Spacepirations

John Glenn 50th Anniversary Angry Mob

2012-02-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

Don't tell me you're not pissed. I mean, WT*? 50 years ago John Glenn went to space and I can't do it yet? Oh, wait. No one can do it from US soil at the moment, there's progress for you, damn right!

Really? What happened to all the dreams of being able to exercise my right to throwing my shoe at the TV at 0 gravity? What happened to all the O'Neil Colonies and sh*t? Yes, I watch PBS, I'm not stupid!

But tell me one, thing, really. Where did all the money go? They are hiding gold bars on the International Space Stashion. And that's not a typo. Why else would they build this pile of cans that look like a cheap knock-off Lego set that can't go anywhere or create gravity or purify everyone's pee? You know what, even if they PAID me I wouldn't go. They don't ever BBQ there. To light a rocket under you is fine, but have some good steak, that's too much. 100 billion dollars and no patio. I want some answers, darn-it!

I mean, geez, where's Spock? WHERE'S SPOCK?!?

Anyway, did you all see Apollo 18 and that Transformers movie? One of them is lying, they can't both be telling the truth. And they both cover up what really happened. But I can't tell you because I'd have to kill you. That's right. Newsflash - the aliens are here. Just look at my mother in law.

And what about all those internet billionaires making rockets? Don't they have better stuff to do with their money, like hire lawyers or buy some bling or solve some real space problem other than whose (rocket) is bigger? I mean, do something useful like develop cars that run on compost or something...

At any rate, if you see Buzz tell him both me and my kid are pissed at him too. For $39.99 it should have been real laser.

Amazon Leadership Principles for Space - Customer Obsession

2012-01-18T22:53:00.000-07:00

In the first post about the Amazon Leadership Principles for space I listed the principles and stated their importance in the life of an Amazonian. In this post we'll look at Customer Obsession.

1. Customer Obsession

Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.

There are several kinds of customers of the space industry, from governments to companies who rely on yet other companies for parts. The ultimate customers, at least for human spaceflight, are the people riding spacecrafts. These customers so far have been tough men and women who were riding experimental spacecraft and were willing to take the rigor and risk of doing so. Since 2001, people with somewhat less "right stuff" (but a lot of money) also flew on the Soyuz as space tourists (the first being Dennis Tito), and in a few years (about 2 years away since 2004) many more with even less right stuff (and somewhat less money) will also be able to go, albeit on shorter suborbital flights, at least initially (Virgin Galactic, we're all waiting for your powered test flights!).

Unlike with Amazon products and services, which are pretty safe to use, that is not the case with manned spacecraft (getting the wrong product shipped or a Kindle malfunction can be annoying but won't kill you). Customer Obsession when your customer is an astronaut, space tourist or researcher revolves first and foremost around safety, the simple yet costly concept of not hurting (or killing) your customer. Humans, as much as they are comfortable in Earth gravity and atmosphere, need special considerations when sent to space, from adjusting a rocket flight profile to avoid tearing the rider apart during launch due to excessive G forces to taking oxygen on the ride to heat shielding to avoid cooking the human passenger; and of course also tools and controls for the capsule, shuttle or space station.

So how did the space industry so far do here? I'd say pretty good, for a test flight program. Cost is prohibitive, no mass production or any meaningful percentage of customer adoption, and for the most part, it is not much fun (if you remove the fact that you're going to frickin' space, obviously).

Why do I call it a test flight program? For a crude comparison, let's look at the Boeing 787, in many ways the first really new airplane in decades (read about it on the Boeing website). That's important as it is not yet a massively produced airplane and it uses technologies and materials not used in that scale in the past, similarly to new spacecraft. The first plane, pre-ordered by All Nippon Airways, went through 518 test flights amounting to over 1,300 hours of flight. Compare that to the space shuttle, whose first integrated test flight had astronauts in it. The most flown shuttle, Atlantis, flew 33 times, each firing the shuttle engines for 8:30 minutes, i.e. less than 5 hours total of engine flight. The accident rate of the space shuttle was 2 in 135 flights, a statistical reliability of 98.52%. Such a reliability record would have taken down the first 787 a long time ago.

Space is about to become the location of airlines such as Virgin Galactic. How many test flights will they have before a true paying customer goes on one? How much Customer Obsession will the new spaceliners and spacecraft makers exhibit?

Amazon Leadership Principles... for Space

2012-01-10T22:23:00.000-07:00

For the past year I have been working for Amazon, a company that needs little introduction (at least in the United States), whose charismatic founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, also has a less known space company, Blue Origin. Embedded in the company DNA, Amazon Leadership Principles are more than company values. They are a language, the terminology used to describe and understand accomplishments and failures in the company, the filter through which the performance of employees is reviewed by their managers and peers every year and throughout the year. These are the ten commandments (Amazon had to do better, so there are fourteen...), embodying the rise and fall of operating at Amazon.

The Leadership Principles, as copied from here are:

Customer Obsession
Ownership
Invent and Simplify
Are Right, A Lot
Hire and Develop the Best
Insist on the Highest Standards
Think Big
Bias for Action
Frugality
Vocally Self Critical
Earn Trust of Others
Dive Deep
Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
Deliver Results

An important aspect of these principles is that they work well together, like a well oiled 14-cylinder engine. A big deficiency in some of them will lead to worsening of the end result and over tasking the others. Be too vocally self critical and you may lose your bias for action for lack of confidence. Trying to earn trust of others by accepting every task and you'll find yourself not delivering good results and not being able to insist on the highest standards due to over tasking yourself, and so on.

To connect between my day-job and my space aspirations, I've decided to inspect the space industry wearing the Amazon Leadership Principles glasses and trying to make suggestions from the point of view of a development manager at Amazon. In an upcoming series of posts I will look at each of the leadership principles and at the space industry from that context.

I hope you will join me on this journey and participate by commenting and adding examples related to each of the principles as you see them or have experienced them in the space industry, as space enthusiasts or space employees.

USA Today Special Issue Ads - a Glimpse of the Future

2011-10-29T12:04:00.000-06:00

Holding an "end of an era".
Photo: Yanir Govrin

In July, USA Today published a special edition called "End of an Era" commemorating and summarizing the space shuttle era. On the cover, Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-129, seconds after lift-off. Inside, a plethora of articles about everything shuttle - the missions, the tragedies and the people. What really caught my eye were the ads in-between. Unlike your regular USA Today which contains ads for anything, from anti-acne lotions to once-in-a-lifetime-opportunities to get previously forgotten gold coins, this issue is chock-full of space related ads.

Browsing through the magazine I found myself leaving behind our economical woes and the pause in U.S. human spaceflight and drifting into a future where there are too many spacecraft to count, where spaceflight is a frequent activity and where being a space tourist or researcher is as normal as being an engineer at a technology company.

There are many ads for universities, taking different approaches to show their importance or involvement in space. Some have made instruments for various missions, others have astronaut alumni. All are still excited about space and will continue to teach new generations of space engineers, scientists and enthusiasts.

Many space-industry companies are represented in the ads, companies that the layperson would never know about such as Comsol - makers of multiphysics simulation software, Vision Research - makers of high speed cameras used in both space missions and sports and Vacco who make propulsion components. There is an entire pyramid of space industry that's largely invisible and out of sight when space is discussed on general media, where NASA (in the U.S. at least) is still seen as holding the on/off master switch of spaceflight.

The cover title, "End of an era" theme reverberates throughout the magazine. An article by Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan (three of the moon walkers) concludes:

Kennedy launched America on that new ocean. For 50 years we explored the waters to become the leader in space exploration. Today, under the announced objectives, the voyage is over. John F. Kennedy would have been sorely disappointed.

While some articles discuss the future through topics such as space tourism, these almost seem like a fig leaf covering the self-shame of lack or end of "true" spaceflight to orbit and beyond. For me it is the ads which provide the real balance to the writers agenda and a glimpse of the future in this publication, a positive reminder for those of us outside of the space industry that it is not going anywhere. The road may look different and has some rocks added to it but there are plenty of Gs to be felt, by robots as well as people.

Honey, Don't Forget the Replicator!

2011-10-02T13:23:00.000-06:00

A little over a year ago I went camping with my family near Grand Lake, Colorado. We had everything we needed - tent, stove, air inflatable mattresses and rechargeable pump (we left the flat-screen TV at home, what more can you ask for?). On the second day we had a problem we didn't anticipate - the beautiful Colorado summer weather turned its face - a swift but fierce hail storm broke one of the fiberglass poles of our tent, more precisely the metal joint that puts them together. We found a repair kit in the nearest town, but needed pliers to get the broken piece off and put the new one from the repair kit on. Being on a paid-for campground (OK, I admit, we even had power and running water, not exactly the wilderness...) we conveniently borrowed one from a friendly neighbor. A short time later the tent was as good as new apart from Duct-tape (look at the bottom of the page for another example of my Duct-tape mastery) replacing what was once a clear triangular skylight, heavily perforated by the hail storm.

What if instead of a campground I were somewhere in deep space and instead of Amnon Govrin my name was Jean-Luc Piccard? Then I'd be on the Starship Enterprise, of course, where a replicator could in seconds create nearly anything, from a cup of tea (cup included) or, in my case, pliers.

But I digress. Back to 2011. In 2011 and the past few decades we've been circling the Earth, not dissimilar from my camping trip, where we're always at a realistic driving distance from the comforts of a Walmart, Costco or a Progress. In low-Earth-orbit astronauts are always at a short distance away for sending supplies (even if some of those fall into the sea like the last launch on August 24). Of course, space agencies are also better prepared for missions and plan for contingencies more than the average camping family (to be fair, space missions cost a tad more, too). Deep-space missions will be a whole different endeavor. The inevitable next giant leap in human space exploration will be Mars, and that's only a nearby planet, not a different solar system, not even at the outer rim of ours.

In the year 2011 we don't have the Star Trek replicator, which can reconstruct items at their molecular level. We do have several devices that achieve similar feats, namely rearranging small generic particles into something else. You'd be surprised how much closer we are to such a magical device than some 24 years ago, when Piccard assertively announced "Tea, Earl-Grey, Hot!" for the first time.

A Google search for "Star Trek Replicator" will reveal quite a few articles on the subject, related developments and products. The ZCorp ZPrinter (one of the commercialized applications) is essentially an ink-jet printer, with paper replaced by special powder and ink augmented by a binding agent. It can print, layer by layer, tools and machines that work right out of the box (sorry, no tea at this point). The idea isn't entirely new, but what's fascinating about the ZPrinter is the ability to create usable working strong-enough tools such as the wrench in the following video. Most impressive to me is the fact the wrench not only works on the mechanical level but can actually strengthen a real nut on a real bolt.

ZCorp 3D printers weigh 165-345 kg (365-750 lbs) sans powder, hardly worth hauling up to space just for a wrench. They also rely on gravity to print. But the development of the materials and layering architecture is a big step forward towards a device that may be useful one day to take on a trip to Mars and beyond with a library of files describing tools and spare parts instead of taking those tools and spare parts, especially if the material can be extracted on the destination.

3D printing is also applicable to other materials and industries. For example, you can print using stainless steel and copper if you also have a 2000 degree Fahrenheit oven (or can afford packing one for a space mission). Or, if you forget your flute at home, just print one.

So next time you go on a long trip, perhaps to the mountains, desert or Mars, you may hear your spouse yelling from across the house "Honey, don't forget the replicator!"

Last Shuttle Launch, Second Last for Atlantis

2011-07-08T00:52:00.000-06:00

It's epic, it's heart wrenching, it's an end of an era, enter other cliché here: __________________________.

It is, after all, the last flight of space shuttle Atlantis and the last flight of any space shuttle. Ever. If you're reading this over the weekend chances are you missed it, but that's OK because thanks to modern technology accelerated by the space program (CCD cameras and computers) you will be able to watch it easily on YouTube or NASA TV. Missing it means you don't really care that much about the U.S. government space program, possibly because you don't care for space in general. It is, after all, the final frontier and you (or the United States or the world) have a lot to get through before that becomes a priority. Alternatively you may be very busy helping usher the Commercial-Space era once the Space-Shuttle era comes to an end on July 8 (a much better proposition than the Soyuz era or the Russian-Space-Capitalism era or Who's-Laughing-Now-And-Who's-Paying-56-Million-Dollars-Per-Seat era).

Either way, unless you've been closely following manned spaceflight events in the recent couple of years, you might have missed the little tidbit that this is actually the second last flight of Atlantis. In May 2010, STS-132 was the final planned flight for Atlantis and it was supposed to be prepped for launch only as a rescue vehicle for STS-134.

Like a mother refusing to accept her son is moving out for good, asking for one more hug and kiss, NASA turned STS-335 (3xx denoting potential rescue missions) into STS-135, with the potential rescue of this mission being multiple Soyuz rockets (which as of the impending launch of Atlantis will be the only game in town for hauling humans to the International Space Station for at least a few years).

As an attendee of the NASA Tweetup for STS-132 I received a Reporter's Space Flight Notepad, courtesy of Boeing. It is a great tool for reporters who generally don't have time to look up information about the vehicle, rockets, thrust, payload or how to spell names of people. The last printed page of that notebook lists the final flights of the three remaining space shuttles, with STS-133 and STS-134 both planned for 2010.

Still being rocket science (as the corny expression goes), the year after the first last flight of Atlantis unfolded quite differently, with an astronaut falling off his bicycle and cracks that necessitated a roll-back into the VAB of Discovery. Both STS-133 and STS-134 ended up flying in 2011 with Atlantis leaping its younger and older sisters and closing this era. Atlantis will also be making the shortest route of all three to its final resting place at Kennedy Space Center.

And so, in about two weeks, the space shuttle era will end about 30 years after it started with STS-1, Columbia, John Young and Bob Crippen.

Reflections on my Birthday, TIME for Kids and Space

2011-06-26T01:51:00.004-06:00

My birthday cake (taken by my son Yotam)

It's my birthday today. Nothing round or big, just a solid 38. Waking up on ones' birthday means growing up one day like any other, but becoming one year older has significance far more than that one extra day. The kid in me has a hard time relating to the chum in the mirror with white hairs popping everywhere on his head and face, almost expecting to still see a younger self.

Space is serious business. Many challenges, many triumphs, also tragedies. For me and kids of all ages it's a source of inspiration, even a way to keep the child in me alive. Watching the shuttle launch last year left me, if only for a short time with the uninhibited worry-free joy of a young child getting a balloon. Yes, it takes a lot more to induce this feeling when you've matured beyond balloons and lollipops, but that feeling is still there, waiting to be cultivated and nurtured. TIME for Kids, a TIME magazine for the younger crowd, helps inspiring the next generation.

TIME for Kids April front page

TIME for Kids is a publication my older kids got at school this year here in Washington state. It talks about serious subjects at a level kids can relate to and even adults can learn from.

In the April issue the front page and centerfold were dedicated to the space shuttle program. I wasn't born into the era of reusable spacecraft and leaving all the reasons (politics, economy, etc.) aside I took almost for granted that it would never end. After all, when the first airplane, car, horse carriage or wheel were made the eras of flying, driving and riding started and never ended with the exception of being superseded by a better/faster technology (not the case this time). TIME for Kids mentions the last flight of Discovery and Endeavor as well as shows a timeline of the major events in the space shuttle history on two easy to understand pages. It includes a picture of the last Endeavour's mission crew including Captain Mark Kelly (who a few days ago announced his retirement from NASA).

At the bottom of the page there's a link to timeforkids.com/shuttle which contains a 15 minute video produced by NASA about the space shuttle.

TIME for Kids Shuttle Send-Off centerfold, April 29 2011

TIME for Kids did a good job with this issue by explaining some key accomplishments of the program and the meaning of the shuttle retirement as far as getting a ride from the Russians. They conclude with an optimistic note about breaking off of Earth orbit to the moon and Mars, which I think will end up being carried out by someone other than a government of a country.

At the end of my birthday (which actually ended over ten hours ago in my birth-timezone) I hope that my kids and their generation will accomplish even greater things than what the generation before me accomplished with the space shuttle - building the first reusable spacecraft. I hope my kids generation will build on this feat of technology and create even more amazing vehicles. I hope that the distance traveled with these future vehicles will be more than the comparable of driving around the block thousands of times. Ad Astra!

Exodus Story Telling - Egypt and Earth Gravity

2011-05-08T14:12:00.002-06:00

Story telling is an art. Captivating an audience by telling a story pivots on how the story is told no less than the story being told. Passover Seder ("Seder" means order in Hebrew) is a very effective way of perpetuating the story about exodus, going out of a known situation into the unknown called freedom. The paradigm is so effective, in fact, that its structure was borrowed to commemorate another story about another pseudo-exodus - getting free of Earth gravity for the first time and traveling to the unknown of space.

The passover story has all the right ingredients for an epic. It's about moving for an opportunity and staying for too long. It's a story about hosts who become anxious that their once guests would become enemies. It's a story about enslavement and freedom, about entitlement and righteousness. It's a story about returning to the land of Israel after a long exile. Coming from the bible, it's a story about god and keeping promisses.

Why do stories get told? The simple answer is so that it is not forgotten. In case of Passover, beyond the emphasis of god (after all, it is a religious ceremony) the Seder script makes a point of every person seeing oneself as if he or she went out of Egypt. The Hagada ("Telling" in Hebrew, the script of the Seder) goes on to explain that if our forefathers hadn't escaped the Egyptian enslavement instead of going through the Seder one would still be in Egypt as a slave.

Telling of the story is laid out as a unique script of events that involves all the senses through dialogs, narratives, songs, symbolic food, wine and games for the kids. By the time a Jewish kid is eighteen, he or she most likely remembers the story by heart, can sing the songs and knows what to eat and when. Then come eight days of digestive system blocking Matzo, but what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.

Why do we need to remember Apollo 11? The first time mankind left Earth gravity and stepped on another celestial body is one of the biggest technological achievements (and also perception altering) of mankind in documented times. Equipped by the most advanced technology of the time (which most electronic devices today put to shame), three men blasted off from Earth on the top of the biggest rocket mankind has ever built, two of which set foot on our nearby neighbor, the moon.

In 1989, twenty years after the first moon landing, a new type of Seder was created to pass that story and make sure it is not forgotten. Evoloterra tells that story using many of the same tools as the Passover Hagada - symbolic food, wine, ceremonial actions and narrative. For example, close to the beginning of the ceremony the participants eat seeds after the leader says:

The seed is the domain of the DNA and a symbol of life's potential.
As we eat the seed let us reflect on the significance of the emergence of DNA and its importance to life as it evolved on Earth.

Evoloterra starts the story with the big bang and goes through key developments that led to mankind landing on the moon, from the moon itself providing the power to pull organisms from the sea through tides all the way to launch of Sputnik and the space race.

To reconstruct the excitement of the moments before and after the moon landing, four participants get the roles of Narrator, CAPCOM, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. These four relive the moments leading to the landing and after it, including communications during descent to the moon surface and the most famous moon-landing quote -

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

Evoloterra is an interesting social experiment in remembering a historic event. Just like the Passover Seder describing Exodus from Egypt, Evoloterra describes the first time mankind stepped on a rock in the sky that wasn't Earth, including the background story leading to the important event. Will it stick like the Passover Seder? I'm not sure about that, but I also don't know how the story of the biblical Exodus was being told less than fifty years after it happened. When I first heard about it last year it was a bit too late, but I'm curious to try it this year and see how my family of three boys and a non-space-enthusiast wife would react to the words and ceremony.

You can hear more about Evoloterra on The Space Show 1396 from July 20, 2010 available here or read about it on the Evoloterra website: http://www.evoloterra.com.
The script of the ceremony itself is available at http://www.evoloterra.com/pdf/Evoloterra_2010-07-20_A.pdf.

Yuri Gagarin - Legend in 1961, Dead in 1968

2011-04-10T09:27:00.003-06:00

Everyone interested in space knows how Yuri Gagarin became an instant legend by being the first human being to go to space and orbit the Earth.

Here is an interesting documentary that looks at his epic flight fifty years ago on the Vostok-1 rocket side-by-side with his last flight on a training jet.

The first man to fly to space, jettison from his ball-shaped capsule and parachute down, ended his life in a training flight with an instructor before flight recorders were put in planes, leaving his death a mystery to this day.

Thanks, @negativereturn, for sharing the link!

A Three-Way Space Decade

2011-04-03T21:45:00.004-06:00

In a few days the fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's historic orbital flight around Earth will take place. Yuri's Night, as it has been called for a decade now will entail hundreds of parties and events around the world to commemorate that event and the first space shuttle flight twenty years later. Space enthusiasts will collectively remember and celebrate. In fact, this decade will be full of golden anniversaries. However, in some ways, it will also look like a remake of an old movie, the one about rockets and capsules. Most interestingly, perhaps, this decade will be about beginnings and new steps towards space accessibility and use through suborbital and possibly orbital flights.

The 1960s were a special decade for many reasons, one of which was space. John F. Kennedy hasn't made his famous "We choose to go to the moon" speech yet (that would come almost a year and a half later in September 1962) but the space race was already on. Times were simpler in some ways, as there were only two participants in the space race, USA and USSR. The rest of the world watched as the epic match took place, bigger even than the two countries involved, starting with the first man in orbit (or even before, with Sputnik) and ending with the first man on the moon.

As we start celebrating all the events leading to that "one giant leap" in 1969, it seems like we have a need to celebrate partly as a pat on the back, as if we're saying "that's what we are capable of" and "we could do it again if we wanted to". But reality kicks in, and a look at the current US and Russia space programs leaves a lot to be desired. After thirty years of space shuttle flights the US defaulted to a remake of a rocket with a capsule on top. Like every good remake, it would be better than the original, however for several reasons that remake won't even see the light of day, at least not on the NASA side. On the former Soviet side, the Russians still fly pretty much the same Soyuz they did back then. So much for colonies on Mars. At least we have SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket which in some ways breaks the rules of traditional government space programs and is showing us how it should be done, even if we're still not going anywhere but low Earth orbit at this point. Space is also no longer today the playground of only two players like it used to be.

The most interesting part of this three-way decade will be the new private space flights. Virgin Galactic and others to follow will start taking people to space (not to orbit and much lower altitude than where the shuttle goes or the international space station hangs out but still beyond 100km altitude). For the first time people will get to space not on a government ordained vehicle and most of those who will get to space this decade will not be trained by or funded by any government. Initially people that can put aside the cost of a house for a joy-ride will go but also scientists and commercial astronauts, ones that will not be representing a specific country. While NASA will have to restructure for the new era one way or another, private companies will continue to develop space hardware and add more ways for people to get to space. Being more accessible, manned spaceflight and research will lead to new discoveries and we may see the first private orbital flights and tourism as well.

In ten years we we will know which of the three parts of this decade will have been more prevalent - the celebrations of past achievements, remaking of old ideas or new, more privatized space access. Hopefully we will have learned from the first, made a better second and used the first two to lay strong foundations for a prosperous third.

Discovery Final Launch Poll Results

2011-03-01T20:35:00.003-07:00

Discovery, STS-133.
Credit: NASA

Back in September, a little over a month before Space Shuttle Discovery was supposed to originally launch for the last time I published an informal, low-tech poll whose purpose was to get a feel for awareness and interest levels of people who are not space enthusiasts themselves but rather friends or family of ones.

Questions

I purposefully asked pretty rudimentary questions:

Which Space Shuttle is getting ready for launch?
When is the next launch?
How many Space Shuttle launches remain after this one?
What mission number is it going to be?

Right Answers

For the sake of this poll, since it was made public before the numerous delays and second last-visit to the Vehicle Assembly Building, I considered the following answers as correct:

Discovery
November 1 2010
1 or 2 (STS-135 was brewing at the time)
STS-133 or 133

Results

I got answers from 18 people. Below is the aggregation of these.

Question	Right	Wrong	Don't Know
1. Shuttle Name	8	3	7
2. Launch Date	3	5	10
3. Remaining Launches	8	6	4
4. Mission Number	2	1	15

What can we learn from this poll? Statistically, not much. I knew that going in. As a crude gauge, however, it is interesting to observe that most people, even friends and family of space enthusiasts, aren't engaged with the here and now of manned spaceflight.

There are currently only two remaining planned human orbital launches from US soil. After a gap of several years to possibly a decade, more manned launches from Kennedy Space Center will likely happen, to orbit and eventually beyond. However, those future launches will likely be using a rocket with a capsule on top. Great as these may be, shuttle launches are amazing to watch, hear and feel. If you have the opportunity, go see Endeavor or Atlantis this year. I guarantee it is an experience you won't ever forget.

Thanks everyone who participated.

Discovery - Final Voyage

2011-02-24T21:04:00.001-07:00

Space Shuttle Discovery made its final ascent to space earlier today.

As I watched it on the screen at home the experience and emotions of watching its young sister Atlantis about nine months ago resurfaced. This time, though, I had my family around me watching, as luck stroke and snow fell over the hills of Issaquah WA the night before, making working from home a more productive endeavor than taking on slippery roads.

For a few minutes today's launch was touch and go. Not because of cracks, leaks or anything structural but because of a computer glitch. A few seconds before the scrub, the countdown started again.

In case you missed it and even if you didn't, here is Discovery's last time lighting the Florida skies.

The launch:

Discovery history:

Robonaut, a new permanent robotic dweller of the ISS:

NSRC and Astroauts4Hire 2011

2011-02-21T23:25:00.002-07:00

The Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference is upon us again. Last year I had the benefit of living right next to where the first one was in Boulder CO, and I got to taste the exhilaration of a beginning. This year we're at opposite ends of the country, as I am in Seattle Washington while NSRC is in Orlando, Florida.

Last year I met Veronica Zabala at the conference and soon thereafter, together with Brian Shiro, Joe Palaia and others founded what we later named Astronauts4Hire, a non-profit aimed at being a catalyst to the new industry of commercial manned spaceflight and a source for training programs, scholarships and, well, astronauts for hire.

A year has passed since the inception of the organization. Countless virtual meetings and a handful of physical ones later, and we are an organization of fourteen flight members (more very soon) from varying backgrounds who share a vision and a twinkle in their eye at the thought of flying into space, and are actively investing their own time and money and training to become flight worthy, as well as define standards and form ties with other organizations such as ZeroG and Commercial Spaceflight Federation.

Although I'm not going to bet there personally, Astronauts4Hire will have a significant presence at NSRC. We will announce new flight members as well as the advisory board and discuss the zero gravity beer flight which will have happened a few days before then. Astronauts4Hire members will also present and participate in panels about subjects such as suborbital astronaut qualifications and flight training.

Timing of NSRC this year is great - after many delays Discovery will make it's final ascent into orbit getting manned spaceflight one more step towards the end of the Space Shuttle era, Astronauts4Hire will make its first flight on a ZeroG flight to taste beer in zero gravity and in anticipation of the first suborbital test flight by Virgin Galactic by the end of the year.

Violinist and Basketball, Astronaut and Bicycle

2011-01-22T00:29:00.003-07:00

An astronaut and a friend of mine shared a similar experience about twenty years apart...

When you're a budding violinist getting ready for an important recital you practice, then practice and then practice some more. To achieve the level of perfection that is needed to play the violin, knowing the notes by heart is not enough. Your muscles, ligaments, fingers and soul have to become one with the piece you play, so you invest a lot of time towards those crucial few minutes of performance. At some point, especially close to the big day, you may want to take a break from practicing and do something else to take the edge off the tension and jitters, for example play basketball. You think nothing of it. Just for an hour, you rationalize it to yourself; it's better to take a break than to fall prey to the concern you're not ready. Relaxing is just what you need. So you go out and play ball.

Being an astronaut is hard work. When you're an astronaut you train for years for a single mission. Like a violin player, dedication and repetition are necessary so that all possible mistakes happen on Earth - in the simulator, classroom and at the pool (Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory) rather than in space or on the way to and from. After all, when you're in space, there is very little room for error, which would cost time and money if not life. As a mission draws near (or gets delayed multiple times), you may need to clear your mind. Riding a bicycle fits the bill - exercise and nature combined, feeling the wind you won't feel in space, cutting through real air, not a crafted mixture coming out of compressed tanks. So you hop on.

It sure seems like a good idea all the way to the fraction of a second of absentmindedness or lapse of focus in that relaxing, change-of-pace activity, which ends up cannibalizing what you took a break from doing.

Albert, I think his name was, ended up not playing at the recital he practiced for months before, as during his basketball game he broke two fingers on his left hand. Even Paganini, who according to the legend played a whole piece on one string because all others broke, couldn't have pulled that one off - broken strings is one thing, broken fingers another.

As for the astronaut - Tim Kopra is his name - he won't get to be on the final flight of space shuttle Discovery since his bicycle ride ended up with a crash landing. He was replaced by Steve Bowen who flew last year on Atlantis, which I got to see with my own eyes.

Both have made and will make a full recovery. But fickle time, as linear (at least the way we experience it) as it may be, doesn't come with a pause button.

I guess sometimes reading a book might be the better or at least safer way to take a break...

Lunar Eclipse and Chuck E. Cheese's

2011-01-06T21:07:00.004-07:00

Photograph by Doug Murray, Reuters (sans Chuck...)

The lunar eclipse on December 21st of last year was magnificent. If you missed it because it was too cloudy, too late, daytime or you're just not into that sort of thing you can find many photos online. I was out and about, next to the hotel we slept in on our last night in Colorado before launching into our new life in the Seattle WA area. I took some inadequate pictures due to lack of tripod lying on a bench, switching my thoughts between how beautiful it was and how to time my escapes into the hotel to avoid missing too much while maintaining the feel of my extremities.

While the memory of the eclipse was still fresh, I started thinking about the physics and math involved in such eclipses or how to predict them. At some point I forced myself to stop. Obviously, it is possible to know when these and other celestial phenomena will occur, but concentrating on the details of it felt like stripping a work of art from its beauty by analyzing the direction of the brush and type of paint.

I came to think about this again a few days ago, at my son's fifth birthday family celebration which happened, at his request, at Chuck E. Cheese's. A machine favored by my son produced "ID" cards with coarse pictures of the person standing in front of it. One of those cards reminded me of the pure enthusiasm of discovery and excitement about space as a future, frontier or, quite simply, even just a place to be for a short time.

Wrapped with all the politics, money, agendas and just being a grown-up, anything, including something as extreme as space exploration can be filtered to have the same lackluster that the annual activity of preparing my tax return tends to have. Alternatively, looking at a card with a UFO hovering in the background of the space shuttle, listing 32 interstellar missions, intergalactic medal of honor and 7 Super Solar Bravery badges, I couldn't help but smile and remember how much out-there space still is.

With 2011 having started a few days ago and the new chapter of my professional and family life, a new year's resolution I'm committing to is remembering, if only for a short time every day, the awe inspiring meaning of space, which transcends any political agenda, any technical detail, any budget and any territorial border.

Waleed Abdalati, NASA Chief Scientist and I

2010-12-16T07:14:00.001-07:00

What do I have in common with the new NASA Chief Scientist Waleed Abdalati?

We've both recently accepted a job offer (I'm going to work for Amazon, you all know where he's going). We're both moving over winter break. In fact, we're both moving to Washington, although while Abdalati is moving to D.C. I'm moving with my family to Microsoft-Boeing-Amazon-Starbucks land also known as Seattle.

In a small world such as ours, it doesn't stop there.

We both have preschoolers in our household. Yeah, pretty mundane stuff, so do millions of other people. But his daughter and my son happened to be in the same preschool.

Here are a couple of photos I took at the Thanksgiving play a few weeks ago:



Thanksgiving preschool play	Proud parents, including new NASA Chief Scientist (right)

I wish Dr. Abdalati great success in his new role and hope to see NASA continue to be a crucial contributor to understanding our planet and beyond.

"Rocket Science" and a Successful Falcon 9 Launch

2010-12-08T20:48:00.004-07:00

SpaceX added a very positive event to a line of problems and mishaps that occurred recently, from the failed Russian three-satellite launch to more delays in Discovery STS-133 launch, originally set for the end of October, now scheduled for Febuary.

All in all, these recent events show us that even after a space access system has been working for 30 years and more than 60 years after launching the first satellite, getting complex systems or people to space is still, as the saying goes, rocket science.

In contrast, through what looks like a flawless launch, a couple of orbits, reentry, splash-down and recovery, Falcon 9 (overview and comparison to Shuttle and Soyuz here) is on track to fulfilling its contract as a cargo platform to the International Space Station, and later on possibly taxi astronauts as well, ending the Russian monopoly formed by the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011.

Here's the SpaceX video of today's launch:

I was very excited to see such a successful demonstration of the new rocket and capsule deployment, both from my personal interest in space and as a part of Astronauts4Hire, where we've also posted a congratulatory post.

Remember to Clap When You Land

2010-11-18T19:10:00.007-07:00

Glide in Landing by Peter Welleman

Flying an airplane, launching on a rocket or the space shuttle bears some injustice, almost mockery of the operator of the aircraft or spacecraft. Every student pilot and astronaut needs to face the irony, almost ugly truth - taking off is much easier than landing.

With a little guidance and reasonable weather almost anyone could take off, at least on the kind of airplane I'm learning to pilot - Cessna 172. Beyond taxing to the runway, adjusting the fuel-air mixture and lining up with the runway centerline, one applies full power, pulls the yoke at an airspeed of 55 knots and presto! The airplane is airborne. On a rocket inside a capsule or a shuttle? Well, once SRBs (Solid Rocket Boosters) are ignited (and that's initiated from outside the spacecraft), there isn't much to do apart from enjoying the Gs. Yes, I know that there's more to taking off with a small airplane, space shuttle and anything in between, but compared to what is required during landing that's easy as pie.

What happens between takeoff and landing is interesting but out of scope for this train of thought. Pilots usually go from point A to point B on Earth, astronauts (at least the ones in the past 35 years) travel many miles only to land (if all goes well) oh so close to where they launched from and private pilot students making the first few air-steps like me practice maneuvers.

Landing is a whole different ballgame. Landing, figuratively and literally, is where the rubber meets the road whether you're in an airplane that weighs less than a car or a space shuttle that's coming back from orbit. Even with the simple Cessna, there's a procedure to follow which entails specific speeds, communication, timing, flaps, throttle, altitude and pitch. It is an art of anticipation and precision. It is the stage of flight requiring most finesse and focus.

All that is in stark contrast to the two dimensional travel more widely known as driving, where stopping a car simply means stepping on the breaks, as the vehicle is almost always on that surface called road (except for San Francisco car chases in movies, that is).

Being a student pilot made me appreciate a little more a custom of clapping upon landing on airline flights to Israel. Needless to say, no one claps their hands after taking off...

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

2010-11-09T15:20:00.003-07:00

Remember the story about the boy who repeatedly cried wolf when there was no wolf, so when there was actually a wolf no one believed him? Well, the more I listen to people who know a lot more than I do about NASA, prior manned space programs, space technology and yesteryear budgets, the more this story comes to mind, though between all the pros, cons and possible futures I can't decide is who is the boy, who is the wolf and who are the towns' people.

Congress recently passed the authorization bill to fund NASA for fiscal year 2011, which started on October first. The bill was a compromise between the initial road-map president Obama laid out in February and the program of record until recently, Constellation. Analysis of the original plan and the eventual bill are easy to find, for example on Space News.

The Space Show with David Livingston always keeps a pulse on space policy including all the twists and turns since February, and it's been very educational to listen to people from various walks of life, from NASA officials to entrepreneurs, from historians to innovators, from mainstream to fringe. Opinions about the bill and the current NASA trajectory vary from absolute enthusiasm to predicting American human spaceflight days are numbered.

The 2011 NASA budget, and I acknowledge I am over-simplifying it, extends the COTS program instated by the Bush administration in January 2004, now called CCDev Round 2), through which private companies like SpaceX will take over taxiing astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The authorization bill also discusses human space exploration beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO), which can potentially be done in a number of ways, heavy-lift being more or less the decided-upon way to do it, at least on the political circles (anything wrong with that picture?).

So who's the wolf and who's the boy in our unraveling space fable? One wolf is American manned spaceflight itself, or lack of it. Some say that with another underfunded project set up to fail we may see the end of American human spaceflight. I personally don't think so, though we might just see it replaced with private manned spaceflight, starting with suborbital and extending to orbital and beyond in upcoming decades. Boys (or girls) who cry this wolf are concerned about the current plan providing no more than pork to an industry in decline without real thinking about long-term goals of space settlement.

Another wolf is government money and its potential effect on private space companies. Some say it may drag initially nimble and cost effective companies like SpaceX to become slow and costly. I think some government money will be needed like it was needed when air-mail was a catalyst for the aviation industry in the early twentieth century years, and it's a matter of managing it correctly and understanding it is set up money, not the business model.

A third wolf being cried about is human factors, specifically protecting crews in long-duration space voyages. Radiation, bone-loss and muscle atrophy are the main physiological issues that as of now don't really have a good answer for. In general, it seems engineering and technology are considered the top priorities for space-money, with life sciences getting scraps. A great introduction to this big bad wolf can be found in The Space Show Classroom. It seems as if there's an unspoken general belief that engineering will inherently solve these problems even if it is not directly aimed at them. For example, a trip to Mars with current propulsion technology will take about six months each way, leading to a round-trip taking a year excluding the stay. Invent faster propulsion (like the one described in the November issue of Popular Science), and you can shorten the trip to Mars and back to less than 80 days (what would Phileas Fogg say about that?) - problem "solved". Well, not really - Mars is but one very close planet compared to what's out there to explore...

Whether these wolves turn out to be vapor or real, boys (and girls) who cry wolf need to make sure they don't abuse the towns' people trust - Cry wolf too many times and even if the next one is real, you will be ignored and ridiculed.

Discovery - The Oldest Shuttle

2010-10-27T23:28:00.002-06:00

A tweet by Mike Massimino (aka @Astro_Mike) caught my eye today:

It points to a cool video that shows the history of Discovery and its last planned mission, STS-133. Mike has been one of the most active astronauts on the internet (more over a million and a quarter followers on twitter, many videos), and has been doing a great job showing a less official angle of astronauts and their missions.

What caught my eye was the description of Discovery as NASA's oldest shuttle. While technically correct, it's only because of the two great disasters of Columbia and Challenger, the former burning on deorbit and the latter disintegrating at launch, both seen by some as the hard way NASA learned about severity of problems previously deemed as not posing a major risk by some.

The end of the space shuttle era is near, and sometime in the future we may look at it as either a stepping stone or a detour on our way to settle space. No matter what - Columbia, Challenger, Discovery and their younger sisters Atlantis and Endeavour are probably the most amazing spacecraft to watch launching (I got to experience STS-132) of all manned spacecraft to date and probably for years, if not decades, to come.

NASAssarry

2010-10-20T12:08:00.001-06:00

The NASA Toaster. For more, see here

Space exploration and exploitation is slowly but surely going on a new trajectory, one of NASA leaving some pieces of the puzzle to the private market including design. For example, through the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program NASA awarded a contract to SpaceX fot getting cargo to the International Space Station without designing the rocket or capsule at NASA, thus allowing SpaceX to design and build the hardware, letting it do more than space contractors did in the past.

This shift is not easy, especially when human life is at stake, as the existing model where NASA has very close control over the design and manufacturing of space hardware, especially manned spacecraft, was put in place for crew safety reasons. Instead, NASA will have to trust private companies to design the hardware, which will have to pass a safety standard (for example, NPR 8705.2B, "Human-Rating Requirements for Space Systems").

In the following years, there will be cases of inertia and fall-back on how things have been done in the past 50 years. Even in software companies I worked for, a lot younger than NASA, inertia and resistance to new ideas occasionally manifested in the form of the statement "but that's how we've been doing it for the last 5 years". Yes, old-and-comfortable is as cozy an environment as a 3 year old favorite blanket.

My request to our elected government officials and those who will be designing and building space hardware in the upcoming years - for every decision, every design, every expense - ask yourself and honestly answer the following question from the perspective of benefiting humanity progress into space: Is this really necessary to be done within NASA and the old controlled way or should this be a commodity NASA buys as a shelf product from someone else?

In short - Is this really NASAssary?

10/10/10 - What's in a Date?

2010-10-10T11:38:00.005-06:00

Today is October 10th 2010 or in it's more serene form, 10/10/10. Take the delimiters out and you get 101010, or 42 in binary which is of course the famous Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, as written over 30 years ago by Douglas Adams. In Roman numbers we're looking at XXX, a term originating from over 40 years ago in relation to movies (X-rating). On the internet, #101010 is a very dark shade of gray.

This is, of course, not the first time the 10/10/10 date happened. 10/10/10 can designate 1910, 1810, and any century before that. If you're one of the people wearing this shirt ("There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't") you'd be probably even more excited a thousand years ago on 10/10/1010 (albeit you wouldn't be able to blog or tweet about it...). Interestingly, October 10th 1010 was actually an ordinary Wednesday noted as October 4th in Europe, as the Julian calendar was still used rather than the Gregorian calendar, created in 1582 but adopted by some countries as late as the 20th century.

As the world rejoices and birds tweet, unless you're Jewish, Muslim, Persian or Mayan (OK, you're probably not Mayan) you may not realize this is not the only calendar used over the world and may want to look at the Fourmilab Calendar Converter, just to get a whiff of some other cultures, current and past.

Since Spacepirations is a space oriented blog, I tried to find space related events that happened on October 10. The most notable event I found was that in 1967 the Outer Space Treaty, which calls for responsibility in space activities, entered into force.

Also on October 10 (courtesy of the New Mexico Museum of Space History):

1846: William Lassell discovers Neptune's moon Triton.
1960: The Soviets' first attempted planetary spacecraft, the Mars probe 1M s/n 1 fails to leave Earth orbit.
2007: Russia launches TMA–11, which carries the Sixteenth Expedition to the International Space Station.

Finally, thanks to Virgin Galactic:

2010: SpaceShipTwo, aka VSS Enterprise did it's first gliding flight - (video here). We just got one step closer to commercial manned space flight.

Whether you're celebrating October 10 2010, 2nd of Cheshvan 5771, 2 Thul-Qedah 1431 or any other date, may your dreams come true until 11/11/11!

Sputnik - The Launch of Space

2010-10-04T12:03:00.002-06:00

Sputnik (Source: US Air Force)

Sputnik 1 was launched 53 years ago, on October 4th, 1957. In many ways, it can be seen as the launch of the space age. Being the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth, it started the space race which led to Buzz and Neil landing on the moon in 1969 and contributed to the demise of Communism.

Most of the people writing nowadays about space weren't alive yet in 1957, myself included. As such, we cannot fully grasp the feelings that swept through the United States of America knowing a USSR made object was flying invisible and uninterrupted above its skies. However, from the events which proceeded it is obvious, to put it mildly, that it was a very big deal.

Similarly to the first successful Wright brothers flight at Kitty Hawk NC, this was a modest beginning. Sputnik had some radio capabilities, short 22 day battery life and limited scientific capabilities. However, it was the eye opener that ignited decades of advancements and discoveries, the proof of the entire concept, which today is a versatile tool for both looking out to space and looking at Earth, helping us understand our pale blue dot, the solar system and far beyond.

Satellites today are not limited, of course, to scientific research. They are directly involved with our daily lives here on Earth. GPS, TV and weather forecast are but some aspects of our daily lives largely enabled by satellites, much more sophisticated than the beep-in-the-sky of 1957, all results of innovation and ingenuity.

Most satellites are very expensive, take years to build and belong to large corporations or governments. However, over the last decade a growing number of small satellites have been being built by universities and companies called CubeSats. A CubeSat is a 10cm cube and weighs up to 1 Kilogram, much smaller and lighter than most satellites. A standard kit has been created, which simplifies creation of a CubeSat, allowing students, researchers and companies put payloads in orbit in less than a year from inception to launch.

If it's your cup of tea, you can track many of the about 2,500 satellites with the help the NASA Satellite Tracking page. Even if you don't generally look up, remember Sputnik the next time you check where a hurricane is heading, go on a road trip using your GPS instead of paper maps or just watch one of the hundreds of channels of TV available today.

Here are some links with more information specific to Sputnik and the early days of space:

NASA:
  http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/
  http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/SpaceAge/

Wikipedia:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_program
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_crisis

Others:
  http://www.russianspaceweb.com/sputnik.html
  http://www.nytimes.com/partners/aol/special/sputnik/
  http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/gal100/sputnik.html

Pilot Lesson 5 - Don't Panic

2010-09-28T22:40:00.005-06:00

The Westin Hotel, Westminster CO, looking south west (Google Maps)

During my pilot lesson on September 24th I got a taste of two potential problems during a flight, the first mistakenly flying into a cloud and the second being engine shutdown. The weather was fantastic - not too hot and practically no wind or turbulence, which added to the positive experience.

What's in a cloud?

The private pilot lesson certifies its holder to fly with visual flight rules (VFR), meaning being able to see outside and use that information to gauge altitude, pitch, etc. However, what if you mistakenly fly into a cloud? One option would be to open the window and tell the cloud it's not supposed to be there. After all, you did verify the weather beforehand and the cloud should at least be considerate of the fact you're not certified for instrument flight rules (IFR). In case that doesn't work, even for the private pilot license some IFR training is in order. Wearing special fogging goggles (Foggles) that block everything apart for the plane instrument panel, I learned how to continuously read and interpret every one of the 6 main instruments and control the plane based on that alone. As an engineer, tuning everything else out and concentrating on flight instruments alone was a great experience that helped me with the rest of the flight, even when I could see the outside again.

A plane with no engine is a glider, not a stone

When a plane (such as the Cessna 172) has one engine, even with preflight inspection and engine reliability features (for example, two spark plugs per cylinder) the engine may shutdown unexpectedly. Thankfully, that's not the end of the world. In addition to steps to remedy the situation, such as turning on carburetor-heat to counteract possible icing, the plane becomes a glider and can be safely landed on a nearby field. Training for engine shutoff was during the second half of the lesson (look for the drop in speed around 22:00 minutes). Another important skill that I am sure I will practice more.

Odds and ends

I flew again with the 180hp Cessna 172N, which is Nevin's favorite plane and as Nevin's student, mine too. I also used my new David Clark H10-13.4 headsets (best price at PilotOne). This was such a great flight I practically smiled all day thinking about it.

Next Space Shuttle Launch - Informal Poll

2010-09-23T16:18:00.009-06:00

Space Shuttle Discovery on her way to the launch Pad, taken by Larry Tanner

Launch Buzz

There is something special about the Space Shuttles that didn't exist when every rocket and capsule were built as disposable spacecraft. Just like we get attached to our cars (OK, maybe it's just me), we got attached to these vehicles that at least in the 1980s and 1990s symbolized a revamped pursuit of space and getting one step closer to space travel as we'd really like to experience it (whenever, wherever - à la Star Trek with some extrapolation).

Every Space Shuttle launch causes a special buzz among space enthusiasts, who in recent years have had online venues for their thoughts and experiences. Blog posts are written, pictures are uploaded (also here) and the social network is flooded with copious amounts of updates. NASA itself joined the party in several ways - allowing the public to vote for astronaut wake-up songs, the opportunity to upload one's face to space and NASA Tweetups like the one I attended last May, where 150 lucky people become journalists of the best kind - supportive and enthusiastic, almost NASA ambassadors to the world, all posting to Twitter using the #NASATweetup tag.

STS-133 and Space Shuttle Discovery are no different. In fact, since after this launch there will be only one more (maybe two) Space Shuttle launches before the program reaches its planned shutdown, the normal jitter and excitement seems to be even greater. The NASA Tweetup event even got its own blog created by Nathan Bergey. This last flight of Discovery will also bring a new dweller to the ISS, one that doesn't consume oxygen or water - Robonaut2, the first first dexterous humanoid robot in space, aimed at providing another pair of hands for repetitive and maintenance tasks that would otherwise require people, without making changes to the original component, for example an air filter.

An Informal Poll

Since you're reading these lines it would be almost moot to ask if you know when Discovery is being launched and you obviously know the name of the Space Shuttle being launched. What I'm wondering about is how much of that is known to your friends and family, that might not share the same enthusiasm for space.

My request to you is this: Ask your family, coworkers and friends:

Which Space Shuttle is getting ready for launch?
When is the next launch?
How many Space Shuttle launches remain after this one?
What mission number is it going to be?

~~Please report back by commenting on this post (no need for names, just people's answers).~~
Update: Commenting disallowed, as Discovery successfully launched on February 24 2011. Thank you everyone who participated!

After the launch I will tally your reports in an attempt to answer this question:
Have NASA and the space enthusiast community been successful at keeping space exploration on people's minds in such a critical era of economic woes and budgetary battles?