Vega on the launch pad. (Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja, 2012)
ESA PR — ESA’s new Vega rocket is now fully assembled on its launch pad. Final preparations are in full swing for the rocket’s inaugural flight from Europe’s Spaceport. The launch window opens on 9 February.
The upper composite, comprising LARES, ALMASat-1, seven CubeSats, the payload adapter and the fairing, was moved to the pad late Monday night. A night transfer is the standard practice in Kourou to avoid overheating the payloads.
Mitt Romney talks at a rally in Brevard County in Florida. And for the third time this week, he says nothing substantive about space policy.
Apparently, Mitt Romneybot (a.k.a., #Mittbot) has been running for President for at least five years and has no idea what he wants to do in space yet. Nor can he describe in any detail what is wrong with the current administration’s policies.
But, he’s brought in a bunch of experts to figure it all out. And he’ll get back to us with the details. At some point. That should warm the hearts of laid off workers on the Space Coast looking for some clues as to what might happen next year.
Mitt Romney. (Credit: Gage Skidmore)
SFF PR — Jacksonville, FL — During last night’s Republican presidential debate, Governor Mitt Romney stated that “a moonbase would be an enormous expense,” and later stated that if someone had come to him saying they had wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, he would’ve said “You’re fired.”
Today, it was revealed that former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin is member of the Romney Space Policy Advisory Group. This is the same NASA Administrator who was the chief architect of an unaffordable and unsustainable plan to return humans to the Moon that would have cost about $200 Billion.
We can only assume that Gov. Romney did not know who Mike Griffin is or what he did as NASA Administrator when he asked Griffin to serve in his group of space policy leaders. At the time of its cancellation, the Augustine Committee, a national committee composed of military, civilian and commercial space leaders, concluded that Mike Griffin’s strategy would only work if NASA received a $3 Billion per year budget increase to $22 Billion. This would result in a total cost that was almost $200 Billion.
Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin
In a move destined to anger NewSpace advocates, Mitt Romney has released a letter of support signed by eight space leaders, including prominent commercial space critics Mike Griffin, Scott Pace and Gene Cernan. Pace, in fact, is chairman of the Romney Space Policy Advisory Group.
“We have watched with dismay as President Obama dismantled the structure that was guiding both the government and commercial space sectors, while providing no purpose or vision or mission,” the signers wrote. “This failure of leadership has thrust the space program into disarray and triggered a dangerous erosion of our technical workforce and capabilities. In short, we have a space program unworthy of a great nation.”
For me, this was the most interesting exchange from last night’s debate in Jacksonville. Gingrich was asked to actually explain something he had said about Mitt Romney. He responded by, in essence, calling Wolf Blitzer an idiot for even asking the question and inferring that answering it was beneath his dignity and the high-minded tone of the event. He also added this little gem:
GINGRICH: I did. And I’m perfectly happy to say that on an interview on some TV show. But this is a national debate, where you have a chance to get the four of us to talk about a whole range of issues.
We should expect more of the same should Gingrich win the presidency.
The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel’s annual report includes a fascinating section about the risk of losing a mission related to the International Space Station (ISS). “Analyses presented to the ASAP on several occasions, most recently in May 2011, stated that the probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) related to ISS Loss of Mission (LOM) was 1 in 55 for a 180-day mission. Since there are approximately 20 180-day missions in the currently […]
The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) believes that NASA’s commercial crew program is at risk from inadequate funding and the space agency’s decision budget-based decision to use less intrusive Space Act Agreements (SAA) to oversee the work of developing vehicles to replace the retired space shuttle.
“It appears to the ASAP that the fiscal year (FY) 2012 funding level approved by Congress, which was less than half of what was requested by the Administration, will not allow commercial crew transportation to the ISS by 2016,” ASAP said in its annual report released this week. “In fact, if the new funding level continues into the future, it is the ASAP’s belief that the program is in jeopardy, thus extending the current lack of a U.S. human spaceflight capability and resulting in no alternative to reliance on Russia to obtain access to the ISS.”
Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center
As the GOP primary looms over Florida, the Space Coast must be at the forefront of the candidates’ minds for both the future of aerospace and our broader high-tech community.
G. Madhavan Nair
The Indian government’s decision to ban former ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair and three other ex-agency officials from future government work over the Antrix-Devas Multimedia deal has exploded into a very public argument full of accusations and recriminations.
Nair says that he is the victim of a witch hunt initiated by his successor, K Radhakrishnan, who is desperately trying to distract people’s attention from numerous failures at ISRO. Nair alleges that Radhakrishnan had deliberately lied about details of the deal, under which Devas would have leased 90 percent of two ISRO-built satellites.
Newt Gingrich gave his JFK-style speech in Florida today followed by a round table. As with Newt, it didn’t contain a single overriding goal (build a transcontinental railroad, land a man on the moon), but rather a series of grandiose goals. A summary, based on this video: Invoked both Abraham Lincoln (railroads) and John F. Kennedy (moon program) Proposed setting aside 10 percent of NASA’s budget for prizes Promised to […]
