With all the lamenting over the retirement of the Space Shuttle later this year after a long almost 30 year history, you would think American technological innovation in the space arena was dying along with it, and along with Aries, if you believed Aries was a significant progress from Apollo, and the right direction for US space goals.
However, the reality is quite different than that presented by the mainstream media. I will briefly cover several positive and forward looking developments which indicate American innovation in space exploration and travel is still very much alive.
Congress has been especially vocal over the recent cancellation of Aries and may indeed do all in its power to once again extend the mission of remaining Space Shuttle fleet and continue to fund the Aries moon mission profile.
However, how much of this is driven by congressional district NASA spending concerns (lay offs of USA shuttle servicing contractors in Florida most notably, and discontinued work on Shuttle fuel tanks in New Orleans). Ideally NASA would be considered principally a science based agency and its funding driven by hard science, if this was the case, a return to the moon probably would never have been number #1 on the objectives. Retaining a shuttle capability with 30 year old hardware even when the ISS is all but complete from an assembly point of view also brings into question why we need this particular vehicle to be extended further, considering the risk of flying such stressed hardware. Remember, never before have we fielded a vehicle that has gone through so many launch and return cycles for so many years.
Frankly, the Shuttle, although significantly more expensive than ever hoped, has served us well. It has allowed us to construct the largest space station in our history, a space station which many agree still will provide very valuable research into long term space travel - research that is critical if we are ever to travel to the other planets, never mind outside our small home we call the solar system, or SOL.
In their April issue Astronomy magazine wrote an article on the huge expanse of the cosmos, and focusing in particular on the likelihood of other intelligent communicating civilizations being in existence today within the milky way, our local galaxy.
http://www.astronomy.com/...
Fifty years ago this month famed scientist Frank Drake postulated a formula which attempts to conservatively estimate the number of such civilizations. Current estimates based on the numbers of solar systems being detected with stars similar to our sun and planets within the not-too-cold-not-too-warm habitable zones around these stars, indicate that we are probably looking at 10,000 intelligent other worldly species in our galazy alone. This is just one of billions of galaxies in the Universe.
Space is immense, so immense that we may never contact most of these civilizations, so immense that we may never travel further than the next nearest star or galaxy.
However, the magnificant scale and possibility that lays out there should draw us ever onward. Its in our blood, we are a species that revels in exploration and advancement. Ultimately our sun will die in a few billion years, or another calamity could behalf our planet long before then, human created, or perhaps a sizeable impact such as those that have happened in the past.
If you ever question if impacts occur, take a look at the moon. Because of its lack of an atmosphere and weatherization process, most of the impacts are still very visible right there in its regolith. Just take a good pair of binoculars and look at those scars.
Space is important, progress is important and from a scientific point of view, work toward better understanding the Universe we are born from and the fate of our civilization may well be the biggest learning in the life of humanity. So its with this mindset that we should consider where we are going today as a space faring nation. ISS is 99% complete. Hubble is in its final years and other powerful telescopes are now on orbit and in design to enter service in the next ten years.
The Shuttle has served its purpose and the next major NASA vehicles must do more than orbit the earth. This is why the President and his panel of experts settled on an ambitious plan to re-ignite investment in cutting edge research and development for new propulsion systems. Data already gleamed from Russian and US space activities have shown that long term space travel is very costly to the health of the astronauts involved, so we need to get to our destinations faster and safer.
New propulsion research is underway, NASA has awarded contracts to five US firms to develop more efficient engines and cutting edge technologies which would allow us to cut down space travel time significantly Already there is talk of a 2-3 month transit time to Mars as opposed to the traditional chemical rocket 2 year round trip.
Its very easy to look at the cancellation of Aries and the retiring of the Shuttle as a visible and notable decline in US space capacity, but we could well be on the vanguard of a new era of research driven accomplishment in what is possible, how far we can travel and how fast. This doesn't just benefit manned space travel, it also means our probes and robotic explorers can reach ever further and faster as we fine tune these technologies.
So that is the vision, further, faster, and doing so while encouraging development of our private space industry. Here are some examples of the real progress being made today, and the vehicle test beds which may become the NASA vehicles of tomorrow.
X37 still very much alive, launching this month. Yes, we have a new shuttle and no one knows about it.
X37 artists impression
X37 under final assembly at Boeing for USAF test April 2010
The X37 is currently under development by DARPA, the Pentagon's cutting edge technology research arm. Existence of the x37 and its design and appearance is public knowledge and confirmed publicaly by the Pentagon however its mission remains a secret. We do know the x37 can stay on orbit up to 270 days as opposed to the Space Shuttle's two weeks. Its about 1/3rd the size of the Space Shuttle and is an unmanned self piloted vehicle. Apparently it can change orbit path on orbit.
NASA is working with DARPA on the heat protection system for the X37 and the spaceflight, launch and landing computers and control programs. The Pentagon hopes to field a fleet of these vehicles in the next decade or so, with obvious ramifications for the likelihood that NASA will have access to this same technology if it chooses to utilize another winged vehicle.
Hypersonic flight - or travelling NYC to Shanghai in two hours.
Continuing to demonstrate that no one does cutting edge like we do, NASA and the defense department have launched and successfully flown several test vehicles which have proven ramjet hypersonic engines as a real world technology. The real challenge remains to scale up these models to a size that could carry a crew and later passengers. For now, the focus is very much on very fast missiles that can travel very far, very quickly.
http://www.spacenews.com/...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
http://www.nasa.gov/...
http://www.space.com/...
The X-43A program made two successful flights in 2004: an 11-second flight that reached Mach 7, and a 10-second flight that approached Mach 10 and set a new record for fastest flight by a jet-powered aircraft. Both vehicles were designed to plummet into the ocean and be destroyed.
Scramjet engines like those on the X-43A and X-51 must be accelerated to very high speeds to deliver compressed air to their combustion chambers. Both craft rely on rocket propulsion to create this initial speed.
While the X-51 will not reach the top speed of its predecessor, it is intended to demonstrate more operationally realistic technologies, Vogel said. Whereas the X-43A used a highly energetic hydrogen fuel, the X-51 uses the same JP-7 fuel that powered the SR-71 surveillance aircraft, and its engine could be adapted to use other hydrocarbon-based fuels, he said. The X-51 is expected to fly about 900 kilometers under jet power in about five minutes, 30 times longer in duration than the X-43A flights.
Breakthrough propulsion research with private industry
There was much criticism of the Obama administration and the NASA director for allocating $6 billion to research future propulsion methods, but in hindsight, this is probably the best investment NASA has made in decades. Moving us beyond the current performance limitations (and polluting factors) of today's chemical rockets will be key to allowing us to explore Mars and continue the outward exploration of our solar system. We simply cannot do this well with today's rocket technology, and certainly not with the Space Shuttle.
http://www.space-travel.com/...
The work will provide for the development of advanced space propulsion technologies to enable missions with higher performance, reduced cost, improved reliability and improved safety.
Technical challenges addressed include alternate propellants, thruster performance, novel concepts, thermal control, cryogenics, propellant and combustion product properties, chemistry, fluid dynamics and advanced concept fabrication.
A growing commercial and space tourism industry
In addition to the leading edge work NASA and the Pentagon are performing in the areas of winged spacecraft, hypersonic flight and propulsion research lets also not forget the groundbreaking work being done by private firms outside of the military industrial complex. Only a few years ago Scaled Composites launched the first of a series of test flights of SpaceshipOne, the world's first commercial space-tourist sub-orbital vehicle. Today we are very close to the first testing of SpaceShipTwo by Virgin Galactic, the final commercial vehicle which will make space tourism a reality for those with $200k in the bank.
http://www.virgingalactic.com/
http://scaled.com/...
Unknown also to most, Bigelow enterprises, owners of hotel chains, have launched and successfully orbited two test "space hotels" in the last few years, expandable module systems using pressurized vessels which would provide orbiting destinations for future honeymooners and others looking for a few days high above the Earth. Remarkably these successful tests have gone largely unnoticed by the media, yet represent once again, major milestones in our development as a spacefaring nation.
http://hubpages.com/...
http://www.youtube.com/...
Meanwhile, Space-X and a number of other small time new players in the US space industry are developing next generation rockets to service the ISS and eventually replace Aries as the US crew transfer vehicle for ISS operations, reducing our need to rely on Russian proton rockets for crew transfer. Yet another development the media has not covered at all.
http://www.spacex.com/
As I write this, Space-X has a falcon-9 rocket at Cape Canaveral undergoing final pre-flight tests. This rocket is already contracted to provide cargo resupply to the ISS and will shortly undergo man-rating tests to launch is accompanying manned Dragon space capsule for ISS crew transit.
So to conclude.... US space development and cutting edge R&D is very much alive, indeed, recent decisions both in NASA and the administration coupled with pioneering and risky work in the private field I believe are taking us to new heights of engineering.... and with some luck (godspeed) we will see the fruits of these efforts in greater capability, faster machines and greater reach into our solar system and beyond for exploration, science and to further our understanding the Universe which birthed us all.