SpacX Founder Elon Musk

SpaceX Founder Elon Musk has sent out a letter thanking supporters for helping to delay action on the House NASA funding bill, which provides far less money for commercial space than the Senate version.

Thank You for Supporting the Future of Human Spaceflight

We recently asked for your help to protect the future of human spaceflight – and the response was impressive. Your phone calls and the efforts of supportive members of Congress helped stop the NASA Authorization bill from being pushed through the House of Representatives before important improvements could be made.

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Lawyers get 90 days to review documents in NASA scientist’s spy trial
CNN

A federal judge overseeing the case of a NASA scientist accused of trying to sell secrets to Israel has granted lawyers 90 days to review classified documents admitted as evidence.

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A P3 Navy aircraft with Hangar One at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. (Copyright 2008: Douglas Messier)

NASA Ames looking to pay for Hangar One restoration with its own funds
Santa Cruz Sentinel

NASA Ames Research Center is gearing up to restore Hangar One, an official said, and despite the agency’s long-running claims that it couldn’t afford to do the work, the money may come from within NASA after all.

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NASTAR PRESS RELEASE

The NASTAR® Center, the premier commercial space training and research center in the world, completed its third Suborbital Scientist Training Class this year. The Suborbital Scientist Training Program provides researchers with hands-on space flight physiology training to prepare them to design and perform experiments on suborbital vehicles. Eight (8) researchers from U.S. universities, including a NASA astronaut candidate, successfully completed the three-day course held August 2-4th, 2010.

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X-51 Waverider

LOCKHEED MARTIN PRESS RELEASE

Lockheed Martin announced today that its Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) rocket motor successfully boosted the experimental X-51A WaveRider beyond Mach 4.5, the speed at which a scramjet will start and begin to provide thrust. The successful boost helped the X-51 hypersonic scramjet engine to accelerate to a historic Mach 5, a first for the vehicle.

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tells Aviation Week says that a recent presentation by one of his engineers was not all it was cracked up to be: Referring to a presentation given at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Joint Propulsion Conference in Nashville, Tenn., by McGregor rocket development facility director Tom Markusic (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 5), Musk says, “Tom was throwing out a bunch of ideas for discussion.” Musk […]

Testing firing of Orion's main engine. (Credit: Aerojet)

AEROJET PROGRAM UPDATE

Aerojet, a GenCorp company, under contract to Lockheed Martin, has successfully completed more than 20 injector tests for the 7500-pound thrust Orion main engine (OME) for NASA’s Orion crew exploration vehicle. The tests are a combination of checkout, development, and qualification that will anchor models and satisfy combustion stability qualification requirements. The OME is a pressure-fed, regeneratively cooled, storable bi-propellant engine that is a technically advanced, increased performance version of Aerojet’s flight-proven 6000-pound thrust space shuttle Orbital Maneuvering System Engine (OMS-E).

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AEROJET PRESS RELEASE
August 10, 2010

Aerojet, a GenCorp company, announced today that it has successfully tested an advanced solid ramjet fuel in an engine ground test. The fuel is being developed to provide long-range, high-speed capability for the U.S. military and potentially for the future USAF/Navy Joint Dual Role Air Dominance Missile (JDRADM).

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NASA PRESS RELEASE

During a meeting Tuesday at NASA Headquarters in Washington, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Israel Space Agency Director General Zvi Kaplan signed a joint statement of intent to expand the agencies’ cooperation in civil space activities.

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NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun was at NASA Ames yesterday, touring the facility and talking about the space agency’s priorities for advanced research. I wasn’t able to attend his press conference due to other obligations, but the San Jose Mercury News has an excellent report.

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Media reports indicated that former NASA administrator and current EADS North America CEO Sean O’Keefe is in critical condition with a broken pelvis and other injuries after surviving a plane crash in Alaska on Monday. His son Kevin is listed in serious condition. Both are expected to recover.

The crash killed five people, including former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens. Two other people survived the accident. All the injured were airlifted to an Anchorage hospital.

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Peter J. Brown writes that proposed changes in the Google Lunar X Prize are not going over very well with teams competing in the $30 million competition:

The not so good news is that as the result of a proposed GLXP rule change, the $20 million GLXP grand prize could be reduced by $5 million if a government-backed lunar mission successfully lands and deploys a rover in advance of any of the 21 GLXP teams accomplishing the same feat. All GLXP teams must be 90% privately funded.

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