Holiday Gifts – A Membership in The National Space Society

Rather than buying space books, we suggest our chapter members and friends give an NSS MEMBERSHIP as a holiday gifts instead. In fact, give three:

• One regular “Adult” for a good friend
• One “Student” for your child or grandchild
• One “Senior Citizen” for a friend who remembers watching the Apollo lunar landings

Besides being a relatively low-cost gift that keeps on giving for an entire year (or at least every other month) to the lucky recipient(s), you’ll help expand the Phoenix chapter as well as the NSS as a whole.

Be sure to check the appropriate box with our chapter registration number (Phoenix = 504)

“Ad Astra”

NSS – Phoenix Chapter Meeting – Saturday 24 October

The next meeting of the Phoenix Chapter of the National Space Society will be this coming Saturday at 11:00 AM at the Noble Library (quadrant 5E on the map, on McCalister Mall, about two blocks west of the light rail station near Tyler St).

It will be held in conjunction with the Earth and Space Exploration Day at ASU (10:00 AM – 4:00 PM).

The agenda will cover:

1. Welcome

2. More arrangements for Holiday Party. It will be either December 5th or 12th. It will be held at Dave Fischer’s house. We need the physical directions and map to Dave’s house. The time will be from 5pm-?. Veronica Ann is collecting names and what people are bringing. Please email her at: Veronica.Zabala@NSS.org with your RSVP and what you are bringing. There will be a 50/50 raffle at this party! All tickets are as follows:

$1.00 each ticket

$5.00 for 6 tickets

Everyone is encouraged to participate in this raffle. 50% of the proceeds go to the NSS Phoenix Chapter !!!

3. We are currently accepting applications for the following NSS Phoenix Chapter Positions:

Educational Outreach Officer
Media/PR Officer
Recruitment Officer
IT Officer

Please email Veronica Ann if you are interested.

4. We are currently seeking Speakers at our January 2010 Chapter Meeting. Sian Proctor had indicated that she would be interested in giving a talk based on her experiences getting into the Astronaut Corps. Is she still interested and what dates is she available?

5. All Chapter Members are encouraged to seek donations and sponsors for the chapter. If you are interested in helping out, please contact Veronica Ann. We need to start earning revenue for our Chapter to promote education outreach as well as to alleviate costs for upcoming field trips. It is the Chapter President’s hope to also create a scholarship for those interested in going to ISDC 2010.

6. Who is going to ISDC 2010. Thus far, the Chapter President is going and would like to know who else is going?

7. Yuri’s Night 2010: Veronica Ann would like to hold an organizational meeting sometime in January 2010 for the NSS Phoenix Chapter to hold a Yuri’s Night 2010 in the Phoenix Region. We would like to invite the following NSS Affiliates to participate:

The Mars Society
The Planetary Society
The National Space Society
SEDS
AIAA
The Moon Society

We need to find a place we can hold the event. Either at a local science center or at a college/university. Does anyone have any ideas?

8. Donate Sci-Fi books! Veronica Ann is collecting all Sci-Fi books to loan schools to promote reading (especially in Science Fiction). If you have any Sci-Fi books that you no longer need, please contact Veronica Ann.

9. All NSS Phoenix Chapter members need to send the Chapter President their updated contact information by the end of October 2009. Please included the following in your email:

Name
Mailing Address
Phone Number
Email Address
Please send this information to: Veronica.Zabala@asu.edu

10. Chapter website update:

How many people have visited our site
From where are people visiting our site from

Any new developments, new features to the site?

11. Chapter dues? Should we begin to incorporate Chapter dues to our Chapter again to help raise funding? if so, does $5.00 every six months sound like a plan? we can collect these Chapter dues January 1st and July 1st of every year.

12. The NSS Chapter needs to get more involved in schools. Veronica Ann would like to know who would be interested in giving lectures about human and robotic space exploration? No experience necessary. Veronica Ann will train! Please contact her for more information and the dates that you may be available to give lectures to school children.

13. Veronica Ann is working to redo the Chapter Bylaws. If you would like to help out and proof the Bylaws, please let Veronica Ann know.

14. Next Chapter Meeting will be held on January 30, 2009, from 11AM – 1PM. Location TBD.

15. Q & A session

16. Reminder that the ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration is holding their Earth & Space Exploration day in front of the Physical Sciences F-wing (across from the library) from 9-3pm. All members are encouraged to participate in this venue after the meeting.

17. Meeting adjourned!

The World At Night – Report from the Scene

The Educational Outreach programs of the National Space Society of Phoenix and the Planetary Society participated in today’s The World At Night exhibition at Christown Mall in Phoenix.

Between 1,000 and 1,500 children and parents stopped by between 10 AM and 3 PM to ask questions, collect trading cards, copies of the Ad Astra magazine, coloring sheets, stickers, decals, bookmarks, photographs and fact sheets from the members. Activities included making soda straw rockets and mission patches. Around a hundred soda straw rockets were built and launched.

The Challenger Space Center in Peoria brought out their Liquid Nitrogen demonstrations, the Dry Ice Comet, Freeze Dried Ice Cream and the Space Helmet Activity.

The Arizona State University School of Earth and Space Exploration put on some captivating exhibits including the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera results from the spacecraft currently orbiting the Moon, and information on Mars, Robotics and Meteorites.

Hard At Work

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Exhibit

Tomorrow’s News – NSS Phoenix Space News

28 September 2009

• Stephen Hawking called for a massive investment in establishing colonies on the Moon and Mars in a lecture in honour of NASA’s 50th anniversary. He argued that the world should devote about 10 times as much as NASA’s current budget – or 0.25% of the world’s financial resources – to space.
• The Ares I processing continues toward a 27 October 2009 launch. Descriptions of progress and problems can be seen here.
• For a very detailed view of the lunar surface from the LRO mission, check out this image.

For folks looking for tidbits on space exploration, add NSS Phoenix Space News page to your RSS feed.

The World At Night – NSS Phoenix Chapter Meeting – 3 October 2009

This coming Saturday, 3 October 2009, at Christown Mall (Bethany Home Road and 19th Avenue), the Phoenix Chapter of the National Space Society will hold a brief meeting (12:30 PM) in conjunction with The World At Night exhibition. Christown Mall opens at 10:00 AM. The exhibit and chapter meeting will be near the Costco store. The World At Night is part of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA). Membership forms for the National Space Society can be found here. For additional events, consult the NSS Phoenix Calendar.

Image from IYA 2009 used by permission

Space Tourism – Taking Off?

Two magazines arrived in my mailbox last week. Both had “Space Tourism” as their cover story. one was Ad Astra (Summer 2009), the quarterly magazine of the National Space Society. The other was Aviation Week (September 7, 2009). On their cover, both magazines had photographs of Virgin Galactic’s White Knight Two, built by Scaled Composites in Mojave, California. While the Virgin Galactic / Scaled Composite venture (at $200,00 per flight) is the best known, there are a lot of other private spacecraft in development. XCOR – Augustine Commission member, Jeff Greason is CEO of XCOR. Their Lynx vehicle will carry one pilot and one passenger to an altitude of 38 miles (61 km). Total flight time is around 30 mijnutes from takeoff to landing. Propulsion is a liquid oxygen / kerosene rocket engine (Lynx 5K18). The Lynx Mark 2 is designed for 68 miles (110 km). Cost is $95,000 per flight. Rocketplane Global – Having spent in excess of $24 million on their XP suborbital space plane, the financial mess has made it difficult to raise capital. Chuck Lauer, CEO, said that more than $100 million of additional costs would be needed to get to first flight. Blue Origin – Jeff Bezos’ company has been conducting test flights of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle since 2006. “Flight opportunities in 2011 may be availablefor autonomous or remotely-controlled experiments on an un-crewed flight test”, according to the website. Talis Enterprise – Testing of the BlackSky prototype is scheduled for 2010. Maximum altitude is 28 miles (46 km). A larger six passenger craft, Enterprise, is scheduled to begin flying passengers in 2013. Cost is estimated to be between $30,000 and $50,000 per flight. EADS Astrium – The winged space plane for suborbital tourism has been put on hold, pending the current economic situation. Space Adventures – Having announced plans in 2006 to build a suborbital vehicle, the company is focusing instead on trips to the ISS aboard Russian Soyuz space craft. Armadillo Aerospace – Having already won the Level 1 $350,000 prize in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, John Carmack (DOOM and Quake) and his company are in the lead to capture the Level 2 prize of $1,000,000. However, they have announced that a deal to build a suborbital tourism vehicle will not happen.

Image: Dave Fischer used by permission

The Augustine Commission – Bad Day at Black Rock – And a Reprieve

The House Committee on Science and Technology

Norm Augustine, Michael Griffin and Vice Admiral Joe Dyer USN (Ret.) testified before the House Committee on Science and Technology. And walked into a hornets nest of unenlightened criticism. Typical was the whining from Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of AZ, who released a statement. She wanted the Commission to do a detailed evaluation of the Constellation program, but added “We have a glancing attention to Constellation, even mentioning it in past tense.”

The chairman, Rep. Bart Gordon from Tennessee, as reported by the New York Times, employed the fallacious “sunk costs” argument to defend Ares I:

“I think that good public policy argues for setting the bar pretty high against making significant changes in direction at this point,” said Representative Bart Gordon, Democrat of Tennessee, who is chairman of the Committee on Science and Technology. “There would need to be a compelling reason to scrap what we’ve invested our time and money in over these past four years.”

Former Administrator Michael Griffin defended the Ares program, deflecting Commission concerns about the rocket’s problems with the request for more money. Pay no attention to the rocket behind the curtain. Pay no attention to the thrust oscillation problems that would shake the walls and bring down the curtain. Pay no attention to the underpowered rocket that cannot lift the curtain.

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

This was a friendlier and much better informed session. Sen. Nelson from Florida and Sen. Hutchison from Texas started with praise for Augustine.

Augustine then noted that the Commission was tasked with options, not recommendations. This had been repeatedly noted by those that have followed the three month deliberations, but needs repeating. He said the next obvious destination is Mars, but that is not possible for safety and financial reason. Then he observed that the Goals and Funding are out of whack. Keeping them as they are would mean:

“If we continued on the path of the existing program, we would have to launch six shuttles in the next 12 months. One could question if that is a safe thing to do.

“No funds for Space Station and Technology. We’d have to deorbit ISS in five years from now after spending 20 years building it. We’d complete Ares I two years after the Space Station was deorbited.

“The Heavy Lift launch capability would be delayed to the mid to late 2020s – and when we got it there would be no upper stage to put on it or Lunar hardware to launch on it. That would be delayed to the 2030s. That is the path we are on.”

That is the dismal state of affairs of the current program.

The remainder of the session explored the various options, returning again and again to the “Flexible Path” or deep space option, with several variations. The emphasis was on commercial crew transportation to low Earth orbit and a return by NASA to exploration. Near Earth Objects (NEO), the Lagrange points and space observatories, building and deploying propellant depots and Phobos as a destination were all explored, as well as the necessity of avoiding deep gravity wells like the Moon and Mars until experience, technology and funding allow.

Political Reality

Behind the scenes and away from the public reassurances to local constituencies by the Senators on the Committee contained in the “questions” to Mr. Augustine, the political realities that shape the space exploration business are working on the new directions.

The Florida workforce and the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), represented by Senator Nelson, will benefit if the Shuttle is extended to 2014 or 2015, as will the Michoud Assembly Facility where the Shuttle External Tank is manufactured. This is the territory of Senator Vitter. And the Johnson Space Center (JSC) will benefit Senator Hutchison.

Senator Shelby from Alabama will ensure continued work for the Marshal Space Flight Center.

ATK (Thiokol) will ensure that solid rocket boosters are used, either with Ares I / V or with the Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle (SDLV), such as Jupiter.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin (UAL – United Launch Alliance) will press forward with their commercial proposals, and ensuring that the Delta and Atlas rockets are well used.

PWR Rocketdyne will appreciate additional business for its Space Shuttle Main Engine if an SDLV is built. The SDLV is almost a foregone conclusion if the Space Shuttle Program is extended beyond 2011.

While the proponents of Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems (COTS) such as Space-X and Orbital Sciences make their case to the politicians, other groups are also working on the future NASA direction. One of these groups is the Direct team, which has proposed a complete exploration architecture (also here) that knits together the political considerations discussed above.

Possible Outcomes

Given the political background to the conundrum of the NASA mission and budget, one might foresee one of three possible outcomes:

• Abandonment of Human Space Flight beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The Space Shuttle would be extended to complete its manifest in 2011. The International Space Station (ISS) would be extended to 2020 (or beyond). Purchase of American astronaut rides to the ISS would be on Russian Soyuz rockets.
• Endorsement of the Commercialization of Space Flight with a reduction in NASA’s role to a procurer of services on bid and contract, and a modest increase in the budget. This would correspond to the UAL proposal discussed here on NSS Phoenix, where many competitors in addition to UAL would compete for the business NASA has up for bids.
• A full blown commitment on the part of the United States to maintaining its historical preeminence in space exploration. LEO operations would be contracted from commercial entities. A Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle would be contracted out to UAL / ATK / PWR (who already operate the facilities where the Space Shuttle components are built and assembled), and would close the gap to ISS resupply until commercial vehicles came on line. These SDLVs with a Centaur derived upper stage would be capable of NEO missions, Lagrange point (EML-2 and SEL-1 and SEL-2) space observatory missions, and Phobos and Deimos missions. Certainly enough to gather the requisite space faring skills to begin contemplating permanent stations within the deep gravity wells of the Moon and Mars. This third outcome satisfies practically all of the political forces in play.

Post your thoughts on the outcomes in the comments section.

LROC Tour

Last week, we facilitated two tours of the LROC Lab and the Mars Space Flight Facility. Our interested party were science geeks and folks interested in space from The Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix.

Below left, is the view of the LROC Lab where the image download link resides. The students and faculty monitor the image download from these computer screens. We want to thank Steven and Veronica for their lively commentary at LROC. On the right is one of the screens tracking the image download parameters.

You can book your own tour of the LROC facility here.

On the left is one of the incoming images of the Moon’s surface from the NAC (Narrow Angle Camera). Overlain are targets previously identified and cataloged for researchers. If you are interested in an object or location on the surface of the Moon, you can request to be notified when it is imaged. Below on the right are some of the folks on the tour.

Over at the Mars Space Flight Facility, Meg Hubbard took us in tow and gave an hour over to discussion of the three operating instruments at Mars. Two instruments are the mini-TES (Thermal Imaging Spectroscopes) instruments on the Mars rovers Spirit (model below left) and Opportunity. This is the tool that “… collects high-resolution infrared spectra that will help identify the mineralogy of all geologic materials including silicates, carbonates, sulfates, phosphates, oxides and hydroxides. Mini-TES will also measure the lower atmospheric boundary layer and provide information on suspended dust, water ice, and water vapor opacity. “

The other instrument is the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on the Mars Odyssey satellite. This instrument “… is a thermal emission imaging system. It contains two independent multi-spectal imaging sub-systems: a 10-band thermal infrared imager (IR), and a 5-band visible imager”.

Earlier, the Mars Global Surveyor carried the full sized Thermal Emission Spectrometer, Modeled below, right. “Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) launched from Cape Canaveral Air Station on 7 November 1996 and was successfully put into orbit around Mars on 12 September 1997. On 31 January 2001, MGS completed the mapping phase of the mission, which lasted one martian year (two Earth years). On 2 November 2006, mission controllers lost contact with the spacecraft, ending the mission”.

Thank you to all the people at ASU and these two great facilities for their time and effort. It was worth every minute.

Examiner.com – Earn some dough, have fun.

I have a great way for you all to make some extra cash for you as Chapter members. Please feel free to pass this on to all of your contacts.

For those who have a flare for writing, there is a great opportunity to write articles for Examiner.com. I just got hired on and I am currently using this as a way to write about science and to promote education in Phoenix, Arizona. My title is the Phoenix Science News Examiner. For you all, you can write about anything: The best places in your region to go hiking or stargazing, where to find the best deals on telescopes, your science clubs events, special lectures, etc. And the best thing is that you get paid each time your articles are viewed.

To view some articles for Phoenix, Arizona just visit: www.examiner.com
Select the region of interest …
Then enjoy reading articles that pertain to your special interests.

If you would like to become a writer for Examiner.com, please view this video: www.examiner.com

Then fill out the short application form (only took me about ten minutes).

Also, please remember to click on the “Find your Examiner” button at the end of the page and type in my name “Veronica Ann Zabala-Aliberto” as the one who referred you (Thank you in advance for doing so). Once you are done, wait until you receive your confirmation in an email.

For a quick example you can visit my first article as an example: Reaching-for-the-Moon-Mars-and-beyond

For some of us who write abstracts, papers and press releases this is a walk in the park but if you have any questions or need any assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me. I will be happy to help you out.

Good luck!

Best,

Veronica Ann
Chapter President
The National Space Society
Phoenix Chapter

Celebrate Apollo 11.

This Saturday, July 18th, Mike Mackowski and Chuck Lesher are giving back to back presentations twice that day and Don (President Moon Society Phoenix) will have a table setup at the Arizona Science Center. Mike is giving a presentation on the Apollo Program and the history of lunar exploration. Chuck will be giving a presentation on the current plans for returning to the moon with an emphasis on NASA’s Constellation Program. The first time will be at 12 noon at the Science Center downtown and the next will be at 3pm at the Challenger Center in Peoria.

After a full day of space advocating and Apollo 11 celebrating, you are all invited to come on over to Chuck’s house and socialize. Even if you cannot help out during the day, please come and join us. Bring your spouse and kids and cousin Ed if he is in town. The more the merrier! Chuck will have BBQ and sodas. BYOB or whatever. You can bring chips or salads or other munches if you want but it is not required. Let’s just get together and have some fun while we calibrate the first steps of man off planet Earth!

Chuck’s House
1982 N Iowa St
Chandler, AZ 85225
Southwest Quadrant of Arizona Ave and Warner Rd

Please feel free to call Don or me. Here are our cell phone numbers

602-616-3162 Chuck
480-330-6119 Don