Rep. Dana Rohrabacher

Washington, May 10  — Today, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science engaged in a colloquy regarding NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and the report language his Committee issued to accompany the FY2013 CJS appropriation. (Attached below)

Rep. Rohrabacher issued the following statement:

“For the past few years there has been a lot of controversy around the idea of launching cargo and astronauts to space on commercially-developed, owned, and operated systems. The Bush Administration decided we should turn over this job to the private sector once we retired the space shuttles, rather than pursuing a traditional NASA-led approach. To their credit, the Obama Administration, guided by an advisory panel led by Norm Augustine, saw the wisdom in this and proposed to fund multiple competing private concepts for crew launch, eventually achieving a fly-off of two or more different systems to ensure that America would have safer, more robust, and much more affordable space access that doesn’t require paying Russia’s Space Agency half a billion dollars every year.

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A full-scale Lynx mockup. (Credit: Douglas Messier)

 The Spacecraft Technology Expo in Los Angeles this week featured some really cool mockups in the exhibit hall, including a full-scale versions of XCOR’s Lynx space plane and its cockpit (above). There was also mockups of the Dragon spacecraft and the Red Bull Stratos capsule that Felix Baumgarter will jump from in an attempt to break the world’s skydiving record.
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Spacecraft Technology Expo
Session 13 – Crew Launch Panel

Andrew Aldrin
Director, Development & Advanced Programs
United Launch Alliance

Keith Reiley
Deputy Program Manager – Commercial Crew Development
Boeing Space Exploration

Garrett Reisman
Senior Engineer, Astronaut Safety and Mission Assurance
SpaceX

Michael Lopez-Alegria
President
Commercial Spaceflight Federation

Editor’s Note: Mark Sirangelo of Sierra Nevada Corporation was scheduled to appear to discuss the company’s Dream Chaser shuttle. However, his schedule did not allow him to appear. He appeared earlier during the expo.

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Hawthorne, CA, and Las Vegas, NV-  Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Bigelow Aerospace (BA) have agreed to conduct a joint marketing effort focused on international customers. The two companies will offer rides on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, using the Falcon launch vehicle to carry passengers to Bigelow habitats orbiting the earth.

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Spacevidcast’s coverage of the ATK Liberty announcement on Wednesday.

Los Angeles/Arlington, Va., May 9, 2012 (ATK PR) – ATK announced today it has developed Liberty into a complete commercial crew transportation system, including the spacecraft, abort system, launch vehicle, and ground and mission operations, designed from inception to meet NASA’s human-rating requirements with a potential for the first test flight in 2014 and Liberty crewed flight in 2015. The company also announced Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) will provide support to the ATK and Astrium Liberty team as a major subcontractor on the project.

“Our goal in providing Liberty is to build the safest and most robust system that provides the shortest time to operation using tested and proven human-rated components,” said Kent Rominger, vice president and program manager for Liberty. “Liberty will give the U.S. a new launch capability with a robust business case and a schedule that we expect will have us flying crews in just three years, ending our dependence on Russia.”

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Kent Rominger
VP, Strategy and Business — Space Launch Systems, ATK

ATK has a complete system now….

• Composite Crew module that Langely was working on — alternative to aluminum capsule — essentially a scaled down Orion MPCV — heat shield not as strong (not coming back from the moon)
• Service module — a modified version of what has been developed for Orion MPCV
• Abrt system — Max Launch abort system — been tested once.
• Lockheed now a major subcontractor on the team

Rapid execution — 2015 is when I’m going to fly crew

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President Barack Obama has said he would veto the House Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for FY 2013 because it cuts far too much, including $330 million from the Administration’s request for NASA’s commercial crew program. The President also opposes restrictive language that would force NASA to immediately down select from four providers to one and move immediately to Federal Acquisition Regulation contracting.

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Test crew included (from top left): NASA Crew Survival Engineering Team Lead Dustin Gohmert, NASA Astronaut Tony Antonelli, NASA Astronaut Lee Archambault, SpaceX Mission Operations Engineer Laura Crabtree, SpaceX Thermal Engineer Brenda Hernandez, NASA Astronaut Rex Walheim, and NASA Astronaut Tim Kopra. (Credit: Roger Gilbertson / SpaceX)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., May 8, 2012 (NASA PR) — Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has finished an important evaluation of a prototype Dragon spacecraft designed to carry people into orbit. This key milestone is part of SpaceX’s partnership with NASA under a funded Space Act Agreement to advance the design of crew transportation vehicles.

The primary goal of the tests was to determine whether the layout will allow astronauts to maneuver effectively in the vehicle. Several veteran space shuttle astronauts and NASA engineers conducted the evaluation during a pair of two-day-long reviews.

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