America's first space capsule since Apollo prepping for launch

Photo: Michael Rooks / SpaceX

The SpaceX Dragon capsule is being prepped for its maiden voyage at Cape Canaveral. I got a chance to climb inside a mockup (SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hates that term--call it an engineering qualification unit) at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorn, California last year. It's big. Big enough for 7 astronauts. Standing in the center, I couldn't touch the sides with my arms outstretched.

This first capsule, designated C1, for COTS-1, after the NASA program sponsoring it, will test out navigation systems in orbit and test reentry. Unlike any previous space capsule, the Dragon is designed for pin-point landings using powerful onboard thrusters. If all goes well, this one will splash down in the Pacific Ocean some time before the end of the year. Future capsules will touchdown on land.

Photo: SpaceX

This mission control center was a blank wall in a corner of the half-million square foot SpaceX facility when I last visited. These people are on a roll and they're hiring like crazy.

SpaceX builds everything in-house, including the mighty Falcon 9 rocket and its nine designed-from-scratch Merlin engines.

Photo: SpaceX

The Dragon has already been mated to its rocket and the complete stack stood up on its pad for a so-called wet dress rehearsal, where all systems are tested for the countdown up to the moment of ignition.

Last step before launch, a static fire test where the rocket stays clamped to the pad while the engines fire.

Bigelow has competition

Hard to picture 7 crew here. Note sleeping alcove with porthole for scale.

I got a press release yesterday from a new venture to build what's being billed as the first commercial space station. What got my attention is who proposes to build the thing: RSC Energia, the Russian company responsible for the most reliable spaceships in the world, the Soyuz, as well as the dozen or so previous Russian space stations.

The other partner in the venture is an outfit called Orbital Technologies, based in Moscow (no apparent connection between the Wisconsin-based Orbital Technologies and the Virginia company Orbital Sciences).

A spokesperson elaborated to me that construction on Commercial Space Station, or CSS, is due to start in 2012 and it will launch in 2015 or 2016. Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace has already started building its Sundancer commercial space station, and plans to launch in 2014, a year ahead of CSS.

It's not clear whether financing is in place for the new venture. I suspect not, given the late start date, although the press release states that that customers have already been found.

"Orbital Technologies has several customers already under contract from different segments of industry and the scientific community, representing such areas as medical research and protein crystallization, materials processing, and the geographic imaging and remote sensing industry."

And, says Orbital CEO Sergey Kostenko, “We also have proposals for the implementation of media projects. And, of course, some parties are interested in short duration stays on the station for enjoyment.”

CSS will be a traditional aluminum can design, just like all space stations that have come before. The advantage is that development should be pretty straightforward, the challenges well understood. The down side is that it will be small and cramped, just 19 cubic meters supposedly serving up to seven crew members.

Bigelow's planned first habitat, in contrast, will enclose a whopping 180 square meters for up to six astronauts, made possible by its never-before-tried inflatable technology, which allows it to launch in a package of much smaller volume.

Watch me on C-SPAN's Book TV

I taped this one-hour interview in Washington last month, and it aired for the first time last night. It will repeat on C-SPAN2 tonight at 9:30 Eastern Time and at various times during the week.

You can also watch it in C-SPAN's online video library. Listen as I describe how I could have used DARPA's autonomous vehicle technology when my baby began projectile vomiting without warning in the back seat of my car to the accompaniment of highly distracting cries of horror from my wife and older daughter.

Besides the long format, one of the cool things about this show is that it pairs authors with experts in the field as interviewers. I drew Joanne Carney, a director at the American Association for the Advancement of Science for this one, and I think she did a bang-up job.

SpaceX hits a home run

Falcon 9 second stage engine making the final push to orbit.

Congratulations to everyone at SpaceX for a flawless inaugural flight to orbit of the new Falcon 9 rocket.

SpaceX made a historically very difficult feat look easy: the company launched a payload into orbit on a brand new rocket design on the first try.

The rocket lifted off just before 3 PM ET today from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral after a first launch attempt ended with an abort just seconds after ignition, but before the rocket was released. After what must have been a tense hour and a half, engineers corrected the problem remotely, and again started the countdown with a mere 30 minutes or so remaining in the launch window. The payload, an engineering qualification model of the SpaceX Dragon capsule—one without the heat shield and parachutes of future cargo and astronaut carrying versions—is now in orbit.

This is exactly the kind of home run needed to help quell opposition to President Obama's proposed new human space flight plan, which calls for chartering flights on private rockets such as the Falcon 9 for sending crew and supplies to the International Space Station after the shuttle retires.

It's good day for SpaceX, the U.S space program, and all of us who hope for a future in which space travel is truly commonplace.

SpaceX to launch tomorrow or Saturday

F9 static fire test. Credit: SpaceX / Chris Thompson.

Looks like all systems are go for Falcon 9's first launch attempt tomorrow. The launch window opens at 11 a.m. ET, with a live webcast to begin at 10:40. The window stays open for 4 hours. If the launch is scrubbed, SpaceX engineers will make another attempt Saturday, same time.

There's a lot more riding on this rocket than the dummy payload. Fairly or not, President Obama's plan to turn routine flights to the International Space Station over to private rockets could live or die based on Falcon 9's performance.

See my additional commentary posted today on the Popular Mechanics website: http://bit.ly/dbQwfl.

If We Can Put a Man on the Moon...

Anyone who thinks that the Obama administration's plan to replace the Space Shuttle with private space taxis is inherently riskier than the status quo needs to read William Eggers and John O'Leary's book, If We can Put a Man on the Moon...: Getting Big Things Done in Government. Especially the chapter on complacency, which says:

"The Complacency Trap occurs when the way things are blocks our vision of what could be. In many cases, this means that risk will go unappreciated until after a disaster has occurred."

The book discusses how NASA's internal culture grew so complacent with the risks of the Space Shuttle and its design (solid fuel rockets with leaky O rings, and flying insulation striking delicate heat shield tiles) that even after numerous close calls, managers refused to take action to prevent disaster from occurring–twice.

I would add that even after two catastrophic failures, managers still saw fit to replace the shuttle with a capsule riding an extended version of the same crappy solid fuel rocket, whose additional segments and seals would pose even more threat to vehicle and crew.

Obama's plan gets NASA out of the Complacency Trap by giving new players a chance to get the job done right. SpaceX, the company that's number one on the runway, started with a clean slate design based on tried and true principles. The Falcon 9 uses good old fashioned lox-kerosene engines that have already successfully launched two satellites into orbit.

Change is inevitable. Private enterprise will open the final frontier. The only question is whether legislators and old-line NASA managers will get out of the Complacency Trap and get on board, or get run over by the bus.

SpaceX launch waiting on flight termination system

Obama with SpaceX managers Neil G. Hicks, Florence Li, Brian Mosdell, Leslie Woods Jr., and CEO Elon Musk. Credit: Getty Images

The Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Falcon 9 is almost ready for launch. The team at Cape Canaveral is waiting on final testing of the flight termination system. The FTS is required by the Air Force so that the rocket can be destroyed mid-flight if it veers off course. Standard equipment for all rockets that launch out of the Cape, even manned ones.

Best guess for Falcon 9's inaugural launch has it taking off no earlier than May 23, though the FTS tests aren't following a fixed schedule, according to the email I've just received from SpaceX. And countdowns can be aborted any time before reaching zero. With this, its highest-profile flight yet, SpaceX managers want to be extra sure to get it right. The much smaller Falcon 1 made it orbit on its fourth try.

I spoke to a manager at NASA HQ recently who feels the success of President Obama's new direction for NASA depends on two things happening this year: Congressional support, and the success of the Falcon 9.

The new direction has the agency relying on charter flights by private companies such as SpaceX for the future of its human space flight program. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk downplays the importance of SpaceX in this effort, for instance in this interview with MSNBC's Alan Boyle. The fact is, however, SpaceX is number one on the runway. The stakes have never been higher for the rocket startup.

Naysayers point to Falcon 9's supposedly untested status (never mind the successful flights of Falcon 1, which uses the same engine design, and many ground tests) as the fatal flaw in the new NASA plan. Successful Falcon 9 flights will go a long way toward putting those arguments to rest.

Obama's space policy speech

NASA hasn't had a clear mission for manned spaceflight since landing on the moon 40 years ago. With his speech today at the Kennedy Space Center, President Obama made the boldest move to get it back on on track since President Kennedy sent us to the moon in the first place.

While it may lack the ring of Kennedy's "let's go to the moon before the end of this decade," Obama's "We've been there before. There's a lot more to explore" for the first time puts the country on a sustainable course beyond low Earth orbit.

The shuttle has been flying in circles for almost 30 years. Nothing in the works at NASA would have done any better. We have to do better than that, Obama told the crowd of space workers and dignitaries.

"Nobody is more committed to manned spaceflight, to human exploration of space than I am. But we've got to do it in a smart way. And we can't just can't keep on doing the same old things that we've been doing and thinking that somehow is going to get us to where we want to go."

Key to doing it smart, said Obama, is tapping private industry to handle routine access to low Earth orbit, while NASA works the big problems: developing new propulsion technologies, working on a heavy lift vehicle (to the tune of $3 billion), and sending robotic probes around the solar system. Overall budget increase for NASA over the next five years: $6 billion.

Obama's speech represents the clearest support for private space flight possible. Obama even opened his speech with mention of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket now on pad 40 undergoing final checkouts before its planned maiden voyage next month.

"By buying the services of space transportation rather than the vehicles themselves, we can continue to ensure rigorous safety standards are met, but we will also accelerate the pace of innovations as companies, from young startups to established leaders, compete to design and build and launch new means of carrying people and materials out of our atmosphere."

That's great news for anyone who wants to see space become a place to do business on a regular basis, and not just a government program, as Obama as much as pointed out.

"We will actually reach space faster and more often under this new plan, in ways that will help us improve our technological capacity and lower our costs, which are both essential for the long term sustainability of space flight."

Now it's up to private space companies such as SpaceX, the linchpins of Obama's new plan, to demonstrate the right stuff. A successful launch by the Falcon 9 next month will go a long way in that direction.

Elon Musk on NASA's new direction

President Obama is set to address the nation on his new direction for space exploration any minute now. Meanwhile, this just in from Space Exploration Technologies CEO Elon Musk on what it could mean. Heady stuff, and I think he's got it exactly right.

At Long Last, an Inspiring Future for Space Exploration

The Apollo Moon landing was one of humanity’s greatest achievements. Millennia from now, when the vast majority of the 20th century is reduced to a few footnotes known only to erudite scholars of history, they will still remember that was when we first set foot upon a heavenly body. It was a mere 66 years after the first powered airplane flight by the Wright brothers.

In the 41 years that have passed since 1969, we have yet to surpass that achievement in human spaceflight. Since then, our capability has actually declined considerably and to a degree that would yield shocked disbelief from anyone in that era. By now, we were supposed to have a base on the Moon, perhaps even on Mars, and have sent humans traveling on great odysseys to the outer planets. Instead, we have been confined to low Earth orbit and even that ends this year with the retirement of the Space Shuttle.

In 2003, following the Columbia accident, President Bush began development of a system to replace the Shuttle, called the Ares I rocket and Orion spacecraft. It is important to note that this too would only have been able to reach low Earth orbit. Many in the media mistakenly assumed it was capable of reaching the Moon. As is not unusual with large government programs, the schedule slipped by several years and costs ballooned by tens of billions.

By the time President Obama cancelled Ares I/Orion earlier this year, the schedule had already slipped five years to 2017 and completing development would have required another $50 billion. Moreover, the cost per flight, inclusive of overhead, was estimated to be at least $1.5 billion compared to the $1 billion of Shuttle, despite carrying only four people to Shuttle’s seven and almost no cargo.

The President quite reasonably concluded that spending $50 billion to develop a vehicle that would cost 50% more to operate, but carry 50% less payload was perhaps not the best possible use of funds. To quote a member of the Augustine Commission, which was convened by the President to analyze Ares/Orion, “If Santa Claus brought us the system tomorrow, fully developed, and the budget didn’t change, our next action would have to be to cancel it,” because we can’t afford the annual operating costs.

Cancellation was therefore simply a matter of time and thankfully we have a President with the political courage to do the right thing sooner rather than later. We can ill afford the expense of an “Apollo on steroids”, as a former NASA Administrator referred to the Ares/Orion program. A lesser President might have waited until after the upcoming election cycle, not caring that billions more dollars would be wasted. It was disappointing to see how many in Congress did not possess this courage. One senator in particular was determined to achieve a new altitude record in hypocrisy, claiming that the public option was bad in healthcare, but good in space!

Thankfully, as a result of funds freed up by this cancellation, there is now hope for a bright future in space exploration. The new plan is to harness our nation’s unparalleled system of free enterprise (as we have done in all other modes of transport), to create far more reliable and affordable rockets. Handing over Earth orbit transport to American commercial companies, overseen of course by NASA and the FAA, will free up the NASA resources necessary to develop interplanetary transport technologies. This is critically important if we are to reach Mars, the next giant leap in human exploration of the Universe.

Today, the President will articulate an ambitious and exciting new plan that will alter our destiny as a species. I believe this address could be as important as President Kennedy’s 1962 speech at Rice University. For the first time since Apollo, our country will have a plan for space exploration that inspires and excites all who look to the stars. Even more important, it will work.

--Elon--

Lunar payloads for sale

The Google Lunar XPRIZE team Astrobotic has been busy. President David Gump has tipped me off that with the details of its lunar-rover-in-progress being finalized, the team is now soliciting ideas for commercial payloads.

A total of 240 pounds of payload is up for sale. At $700,000 a pound, it won't be cheap, but Gump says 11 pounds are already accounted for in the form of the cremated remains of people of who want to be buried in space. Ideas for other payloads include systems for detecting water, producing oxygen, and prospecting for buried lava tubes suitable for conversion into habitats.

The Google Lunar XPRIZE is the brainchild of Peter Diamandis, who founded the Ansari XPRIZE for the first manned space flight, which Scaled Composites won in 2004. Now 20 teams from around the world are competing for a $30 million purse for the first to land a privately funded rover on the moon before 2015.

Astrobotic seems to have what it takes to pull it off: Raytheon (a major defense contractor) and Carnegie Mellon University as partners, and the mad genius of Red Whittaker (whose team won the DARPA Urban Challenge robot car race in 2007) as chief technical officer.

The team plans to land at the Apollo 11 site, which hasn't been seen up close since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin departed the surface of the moon in 1969. Mission planners hope that stereo cameras on the rover will reveal the site all its magnificent desolation for the first time in more than 40 years.

My new copywriting website now live

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SpaceX one step away from launch

Got this photo in from Space Exploration Technologies during the night. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is sitting on pad 40 at Cape Canaveral. Over the weekend, the team fired the rocket's nine engines in a test run lasting several seconds.

Next step, a test launch to orbit, some time in the next two to three weeks.

Falcon 9 is powerful enough to send 7 astronauts to low Earth orbit. For now it will be pressed into service by NASA for cargo delivery flights to the International Space Station. But Falcon 9, along with the SpaceX Dragon capsule, is number one on the runway as America's next manned spaceship, gearing up to take over the Space Shuttle's duties when it retires this year.

Photo credit: Chris Thompson/SpaceX

X-51 hypersonic waverider prepping for spring flight

Here's an Air Force video report on one of the projects I cover in my book The Department of Mad Scientists.

http://www.af.mil/news/video/index.asp?cid=3&sid=11769

The X-51 project seeks to break new ground in the field of hypersonic (mach 5+) air breathing flight. If all goes well, an unmanned aircraft will drop from a B-52 bomber off the California coast, fire a solid fuel booster rocket to get up to operating speed, and then light up a scramjet engine to get up to mach 6.

This will be the first time that a scramjet stays lit for as long as its fuel supply holds out. Previous tests have achieved powered flight for only a few seconds at a time. Staying lit for over a minute will be a first, and has tremendous implications for the future of aviation. See, for example, program manager Charlie Brink's discussion of using scramjets for spaceflight in the second half of the video.

Thanks to Nancy Colaguori of the X-51's propulsion contractor, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, for the link.

ARPA-E awarding $100 million for energy breakthroughs

ARPA-E, the wild-haired agency of the Department of Energy inspired by DARPA, has just announced that it will award an additional $100 million for breakthrough energy projects.

Job one for ARPA-E is solving the nation's energy problems. And high on the list of desperately needed tech is grid storage. "By investing in the development of grid-scale energy storage technology," says an ARPA-E press release today, "this funding opportunity will allow the U.S. to assume global technology and manufacturing leadership in the emerging and potentially massive global market for stationary electricity storage infrastructure."

Sun power and wind power hold enormous potential for reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, but only if some economical way can be found to use their power when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining. There are also vast fortunes to be made, if this problem can be solved. Said IDC Energy Insights analyst Sam Jaffe in a recent podcast:

For instance, in Hawaii right now, there's been a large buildout of photovoltaic—still in the single percentage points of overall electricity generated—but it's causing a significant strain on a local utility. The local utility is now saying 'we cannot take any more distributed photovoltaic without some sort of storage and storage management system to avoid hurting our distribution system.' And that's in the single percentage points.

Ordinary lead acid batteries won't cut it for large scale storage, and more advanced lithium-ion batteries, like those in laptops, are too expensive. Very likely no single solution will do the job, but rather a hybrid approach. Some contenders for grid-scale storage include liquid metal batteries (already getting ARPA-E money) and flywheels.

SpaceX loaded for bear

While the space world contemplates the ramifications of NASA's radical new direction, Space Exploration Technologies is gearing up for the first commercial cargo flights to the International Space Station.

This photo just in from SpaceX shows technicians loading the company's Dragon space capsule with a standard ISS cargo rack as NASA personnel, including astronauts Marsha Ivins and Megan McArthur, look on off camera.

It's just the beginning of a whole new way of doing doing business at NASA. As X PRIZE founder Peter Diamandis told Popular Mechanics science editor Jennifer Bogo yesterday,

"The new approach NASA has taken has laid the foundation for the Google, Cisco and Apple computers of space to be born. And, ultimately, lays the foundation for the rest of us to have a chance to get to go to space."

See my analysis of NASA's new trajectory at popularmechanics.com.

According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in an update posted earlier this month, the maiden voyage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the one that will fly the Dragon, should occur in the March to May time frame. After a total of three such test flights to orbit, the first cargo delivery flights should occur later this year.

End of a manned space flight era

The writing's been on the wall for some time. Now it looks as though it's finally going to be official.

The Orlando Sentinel quoted some unnamed sources today as saying that the White House is going to fight to axe the multi-billion-dollar Constellation program that was to replace the Space Shuttle as America's next manned spaceship.

The program's been behind schedule and over budget (now up to $8 billion and counting) pretty much from day one. What's more, it's based on an inherently flawed and dangerous design, using as a first stage a bigger version of the difficult-to-control solid booster that doomed the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986.

Keeping big contractors in business in key states has always been the name of this game, more than the ostensible reason for the system, getting American astronauts back to the moon. From the Orlando Sentinel article:

One administration official said the budget will send a message that it's time members of Congress recognize that NASA can't design space programs to create jobs in their districts. "That's the view of the president," the official said.

It seems the 50-year reign of U.S. government owned manned space ships will end with the retirement of the Space Shuttle this year. What's to take it's place?

Certainly the Russians will keep flying U.S. astros to the International Space Station, but some home-grown solutions are waiting in the wings to fill the gap.

SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are already under contract to NASA to send cargo to Space Station. Looking ahead to the not-too-distant future, SpaceX is already building its cargo ships with windows. The company's Falcon 9 rocket, capable of launching up to 7 astros into orbit, is being readied at a Cape Canaveral launch pad for its maiden voyage later this year.

Meanwhile, commercial space station builder Bigelow Aerospace is moving ahead in a partnership with Boeing to develop its own manned launchers. Robert Bigelow told me last week that he's looking forward to a breakout year for his company as well, as he transitions from a primary focus on R&D to full-on sales mode. His man in Washington, Mike Gold, has been showing off scale models of Bigelow's space habitats to prospects at space agencies around the world. If all goes well, soon the Space Station will no longer be the last word in orbital research centers.

My editor at Popular Mechanics, Joe Pappalardo, asks in a post today,

What will happen if private space fails to create a reliable launch vehicle? So far they are doing well, but a small engineering flaw or a mishap could grind the effort to a halt. Also, as private space companies morph into large contractors, will the risk of bureaucratic lethargy increase, as seen in the defense industry among prime contractors?

Important questions, to be sure, but I think the new, private space pioneers will indeed save the day, and open space to exploration as never before. Now all our government has to do is help, rather than hinder them. Looks like it's on the right track.