The following letter supporting NASA’s commercial crew program appears in the current edition of Space News along with an equally supportive editorial titled, “Milking Commercial Crew Is the Wrong Answer.” The text of the letter was provided by the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.

Commercial Crew: Science’s Friend, Not Enemy

Recent congressional hearings on the NASA fiscal year 2013 budget request have revealed a flawed and dangerous hypothesis by some members of Congress — that NASA’s Commercial Crew Program has robbed funding from its planetary exploration efforts.

This conclusion is factually flawed. This can be seen from the fact that the fiscal 2013 budget request for commercial crew is no higher than the 2013 request made last year as a part of the Obama administration’s fiscal 2012 five-year NASA budget projection — before this year’s significant and misguided cuts to planetary exploration.

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SAFE PR — The Society of Aviation and Flight Educators (SAFE) recently entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Orbital Commerce Project (OCP). The purpose of the agreement is “to promote safety in the Commercial Human Spaceflight industry through excellence in training and education.” The two organizations will team up on initiatives that include:

• Working with the Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA/AST) to develop the framework for spaceflight educator certification
• Developing recognized levels of achievement and spaceflight educator proficiency
• Creating courses and teaching materials to advance spaceflight education
• Promoting “safety through training” to the Commercial Human Spaceflight Industry
• Developing unusual attitude and G-tolerance courses

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By Lionel Pousaz
Mediacom

The first prototype of a new, ultra-compact motor that will allow small satellites to journey beyond Earth’s orbit is just making its way out of the EPFL laboratories in Lausanne, Swtizerland where it was built. The goal of the micro motor: to drastically reduce the cost of space exploration.

Imagine reaching the Moon using just a fraction of a liter of fuel. With their ionic motor, MicroThrust, EPFL scientists and their European partners are making this a reality and ushering in a new era of low-cost space exploration. The complete thruster weighs just a few hundred grams and is specifically designed to propel small (1-100 kg) satellites, which it enables to change orbit around the Earth and even voyage to more distant destinations – functions typically possible only for large, expensive spacecraft.

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STAR Systems of Phoenix has launched a $20,000 fund-raising campaign via Kickstarter to fund its Hermes space plane. To learn more and to donate, click here.

(Dulles, VA 2 April 2012 — OSC PR) – Orbital Sciences Corporation (NYSE: ORB) celebrated the company’s first three decades in the space business today as it completed 30 years of operations since the enterprise’s founding on April 2, 1982. At anniversary events at the company’s Dulles, Virginia headquarters and at other sites in Arizona, California, Maryland and Virginia, Orbital executives thanked employees and customers for making possible the company’s successes to date, and for providing exciting opportunities for future achievements.

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By Douglas Messier
Parabolic Arc Managing Editor

With the first commercial flight of SpaceShipTwo right on schedule for this Christmas, Sir Richard Branson has time to plan a trip to where no man (outside of cheesy sci-fi novels and even cheesier movies based on said novels) has ever gone before: the center of the Earth.

Making headlines for the first time in years, Britain’s pathologically reclusive and chronically publicity-shy answer to Howard Hughes announced his latest venture, Virgin Volcanic, on the first day of April. Branson plans to screw his way to the top bottom of an active volcano and through the center of Earth’s molten core using a giant carbon-composite VVS1 vehicle that looks exactly like….wait for it….a giant screw.

“Using patented carbon-carbon materials pioneered for deep space exploration, Virgin is proud to announce a revolutionary new vehicle, VVS1, which will be capable of plunging three people into the molten lava core of an active volcano,” Virgin Volcanic announced breathlessly on its website.

“Sir Richard Branson will go on the first expedition along with Tom Hanks, Academy Award winning actor and star of Joe Versus the Volcano; Black Eyed Peas recording artist and science enthusiast Will.i.am; actor/producer Seth Green; and two-time Academy Award winning documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple.”

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by Douglas Messier
Parabolic Arc Managing Editor

Imagine retrieving a soil sample from the Martian moon Phobos and returning it to Earth using two spacecraft so small you can hold them in your hands.

That’s just one of seven advanced inner Solar System missions using Cubesats that are being explored by Jet Propulsion Laboratory researchers under a study funded by the NASA Innovative Advance Concepts (NIAC) Program, which looks at technologies that are still about a decade away.

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Brevard County, Fla. (March 30, 2012 – EDC PR) – The Economic Development Commission of Florida’s Space Coast (EDC) has partnered with the Florida Economic Gardening Institute (GrowFL), Florida High Tech Corridor Council, Melbourne Regional Chamber of East Central Florida, Titusville Area Chamber of Commerce, Cocoa Beach Regional Chamber and the Greater Palm Bay Chamber to bring a greater emphasis on entrepreneurship in Brevard County and support for existing businesses. This effort is designed to stimulate job creation and foster the development of emerging growth-oriented companies.

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by Michael P. Kleiman
377th Air Base Wing Public Affairs

KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. — The SpaceLoft-6 sounding rocket will launch April 5, 2012, at Spaceport America, in Upham, N.M., with seven payloads, crucial for future Operationally Responsive Space missions, demonstrating its dependability and resilience during a 13-minute, 70-mile-high trek.

The ORS director explained the mission’s significance.

“One of the ways we prove space-based range technologies of tracking the rocket through flight, knowing where it is at all times in case the flight has to be terminated due to trajectory issues, is to get multiple flights to validate that the systems work in flight. Orbital flights are rare and costly, so one of the ways we are getting that flight heritage is by flying these technologies on small sounding rockets, which is much more inexpensive and easier,” said Dr. Peter Wegner.

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