Good day. See Dennis Wingo, "Some Thoughts Regarding Presidential Science Advisor John Marburger's Speech on Space Exploration and Utilization" as posted on spaceref.com - link here and snip below.
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1116
Google Alert for: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
Some Thoughts Regarding Presidential Science Advisor John ...
Space Ref - USA
... A look at the payload of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter for its contribution to prospecting for possible valuable lunar resources is the first step. ...
-------------------------------------------------------------
You see when you look for items on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter you find information on how the government works or doesn't work. It all takes money and the money goes where the politicians divert it.
Also, if you read the links you will see a bit of how the political and budget scene change with time and how it may affect the vision for space exploration.
If you are not in the USA, then maybe not a concern, still, if you want to see the LRO in action and see humans back on the Moon, there will have to be the money to fund it and a justification for spending the tax payer's money.
You may find it interesting to read what Dr. John Marburger, head of the Office of Science and Technology, has to say at two of his recent talks, as well as what Dennis Wingo comments.
- LRK -
Do you want the solar system incorporated in our economic sphere, or not?
Thanks for looking up with me.
Larry Kellogg
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsltr.: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
=============================================================
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1116
Some Thoughts Regarding Presidential Science Advisor John Marburger's Speech on Space Exploration and Utilization
Dennis Wingo
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Recently Dr. John Marburger, head of the Office of Science and Technology gave the keynote address at the 44th Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium in Greenbelt, Md. To me, as a long time space advocate, this speech is the most important statement on the development of the space frontier from the government since John F. Kennedy's fateful endorsement of the Apollo program. There was an incredible statement made early into the speech:
>>> As I see it, questions about the vision boil down to whether we want to incorporate the solar system in our economic sphere, or not.
I, and I would grant most space advocates, certainly want to incorporate the solar system into our economic sphere. Mining the Moon? Gathering resources of the asteroids for our use on the Earth? Living and working on Mars? L-5 habitats? The key to the entire success or ultimate failure of the President's Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) is the proper definition of "economic sphere". Here is the definition that Dr. Marburger offered:
>>> Our national policy, declared by President [George W.] Bush and
>>> endorsed by Congress last December in the NASA authorization act,
>>> affirms that, "The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance
>>> U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust
>>> space exploration program." So at least for now the question has
>>> been decided in the affirmative
Does the current VSE have the goal of executing on the "advancing U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests" aspect? This is a key question that Marburger seems to be asking as the next paragraph in his talk explains:
>>> The wording of this policy phrase is significant. It subordinates space exploration to the primary goals of scientific, security and economic interests. Stated this way, the "fundamental goal" identifies the benefits against which the costs of exploration can be weighed. This is extremely important for policy-making because science, security and economic dimensions are shared by other federally funded activities. By linking costs to these common benefits it becomes possible, at least in principle, to weigh investments in space exploration against competing opportunities to achieve benefits of the same type.
I don't think that NASA as an agency - or the aerospace industry - has seriously thought about the restating of the space program within the context that Marburger has laid out. This new policy that is being implemented by the Bush administration is more focused toward "ensuring future economic competitiveness" and space is placed at a lower priority as it is not perceived to contribute as strongly as other fields such as nanotechnology, infotechnology, and biotechnology. Supporting future national economic competitiveness is at the core of the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) that was announced by the president in his state of the union address. NASA is losing out in the battle for funds when compared to other activities, as space and space science is not considered to contribute as strongly as the other fields to economic competitiveness. This is the key implication of Marburger's speech.
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=19999
Speech by OSTP Director John Marburger to the 44th Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium STATUS REPORT Date Released: Monday, March 20, 2006
Source: Office of Science and Technology Policy http://www.ostp.gov/
http://www.ostp.gov/html/jhmGoddardSymp03-15-06Release.pdf
44th Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium Greenbelt, Maryland March 15 Keynote Address
John Marburger
Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy Executive Office of the President
It is a privilege for me to speak in this Symposium. My first job as a scientist, before I went on to graduate school, was at Goddard Space Flight Center. I had worked there during the summer of 1961, and returned as a full time employee in what was then called the Thermal Systems branch in the summer of 1962. Goddard was booming in those days, and the challenge of making scientific instruments work in the space environment attracted many fine scientists and engineers. I worked with a team trying to understand and optimize the properties of materials that could be used as thermoelectric generators for space applications, which shows you how broadly the spectrum of science and technology must extend to support missions in space. In the fall of 1963 I became a NASA graduate trainee in Stanford's then-new Department of Applied Physics, and ever since have combined my love of basic science with an interest in practical applications. The topic of this year's Symposium, "Engineers, Scientists and the Vision" reflects the combination of mental attitudes needed to accomplish great things in space, and I am pleased to add a few thoughts of my own this morning on these topics.
I am always puzzled by debates over the vision for space exploration because the choices are so constrained by physical reality. We humans dwell in a vast universe whose chief features only became apparent during the twentieth century. We have known for a long time that a huge gap separates the objects trapped by the gravity of our star, the Sun, and everything else. Information about phenomena beyond that gap can come to us only through the rain of photons and other elementary particles spewed out by the awesome processes of the cosmos. Our observations of that part of space began in prehistoric times and they continue to sustain the growth of science in our era. Phenomena on our side of the interstellar gap, in what we call the Solar System, are potentially amenable to direct investigation and manipulation through physical contact, and can reasonably be described as falling within humanity's economic sphere of influence. As I see it, questions about the vision boil down to whether we want to incorporate the Solar System in our economic sphere, or not. Our national policy, declared by President Bush and endorsed by Congress last December in the NASA authorization act, affirms that, "The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program." So at least for now the question has been decided in the affirmative.
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.ostp.gov/html/JHMAAASpolicyforum.pdf
2006 AAAS Policy Forum
Washington, D.C.
April 20, 2006
John Marburger
Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy Executive Office of the President
Thanks to AAAS for inviting me once again to address this important annual policy forum. The pace of scientific discoveries far exceeds the pace of science policy, so you would expect these annual forums to be rather repetitive and boring, especially when you hear from the same people – like the President's science advisor – year after year. This is the fifth time I have spoken in the Forum, and I will try to avoid repeating myself, although I admit I am tempted. Instead I will repeat the words of other science advisors starting with Allan Bromley. In his book about his experience as science advisor to the first President Bush, Bromley said one of his most surprising discoveries about Washington was that "it took longer to make anything happen than I could have believed possible!" This fact of Washington life means that often years go by between the emergence of challenges and effective responses to them. And yet things do happen and government can act decisively when the path forward is clear.
Snip
I am approaching the end of my talk, and I have said little about the budgets of other areas of science, or the details of how the ACI can be funded without serious negative impacts on other areas of science funding. The fact is that the FY07 cost of the ACI is dwarfed by the $2.7 billion in current year earmarks in the research budget. Earmarking has increased rapidly during the past five years, and has reached the point where it now threatens the missions of the agencies whose funds have been directed toward purposes that do not support the agency work-plans. From the point of view of transparency in government operations, earmarking at this level erodes the value of reported budget numbers for inferring agency resources. For example, the $137 million in earmarks on the $570 million NIST core budget in the current year lead to a gross exaggeration of how much money NIST actually has to satisfy its needs, particularly its physical plant requirements. The ACI request would increase the amount actually available to NIST by 24%, but because the earmarks mask the actual current amount, a comparison of the FY07 request with the FY06 appropriated suggests a reduction of 5.8% for NIST. This is a very serious problem. Media reporters attempting to identify "winners and losers" cannot even get the sign right on the budget changes inferred this way.
The White House Office of Management and Budget has criteria for identifying and accounting for earmarks, but those criteria are not employed by AAAS analysts, and the AAAS earmark methodology is not transparent. Unfortunately OMB does not publish earmark data, or include the effects of earmarks it in its tables. Consequently the dramatic growth of earmarks has seriously undermined the usefulness of the historically valuable OMB and AAAS analyses. Published budget numbers from either source no longer consistently reflect the actual resources available to science agencies to carry out their programs. This is not a satisfactory situation, and I urge AAAS to work with OSTP and OMB to develop a mutually comprehensible approach to the problem of taking earmarks into account in analyzing the annual science budgets.
Earmarking and prioritization are clearly related. One person's priority is another's earmark. One of the drivers for earmarking is the reluctance of individuals or institutions to participate in the merit based review procedures that are best practices in most funding agencies today. Another is the absence of funding programs for categories of expense that are deemed important even sometimes by the targeted agencies. I believe that where science stakeholders can form a consensus on priorities, the negative impact of earmarking can be greatly diminished.
Snip
=============================================================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
=============================================================
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Moon, Mars, and Beyond - real or simulated - choices
Good day, too many links, not enough time.
Have mentioned the Orbiter Spaceflight Simulator before and haven't had the time to learn how to navigate a spaceship but maybe some of you or your potential astronauts would like to. A wealth of information is available.
See some links below.
Maybe you just want to be able to look down at the Moon and see what the terrain is like. There are thousands of images. Some links to some below.
What is happening today and being pushed for tomorrow are some of the topics in the links from [Spaceref-daily] SpaceRef Newsletter - 27 April 2006.
Included some of those links below as well.
- LRK -
Ross Tierney put two new images of the latest variants of the proposed launchers for the new program in the files section of the group of the "Inside_KSC" Yahoo group. Provided a link but may need to be a member to view.
Larry Klaes provided a link to a fellow from Canada that has actually filmed Suitsat as it passed overhead!
O.K., need to go study some Thai language as we are going there in June to see Sangad's relatives and where my money has been going. :-)
Sawasdee.[sa wat dee] Hello - Goodbye
http://www.sawasdee.com/
http://www.thai-language.com/
http://www.thai-language.com/id/196817
http://www.thai-language.com/id/589845
Thanks for looking up with me.
Larry Kellogg
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsltr.: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
=============================================================
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html
Orbiter Spaceflight Simulator
http://www.orbitersim.com
.............................................................
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/download/orbiter.pdf
Orbiter User Manual 3.3 MB PDF file
MFD = Multifunctional Display - LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
https://sourceforge.net/projects/mscorbaddon/
Meadville Space Center (Orbiter Add-ons)
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.orbitersim.com/Forum/default.aspx
Orbiter Spacelight Simulator Forums
.............................................................
http://www.orbitersim.com/Forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=3064
Beginners guide to Orbiter - Tutorials
.............................................................
http://www.orbitermars.co.uk/stdorbit.htm
'Standard Orbit, Mr Sulu'
It's a pretty good bet that you've seen the Enterprise orbiting a planet in
the Star Trek standard orbit. Of course, we can only really speculate why
such an orbit was standard in Star Trek. Perhaps it's a good orbit for
scanning planets, or avoiding being attacked by things on the surface. What
we can be sure of is that Captain Kirk's standard orbit isn't actually a
very good orbit from a navigation point of view. It's circular, but it's
neither close to the planet nor far away. It's actually not the best orbit
for doing anything.
So what are the standard orbits for Orbiter? I'd say there were five
standards. Why five? The reason is that different orbits are good for
different things. Things that are easy in one orbit can be incredibly
expensive in fuel in another. So doing the right thing in the right orbit
can make the all the difference.
Snip
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.ibiblio.org/mscorbit/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=219
Meadville Space Center
Know the future through the past
.............................................................
http://www.orbithangar.com/
http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2132
http://www.orbithangar.com/orbiter.php
Orbit Hanger Mods
Orbiter Downloads
Orbiter is a free space flight simulator created by Martin Schweiger.
You can find the official web site is at http://www.orbitersim.com .
Listed below is a collection of old orbiter versions I am currently hosting.
Only the base package and texture package is required. When
upgrading a version, make sure you apply the patches in order!
.............................................................
http://www.orbithangar.com/searchresults.php?category=Spacecraft&subcat=nasaConcepts&Submit=Search&OrbVer=default
Search Results
=============================================================
Go to the Slideshows - Mapping - and do a quick flight over the Moon.
Then take your time with the Panoramic views.
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/
Apollo Image Atlas
Moon Rise
Foreword
Scanning and Processing Information
Credits
The Apollo Image Atlas can be accessed in the following ways:
* Browse Image Catalog
o 70mm Hasselblad
o Mapping (Metric)
o Panoramic
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/pan/
o Apollo Lunar Surface Closeup Camera (ALSCC)
* Search
o Search by Feature Name
o Search by Coordinate
* Slideshows
o 70mm Hasselblad
o Mapping (Metric)
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/slideshow/metric/
The Apollo Image Atlas is a comprehensive collection of Apollo-Saturn
mission photography. Inluded are almost 25,000 lunar images, both from orbit
and from the moon's surface, as well as photographs of the earth, astronauts
and mission hardware.
For questions or comments about this dataset please contact
rpif@lpi.usra.edu.
Please also visit the Lunar and Planetary Institute's companion lunar
atlases:
Digital Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/lunar_orbiter/
Consolidated Lunar Atlas of the Moon
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/cla/
Ranger Photographs of the Moon
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/ranger/
Snip
=============================================================
Some links from [Spaceref-daily] SpaceRef Newsletter - 27 April 2006
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
THE DAY IN SPACE
__________________
In today's space news from SpaceRef:
-- NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 26 April 2006
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.nl.html?pid=20425
-- NASA Space Station Status Report 26 April 2006
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.nl.html?pid=20431
"New supplies arrived at the International Space Station today as an
unpiloted Russian cargo spacecraft linked up to the Zvezda Service Module.
The ISS Progress 21 is filled with 2.5 tons of food, fuel and personal items
for the station's Expedition 13 crew. Commander Pavel Vinogradov and Flight
Engineer Jeff Williams will open the hatch to the supply ship once leak
checks are completed later today. The crew will begin unloading items
Thursday."
-- Mikulski Calls for Balanced Space Program, Increased Support for NASA
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=19687
"NASA's role in promoting science has been ignored by this administration.
NASA is absolutely crucial to the innovation economy and the innovation
society. It is time for the administration to recognize both the cost and
the benefits of a balanced space program," said Senator Mikulski. "A
balanced space program is what made our nation the leader in space - it
pushed the envelope of science and discovery, while spurring innovation."
-- ESA SMART-1 maps Humorum edge - where Highlands and Mare mix
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.nl.html?pid=20424
"This sequence of images, taken by the advanced Moon Imaging Experiment
(AMIE) on board ESA's SMART-1 spacecraft, shows on area on the near side of
the Moon, on the edge of the Mare Humorum basin. AMIE obtained these raw
images on 13 January 2006 from a distance ranging between 1031 and 1107
kilometres from the surface, with a ground resolution between 93 and 100
metres per pixel."
--IFPTE Urges Congress to Save NASA Science and Aeronautics
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=19686
"IFPTE President Gregory Junemann outlined the union's requests to restore
funding to these two programs back to the levels approved by Congress last
year. Junemann also raised objections to NASA's new Workforce Strategy and
the proposal to spend tens of millions of dollars implementing a RIF of up
to 1,000 NASA civil servant scientists, engineers, and other staff. The
brewing plan to support some of NASA's aeronautics expertise by farming it
out to European interests was also addressed."
-- Mini satellites rocketing to space station
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=19700
"A Russian rocket launched Monday, April 24, is carrying the first of three
small, spherical satellites developed at MIT to the International Space
Station -- a major step toward building space-based robotic telescopes and
other systems."
-- Galaxies Don Mask of Stars in New NASA Spitzer Image
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=19704
"A pair of dancing galaxies appears dressed for a cosmic masquerade in a new
image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The infrared picture shows what
looks like two icy blue eyes staring through an elaborate, swirling red
mask. These "eyes" are actually the cores of two merging galaxies, called
NGC 2207 and IC 2163, which recently met and began to twirl around each
other."
-- Pieces of NASA'S Next Mars Mission are Coming Together
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=19702
"NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, the next mission to the surface of Mars, is
beginning a new phase in preparation for a launch in August 2007. As part of
this "assembly, test and launch operations" phase, Phoenix team members are
beginning to add complex subsystems such as the flight computer, power
systems and science instruments to the main structure of the spacecraft."
Snip
=============================================================
If you are not on the "inside_ksc" yahoo groups you might not be able to see
this. That being the case, maybe you should be. :-)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/inside_ksc/
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
"R Tierney"
I've put two new images of the latest variants of the proposed launchers for
the new program in the files section of the group here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/inside_ksc/files/
They are called CLV.jpg and CaLV.jpg
In brief, NASA's current alterations are:-
Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV) AKA "The Stick" AKA "Ares-I":
* 5-segment SRB with PBAN propellant
* Interstage no longer to be lattice-structure, but closed
* Interstage structure includes latteral thrusters for the roll program
portion of the launch
* 5.5m wide, much shorter Upper Stage
* Upper Stage now powered by J-2X, a more powerful variant of the J-2 used
during Apollo which is being put back into production
* Fairing above the Upper Stage tapers to 5.0m to mount the CEV.
* 5.0m diameter CEV Command and Service Modules
* Total Lift Capacity to LEO (30x160nm, 28.5deg) ~ 24 tons.
Cargo Launch Vehicle (CaLV) AKA "Ares-V":
* 5-segment SRB with PBAN propellant
* Core Vehicle diameter increased from 8.7m (External Tank diameter) to
10.0m (Saturn-V diameter)
* Main Core Stage powered by 5 x RS-68 engines instead of SSME.
* Main Core Stage capacity increased by ~40% over original CaLV spec
* Upper/Earth Departure Stage (EDS) also 10m diameter
* Upper/EDS to be powered by single J-2X engine
* Payload fairing also 10m diameter (external)
* Total Lift Capacity to LEO (30x160nm, 28.5deg) ~ 146.5 tons.
Enjoy.
Ross.
Make sure to visit the Flagship website:
http://www.insideksc.com
Snip
=============================================================
Thanks to Larry Klaes for info here. - LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
A fellow from Canada has actually filmed Suitsat as it passed overhead!
The quote from Spaceweather.com:
REMEMBER SUITSAT? Three months ago, ISS astronauts hurled an old Russian
spacesuit overboard. Amazingly, it is still orbiting Earth. On April 18th,
Kevin Fetter videotaped "SuitSat" passing over his home in Brockville,
Ontario, Canada: 1 MB movie. (The bright star in the movie is Vega.)
Eventually, SuitSat will sink into Earth's atmosphere and disintegrate in
spectacular style--a fireball--but not yet!
The film is here:
http://science.nasa.gov/spaceweather/swpod2006/27apr06/fetter.wmv
Snip
=============================================================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
=============================================================
Good day, too many links, not enough time.
Have mentioned the Orbiter Spaceflight Simulator before and haven't had the time to learn how to navigate a spaceship but maybe some of you or your potential astronauts would like to. A wealth of information is available.
See some links below.
Maybe you just want to be able to look down at the Moon and see what the terrain is like. There are thousands of images. Some links to some below.
What is happening today and being pushed for tomorrow are some of the topics in the links from [Spaceref-daily] SpaceRef Newsletter - 27 April 2006.
Included some of those links below as well.
- LRK -
Ross Tierney put two new images of the latest variants of the proposed launchers for the new program in the files section of the group of the "Inside_KSC" Yahoo group. Provided a link but may need to be a member to view.
Larry Klaes provided a link to a fellow from Canada that has actually filmed Suitsat as it passed overhead!
O.K., need to go study some Thai language as we are going there in June to see Sangad's relatives and where my money has been going. :-)
Sawasdee.[sa wat dee] Hello - Goodbye
http://www.sawasdee.com/
http://www.thai-language.com/
http://www.thai-language.com/id/196817
http://www.thai-language.com/id/589845
Thanks for looking up with me.
Larry Kellogg
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsltr.: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
=============================================================
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html
Orbiter Spaceflight Simulator
http://www.orbitersim.com
.............................................................
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/download/orbiter.pdf
Orbiter User Manual 3.3 MB PDF file
MFD = Multifunctional Display - LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
https://sourceforge.net/projects/mscorbaddon/
Meadville Space Center (Orbiter Add-ons)
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.orbitersim.com/Forum/default.aspx
Orbiter Spacelight Simulator Forums
.............................................................
http://www.orbitersim.com/Forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=3064
Beginners guide to Orbiter - Tutorials
.............................................................
http://www.orbitermars.co.uk/stdorbit.htm
'Standard Orbit, Mr Sulu'
It's a pretty good bet that you've seen the Enterprise orbiting a planet in
the Star Trek standard orbit. Of course, we can only really speculate why
such an orbit was standard in Star Trek. Perhaps it's a good orbit for
scanning planets, or avoiding being attacked by things on the surface. What
we can be sure of is that Captain Kirk's standard orbit isn't actually a
very good orbit from a navigation point of view. It's circular, but it's
neither close to the planet nor far away. It's actually not the best orbit
for doing anything.
So what are the standard orbits for Orbiter? I'd say there were five
standards. Why five? The reason is that different orbits are good for
different things. Things that are easy in one orbit can be incredibly
expensive in fuel in another. So doing the right thing in the right orbit
can make the all the difference.
Snip
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.ibiblio.org/mscorbit/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=219
Meadville Space Center
Know the future through the past
.............................................................
http://www.orbithangar.com/
http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2132
http://www.orbithangar.com/orbiter.php
Orbit Hanger Mods
Orbiter Downloads
Orbiter is a free space flight simulator created by Martin Schweiger.
You can find the official web site is at http://www.orbitersim.com .
Listed below is a collection of old orbiter versions I am currently hosting.
Only the base package and texture package is required. When
upgrading a version, make sure you apply the patches in order!
.............................................................
http://www.orbithangar.com/searchresults.php?category=Spacecraft&subcat=nasaConcepts&Submit=Search&OrbVer=default
Search Results
=============================================================
Go to the Slideshows - Mapping - and do a quick flight over the Moon.
Then take your time with the Panoramic views.
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/
Apollo Image Atlas
Moon Rise
Foreword
Scanning and Processing Information
Credits
The Apollo Image Atlas can be accessed in the following ways:
* Browse Image Catalog
o 70mm Hasselblad
o Mapping (Metric)
o Panoramic
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/pan/
o Apollo Lunar Surface Closeup Camera (ALSCC)
* Search
o Search by Feature Name
o Search by Coordinate
* Slideshows
o 70mm Hasselblad
o Mapping (Metric)
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/slideshow/metric/
The Apollo Image Atlas is a comprehensive collection of Apollo-Saturn
mission photography. Inluded are almost 25,000 lunar images, both from orbit
and from the moon's surface, as well as photographs of the earth, astronauts
and mission hardware.
For questions or comments about this dataset please contact
rpif@lpi.usra.edu.
Please also visit the Lunar and Planetary Institute's companion lunar
atlases:
Digital Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/lunar_orbiter/
Consolidated Lunar Atlas of the Moon
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/cla/
Ranger Photographs of the Moon
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/ranger/
Snip
=============================================================
Some links from [Spaceref-daily] SpaceRef Newsletter - 27 April 2006
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
THE DAY IN SPACE
__________________
In today's space news from SpaceRef:
-- NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 26 April 2006
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.nl.html?pid=20425
-- NASA Space Station Status Report 26 April 2006
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.nl.html?pid=20431
"New supplies arrived at the International Space Station today as an
unpiloted Russian cargo spacecraft linked up to the Zvezda Service Module.
The ISS Progress 21 is filled with 2.5 tons of food, fuel and personal items
for the station's Expedition 13 crew. Commander Pavel Vinogradov and Flight
Engineer Jeff Williams will open the hatch to the supply ship once leak
checks are completed later today. The crew will begin unloading items
Thursday."
-- Mikulski Calls for Balanced Space Program, Increased Support for NASA
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=19687
"NASA's role in promoting science has been ignored by this administration.
NASA is absolutely crucial to the innovation economy and the innovation
society. It is time for the administration to recognize both the cost and
the benefits of a balanced space program," said Senator Mikulski. "A
balanced space program is what made our nation the leader in space - it
pushed the envelope of science and discovery, while spurring innovation."
-- ESA SMART-1 maps Humorum edge - where Highlands and Mare mix
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.nl.html?pid=20424
"This sequence of images, taken by the advanced Moon Imaging Experiment
(AMIE) on board ESA's SMART-1 spacecraft, shows on area on the near side of
the Moon, on the edge of the Mare Humorum basin. AMIE obtained these raw
images on 13 January 2006 from a distance ranging between 1031 and 1107
kilometres from the surface, with a ground resolution between 93 and 100
metres per pixel."
--IFPTE Urges Congress to Save NASA Science and Aeronautics
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=19686
"IFPTE President Gregory Junemann outlined the union's requests to restore
funding to these two programs back to the levels approved by Congress last
year. Junemann also raised objections to NASA's new Workforce Strategy and
the proposal to spend tens of millions of dollars implementing a RIF of up
to 1,000 NASA civil servant scientists, engineers, and other staff. The
brewing plan to support some of NASA's aeronautics expertise by farming it
out to European interests was also addressed."
-- Mini satellites rocketing to space station
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=19700
"A Russian rocket launched Monday, April 24, is carrying the first of three
small, spherical satellites developed at MIT to the International Space
Station -- a major step toward building space-based robotic telescopes and
other systems."
-- Galaxies Don Mask of Stars in New NASA Spitzer Image
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=19704
"A pair of dancing galaxies appears dressed for a cosmic masquerade in a new
image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The infrared picture shows what
looks like two icy blue eyes staring through an elaborate, swirling red
mask. These "eyes" are actually the cores of two merging galaxies, called
NGC 2207 and IC 2163, which recently met and began to twirl around each
other."
-- Pieces of NASA'S Next Mars Mission are Coming Together
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=19702
"NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, the next mission to the surface of Mars, is
beginning a new phase in preparation for a launch in August 2007. As part of
this "assembly, test and launch operations" phase, Phoenix team members are
beginning to add complex subsystems such as the flight computer, power
systems and science instruments to the main structure of the spacecraft."
Snip
=============================================================
If you are not on the "inside_ksc" yahoo groups you might not be able to see
this. That being the case, maybe you should be. :-)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/inside_ksc/
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
"R Tierney"
I've put two new images of the latest variants of the proposed launchers for
the new program in the files section of the group here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/inside_ksc/files/
They are called CLV.jpg and CaLV.jpg
In brief, NASA's current alterations are:-
Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV) AKA "The Stick" AKA "Ares-I":
* 5-segment SRB with PBAN propellant
* Interstage no longer to be lattice-structure, but closed
* Interstage structure includes latteral thrusters for the roll program
portion of the launch
* 5.5m wide, much shorter Upper Stage
* Upper Stage now powered by J-2X, a more powerful variant of the J-2 used
during Apollo which is being put back into production
* Fairing above the Upper Stage tapers to 5.0m to mount the CEV.
* 5.0m diameter CEV Command and Service Modules
* Total Lift Capacity to LEO (30x160nm, 28.5deg) ~ 24 tons.
Cargo Launch Vehicle (CaLV) AKA "Ares-V":
* 5-segment SRB with PBAN propellant
* Core Vehicle diameter increased from 8.7m (External Tank diameter) to
10.0m (Saturn-V diameter)
* Main Core Stage powered by 5 x RS-68 engines instead of SSME.
* Main Core Stage capacity increased by ~40% over original CaLV spec
* Upper/Earth Departure Stage (EDS) also 10m diameter
* Upper/EDS to be powered by single J-2X engine
* Payload fairing also 10m diameter (external)
* Total Lift Capacity to LEO (30x160nm, 28.5deg) ~ 146.5 tons.
Enjoy.
Ross.
Make sure to visit the Flagship website:
http://www.insideksc.com
Snip
=============================================================
Thanks to Larry Klaes for info here. - LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
A fellow from Canada has actually filmed Suitsat as it passed overhead!
The quote from Spaceweather.com:
REMEMBER SUITSAT? Three months ago, ISS astronauts hurled an old Russian
spacesuit overboard. Amazingly, it is still orbiting Earth. On April 18th,
Kevin Fetter videotaped "SuitSat" passing over his home in Brockville,
Ontario, Canada: 1 MB movie. (The bright star in the movie is Vega.)
Eventually, SuitSat will sink into Earth's atmosphere and disintegrate in
spectacular style--a fireball--but not yet!
The film is here:
http://science.nasa.gov/spaceweather/swpod2006/27apr06/fetter.wmv
Snip
=============================================================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
=============================================================
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Former Test Pilot Scott Crossfield Killed in Plane Crash
Good day,
Earlier this week there was on some of the space groups, talk about former test pilot Scott Crossfield being killed in a plane crash. He was 84 years young.
David Baker in the UK sent me his thoughts about Scott and I have copied his note. (see later).
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.space.com/news/cs_060420_crossfield_obit.html
Former Test Pilot Scott Crossfield Killed in Plane Crash
By Robert Z. Pearlman
posted: 20 April 2006
4:50 p.m. ET
The first man to fly twice the speed of sound, Scott Crossfield was found dead today inside the wreckage of a single-engine plane he had been flying on Wednesday morning from Alabama to Virginia, authorities told the Associated Press.
Crossfield's Cessna 210A was found by search crews in the mountains northwest of Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday after radio and radar contact was lost at 11:15 a.m. EDT (1515 GMT) the day before. There were thunderstorms reported in the area, though the cause of the crash was not immediately released.
"Scott Crossfield was a pioneer and a legend in the world of test flight and space flight," said Mike Coats, Johnson Space Center Director. "The astronaut corps and all of NASA are deeply saddened by his death, but his legacy will be with us through the centuries."
Crossfield, 84, made aeronautical history in 1953 when he reached a speed of more than 1,320 mph, or Mach 2, in a Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket research aircraft. Taken aloft by a Boeing P2B Superfortress (the Navy's designation of the B-29), Crossfield climbed to 72,000 feet before diving to 62,000 feet, becoming the first person to travel at more than twice the speed of sound, according to his NASA biography.
Snip
-------------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes you wonder how individuals in our space program got there start.
Often there is something early in their lives that helps to set one on a life path. One of the articles about Scott's life mentions that his first airplane flight was at the age of 6 and hooked him on aviation.
Maybe you can look back in your life and remember someone or an event that helped shape your carrier.
My dad, who will be 95 June 9th, taught Jr. High Industrial Arts classes for 41 years and I remember some of the summer arts and crafts classes he gave for kids. Some of his students are now teachers or working in cabinet shops, or architects. It is a nice warm feeling when you hear someone call out, "Hi Russ". When asked, "Who was that?" Oh I had him in class back in ...
Then there was my fourth grade teacher, Mr. Peavy, that had us build crystal radio sets by wrapping wire on an oat meal carton and finding a hot spot on a galena crystal (lead sulfide) with a "cat's whisker" wire contact.
http://www.techlib.com/electronics/crystal.html
That extra 2% effort will often make a difference. One doesn't need to be a genius, just attack life with gusto.
You know the look, when you see someone say, "Boy are we excited!"
Reach out, and "Make It So."
Thanks for looking up with me.
Larry Kellogg
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsltr.: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
=============================================================
I think we forget that individuals do make a difference and showing what some have done may help us find the same spirit in ourselves.
Thanks David. - LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
>Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 2:09 AM
>To: larry.kellogg@sbcglobal.net
>Subject: Memorium
Larry:
I greatly enjoy your notes and read them avidly whenever I can. The good work in bringing to our notice the great contributions of Eberhardt Rechtin will, I am sure, absolve you of retribution from the great sword of copyright (far more terrifying than Damoclese)!
I write to share thoughts about the life of the pioneering test pilot Scott Crossfield, a gentleman in every sense of the word who was a great influence in my early life just before I came from England to school in the US. Being a teenage lad in the 1950s with a great desire to fly and to "push the envelope" Scotty's activities, among many of that era, transformed these pilots into heroes - they WERE a very great stimulation to so many of us and role models which, dare I say it, were a breed non-existent today. Everything was so different then, anything seemed possible and achievable through exciting adventures on the new frontier of high speed, high altitude flight - all the way to space. But a diversion prevented wings making it to orbit for another 20 years or more, yet when the Shuttle took off in 1981, great machine as it was, it had the role more of a Mack truck than a thoroughbred high performer.
Crossfield gave us lads that can-do spirit and when a persistent ear problem kept me from the hot seat I seized an opportunity to begin a ground career in the US at NASA that gave me great oppotunities for which I shall for ever be grateful. I remember Scotty saying that he was reluctant to "fly" the X-15 simulator because it would give him only theoretical feedback based on predictions about how this aircraft would fly - it was his job, he said, to write the formula for the simulator by flying the real thing first! What a difference to the approach today where experimental test flights occupy the centre, not the corner, of the envelope.
Scotty was very aware of the need for us to embrace the young and not distance ourselves from them - they are, after all, the next generation to whose shoulders the mantle will pass. He was highly supportive of the aerospace teachers' program which resonates deeply with me after a lifetime in aerospace - I spend much time in that role for universities and colleges.
Perhaps a quote direct from Scotty himself sys it all: "Each of us who strives toward the unattainable contributes to man's ever-growing reservoir of knowledge and fact. Each drop, however small, is vital for those who follow behind us. Without it man must inevitably atrophy. Thus, as Emerson says, Men walk as prophecies of the next Age."
Let all of us keep looking up and drawing more to our line of sight.
David Baker
Cambridge, UK
=============================================================
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Crossfield
Snip
On April 19, 2006, a Cessna 210 piloted by Crossfield was reported missing while flying from Prattville, Alabama to Herndon, Virginia. On April 20, authorities confirmed his body was found in the wreckage of his plane in a remote area of Gordon County, Georgia. There were severe thunderstorms in the area when air traffic monitors lost radio and radar contact with Crossfield's plane.
While lightning itself poses a relatively minor risk to all-metal aircraft like Crossfield's, thunderstorms often contain turbulence severe enough to break an aircraft into pieces, as well as strong downdrafts, heavy rain, severe icing, and heavy hail. The Gordon County Sheriff's department reported that debris from Crossfield's aircraft was found in three different locations within a quarter mile, suggesting that the plane broke up while it was still in the air.
Scott was returning from Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama, where he had given a talk. He was survived by his wife of sixty years, Alice Crossfield; six children; and two grandchildren.
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/Biographies/Pilots/bd-dfrc-p021.html
Scott Crossfield
A. Scott Crossfield former NASA Dryden Pilot
Scott Crossfield joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA--the predecessor of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA) at its High Speed Flight Research Station, Edwards, Calif., as a research pilot in June, 1950. During the next five years, he flew the X-1, X-4, X-5, XF-92A, and D-558-I and -II aircraft, accumulating 87 rocket flights in the X-1 and D-558-II aircraft, plus 12 flights in the latter aircraft employing only jet power.
He made aeronautical history on November 20, 1953, when he reached the aviation milestone of Mach 2 (twice the speed of sound) or more than 1,320 miles per hour in the D-558-II Skyrocket. Taken aloft in the supersonic, swept-wing research aircraft by a Boeing P2B Superfortress "mother ship" (the Navy designation of the B-29), he dropped clear of the bomber at 32,000 feet and climbed to 72,000 feet before diving to 62,000 feet where he became the first pilot to fly more than twice the speed of sound. His flight was part of a carefully planned program of flight research with the Skyrocket that featured incremental increases in speed while NACA instrumentation recorded the flight data at each increment.
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.sierrafoot.org/x-15/bios/crossfield.html
A. Scott Crossfield
First X-15 test pilot (for NAA) and major contributor to design and development in an engineering role. Prior to the X-15 program Scott Crossfield had substantial test flight experience in the Bell X-1 and the Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket. It is possible that no other test pilot in aviation history has test flown as many aircraft that are now displayed in flight museums -- The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Milestones of Flight Gallery includes the #1 X-15 and the #2 Skyrocket, in which Crossfield became the first pilot to fly faster than Mach 2. He also flew the #2 Bell X-1, the sister ship of the #1 ("Glamorous Glennis"), which also hangs in the same gallery.
Scott Crossfield's X-15 experience included 14 free flights, 2 captive carries, 14 aborts, and numerous ground tests. Ground tests included the ammonia tank explosion that blew apart the #3 X-15 during an XLR-99 test run prior to first flight of this engine. All of his flight test work was part of North American Aviation's initial test phase, which brought the X-15 to readiness for its official delivery to NASA and the Air Force. This provided more than an average share of high adventure as early problems with aircraft systems were ironed out. Although his role with North American Aviation precluded flying missions in the research program, Crossfield has said that he was very pleased to have been able to spend 9 years of his life with the X-15, from its conception to his last flight.
His distinguished career in test flight and aeronautical engineering has been widely recognized. He was one of 6 test pilots who were the founding members of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP), and his participation in that organization still continues. At his 80'th birthday, in 2001, Scott Crossfield was still flying 200 hours per year as a private pilot. His autobiography is the book Always Another Dawn, and the following references are but three of more than 1,000 citations on the web:
Biography, at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/Biographies/Pilots/bd-dfrc-p021.html
Biography, at Edwards AFB, Air Force Flight Test Center http://www.edwards.af.mil/history/docs_html/people/pilot_crossfield.html
Awards -- AVweb's summary of Scott Crossfield's awards and recognitions http://www.avweb.com/news/profiles/182925-1.html
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.avweb.com/news/profiles/182924-1.html
March 21, 2001
Scott Crossfield
Scott Crossfield was the first pilot to fly the X-15. He was the first pilot to fly at Mach 2 and (unofficially) the first to fly at Mach 3 successfully.
That was the ascent phase of a 60-year career that took him from general aviation through the Navy, Ike's military-industrial complex at NACA, the airline business at Eastern, manufacturing and research at North American and Hawker-Siddley, politics on the House Transportation committee, and back to general aviation as a Cessna 210 owner. With a list of awards and recognitions longer than a dry lake bed, Scott has been a lifelong advocate for aviation education, and just last week presented the 16th annual A. Scott Crossfield Aerospace Teacher of the Year Award. In this month's Profile AVweb's Joe Godfrey talks with Scott about aeronautics, space, and general aviation: where we are, where we're going, and where we should be.
By Joe Godfrey
Scott CrossfieldA. Scott Crossfield was born October 2, 1921, in Berkeley, Calif. He took his first flight at age six in an oil company airplane, a flight that hooked him on aviation for life. During World War II he was a fighter pilot and fighter gunnery instructor in the U.S. Navy. In 1950, he joined NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and was a research pilot for the next five years at the High Speed Flight Research Station at Edwards, Calif. There he was the test pilot for numerous research aircraft, including the X-1, X-4, X-5, XF-92, the D-558-I, D-558-II, and on November 20, 1953 he became the first pilot to fly faster than Mach 2. He was also the first pilot to fly the X-15 and in 1960 became the first man to fly that aircraft (unofficially) at Mach 3.
Author's note: Here's the story on the adjective: Exceeding Mach 3 was Joe Walker's assignment, but Scott admits to bumping Mach 3 while flying his own assignment a few days before Walker did it. Technically that violated Scott's contract, and, although the statute of limitations for that transgression is long passed, he believes the official record properly belongs to Walker, which is why he adds "unofficially." -JG
Snip
=============================================================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
=============================================================
Good day,
Earlier this week there was on some of the space groups, talk about former test pilot Scott Crossfield being killed in a plane crash. He was 84 years young.
David Baker in the UK sent me his thoughts about Scott and I have copied his note. (see later).
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.space.com/news/cs_060420_crossfield_obit.html
Former Test Pilot Scott Crossfield Killed in Plane Crash
By Robert Z. Pearlman
posted: 20 April 2006
4:50 p.m. ET
The first man to fly twice the speed of sound, Scott Crossfield was found dead today inside the wreckage of a single-engine plane he had been flying on Wednesday morning from Alabama to Virginia, authorities told the Associated Press.
Crossfield's Cessna 210A was found by search crews in the mountains northwest of Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday after radio and radar contact was lost at 11:15 a.m. EDT (1515 GMT) the day before. There were thunderstorms reported in the area, though the cause of the crash was not immediately released.
"Scott Crossfield was a pioneer and a legend in the world of test flight and space flight," said Mike Coats, Johnson Space Center Director. "The astronaut corps and all of NASA are deeply saddened by his death, but his legacy will be with us through the centuries."
Crossfield, 84, made aeronautical history in 1953 when he reached a speed of more than 1,320 mph, or Mach 2, in a Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket research aircraft. Taken aloft by a Boeing P2B Superfortress (the Navy's designation of the B-29), Crossfield climbed to 72,000 feet before diving to 62,000 feet, becoming the first person to travel at more than twice the speed of sound, according to his NASA biography.
Snip
-------------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes you wonder how individuals in our space program got there start.
Often there is something early in their lives that helps to set one on a life path. One of the articles about Scott's life mentions that his first airplane flight was at the age of 6 and hooked him on aviation.
Maybe you can look back in your life and remember someone or an event that helped shape your carrier.
My dad, who will be 95 June 9th, taught Jr. High Industrial Arts classes for 41 years and I remember some of the summer arts and crafts classes he gave for kids. Some of his students are now teachers or working in cabinet shops, or architects. It is a nice warm feeling when you hear someone call out, "Hi Russ". When asked, "Who was that?" Oh I had him in class back in ...
Then there was my fourth grade teacher, Mr. Peavy, that had us build crystal radio sets by wrapping wire on an oat meal carton and finding a hot spot on a galena crystal (lead sulfide) with a "cat's whisker" wire contact.
http://www.techlib.com/electronics/crystal.html
That extra 2% effort will often make a difference. One doesn't need to be a genius, just attack life with gusto.
You know the look, when you see someone say, "Boy are we excited!"
Reach out, and "Make It So."
Thanks for looking up with me.
Larry Kellogg
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsltr.: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
=============================================================
I think we forget that individuals do make a difference and showing what some have done may help us find the same spirit in ourselves.
Thanks David. - LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
>Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 2:09 AM
>To: larry.kellogg@sbcglobal.net
>Subject: Memorium
Larry:
I greatly enjoy your notes and read them avidly whenever I can. The good work in bringing to our notice the great contributions of Eberhardt Rechtin will, I am sure, absolve you of retribution from the great sword of copyright (far more terrifying than Damoclese)!
I write to share thoughts about the life of the pioneering test pilot Scott Crossfield, a gentleman in every sense of the word who was a great influence in my early life just before I came from England to school in the US. Being a teenage lad in the 1950s with a great desire to fly and to "push the envelope" Scotty's activities, among many of that era, transformed these pilots into heroes - they WERE a very great stimulation to so many of us and role models which, dare I say it, were a breed non-existent today. Everything was so different then, anything seemed possible and achievable through exciting adventures on the new frontier of high speed, high altitude flight - all the way to space. But a diversion prevented wings making it to orbit for another 20 years or more, yet when the Shuttle took off in 1981, great machine as it was, it had the role more of a Mack truck than a thoroughbred high performer.
Crossfield gave us lads that can-do spirit and when a persistent ear problem kept me from the hot seat I seized an opportunity to begin a ground career in the US at NASA that gave me great oppotunities for which I shall for ever be grateful. I remember Scotty saying that he was reluctant to "fly" the X-15 simulator because it would give him only theoretical feedback based on predictions about how this aircraft would fly - it was his job, he said, to write the formula for the simulator by flying the real thing first! What a difference to the approach today where experimental test flights occupy the centre, not the corner, of the envelope.
Scotty was very aware of the need for us to embrace the young and not distance ourselves from them - they are, after all, the next generation to whose shoulders the mantle will pass. He was highly supportive of the aerospace teachers' program which resonates deeply with me after a lifetime in aerospace - I spend much time in that role for universities and colleges.
Perhaps a quote direct from Scotty himself sys it all: "Each of us who strives toward the unattainable contributes to man's ever-growing reservoir of knowledge and fact. Each drop, however small, is vital for those who follow behind us. Without it man must inevitably atrophy. Thus, as Emerson says, Men walk as prophecies of the next Age."
Let all of us keep looking up and drawing more to our line of sight.
David Baker
Cambridge, UK
=============================================================
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Crossfield
Snip
On April 19, 2006, a Cessna 210 piloted by Crossfield was reported missing while flying from Prattville, Alabama to Herndon, Virginia. On April 20, authorities confirmed his body was found in the wreckage of his plane in a remote area of Gordon County, Georgia. There were severe thunderstorms in the area when air traffic monitors lost radio and radar contact with Crossfield's plane.
While lightning itself poses a relatively minor risk to all-metal aircraft like Crossfield's, thunderstorms often contain turbulence severe enough to break an aircraft into pieces, as well as strong downdrafts, heavy rain, severe icing, and heavy hail. The Gordon County Sheriff's department reported that debris from Crossfield's aircraft was found in three different locations within a quarter mile, suggesting that the plane broke up while it was still in the air.
Scott was returning from Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama, where he had given a talk. He was survived by his wife of sixty years, Alice Crossfield; six children; and two grandchildren.
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/Biographies/Pilots/bd-dfrc-p021.html
Scott Crossfield
A. Scott Crossfield former NASA Dryden Pilot
Scott Crossfield joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA--the predecessor of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA) at its High Speed Flight Research Station, Edwards, Calif., as a research pilot in June, 1950. During the next five years, he flew the X-1, X-4, X-5, XF-92A, and D-558-I and -II aircraft, accumulating 87 rocket flights in the X-1 and D-558-II aircraft, plus 12 flights in the latter aircraft employing only jet power.
He made aeronautical history on November 20, 1953, when he reached the aviation milestone of Mach 2 (twice the speed of sound) or more than 1,320 miles per hour in the D-558-II Skyrocket. Taken aloft in the supersonic, swept-wing research aircraft by a Boeing P2B Superfortress "mother ship" (the Navy designation of the B-29), he dropped clear of the bomber at 32,000 feet and climbed to 72,000 feet before diving to 62,000 feet where he became the first pilot to fly more than twice the speed of sound. His flight was part of a carefully planned program of flight research with the Skyrocket that featured incremental increases in speed while NACA instrumentation recorded the flight data at each increment.
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.sierrafoot.org/x-15/bios/crossfield.html
A. Scott Crossfield
First X-15 test pilot (for NAA) and major contributor to design and development in an engineering role. Prior to the X-15 program Scott Crossfield had substantial test flight experience in the Bell X-1 and the Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket. It is possible that no other test pilot in aviation history has test flown as many aircraft that are now displayed in flight museums -- The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Milestones of Flight Gallery includes the #1 X-15 and the #2 Skyrocket, in which Crossfield became the first pilot to fly faster than Mach 2. He also flew the #2 Bell X-1, the sister ship of the #1 ("Glamorous Glennis"), which also hangs in the same gallery.
Scott Crossfield's X-15 experience included 14 free flights, 2 captive carries, 14 aborts, and numerous ground tests. Ground tests included the ammonia tank explosion that blew apart the #3 X-15 during an XLR-99 test run prior to first flight of this engine. All of his flight test work was part of North American Aviation's initial test phase, which brought the X-15 to readiness for its official delivery to NASA and the Air Force. This provided more than an average share of high adventure as early problems with aircraft systems were ironed out. Although his role with North American Aviation precluded flying missions in the research program, Crossfield has said that he was very pleased to have been able to spend 9 years of his life with the X-15, from its conception to his last flight.
His distinguished career in test flight and aeronautical engineering has been widely recognized. He was one of 6 test pilots who were the founding members of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP), and his participation in that organization still continues. At his 80'th birthday, in 2001, Scott Crossfield was still flying 200 hours per year as a private pilot. His autobiography is the book Always Another Dawn, and the following references are but three of more than 1,000 citations on the web:
Biography, at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/Biographies/Pilots/bd-dfrc-p021.html
Biography, at Edwards AFB, Air Force Flight Test Center http://www.edwards.af.mil/history/docs_html/people/pilot_crossfield.html
Awards -- AVweb's summary of Scott Crossfield's awards and recognitions http://www.avweb.com/news/profiles/182925-1.html
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.avweb.com/news/profiles/182924-1.html
March 21, 2001
Scott Crossfield
Scott Crossfield was the first pilot to fly the X-15. He was the first pilot to fly at Mach 2 and (unofficially) the first to fly at Mach 3 successfully.
That was the ascent phase of a 60-year career that took him from general aviation through the Navy, Ike's military-industrial complex at NACA, the airline business at Eastern, manufacturing and research at North American and Hawker-Siddley, politics on the House Transportation committee, and back to general aviation as a Cessna 210 owner. With a list of awards and recognitions longer than a dry lake bed, Scott has been a lifelong advocate for aviation education, and just last week presented the 16th annual A. Scott Crossfield Aerospace Teacher of the Year Award. In this month's Profile AVweb's Joe Godfrey talks with Scott about aeronautics, space, and general aviation: where we are, where we're going, and where we should be.
By Joe Godfrey
Scott CrossfieldA. Scott Crossfield was born October 2, 1921, in Berkeley, Calif. He took his first flight at age six in an oil company airplane, a flight that hooked him on aviation for life. During World War II he was a fighter pilot and fighter gunnery instructor in the U.S. Navy. In 1950, he joined NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and was a research pilot for the next five years at the High Speed Flight Research Station at Edwards, Calif. There he was the test pilot for numerous research aircraft, including the X-1, X-4, X-5, XF-92, the D-558-I, D-558-II, and on November 20, 1953 he became the first pilot to fly faster than Mach 2. He was also the first pilot to fly the X-15 and in 1960 became the first man to fly that aircraft (unofficially) at Mach 3.
Author's note: Here's the story on the adjective: Exceeding Mach 3 was Joe Walker's assignment, but Scott admits to bumping Mach 3 while flying his own assignment a few days before Walker did it. Technically that violated Scott's contract, and, although the statute of limitations for that transgression is long passed, he believes the official record properly belongs to Walker, which is why he adds "unofficially." -JG
Snip
=============================================================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
=============================================================
Monday, April 24, 2006
Space trailblazer Eberhardt Rechtin passed away at the age of 80 on Friday, 14 April 2006.
Once again, my thanks to Larry Klaes for keeping me informed.
He passed a notification of the death of Eberhardt Rechtin who passed away at the age of 80 on Friday, 14 April 2006. (See below)
You can read the notices below but what I want, is for you to take the time to read and digest and ponder the Oral History Interview with Eberhardt Rechtin that is posted on the IEEE web site.
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/transcripts/rechtin.html
Interviewee:
Eberhardt Rechtin
Interviewer:
Frederick Nebeker
Date:
February 23, 1995
Copyright Statement
This manuscript is being made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the IEEE History Center. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of IEEE History Center.
Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the IEEE History Center Oral History Program, Rutgers - the State University, 39 Union Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8538 USA. It should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Eberhardt Rechtin, Electrical Engineer, an oral history conducted in
1995 by Frederik Nebeker, IEEE History Center, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
-------------------------------------------------------------
After reading the above copyright notice I will probably get in trouble for including these few paragraphs but I really want you to read the interview.
Then go remind those that are organizing our "To the Moon, Mars, and Beyond"
quest to do some "architecting".
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
Snip
Nebeker: I remember Bill Baker telling me that I don't know this story well, but at some point Bell Labs was recognizing that what you are dealing with is a large system and that engineers have to be trained in taking in the big picture.
Rechtin: That came about easily in World War II and maybe before because Boda could not have written his book on feedback systems unless they had a system concept, because it was not just an idea of "Put it in the front it comes out the other end." That was a new idea of feedback and the difference between positive and negative feedback. They had already run into problems of stability, because when they put in the wrong kind of feedback, the damn thing oscillated and blew up. So they had clearly seen that when you connected all these parts together, you could produce something. You could get rid of a lot of the problems on the forward link, particularly on the linearities, if you had a feedback loop. That led to control theory, which tended to branch away from the Bell System. It also led to switching theory, which is the core of the Bell System. That became obvious when they found out that there weren't enough telephone operators in the world to pick up all the number of connections they were going to have to make. In terms of where all of this came from, I made no claims at all that either systems or architecture were my inventions. When you put them together you then define the function of building architectures as architecting. I don't know if I would even call it that word but I was one of the first to use it consistently. I use "architecting" so that people focus on the process that an architect does. If I just use "architecture" it means too many different things, so I invented another word. Some people want to call it "architecturing" but that could be more complicated than we want. I wanted to focus on system architecting as a process. That also avoids another process as to who does it, because there is nothing that says a system engineer can't do architecting, and nothing says a system architect can't do systems engineering. If you are missing that function, then you have a problem. The Bell System didn't confront the problem too seriously because their whole basic architecture from the beginning was essentially the same.
Snip
-------------------------------------------------------------
Because I am afraid you won't go read the whole interview, let me include a few more paragraphs and really get me in trouble.
What do you do when you flunk a required course for your degree?
What do you do when you are told you cannot communicate with a space probe that is going to go outside the Solar system?
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
Nebeker: This is a graduate course.
Rechtin: This is a graduate barrier course to a Ph.D. I flunked it, absolutely cold out, and it was as I recall a three quarter course--you had three parts to it. Well, that meant no Ph.D., but Cal Tech always said one can have a second try at it and if one can get your average above the necessary C or whatever it was, well all right. Very few people ever made it the second time if they couldn't figure it out the first time. So I spent the summer going through every problem in Symthe's book. It got awfully tedious after a while and suddenly the light hit; I saw the key to the lock.
I hadn't seen it before and nobody would tell you, least of all Smythe. For every one of his problems, and later I learned for a lot of the world's problems, there is a simple way of getting the answer and the standard way of getting the answer. The standard way takes a lot of time and a lot of grinding, and a lot of work. The simple way you get by sitting back and thinking, "Are there whole chunks of this problem that have already been solved?" For example, did some famous mathematician solve a certain kind of equation? Absolutely, and it is expressed in terms of Bessel functions. I didn't know that; I didn't know a Bessel function from a rock on the ground when I began this thing. Anyway, they are solutions to boundary conditions and if you express them in Bessel functions, they essentially work out what all the mathematical answers are. It suddenly occurred to me that all of these problems were all of the same type.
Nebeker: So he designed these all to have a simpler way?
Rechtin: There was always a simple way. His course consisted of a set of problems in an exam session where they were always four problems. If you solved them in the simple clear way that Smythe was aiming for, which he never told you, naturally, you could do the whole thing in maybe half or three quarters of an hour, well within the one hour time limit, with absolutely no problem. If you didn't you were lucky to get past two of them.
Well, I had been struggling the hard way, not understanding what the message was. So I then went back and said, "I want to take the first semester over again and at the end of the first semester, I want to take the whole course by exam." Smythe thought, "This guy is a lunatic," because he told me so.
Well, I took the semester and cracked it with a straight A. Then I went in to take the whole course by exam, and he looked a bit pitying me in the end, I guess. I sat down for as I recall, a four hour exam, a whole slew of problems. In about an hour and a half I finished them all and I walked into his office and said, "This is what I can do." He looked up thinking, "This guy has flunked." Well, he said he would look at it and looked at it and saw that they were all done. All of them were clean, perfect, straightforward, so I got an A for the course as a whole on top of that. That taught me a number of things. One of the things that I found out was that there are was that there are what I call the three line solutions. In many problems you can show what the proof is in just very few lines or a few points in logic worked carefully through. There is a clean, clear way of doing it. That had a profound influence on the rest of my life, which is the reason I told the story in detail. When I first went to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I went there before I got my Ph.D. I was at JPL for the final year and that was because I was wiped out on my Ph.D. exam by Bell Labs solving my problem before I could solve it so I had to start all over again but that's a different story. Anyway, I went to JPL to work on problems of jamming, and anti-jamming of signals because the defense department was still very active. Even after the second world war, the Korean War started up.
Nebeker: What sort of signals?
Rechtin: These were primarily guide missile signals because JPL was working on guided missiles at the time. They were using radio guidance and they were concerned about these things being jammed. A group of us, including Saul Galan, who is now a professor at USC and a member of the National Academy.
Eva Turby, a professor who went on to found a lot of companies, which have done very well, also worked in my group and went on to become a member of the National Academy. Dante Yula went to Brooklyn Poly Tech became a professor, member of the National Academy; Walt Victor who was essentially the chief engineer on the architectural things that we came up with, and the principal reason the deep space network and communications actually worked went on to become a member of the National Academy. Of the seven-person group I had at the time, six were members of the National Academy because of what we did. How did we start? We started out by thinking, "Well, we ought to do some self-learning here." One of the things that we had to learn about was Wiener's famous "yellow peril." That was a thesis-like thing which Norbert Wiener put together; it was called the "yellow peril" because it came out in a yellow-covered book. It was a proof of how you could extract the signal from noise essentially using spectral techniques. By spectral I mean you look at the spectrum of the signal that you anticipate and you look at the spectrum of the noise. You look at the two and you run through all the mathematics and integral equations and lots of complicated things. It will then show you what the transfer function of your box ought to be in order to get the most signal for the least noise. At least on statistical average.
This "yellow peril" started out with the statement of the problem and started to go through forming an analysis. It went on and on. In the middle there was this elaborate integral equation. It kept going on and on and then at the end of the book it said QED. Well, what was it saying? The equation didn't look familiar to anybody; it was a strange-looking thing. Well, it turned out that in Pickering's course the one I mentioned on Gardener and Barnes, we had to learn the Laplace transforms. It suddenly occurred to me that all this stuff that Wiener had been going through was because of a property of the Fourier transforms which is very difficult to take into account. That is, the Fourier transform assumes that the signal has started at minus infinity and is going to plus infinity. All of the difficulties that Wiener had gone into were because of that characteristic. It occurred to me that maybe I could prove it in three lines with the Laplace transform.
The Laplace has an interesting characteristic, a built-in damping function, so the assumption is by the time you get to infinity it will be negligibly small--complex variables will show you the same sort of thing.
Well in three lines I showed not only how to get that integral equation but also how to state it in Fourier terms. I transformed it by complex algebra into a very simple algebraic thing that you could do. Then I realized it was true not only for a simple sine wave going through noise, which is what he had analyzed, but for any signal form in a closed loop control system. I could design control systems confronted with heavy noise, and no one knew how to do that when we started. We had to study Cromaire's book on statistics; we had to study all kinds of things just to make sure that we'd end up on some [unintelligible passage] But it led in turn to what people now call the phase locked loop. I showed the underlying theory of what a phase locked loop would be confronted with noise, and most importantly that was the best you could do. You could not do any better, there's a remarkable proof that we had but you had to state it in engineering terms that people could use and apply to any desired application.
Why did that turn out to be important? Because later on in the career of JPL, we were confronted with the problem of communicating to the edge of the solar system. I was told by Nobel Prize winners that it would not be possible really to communicate to the edge of the solar system. If you could, you couldn't send back enough interesting information. You would have to have band widths of your receiving system wide enough to account for the Doppler shifts. If you did that you had to send megawatts of power back from enormous antennas at the edge of the solar system. Nobody knew how to do that with any finite wait; any worthwhile wait anyway. Well, I sat down and figured out, "Wait a minute. We could track the Doppler. There is no reason we have to have a band width equivalent to the maximum spread that you hear on the train going by." All you had to know was more or less where it started. The rest of it was controlled completely by simple mechanics because Newton's Laws were going to tell you what you were going to do and you could compute what the Doppler was going to be. The filter band width you needed was only enough to find out that single parameter. The amount of information in that single parameter as to what's the Doppler frequency is very small. The only way it can change in the gravitational field is through acceleration, which is another simple parameter to find. If you could find the position and the velocity and the acceleration, the total number of bits that you were looking for in finding the carrier signal was very small.
So we built phase lock receiving systems which had the equivalent band width at ten gigahertz of ten cycles. That meant we had what was then called a Q of 108, unheard of at the ratio of bandwidth to the total signal. There is so such thing; there is no mechanical thick filter that you could build in a Q of that sort. That meant we could detect very small signals. As you know, it is about ten watts with a ten foot antenna at roughly ten billion miles that is picked up routinely. Given that, when the problems came up that NASA had, we came up first with the system called Microlock. I don't remember the military equivalent system, which was called Codorac. It included ranging, velocity, command and everything else. We found that you could determine where you were in the solar system relevant to the planets with extraordinary accuracy by using radio systems far better than you could with anything else. The precision with which you could near an outer planet was going to be within about a hundred miles at roughly ten billion and that was not going to be all that difficult to do. Now, nobody believed all this when we started but I knew what to do; I was the architect. I figured out that it was possible to do, and we began to demonstrate it. In due course, JPL wound up building the deep space network and we wound up determining all of the velocity position angular stuff for navigation in the solar system. We had worked out what kinds of commands you could send. We collaborated with MIT-Lincoln, my good friend Bill Davenport, working out how you treat different kinds of systems which are coded, using essentially some of Shannon's ideas, and with all of that we came up with a completely integrated coded phase lock system. It was a completely different architecture from anything I have ever seen before.
Nebeker: When was this?
Rechtin: That was 1957. We made proposals on how to do all this in the early part of 1958, and everything came up to the surface.
Snip
-------------------------------------------------------------
Phase locked loops, solving in three lines, thinking the problem through, taking the time to do the "architecting", hope that makes sense.
Enjoyed the read.
- LRK -
Thanks for looking up with me.
Larry Kellogg
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsltr.: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
=============================================================
LARRY KLAES passed this information on the death of Eberhardt Rechtin.
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
>From: "Craig B. Waff"
>Reply-To: History of Astronomy Discussion Group
>
>To: HASTRO-L@LISTSERV.WVU.EDU
>Subject: [HASTRO-L] Eberhardt Rechtin
>Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 17:09:02 +0000
>
>Members of this list may be interested in learning of the sad news that
>Eberhardt Rechtin, who in the late 1950s and early 1960s led the team
>at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that developed NASA's Deep Space
>Network communications system for communicating with space probes,
>passed away at the age of 80 on Friday, 14 April 2006. Rechtin was
>also a director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an
>Assistant Secretary of Defense for telecommunications, chief engineer
>at Hewlett Packard, chief executive officer of the Aerospace
>Corporation, and a professor at the University of Southern California.
>While conducting research for a history of the Deep Space Network, I
>had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Rechtin several times.
>
>Obituaries written for the Los Angeles Times and the Pasadena Star-News
>can be found online at
>
>
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-rechtin18apr18,1,1635196.story?coll=la-news-obituaries
>
> http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_3725423
>
>
>Craig B. Waff
>Historian, 89th Airlift Wing
>Andrews AFB, Maryland
=============================================================
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2006/04/eberhardt_recht.html
Eberhardt Rechtin Has Died
Space trailblazer Rechtin dies, Pasadena Star News
"Eberhardt Rechtin, a pioneer in deep space research and former assistant director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, died Friday after a long illness.
He was 80."
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_3725423
=============================================================
http://www.legacy.com/Obituaries.asp?Page=APStory&Id=11040
>From the Associated Press
Eberhardt Rechtin
TORRANCE, California (AP) - Eberhardt Rechtin, an engineer who played a key role in the development of space technology during the Cold War, has died.
He was 80.
Rechtin died Friday at Torrance Memorial Hospital after lengthy battles with several illnesses, his family said in a statement.
His technical accomplishments included the creation of the Deep Space Network, a system developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California that captures communications from distant planetary spacecraft.
Although it may seem routine now to see photos from the surface of Mars, the network required the solution of huge technical problems in the 1960s. Not only were signals extraordinarily weak after traveling millions of miles (kilometers) through space, but they also had to be captured by a series of receiving stations as the Earth rotated. Ultimately, the network became a critical part of U.S. breakthroughs in planetary science.
Rechtin also helped develop electronics systems for the nation's first space probe, Explorer, said Albert Wheelon, a close friend and fellow aerospace industry leader.
"He felt his time in public service had been a privilege," Wheelon said.
"There was never a careerist view of his work. He was a selfless person."
Rechtin studied engineering at the California Institute of Technology during World War II and received a Ph.D. there in 1950. He worked at Jet Propulsion Laboratory until 1967, when he was named director of the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. One of his first decisions was to cancel a program to develop a mechanical elephant intended to fight in the jungles during the Vietnam War. He later was named an assistant secretary of Defense, helping to oversee defense intelligence operations.
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press
=============================================================
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_3725423
Article Launched: 4/19/2006 12:00 AM
Space trailblazer Rechtin dies
Pasadena Star-News
LA CAÑADA FLINTRIDGE - Eberhardt Rechtin, a pioneer in deep space research and former assistant director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, died Friday after a long illness. He was 80.
In the early years of the United States space race with the Soviet Union, Rechtin was a key player in putting together JPL's Deep Space Network, which tracks objects in Earth's orbit and beyond.
Rechtin helped create the Goldstone tracking dishes in the Mojave Desert, as well as similar projects in Australia and South Africa, responsible for providing the tracking, telemetry, and command for all space flight from the Ranger program onward.
In 1967, Rechtin was named director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Department of Defense's laboratory for new technology. While at the DoD, Rechtin was also named principal deputy director of research and engineering, then assistant secretary of defense for telecommunications.
In 1973, Rechtin left the DoD to become chief engineer of Hewlett-Packard Corp.
After four years in the private sector, Rechtin became CEO of The Aerospace Corp., the El Segundo-based nonprofit corporation that provides engineering and architectural services for the Air Force's space program.
During Rechtin's tenure, Aerospace placed the first GPS satellites in orbit, was involved in the Strategic Defense Initiative and was instrumental in testing the first anti-satellite weaponry. In that era, Aerospace sales nearly tripled, rising to $323 million in 1986 from $126 million in 1977.
Under Rechtin, Aerospace also made major strides in advancing the roles of minority and women engineers.
After he retired from Aerospace, Rechtin focused on engineering theory. He became a professor at USC, teaching graduate students the concept of systems involved in large-scale engineering projects. Rechtin's vision of systems architecting is now taught worldwide. He retired from USC in 1994 as professor emeritus.
Rechtin authored several books: "Looking Ahead 1977-1987"; "Systems
Architecting: The Creating and Building of Complex Systems"; "The Art of Systems Architecting" and "The Architecting of Organizations: Why Eagles Can't Swim."
During his career, Rechtin was the recipient of numerous awards from professional organizations, including the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Radio Engineers, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (von Karman lectureship and Robert H. Goddard Award), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Council on Systems Engineering, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (the Alexander Graham Bell Award), Department of Defense, the NASA medal for exceptional scientific achievement and a Caltech distinguished alumni award. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from USC in 2005.
Rechtin received his B.S. with honors and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Caltech in 1946 and 1950, respectively. Born in Orange, N.J., Rechtin grew up in Palos Verdes and attended Redondo Union High School.
Rechtin was an accomplished violinist, pianist and classical guitarist. An avid hiker, Rechtin enjoyed exploring the backcountry around Mammoth Lakes with his family.
Rechtin is survived by his wife of 55 years, Deedee; their five children, Andrea Rechtin, Nina Meierding, Julie Rechtin, Erica Bauermeister and Mark Rechtin; four grandchildren; and his sister, Joan Lincoln.
A memorial service is planned for 2 p.m. Sunday at The Neighborhood Church in Palos Verdes Estates. In lieu of flowers, the family requests a donation be made to the scholarship fund for graduate students at Caltech in honor of Eberhardt Rechtin.
=============================================================
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/transcripts/rechtin.html
Interviewee:
Eberhardt Rechtin
Interviewer:
Frederick Nebeker
Date:
February 23, 1995
Copyright Statement
This manuscript is being made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the IEEE History Center. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of IEEE History Center.
Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the IEEE History Center Oral History Program, Rutgers - the State University, 39 Union Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8538 USA. It should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Eberhardt Rechtin, Electrical Engineer, an oral history conducted in
1995 by Frederik Nebeker, IEEE History Center, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
Snip
[Please do read the above interview. - LRK -] =============================================================
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/
IEEE History Center
Preserving, Researching and Promoting the Legacy of Electrical Engineering and Computing
-------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 24 April, 2006.
"MIT achieved the first satellite relay of a television signal, between Camps Parks, CA and Westford, MA, on this day in 1962."
Snip
=============================================================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
=============================================================
Once again, my thanks to Larry Klaes for keeping me informed.
He passed a notification of the death of Eberhardt Rechtin who passed away at the age of 80 on Friday, 14 April 2006. (See below)
You can read the notices below but what I want, is for you to take the time to read and digest and ponder the Oral History Interview with Eberhardt Rechtin that is posted on the IEEE web site.
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/transcripts/rechtin.html
Interviewee:
Eberhardt Rechtin
Interviewer:
Frederick Nebeker
Date:
February 23, 1995
Copyright Statement
This manuscript is being made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the IEEE History Center. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of IEEE History Center.
Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the IEEE History Center Oral History Program, Rutgers - the State University, 39 Union Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8538 USA. It should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Eberhardt Rechtin, Electrical Engineer, an oral history conducted in
1995 by Frederik Nebeker, IEEE History Center, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
-------------------------------------------------------------
After reading the above copyright notice I will probably get in trouble for including these few paragraphs but I really want you to read the interview.
Then go remind those that are organizing our "To the Moon, Mars, and Beyond"
quest to do some "architecting".
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
Snip
Nebeker: I remember Bill Baker telling me that I don't know this story well, but at some point Bell Labs was recognizing that what you are dealing with is a large system and that engineers have to be trained in taking in the big picture.
Rechtin: That came about easily in World War II and maybe before because Boda could not have written his book on feedback systems unless they had a system concept, because it was not just an idea of "Put it in the front it comes out the other end." That was a new idea of feedback and the difference between positive and negative feedback. They had already run into problems of stability, because when they put in the wrong kind of feedback, the damn thing oscillated and blew up. So they had clearly seen that when you connected all these parts together, you could produce something. You could get rid of a lot of the problems on the forward link, particularly on the linearities, if you had a feedback loop. That led to control theory, which tended to branch away from the Bell System. It also led to switching theory, which is the core of the Bell System. That became obvious when they found out that there weren't enough telephone operators in the world to pick up all the number of connections they were going to have to make. In terms of where all of this came from, I made no claims at all that either systems or architecture were my inventions. When you put them together you then define the function of building architectures as architecting. I don't know if I would even call it that word but I was one of the first to use it consistently. I use "architecting" so that people focus on the process that an architect does. If I just use "architecture" it means too many different things, so I invented another word. Some people want to call it "architecturing" but that could be more complicated than we want. I wanted to focus on system architecting as a process. That also avoids another process as to who does it, because there is nothing that says a system engineer can't do architecting, and nothing says a system architect can't do systems engineering. If you are missing that function, then you have a problem. The Bell System didn't confront the problem too seriously because their whole basic architecture from the beginning was essentially the same.
Snip
-------------------------------------------------------------
Because I am afraid you won't go read the whole interview, let me include a few more paragraphs and really get me in trouble.
What do you do when you flunk a required course for your degree?
What do you do when you are told you cannot communicate with a space probe that is going to go outside the Solar system?
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
Nebeker: This is a graduate course.
Rechtin: This is a graduate barrier course to a Ph.D. I flunked it, absolutely cold out, and it was as I recall a three quarter course--you had three parts to it. Well, that meant no Ph.D., but Cal Tech always said one can have a second try at it and if one can get your average above the necessary C or whatever it was, well all right. Very few people ever made it the second time if they couldn't figure it out the first time. So I spent the summer going through every problem in Symthe's book. It got awfully tedious after a while and suddenly the light hit; I saw the key to the lock.
I hadn't seen it before and nobody would tell you, least of all Smythe. For every one of his problems, and later I learned for a lot of the world's problems, there is a simple way of getting the answer and the standard way of getting the answer. The standard way takes a lot of time and a lot of grinding, and a lot of work. The simple way you get by sitting back and thinking, "Are there whole chunks of this problem that have already been solved?" For example, did some famous mathematician solve a certain kind of equation? Absolutely, and it is expressed in terms of Bessel functions. I didn't know that; I didn't know a Bessel function from a rock on the ground when I began this thing. Anyway, they are solutions to boundary conditions and if you express them in Bessel functions, they essentially work out what all the mathematical answers are. It suddenly occurred to me that all of these problems were all of the same type.
Nebeker: So he designed these all to have a simpler way?
Rechtin: There was always a simple way. His course consisted of a set of problems in an exam session where they were always four problems. If you solved them in the simple clear way that Smythe was aiming for, which he never told you, naturally, you could do the whole thing in maybe half or three quarters of an hour, well within the one hour time limit, with absolutely no problem. If you didn't you were lucky to get past two of them.
Well, I had been struggling the hard way, not understanding what the message was. So I then went back and said, "I want to take the first semester over again and at the end of the first semester, I want to take the whole course by exam." Smythe thought, "This guy is a lunatic," because he told me so.
Well, I took the semester and cracked it with a straight A. Then I went in to take the whole course by exam, and he looked a bit pitying me in the end, I guess. I sat down for as I recall, a four hour exam, a whole slew of problems. In about an hour and a half I finished them all and I walked into his office and said, "This is what I can do." He looked up thinking, "This guy has flunked." Well, he said he would look at it and looked at it and saw that they were all done. All of them were clean, perfect, straightforward, so I got an A for the course as a whole on top of that. That taught me a number of things. One of the things that I found out was that there are was that there are what I call the three line solutions. In many problems you can show what the proof is in just very few lines or a few points in logic worked carefully through. There is a clean, clear way of doing it. That had a profound influence on the rest of my life, which is the reason I told the story in detail. When I first went to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I went there before I got my Ph.D. I was at JPL for the final year and that was because I was wiped out on my Ph.D. exam by Bell Labs solving my problem before I could solve it so I had to start all over again but that's a different story. Anyway, I went to JPL to work on problems of jamming, and anti-jamming of signals because the defense department was still very active. Even after the second world war, the Korean War started up.
Nebeker: What sort of signals?
Rechtin: These were primarily guide missile signals because JPL was working on guided missiles at the time. They were using radio guidance and they were concerned about these things being jammed. A group of us, including Saul Galan, who is now a professor at USC and a member of the National Academy.
Eva Turby, a professor who went on to found a lot of companies, which have done very well, also worked in my group and went on to become a member of the National Academy. Dante Yula went to Brooklyn Poly Tech became a professor, member of the National Academy; Walt Victor who was essentially the chief engineer on the architectural things that we came up with, and the principal reason the deep space network and communications actually worked went on to become a member of the National Academy. Of the seven-person group I had at the time, six were members of the National Academy because of what we did. How did we start? We started out by thinking, "Well, we ought to do some self-learning here." One of the things that we had to learn about was Wiener's famous "yellow peril." That was a thesis-like thing which Norbert Wiener put together; it was called the "yellow peril" because it came out in a yellow-covered book. It was a proof of how you could extract the signal from noise essentially using spectral techniques. By spectral I mean you look at the spectrum of the signal that you anticipate and you look at the spectrum of the noise. You look at the two and you run through all the mathematics and integral equations and lots of complicated things. It will then show you what the transfer function of your box ought to be in order to get the most signal for the least noise. At least on statistical average.
This "yellow peril" started out with the statement of the problem and started to go through forming an analysis. It went on and on. In the middle there was this elaborate integral equation. It kept going on and on and then at the end of the book it said QED. Well, what was it saying? The equation didn't look familiar to anybody; it was a strange-looking thing. Well, it turned out that in Pickering's course the one I mentioned on Gardener and Barnes, we had to learn the Laplace transforms. It suddenly occurred to me that all this stuff that Wiener had been going through was because of a property of the Fourier transforms which is very difficult to take into account. That is, the Fourier transform assumes that the signal has started at minus infinity and is going to plus infinity. All of the difficulties that Wiener had gone into were because of that characteristic. It occurred to me that maybe I could prove it in three lines with the Laplace transform.
The Laplace has an interesting characteristic, a built-in damping function, so the assumption is by the time you get to infinity it will be negligibly small--complex variables will show you the same sort of thing.
Well in three lines I showed not only how to get that integral equation but also how to state it in Fourier terms. I transformed it by complex algebra into a very simple algebraic thing that you could do. Then I realized it was true not only for a simple sine wave going through noise, which is what he had analyzed, but for any signal form in a closed loop control system. I could design control systems confronted with heavy noise, and no one knew how to do that when we started. We had to study Cromaire's book on statistics; we had to study all kinds of things just to make sure that we'd end up on some [unintelligible passage] But it led in turn to what people now call the phase locked loop. I showed the underlying theory of what a phase locked loop would be confronted with noise, and most importantly that was the best you could do. You could not do any better, there's a remarkable proof that we had but you had to state it in engineering terms that people could use and apply to any desired application.
Why did that turn out to be important? Because later on in the career of JPL, we were confronted with the problem of communicating to the edge of the solar system. I was told by Nobel Prize winners that it would not be possible really to communicate to the edge of the solar system. If you could, you couldn't send back enough interesting information. You would have to have band widths of your receiving system wide enough to account for the Doppler shifts. If you did that you had to send megawatts of power back from enormous antennas at the edge of the solar system. Nobody knew how to do that with any finite wait; any worthwhile wait anyway. Well, I sat down and figured out, "Wait a minute. We could track the Doppler. There is no reason we have to have a band width equivalent to the maximum spread that you hear on the train going by." All you had to know was more or less where it started. The rest of it was controlled completely by simple mechanics because Newton's Laws were going to tell you what you were going to do and you could compute what the Doppler was going to be. The filter band width you needed was only enough to find out that single parameter. The amount of information in that single parameter as to what's the Doppler frequency is very small. The only way it can change in the gravitational field is through acceleration, which is another simple parameter to find. If you could find the position and the velocity and the acceleration, the total number of bits that you were looking for in finding the carrier signal was very small.
So we built phase lock receiving systems which had the equivalent band width at ten gigahertz of ten cycles. That meant we had what was then called a Q of 108, unheard of at the ratio of bandwidth to the total signal. There is so such thing; there is no mechanical thick filter that you could build in a Q of that sort. That meant we could detect very small signals. As you know, it is about ten watts with a ten foot antenna at roughly ten billion miles that is picked up routinely. Given that, when the problems came up that NASA had, we came up first with the system called Microlock. I don't remember the military equivalent system, which was called Codorac. It included ranging, velocity, command and everything else. We found that you could determine where you were in the solar system relevant to the planets with extraordinary accuracy by using radio systems far better than you could with anything else. The precision with which you could near an outer planet was going to be within about a hundred miles at roughly ten billion and that was not going to be all that difficult to do. Now, nobody believed all this when we started but I knew what to do; I was the architect. I figured out that it was possible to do, and we began to demonstrate it. In due course, JPL wound up building the deep space network and we wound up determining all of the velocity position angular stuff for navigation in the solar system. We had worked out what kinds of commands you could send. We collaborated with MIT-Lincoln, my good friend Bill Davenport, working out how you treat different kinds of systems which are coded, using essentially some of Shannon's ideas, and with all of that we came up with a completely integrated coded phase lock system. It was a completely different architecture from anything I have ever seen before.
Nebeker: When was this?
Rechtin: That was 1957. We made proposals on how to do all this in the early part of 1958, and everything came up to the surface.
Snip
-------------------------------------------------------------
Phase locked loops, solving in three lines, thinking the problem through, taking the time to do the "architecting", hope that makes sense.
Enjoyed the read.
- LRK -
Thanks for looking up with me.
Larry Kellogg
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsltr.: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
=============================================================
LARRY KLAES passed this information on the death of Eberhardt Rechtin.
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
>From: "Craig B. Waff"
>Reply-To: History of Astronomy Discussion Group
>
>To: HASTRO-L@LISTSERV.WVU.EDU
>Subject: [HASTRO-L] Eberhardt Rechtin
>Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 17:09:02 +0000
>
>Members of this list may be interested in learning of the sad news that
>Eberhardt Rechtin, who in the late 1950s and early 1960s led the team
>at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that developed NASA's Deep Space
>Network communications system for communicating with space probes,
>passed away at the age of 80 on Friday, 14 April 2006. Rechtin was
>also a director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an
>Assistant Secretary of Defense for telecommunications, chief engineer
>at Hewlett Packard, chief executive officer of the Aerospace
>Corporation, and a professor at the University of Southern California.
>While conducting research for a history of the Deep Space Network, I
>had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Rechtin several times.
>
>Obituaries written for the Los Angeles Times and the Pasadena Star-News
>can be found online at
>
>
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-rechtin18apr18,1,1635196.story?coll=la-news-obituaries
>
> http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_3725423
>
>
>Craig B. Waff
>Historian, 89th Airlift Wing
>Andrews AFB, Maryland
=============================================================
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2006/04/eberhardt_recht.html
Eberhardt Rechtin Has Died
Space trailblazer Rechtin dies, Pasadena Star News
"Eberhardt Rechtin, a pioneer in deep space research and former assistant director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, died Friday after a long illness.
He was 80."
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_3725423
=============================================================
http://www.legacy.com/Obituaries.asp?Page=APStory&Id=11040
>From the Associated Press
Eberhardt Rechtin
TORRANCE, California (AP) - Eberhardt Rechtin, an engineer who played a key role in the development of space technology during the Cold War, has died.
He was 80.
Rechtin died Friday at Torrance Memorial Hospital after lengthy battles with several illnesses, his family said in a statement.
His technical accomplishments included the creation of the Deep Space Network, a system developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California that captures communications from distant planetary spacecraft.
Although it may seem routine now to see photos from the surface of Mars, the network required the solution of huge technical problems in the 1960s. Not only were signals extraordinarily weak after traveling millions of miles (kilometers) through space, but they also had to be captured by a series of receiving stations as the Earth rotated. Ultimately, the network became a critical part of U.S. breakthroughs in planetary science.
Rechtin also helped develop electronics systems for the nation's first space probe, Explorer, said Albert Wheelon, a close friend and fellow aerospace industry leader.
"He felt his time in public service had been a privilege," Wheelon said.
"There was never a careerist view of his work. He was a selfless person."
Rechtin studied engineering at the California Institute of Technology during World War II and received a Ph.D. there in 1950. He worked at Jet Propulsion Laboratory until 1967, when he was named director of the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. One of his first decisions was to cancel a program to develop a mechanical elephant intended to fight in the jungles during the Vietnam War. He later was named an assistant secretary of Defense, helping to oversee defense intelligence operations.
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press
=============================================================
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_3725423
Article Launched: 4/19/2006 12:00 AM
Space trailblazer Rechtin dies
Pasadena Star-News
LA CAÑADA FLINTRIDGE - Eberhardt Rechtin, a pioneer in deep space research and former assistant director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, died Friday after a long illness. He was 80.
In the early years of the United States space race with the Soviet Union, Rechtin was a key player in putting together JPL's Deep Space Network, which tracks objects in Earth's orbit and beyond.
Rechtin helped create the Goldstone tracking dishes in the Mojave Desert, as well as similar projects in Australia and South Africa, responsible for providing the tracking, telemetry, and command for all space flight from the Ranger program onward.
In 1967, Rechtin was named director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Department of Defense's laboratory for new technology. While at the DoD, Rechtin was also named principal deputy director of research and engineering, then assistant secretary of defense for telecommunications.
In 1973, Rechtin left the DoD to become chief engineer of Hewlett-Packard Corp.
After four years in the private sector, Rechtin became CEO of The Aerospace Corp., the El Segundo-based nonprofit corporation that provides engineering and architectural services for the Air Force's space program.
During Rechtin's tenure, Aerospace placed the first GPS satellites in orbit, was involved in the Strategic Defense Initiative and was instrumental in testing the first anti-satellite weaponry. In that era, Aerospace sales nearly tripled, rising to $323 million in 1986 from $126 million in 1977.
Under Rechtin, Aerospace also made major strides in advancing the roles of minority and women engineers.
After he retired from Aerospace, Rechtin focused on engineering theory. He became a professor at USC, teaching graduate students the concept of systems involved in large-scale engineering projects. Rechtin's vision of systems architecting is now taught worldwide. He retired from USC in 1994 as professor emeritus.
Rechtin authored several books: "Looking Ahead 1977-1987"; "Systems
Architecting: The Creating and Building of Complex Systems"; "The Art of Systems Architecting" and "The Architecting of Organizations: Why Eagles Can't Swim."
During his career, Rechtin was the recipient of numerous awards from professional organizations, including the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Radio Engineers, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (von Karman lectureship and Robert H. Goddard Award), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Council on Systems Engineering, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (the Alexander Graham Bell Award), Department of Defense, the NASA medal for exceptional scientific achievement and a Caltech distinguished alumni award. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from USC in 2005.
Rechtin received his B.S. with honors and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Caltech in 1946 and 1950, respectively. Born in Orange, N.J., Rechtin grew up in Palos Verdes and attended Redondo Union High School.
Rechtin was an accomplished violinist, pianist and classical guitarist. An avid hiker, Rechtin enjoyed exploring the backcountry around Mammoth Lakes with his family.
Rechtin is survived by his wife of 55 years, Deedee; their five children, Andrea Rechtin, Nina Meierding, Julie Rechtin, Erica Bauermeister and Mark Rechtin; four grandchildren; and his sister, Joan Lincoln.
A memorial service is planned for 2 p.m. Sunday at The Neighborhood Church in Palos Verdes Estates. In lieu of flowers, the family requests a donation be made to the scholarship fund for graduate students at Caltech in honor of Eberhardt Rechtin.
=============================================================
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/transcripts/rechtin.html
Interviewee:
Eberhardt Rechtin
Interviewer:
Frederick Nebeker
Date:
February 23, 1995
Copyright Statement
This manuscript is being made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the IEEE History Center. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of IEEE History Center.
Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the IEEE History Center Oral History Program, Rutgers - the State University, 39 Union Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8538 USA. It should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Eberhardt Rechtin, Electrical Engineer, an oral history conducted in
1995 by Frederik Nebeker, IEEE History Center, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
Snip
[Please do read the above interview. - LRK -] =============================================================
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/
IEEE History Center
Preserving, Researching and Promoting the Legacy of Electrical Engineering and Computing
-------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 24 April, 2006.
"MIT achieved the first satellite relay of a television signal, between Camps Parks, CA and Westford, MA, on this day in 1962."
Snip
=============================================================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
=============================================================
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Good day,
Back from visit with folks in Washington State. (94 & 95)
Hope I do as well, might even see us get back to the Moon. :-)
Google Alert for the LRO found it mentioned in the notice that NASA Ames at Moffett Field, CA has been told their new director will be retired Air Force brigadier general, Simon P. "Pete" Worden.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Google Alert for: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
NASA appoints retired Air Force brigadier general to Ames http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/northern_california/14400670.htm
San Jose Mercury News - CA, USA
... pole to search for ice. The project will launch in 2008, along with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will circle the moon. ...
-------------------------------------------------------------
Will watch and see if this fits in with the Ames tasks for managing some robotic missions to the Moon. There certainly has been enough press about stabbing the Moon in a search for water.
Hope the whole Moon is considered for potential lunar habitation.
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1985lbsa.conf..405H
Lava tubes - Potential shelters for habitats
Journal:
IN: Lunar bases and space activities of the 21st century (A86-30113 13-14). Houston, TX, Lunar and Planetary Institute, 1985, p. 405-412.
Publication Date:
00/1985
Category:
Lunar and Planetary Exploration
Origin:
STI
NASA/STI Keywords:
LUNAR BASES, SITE SELECTION, SPACE HABITATS, UNDERGROUND STRUCTURES, CAVES, LAVA, RADIATION SHIELDING
Bibliographic Code:
1985lbsa.conf..405H
Abstract
Natural caverns occur on the moon in the form of 'lava tubes', which are the drained conduits of underground lava rivers. The inside dimensions of these tubes measure tens to hundreds of meters, and their roofs are expected to be thicker than 10 meters. Consequently, lava tube interiors offer an environment that is naturally protected from the hazards of radiation and meteorite impact. Further, constant, relatively benign temperatures of -20 C prevail. These are extremely favorable environmental conditions for human activities and industrial operations. Significant operational, technological, and economical benefits might result if a lunar base were constructed inside a lava tube.
[8 page pdf file - LRK -]
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?db_key=AST&bibcode=1985lbsa.conf..405H
-------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for looking up with me.
Larry Kellogg
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsltr.: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
=============================================================
NASA appoints retired Air Force brigadier general to Ames http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/nort
hern_california/14400670.htm
San Jose Mercury News - CA, USA
Posted on Fri, Apr. 21, 2006
NASA appoints retired Air Force brigadier general to Ames Associated Press
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - NASA on Friday appointed retired Air Force Brig.
Gen. Simon Worden to head the Ames Research Center, which has played an increasingly visible role in President Bush's plan to return astronauts to the moon.
Worden replaces Scott Hubbard, who resigned earlier this year to take a position at the SETI Institute, a nonprofit that studies the possibility of life beyond Earth. Hubbard, who investigated the space shuttle Columbia accident, led Ames since 2002.
During his Air Force service, Worden commanded the 50th Space Wing, which is responsible for more than 60 Pentagon satellites.
The shakeup comes at a time when Ames is taking a more active role to fulfill Bush's space exploration vision for a manned mission to the moon by 2018.
Last year, the NASA center was tapped to direct at least four unmanned missions to the moon ahead of human landings. The missions will map the lunar surface, probe for evidence of water and scout for future landing spots.
Earlier this month, Ames was selected to launch a mission that would crash a space probe into the moon's south pole to search for ice. The project will launch in 2008, along with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will circle the moon.
Ames, based in Silicon Valley, has an annual budget of $600 million and employs about 2,500 researchers.
Snip
=============================================================
NASA Ames Research Center: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames
Snip
04.21.06 - NASA Names Worden New Ames Center Director NASA Administrator Michael Griffin announced Friday that Simon P. "Pete"
Worden will be the next director of NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. Worden, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general, is a research professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
Read More+ http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2006/06_24AR.html
Michael Mewhinney
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
Phone: (650) 604-3937/9000
April 21, 2006
RELEASE: 06_24AR
NASA Names Worden New Ames Center Director
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin announced Friday that Simon P. "Pete"
Worden will be the next director of NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett
Field, Calif. Worden, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general, is a
research professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
Ames Research Center is located in California's Silicon Valley at the core
of the research cluster of high-tech companies, universities and
laboratories that define the region's character. With more than $3 billion
in capital equipment, 2,500 research personnel and an approximately $600
million annual budget, Ames has a significant economic impact in the region.
During his Air Force service, Worden held director and deputy director level
positions with the Air Force Space Command, where he was responsible for
developing new programs, including next generation launch concepts. He also
was commander of the 50th Space Wing, U.S. Air Force Space Command. He also
served as 2nd deputy for technology with the Strategic Defense Initiative
Organization, where he received the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal for
directing the 1994 Clementine lunar probe mission.
Worden holds a bachelor's degree in astronomy from the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a doctorate in astronomy from the University of
Arizona.
For an official United States Airforce biography, please visit:
United States Airforce Brig. Gen. Simon P. Worden Biography
http://www.af.mil/bios/bio.asp?bioID=7661
Snip
=============================================================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
=============================================================
Back from visit with folks in Washington State. (94 & 95)
Hope I do as well, might even see us get back to the Moon. :-)
Google Alert for the LRO found it mentioned in the notice that NASA Ames at Moffett Field, CA has been told their new director will be retired Air Force brigadier general, Simon P. "Pete" Worden.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Google Alert for: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
NASA appoints retired Air Force brigadier general to Ames http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/northern_california/14400670.htm
San Jose Mercury News - CA, USA
... pole to search for ice. The project will launch in 2008, along with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will circle the moon. ...
-------------------------------------------------------------
Will watch and see if this fits in with the Ames tasks for managing some robotic missions to the Moon. There certainly has been enough press about stabbing the Moon in a search for water.
Hope the whole Moon is considered for potential lunar habitation.
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1985lbsa.conf..405H
Lava tubes - Potential shelters for habitats
Journal:
IN: Lunar bases and space activities of the 21st century (A86-30113 13-14). Houston, TX, Lunar and Planetary Institute, 1985, p. 405-412.
Publication Date:
00/1985
Category:
Lunar and Planetary Exploration
Origin:
STI
NASA/STI Keywords:
LUNAR BASES, SITE SELECTION, SPACE HABITATS, UNDERGROUND STRUCTURES, CAVES, LAVA, RADIATION SHIELDING
Bibliographic Code:
1985lbsa.conf..405H
Abstract
Natural caverns occur on the moon in the form of 'lava tubes', which are the drained conduits of underground lava rivers. The inside dimensions of these tubes measure tens to hundreds of meters, and their roofs are expected to be thicker than 10 meters. Consequently, lava tube interiors offer an environment that is naturally protected from the hazards of radiation and meteorite impact. Further, constant, relatively benign temperatures of -20 C prevail. These are extremely favorable environmental conditions for human activities and industrial operations. Significant operational, technological, and economical benefits might result if a lunar base were constructed inside a lava tube.
[8 page pdf file - LRK -]
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?db_key=AST&bibcode=1985lbsa.conf..405H
-------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for looking up with me.
Larry Kellogg
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsltr.: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
=============================================================
NASA appoints retired Air Force brigadier general to Ames http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/nort
hern_california/14400670.htm
San Jose Mercury News - CA, USA
Posted on Fri, Apr. 21, 2006
NASA appoints retired Air Force brigadier general to Ames Associated Press
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - NASA on Friday appointed retired Air Force Brig.
Gen. Simon Worden to head the Ames Research Center, which has played an increasingly visible role in President Bush's plan to return astronauts to the moon.
Worden replaces Scott Hubbard, who resigned earlier this year to take a position at the SETI Institute, a nonprofit that studies the possibility of life beyond Earth. Hubbard, who investigated the space shuttle Columbia accident, led Ames since 2002.
During his Air Force service, Worden commanded the 50th Space Wing, which is responsible for more than 60 Pentagon satellites.
The shakeup comes at a time when Ames is taking a more active role to fulfill Bush's space exploration vision for a manned mission to the moon by 2018.
Last year, the NASA center was tapped to direct at least four unmanned missions to the moon ahead of human landings. The missions will map the lunar surface, probe for evidence of water and scout for future landing spots.
Earlier this month, Ames was selected to launch a mission that would crash a space probe into the moon's south pole to search for ice. The project will launch in 2008, along with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will circle the moon.
Ames, based in Silicon Valley, has an annual budget of $600 million and employs about 2,500 researchers.
Snip
=============================================================
NASA Ames Research Center: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames
Snip
04.21.06 - NASA Names Worden New Ames Center Director NASA Administrator Michael Griffin announced Friday that Simon P. "Pete"
Worden will be the next director of NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. Worden, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general, is a research professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
Read More+ http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2006/06_24AR.html
Michael Mewhinney
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
Phone: (650) 604-3937/9000
April 21, 2006
RELEASE: 06_24AR
NASA Names Worden New Ames Center Director
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin announced Friday that Simon P. "Pete"
Worden will be the next director of NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett
Field, Calif. Worden, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general, is a
research professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
Ames Research Center is located in California's Silicon Valley at the core
of the research cluster of high-tech companies, universities and
laboratories that define the region's character. With more than $3 billion
in capital equipment, 2,500 research personnel and an approximately $600
million annual budget, Ames has a significant economic impact in the region.
During his Air Force service, Worden held director and deputy director level
positions with the Air Force Space Command, where he was responsible for
developing new programs, including next generation launch concepts. He also
was commander of the 50th Space Wing, U.S. Air Force Space Command. He also
served as 2nd deputy for technology with the Strategic Defense Initiative
Organization, where he received the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal for
directing the 1994 Clementine lunar probe mission.
Worden holds a bachelor's degree in astronomy from the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a doctorate in astronomy from the University of
Arizona.
For an official United States Airforce biography, please visit:
United States Airforce Brig. Gen. Simon P. Worden Biography
http://www.af.mil/bios/bio.asp?bioID=7661
Snip
=============================================================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
=============================================================
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Will be driving up to Washington State tomorrow to see my folks and will probably be off line for a couple of days. Give you time to think about what you would like to look up and see.
- LRK -
John Reed sent a link about the NASA Challenge Competitions, which includes a Teather Challenge.
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/apr/HQ_06189_Centennial.html
Michael Braukus/Dolores Beasley
Headquarters, Washington
(202) 358-1979/1753
April 18, 2006
RELEASE: 06-189
Five NASA Centennial Challenges Competitions Open For Registration
NASA announced Tuesday the opening of team registration for five Centennial Challenges prize competitions with cash prizes totaling more than $1 million.
Teams from industry, academia, and the public may formally begin their participation by contacting NASA's collaborator, or allied organization, responsible for administering each competition. The prize competitions and allied organizations that are accepting team registrations are:
- Astronaut Glove Challenge, administered by Volanz Aerospace/Spaceflight America with a total prize value of $250,000.
- Beam Power Challenge, administered by the Spaceward Foundation as part of the annual Space Elevator Games with a total prize value of $200,000.
- Lunar Regolith Excavation Challenge, administered by the California Space Education & Workforce Institute with a total prize value of $250,000.
- MoonROx (Moon Regolith Oxygen) Challenge, administered by the Florida Space Research Institute with a total prize value of $250,000.
- Tether Challenge, administered by the Spaceward Foundation as part of the annual Space Elevator Games with a total prize value of $200,000.
Snip
-------------------------------------------------------------
If a space elevator is developed you will have something to look at.
In the mean time, thanks for looking up with me.
- LRK -
Larry Kellogg
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsltr.: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
=============================================================
John Reed sent this link about NASA’s challenge grants. - LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
You probably already know about these challenge grants, but I thought it was interesting that 2 of them went to the space elevator folks--not long ago, that was considered seriously "out there" science fiction...
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/apr/HQ_06189_Centennial.html
Also, kudos to the folks at the Cassini web site, I sent them a question regarding parking the probe in orbit around Titan or Enceladus once the primary mission was over...I asked about delta-v and slingshot maneuvers around other moons to help...their reply was prompt and informative--their P/R has been exceptional throughout the mission, and should be used as a model for getting the public involved in future missions--they even won a Webby!
J
...in deepest, darkest, SE GA
=============================================================
http://www.spaceelevator.com/
The Space Elevator Reference brought to you by SpaceRef Scientific, engineering, economic and policy challenges inherent in constructing the solar systems first space elevator.
www.spaceelevator.com/ - 21k - Cached - Similar pages
The Space Elevator Reference
Fiction or reality? With recent advancements in technology many people now believe it is possible to build a space elevator. This site will serve as a reference tool for those interested in exchanging ideas on the scientific, engineering, economic and policy challenges inherent in constructing the solar system's first space elevator.
Marc Boucher, editor.
What is a Space Elevator?
A space elevator is a physical connection from the surface of the Earth, or another planetary body such as Mars, to a geostationary Earth orbit (GEO - In the case of Earth) above the Earth at roughly 35,786 km in altitude.
It is hoped that someday a space elevator would be utilized as a transportation and utility system for moving people, payloads, power, and gases between the surface of the Earth and space. It makes the physical connection from Earth to space in the same way a bridge connects two cities across a body of water. (Source: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Advanced Space Infrastructure Workshop on Geostationary Orbiting Tether Space Elevator Concepts, slightly modified)
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_elevator_020327-1.html
The Space Elevator Comes Closer to Reality By Leonard David Senior Space Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
27 March 2002
SPACE.com -- The Space Elevator Comes Closer to Reality Forget the roar of rocketry and those bone jarring liftoffs, the elevator would be a smooth 62000-mile (100000-kilometer) ride up a long cable.
www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_elevator_020327-1.html - 37k - Cached - Similar pages
Snip
=============================================================
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast07sep_1.htm
The Audacious Space Elevator
NASA Science News: Two orbiting NASA satellites are giving scientists an unprecented view of what goes on beneath the obscuring cloudtops of great swirling ...
science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast07sep_1.htm - 21k - Cached - Similar pages
Snip
=============================================================
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
Space elevator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A space elevator is a hypothetical structure designed to transport material from a planet's surface into space. Many different types of space elevator structures have been proposed. They all share the goal of replacing rocket propulsion with the traversal of a fixed structure via a mechanism not unlike an elevator, hence its name, in order to move material into or beyond orbit. Space elevators have also sometimes been referred to as beanstalks, space bridges, space lifts, space ladders or orbital towers.
The most common proposal is a tether, usually in the form of a cable or ribbon, that spans from the surface to a point beyond geosynchronous orbit.
As the planet rotates, the inertia at the end of the tether counteracts gravity and keeps the tether taut. Vehicles can then climb the tether and escape the planet's gravity without the use of rockets. Such a structure could eventually permit delivery of great quantities of cargo and people to orbit, and at costs only a fraction of those associated with current means.
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.liftport.com/
LiftPort - The Space Elevator Company
The LiftPort Group (LPG) is dedicated to building a mass transportation system to open up access to the inner solar system (LEO, GEO, the Moon, Mars, and asteroids). The Space Elevator will be at the heart of this revolutionary transportation service. By opening up broad-based access to Earth orbits and the inner solar system, LPG will help bring about the creation of entire new markets. Based in space commerce, these new markets can only become viable through safe, inexpensive, routine access to the inner solar system. In short, we at LiftPort Group believe that development of the space elevator is a crucial step in the future of Earth and space.
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.elevator2010.org/site/index.html
The Space Elevator - Elevator:2010
November 15: Spaceward announces details for 2006 Space Elevator Games.
(rulebooks); October 21-23: First annual Space Elevator games held by Spaceward at ...
www.elevator2010.org/ - 16k - Cached - Similar pages
Climbing The Sky
The dream of a Space Elevator is a monumental one. A vision that will not only further space exploration and knowledge, but has the potential to shape the existential future of the human race for centuries to come.
For the first time since it was initially conceived, this dream is now within our reach.
Elevator 2010 has joined the massive construction effort, adding energy, resources and new initiatives to the ever-growing number of organizations, companies, websites and enthusiasts focused on the technical, political and economic development of the Space Elevator.
We firmly believe that the set of technologies that underlie the infinite promise of the Space Elevator can be demonstrated, or proven infeasible, within a 5 year time-frame.
And hence our name. Elevator:2010. we promise to get an answer for you by then.
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.isr.us/SEHome.asp
Institute for Scientific Research, Inc. - Space Elevator Technical details, meetings, images, and FAQs about building a space elevator.
www.isr.us/SEHome.asp - 27k - Cached - Similar pages
The Space Elevator: 3rd Annual International Conference
The-Space-Elevator@isr.us.
http://www.isr.us/Spaceelevatorconference/
A space elevator is a revolutionary concept of getting from Earth into space, a ribbon with one end attached to Earth on a floating platform located at the equator and the other end in space beyond geosynchronous orbit (35,800 km altitude).
The space elevator would ferry satellites, spaceships, and pieces of space stations into space using electric lifts clamped to the ribbon, serving as a means for commerce, scientific advancement, and exploration.
The discovery of carbon nanotubes and the ongoing development to implement them into a composite is the key to space elevator viability being achieved in the coming years.
ISR is researching a space elevator capable of lifting 5-ton payloads every day to all Earth orbits, the Moon, Mars, Venus or the asteroids. The first space elevator would reduce lift costs immediately. Additional and larger elevators, built utilizing the first one, would allow large-scale manned and commercial activities in space and reduce lift costs even further.
Snip
=============================================================
http://science.howstuffworks.com/space-elevator.htm
When the Space Shuttle Columbia lifted off on April 12, 1981, from Kennedy Space Center, Fla., to begin the first space shuttle mission, the dream of a reusable spacecraft was realized. Since then, NASA has launched more than 100 missions, but the price tag of space missions has changed little.
Whether it is the space shuttle or the non-reusable Russian spacecraft, the cost of a launch is approximately $10,000 per pound ($22,000 per kg).
While the space shuttle is reusable, missions are still very infrequent and expensive, with each launch costing an estimated half a billion dollars. A new space transportation system being developed could make travel to Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) a daily event and transform the global economy.
science.howstuffworks.com/space-elevator.htm - 36k - Cached - Similar pages
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,57536,00.html
Wired News: To the Moon in a Space Elevator?
By Steve Kettmann Steve Kettmann | Also by this reporter 02:00 AM Feb, 04, 2003 EST
The Columbia disaster could spur faster development of a radically different approach to reaching outer space: the space elevator.
Long imagined by science-fiction writers but seen by others as hopelessly far-fetched, the space-elevator concept has advanced dramatically in recent years along with leaps forward in the design of carbon nanotubes. Using the lightweight, strong carbon material, it's feasible to talk of building a meter-wide "ribbon" that would start on a mobile ocean platform at the equator, west of Ecuador, and extend 62,000 miles up into space.
www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,57536,00.html - 27k - Cached - Similar pages
Snip
=============================================================
http://liftwatch.org/tiki-view_articles.php
Space Elevator News
Research news on launching by cables extending into space. Frequently updated.
liftwatch.org/ - 1k - Apr 17, 2006 - Cached - Similar pages
Snip
=============================================================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
=============================================================
- LRK -
John Reed sent a link about the NASA Challenge Competitions, which includes a Teather Challenge.
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/apr/HQ_06189_Centennial.html
Michael Braukus/Dolores Beasley
Headquarters, Washington
(202) 358-1979/1753
April 18, 2006
RELEASE: 06-189
Five NASA Centennial Challenges Competitions Open For Registration
NASA announced Tuesday the opening of team registration for five Centennial Challenges prize competitions with cash prizes totaling more than $1 million.
Teams from industry, academia, and the public may formally begin their participation by contacting NASA's collaborator, or allied organization, responsible for administering each competition. The prize competitions and allied organizations that are accepting team registrations are:
- Astronaut Glove Challenge, administered by Volanz Aerospace/Spaceflight America with a total prize value of $250,000.
- Beam Power Challenge, administered by the Spaceward Foundation as part of the annual Space Elevator Games with a total prize value of $200,000.
- Lunar Regolith Excavation Challenge, administered by the California Space Education & Workforce Institute with a total prize value of $250,000.
- MoonROx (Moon Regolith Oxygen) Challenge, administered by the Florida Space Research Institute with a total prize value of $250,000.
- Tether Challenge, administered by the Spaceward Foundation as part of the annual Space Elevator Games with a total prize value of $200,000.
Snip
-------------------------------------------------------------
If a space elevator is developed you will have something to look at.
In the mean time, thanks for looking up with me.
- LRK -
Larry Kellogg
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsltr.: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
=============================================================
John Reed sent this link about NASA’s challenge grants. - LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
You probably already know about these challenge grants, but I thought it was interesting that 2 of them went to the space elevator folks--not long ago, that was considered seriously "out there" science fiction...
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/apr/HQ_06189_Centennial.html
Also, kudos to the folks at the Cassini web site, I sent them a question regarding parking the probe in orbit around Titan or Enceladus once the primary mission was over...I asked about delta-v and slingshot maneuvers around other moons to help...their reply was prompt and informative--their P/R has been exceptional throughout the mission, and should be used as a model for getting the public involved in future missions--they even won a Webby!
J
...in deepest, darkest, SE GA
=============================================================
http://www.spaceelevator.com/
The Space Elevator Reference brought to you by SpaceRef Scientific, engineering, economic and policy challenges inherent in constructing the solar systems first space elevator.
www.spaceelevator.com/ - 21k - Cached - Similar pages
The Space Elevator Reference
Fiction or reality? With recent advancements in technology many people now believe it is possible to build a space elevator. This site will serve as a reference tool for those interested in exchanging ideas on the scientific, engineering, economic and policy challenges inherent in constructing the solar system's first space elevator.
Marc Boucher, editor.
What is a Space Elevator?
A space elevator is a physical connection from the surface of the Earth, or another planetary body such as Mars, to a geostationary Earth orbit (GEO - In the case of Earth) above the Earth at roughly 35,786 km in altitude.
It is hoped that someday a space elevator would be utilized as a transportation and utility system for moving people, payloads, power, and gases between the surface of the Earth and space. It makes the physical connection from Earth to space in the same way a bridge connects two cities across a body of water. (Source: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Advanced Space Infrastructure Workshop on Geostationary Orbiting Tether Space Elevator Concepts, slightly modified)
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_elevator_020327-1.html
The Space Elevator Comes Closer to Reality By Leonard David Senior Space Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
27 March 2002
SPACE.com -- The Space Elevator Comes Closer to Reality Forget the roar of rocketry and those bone jarring liftoffs, the elevator would be a smooth 62000-mile (100000-kilometer) ride up a long cable.
www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_elevator_020327-1.html - 37k - Cached - Similar pages
Snip
=============================================================
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast07sep_1.htm
The Audacious Space Elevator
NASA Science News: Two orbiting NASA satellites are giving scientists an unprecented view of what goes on beneath the obscuring cloudtops of great swirling ...
science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast07sep_1.htm - 21k - Cached - Similar pages
Snip
=============================================================
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
Space elevator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A space elevator is a hypothetical structure designed to transport material from a planet's surface into space. Many different types of space elevator structures have been proposed. They all share the goal of replacing rocket propulsion with the traversal of a fixed structure via a mechanism not unlike an elevator, hence its name, in order to move material into or beyond orbit. Space elevators have also sometimes been referred to as beanstalks, space bridges, space lifts, space ladders or orbital towers.
The most common proposal is a tether, usually in the form of a cable or ribbon, that spans from the surface to a point beyond geosynchronous orbit.
As the planet rotates, the inertia at the end of the tether counteracts gravity and keeps the tether taut. Vehicles can then climb the tether and escape the planet's gravity without the use of rockets. Such a structure could eventually permit delivery of great quantities of cargo and people to orbit, and at costs only a fraction of those associated with current means.
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.liftport.com/
LiftPort - The Space Elevator Company
The LiftPort Group (LPG) is dedicated to building a mass transportation system to open up access to the inner solar system (LEO, GEO, the Moon, Mars, and asteroids). The Space Elevator will be at the heart of this revolutionary transportation service. By opening up broad-based access to Earth orbits and the inner solar system, LPG will help bring about the creation of entire new markets. Based in space commerce, these new markets can only become viable through safe, inexpensive, routine access to the inner solar system. In short, we at LiftPort Group believe that development of the space elevator is a crucial step in the future of Earth and space.
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.elevator2010.org/site/index.html
The Space Elevator - Elevator:2010
November 15: Spaceward announces details for 2006 Space Elevator Games.
(rulebooks); October 21-23: First annual Space Elevator games held by Spaceward at ...
www.elevator2010.org/ - 16k - Cached - Similar pages
Climbing The Sky
The dream of a Space Elevator is a monumental one. A vision that will not only further space exploration and knowledge, but has the potential to shape the existential future of the human race for centuries to come.
For the first time since it was initially conceived, this dream is now within our reach.
Elevator 2010 has joined the massive construction effort, adding energy, resources and new initiatives to the ever-growing number of organizations, companies, websites and enthusiasts focused on the technical, political and economic development of the Space Elevator.
We firmly believe that the set of technologies that underlie the infinite promise of the Space Elevator can be demonstrated, or proven infeasible, within a 5 year time-frame.
And hence our name. Elevator:2010. we promise to get an answer for you by then.
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.isr.us/SEHome.asp
Institute for Scientific Research, Inc. - Space Elevator Technical details, meetings, images, and FAQs about building a space elevator.
www.isr.us/SEHome.asp - 27k - Cached - Similar pages
The Space Elevator: 3rd Annual International Conference
The-Space-Elevator@isr.us.
http://www.isr.us/Spaceelevatorconference/
A space elevator is a revolutionary concept of getting from Earth into space, a ribbon with one end attached to Earth on a floating platform located at the equator and the other end in space beyond geosynchronous orbit (35,800 km altitude).
The space elevator would ferry satellites, spaceships, and pieces of space stations into space using electric lifts clamped to the ribbon, serving as a means for commerce, scientific advancement, and exploration.
The discovery of carbon nanotubes and the ongoing development to implement them into a composite is the key to space elevator viability being achieved in the coming years.
ISR is researching a space elevator capable of lifting 5-ton payloads every day to all Earth orbits, the Moon, Mars, Venus or the asteroids. The first space elevator would reduce lift costs immediately. Additional and larger elevators, built utilizing the first one, would allow large-scale manned and commercial activities in space and reduce lift costs even further.
Snip
=============================================================
http://science.howstuffworks.com/space-elevator.htm
When the Space Shuttle Columbia lifted off on April 12, 1981, from Kennedy Space Center, Fla., to begin the first space shuttle mission, the dream of a reusable spacecraft was realized. Since then, NASA has launched more than 100 missions, but the price tag of space missions has changed little.
Whether it is the space shuttle or the non-reusable Russian spacecraft, the cost of a launch is approximately $10,000 per pound ($22,000 per kg).
While the space shuttle is reusable, missions are still very infrequent and expensive, with each launch costing an estimated half a billion dollars. A new space transportation system being developed could make travel to Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) a daily event and transform the global economy.
science.howstuffworks.com/space-elevator.htm - 36k - Cached - Similar pages
Snip
=============================================================
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,57536,00.html
Wired News: To the Moon in a Space Elevator?
By Steve Kettmann Steve Kettmann | Also by this reporter 02:00 AM Feb, 04, 2003 EST
The Columbia disaster could spur faster development of a radically different approach to reaching outer space: the space elevator.
Long imagined by science-fiction writers but seen by others as hopelessly far-fetched, the space-elevator concept has advanced dramatically in recent years along with leaps forward in the design of carbon nanotubes. Using the lightweight, strong carbon material, it's feasible to talk of building a meter-wide "ribbon" that would start on a mobile ocean platform at the equator, west of Ecuador, and extend 62,000 miles up into space.
www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,57536,00.html - 27k - Cached - Similar pages
Snip
=============================================================
http://liftwatch.org/tiki-view_articles.php
Space Elevator News
Research news on launching by cables extending into space. Frequently updated.
liftwatch.org/ - 1k - Apr 17, 2006 - Cached - Similar pages
Snip
=============================================================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
=============================================================
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Good day, What will be will be - is that the way you see it?
I don't know if this post will have any meaning for you or not but here goes.
I mentioned the spacecraft Triana as an example of missions that can get derailed. Having mentioned Triana, fate would mention it again in relation to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
The LRO will need inertial measurement units, so order a couple from Honeywell. (and only Honeywell) Since they made the one for Triana, refurbish that one too. Probably not going anywhere sitting in the GSFC clean room.
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=19234
http://www.moontoday.net/news/viewsr.html?pid=19234
NASA GSFC Solicitation: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Intertial (LRO) Reference Unit (IRU)
Snip
NASA/GSFC has a requirement for two (2) new Miniature Inertial Measurement Units (MIMUs), and the refurbishment of a previously purchased MIMU under the Triana program.
Snip
-------------------------------------------------------------
Now the notice I posted about Triana said there was a search going on back in 2002 for another way to launch it as going by way of the shuttle was now not acceptable. You see there was this earlier NEED to use the shuttle for launching things as it was declared this was the way to go. Don't launch on rockets. Then a shuttle accident and launching satellites from the shuttle was now a no, no, also.
Even though there were offers to launch Triana from other countries, that was not authorized. I sat in an interesting presentation from one of the scientists that was trying to get Triana launched. Time passes.
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/671
NASA considers foreign launch options for Triana
Posted: Fri, Feb 8, 2002, 8:06 AM ET (1306 GMT) Triana illustration
(NASA/GSFC) NASA is evaluating two proposals to launch the Triana spacecraft on foreign boosters, Space News reported Thursday. One proposal would launch Triana as a secondary payload on an Ariane 5; such a launch would be paid by a European national space agency in exchange in a scientific role on the mission. A second possibility is to launch it on a Ukrainian Tsiklon launch vehicle, arranged by an unnamed company trying to market the Tsiklon commercially. Triana is a mission that would observe the fully-illuminated disk of the Earth from the Earth-Sun L1 point, 1.5 million kilometers away.
The Triana spacecraft has been built but is sitting in storage since there are no foreseeable launch opportunities on the shuttle, which was the original launch vehicle for the spacecraft. Triana was proposed in 1998 by then-Vice President Al Gore, but faced strong Congressional scrutiny, including an order to stop work on the mission until an independent panel confirmed the mission's scientific validity.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Now we have had 9/11 and even more restrictions on what can launch on other countries rockets. http://ogc.yale.edu/legal_reference/export_controls.html
- LRK -
In my mail are requests to save other missions because going to the Moon without enough money for all the other things NASA was doing is putting a bite on the purse strings. Even though NASA is supposed to carry out the Presidents vision, it is also supposed to honor requests from congress for other desirable projects. When there is not enough for all, something gets cut.
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/feb/HQ_06056_Budget_Statement.html
Snip
We must seek innovative ways to leverage, to the maximum extent practicable, the investments being made by commercial industry and through international partnerships. We must plan executable programs with priority given to the required timing and affordability of needed capabilities. As I have testified previously to the Congress, we will go as we can afford to pay, and we will set priorities for our time, resources, and energy. For example, NASA's exploration architecture cannot afford the robust space nuclear R&D program that was previously planned. Thus, rather than engaging in them halfway, we have cut back those efforts. But because it is important in the long run, we will seek to leverage the work of other nations which have developed small nuclear reactors that could be applied to space.
Snip
-------------------------------------------------------------
What this means to me is that whatever the plans are now for going to the
Moon, I will not be surprised if the plans get changed, modified, stalled,
or canceled altogether.
- LRK -
What does it mean for you?
Do you add your voice to large organized groups that advocate going to
space?
Do you start your own campaign and hope others will join you?
Maybe just accept, what will be, will be.
How do you "make it so"?
Thanks for looking up.
Larry Kellogg
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsltr.: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
=============================================================
=============================================================
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=19234
http://www.moontoday.net/news/viewsr.html?pid=19234
STATUS REPORT
Date Released: Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Source: Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA GSFC Solicitation: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Intertial (LRO)
Reference Unit (IRU)
Synopsis - Jan 10, 2006
General Information
Solicitation Number: RLEP-LRO-IRU--12-23-05
Posted Date: Jan 10, 2006
FedBizOpps Posted Date: Jan 10, 2006
Original Response Date: Jan 25, 2006
Current Response Date: Jan 25, 2006
Classification Code: A -- Research and Development
NAICS Code: 927110 - Space Research and Technology
Contracting Office Address
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 210.S, Greenbelt, MD 20771
Description
NASA/GSFC has a requirement for two (2) new Miniature Inertial Measurement
Units (MIMUs), and the refurbishment of a previously purchased MIMU under
the Triana program.
NASA/GSFC intends to issue a sole-source Request for Proposal (RFP) to
Honeywell Incorporated, Space Systems Group. Honeywell shall deliver two (2)
new MIMUs and refurbish a previously purchased Honeywell MIMU, which was
purchased under the Triana program. Honeywell shall provide spacecraft
attitude rate measurements to the Attitude Control System, for science
grade, fine guidance and emergency Sun Acquisition mode support. The LRO is
required to possess redundant MIMUs and the MIMU Flight Spare units must
have identical form, fit and function as the new MIMU flight unit.
Honeywell, as the original vendor of the Triana MIMU, is the only source
that can upgrade the existing unit, and build identical Flight Units. The
refurbishment of the MIMU requires the detailed knowledge of Honeywell's
specific proprietary design. Further, Honeywell is uniquely qualified for
this contract because of their extensive expertise and experience with the
prior Triana MIMU effort. This combined with the adherence to the existing
project schedule is paramount for us to meet our launch schedule as
requested in the President's Vision for U.S. Space Exploration. To ensure we
meet our October 2008 launch date with acceptable technical and schedule
risk, the MIMU procurement must be awarded by early 2006. The estimated
period of performance of this firm-fixed-price (FFP) effort is approximately
14 months.
The Government does not intend to acquire a commercial item using FAR Part
12. An Ombudsman has been appointed. See Notes 22, 26, and B.
Snip
=============================================================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
=============================================================
I don't know if this post will have any meaning for you or not but here goes.
I mentioned the spacecraft Triana as an example of missions that can get derailed. Having mentioned Triana, fate would mention it again in relation to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
The LRO will need inertial measurement units, so order a couple from Honeywell. (and only Honeywell) Since they made the one for Triana, refurbish that one too. Probably not going anywhere sitting in the GSFC clean room.
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=19234
http://www.moontoday.net/news/viewsr.html?pid=19234
NASA GSFC Solicitation: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Intertial (LRO) Reference Unit (IRU)
Snip
NASA/GSFC has a requirement for two (2) new Miniature Inertial Measurement Units (MIMUs), and the refurbishment of a previously purchased MIMU under the Triana program.
Snip
-------------------------------------------------------------
Now the notice I posted about Triana said there was a search going on back in 2002 for another way to launch it as going by way of the shuttle was now not acceptable. You see there was this earlier NEED to use the shuttle for launching things as it was declared this was the way to go. Don't launch on rockets. Then a shuttle accident and launching satellites from the shuttle was now a no, no, also.
Even though there were offers to launch Triana from other countries, that was not authorized. I sat in an interesting presentation from one of the scientists that was trying to get Triana launched. Time passes.
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/671
NASA considers foreign launch options for Triana
Posted: Fri, Feb 8, 2002, 8:06 AM ET (1306 GMT) Triana illustration
(NASA/GSFC) NASA is evaluating two proposals to launch the Triana spacecraft on foreign boosters, Space News reported Thursday. One proposal would launch Triana as a secondary payload on an Ariane 5; such a launch would be paid by a European national space agency in exchange in a scientific role on the mission. A second possibility is to launch it on a Ukrainian Tsiklon launch vehicle, arranged by an unnamed company trying to market the Tsiklon commercially. Triana is a mission that would observe the fully-illuminated disk of the Earth from the Earth-Sun L1 point, 1.5 million kilometers away.
The Triana spacecraft has been built but is sitting in storage since there are no foreseeable launch opportunities on the shuttle, which was the original launch vehicle for the spacecraft. Triana was proposed in 1998 by then-Vice President Al Gore, but faced strong Congressional scrutiny, including an order to stop work on the mission until an independent panel confirmed the mission's scientific validity.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Now we have had 9/11 and even more restrictions on what can launch on other countries rockets. http://ogc.yale.edu/legal_reference/export_controls.html
- LRK -
In my mail are requests to save other missions because going to the Moon without enough money for all the other things NASA was doing is putting a bite on the purse strings. Even though NASA is supposed to carry out the Presidents vision, it is also supposed to honor requests from congress for other desirable projects. When there is not enough for all, something gets cut.
- LRK -
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/feb/HQ_06056_Budget_Statement.html
Snip
We must seek innovative ways to leverage, to the maximum extent practicable, the investments being made by commercial industry and through international partnerships. We must plan executable programs with priority given to the required timing and affordability of needed capabilities. As I have testified previously to the Congress, we will go as we can afford to pay, and we will set priorities for our time, resources, and energy. For example, NASA's exploration architecture cannot afford the robust space nuclear R&D program that was previously planned. Thus, rather than engaging in them halfway, we have cut back those efforts. But because it is important in the long run, we will seek to leverage the work of other nations which have developed small nuclear reactors that could be applied to space.
Snip
-------------------------------------------------------------
What this means to me is that whatever the plans are now for going to the
Moon, I will not be surprised if the plans get changed, modified, stalled,
or canceled altogether.
- LRK -
What does it mean for you?
Do you add your voice to large organized groups that advocate going to
space?
Do you start your own campaign and hope others will join you?
Maybe just accept, what will be, will be.
How do you "make it so"?
Thanks for looking up.
Larry Kellogg
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsltr.: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
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http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=19234
http://www.moontoday.net/news/viewsr.html?pid=19234
STATUS REPORT
Date Released: Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Source: Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA GSFC Solicitation: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Intertial (LRO)
Reference Unit (IRU)
Synopsis - Jan 10, 2006
General Information
Solicitation Number: RLEP-LRO-IRU--12-23-05
Posted Date: Jan 10, 2006
FedBizOpps Posted Date: Jan 10, 2006
Original Response Date: Jan 25, 2006
Current Response Date: Jan 25, 2006
Classification Code: A -- Research and Development
NAICS Code: 927110 - Space Research and Technology
Contracting Office Address
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 210.S, Greenbelt, MD 20771
Description
NASA/GSFC has a requirement for two (2) new Miniature Inertial Measurement
Units (MIMUs), and the refurbishment of a previously purchased MIMU under
the Triana program.
NASA/GSFC intends to issue a sole-source Request for Proposal (RFP) to
Honeywell Incorporated, Space Systems Group. Honeywell shall deliver two (2)
new MIMUs and refurbish a previously purchased Honeywell MIMU, which was
purchased under the Triana program. Honeywell shall provide spacecraft
attitude rate measurements to the Attitude Control System, for science
grade, fine guidance and emergency Sun Acquisition mode support. The LRO is
required to possess redundant MIMUs and the MIMU Flight Spare units must
have identical form, fit and function as the new MIMU flight unit.
Honeywell, as the original vendor of the Triana MIMU, is the only source
that can upgrade the existing unit, and build identical Flight Units. The
refurbishment of the MIMU requires the detailed knowledge of Honeywell's
specific proprietary design. Further, Honeywell is uniquely qualified for
this contract because of their extensive expertise and experience with the
prior Triana MIMU effort. This combined with the adherence to the existing
project schedule is paramount for us to meet our launch schedule as
requested in the President's Vision for U.S. Space Exploration. To ensure we
meet our October 2008 launch date with acceptable technical and schedule
risk, the MIMU procurement must be awarded by early 2006. The estimated
period of performance of this firm-fixed-price (FFP) effort is approximately
14 months.
The Government does not intend to acquire a commercial item using FAR Part
12. An Ombudsman has been appointed. See Notes 22, 26, and B.
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
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