Orbital Spaceflight Session
Dennis Stone – NASA Commercial Crew and Cargo
Philip McAlister – NASA Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation
Mark Sirangelo – Sierra Nevada Corp.
Jim Muncy – Space Frontier Foundation
Some perspective on the CRuSR program funding controversy that I’ve picked up here at NewSpace 2010.
If you recall, the Administration proposed funding the Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research program at $15 million per year. The effort is designed to fund experiments on an emerging group of commercial vehicles being developed in the United States.However, Congress was not quite as enthused.
XCOR's Lynx suborbital vehicle
Suborbital Spaceflight – Panel Discussion
- Alan Stern – Associate Vice-President of R&D, Southwest Research Institute
- A.C. Charamia – President, SpaceWorks Commercial
- Douglas Maclise – NASA CRuSR Program
- David Masten – Founder and CEO, Masten Space Systems
- Lee Valentine – Space Studies Institute (more…)
I found a copy of the revised Senate authorization bill for NASA that is dated July 20. The commercial and technology development programs are better funded than in the original draft of the bill, although the figures still fall below what the Obama Administration proposed.
San Diego City Beat takes a broad look at California’s space industry, focusing on Space X, the Obama Administration’s commercial policy, and the California Space Authority.
Moving forward, the CSA’s No. 1 project will be to support the creation of a 71-acre, $220-million California Space Center outside the Vandenberg base. It will include conference facilities, mission-control buildings, a rocket garden, a launch viewing area and a visitor center that Foster says, when it’s ready in eight to 10 years, will be “bigger and better†than the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Differing views for NASA advance
Florida Today
The space shuttle would fly one extra flight and NASA would embark sooner on developing its next heavy-lift rocket under a key Senate panel’s vote Wednesday that sets up a clash with the House on the space agency’s future.
AIA PRESS RELEASE
Aerospace Industries Association is extremely pleased that the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Science and Technology Committee have completed work on their respective versions of the NASA authorization bill. Â These bills are a critical first step towards ensuring that we maintain a robust human spaceflight program.
UKSA PRESS RELEASE
UK Space Minister David Willetts announced a one-year pilot programme to design and launch a CubeSat and the creation of an Earth Observation Hub in Oxfordshire.
The CubeSat is a shoebox-size satellite that can be fitted with the latest space technology. The compact size of the satellite, which is called UKube1, will allow the UK to test new equipment and carry out research in a relatively cheap way.
An Aerojet AJ26 rocket engine is prepared to be installed in the E-1 Test Stand at Stennis Space Center. Image credit: NASA
NASA PRESS RELEASE
Engineers at NASA’s John C. Stennis Space Center recently installed an Aerojet AJ26 rocket engine for qualification testing as part of a partnership that highlights the space agency’s commitment to work with commercial companies to provide space transportation.
The newly created UK Space Agency signed agreements with NASA and the Russian space agency Roskosmos to facilitate join cooperation across a range of areas.
The NASA agreement “identify new cooperative activities related to Earth and space science, life sciences, and space exploration, in addition to other areas of mutual interest.”
SPACE FLORIDA PRESS RELEASE
This morning Space Florida and UK Trade & Investment signed a formal Memorandum of Understanding that will facilitate beneficial commercial space opportunities between the State of Florida and the UK’s aerospace and commercial space industries. This is the first commercial MOU between Space Florida and a sovereign government and a further practical example of the close UK-US trade relationship.
Space shuttle Atlantis lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California, completing the final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Image Credit: NASA/Carla Thomas
FUTRON PRESS RELEASE
This week marks the 41st anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, the culmination of a space race between the United States and the Soviet Union, the two dominant space powers of that era. By contrast, the United States today is one of many spacefaring nations—a fact recognized by the new U.S. National Space Policy, which places a greater emphasis on international cooperation. Understanding the capabilities of the many countries now active in space is essential to an effective implementation of such a policy.
The recently-released third edition of Futron’s Space Competitiveness Index: A Comparative Analysis of How Countries Invest in and Benefit from Space Industry is a tool that can help policymakers, executives, analysts, and others compare the strengths and weaknesses of major space-participant nations.