Sen. Richard Shelby

Space Access Society Political Action Alert 6/4/14
Short Fuse – Action Required By 9 am EDT Thursday 6/5/14

Please Redistribute As Widely As Possible

In a subcommittee markup Tuesday, Senator Richard Shelby (R AL) inserted a requirement in the Senate NASA funding bill (formally known as the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Fiscal Year 2015 Appropriations Bill, “Senate CJS Appropriation” for short) to provide, he stated, “greater accountability and budgetary transparency in the commercial crew program and future commercial cargo missions.”

What this actually is, according to the story at dothanfirst.com, is this:

• Language requiring NASA to ensure that companies participating in the competition for the development of Commercial Crew launch vehicles be required to submit certified cost and pricing data (consistent with FAR requirements)
• Language requiring NASA to require certified cost and pricing data for the new round of contracts for future cargo resupply missions.

In other words, it’s a poison pill for Commercial Crew and Commercial Cargo, two programs whose ongoing success threatens to undermine the justification for Senator Shelby’s missionless and massively wasteful hometown government mega-rocket project, SLS.

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SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell visited the Atlantic Council today for its Captains of Industry series.

The following is a statement from NASA regarding the National Research Council report, “Pathways to Exploration – Rationales and Approaches for a U.S. Program of Human Space Exploration” — “NASA welcomes the release of this report. After a preliminary review, we are pleased to find the NRC’s assessment and identification of compelling themes for human exploration are consistent with the bipartisan plan agreed to by Congress and the Administration in […]

WASHINGTON (NRC PR) – Arguing for a continuation of the nation’s human space exploration program, a new congressionally mandated report from the National Research Council concludes that the expense of human spaceflight and the dangers to the astronauts involved can be justified only by the goal of putting humans on other worlds.  The report recommends that the nation pursue a disciplined “pathway” approach that encompasses executing a specific sequence of intermediate accomplishments and destinations leading to the “horizon goal” of putting humans on Mars.  The success of this approach would require a steadfast commitment to a consensus goal, international collaboration, and a budget that increases by more than the rate of inflation.

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Video Caption: Airbus Space and Defence completed tests on their SpacePlane demonstrator between May 1-4, 2014.

Tests completed for Airbus Defence and Space’s SpacePlane
demonstrator in South China Sea

Held on 1-4 May, the tests of Airbus Defence and Space’s SpacePlane demonstrator validated the dynamic flight conditions encountered in the end-of-flight phase following a return from space.

The tests, supported by the Singapore Economic Development Board, took place 100 kilometers off the coast of Singapore and involved a fleet of seven ships.

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University of Zurich CellBox experiment integration two days prior to launch. (Credit: University of Zurich/Space Florida)

EXPLORATION PARK, Fla., June 3, 2014 (Space Florida PR) – Space Florida and the University of Zurich, Switzerland are pleased to announce the successful launch and return of the first international, commercial experiment processed at the Space Life Sciences Laboratory (SLSL) at Exploration Park, Florida.

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NASA ARMSTRONG FLIGHT RESEARCH CENTER, Calif. (NASA PR) — NASA has selected 12 technology experiments to fly on the first commercial research flight on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo.

Through NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program within the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, officials have been working with commercial companies, universities and government organizations to coordinate testing of innovative space technologies on research flights through the use of commercial suborbital flight platforms.

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CGI image of the IBDM design (Credit: QinetiQ)

Farnborough, 3 June 2014 (QinetiQ PR: QinetiQ Space has won a contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) for the development of the International Berthing Docking Mechanism (IBDM), a unique soft docking system for use by spacecraft at the International Space Station (ISS).

Under the current contract phase, which will run until 2015, QinetiQ Space will develop and build an engineering model that it is intended to be tested on the ground. The contract is expected to lead to a follow-on development phase lasting until 2017.

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Space News has sharply criticized SpaceX Founder Elon Musk for a series of Tweets in which he all but accused United Launch Alliance (ULA) and Aerojet Rocketdyne of bribing an Air Force employee to award ULA a lucrative government launch contract.

“His public indictment, on the basis of appearance alone, reeks of sour grapes,” the editorial charges. “It was a cheap shot at best; at worst, it was a cynical ploy designed to sell the narrative that SpaceX is not getting a fair shake from the Air Force. Either way, Mr. Musk has unfairly, perhaps irreparably, impugned reputations.”

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