Lunar News Network

Saving Ares from Shock

A severe engineering challenge on the Ares rocket has been solved (AP - NASA fixes moonship shaking with shock absorbers):

For close to a year, NASA engineers working on the new Ares 1 rocket and Orion crew capsule have been wrestling with the problem of heavy vibrations from the massive rocket engines about two minutes after launch. If the vibrations are not dampened, it could potentially harm the crew or make it too difficult for them to operate for a few seconds. Officials on Tuesday said they have settled on a solution that is similar to what smooths the rides of pickup trucks: shock absorbers. But NASA's shock absorbers will be big and mostly remote-controlled.

Ok, so it's not exactly inertial dampeners, we can't do that yet, but we can certainly do shock absorbers, nice to see that this problem has been solved.

McCain & Obama's Space Policies

Thank you to the Planetary Society for publishing a side-by-side comparison of the candidates views on space policy.

Moon Miners

I have highlighted the debate about why we should return to the Moon using the "Pro-Con" category tag and you can browse through past entries to review the many reasons why we should support the space program and the return to the Moon. One of the best specific and materialistic reasons to set up a base on the Moon is to mine helium-3. This reason for going is the subject of a news report this week (Yahoo News - How Lunar Soil Could Power the Future):

The moon is once again a popular destination, as several space-faring nations are talking about setting up bases there. One reason would be to mine fuel for future fusion reactors. The fuel in this case is helium-3, a lighter isotope of the helium used in balloons. In high energy collisions, helium-3 fuses with other nuclei to release more energy and less waste than the reactions in traditional nuclear reactors. "If we can show that we can burn helium-3, it is a much cleaner and safer energy source than other nuclear fuels," said Gerald Kulcinski, director of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Imagine that, the Moon as a clean energy resource. If we can get green activists behind this plan imagine the support and political momentum this would create.

Orion Delayed

More bad news to report (CNN -  NASA: Space shuttle replacement won't fly until 2014):

NASA has put off the planned launch of its next-generation Orion spacecraft for a year, a setback to efforts to fly a successor to its aging space shuttles, the space agency announced Monday. The Orion space vehicle in this artist rendering from Lockheed Martin's web site, won't see space until 2014. [...] a year later than NASA had planned to launch the first Orion, but still six months short of the March 2015 commitment date set by Congress. Program managers were hoping to fly the new vehicle much sooner than that to keep the gap between the last shuttle flight and the first Orion flight to a minimum.

I wonder if this is something that a new president can change? After all, with both McCain and Obama (a new convert) strongly supporting the program perhaps there will be more momentum. I'm worried though that past budget cycles are dictating what can be done and when, and even if a new president wanted to give NASA more money in the future, it may be too late to reverse these delays.

NASA Panel Raises Safety Issues

And now for some bad news (AP - NASA safety panel worries about moon ship design):

NASA is not properly emphasizing safety in its design of a new spaceship and its return-to-the-moon program faces money, morale and leadership problems, an agency safety panel found Monday.

The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel cited "surprising anxiety among NASA employees" about the Constellation moon program and said the project "lacks clear direction." Its 143-page annual report [PDF] specifically faulted the agency's design of the Orion crew capsule for not putting safety features first.

Officials in charge of the program, defending the design safety at a news conference, wouldn't say whether astronauts are among the worried employees. Astronauts would have to fly in the Orion crew capsule, with a first launch planned by 2015.

It's worrisome to see these concerns addressed so publicly in the press. Greater transparency is good, and accountability is good, but in an election season, it would be easy for a candidate or a new president to manipulate expert panel reports to an uninformed public and use it as a justification for cutting budgets and programs. I'm sure panels such as the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel have their own timelines, but would it have been at all impractical to wait until after the election is over to release their findings?

Obama Revises His Position

Now that the U.S. presidential election has moved into the general election we are getting less space related political news than we did during the primaries. As we previously noted, Barack Obama has said that he would cut the NASA budget and divert the savings to fund education initiatives. Here is one recent report about Obama's campaign visit to Florida in which he voices support for NASA and dramatically updates his views on funding the Constellation program and narrowing the gap between the end of the shuttle program and the Orion program (Spaceflight Now - Obama vows NASA support during visit to Florida):

Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic candidate for president, held a town hall meeting near the Kennedy Space Center today and vowed strong support for NASA, saying he favors at least one shuttle flight beyond the 10 missions left on the agency's manifest. Obama also said he would work to close the gap between the end of shuttle operations in 2010 and the debut of the Orion spacecraft that will replace it and said earlier reports that he would divert money from NASA's next manned spacecraft to education were unfounded.

[...]

"I know it's still being reported that we were talking about delaying some aspects of the Constellation program to pay for our early education program," he said. "I told my staff we're going to find an entirely different offset because we've got to make sure that the money that's going into NASA for basic research and development continues to go there. That has been a top priority for us. This is an administration that's been anti-science. Whether it's on stem cell research, whether it's on climate change, they have rejected science. I want to reverse that trend, I want us to be a science-based society and I want us to invest in science."

While this is not a ringing endorsement of the Moon-Mars-Beyond program it does signal a major policy shift by Obama towards strong support for NASA and a smoother transition from the shuttle era to the Constellation era if he wins. Is this just political maneuvering or does it reflect a true change of heart?