We are at just under four hours before Phoenix lands on the surface of Mars. I am checking periodically at the Phoenix mission control website in anticipation of this event. Martian weather is clear and the landing later today is green for go. I suspect there are a lot of very excited and anxious people at JPL right now.
The above animation is of weather on Mars around its north pole from 5/16 through 5/22. The small cigar shaped outline in the upper left quadrant is the planned landing zone.
It’s not just a big day for race fans, its a big day for science and space enthusiasts. In August of last year the Mars Phoenix Explorer left Earth to start its journey to Mars. Its mission is to arrive safely, land on the Martian North Pole, and dig into the soil there begin looking for the building blocks of life. It arrives today at around 4:45PM PDT. Arriving is the hardest part, as now the explorer has to successfully enter the Martian atmosphere (at 12,000mph) using parachutes to slow the rapid descent from 900mph to 250mph, and then fire landing rockets to prevent it from slamming into the Martian surface (see the video above). Its a complex landing, and the mission control team probably hasn’t been sleeping much these last few days, as the last five years of their work culminates today in about seven minutes of anxiety. That’s okay, though, as they have a number of ways they can distract themselves while keeping us updated on the the mission’s progress. For instance, you can follow the Phoenix mission on Twitter and get frequent updates and mission facts. The mission team also has a blog that is full of information and that will be used to post what the mission team is thinking and what Phoenix sees and discovers, as well as an information rich mission website.
So, the entire Phoenix mission is going to be captured for us via an array of online tools. This is incredibly exciting, and it serves to connect us to the exploration and science that NASA leads in a way that is not only meaningful, but also basically real time.
Last Monday Stephen Hawking gave a speech at an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of NASA. Hawking has long been a proponent of the value of humans exploring space, and again called for a determined effort by humans to colonize the moon and Mars. He put special emphasis on putting humans into space, and not relying solely on robotic explorers, which is largely driven by the survival of humans, longer term, and is an insurance policy against war, catastrophe, and disaster here on Earth. A great quote from the speech:
“Robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information, but they don’t catch the public imagination in the same way, and they don’t spread the human race into space, which I’m arguing should be our long-term strategy. If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.”
With regards to life on other planets, Hawking offered three possibilities: that life in the universe, of any type, is rare; that simple forms of life may be common, but intelligent forms of life rare; or that intelligent life typically destroys itself. He went on to say:
“Personally, I favor the second possibility – that primitive life is relatively common, but that intelligent life is very rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.”
This is unbelievable given the incredibly short time, only 51 years, that humans have had access to orbit around Earth. Via the European Space Agency (ESA) come high resolution images of all of the human-made objects that litter our previously pristine orbit. The image above only depicts those objects in low Earth orbit (LEO). Here are some staggering space garbage facts:
We have put upwards of 6000 satellites into orbit from 4600 orbital launches
400 of these are beyond geostationary orbit or are on interplanetary trajectories
Only 800 satellites of the 6000 are considered operational
Most of the debris has come from explosion events (200) or collision events (10)
As we contemplate commercial orbital access, and look to things like space tourism to make the experience of space travel viable for many more people, this is a difficult reality to process. First, the amount of space debris is only going to increase, and most probably exponentially as the number of active space programs, both private and government, continues to rapidly increase. Second, there is real concern around protecting space vehicles, space stations, and future satellites from imminent collisions with this debris. That adds tremendous cost, complexity and weight to programs that are already stretched for budget and capacity. This is not impossible to overcome, and engineers have been thinking about this issue for awhile given some of the close calls with the Space Shuttle and the ISS. Still, another complexity added to an already very complex process.
April 4th marked the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 6, the last of the unmanned Apollo missions and the second time that a Saturn V rocket was launched. This was also the day that Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee, and as such Apollo 6 was minimally covered in the news. The Saturn V would play a significant role in getting astronauts to the moon and this launch, forty years ago, was to be the final test of the Saturn V before qualifying and readying it for the planned manned missions. For the Moon program, this was an incredibly important mission and would complete an important phase of systems testing. Apollo 6 did have serious problems which prevented the mission from reaching the designated orbit. These problems were quickly identified and addressed in the next mission, Apollo 7, and in the end, it was the only Saturn V launch that experienced operational challenges. It was the Apollo 6 mission that proved the integrity of the Saturn V launch vehicle. Since Apollo 6 was a test flight, NASA positioned cameras in places that would not be possible on a Moon mission. One of these took the famous set of images of the Saturn V first stage separation and the jettisoning of the interstage ring, pictured above.
After Apollo 6, all future Apollo missions were manned. After Apollo 17 the Apollo program was terminated for lack of funding, indicative of a tumultuous time in American history and a changing domestic agenda. At program termination there were three Saturn V rockets that had been completed in preparation of future Moon missions. Of these, one was ultimately used to launch Skylab, America’s first space station, into orbit on May 14, 1973. The remaining two are on display at various places around the country, including the complete Saturn V at the Johnson Space Center in Houston which is composed entirely of never used flight hardware.
As we near the end of the Space Shuttle’s operational life, and work continues on the replacement Orion/Constellation program, it is interesting that NASA has in some ways gone back to the future and put in place a program that is a direct descendant of the successes of the Apollo and Saturn programs, in some cases using identical systems technologies.
It has been a while since I have posted about robots, so via DangerRoom comes news that we are that much closer to bigger, better, and more stealthy flying robots of death. At least the United States Navy is. We’ve had operational drones and remotely piloted craft that could fire on targets, but within the next year the Northrop Grumman X-47B will take flight, and begin aircraft carrier landing testing a year after that. This is a mean machine, and brings an array of capabilities to bear all from a compact, efficient, and radar resistant form factor. It’s not a small craft, but it is much smaller than all other carrier based aircraft. It’s mission profile reads like a Tom Clancy novel:
Ballistic missle defense
Irregular force attack
“Manhunting”
Strike-coordinated armed reconnaissance
Combat air support
Special operations force support
Air interdiction
Electronic surveillance
SEAD/EW (I have no idea what this means…)
The impetus behind creating this robotic aircraft is to provide the Navy and Marines with a platform that can stay in flight for 50-100 hours, carry 4,500 pounds of ordinance, and perform the toughest missions under the most dangerous of circumstances. Clearly criteria that make a pilotless option priority. Additionally, there are plans to make the airframe compatible with carrying directed energy weapons. That would be lasers.
Catching up on my feeds just now I was saddened to see that Arthur C. Clarke, physicist, author, innovator, futurist, and ardent believer in the potential of humanity, has died. He was 90, so the man had a very decent run. Perhaps his most recognized work was 2001: A Space Odyssey, the movie for which just celebrated its 40th anniversary. He leaves behind an enormous legacy of invention, creativity, art, and inspiration having written over 100 books. Enormous. Few have been so profoundly influential to so many, and managed to do it with such consistent style, usually sporting a satin Nehru jacket and tanned from the beaches of his home in Sri Lanka. For me, Arthur C. Clarke is the Yin to Philip K. Dick’s Yang. A couple great quotes from Clarke in honor of his passing…
Reflecting on his life:
“Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered. I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these I would like to be remembered as a writer.”
A terrific quote on the value of the space program, from 1970:
“The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars… A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.”
One of the researchers investigating the possibilities of building a space elevator said that. It was an incredibly futuristic idea a decade ago. Not so much today. Getting to space with rockets is incredibly dangerous and increasingly expensive. Each Space Shuttle mission costs NASA (and by extension the American taxpayers) about $500 million, and in these constrained budgetary times that is verging on cost prohibitive. This lends credence to the space elevator concept, which is not by any means a new idea (Arthur C. Clark put forth the idea in his 1978 novel “The Fountains of Paradise” - though he was not the first). Developments in materials technologies, like carbon nanotubes, are giving the space elevator new momentum and urging NASA to perhaps consider it seriously as a future alternative to orbital access.
The concept is exceedingly simple:
- Send up a satellite that maintains a geosynchronous orbit
- Satellite deploys a ribbon or cable back to Earth
- Cable is attached to an offshore station
- Elevator rides the cable from the offshore station up to the orbiting satellite
The elevator could be powered by Earth based lasers or by powerful solar reflectors. Panels on the elevator would receive the light energy from the emitters on the ground and produce the electricity that would power the motors on the elevator. It’s sustainable.
Previously, we had been held back by the material realities of trying to build a several thousand mile (as long as 22,000 miles) elevator cable. The advent of carbon nanotube technology, still in its infancy, could be the lightweight but incredibly strong materials breakthrough that makes this possible. If completed, the space elevator would be the largest structure ever built.
More on space elevators in an excellent entry at Wikipedia, at NASA, and a short video from PBS’s NOVA.
NASA is trying to move quickly to finish the International Space Station before they decommission the Space Shuttle in 2010. This is primarily because the program currently in development to replace the shuttle, the Orion orbital vehicle and Constellation launch system, will most likely not be operational until 2015. This leaves a four to five year period where NASA will not be able to access space without the help of others, whether they be companies or nations. The good news is that at that time there will be several options as Russia, Japan (JAXA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and possibly even China will have operational orbital programs, not to mention the private ventures like SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler (two very cool companies, definitely check them out) that are currently contracted by NASA to develop supplementary ISS transport and support programs. The program from SpaceX, the Falcon9 rocket and Dragon space vehicle, is planned to be operational by 2010. I imagine that Sir Richard Branson would be willing to help, if needed.
As recently as last week NASA alluded to talking with the Russian space program regarding negotiating the purchase of use of their Soyuz and Progress orbital programs, in the event that contracting with private space companies does not provide the necessary capacity. Given that it is now 2008, and that the shuttle goes defunct in 2010, it is in NASA’s best interest to have these plans solidified as soon as possible. Otherwise, our astronauts and researchers face a space access bottleneck at exactly the time that the International Space Station becomes fully operational.
The Cold War was the catalyst for the development of a diversity of interesting vehicles, platforms and technologies, but few have been of more interesting to me than the Soviet “Lun” ekranoplan pictured above and below. The Soviet Union began developing the wing-in-ground (WIG) ground effect technology in the 1930’s, but the craft reached a pinnacle of sorts in the 1980’s with the Lun (one of which can be seen at Google Earth), though WIG craft have yet to reach any broad application, whether military or commercial. Ekranoplans benefit from WIG in two important ways, the first being the ability to achieve incredibly high speeds and the second that flying at 10 to 50 feet above the surface makes them largely undetectable by radar.
WIG works as a high pressure region develops beneath the wing’s lower surface and above the water surface, which enhances its lift compared to a conventional wing in free air. The close proximity of the water also disrupts the formation of wing-tip vortices, which are a major cause of induced drag on conventional wings in free air. To benefit from WIG, the airfoil must have a relatively flat lower surface in order to increase lift. WIG craft have an advantage over water-bourne craft in that a huge amount of power is needed to overcome the drag of the water. By flying just above the water that power can be used for speed and carrying capacity.
Ekranoplans were developed in a range of sizes and applications, but they could reach enormous proportions and cargo carrying capacity. The Lun, among the largest to be developed, spanned 240 feet long with a wingspan of 144 feet. Its size would be comparable to a Boeing 747. It had a maximum takeoff weight of 882,000 pounds and a range of over 1,800 miles. This behemoth could cruise at 341 mph, leaving traditional naval vessels quickly in its wake.
Several nations, including Russia and the United States, continue to explore the potential of WIG (like the Boeing Pelican), and China appears to have an active WIG program, but to date none have pushed this technology to the limit as Soviet designers and engineers did towards the end of the Cold War.
A Soviet Lun Ekranoplan transport at rest with crew on the exterior giving an idea of the size of the craft.
That graphic above looks like it could have been from 1969. I posted about the Constellation and Orion programs earlier, but just spent way to much time on HowStuffWorks and found an excellent and concise summary of the details around the Orion CEV. It is interesting how much from the Apollo program we are leveraging for Orion and Constellation. NASA has gone back to the future, so to speak. It makes perfect sense, in the vein of continuous improvement, as the Apollo program worked very well nearly forty years ago. With today’s advancements in electronics, computers, materials, and propulsion (not to mention everything we have learned from the shuttle and the ISS), Orion should benefit from a very long list of innovations and improvements. Earlier I had read that this program would not be coming online until 2015, five years after the decommissioning of the Space Shuttle leaving quite a gap in our ability to reach space without the help of others. Now I am seeing estimates of 2011 for Orion to be operational, keeping us in what is building up to be an incredibly competitive space race with China, India, Japan, Russia, and the ESA.
The International Space Station has been underway for so long that I think it is often just forgotten about. Work commenced in 1998, so its been under construction for nearly a full decade. But it’s up there and manned 24/7/365. We should collectively pay more attention to the development of the ISS as that is where the future of humanity is slowly (very, very slowly) being shaped. That, and we’re freaking building this thing in space. Most are at least familiar with the station if only because of the problems that have plagued its construction, including the problems with the NASA space shuttle that have caused major construction delays. There have been some close calls for the astronauts and scientists manning the ISS, and some difficult learning experiences for the international team tasked with building Earth’s first large scale “permanent” space platform. But that is the whole point, really, to learn along the way. Building this station is an incredible undertaking.
Some quick ISS facts:
- It is the largest and most complex international science project in history
- 27 nations are actively involved in its construction, most not having a space program
- When completed it will weigh over 1 million pounds
- It will ultimately be 356 feet across and 290 feet long
- The solar panels on the ISS would cover an acre
- It is in orbit approximately 250 statute miles from Earth
- It completes 15.77 orbits of the Earth each day
- The station has been continuously inhabited since November, 2002
- It will eventually have 15,000 cubic feet of living space
- The costs to create the ISS will exceed $130 billion, far beyond the original budget
- Five space tourists have visited, paying $25 million each for the opportunity
- The microgravity environment on the station is 88% of Earth’s gravity
- As of today it has been in orbit 3,362 days, and has been inhabited for 2,651 days
- For this pinnacle of human technological achievement, it looks rickety
There is a tremendous amount of valuable research already underway on the station, including experiments in biology, medicine, physics, biotechnology, materials research, cosmology and meteorology. Obviously, much more is planned and as more research modules come online the opportunities will increase. 2010 is tentatively planned to be the year of completion. But that will certainly be subject to change. Oddly, the year that the station is completed is the year that NASA decommissions the space shuttle with its replacement, the Orion/Constellation program, not coming online until 2015.
Some images I grabbed of the ISS for review:
This image, from 2001/2002, shows the initial operational solar arrays.
This is the station configuration as of November, 2007.
Very cool image of an astronaut capturing a reflection of the ISS and the Earth below in his face mask.
A detail shot of the connection between one of the solar arrays and a module. Note the astronaut working on the station in the upper center of the image.
Another detail. The exterior is incredibly complex. There is an astronaut in the image towards the center middle providing the scale of this module. The arm in the image was manufactured by Canada.
A space shuttle preparing to dock with the station. The shuttle has been the primary large payload delivery vehicle for the ISS. The Russians provide supplies and take away refuse via manned and unmanned Soyuz capsules.
A chart showing the breakdown of components and with nation’s of origin.
More from NASA. Check out the interactive informational tour.
I have been following this story like the wide-eyed ten year old that I am when it comes to anything related to even the remote possibility that I might someday be able to experience the weightlessness of space. Earlier this week Sir Richard Branson unveiled the design of Virgin Galactic’s new orbitalspace launch system, the carrier vehicle WhiteKnightTwo and the suborbital craft SpaceShipTwo (pictured above). This would be phase two of Virgin Galactic’s plan to “improve” humanity’s access to space. At $200,000 per seat that would be wealthy humanity, at least initially until the operation scales and ticket prices come down dramatically. Back in 2005 Branson’s Virgin Group and Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites announced an agreement to form a new aerospace production company to build a fleet of commercial sub-orbital spaceships and launch aircraft. The new company, The Spaceship Company owns the designs of the SpaceShipTwo and White Knight Two launch systems. See my previous post on Burt Rutan.
SpaceShipTwo will hold six passengers and two pilots and will fly higher than SpaceShipOne, the craft created by Scaled Composites that became the first private venture to enter Earth’s orbit, winning the Ansari X-prize in the process. Virgin Galactic hopes to launch its first public flight before 2009 and is now taking seat reservations. 200 people have already purchased tickets.
The commercial flights will be about 2.5 hours in duration with only a few minutes of that actually being spent in orbit experiencing weightlessness. At $200,000 per flight, that is $1,333 per minute.
Like many things in the latter days of the Soviet Union, the Buran (Russian for blizzard or snowstorm) program was a response. It was a reaction to NASA’s space shuttle and an effort to give the Soviet’s an edge in getting to orbit, though the concept of reusable space vehicles in the Soviet Union predates the American space program. Buran was the most expensive and complicated space program in Soviet history, and one that contributed to the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union as its economy fell apart and the political stability of the once proud nation fragmented. The Soviets sunk everything they had into both their response to the Strategic Defense Initiative and into the rekindled space race, and this broke their already fragile economy. It was a gamble that they lost as the walls, both literally and figuratively, began to come down.
Buran was an endeavor that mobilized the best and the brightest in Soviet aerospace, and these were very, very bright individuals. The innovations, accomplishments and firsts of Soviet aerospace are many. This made the Buran progam’s end all the more frustrating as this huge effort was finally canceled in 1993 because of the crumbling Soviet state and the resulting loss of all funding. Sad that Buran only made one flight in 1988, unmanned, as a test. The program never had a chance to prove its value.
Pictured below is the Buran shuttle mounted piggy back on its transport aircraft, an Antonov An-225 which was designed specifically to carry the Buran program shuttles between landing and launch sites, much like the NASA shuttles and their custom 747 transport. The An-225 is still the largest powered aircraft in the world.
The Buran program is often criticized as essentially being a copy of the United States space shuttle, the result of espionage by the Soviets. The similarities are undeniable, and at the project’s inception in 1976 Soviet leaders pushed for the program to copy the American shuttle to maintain parity with the United States, though Soviet aerospace engineers argued for the utility of a smaller reusable shuttle. Superficially, there are incredible similarities between the two craft, as seen below:
In reality, there were many significant differences between the two craft:
- Buran utilized manned & robotic flight, the US shuttle was retrofitted for robotic flight.
- Unlike the shuttle, Buran had no main rocket engines freeing tremendous weight & space.
- Buran’s launcher, Energia, was designed to carry up to 80 metric tons into orbit on its own.
- Energa was also being designed to carry payloads to the moon without Buran.
- Buran could lift 30 metric tons of payload into orbit, vs. the shuttle’s 25 metric tons.
- The thermodynamic tiles of Buran were very different than the shuttle, and thought superior.
On May 12, 2002, a hangar housing the only remaining Buran shuttle, and quite possibly the actual shuttle that flew in 1988, collapsed due to inadequate maintenance and upkeep. The collapse killed eight workers and destroyed the shuttle.
“Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding.“
That puts him in alignment with a number of innovation leaders, those that believe that success is born out of learning from failures and capitalizing on that learning. In an intensely competitive world, not fearing failure and successfully mitigating and taking advantage of risk can be the difference between whether or not you are relevant next year. Anyway, a comment on my post What’s Left For Architects offered up a quote from Burt Rutan in reference to his employees at Scaled Composites, the company building SpaceShipOne, shown behind him in the photo above. Here’s the quote:
“You don’t get the privilege of designing something unless you have the capability of building it with your own hands.”
That’s a powerful statement, and incredibly prescient for a number of industries, the most obvious for myself presently being architecture. Architecture in the United States has done an impressive job moving about as far away from the actual making as possible. In many ways this has occurred due to a fear of failure, and a fear of risk. But that’s changing. Slowly. Stay tuned. Moving on, the comment and the quote it contained motivated me to do this post on Burt Rutan. Easily one of the most prolific innovators and leaders in the world of aerospace, Rutan is championing the first privately funded venture to put humans into orbit. Back in 2004 he and his team won the highly publicized Ansari X Prize for successfully sending SpaceShipOne into orbit. Twice. In two weeks. I do not think that NASA has ever accomplished that with the same launch and orbital vehicles. Though they suffered a tragic setback earlier this year, Rutan and his team are still focused and unwavering on their goal set. That is because this is a really big deal, and smart business people like Sir Richard Branson see the enormous potential of broadening our access to Earth orbit. Beyond SpaceShipOne, though, Rutan has a laundry list of innovations and achievements including Voyager, the first aircraft to circle the Earth without refueling. The man is a relentless, tough, smart, designer, engineer and collaborator. He is also an accomplished team builder, and while it may be his name that is linked to all of these achievements, his success has been from putting together exceptional teams, and supporting them. I leave you with one last smart quote from the man:
“If you don’t have a consensus that it’s nonsense, you don’t have a breakthrough.”
That question is on the whiteboard of Bill Johns office at Lockheed Martin, and is his mantra as he engages in what is perhaps the most important program for the U.S. space program in the last thirty years. The question has a box around it with a “do not erase” pointing to it. Johns is a senior manager at Lockheed Martin, which in August 2006 won the $8 billion contract to build the next generation of NASA’s reusable space vehicles. Called “Orion,” and depicted in the rendering above in orbit around the moon, this crew capsule is being designed to take six astronauts into orbit in support of the International Space Station, or four astronauts to the moon. The space shuttle, initially the darling of an aggressive NASA in the 1970’s and 1980’s, continues to be plagued with problems and technology challenges. That, and it is incredibly expensive and inefficient to operate. NASA is decommissioning the three remaining space shuttles in 2010. It should be noted that as a wide-eyed 10 year old I wrote a letter to NASA expressing my own excitement with the shuttle program. Not only did NASA respond, but they sent me an enormous trove of images, press releases, and an autographed photo of the first shuttle crew. That was 1979. I think I speak for many when I acknowledge the disappointment that has become the shuttle program.
The Orion crew capsule, part of the larger Constellation program, is scheduled to replace the shuttle by 2015, leaving a five year gap in the United State’s ability to get into space without any help. This is a bit of a digression, but it is important to point out that during those five years we will see a proliferation of space exploration and orbital entry vehicles from Japan, China, India, Russia, the European Space Agency, and private ventures like Virgin Galactic. We are at the beginning of a new space race, and the competition is intense.
So, there is a lot of pressure on Bill and his team. And $8 billion is not that much money for a program of this importance. That is the equivalent of about six weeks of expenses for U.S. operations in Iraq. Needless to say, the Orion and Constellation programs have some daunting challenges to overcome, and it is how they are overcoming these challenges that is immensely interesting. Here are some details on how they are doing it…
1. Build on the successes of the seemingly antique Apollo program:
- Apollo is the model for Constellation, put a crew capsule on top of a giant rocket
- The hatch for the crew capsule is from the Apollo capsule with minor changes
- One of two heat shield technologies being tested is the one used for Apollo
- The reentry parachutes are slightly modified versions of those from Apollo
- The launchpad for Orion will be a rebuilt pad that originally launched Apollo 10
2. Take advantage of “off-the-shelf” technologies, which are superior to those currently in use:
- Flight control computers are engineered versions of those used for the Boeing 777
- Much of the avionics electronics are from already existing and massively tested craft
- The solid rocket boosters will be modified versions of those from the space shuttle
3. Utilize a “small,” agile and innovative team:
- The team that created Apollo numbered in excess of 400,000
- The Orion team is made up of 1600 at Lockheed Martin and 600 at NASA
- Orion utilizes rapid prototyping and environment testing with actual astronauts
- There is a focus outside of the space program for innovation (like NASCAR)
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