Clean-suited technicians assemble a TE generator for a spacecraft. NASA's expertise in this technology can help cars and trucks to run more efficiently. (Credit: JPL)

By Bob Silberg
Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Next time you’re pumping gasoline into your car or truck, think about this: Three-quarters of the energy in that pricey petroleum will be wasted. Only about 25 percent of the energy in every gallon of gasoline you buy actually helps your vehicle to run. The rest is converted to heat, which is radiated uselessly off of your engine or blown out of your exhaust pipe.

What if you could recover some of that wasted energy? You’d need less gas, which would not only save money, but also reduce carbon emissions and the need for foreign sources of fuel. But is there a practical way to turn a car’s heat into useful energy?

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XCOR test engineer Geoffrey Licciardello asked his friend, artist David Lillie, to produce the illustration above. This is a piece of personal artwork that Licciardello commissioned and is not official XCOR illustration. I thought it was pretty cool, so I asked for permission to use it. The website for Lillie’s comic is https://www.dreamkeeperscomic.com and his art account is https://dreamkeepers.deviantart.com/ if you want to check out his other work.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) speaks during the FAA Commercial Space Conference.

NASA PR — Technical Interchange Meetings (TIMs) are informal forums where NASA and industry partners’ experts meet and discuss detailed topics in a collaborative fashion where a free exchange of ideas is encouraged. TIMs allow quick identification and resolution, at an engineer-to-engineer level, of technical questions that crop up as systems development activities progress.

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NASA PR — NASA’s industry partners continue to make good progress in maturing designs and development of their commercial crew transportation systems under CCDev2. During the past two months, eight milestones were completed by Sierra Nevada, SpaceX, Boeing, United Launch Alliance, Alliant Techsystems, Inc., and Excalibur Almaz, Inc. This brings the total number of completed milestones under CCDev2 to 34 of the 62 planned. Each of these milestone accomplishments brings the United States one step closer to ending the gap in America’s human access to space.

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A cool Q&A with John Glenn. Check out Florida Today’s awesome anniversary section.

Having spent 9 years and $930 million developing a new solid-fuel rocket to launch small satellites into Earth orbit, France and Italy have decided that working on a new spacecraft that will send humans to explore the moon, Mars and various asteroids is both beneath them and simply too boring.

Two of Europe’s biggest International Space Station contributors have rejected a NASA proposal that would see the European Space Agency (ESA) pay its share of ISS operating costs by building a propulsion module for NASA’s Orion crew transport capsule, saying the proposal is technologically lackluster and unlikely to generate public enthusiasm.

Interesting.

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Video Caption: Gov. Rick Scott signed the Senate Bill 634 Thursday, which is expected to make it easier for Space Florida to access state and federal transportation money to improve launch facilities. Scott held a ceremony in his Capitol office for the signing, the first bill to be signed this year, with sponsors Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers, and Rep. Ritch Workman, R-Melbourne, and Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll, who also […]

Pad OA at Wallops Island. (Credit: Orbital Sciences Corporation)

RICHMOND (VIRGINIA PR) — A prime location for orbital launches and a trajectory path over the Atlantic Ocean position the Commonwealth’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport for tremendous growth over the next few years.

Governor Bob McDonnell outlined the study today called, Competitive Analysis of Virginia’s Space Industry, at the 15th Annual FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference held in Washington, D.C. The study details the Commonwealth’s space landscape and gives recommendations and strategies to move the program forward.

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Commercial Crew Program Manager Ed Mango talks to industry partners and stakeholders during a Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) preproposal conference on Feb. 14. Image credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

by Rebecca Regan
NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center

Aerospace companies bidding for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) development dollars will be expected to present the agency with a viable spacecraft and rocket combination along with blueprints for a mission control center and ground operations.

“We don’t want a sales pitch, we don’t want an advertisement,” said Ed Mango, CCP program manager, during a preproposal conference on Feb. 14. “We want to know how they are technically going to make this happen.”
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