US Spaceflight for the future [update]

BBC News - 'Recycled probe' sweeps by comet

Probe sent to Comet Temple 1 (it shot something at the coment to make it blow up some ice and junk for study) was retasked in flight to see another comet, which is happening for the 20 days.
Good use of money since these probes are $$$, and the data is good stuff, this being the 5th comet we've been able to send sats to.

:king:
 
Superhero-Style Spacesuits Could Provide Vital Compression For Astronauts | Popular Science

sweet article. MIT people are developing a suit to mitigate or "cure" the adverse affects of micro/zero/minimal gravity with a skin tight suit.

This new Spiderman-style suit may not win astronauts a spot in the fashion hall of fame, but it could help keep their bones intact during long spaceflights. Described in a new paper, prototype tests of the Gravity Loading Countermeasure Skinsuit, being developed by a research team at MIT’s Man-Vehicle Laboratory, show that the suit simulates the effects of gravity on the human body, which could solve one of the biggest obstacles to future human space travel.

Astronauts lose 1 to 2 percent of their bone mass for each month they spend in space. As far back as the Gemini missions, conditioning exercise regimes have been used to slow the rate of bone loss, but a 2001-2004 NASA-sponsored study showed that crew members aboard the International Space Station (ISS) were still losing up to 2.7 percent of their interior bone material and 1.7 percent of outer hipbone material for each month they spent in space. If ISS crew members lose this much bone density after 4 to 6 months in space, astronauts on long missions to Mars—voyages that could take years—could lose enough bone mass that they suffer fractures while carrying out tasks on the Martian surface.

With stirrups that loop around the feet, the elastic gravity skinsuit is purposely cut too short for the astronaut so that it stretches when put on—pulling the wearer’s shoulders towards the feet. In normal gravity conditions on Earth, a human’s legs bear more weight than the torso. Because the suit’s legs stretch more than the torso section, the wearer’s legs are subjected to a greater force—replicating gravity effects on Earth.

The prototype suit testing took place on parabolic flights that created brief periods of weightlessness. Results showed that the suit successfully imitated the pull of gravity on the torso and thighs, but it did not exert enough force on the lower legs. Researchers are now refining the suit’s design to address this; they also plan to test the suit to see how it performs when worn overnight. Volunteers who wore the suit on the test flights reported that the suit was comfortable and did not significantly restrict movement, which means crewmembers can work and exercise while wearing the suit.
Click to expand...
suit.jpg


:king:
 
Last edited:
For its part, Bigelow, in addition to showing off his modules, revealed for the first time the six "sovereign clients" that have signed memoranda of understanding to utilize his orbital facilities: the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Australia, Singapore, Japan and Sweden.

But the Swedish contingent was much more than entertaining window-dressing. In fact, its participation in the symposium directly addressed an industry-wide concern, namely, that the civilian market won't be sufficiently large to launch and support the business of space travel and tourism.

Bigelow certainly is bullish on the possibilities. He had both models and rendered posters of facilities that utilized various configurations of clusters of his workhorse BA-330 module. It's an impressive structure—45 feet long, 22 feet in diameter and containing 12,000 cubic feet of volume. (In one scheme shown by Bigelow, nine BA-330s were connected to create a space hospital with more than 100,000 cubit feet of habitable space.)

Capable of comfortably supporting six crew members, according to Bigelow, each BA-330 module is more than 10 times as large as the dual-Orion configuration that Lockheed Martin has devised for its Plymouth Rock asteroid mission. In fact, during one panel discussion, Bigelow tweaked the Lockheed Martin representative sitting next to him, claiming that "Orion is unnecessary."

Bigelow joked that he wanted to make sure that crews returned from deep space alive and well—or, at least, without turning on one another after suffering attacks of claustrophobia.

But as large as the BA-330 is, it's dwarfed by the BA-2100, which is six times as large and has multiple decks. The BA-2100's docking ends are about 25 feet in diameter, and one source told PM that the module's dry mass could be as low as 70 tons. In other words, in its uninflated state, it could be placed into orbit by the heavy-lift launcher that the U.S. Senate recently approved for development. The massive structure could then be inflated and subsequently outfitted with materials carried aboard additional launches. With its radiation and micrometeoroid shielding, the BA-2100 could provide a trip for a large crew to the outer solar system.
Click to expand...

ba-2100
BA-2100_Model-300-md.jpg


other documentation shows the BA-2100 at 100 tons, with a different BA-1150 at 70 tons.

:king:
 
Last edited:
RELEASE: 10-292

NASA SELECTS COMPANIES FOR HEAVY-LIFT LAUNCH VEHICLE STUDIES

WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected 13 companies for negotiations leading
to potential contract awards to conduct systems analysis and trade
studies for evaluating heavy-lift launch vehicle system concepts,
propulsion technologies, and affordability.

The selected companies are:

Aerojet General Corp., Rancho Cordova, Calif.
Analytical Mechanics Associates, Huntsville, Ala.
Andrews Space, Tukwila, Wash.
Alliant Techsystems, Huntsville, Ala.
The Boeing Co., Huntsville, Ala.
Lockheed Martin Corp., Huntsville, Ala.
Northrop Grumman Systems Corp., Huntsville, Ala.
Orbital Sciences Corp., Chandler, Ariz.
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, Canoga Park, Calif.
Science Applications International Corp., Huntsville, Ala.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Hawthorne, Calif.
United Launch Alliance, Centennial, Colo.
United Space Alliance, Huntsville, Ala.

The awards total approximately $7.5 million with a maximum individual
contract award of $625,000. Each company will provide a final report
to help lay the groundwork for the transportation system that could
launch humans to multiple destinations, including asteroids, Lagrange
points, the moon and Mars.

"These trade studies will provide a look at innovative launch vehicle
concepts, propulsion technologies, and processes that should make
human exploration missions more affordable," said Doug Cooke,
associate administrator of NASA's Exploration Systems Mission
Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. "If we are to
travel beyond low-Earth orbit, industry's collaboration is essential
to reduce the cost associated with our future exploration goals and
approaches and make the heavy-lift vehicle affordable to build and
fly."

The studies will include heritage systems from shuttle and Ares, as
well as alternative architectures and identify propulsion technology
gaps including main propulsion elements, propellant tanks and rocket
health management systems. The reports will include assessments of
various heavy-lift launch vehicle and in-space vehicle that use
different propulsion combinations. The companies will examine how
these combinations can be employed to meet multiple mission
objectives.

NASA will use the recommendations to evaluate heavy-lift launch
vehicle concepts and propulsion technologies for affordability that
will be required to enable robust and sustainable future exploration
missions.
Click to expand...
pretty much the same release FM has.

from an observer:

They're supposed to be six month studies. They were originally supposed to be announcing winners back in mid-September, but my guess is that they delayed things a bit to see how the NASA authorization goes.

It's interesting to see the different emphasis in the announcement from the original BAA solicitation--the solicitation was more focused on an HLV as part of a space architecture, including depots and other in-space propulsion elements. The non rockety stuff seems a bit deemphasized now--at least in the presser.

At least with Aerojet, we're likely to see thrust augmented nozzles, and probably at least some depot stuff with ULA. Andrews should be interesting as well. I wonder if they'll post the results of the Technical Interchange Meetings that they're going to be doing every two months during the contract. Those could be interesting.
Click to expand...

:king:
 
ASA ANNOUNCES TELEVISED CHANDRA NEWS CONFERENCE

WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news conference at 12:30 p.m. EST on
Monday, Nov. 15, to discuss the Chandra X-ray Observatory's discovery
of an exceptional object in our cosmic neighborhood.

The news conference will originate from NASA Headquarters' television
studio, 300 E St. SW in Washington and carried live on NASA TV.

Media representatives may attend the conference, join by phone or ask
questions from participating NASA locations. To RSVP or obtain
dial-in information, journalists must send their name, affiliation
and telephone number to Trent Perrotto at: trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov
by 10 a.m. EST on Nov. 15. Reporters wishing to attend the conference
in-person must have a valid press credential for access. Non-U.S.
media also must bring passports.

Scientists involved in the research will be available to answer
questions. Panelists providing analysis of the research include:
- Jon Morse, director, Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters in
Washington
- Kimberly Weaver, astrophysicist, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, Md.
- Alex Filippenko, astrophysicist, University of California, Berkeley

For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and further information, visit:


NASA - NASA TV


For more information about NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, visit:


NASA - Chandra




http://chandra.harvard.edu
Click to expand...

They've discovered the youngest nearby (52.5 Mlys) black hole yet, formed by supernova 1979C.

:king:
 
Goshin: a couple buds of mine are NASA engineers and they told me a story you might like.

Most of the raw data from the Apollo missions was somehow lost. When NASA went all digital, they think it the boxes of paper records got thrown out. All the huge calculations are just gone and because they don't have new moon missions to learn from, they're stuck on a lot of problems. Even with their super computers and Phds, they couldn't replicate the work their predecessors had accomplished back in the Apollo missions. NASA tracked down the few remaining senior engineers for Apollo and brought them in.

hf_apollo13_030823_iod5_04.jpg


Imagine those same guys, still wearing the white shirt, black tie, black glasses, slicked hair... except 90 years old sporting walking canes with tennis balls on the back two legs, showing up at NASA with their slide rule calculators as 'consultants.' Kinda like the old man in Mark Wahlberg's movie Shooter.

old-man-from-shooter1.jpg



At first my friends were real skeptical. I mean, these guys didn't even have modern computers or anything back then how could they come in and teach today's scientists anything? Well, they did. My friends who each have two Phds, were blown away by these old farts with slide rule calculators. "How do you account for the gravity of whatever?" "Oh, don't worry about that. That's simplified when you do this..." Filling in empty equations, analyzing current problems, explaining how they landed on the damn moon without everyone dying. My friends said they may have never been able to solve some of these problems without those old farts with their slide rules. When they left, my dork friends had gushing nerd crushes on them like a 10 year old would over Babe Ruth.


#2) Apparently, the big hassle down at NASA is that they want 100% safety for any space mission. That's the #1 reason we can't make it to the moon is all the damn red tape safety measures (that, and Obama's focus on robotics and "reaching out to muslims," and not space exploration... which they said all of NASA hates him for). I read on TW a while ago about an idea of a one-way manned trip to Mars and they said they had been kicking the idea around a long time and were really excited, and volunteers wouldn't be hard to find, but safety and red tape stops them.

One day down at Moffett Field they were working in those huge blimp hangars. Chuck Yeager was there as a guest speaker for "Safety Week." Chuck was never known as much of a safety guy, but he came in to give a speech anyway. He gets up on stage to speak to a few hundred NASA engineers. He looks around and notices some rays of light shining through the roof. To kick off his safety speech, and maybe he planned this to get his true point across to the new NASA engineers, he said "Ha! You see those holes up there? One day a damn pigeon shit on me so I pulled out my .45 and blasted away at those damn birds. I never hit one, but damn it, I don't like being shit on." NASA didn't bring him back the following year for safety week :p:
 
They also discussed the possibility of it being a pulsar wind nebula but at this time they cannot tell which of the two it is yet. Kimberly Weaver was leaning towards a black hole though. The SN 1979C is unlike any other SNR they've seen so that one was one of the reasons Kimberly was leaning towards a black hole.


Here's an NASA article on it:
Click to expand...
NASA - NASA's Chandra Finds Youngest Nearby Black Hole

The 30-year-old black hole provides a unique opportunity to watch this type of object develop from infancy.

The black hole could help scientists better understand how massive stars explode, which ones leave behind black holes or neutron stars, and the number of black holes in our galaxy and others.

The 30-year-old object is a remnant of SN 1979C, a supernova in the galaxy M100 approximately 50 million light years from Earth. Data from Chandra, NASA's Swift satellite, the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and the German ROSAT observatory revealed a bright source of X-rays that has remained steady during observation from 1995 to 2007. This suggests the object is a black hole being fed either by material falling into it from the supernova or a binary companion.

"If our interpretation is correct, this is the nearest example where the birth of a black hole has been observed," said Daniel Patnaude of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. who led the study.
Click to expand...
so there you go
DM, that's cool. I love hearing inside scoops. I'll read up on it more later :) (and all of nasa doesn't hate the prez. Just human spaceflight/HLV proponents ;))

:king:
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top