Expedition 31 crew members aboard the International Space Staton captured this video of the approach, grapple and berthing of the SpaceX Dragon cargo vehicle to the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module. Video source: NASA.
"Looks like we've got us a dragon by the tail."
Those were the words spoken by U.S. astronaut Don Pettit as he grappled the SpaceX Dragon capsule to berth with the International Space Station.
They might be this generation's equivalent of Neil Armstrong's famous quote when he first stepped on the Moon. "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
@elonmusk @SpaceX That's one small step for a #dragon, one giant leap for dragonkind!
And once again, NASA was the top story this week for many mainstream media.
For me personally ... I've spent the last year telling people why the Space Shuttle was retired, and how the United States would soon have an entirely new spacecraft fleet designed and mostly funded by the private sector. That day arrived today. Instead of having tell people it will be here one day soon ... it's here now. The dream is alive.
And here's a thought ... An American astronaut, aided by a Dutch astronaut, used a Canadian robot arm to grapple and berth to an International Space Station a spacecraft built by a South African emigrant to the United States. Such a uniquely American story, and an example of what the future of human spaceflight should be about. It's not one nation going to space. It's one species.
Below are links I've found to stories. More will be added as circumstances permit.
Fifty years ago today, Scott Carpenter became the second American to orbit the Earth.
The flight was far from perfect. But little was in those early days.
Aurora 7 was essentially a test flight, as were all the Mercury flights. Humanity was dipping its toe into the celestial ocean for the first time. Much could go wrong, and it usually did.
In remembering Commander Carpenter's historic flight, you may wish to stop by his official web site at ScottCarpenter.com.
Fifty years later, the SpaceX Dragon just made its closest flyby of the International Space Station. Carpenter's flight helped lay the foundation.
Click the arrow to watch the SpaceKSC.com video of the SpaceX COTS-2 launch. Video credit: SpaceKSC.com.
The future began on May 22, 2012, at 3:44 AM Eastern Daylight Time, in what had been for millennia a swamp that was home for hundreds of alligators and billions of mosquitoes.
But the launch was Humanity's response that, one day, we may leave from this old swamp to go somewhere that mosquitoes never bite.
I took my share of mosquito bites as I filmed the historic launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, sending the Dragon capsule to the International Space Station.
(By the way, hand sanitizer is a quick and effective remedy. The swelling goes right down.)
Most "mainstream" media outlets on the Internet are reporting this as their lead story. Hopefully this will correct the general public's misperception that the United States no longer has a space program.
Here are links to articles about the launch. Start with this wonderful clip from CNN's John Zarrella:
Click the arrow to watch the video. You may be subjected to an ad first.
Then watch tonight's PBS Newshour report with Judy Woodruff and Miles O'Brien:
Retired astronaut Mark Kelly was interviewed by MSNBC about his thoughts on commercial space and SpaceX.
The interview did not mention that Kelly has a working relationship with SpaceX. On March 29, SpaceX announced that Kelly joined an independent safety panel to oversee development of the company's human spaceflight program.
Click the arrow to watch the CASIS video, "CASIS: Bringin Home the Magic of Space."
The Center for Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) has relaunched its web site. The new site is well worth the visit.
According to the web site:
In 2011, NASA chose the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) to be the sole manager of the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory. The mission of CASIS is to maximize use of this unparalleled platform for innovation, which can benefit all humankind and inspire a new generation to look to the stars.
The organization has been awarded by NASA the responsibility of inciting the imagination of entrepreneurs and scientists alike, accelerating and facilitating space-based research as well as creating public awareness of National Lab research and making space science more accessible to the world.
By carefully selecting research and funding projects, by connecting investors looking for opportunity to scientists with great ideas, and by making access to the station faster and easier, CASIS will drive scientific inquiry toward developing groundbreaking new technologies and products that will tangibly affect our lives.
Click the arrow to watch the SpaceKSC.com video of the aborted COTS-2 launch attempt. This was filmed from NASA Causeway East about four miles west of Launch Complex 40. Video credit: SpaceKSC.com
SpaceX was one half-second from history this morning when a faulty value on the middle of its nine Merlin engines caused the Falcon 9 engine to turn itself off.
The company issued the below press release this evening:
Update on SpaceX COTS 2 Launch
Today’s launch was aborted when the flight computer detected slightly high pressure in the engine 5 combustion chamber. We have discovered root cause and repairs are underway.
During rigorous inspections of the engine, SpaceX engineers discovered a faulty check valve on the Merlin engine. We are now in the process of replacing the failed valve. Those repairs should be complete tonight. We will continue to review data on Sunday. If things look good, we will be ready to attempt to launch on Tuesday, May 22nd at 3:44 AM Eastern.
NASA and SpaceX have constantly reminded us that this is a test flight. In that sense, the test worked because the system detected a problem with the #5 engine before launch. It appears to be a simple fix.
These engines have been lit twice now. They were lit on April 30 as part of a static test fire:
Click the arrow to watch the April 30 static test fire.
Cargo delivery was not an immediate concern. The STS-135 Atlantis flight was added by the Obama administration to build up supplies until the commercial cargo vehicles were ready.
Other ISS partners have a cargo capability — Russia (Progress), Japan (HTV-2) and the European Space Agency (ATV). None of those vehicles, however, has the capability of returning a payload to Earth from the ISS. They all burn up on re-entry.
The Dragon capsule was initially designed with the eventual intent of being a crewed ship, so a safe soft landing was always planned.
This, then, is why the Dragon mission is "a big deal."
Once operational, the United States will have the only vehicle on Planet Earth capable of returning experiments and other payloads from space.
The Orbital Sciences Cygnus module, the other vehicle in NASA's commercial cargo program, will also burn up on re-entry. SpaceX, therefore, will have the monopoly on payload return from the ISS.
What if SpaceX fails?
SpaceX founder Elon Musk and NASA constantly remind us that this is a test flight. Officially designated COTS-2, this is a combination of what was originally planned to be two test flights. The first was to demonstrate that Dragon could maneuver in space, but it would not berth at the ISS. The second test flight was to attempt a berth with the station.
(The difference between docking and berthing? With docking, the vehicle would directly approach the ISS and attach itself to a port. With berthing, the Dragon will park alongside the station, then a Canadarm operator will grapple the ship and manually attach it to the docking port.)
Now both test flights have been combined into one, raising the stakes and the risk. That's one reason why this flight has been delayed for months.
The worst case scenario is that the Falcon 9 rocket blows up on the pad or after launch. If that happens, it could be comparable to the Vanguard TV-3 launch attempt on December 6, 1957.
Click the arrow to watch the failure of the Vanguard TV-3 launch.
Vanguard TV-3 was a test flight, but it was framed by the media as the American response to the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2 launches. It was never intended to be that, but the media love drama and TV-3 fit the bill. It lost thrust two seconds after liftoff and fell back to the pad, exploding in a fireball. The failure was telecast live on national television, and was derided by critics as a "flopnik."
Popular history has forgotten that, once operational, Vanguard was extremely successful. The first two satellites launched by Vanguard are still in orbit and are projected to remain there until at least the year 2200.
Although Saturday's launch is a "test flight," those who want to protect the status quo eagerly await Dragon's failure. Many members of Congress have claimed that the private sector can't be trusted, even though the private sector has always built NASA's vehicles. All that's changed is the financial model — the commercial companies assume the risk and development costs up front, and only get the NASA contract if they prove they have a viable system. The real reason these members of Congress attack commercial space is that, with their positions on key committees, they can direct pork to established aerospace contractors that bring jobs to their districts.
In their minds, the status quo equates to re-election. They couldn't care less about new technology that reduces NASA's costs.
Others mistakenly see commercial space in a zero-sum game with deep space exploration. They think that if only the ISS and commercial space were cancelled, all that money could be transferred to a national mandate that would return more rocks from the Moon. Some Apollo-era astronauts fall into this category.
This assumption is simply a conceit. These astronauts, although national heroes, have no grasp on the political context that led to the Apollo program. All they know is that in the mid-1960s, NASA had nearly 5% of the federal budget. The reason was President John F. Kennedy had framed the "space race" in a context of national survival, a demonstration of prestige to show the world that American technology was superior to the Soviet Union.
But that era no longer exists. It now rots in the dustbin of history. Many presidents since then have quoted Kennedy in proposing new space programs. But they seem to forget why Kennedy proposed a Moon program, and those reasons are no longer valid — which is why today NASA's budget is less than one-half of one percent of the federal budget. Cancel the ISS and commercial space, and the money simply goes to other porkery unrelated to space.
Click the arrow to watch an NBC News report on May 5, 1961 after the launch of Freedom 7.
Watch the above video of NBC News reporting the night of Alan Shepard's historic Freedom 7 flight. Are those life-and-death assumptions valid today? Of course not.
In some ways, I see similarities between Shepard's flight and the Dragon mission, but those are only superficial. Shepard's Redstone flight was a test of the Mercury technology on a suborbital trajectory. Orbital flight was already on the drawing board.
Had the launch failed, if — heaven forbid — Shepard's life had been lost, the damage to national prestige would have been incalculable, but I suspect the program would have continued. Kennedy would not have included the Moon mission in his "On Urgent National Needs" speech on May 25. Most likely, NASA and human spaceflight would have continued at a much slower and cautious pace. But we would never have gone to the Moon, because Kennedy wouldn't have mustered the political courage to propose it in the wake of a tragedy.
If COTS-2 fails, no lives will be lost, and NASA will have a redundant delivery option with Cygnus. But the world will still lack a means of returning experiments from the ISS. So SpaceX will try again, and one day there will be a COTS-3.
Does this compare to STS-1, the first Shuttle flight? That was certainly risky. The Shuttle was incapable of unmanned test flight. Astronauts had to be onboard. Dragon won't have a crew, just supplies and student experiments.
The biggest risk, in my opinion, is what a failure will mean to the future of commercial space.
Congressional porkery aside, commercial space once viable will give the United States a new and unique industry no other nation on Earth will have.
Click the arrow to watch the Astrogenetix video on salmonella and MRSA vaccine research.
We've just begun to investigate the implications for life and physical sciences research in microgravity. As demonstrated in the above Astrogenetix video, potential vaccines for salmonella and MRSA are being tested for approval, thanks to research aboard the ISS. By the end of the decade, we may have found clues that lead to fighting cancer, muscular dystrophy, and aging. Benefits to humanity aside, this also jump-starts an entirely new economy here in the United States that other nations will envy.
Bigelow Aerospace is ready to start deploying its private space station modules in low Earth orbit. But it must wait for commercial crew to deliver customers. Boeing is already a partner. Last week, SpaceX and Bigelow announced plans to jointly market flights. Seven nations have signed memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with Bigelow to use its modules.
Entrepreneurs are poised to invest hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in commercial exploitation of space. Planetary Resources recently announced plans to harvest asteroids for minerals rare on Earth.
And there are those such as Virgin Galactic that are marketing commercial tourist flights into space.
If COTS-2 fails, commercial space critics will lump all these together, although they really have nothing to do with another, and insist the only means to space is through a bloated government bureaucracy, funded by politicians who steer programs to their districts.
That's what's at stake on Saturday. Only the future of the American economy.
Click the arrow to watch the video on the NASAKennedy YouTube channel.
The NASAKennedy YouTube channel has published the above 6½ minute video about the future of Kennedy Space Center. It's an excellent summary of all the programs about to arrive.
An article about upgrades to the Vehicle Assembly Building was posted today on NASA's web site. Click here to read.
The next three-member crew to join the International Space Station launches tonight at 11:01 PM Eastern Daylight Time. The TMA-04M crew members are American Joe Acaba, and Russians Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin.
When they arrive, they'll join American Don Pettit, Russian Oleg Konenenko (who is the ISS commander) and ESA representative Andre Kuipers from the Netherlands. Collectively they form the Expedition 31 crew. Click here for the Expedition 30/31 press kit.
The above video is a great overview of how the Soyuz crew vehicle works.
Two opinion columns in the Sunday Florida Today strongly criticized the House of Representatives for its vote last week to end prematurely the commercial crew competition.
NASA is on budget, on schedule and ready to show us something new and exciting in human spaceflight for the first time since today’s fortysomethings were in grade school.
But the U.S. House, including both representatives from Brevard, voted last week to wreck the program — nine days before the high-stakes launch of a “commercial crew” rocket and capsule from the Cape.
For those just tuning in, an assortment of privately developed flying machines are scheduled to begin key test launches this week, competing for a contract to carry U.S. astronauts into orbit.
Privatization has sparked the aerospace version of a TV season of “The Apprentice,” pitting a capsule designed by a PayPal inventor against a mini-space shuttle and a classic rocket that up to now has launched only satellites. Seven companies, four with NASA seed money, have moved as fast as the early Mercury and Apollo programs, but at a fraction of the cost to taxpayers.
Now, Congress wants to cancel the show midseason.
Reed reserved particular criticism for Brevard County's two House representatives.
What I can’t understand is why House members, including Reps. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, and Sandy Adams, R-Orlando, would vote to halt the only bargain NASA has going.
This year, NASA spent $406 million on four companies to build new spacecraft, with another three developing rockets and components for free. Before Thursday’s vote, the [White] House had boosted investment in the privatized rocket program to $830 million ...
I can’t wait to see if SpaceX can launch its Dragon Capsule from the Cape on Saturday and rendezvous with the space station. Or see Sierra-Nevada’s Dreamcatcher mini-shuttle blast off next year and try the same. Or see an Atlas V saddled up for passengers.
Why would Posey and Adams vote to stop that?
Posey told FLORIDA TODAY he would be willing to narrow the contest to two competitors, but voted for the bill because he’s afraid impatience in Congress could lead to cuts.
Adams said something about getting “the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars.”
But if they want lower costs and a fast track to space, Congress should leave NASA’s competition alone.
The request includes $829.7 million for the Commercial Crew program. While this request is $329.7 million over the authorized levels for the program, the prioritization of human space flight within the budget is encouraging. I believe the Commercial Crew Program can continue on schedule under the agreed upon authorized level of $500 million and I support such an allocation of funds. This level of funding will enable NASA to continue encouraging the private development of safe and affordable space transportation systems to carry American astronauts on American rockets built by an American workforce to and from the International Space Station.
I wrote Ms. Adams the month before asking her to fully support the Administration's request, so that the United States could cease relying upon Russia for flights to the ISS. Ms. Adams' office did not respond.
You should be concerned about a Congressional vote this week for NASA to immediately end its successful competition among multiple contractors vying to deliver a new, privatized system to carry astronauts to and from the space station.
So far, a layered approach with multiple companies competing to build a new space transportation system is showing signs of working, with the most obvious evidence being a Falcon 9 rocket set to launch a Dragon spacecraft to the space station as early as Saturday.
Private firms are competing against one another, with potentially lucrative contracts as a prize. They are coming up with innovative ways to design and operate a human space transport that would have cost billions more and already be years behind schedule, if it were developed under NASA’s old way of doing business, with one big contractor handed a single multi-billion dollar contract.
Kelly quotes Rep. Posey as commenting:
“I wish there was more money available. That would solve a lot of problems. It would be great if there were 10 competent launch teams competing to do the job. Unfortunately, the reality is that there is not enough money to water all the trees in the forest. At some point NASA is going to have to decide to focus on proceeding with one or two launch providers and this bill tells NASA to move to the down select date sooner ... In a perfect world with unlimited funds you wouldn't have to do that, but that is not the world we live in today.”
This is, of course, nonsense.
The commercial crew funding was shifted by the House to the Space Launch System, a heavy-lift vehicle mandated by Congress in 2010 to keep employed Shuttle-era contractors.
