Space news and Exploration II

[ScienceRocks]

Musk is testing x-wing style fins, spaceport drone ship

In sum, Musk is showing off rockets with 'X-wings' and landing pads in the sea, said The Verge; Dante D'Orazio wrote about the Tweets on Sunday: The latest version of SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 rocket has a set of four independently adjustable fins. "The grid fins are designed to deploy only after takeoff, when they'll work together with thrusters to help the rocket maneuver itself into position for those spectacular vertical landings." UPI noted the fins are referred to with 'x-wing config.' for the shape they make jetting out in four separate directions. Darrell Etherington of TechCrunch said the fins "could help spacecraft navigate upon re-entry after delivering personnel or cargo to an orbiting space station." The new modifications to the rocket should make atmospheric navigation easier, he added.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news...ceport.html#jCp

 

[ScienceRocks]

SpaceX will attempt to land Falcon 9 boot December 9th on a floating platform and then reuse it
Next Big Future ^ | Octiber 27, 2014 | Next Big Future

Elon Musk spoke at the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department's 2014 Centennial celebration. The October 22-24 Centennial Symposium featuring some of the most illustrious names in aerospace reflecting on past achievement, celebrating today’s innovative research and education, and offering their perspectives on what lies ahead.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said his company will make a first attempt to land the booster stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a floating platform during the upcoming ISS resupply mission. If the attempt is successful, the company plans to refurbish and reuse the booster stage, making spaceflight history and paving the way for a significant reduction in the cost of access to space.

Propellant only makes up a tiny percentage (in the case of a Falcon 9 rocket, about 0.3 percent) of the cost of the craft, so being able to reuse all the hardware for multiple flights could potentially slash the cost of spaceflight by a factor of 10 or more.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that, on the fifth resupply mission planned for December 9th, the reusable rocket program is ready to go one step further: instead of a soft water landing, the first stage will attempt for the first time to propulsively land on a floating platform in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

"Before we boost back to the launch site and try to land there, we need to show that we can land with precision over and over again," said Musk. "So for the upcoming launch we've got a chance of landing on a floating platform. We have a huge platform that is being constructed at a shipyard in Louisiana right now which is 300 feet long by 170 feet wide (90 by 50 meters)."

"If we land on that [platform], I think we'll be able to refly that booster," Musk continued. "It's probably not more of a 50 percent chance of landing it on the platform [on the first try], but there's a lot of launches that will occur over the next year, at least a dozen, so I think it's quite likely, probably 80 or 90 percent likely, that one of those flights will be able to land and refly."

SpaceX Tests Fins On Reusable Rocket Flight | Video

The steerable fins provide control during fly back. They can be seen deploying about a minute and 15 seconds into the flight. This test flight of the Falcon 9 Reusable (F9R) occurred on June 17th, 2014. There was an analysis of a reusable launch system where the cost of developing the reusable launch system was $36 billion. If Spacex is successful they will have developed reusability for about $100 million.

There were also prior ideas involving large ground infrastructure such as giant magnetic launching systems

"The payload penalty for full and fast reusability versus an expendable version is roughly 40 percent," Musk says. "[But] propellant cost is less than 0.4 percent of the total flight cost. Even taking into account the payload reduction for reusability, the improvement is therefore theoretically over a hundred times."

A hundred times is an incredible gain. It would drop cost for Musk’s Falcon Heavy rocket—a scaled-up version of the Falcon 9 that’s currently rated at $1000 per pound to orbit—to just $10. "That, however, requires a very high flight rate, just like aircraft," Musk says. "At a low flight rate, the improvement is still probably around 50 percent. For Falcon Heavy, that would mean a price per pound to orbit of less than $500.

Falcon Heavy is particularly amenable to reuse of the first stage—the two outer cores in particular, because they separate at a much lower velocity than the center one, being dropped off early in the flight.

Turnaround Time

Bringing down the cost of rocket launches isn’t just about reusability; as Musk’s quote suggests, it’s also about turnaround time. The original premise of the space shuttle program was that the vehicle would be turned around within days; it ended up being months, which is one of the reasons that it never met its cost goals.

What about a reusable Falcon? Musk says he expects "single-digit hours" between landing and next flight, at least for the lower stages. "For the upper stage, there is the additional constraint of the orbit ground track needing to overfly the landing pad, since cross-range [the distance to a landing site that it can fly to either side of its original entry flight path] is limited. At most this adds 24 hours to the upper-stage turnaround."

Translation: One of the other reasons that the shuttle was so expensive was that it had very large wings to give the vehicle a thousand miles of cross-range. The Air Force demanded this feature, which would have allowed the shuttle to return to its launch site after a single orbit, though it was never used. But SpaceX doesn’t mandate that cross-range feature. Therefore its craft would have to wait a little bit for the Earth to rotate and bring the landing site around again, but this would make SpaceX missions cheaper because the rockets don’t have to carry so much propellant in this stage.

What does it imply for flight rate? "Multiple flights per day for first stage and side boosters," Musk says. "At least one flight per day for the upper stage" (which costs much less, anyway).

So what does that mean for ticket prices in the future? Musk tells us that with daily flights, the cost will run about $100 per pound. For the average male, that means about 20,000 bucks. Start saving your money.

Is there demand for forty thousand flight per year ? 100 space flights per day at $100 per pound ?

There were 77 successful orbital launches in 81 attempts in 2013.

Those launches were for about $2000-8,000 per pound.

There are new far more capable cubesats. Having a lot of lower cost payload would boost demand for low cost launches.

Planetary Resources is making $1 million space telescopes.

Bigelow Aerospace wants to launch inflatable space stations for space hotels and for space stations for every nation with a space program.

Commercial satellites generate about $150 billion per year in revenue and use about $4 billion in launch services.

Daily launches of one reusable rocket is 365 launches. If you have 100 reusable rockets all flying daily then you need demand for 36,500 launches. If the payload capacity is 8 to 50 tons. This would be 180,000 tons to 1.8 million tons.

There would be need for more launch facilities.

There would need to be a system for rapidly prepping the payloads. Some kind of standard container system for loading them. A space version of a shipping container.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Venus Express gets one last boost of life
By David Szondy
November 30, 2014

The European Space Agency's Venus Express unmanned probe is being put through a series of maneuvers in hopes that its remaining fuel can push it into a higher orbit. If successful, the orbit change will give the spacecraft a bit more life before it plunges into the Venusian atmosphere it was sent to investigate

 

[ScienceRocks]

Raise shields: Protective invisible barrier found surrounding Earth
By David Szondy
November 29, 2014

The idea of putting a Star Trek-like force field around the entire Earth seems like the fodder for a fairly silly science fiction epic out of the 1930s, but according to space scientists, such a barrier already exists. Discovered by a pair of NASA space probes, the natural shield protects the Earth and near-Earth satellites from so-called "killer electrons" with a precision that cuts it off like a wall of glass.

 

[HenryBHough]

Think of all the food stamps Our Kenyan Emperor could buy for his "people" with that space money.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Think of all the food stamps Our Kenyan Emperor could buy for his "people" with that space money.

Cutting science would make for a far poorer nation. Would be a sad day. That would be killing high paying jobs with real skills and putting people in the bread lines.

 

[HenryBHough]

Think of all the food stamps Our Kenyan Emperor could buy for his "people" with that space money.

Cutting science would make for a far poorer nation. Would be a sad day. That would be killing high paying jobs with real skills and putting people in the bread lines.

Indeed it WAS.

 

[ScienceRocks]

A home-brew observatory detects exoplanet
36 minutes ago by Nancy Owano

Credit: David Schneider

David Schneider, a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum, was interested in exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than the sun, but figured this kind of exercise as a home-based project was going to need expensive telescopes; he stumbled across a project at Ohio State University, where resourceful astronomers had figured out a way to spot exoplanets using a device with a lens designed for high-end cameras. Schneider's wheels turned, thinking he might also be able to pull this off if he got his hands on a charge-coupled-device detector not research-grade, and maybe he could forget about an expensive telescope as well? He also discovered an online posting by an amateur astronomer saying he had detected a known exoplanet using a digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera with a telephoto lens.

Read more at: A home-brew observatory detects exoplanet

 

[ScienceRocks]

Ground-based detection of super-Earth transit paves way to remote sensing of exoplanets
9 hours ago

Earth and Super-Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL

For the first time, a team of astronomers - including York University Professor Ray Jayawardhana - have measured the passing of a super-Earth in front of a bright, nearby Sun-like star using a ground-based telescope. The transit of the exoplanet 55 Cancri e is the shallowest detected from the ground yet, and the success bodes well for characterizing the many small planets that upcoming space missions are expected to discover in the next few years.

The international research team used the 2.5-meter Nordic Optical Telescope on the island of La Palma, Spain - a moderate-sized facility by today's standards - to make the detection. Previous observations of this planet transit had to rely on space-borne telescopes.

During its transit, the planet crosses its host star, 55 Cancri, located just 40 light-years away from us and visible to the naked eye, blocking a tiny fraction of the starlight, dimming the star by 1/2000th (or 0.05%) for almost two hours.
"Our observations show that we can detect the transits of small planets around Sun-like stars using ground-based telescopes," says Dr. Ernst de Mooij, of Queen's University Belfast, UK, the study's lead author. "This is especially important because upcoming space missions such as TESS and PLATO should find many small planets around bright stars."

TESS is a NASA mission scheduled for launch in 2017, while PLATO is to be launched in 2024 by the European Space Agency; both will search for transiting terrestrial planets around nearby bright stars.

Read more at: Ground-based detection of super-Earth transit paves way to remote sensing of exoplanets


Astronomers poised to capture image of supermassive black hole
9 hours ago by Matt Williams, Universe Today

Artist’s concept of one of the most primitive supermassive black holes (central black dot) at the core of a young, star-rich galaxy. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Scientists have long suspected that supermassive black holes (SMBH) reside at the center of every large galaxy in our universe. These can be billions of times more massive than our sun, and are so powerful that activity at their boundaries can ripple throughout their host galaxies.

Read more at: [url="http://phys.org/news/2014-12-astronomers-poised-capture-image-supermassive.html#jCp"]Astronomers poised to capture image of supermassive black hole[/URL]

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA launching new Orion spacecraft on test flight

NASA's quest to send astronauts out into the solar system begins this week with a two-laps-around-Earth test flight.

The new Orion spacecraft is not going to Mars just yet; Thursday's debut will be unmanned and last just 4½ hours. But it will be the farthest a built-for-humans capsule has flown since the Apollo moon missions, shooting 3,600 miles out into space in order to gain enough momentum to re-enter the atmosphere at a scorching 20,000 mph (32,000 kph).

The dry run, if all goes well, will end with a Pacific splashdown off Mexico's Baja coast. Navy ships will recover the capsule, a la Apollo, for future use.

Read more at: NASA launching new Orion spacecraft on test flight

 

[FA_Q2]

You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.

We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?

Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?

"A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014 — $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill — which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding — would roll back NASA’s funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."

LINK: Space.com

Why would you want to cut our military budget? Especially with the world in upheaval right now? That would be stupid IMO. Cut wasteful spending, okay. Other than that though, I say no cuts to the military budget. We need a strong and powerful military. Like it or not, might makes right. That's the way it has always been and the way it will always be.

Here's the key to our disagreement on this issue, you say "Cut wasteful spending, okay..." I totally agree that the World is a very dangerous place right now and for the foreseeable future, and that the U.S. has to have a powerful and agile military equipped to respond to multiple kinds of threats. I believe it can accomplish that objective with a lot less money. The conservatives are right in this case, government wildly throwing money at the DoD is not going to accomplish the goal. Resources are not unlimited, they have to be allocated in a lot more intelligent way now than they have been in the last 50 yrs. You could take a look at a couple of examples to get an idea of what I mean. For instance the F-35 JSF...

"The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the most expensive, and possible the most error ridden, project in the history of the United States military. But DOD has sunk so much money into the F-35 — which is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over the 55-year life of the program — that the Pentagon deemed it "too big to fail" in 2010.
Now, the Air Force has taken steps to make sure that the unmitigated disaster that the F-35 has become does not happen again.
The Air Force, in its 20-year strategic forecast entitled "America's Air Force: A Call to the Future," has called for an end to big-ticket programs like the F-35. Instead, it plans to invest in what DOD officials have called more "agile" weapons that can be adapted for multiple uses.
The report paints a future of the Air Force that resembles an innovative 21st Century company as opposed to a traditional fighting force. The document says that it's now impossible for the United States to build a strategy advantage with large, expensive programs that take years — in the case of the F-35, 14 years and counting to complete.".......LINK: CNBC

400 billion dollars spent to date and a cost of at least 1.5 trillion dollars over the life-span of the aircraft. And for this the armed forces, according to most of the experts I've read, are going to be getting a fighter that is going to under-achieve in the multiple roles it is supposed to fill. And from what I've read a few old much much cheaper A-10 Warthogs would be a more lethal platform in the air war against ISIS than a squadron of F-35's.

Another example I would urge you to look at is the Navy's LCS multi-billion dollar program. Some experts question whether some of these ships will even be survivable in the first few minutes of combat. Imagine asking the men and women of the Navy to man ships that may be vulnerable to even the glorified speedboats that Iran uses in the gulf.

We don't disagree that America has to maintain superior Armed Forces. We might disagree if it has to spend more money that the next 10 nations combined. Here's a chart of the top spenders;

So back to my original point in my other post. NASA. I think you're very mistaken if you don't think that the farther we get into the 21st century the more important capability in space will be to a nations defense. China will have men on the moon in the next decade or so, right now America is ceding dominance in space to them, and others. Also, doesn't it piss you off just a little that NASA can't even get astronauts to the space station without hitching a ride with the Russians? And the recent destruction of that private rocket shows that route is no where near safe enough or reliable enough yet.

Spend the available moneys smarter and in the long run you'll have to spend a lot less.

Well said.

 

[FA_Q2]

We spend 1/30th the amount on our space program as defense. Our space program does a lot of good and extends our species knowledge of our place in the universe.


THis is why I hate losertrians. These people want to destroy our scientific institutions and with it our country. They have no room to talk about Obama...As bad as he is.

Space agency says Philae completes primary mission

The pioneering lander Philae completed its primary mission of exploring the comet's surface and returned plenty of data before depleted batteries forced it to go silent, the European Space Agency said Saturday.

Read more at: Space agency says Philae completes primary mission

Except you don't have a single clue what you ate talking about. I am a fervent supporter of NASA and a libertarian. All you have to offer is vapid statements like funding them 50 billion without a single detail. That's likely because you haven't a clue as to the details but seem to think your opinion should matter any way.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Really, you people say that you want to do away with government no matter if it works or not. This is the message you scream day and night on this very board. What I am saying is that some government programs are beneficial to our society. What is wrong with that? Don't get me wrong, I do support removing red tape and scaling back the abuses of our government...There's plenty of this and I see some of your points on many issues having to do with them. The government is taking our rights away and doing the reverse when it comes to innovation. So it isn't all sugar and happy days, either.
But on the other hand, we're better off as a country having highly educated engineers, scientist, etc. We have the best space program and weather service on earth. Science and research not only should be funded, but it must. The life blood of why we're a first world technological nation is driven by this very fact.
I understand the private sector does a lot and I love the private sector as it can do things for less and doesn't have the red tape, but it certainly won't fund the research that we need to remain an undisputed science power, the weather service for all, and grants for education in science for the next generation if it doesn't have a profit margin stamped on it. All first world nations invest in science, research and R&D because they understand 1. That it creates a larger middle class with good paying jobs, which increases the GDP for all, 2. The nation has an edge in science and r&d which allows it to have things like the best military on earth, toys like we're typing on and cures for diseases that you may wake up tomorrow wishes we had.

I may not totally understand you as a libertarian, but this is "what" I as a person that watches science honestly believes is the best course of action for our nation to take.I point at over a hundred years of history with the national weather service and 60 years with nasa.

 

[FA_Q2]

Really, you people say that you want to do away with government no matter if it works or not. This is the message you scream day and night on this very board. What I am saying is that some government programs are beneficial to our society. What is wrong with that? Don't get me wrong, I do support removing red tape and scaling back the abuses of our government...There's plenty of this and I see some of your points on many issues having to do with them. The government is taking our rights away and doing the reverse when it comes to innovation. So it isn't all sugar and happy days, either.
But on the other hand, we're better off as a country having highly educated engineers, scientist, etc. We have the best space program and weather service on earth. Science and research not only should be funded, but it must. The life blood of why we're a first world technological nation is driven by this very fact.
I understand the private sector does a lot and I love the private sector as it can do things for less and doesn't have the red tape, but it certainly won't fund the research that we need to remain an undisputed science power, the weather service for all, and grants for education in science for the next generation if it doesn't have a profit margin stamped on it. All first world nations invest in science, research and R&D because they understand 1. That it creates a larger middle class with good paying jobs, which increases the GDP for all, 2. The nation has an edge in science and r&d which allows it to have things like the best military on earth, toys like we're typing on and cures for diseases that you may wake up tomorrow wishes we had.

I may not totally understand you as a libertarian, but this is "what" I as a person that watches science honestly believes is the best course of action for our nation to take.I point at over a hundred years of history with the national weather service and 60 years with nasa.

This is your problem with libertarians then, as I see it:
you people say that you want to do away with government no matter if it works or not. This is the message you scream day and night on this very board.
'Us people' may include some anarcho-capitalists but all libertarians are not anarcho-capitalists. There are extremes in every political stripe but they do not dominate the whole. Libertarians do not, as a whole, want government to cease to exist. Most of us just want government to stick to what it is supposed to do and leave the rest to us.

Government has a pivotal role in science namely because they are the only entity in existence that can take a billion dollars and light it on fire without a single good thing coming out of it. That happens when you are pushing science, sometimes VERY large investments do not pan out and the commercial industry does not take kindly to that. I am fairly certain that no commercial entity would be landing a drill on a comet right now but the government can invest that kind of capitol without a clear benefit and we all can reap the discovered rewards after they are worked out - if there are any.

 

[ChrisL]

Really, you people say that you want to do away with government no matter if it works or not. This is the message you scream day and night on this very board. What I am saying is that some government programs are beneficial to our society. What is wrong with that? Don't get me wrong, I do support removing red tape and scaling back the abuses of our government...There's plenty of this and I see some of your points on many issues having to do with them. The government is taking our rights away and doing the reverse when it comes to innovation. So it isn't all sugar and happy days, either.
But on the other hand, we're better off as a country having highly educated engineers, scientist, etc. We have the best space program and weather service on earth. Science and research not only should be funded, but it must. The life blood of why we're a first world technological nation is driven by this very fact.
I understand the private sector does a lot and I love the private sector as it can do things for less and doesn't have the red tape, but it certainly won't fund the research that we need to remain an undisputed science power, the weather service for all, and grants for education in science for the next generation if it doesn't have a profit margin stamped on it. All first world nations invest in science, research and R&D because they understand 1. That it creates a larger middle class with good paying jobs, which increases the GDP for all, 2. The nation has an edge in science and r&d which allows it to have things like the best military on earth, toys like we're typing on and cures for diseases that you may wake up tomorrow wishes we had.

I may not totally understand you as a libertarian, but this is "what" I as a person that watches science honestly believes is the best course of action for our nation to take.I point at over a hundred years of history with the national weather service and 60 years with nasa.

This is your problem with libertarians then, as I see it:
you people say that you want to do away with government no matter if it works or not. This is the message you scream day and night on this very board.
'Us people' may include some anarcho-capitalists but all libertarians are not anarcho-capitalists. There are extremes in every political stripe but they do not dominate the whole. Libertarians do not, as a whole, want government to cease to exist. Most of us just want government to stick to what it is supposed to do and leave the rest to us.

Government has a pivotal role in science namely because they are the only entity in existence that can take a billion dollars and light it on fire without a single good thing coming out of it. That happens when you are pushing science, sometimes VERY large investments do not pan out and the commercial industry does not take kindly to that. I am fairly certain that no commercial entity would be landing a drill on a comet right now but the government can invest that kind of capitol without a clear benefit and we all can reap the discovered rewards after they are worked out - if there are any.

Yes, there is a definite difference between a libertarian and an anarchist. People seem to get the two confused quite often.

 

[ScienceRocks]

I'll be dead and buried in the ground before I stop supporting space travel!

New Horizons mission nearing Pluto after nine years in space
12 hours ago by Scott Dance, The Baltimore Sun

It took the spacecraft New Horizons, hurtling from Earth faster than any mission before it, a matter of hours to pass the moon's orbit and a year to reach Jupiter's gravity.

Nine years into its journey, it's finally approaching its destination: Pluto.

Much has changed since scientists at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., conceived the mission a decade and a half ago. Astronomers found two more moons orbiting Pluto, observed changes in its thin atmosphere, and determined the distant object wasn't a planet, after all.

But they expect those discoveries to pale compared to the observations New Horizons will record once they wake it from hibernation Saturday, and as it approaches an encounter with Pluto in July. They organized the mission to learn more about Pluto's composition and characteristics, and how planets formed in the early universe.

Read more at: New Horizons mission nearing Pluto after nine years in space

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA Plans Manned Mars Mission For 2030

NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s – goals outlined in the bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and in the U.S. National Space Policy, also issued in 2010.
Mars is a rich destination for scientific discovery and robotic and human exploration as we expand our presence into the solar system. Its formation and evolution are comparable to Earth, helping us learn more about our own planet’s history and future. Mars had conditions suitable for life in its past. Future exploration could uncover evidence of life, answering one of the fundamental mysteries of the cosmos: Does life exist beyond Earth?

I predict China will beat us to Mars. This program will be defunded by the next tea party government and killed. If we do it at all it will be after 2040.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Japan's Epic Asteroid Mission Successfully Launches

Japan on Wednesday successfully launched a probe destined for a distant asteroid on a six-year mission, just weeks after a European spacecraft's historic landing on a comet.


The Japanese Hayabusa probe exploded on its re-entry to Earth, but a capsule possibly containing samples of asteroid dust survived. Discovery News' Ian O'Neill explains.

The robotic spacecraft, Hayabusa-2, blasted off aboard Japan's H-IIA rocket from Tanegashima Space Center in the south of the country.

The rocket roared up out of the Earth's gravitational pull trailed by orange flames at 1:22 pm (0422 GMT) after launch delays due to bad weather.

 

[ScienceRocks]

AMAZON CEO: 'I Want To See Millions Of People Living And Working In Space'

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has an ambitious vision for the future of humanity.

When asked about why space exploration appears to be a common interest among tech entrepreneurs such as himself, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, Bezos replied with the following:

Read Bezo's quote at: http://www.businessi...2#ixzz3KrPfuLAV

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is set to awake on Dec. 6 from the last of its 18 hibernation periods and prepare for its initial approach towards Pluto, which will take place on Jan. 15. The spacecraft is scheduled to come as close as 6,200 miles from the surface of Pluto on July 14, 2015 -- the closest any man-made object has come to the dwarf planet. The mission marks the first visit outside Neptune's orbit to the Kuiper Belt, which consists of Pluto and thousands of objects that have not yet been identified, according to Spaceflight Now, a space news website.

from http://abcnews.go.co...ory?id=27285504