Monthly Archives: March 2015

Bigelow Aerospace Shows Off Expandable Space Station

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NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. The International Space Station's next module looks like a hot tub wrapped up in bulletproof fabric, sitting on the floor of a Las Vegas warehouse but when the module goes into orbit later this year, NASA plans to unfold it into the outer-space equivalent of a rec room.

"This could be a very nice module potentially for the crews to go hang out in. ... It may become a very popular place," Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, told journalists who gathered Thursday at Bigelow Aerospace's Las Vegas headquarters for the module's unveiling.

But that's just the start. If the experimental module works out the way NASA and Bigelow Aerospace hope it does, we could be seeing even bigger and better expandable spacecraft, including monster space blimps that have twice as much volume as the International Space Station.

"Expandable systems are the spacecraft of the future," said Robert Bigelow, the billionaire founder of Bigelow Aerospace.

Thursday's event marked the public debut of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, which Bigelow Aerospace built under the terms of a $17.8 million contract with NASA.

Within the next few months, the BEAM module is due to be trucked east to Florida for processing. It'll be launched as early as September from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, aboard a robotic SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule.

The Dragon will deliver BEAM to the space station in its folded-up, 5-by-7-foot (1.5-by-2-meter) configuration. Astronauts will use the station's robotic arm to attach the module to a docking port on the U.S.-built Tranquility node and then they'll fill it up with air.

As it's inflated, the module is designed to expand like an air mattress but with a many-layered, high-tech, bulletproof skin that Bigelow compares to the steel belts in a radial tire. When fully deployed, BEAM will provide as much volume as a 10-by-12-foot (3-by-4-meter) room.

This module - known as the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM - will serve as an extra room on the International Space Station and also a demonstration project for future Mars transport habitats. BEAM is about 5 feet high and 7 feet wide in its folded-up configuration, but can expand to provide as much volume as a 10-by-13-foot room in orbit.

NASA will conduct two years' worth of tests to determine how well the module holds pressure, how much protection it provides from space radiation and how resilient it is to impacts with tiny bits of orbital debris.

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Bigelow Aerospace Shows Off Expandable Space Station

Vector Aerospace Graciously Accepts 2015 Rolls-Royce M250 Total Quality Award

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Richmond, BC Vector Aerospace Corporation (Vector Aerospace), a global independent provider of aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services, is pleased to announce that Vector Aerospace Helicopter Services North America (HS-NA) has been awarded a 2015 Total Quality Award from Rolls-Royce for the M250 engine product line on Monday, March 2nd, 2015 at the Rolls-Royce FIRST Network Recognition Reception, held as part of Rolls-Royce's attendance at this year's HAI HELI-EXPO in Orlando, Florida.

Upon receiving this award, Vector Aerospace was recognized for a 94% satisfaction rating with M250 customers for Quality and a 93% rating for Customer Service as well as an average TAT improvement of 14% for M250 engines and modules. Vector Aerospace also produced 35% reduction in warranties over four years, and invested significantly in piece part repair development over 2014.

It was an honor for Vector Aerospace to receive this award during the Rolls-Royce FIRST Network Recognition Reception just before the kick-off of HAI Heli-Expo last week, said Julien Roy, vice president, operations for HS-NAs Richmond facility. We are grateful for the strong relationship we have developed with Rolls-Royce over the past thirty years, and look forward to continuing to provide best-in class quality and support on this engine line for years to come.

Vector Aerospace is an Approved Maintenance Repair and Overhaul Centre (AMROC) for Rolls-Royce M250 engines and an active participant in the Rolls-Royce Authorized Maintenance Center (AMC) council. Its M250 shop was established over thirty years ago. During the early 1980s, Vector Aerospaces M250 capabilities underwent some intense development to reduce vibration and power deterioration, allowing for a more efficient and reliable engine. Over this period Vector has worked with Rolls-Royce to support the US Army Kiowa Warrior Program, the US Border and Protection Service, and the Rolls-Royce CLS (C30R3) program.

Vector Aerospace holds approvals from some of the world's leading turbine engine, airframe and avionics OEMs. Powerplants supported include a wide range of turboshafts, turboprops and turbofans from General Electric, Honeywell, Pratt & Whitney Canada, Rolls-Royce and Turbomeca. Vector Aerospace also provides support for a wide range of airframes from Airbus Helicopters, Bell, Boeing and Sikorsky. Its capabilities include major inspections and dynamic component overhaul, full-service avionics capability including aircraft rewiring, as well as mission equipment installation and glass cockpit upgrades.

About Vector Aerospace

Vector Aerospace is a global provider of aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services. Through facilities in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, South Africa, Kenya and Singapore, Vector Aerospace serves commercial and military customers in supporting gas turbine engines, components and helicopter airframes. Vector Aerospaces 2,700 employees act with integrity in setting the standard of customer service.

More information can be found on the companys website at http://www.vectoraerospace.com

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Vector Aerospace Graciously Accepts 2015 Rolls-Royce M250 Total Quality Award

Advanced Aerospace Solutions Receives 2014 NASA Small Business Subcontractor of the Year Award

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Advanced Aerospace Solutions (AdvAero) is pleased to announce that it has been awarded NASA's prestigious 2014 Small Business Subcontractor of the Year Award in recognition of its outstanding contribution to NASA in 2014. This award relates to work performed by the AdvAero's team on a previously-announced contract that involves the use of Marinvent's Piaggio P180 Avanti advanced flight test aircraft and flight test team for the flight test and evaluation of one of NASA's latest NextGen technologies called the Traffic Aware Strategic Aircrew Requests (TASAR).

"AdvAero has been working very closely with NASA Langley providing flight test and evaluation services for the TASAR NextGen technology as a subcontractor to Engility Corporation for the past three years," saidJohn Maris, CEO of AdvAero. "We have established an excellent working relationship with the team at NASA and Engility, and with our other partners on the NextGen research team. We are absolutely delighted to have been recognized by NASA for our contribution to the project in this manner. This award is extremely significant to us and to our JV Partner Marinvent, whose team and Piaggio Avanti Flying Avionics Test Bed have been an integral part of this project with us. So it is with great pride that AdvAero accepts the award on behalf of both companies."

The official NASA press release:http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/march/nasa-announces-small-business-industry-awards/#.VP9T6vnF9s4

About Advanced Aerospace Solutions and its JV partner Marinvent Corporation

Advanced Aerospace Solutions and Marinvent Corporation are aerospace R&D test and evaluation companies, headquartered inRaleigh, NCandSt-Bruno, QCrespectively, whose major function is to reduce the risk, life cycle cost, time to develop, and time to certify novel aerospace technologies for fixed wing, rotary wing and unmanned platforms. The companies specialize in Flight Test Services, Systems Engineering, Human Factors Engineering, Aerospace Consulting, Flight Test & Certification Training, Software Development, Government Procurement Services and Civil Certification. The companies have a stellar track record and have been awarded numerous Supplemental Type Certificates (STC), ranging from single display upgrades to complete cockpit retrofits. Our customer base includes Governments around the world, NASA and every major avionics manufacturer inNorth Americaand beyond.

For more information, visithttp://www.adv-aero.comandhttp://www.marinvent.com

Press Contact:Phil Cole, VP Business Development, Advanced Aerospace Solutions and Marinvent Corporation,phil.c@adv-aero.comorphil.cole@marinvent.com

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Advanced Aerospace Solutions Receives 2014 NASA Small Business Subcontractor of the Year Award

Imaging study looks at brain injury in former NFL players

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A recent study of retired NFL players by Johns Hopkins medical researchers adds to growing evidence linking football with brain damage.

The study published last month in the journal Neurobiology of Disease focused on nine retired NFL players, but the results add to a growing body of research and anecdotal accounts associating brain disease with the blows to the head that are a common part of football and other sports.

Using an improved brain-imaging technique, Hopkins researchers found evidence of brain injury and repair in the former NFL players while it did not appear in a control group of nine healthy men had who never played professional football.

Because of the small number of subjects and lack of consistent results, however, the retired players' cognitive performance tests did not present clear evidence of mental impairment, said the researcher who conducted that part of the study. The sample was also too small to correlate the results of another element of the study, eight cognition tests including measures of word memory, verbal fluency and attention with the images showing damage chiefly in three parts of the brain, the report said.

Dr. Jennifer M. Coughlin, the lead project researcher, said the study is a step toward bridging knowledge gaps on the association between playing violent sports such as football with mental decline and mood disorders later in the player's life. She was one of 19 co-authors of the study, 17 of whom are with the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.

"Ultimately, I'm really hoping that someday we're able to answer the questions from the players and their family members of whether football really caused brain injury," said Coughlin, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "We don't have these answers for family members yet."

The new imaging technology developed in about the past seven years promises a way to study how brain injury develops over time in living people, Coughlin said.

The study included 11 former players, nine of whom took part in both the imaging and the cognitive test portion of the study. The former players, 57 to 74 years old, played a variety of positions, though there was no former quarterback in the group. When the research was done, the men had been out of the NFL for 24 to 42 years.

The nine reported a range of experiences with concussion as defined by the American Academy of Neurology. Concussion does not necessarily mean that the victim loses consciousness, but early symptoms can include headache, dizziness, lack of awareness of surroundings, and nausea or vomiting. Later symptoms can include persistent headache, poor attention and memory loss.

Of the nine players who took part in both parts of the study, one reported 11 concussions, one said he'd had none. Most reported two to five.

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Imaging study looks at brain injury in former NFL players

Reporters Without Borders unblocks access to censored websites

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Online censorship is rife. In many countries, notably China, citizens are prevented from accessing certain websites at the behest of their government. To help provide access to information and unbiased news, freedom of information organization Reporters Without Borders has set up mirrors to nine censored websites so they can be accessed from 11 countries that blocked them.

As part of Operation Collateral Freedom, Reporters Without Borders is mirroring the likes of The Tibet Post International which is blocked in China, and Gooya News which is blocked in Iran. Mirrored sites are hosted on Amazon, Microsoft and Google servers which are unlikely to be blocked by a censoring country.

While it would still be possible to block access to the mirrored sites, the fact that they are hosted on such popular servers means that there would be massive knock-on effects for other much-used services. Encryption is also in use to help prevent the risk of blocking by keyword.

Reporters Without Borders is waging war on the "Enemies of the Internet" which includes Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, China, Cuba, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The full list of sites that make up Operation Collateral Freedom are:

Explaining how access has been opened up, Reporters Without Borders says:

To prevent this blocking, Operation Collateral Freedom is using techniques similar to those developed by GreatFire, an NGO that has carried out several operations of this kind designed to circumvent Chinese censorship.

Access to blocked sites can be restored by using a "website copier" (which copies the content of the censored site to an uncensored server and then keeps updating this "mirror") or by using a proxy.

In Operation Collateral Freedom, we are using both methods, with the mirror site being placed on a strategic server run by a major service provider such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google. The censoring country would be unlikely to block one of these servers because the collateral disruption and damage would outweigh the benefits to be gained from restoring censorship.

The organization is currently renting bandwidth to host the mirrored sites, and is calling for people to spread the word through social media using the hashtag#CollateralFreedom. Donations are being sought to keep the operation running for as long as possible.

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Reporters Without Borders unblocks access to censored websites

Free speech isn't free

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SEPTA DID what it felt it had to do, pointlessly, and wound up in federal court after banning posters deemed to be anti-Islamic.

I say pointlessly because the same ban had been tried and defeated in Washington, D.C., New York and San Francisco.

The U.S. District Court here ruled Wednesday that since SEPTA has accepted other advocacy advertising, it can't refuse ads that call for ending U.S. aid to Islamic countries and that portray an Islamic leader as an ally of Adolf Hitler.

SEPTA general counsel Gino Benedetti said SEPTA rejected the Hitler ad because it "disparaged Muslims because it portrayed them in a way that I believe was untrue and incorrect and false," adding the ad "put every single Muslim in the same category as being a Jew hater."

I'll get to the specific ad in a moment, but that's a huge stretch by Benedetti, like saying attacking Boko Haram is an attack on all Muslims.

The posters (and other ads) are commissioned by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, co-founded by Pamela Geller. Both are accused of being "Islamophobic," which is a convenient way of trying to shut down those who disagree with you.

Those attacking Geller and AFDI include the Council on American-Islamic Relations, other Islamic groups and the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center, which I have supported over the years, even while not agreeing with all it says and does.

I also don't agree with everything Geller says. She's too often a bomb thrower whose careless words allow her critics to paint her with the anti-Muslim brush.

"This is part of the Islamic supremacist narrative," she told me. "I oppose an ideology that calls for the annihilation of the nonbeliever."

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Free speech isn't free

Flag flap at California school raises free speech debate

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IRVINE, Calif. (AP) When student government representatives at the University of California, Irvine voted to ban all flags including the American one from their tiny office, they thought they had found a solution to a battle over freedom of speech that began when someone first tacked a U.S. flag to the wall in January. The flag had been at the center of an increasingly bitter game of cat-and-mouse, with some students taking it down repeatedly and others replacing it in the dark of night.

Last week, six student legislative council members passed a resolution banning all flags from their office space, saying the U.S. flag could be viewed as hate speech because some consider it a symbol of colonialism and imperialism. The executive cabinet of the Associated Students organization vetoed the legislation two days later but it was too late.

The vote prompted a furor: Taxpayers protested on the campus plaza, the school was bombarded with angry comments on its social media sites, and one state lawmaker proposed a constitutional amendment that would prohibit state-funded colleges and universities from banning the U.S. flag on campus. On Thursday, student government meetings were canceled for the second day in a row because of an unspecified threat.

The debate resonated on the ethnically and religiously diverse suburban campus south of Los Angeles, where tensions over freedom of speech have taken the national stage several times before. For years, Jewish students and members of the Muslim Student Union have sparred in a dispute that came to a head in 2011, when 10 Muslim students were arrested and prosecuted for disrupting a speech by Israeli ambassador Michael Oren. In 2007, federal civil rights investigators looked into complaints of anti-Semitic speeches given at the university by invited Muslim speakers, but they found the comments were directed as Israeli policies, not Jewish students.

"It's the nature of young minds questioning and activism at a young age. I think people notice it at UCI more because they think, 'Oh, that's the quiet conservative campus in the middle of Orange County.' But the reality is the students are from all over the place, and they're testing out their ideas just like they are at any other campus," said Cathy Lawhon, a university spokeswoman. About 14 percent of the university's nearly 30,000 students are from other countries.

The tension between Muslim and Jewish undergraduates has calmed recently, and President Barack Obama gave the university commencement speech last spring. So current students said they were dismayed to be in the national spotlight again on freedom of speech issues. Some students and professors reacted to the national criticism by defending the six students in an online petition that said, in part, that the "resolution's perspective has been completely borne out by recent events."

Daniel Kellogg, a fourth-year cognitive sciences major, wore a muscle shirt emblazoned with the American flag as he walked across campus to drop off a term paper. The attention was unsettling, he said, particularly because UC Irvine was being portrayed nationally as a hotbed of anti-American fervor because of the actions of six students.

"We have a lot of international students, and I could see how somebody could possibly be uncomfortable by a gigantic flag in the middle of the common area. But at the same time, this is the United States, and they should just get used to that," Kellogg said.

Meeting minutes show legislative council members grappled with whose rights were more important as they voted: those offended by the flag or those who were offended by its removal. One council member noted that an anonymous letter that criticized the flag was free speech but taking it down was impinging on the free speech of others who wanted it left up.

Associated Students President Reza Zomorrodian did not respond to emails nor did any of the legislative council members involved in the vote or the resolution's author. But in a statement earlier this week, three of the six students who passed the resolution said that they were grateful to be "privileged enough to even have these kinds of conversations" and said they had meant to create a "safe, inclusive space" for all students.

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Flag flap at California school raises free speech debate