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Orbital Evaluating Three Bids for Antares Engine; Says Amazonas 4A Glitch Is Permanent
By Peter B. de Selding | Apr. 18, 2014

There are likely two possible causes of the problem with Amazonas 4A, and in both cases, the issue is isolated and will not affect any other Orbital-built satellites in orbit or in production. Credit: Orbital Sciences photo
PARIS — Satellite and rocket builder Orbital Sciences Corp. on April 17 said the electrical failure on the Orbital-built Amazonas 4A satellite launched in March appears likely to result in a permanent reduction in the satellite’s capacity but that there is no risk of similar failures on other satellites in orbit or in production.

The company also said it is evaluating three bids — two Russian, one U.S. — to produce main-stage engines for Orbital’s Antares rocket. The engines being offered include the Russian-built, U.S.-modified engine currently used for Antares.

In a conference call with investors, Orbital Chief Executive David W. Thompson said his company has a sufficient supply of the current Russian-built engines for three more years of Antares operations. Orbital has three Antares first-stage structures, built by a Ukrainian manufacturer, at an Orbital facility, with two more to be shipped soon.

Dulles, Va.-based Orbital has been hunting for an alternative engine supplier in part because the current Russian manufacturer, NK Engines,would need to restart long-ceased production activities to maintain a supply for Antares beyond the next few years. The engines are imported to the United States by Aerojet Rocketdyne of Sacramento, Calif., refurbished and sold to Orbital as the AJ26.

Thompson said it would take another two or three months to decide on a winning bidder, but that both the alternatives to the current supplier “may be preferable to continuing with our current engines.”

Once the decision is made, he said, Orbital will conclude a block purchase of engines to cover Antares launches between 2017 and 2020. Thompson said he has made clear to all three bidders that they will have to absorb any nonrecurring engineering costs associated with filling the order and then recover those costs over time through engine orders.

Orbital’s own costs associated with a switch in suppliers likely would not exceed $30 million, he said.

One factor weighing on the decision is whether either of the two alternatives to the current supplier would require a demonstration flight before proceeding with Orbital’s contract with NASA to resupply the international space station.

Thompson said Orbital expects that its current Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA will be expanded as NASA increases the amount of cargo it wants sent to the orbiting complex in the next three to four years. He said this new cargo requirement could add between two and four more Antares flights to Orbital’s flight manifest, for a total of 10-12 Antares CRS missions.

A CRS 2 contract, which is also expected given the U.S. decision to extend the station’s life by four years, to 2024, is not anticipated before 2015, Thompson said.

The Amazonas 4A satellite, meanwhile, was launched in March aboard a European Ariane 5 ECA rocket and is owned by commercial fleet operator Hispasat of Spain. Thompson said in early April the satellite suffered a failure in a power subsystem.

Hispasat and Orbital continue to evaluate the issue but both companies have made statements suggesting that the anomaly is permanent and will reduce the broadcasting capacity of the satellite’s Ku-band payload.

Thompson said the investigation is focusing on two possible causes of the problem. In both cases, he said, the issue is isolated to Amazonas 4A and will not affect any other Orbital-built satellites in orbit or in production.

One of the failure scenarios “had to do with something that was specific to the Amazonas 4A, that is not done on any prior satellite or any satellite in production,” Thompson said.

“The other failure mode is focused on a component that we have used many times in the past — at least 50 of these have been used by us over the last 10-12 years.” Thompson said. “It probably comes down to a combination of unit-to-unit variability compounded by certain peculiar aspects of this particular satellite.”

For reasons unrelated to Amazonas 4A, Orbital is no longer using this component design.

Orbital Chief Financial Officer Garrett E. Pierce said during the conference call that the company’s revenue for the three months ending March 31 was down $13 million from forecasts because of the Amazonas 4A issue. Operating income was down $6.4 million in the period because of Amazonas 4A and the likely loss of future orbital incentive payments from Hispasat.

Satellite owners commonly withhold about 10 percent of what they agreed to pay for a satellite pending successful operations in orbit. These payments are made annually, with interest, throughout the satellite’s scheduled 15-year operating life.

Pierce said Orbital had taken out insurance against the potential loss of its incentive payments, and that a claim for full recovery of the $6.4 million, and “possibly more,” should be received by June.

Thompson said he remains optimistic that an option for another satellite order from Hispasat would be exercised despite the Amazonas 4A issue.

“The likely cause of this problem is such that it should not put a cloud over their decision on moving forward with that option,” Thompson said.



Follow Peter on Twitter: @pbdes

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Two Companies Take Radically Different Approaches to Launcher Reusability
By Peter B. de Selding | Apr. 15, 2014

Reaction Engines’ Skylon is a single-stage-to-orbit rocket designed to take payloads into low Earth orbit before returning to the same aircraft-type landing strip from where it took off. Credit: Reaction Engines artist's concept
PARIS — Two companies actively working on reusable launch vehicles on April 11 described their strategies, with one starting in small increments of reusability and the other beginning with a fully formed — if untested — spaceplane.

Both companies — Space Exploration Technologies Corp. of Hawthorne, Calif., and Britain’s Reaction Engines — said the goal is to reduce launch costs by developing reusable hardware.

U.S. and European government officials said they remain believers, if not currently big investors, in the two systems but stressed that the past 20 years of rocket history is littered with designs and flight vehicles — including the U.S. space shuttle — that never met the economic promise of reusable systems.

Dan Dumbacher, NASA deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, whose background includes work on the shuttle and the NASA-backed X-33 VentureStar spaceplane developed by Lockheed Martin, said reusability presents more engineering and physics challenges than anyone expects.

Dumbacher also stressed the importance of economic considerations. He said the X-33 program, which collapsed following a fuel-tank failure on a test stand, likely would not have survived the changed expectations in the commercial launch market in any event.

The vehicle was developed in the mid-1990s at a time of what proved to be wildly optimistic projections of commercial launch demand.

Addressing the Space Access conference here organized by Astech Paris Region, Dumbacher said the annual flight rate of a reusable rocket, or one that includes major reusable components, is a key to managing the economics.

“The SSMEs were reusable,” Dumbacher said of the space shuttle main engines. “We tried to make them reusable for 55 flights. Look how long and how much money it took for us to do that, and we still weren’t completely successful for all the parts. I want to be realistic: We are not as smart as we think we are and we don’t understand the environment as well as we think we do.”

Christophe Bonnal, a senior expert in the technical division of the French space agency, CNES, recalled an earlier French-Russian joint effort to reuse large strap-on rocket boosters.

“These reusable stages at the start of our studies were just cylinders with engines and little wings,” Bonnal said. “Three years later, they had become complete Airbuses in terms of size, with four engines on each of them. Our main problem was the impact reusability has on the design of the launcher. Safety factors have to be higher, and you need around 30 percent more propellant in the first stage to fly the stage back to the launch site.”

Bonnal said CNES concluded that a reusable first stage could save about 10 percent in costs for a fully expendable rocket if the reusable vehicle flew 50 times per year and the engines could be used nine times on the rocket’s boosters before being used a 10th time as an expendable engine on the rocket’s second stage.

“Then we would save 10 percent — plus or minus 15 percent,” Bonnal said. “We have more to learn.”

Barry Matsumori, SpaceX vice president for commercial sales and business development, said SpaceX is proceeding in small steps by adding legs to the first stage of the company’s currently expendable Falcon 9 rocket to test maneuvering, while continuing parallel testing through the company’s Grasshopper program.

Grasshopper will be evolving into the F9R program, aimed at developing a partially reusable variant of the Falcon 9..

Matsumori said it is too soon to estimate how many flights per year would be required of the Falcon 9 with a reusable first stage to generate the savings SpaceX hopes to realize.

SpaceX has told its customers that the company’s Falcon 9 commercial launch prices, already considered low when compared to other launch service providers, should drop further once the first stage is made reusable.

Reaction Engines’ Skylon, meanwhile, is a single-stage-to-orbit rocket designed to take payloads into low Earth orbit before returning to the same aircraft-type landing strip from where it took off.

The company, which labored for years with little government support, has recently received modest backing from the British and European space agencies.

Roger Longstaff, the Skylon project manager, said focusing on flight rate is only one way of solving the economics problems around reusable rockets. Reaction Engines, he said, is coming at the market from another angle.

“People ask us: ‘With only 60-70 total launches per year, how can you justify spending admittedly much more than what is needed for an expendable rocket like Ariane 6 — two or three times as much?” Longstaff said, referring to ESA’s proposed 4-billion-euro ($5.5 billion) future launcher now in design.

Longstaff said Reaction Engines proposes to adapt commercial airline industry practices, where Boeing and Airbus sell plans to multiple airlines that use the same airports.

Under this model, he said, even nations whose governments would launch only once or twice a year might find it valuable to purchase a Skylon and then share spaceport costs.

“It is much easier to buy a spaceplane for somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion than to develop your own system,” Longstaff said. “If you can get sales of around 30 planes, then the business model closes and this can be developed using private funding. If there are fewer, then you are looking at some form of public-private partnership, and this is what we are going to talk to [the European Space Agency] about.”



Follow Peter on Twitter: @pbdes

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

When it comes to Space and the Future of manned and Unmanned Space exploration and Industry. I have more Faith in SpaceX, and Commercial Crew then I do NASA. So I bet on Falcon Heavy before I do SLS

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Technical, Cost Issues Persist For Webb Telescope
By Amy Svitak [email protected]
Source: Aviation Week & Space Technology

July 22, 2013
Credit: NASA
For more than a decade NASA's most expensive science mission, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), has suffered cost growth and schedule delays owing to poor management and inadequate budgets. But until recently, technical progress on the enormous space observatory appeared sound.

Conceived in the late 1990s as a follow-on to the Hubble Space Telescope, JWST was projected to cost just $1 billion to build and launch an observatory so advanced it would revolutionize scientific understanding of star and planet formation and identify galaxies in the early universe.

By 2011, however, the program had seen almost a decade of cost overruns and schedule delays. Under pressure from lawmakers, NASA rebaselined the program with a revised cost estimate of $8.8 billion, a new launch date of October 2018, and a healthy amount of schedule margin to maintain both. At nearly nine times the original cost, and more than a decade behind schedule, JWST was finally on track.

Since then, the program has entered a critical phase; myriad technical concerns have emerged, including mass issues on the spacecraft, delayed delivery of two instruments and technical problems with key subsystems, one of which required the addition of a third round of lengthy cryo-vacuum testing to the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM). Combined, these issues have cost 18 of 26 months of schedule reserve on the ISIM, the heart of the telescope that houses JWST's four instruments, designed to detect light from distant stars and galaxies.

One of the late instruments is the Near-infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), a 200-kg spectrometer designed to observe up to 100 celestial bodies simultaneously at various spectral resolutions being supplied by the European Space Agency (ESA) and built by Astrium GmbH of Ottobrun, Germany.

According to ESA, in July 2011 three cracks were found in the part that holds the optics components for NIRSpec. After a failure review board in January 2012, ESA had to reassemble the instrument using a flight spare optical bench.

During the rebuild and test, however, ESA encountered additional problems with NIRSpec, including failure of the NASA-supplied microshutter arrays to close. The project also suffered from slower-than-planned progress on the reintegration on the part of Astrium, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which conducted an in-depth review of JWST in 2012.

ESA is reworking the optical bench, but will not deliver the instrument to NASA in time for ISIM's first cryo-vacuum test, which gets underway in August. The agency says NIRSpec is now reassembled and has passed the first cryo-performance and vibration tests, with a final cryo-test now underway. Shipment to NASA is planned for mid-September, more than a year late but in time to incorporate NIRSPec—still fitted with the faulty microshutter arrays—into the ISIM's second round of cryo-vacuum tests next year.

Meanwhile, NASA is making changes to a spare microshutter array that will be less sensitive to the acoustic environment. The goal is to have ESA swap the array assembly ahead of the ISIM vibration test and third cryo-vacuum test in 2015.

Together with the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) delivered to NASA in May last year, NIRSpec is one of two instruments Europe is contributing to JWST. Combined with launch atop an Ariane 5 ECA rocket in October 2018, and post-delivery and operational mission support, Europe's JWST contribution comprised €370 million ($500 million) in 2004. “Today, ESA says the figure is around €600 million ($790 million), though that appears to exclude launch costs of around €140 million.

NASA is also awaiting delivery of a second instrument delayed by almost 11 months, the Near-infrared Camera (NIRCam) built by Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology of Palo Alto, Calif. NASA determined the need to electrically ground a mirror on the instrument, a process company spokesman Buddy Nelson says is complete, with delivery expected at the end of July.

In addition to instrument troubles, NASA is grappling with a problem on a key subsystem—a cryo-cooler designed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to cool MIRI.

In 2010, NASA realized an essential valve in the cryo-cooler was leaking at rates that exceeded requirements, according to GAO. NASA says the MIRI cryo-cooler is particularly complex because it spans approximately 10 meters—or 33 ft.—through the entire JWST observatory. Following the results of a failure review board, a new valve was designed, but it also did not meet leak-rate requirements. NASA says yet another new valve will not be manufactured in time for use in the first ISIM cryo-vacuum test, and is concurrently developing alternatives.

Problems with a second subsystem, also discovered in 2010, involved the degradation of Teledyne-built infrared flight detectors used by three of JWST's four instruments. As a result, approximately $42 million and 15 months of schedule reserve to replace the detectors were included in the rebaseline of JWST cost and schedule, according to GAO. These additions covered the cost of manufacturing the detectors, fabrication, assembly, and test of new focal plane assemblies, and changing the detectors on three of JWST's four instruments.

Since the manufacturing takes some 30 months, the detectors cannot be delivered until after the second round of ISIM cryo-vacuum tests in 2014. As a result, $2 million of the $42 million in the replan was used to add a third round of cryo-vacuum tests for ISIM.

Another challenge JWST has had to address recently is reducing mass on the spacecraft bus to account for the mass of its electrical wiring harnesses, which turned out to be larger than expected.

NASA has been concerned with JWST's mass since its inception in 1999, due to the telescope's size and the payload-carrying capacity of available launch vehicles. Mass constraints were allocated for each subsystem, including the spacecraft, limited to 1,754 kg. But as of September 2012, its estimated mass was 1,960 kg, a 12% overage.

NASA spokesman J.D. Harrington says design changes were insignificant, and included finding lighter-weight components and low-mass means for meeting spacecraft requirements.

“We also received additional mass margin from the launch provider,” he said, refering to Arianespace, which manages Ariane 5 launches. “All of this is completely normal as the observatory design matures.”

NASA says despite these concerns, JWST remains on cost and schedule under the rebaselined plan, asserting the project has overcome several challenges in the past 18 months alone: Mitigating an increase in the amount of heat expected on the instruments, accelerating optics work that added a month of funded reserve to the schedule, and completing 18 segments of the primary mirror—the project's highest technology risk—six weeks ahead of schedule.

“We are managing to the 2013 budget, and in the replan there is a plan for 2014 and each year after, so we're on track,” said Jonathan Gardner, deputy senior project scientist for JWST, at a NASA Advisory Council astrophysics subcommittee meeting July 17. Gardner warned, however, that any changes to the rebaselined plan—including a proposed $74-million funding cut to JWST in the House Appropriations Committee's version of NASA's 2014 budget—would give the program an out. “The project is committed to the budget and schedule, the profile that's in the replan, and if we don't have that profile then we're no longer committed to maintaining the same budget and schedule.”

Under the rebaselined plan, NASA has excluded the ISIM—one of JWST's four primary components that will eventually be integrated with the optical telescope, mirrors and spacecraft bus—from the so-called 'critical path' of milestones that could delay JWST's launch. Although the ISIM has burned through 75% of its schedule margin and added a third round of thermal vacuum tests, “since the ISIM is not on the critical path, there is no change in the launch date,” Harrington says.

Once ISIM test and integration is complete, JWST will have 14 months of funded schedule reserve before it launches in 2018. Only half of that time is allotted for the final three of five complex integration and test efforts, during which problems are commonly found and schedules tend to slip.

“For now, when they run into problems they can shift things around to accommodate late deliveries and other issues,” says a congressional source familiar with the project. “Once you get farther along in integration and test, you lose that flexibility, so any delays could delay the launch.”

Tap the icon in the digital edition of AW&ST for a timeline of JWST integration and test efforts, or go to AviationWeek.com/jwst

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NASA Slips First Test Flight of Orion Space Capsule to December
By Robert Z. Pearlman, collectSPACE.com Editor | March 17, 2014 06:45am ET


The countdown to the maiden launch of Orion, a NASA space capsule designed to take astronauts out into the solar system, is now three months longer than previously planned.

The space agency on Friday (March 14) announced that it was retargeting the first flight of its Orion spacecraft from autumn to just before winter this year.

"The Orion team continues to work toward completing the spacecraft to be ready for a launch in [the] September [to] October [period]," NASA stated on its website. "However, the initial timeframe for the launch of the Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) has shifted ... to early December to support allowing more opportunities for launches this year."



The EFT-1 mission will fly the Orion capsule to an altitude of approximately 3,600 miles (5,800 kilometers) above the Earth's surface, more than 15 times farther out than where the International Space Station (ISS) orbits. By flying out to those distances, NASA will be able to judge how Orion performs in, and returns from, deep-space journeys.

Flying atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta 4 Heavy rocket, EFT-1 precedes the first flight of the Orion capsule on its intended launch vehicle, NASA's new Space Launch System (SLS), targeted for 2017. By 2021, NASA plans to send astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft on a mission to the vicinity of the moon to rendezvous with a redirected asteroid, before ultimately launching a crew to Mars in the 2030s.

For its first spaceflight though, the Orion capsule will carry instrumentation, rather than astronauts, on a mission that will help test out and refine the spacecraft's design. On EFT-1, Orion will re-enter Earth's atmosphere at a speed of more than 20,000 mph (32,200 km/h), returning to the planet faster than any current human spacecraft. As Orion returns to Earth, it will endure temperatures of up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,200 Celsius), higher than any crewed craft since the Apollo astronauts came home from the moon.

The Orion space capsule will then splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, where NASA and Navy teams will be waiting to recover the capsule for study.



NASA engineers ready the Orion EFT-1 mock service module for installation of the fairings that will protect it during launch when Orion lifts off on its first mission, now slated for December 2014.
Pin It NASA engineers ready the Orion EFT-1 mock service module for installation of the fairings that will protect it during launch when Orion lifts off on its first mission, now slated for December 2014.
Credit: NASAView full size image
Final assembly and pre-flight testing of the EFT-1 Orion is underway at Kennedy Space Center. Lockheed Martin, as NASA's prime contractor, is preparing the Orion inside the center's historic Operations and Checkout (O&C) building, which was used in the late 1960s and early 1970s to ready Apollo spacecraft for flights to the moon.


According to NASA, almost all of the spacecraft's control or avionics components have been installed and, system by system, are now being powered. This functional testing will lead to performance tests, in which all of the systems work together to operate the crew module as a whole.

Ultimately, engineers will turn on all of the Orion capsule's flight computers, radios and other systems simultaneously and simulate the vehicle's sensors so that the spacecraft thinks its flying in space.

Testing of the EFT-1 Orion service module, a mockup of what on later flights will provide the spacecraft with power and in-space propulsion, was recently completed.

The crew module's testing is slated to be finished in April, and then Orion's 16.4-foot in diameter (5 m) heat shield — the largest of its kind ever built— will be installed. With that in place, the crew module, service module and launch abort system will be ready to be mated this spring.

The EFT-1 rocket is also coming together in Florida. The core and starboard boosters for the Delta 4 Heavy arrived at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station earlier this month. The port-side booster, which is still being built in Alabama, is scheduled to arrive in April along with the rocket's upper stage for integration and testing.


Despite the delay to December, NASA is still intending to have the complete EFT-1 vehicle ready by September.

"Completing the [Orion] according to the original schedule will allow many engineers and technicians to continue ...to work on the Orion spacecraft that will fly atop the agency's Space Launch System," NASA said. "It will also ensure that NASA's partners are fully ready for the launch of EFT-1 at the earliest opportunity on the manifest."

Though not stated by NASA, reports suggest that the slip to December was made to allow two recently declassified space surveillance satellites to launch before EFT-1. The Air Force's Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program satellites will track satellites orbiting high above the Earth.

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SpaceX achieves controlled landing of Falcon 9 first stage
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: April 19, 2014


SpaceX says it made two key strides toward the eventual reusability of the Falcon 9 rocket this week with the controlled splashdown of the rocket's first stage in the Atlantic Ocean on Friday and the successful first flight of a booster prototype from the company's Central Texas test facility.


Artist's concept of a Falcon 9 first stage descending to a landing. Photo credit: SpaceX

The California-based space transportation company, founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, has tried to retrieve rocket stages after several launches, initially trying a parachute-assisted recovery before switching to a concept involving a propulsive soft touchdown on a landing pad.

The first step was to prove the rocket's first stage could complete a series of unprecedented engine burns using leftover propellant after finishing its primary job of boosting a satellite into orbit.

Musk announced late Friday the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral earlier in the day had apparently reached a splashdown zone in the Atlantic Ocean intact, based on data from a tracking plane dispatched to monitor telemetry from the descending rocket booster.

Using Twitter to share the news, Musk said the aircraft received data for 8 seconds after the rocket reached the water, an indication the first stage at least survived the landing long enough to continue powering its transmitter.

The first stage was supposed to fire its engines twice after separating from the Falcon 9 rocket's second stage less than 3 minutes after liftoff Friday. The first burn was expected to slow the rocket's velocity enough to fall into a prescribed landing zone in the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred miles northeast of Cape Canaveral, and a second firing was to have allowed the rocket to gently settle into the sea.

Four carbon fiber and aluminum honeycomb mounting legs mounted around the base of the 12-foot-diameter first stage were supposed to extend shortly before the water landing. Friday's launch was the first SpaceX flight to feature landing legs, which officials said had no negative effect on the flight's ascent.

The first stage's sporty descent maneuvers occurred as the Falcon 9 rocket's upper stage continued into orbit with a Dragon supply ship heading for the International Space Station.

Boats stationed near the first stage's landing site were heading for the expected splashdown point late Friday, according to Musk, but rough seas were expected to make it difficult to locate and retrieve the rocket.

If the launcher stage can be plucked from the sea, SpaceX plans to return it to port and analyze its condition.

Regardless of whether the first stage is retrieved in one piece, Musk told reporters Friday the recovery experiment went further in demonstrating the Falcon 9's potential for reuse than any mission before.

"We were able to control the boost stage to a zero roll rate, which is previously what has destroyed the stage -- uncontrolled roll where the on-board nitrogen thrusters weren't able to control the aerodynamic torque and spun up," Musk said. "This time, with more powerful thrusters and more nitrogen propellant, we were able to null the roll rates."

The last time SpaceX tried to recover a Falcon 9 first stage, the rocket came down spinning, exceeding the control abilities of the nitrogen cold gas thrusters and starving the engines of fuel. After that launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, crews salvaged only fragments of the Falcon 9's first stage.

Friday's rocket launch came the same week as SpaceX's new vertical takeoff and landing testbed, dubbed Falcon 9R Dev 1, flew for the first time at the company's rocket development site in McGregor, Texas.

This view from a hexacopter flying over SpaceX's Central Texas test site shows the Falcon 9R prototype reaching a height of more than 800 feet. Video credit: SpaceX

"We're really excited to connect the dots of what's needed [for reusability]," Musk said. "When you combine this with Falcon 9R ... there are just only a few more steps that need to be there to have it all work, and I think we've got a decent chance of bringing a stage back this year, which would be wonderful."

The next step, assuming sea crews are unable to recover the rocket from Friday's launch, is to return a first stage to a precision touchdown on land and determine what might be necessary to prepare it for another flight.

"The reuse must be both rapid and complete, like an aircraft or a car," Musk said. "If you have to disassemble and reassemble a car and change a bunch of parts in between driving it, it would make it quite expensive.

According to Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president of mission assurance, the next Falcon 9 launch scheduled for May will also try for a water recovery.

"We don't have to just recover it," Musk said. "We have to show that it can be reflown quickly and easily, where the only thing you [have to do] is reload propellant."

Using the space shuttle as an example, Musk said it is critical to maintain the same approach to the Falcon 9's reusability in order to make it work.

"The unfortunate thing with the space shuttle was originally the design of the shuttle was, I think, fairly well-suited for good reuse, but then the requirements changed and that made it very difficult to reuse efficiently," Musk said. "As long as we're able to hold to our requirements, I think we'll be able to achieve rapid and essentially complete reuse."

The space shuttle's winged orbiter and segments of its solid rocket boosters were used many times, but the program was stymied by bloated costs and multi-month turnarounds between missions.

Musk aims to make reusability commercially viable and reduce the Falcon 9's launch costs.

None of SpaceX's competitors in the launch market are pursuing reusability with the same fervor. Launch industry executives expressed casual interest, at best, in the prospect for rocket reusability in a panel discussion last month.

"There's no question it's nirvana," said Robert Cleave, president of Lockheed Martin's launch services unit, which sells the Atlas 5 rocket on the commercial marketplace. "It's been nirvana since the '60s. We've had some reusable things. The space shuttle was reusable, but the price point wasn't the best."

Cleave said Lockheed Martin has interest in launcher reusability, but he doubted the paradigm was economically or technically viable in the near future. The Atlas 5 rocket is one of SpaceX's main rivals in the U.S. domestic launch market.

Stephane Israel, chairman and CEO of Arianespace, another SpaceX rival, also said reusability was not on the French launch services company's horizon for next few decades.

"There are some capabilities in Europe regarding reusability, so the technologies are existing, but it's a matter of fact that when you consider the roadmap of Ariane, we do not bet on reusability," Israel said. "We are looking at it, but it's not our primary bet that the business model is quite convincing. We will monitor closely what will happen."

Musk hopes SpaceX can recover a Falcon 9 booster this year and fly a used first stage for the first time in 2015.

Eventually, SpaceX plans to clad the rocket's single-engine upper stage with a heat shield with an eye toward reusing it as well. The company has not disclosed a timetable for a potential recovery of the second stage.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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Jeff Head said:

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No Official Confirmation of NASA Severing Ties with Russian Space Agency
© flickr.com/ Bernt Rostad
10:40 23/04/2014
Tags: U.S.-Russian space cooperation, NASA, Roscosmos, United States, Russia
MOSCOW, April 23 (RIA Novosti) – Russia's Roscosmos space agency has yet received no official notifications from NASA on curtailing cooperation, and working contacts continue, Roscosmos chief Oleg Ostapenko said in an interview with Vedomosti newspaper Wednesday.
“Roscosmos has received no official notifications on suspending cooperation, we continue working contacts with NASA and other space agencies,” Ostapenko told Vedomosti adding: “Recently I held talks with the NASA leadership and European colleagues.”
The US space agency announced in early April that amid tensions over Ukraine it would halt cooperation with Russia but will continue working together on the International Space Station and participate in joint meetings at international events in third countries.
Russia's Roscosmos later said the United States eased its stance on space cooperation with Russia and NASA announced its plans to continue joint work in a number of other projects.
The Roscosmos chief expressed hope that the current tensions in Ukraine would not significantly affect joint space programs saying that “these projects are under major political pressure.”
Asked whether the US refusal to issue licenses on the launch of satellites, which are part of the US intellectual property, would seriously affect Russia, Ostapenko said such steps don’t work “for the better.”
“At the same time we are taking concrete steps that will give us an opportunity to work independently in this sphere. This will be done in the short term,” Ostapensko said.
In case of necessity, Russia is able to replace the supplies of Western parts, he said.
“But we are ready to cooperate as part of establishing joint ventures, transferring technologies and production in our territory to benefit us and our partners. It is important that this cooperation becomes mutually beneficial and isn’t used as a tool affecting the sides,” Ostapenko said.
Russian cosmonauts will continue to work with their colleagues from the US, Europe and Japan, despite NASA statements about suspending cooperation, Yuri Lonchakov, the head of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, said last week.

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State Senate Debates a Space Tourism Port

By HOWARD FISCHER
The Senate is set to take up legislation today designed to pave the way for a space port in the state. Arizona Public Radio’s Howard Fischer explains.

Taber MacCallum of Tucson-based Paragon Space Development said the idea is to use a helium balloon to float a capsule with two crew and six passengers up to 20 miles, float along for a couple of hours and then use a steerable parachute to glide back to earth. Where the launches will take place is another question.

“It varies with the time of year. Sometimes you have lots of high winds and sometimes you don’t. There could be days when we come right back to where we started. And, there certainly could be days when we’re 300 miles away,” MacCallum said.

Paragon wants passengers to sign a waiver absolving the company of all liability should something go wrong. Today’s Senate vote would amend Arizona law to make that waiver enforceable. The cost of for the first flights, set for sometime in 2016, is $65,000. For that you get about two hours floating on top of the Earth’s atmosphere and taking in the view. MacCallum said also there will be munchies and champagne. And, yes, that’s included in the price tag.

“That would just be cheesy to say here you are at 100,000 feet, looking at the view. Oh, that champagne will be $10. That would be crazy,” MacCallum said.

MacCallum said the decision to locate a launch zone in the state goes beyond his company’s presence here. He said it turns out that the perfect place to launch high-altitude balloons is Page.

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SpaceX to test methane rocket engine in Miss.
Apr. 23, 2014 | 0 Comments

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BAY ST. LOUIS — Private space exploration firm SpaceX and the Stennis Space Center have cut the ribbon on an improved rocket engine test stand.

SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, Calif., is supposed to conduct initial testing this year of its new Raptor engines, which will be powered by methane and liquid oxygen.

“We’re no stranger to commercial testing,” Stennis Director Rick Gilbrech said at Monday’s ceremony.

“We’ve been in the commercial market for over a decade. We’re very pleased to welcome Space X as a partner and commercial customer.”

He said the company will start with a very fundamental test program — a single Raptor injector element.

The E2 stand, said Space X President and COO Gwynne Shotwell, is “one of the most capable high pressure test stands on the planet.”

“The testing we will do here will pave the way to what I believe will be the largest LOX/methane system flying,” she said.

The rocket engines tested there, she said, could eventually help Americans reach Mars. The company’s aggressive timetable for the first such flight, she said, is 15-20 years.

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

Oh Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock were Beaming in.

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Miragedriver said:

All joking aside… What could that be? Light reflection from an atmospheric heat wave? Basalt stone? A vehicle?

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