those questions, he started getting a lot of reaction from posters on NSF, myself included,” noted Longton. “In private conversations with Ross I also became aware that he was being contacted offline by a large number of design engineers from MSFC who wanted to know more about his thoughts, and if he had any plans to pursue his ideas further and if so could they help.

As DIRECT v2.0 took shape, the movement claims they began to attract ‘big name’ attention within NASA. However, this time the interest appeared to be more positive than before – especially after the departure of NASA administrator Mike Griffin.

“From within the first few months we had some fairly high-level interest, not Project Manager level, but close! I met (Space Shuttle Program manager) John Shannon at the first Augustine Committee hearing, where he was presenting Sidemount. He had not actually been aware of DIRECT prior to that, but he liked what he saw,” added Tierney.

“It wasn’t until after Dr. Griffin was removed that things really started to pick up, when at the start of this year Longton, Steve Metschan and I were invited to meet with Bill Gerstenmaier (Associate Administrator for Space Operations for NASA), Doug Cooke (Constellation), Phil Sumrall and Geoff Yoder at NASA Headquarters.

With the Jupiter-like vehicles making favourable appearances on several studies, though never named as a “Jupiter” but instead as an inline SD HLV, the appearance of inline SD HLVs in the studies which followed the Augustine review – mirroring configurations proposed for some time via the DIRECT movement – felt like a vindication to the teammembers.
However, despite the studies pointing favorably towards the inline SD HLV – allowing for a level of optimism the findings would translate into NASA’s forward path – the FY2011 budget proposal would prove to be a hammer blow, effectively ending any and all hope for a SD HLV of any configuration.

“We met with Bill Gerstenmaier a matter of days before the President rolled-out his FY2011 plans in February and de-railed everything,” Tierney recalled. “We’re very strongly in favour of the new commercial space industry being given powerful support, and a budget does need to be allocated to new R&D work within the agency – both of those are highly supportable objectives.

However, holding out hope for an inline SD HLV proved to be a correct decision, as the FY2011 budget proposal was itself retooled to provide NASA direction to build such a vehicle.

And once again, continuing studies – such as the HEFT (Human Exploration Framework Team) assessments – show a favorable attitude to the inline SD HLV, one which mirrors the configuration of a Jupiter 246.

This is definitely a ‘win’, but not just for us: NASA wins by keeping it’s strong political support and sustaining its budgets while all other agencies are suffering cuts. The contractors win by keeping many of the existing contracts. The workforce wins by saving more than 60 percent of the jobs that were otherwise to be lost. Commercial New. Space wins by getting more than $3 billion allocated over the next 6 years. R&D wins by getting its larger budgets.

“In short; everyone wins with this compromise – especially the United States as a nation, who get new industry, save jobs and create a new, affordable, exploration program.”

The result of the Bill’s passing left the DIRECT movement with a decision to make; whether to continue pushing forward their own architecture and proposals, or to claim NASA is now on the correct trajectory, and to leave them to their own devices – without what could be deemed as outside interference.

Over the last 4 years we had always said that once NASA picked up the ball and began to run with it that we intended to let them have it. That has always been our desire. We want NASA to take ownership of this and make it their own, not ours.

“We’ll now they have it and we are on the sidelines, cheering them on like a favorite football team. There is little else we can contribute. NASA will make of it whatever they will. While their current proposals look just like the Jupiter, we don’t expect it to end up like that. It will be something else, something that resembles the Jupiter, but with their own stamp on it.

“We hope they don’t stray too far, because we occupied the sweet spot for a SDHLV, but they will stray, and make SLS their very own. We wish them the most sincere best wishes as they carry this over the goal line.”

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Goshin said:

what pisses me off, is right under that:

the truth is, they dont know. They've already said the sun contributes 20% to global warming trends. They aren't looking at the the 200 year suess cycle either. I dunno, it was a stupid statement to make in this article.

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Shiloh said:

Its a necessary disclaimer. It means even though they've found evidence that helps contradict the 'established' and 'consensus' views of CO2 being the majority cause of 20th century warming, they don't want to be ostracized, blacklisted, defunded, fired etc.

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Goshin said:

something fun and long to read, was vetted by NASA as the most probable type of space station we can create if we wanted to have 20k people living in space
http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/Contest/Results/2009/ASTEN.pdf

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Two German radar satellites are now flying in tight formation as they prepare to make the most detailed ever 3D map of the Earth's entire surface.

TanDEM-X and TerraSAR-X have moved to within 350m of each other as they sweep around the planet at 7km/s.

The pair will soon begin an intense observation campaign that will pin down the variation in height across the globe to an accuracy of better than two metres.

This digital elevation model (DEM) will be put to myriad uses - everything from improving the safety of aircraft navigation to understanding better which areas of ground are most at risk during a flood.

TerraSAR-X was launched in 2007. TanDEM-X was put in space in June, since when it has been brought closer and closer to its more established sibling.

The very close proximity manoeuvres were conducted step-by-step over the course of the past week.
The fully finished DEM of the Earth's surface should be available in 2014.

Perhaps the best-known, near-global, space-borne DEM prior to the German venture came from the US Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) of 2000. Its best product has a 30m by 30m spatial resolution, and a vertical resolution that varies from 16m to 10m.

With the TanDEM mission, the intention is to go down to a spatial resolution of 12m by 12m with a relative vertical accuracy of less than two metres.

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Goshin said:

BBC News - German radar satellites fly tight space waltz

as far as these things go, that's very very close.

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