The Obama Space Vision for NASA: Massive Paradigm Shifts Ahead

Today is February 1.  That is the day each year that the President’s budget for the federal government is delivered to Congress.  Thus, it is the moment at which the plans – the real plans with money to be spent – are actually known.

The budget for NASA shows some shocking decisions.  The overall plan that NASA had been following, to retire the Space Shuttle and develop the next-generation Constellation spacecraft, comprised of the Ares I and Ares V launchers and the Orion crew capsule, is being tossed into the dustbin.

Yes, the Space Shuttle will still be retired.  There are only five flights left on the schedule – including a launch of Endeavour coming up this Sunday, February 7.  But Constellation is dead – and something new and better is supposed to be invented instead.

The new plan is to find and use private sector creativity.  Brilliant!   And it is also exactly what Red Planet Capital was created to do.

Great coverage over at SpaceRef.com and also at NASAwatch.com.  The budget overview is available here, and the details are here.  You can also get a copy of Administrator Charlie Bolden’s statement on the budget here.

NASA’s Safety Panel: Ares I Safer Than COTS

The NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) released it Annual Report for 2009 this week.  One of the findings in the 117-page report was that the Ares I is the best option for NASA to send astronauts to the International Space Station after the Space Shuttle retires.  The primary consideration for this conclusion – the Ares I was designed with crew safety as its primary criteria.  See a concept image of the Ares I here.

The authors of the ASAP Report, in fact, made perfectly clear that they disagree with the conclusions of President Obama’s Augustine Commission regarding the future of manned space flight in the US (see an excellent article on the subject from NewScientist here) that the best way to deliver astronauts and material to low earth orbit was to use commercial spacecraft.

The Augustine Commission had backed commercial systems, and NASA currently has a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) contract in place with Space X to use the Falcon 9 rocket to send cargo to the ISS, beginning in 2012.

Regardless of whether the ultimate decision is to launch people with commercial systems, the Ares system, or something else — or even to decide to abandon human space flight entirely, it must be very difficult for the brave and loyal people working hard every day at NASA.  Not only does the Agency seem to have no current direction, the policy arguments over the best direction for the future seem to be overly public.

Mystery light over Norway

From the UK’s Daily Mail, a really interesting story today about a fantastic show of light in the sky – likely connected with a malfunctioning rocket lifting off from Russia.  See the entire story, with photos and video, here.

Here are the first few paragraphs from the story:

A mysterious light display appearing over Norway last night has left thousands of residents in the north of the country baffled.

Witnesses from Trøndelag to Finnmark compared the amazing sight to anything from a Russian rocket to a meteor or a shock wave – although no one appears to have mentioned UFOs yet.

The phenomenon began when what appeared to be a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain. It stopped mid-air, then began to circulate.

Photos after the jump.

The entire article is at:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1234430/Mystery-spiral-blue-light-display-hovers-Norway.html#ixzz0ZEZsFpQu

A nice quiet place for a drink

Back when I was a newly-arrived young lawyer in Silicon Valley, I had a group of peers with whom I would regularly go out for a drink after work.  We were constantly looking for someplace new, someplace different, someplace not so crowded.

This week, we all learned that a new place is available for consideration, with the announcement that NASA’s LCROSS (pronounced “El-Cross”) mission discovered water – lots of water – on the moon when it crashed a spacecraft into a crater at the moon’s south pole.  Why is this important?  Water is need to keep people alive, water contains oxygen for people to drink, and water just happens to be rocket fuel (once it is split into hydrogen and oxygen).

Finding water on the moon could well be exactly what is needed to reignite the smoldering fires of exploration at NASA and get humanity back on the path of reaching for the stars.  With water on the moon, a permanent outpost makes great sense.

Space Flight? There’s an App for That

The cutting edge scientists at NASA’s Ames Research Center have pushed the space agency forward in many ways through the years.  This week, they did so again by releasing a new tool to help us all keep track of them many things happening at NASA.  They released an iPhone app – and it is quite well done.  The app is free, and you can get it on the App Store from Apple directly to the iPhone and iPod Touch or within iTunes.

It is not at all surprising that the NASA app comes from the Ames Research Center.  ARC is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, and the Innovative Partnerships Program at ARC has been the part of NASA that is most connected with developing cutting-edge technologies in partnership with the private sector.  The partnership with Google? – managed at ARC.  The partnership with companies developing a private ability to send supplies and people to the International Space Station? – managed at ARC.  The partnership with the venture capital community? – managed at ARC.

Making Better Decisions

Most of us are flooded with information in today’s world.  It’s no surprise: today’s information systems are capturing and digitizing more information EVERY DAY than has been collected in the entire history of the Library of Congress.

Schoolchildren with a basic knowledge of how to construct google searches are able to access detailed information about arcane subjects that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

When I was earning my MBA (in the dark ages of the early 80s), the core mantra in almost every class was avoidance of snap judgements.  The first thing to determine was how long the ultimate decision could be delayed, so as to use the maximum amount of time to gather all salient facts.  More facts (more data) could be used to make better decisions.  So, with all this data available on which to base decisions, today’s decisions must be the best in the history of mankind – right?

Watching the ISS go by

Each morning at 5:45 am, I am up to take a morning walk or bike ride with the family dog.  About half the time, my older daughter gets up and walks with us.

Last night, I noticed that the ISS would be passing directly overhead this morning at 5:59 am (NASA has a special web site where you can check for opportunities to watch the ISS and Shuttle go overhead at your home – check it out here).  As I tucked in my older daughter last night, I suggested to her that she get up and watch it with me this morning.