NASA has partnered with Space Adventures to support the YouTube Space Lab competition that invites students to envision and design their own experiment with the ultimate prize -- flying it on the International Space Station.

The contest opened on October 11, and will continue to accept submissions in the form of a two-minute video through December 7. Students age 14 to 18 can become researchers by proposing up to three separate original entries on the official YouTube Space Lab contest Web site. Participants can enter as individuals or in teams of up to three people. Entries must include an experiment question, hypothesis, method, and expected results.

Photo: Progress Reentry As Seen From The International Space Station

@astro_aggie (Mike Fossum) "Enjoy this picture I took #fromspace of the Progress cargo ship burning up after undock on Saturday."

Successful Progress Launch Sets Stage for Soyuz Flight

"The following is a statement from Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA Headquarters in Washington, on Sunday's launch of the Progress 45 spacecraft to the International Space Station. The rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 6:11 a.m. EDT (4:11 p.m. Baikonur local time). ..."

NASA should put KSC first, opinion, Florida Today

"The push by some members of Congress who might secure jobs from new development in Virginia is just a pork project."

Keith's note: Utterly hilarious. I guess this means that there is no "pork" involved in decisions affecting KSC. Pot - Kettle - Black, y'all.

- Florida Vs Virginia Food Fight In Space Update, earlier post
- Virginia's Invisible Spaceport (Updated), earlier post
- Florida's Sneaky Business Tactics, earlier post

Dayton City Paper Donates Full Page Ad to Space Shuttle Enterprise Petition Effort

"The quest to land retired Space Shuttle Enterprise at the National Museum of the United States Air Force received a major boost when Paul Noah, the publisher of the Dayton City Paper, donated a full page ad supporting the White House petition effort in the Oct. 18th LWV voters guide issue.

The petition launched two weeks ago, has picked up approximately 3,500 supporters and will need to earn a total of 5,000 signatures by October 30th in order to receive consideration from the Obama administration.

View the petition at "We The People" at WhiteHouse.gov"

Keith's note: This comment from NASA's Phil McAlister via Jeff Foust on Twitter from the ISPCS (International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight) is somewhat revealing as to NASA's preceptions in terms of the appropriate size of a government oversight office.

@Jeff_Foust: McAlister: Comm'l Crew office capped at 250, which for NASA is a very lean program; "not a standing army but a platoon." #ispcs

According to Wikipedia (and other references) a platoon contains 26-55 individuals. McAlister is off by a factor of 5 to 10. What McAlister is actually talking about is an organization that is somewhere between a large company or a lean battalion in size.

I'd love to see a NASA management tree and job description for each of these 250 positions in the commercial crew office. If NASA was truly interested in the use of commercial means to accomplish its mission - but also interested in the underlying managerial philosophy inherent in private sector operations - then NASA would learn to mirror the way that the private sector works. Or at least try. These comments make me question if they ever will. I wonder what the government/supplier ratio will be in terms of government oversight for Shuttle Vs commercial crew and cargo flights. Add in the people across NASA matrixed to the commerical crew office and I will bet that the total workforce greatly exceeds 250.

Reader note: "Someone check my math but the full taxpayer cost of 250 NASA civil servants is approx. $75 M per year. Does this come off the top of the appropriated funds (Senate Appropriations recently set at $500 M for 2012)? That's a 15% overhead for the program office alone - not to mention the Center technical oversight."

Reader note: "250 CS employees would be about $55M. I know our center uses about $220k for an FTE. Don't know the exact number since it changes. $300k/FTE is way high."

Keith's 21 Oct 8:37 am EDT Update: Early this morning Anlyn Bankos from NASA's commercial office sent me an email with two reports attached "NASA's Return on Investment Report October 2011" and "CCDev 2 Milestone Schedule". When I sent an email asking for the URLs at the NASA Commercial Office I got this message back from Bankos "I will be out of the office from Wednesday, February 16-Friday, February 18. If you have any questions, please contact Dick Smart.". Wow. Its October. I guess they are not very busy - at least not busy enough for their "customers" to notice that this message is 6 months out of date.

Keith's 21 Oct 2:00 pm EDT Update: NASA's Return on Investment Report October 2011 and CCDev 2 Milestone Schedule are now online at NASA. It took 6 hours for them to make a simple website update.

Soyuz flight VS01 Lifts Off From French Guiana (with video)
 
"Soyuz lifts off for the first time from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, carrying the first two Galileo In-Orbit Validation satellites. Following the liftoff join ESA live webstreaming for the separation phase, expected at around 16:20 CEST. Streaming recommences at 15:40 CEST."

Full Committee Hearing: NASA's Commercial Crew Development Program: Accomplishments and Challenges

Wednesday October 26, 2011, 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Panel One
- John Elbon, Vice President and General Manger, Space Exploration Division, The Boeing Company
- Steve Lindsey, Director, Space Exploration, Sierra Nevada Space Systems
- Elon Musk, CEO and CTO, Space Exploration Technologies
- Charles Precourt, Vice President and General Manager, ATK Space Launch Systems
- George Sowers, Vice President, Business Development and Advanced Programs, United Launch Alliance
Panel Two
- Bill Gerstenmaier, Associate Administrator, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, NASA

Crowdsourcing Science with Zooniverse and NASA at the NEEMO-15 Underwater Asteroid Mission

"Analyzing the vast amount of data that NASA brings back from its missions is an enormous task. In order to improve collaboration internally, as well as engage citizens in NASA's mission, the Open Government team is experimenting with different ways to process mission data quickly. The NASA OpenGov team has enlisted the help of established NASA partners Zooniverse and Vizzuality, who have pioneered the analysis of large datasets through crowdsourcing, using the power of elegant interfaces, to engage citizen scientists in the NEEMO mission."

SpaceX Completes Key Milestone to Fly Astronauts to International Space Station

"Today, SpaceX announced it has successfully completed the preliminary design review of its revolutionary launch abort system, a system designed for manned missions using its Dragon spacecraft. This represents a major step toward creating an American-made successor to the Space Shuttle. NASA's approval of the latest design review marks the fourth successfully completed milestone under the agency's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program and demonstrates the innovation that's possible when NASA partners with the private sector."

Did NASA Hide In-space Fuel Depots To Get a Heavy Lift Rocket?, TCMnet

"Last week, a 69 page NASA Powerpoint presentation on the costs of in-orbit fuel depots was leaked to SpaceRef.Com. The July 21, 2011 document, a preliminary report of a more detailed in-house NASA study that at least one Congressman has requested and been promised, says it would be dramatically faster and cheaper to use existing rockets in combination with in-orbit fueling to get to the Moon, an asteroid, and other deep space destinations than to build the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The Tea Party in Space (TPIS) is calling it an "integrity issue" for NASA."

Is This NASA Document Saving or Killing Manned Private Spaceflight?, Popular Mechanics

"NASA, which wants to send its astronauts aboard privately built spacecraft, recently released the first draft of a document detailing how it would ensure those ships are safe. The contract is a tome of legalese, but buried inside the hundreds of pages are provisions that have some private space companies worried that NASA's oversight could slow them down."

Bigelow Aerospace Lays Off Half Of Its Employees Due To Space Taxi Delays, Reuters via Huffington Post

"We no longer can say with some certainty when the transportation is going to be there," said Bigelow, who spoke with reporters after a speech at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight under way this week in Las Cruces."

Governor Scott tours Kennedy Space Center for first time, 13 News

"Florida's governor toured the Kennedy Space Center for the first time since taking office Tuesday to get a look at progress of the next generation of NASA spaceflight. He also talked about ways to lure more companies to the Space Coast and Florida to employ jobless space shuttle workers. Scott and his cabinet walked through the Operations and Checkout Building where the Orion spacecraft is being built and fine-tuned for future deep space missions."

Florida governor visits NASA facility to talk jobs, CNN

"It's no longer your daddy's NASA," said Carroll, who also heads Space Florida, the state's aerospace advocate. "It's going to be the 21st century NASA for our grandchildren."

- Florida is Getting Greedy About Human Space Flight, earlier post
- Virginia's Invisible Spaceport, earlier post

Keith's note: As you can see from these charts taken (out of context) from the 13 July 2010 NASA HEFT presentation "EELV Capacity Analysis", NASA clearly did quite a bit of comparison and contrast between various existing expendable launch vehicles - foreign and domestic - analyses that did not always include use of a SLS-class heavy launch vehicle. Indeed, one chart is titled "International Partners Have Lots of Capacity". The rest of this presentation contains procurement-sensitive information and will not be published here.

That said, it is obvious that even a year ago pragmatic thought was given to how a variety of launchers could be used for human, cargo, and other launch purposes including ways that mission profiles (DRM 4) usually associated with a HLV could be accomplished in whole or in part by the use of expendable launch vehicles. A more detailed look at what was being reviewed last year can be found at "Human Exploration Framework Team Presentation Online".

- NASA Studies Show Cheaper Alternatives to SLS, earlier post
- Using Commercial Launchers and Fuel Depots Instead of HLVs", earlier post
- The HLV Cost Information NASA Decided Not To Give To Congress, earlier post

"Beth Beck and Agela Triano worked together to create NASA SpaceSmart, an activity-based communication tool to measure shifts in public opinion about space. Beth is NASA's Space Operations Outreach Manager and Angela is a Marketing Solutions Account Executive at GES. Learn ways to engage and interact with your audience as you communicate your brand message, while tracking what topics "move the needle" in how they view your brand. SpaceSmart is one of many projects Beth created as an opportunity to make this world a better place while demonstrating the relevance between life on Earth and the extreme environment of space."

Keith's note: SpaceSmart has a Twitter account at @SpaceSmart but it hasn't tweeted since 7 Feb 2011. Not very current - or "SpaceSmart". This project also has a website nasaspacesmart.com whose domain is registered to PurcellMultimedia in Lewisville, Texas. This website points to Facebook page that does not seem to exist. There is no mention of this effort at NASA.gov. Why hasn't HEOMD EPO Lead Beth Beth told anyone about this? If you pay $10 you can hear her talk about it here.

This SpaceSmart thing seems to be accomplishing nothing - so what is it that Beth Beck is going to talk about on behalf of the agency? The Twitter page says "I'm SpaceBot. NASA is still developing the world I live in. You can join me there soon. Stay tuned." The last time Beth embarked on an automated website we got NASA Buzzroom and all of the inappropriate content it automatically published at NASA.gov. Isn't NASA supposed to be coordinating all of these EPO and public engagement activities?

Keith's update: I came across these confusing presentations from 2010 and 2011 that describe what NASA SpaceSmart is supposed to do - whenever it actually starts doing whatever it is supposed to do. Lots of numbers and charts but no description of what this little droid mascot "SpaceBot" represents or what Space Smart actually does or will do. Global Experience Specialists, Inc. (GES) is apparently the NASA contractor on this. Two Twitter accounts are listed as being sources for more information. @joannascorsone does not seem to Twitter very much and @trianotwntxs protects their Tweets and only has 25 followers. This doesn't strike me as a team that does a whole lot of social media interaction - at least not on Twitter.

The nasaspacesmart.com website openly says "Space Smart™" If you do a quick trademark search you will see that there are 50 applications to trademark "Space Smart" or close variants thereof. 17 applications are still live. So ... does this NASA activity actually own the trademark that it is claiming -- or has their application been denied? Did NASA apply for this trademark?

Keith's update: There is another Twitter account associated with this effort @spacesmartbot. Alas, it is not very smart. It only tweeted 22 times - the last time being 24 June 2010. Then it shut down (I guess). Curiously, that last tweet says "[] I don't think exploration isn't in the country's best interest." Hmm. Bad robot grammar.

Oh well. More stuff to FOIA.

Republicans Send Deficit Reduction Recommendations to Select Committee (NASA excerpts)

"We propose reductions of $177 million (based on the FY12 request) by taking the following actions:

* Cancellation of OCO-2 mission (received $89.0 million in the FYI 1 CR; $91 million savings in FY 12; $149 million savings over five years). Life cycle cost savings could be higher as NASA struggles to define a launch vehicle to carry OCO-2 to orbit.

* Reduce by 20% "Other Missions and Data Analysis" account within the Earth Systematic Missions (received $274 million in the FY11 CR; $74 million in savings in FY 12; $584 million in savings over five years). The FY12 request represents a 66.8% increase over FY2010 enacted, with an average annual increase thereafter of 32%.

* Reduce by 20% "Venture Class Missions" account within the Earth System Science Pathfinder Missions (received $32 million under the FY11 CR; $12.4 million savings in FY12; $144 million savings over five years). Venture Class Missions is a new activity for NASA, begun in response to a recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences. It is, in essence, a new start. While we support the program's goals, we simply propose that growth in the spending profile be moderated."

Keith's note: Of course the Republican staffers on this authorizing committee could have picked any mission with a similar cost range to cut but they chose OCO-2 because its mission is directly related to global change issues. Alas, the National Academy of Sciences sees the replacement of OCO-1 as being important. I guess that just makes it a bigger target for climate change deniers. Why get data, eh? Take a look at the other cuts that are recommended. It is clear that there is an anti-Earth science bias running throughout. If you were to collect all of the input that the Super Committee as received from here and there you'd see all manner of proposed cuts - some obvious, some wacky, and many overtly partisan. Keep that in mind when you read this.

German ROSAT Satellite Has Fallen to Earth, Say NASA Sources, ABC

"The German ROSAT satellite fell back to Earth Saturday evening, U.S. time, NASA sources told ABC News. DLR, Germany's scientific research agency, said the satellite re-entered the atmosphere between 9:45 and 10:15 p.m. ET. It was the second time a satellite large enough to for debris to reach the Earth's surface has fallen from orbit in the past month, an occurence that typically happens only once per year."

Damage From Falling Satellites? Insurance Will Cover It, New York Times

"The odds of a fragment hitting your little patch of earth are extremely low. But not to worry: if you are unlucky enough to have some space shrapnel fall on your house or car, standard insurance policies will most likely cover the damage, says the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group."

Marc's note: According to the German Aerospace Center (DLR) the latest prediction on ROSAT re-entry: Between 22 October 2011, 18:00 UTC & 23 October 2011, 12:00 UTC. Follow the DLR tweets for the latest re-entry updates.

Marc's Update: German satellite hits east of India, centre says, CBC

"Parts of a defunct German research satellite have returned to Earth and likely fallen into the Bay of Bengal, east of India, the chair of the German Aerospace Centre says."

NASA: Pay the Americans now ... or pay the Russians later, MSNBC

"If NASA can't provide as much support for U.S. spaceship-builders as it's hoping for, it'll have to keep paying the Russians $450 million for every year of delay, the space agency's No. 2 official said today. NASA's deputy administrator, Lori Garver, laid out that "pay now or pay later" message at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in Las Cruces, N.M."

Back space taxis or pay more for Russian rides, Reuters

"The Obama Administration is requesting $850 million for the [commercial] program for the fiscal year that began Oct 1. Bills pending in the House and Senate cut that to $312 million and $500 million, respectively. Without full funding in 2012, the United States' ability to stop buying rides from Russia in 2016 is at risk, NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver said at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight, under way in Las Cruces, New Mexico, this week."

NASA may extend Russian contract to fly to space station, Orlando Sentinel

"Top NASA officials are quietly working to extend a contract with Moscow that would continue using Russian rockets to fly U.S. astronauts into space until 2016 and beyond -- a move that underscores how much the U.S. now relies on its former Cold War adversary. Already, NASA is committed to pay Russia $1.5 billion during the next five years to transport its astronauts to and from the International Space Station, a necessary arrangement because the U.S. no longer flies a human-rated spacecraft since NASA retired the space shuttle last summer."

NASA Is Considering Fuel Depots in the Skies, NY Times

"At a Congressional hearing in July, Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, asked Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr., the NASA administrator, about the possibility of depots as an alternative to the Space Launch System. General Bolden said that he did not know details about any propellant depot study, but that his agency had looked at alternatives to building a heavy-lift. "It turned out that was not as economical, nor as reliable," he said. Although General Bolden promised to provide the information, Mr. Rohrabacher said he had obtained the study about propellant depots only through unofficial channels. "I'm shocked that the leadership in NASA would try to keep a report as significant as this away from decision makers of the legislative branch," Mr. Rohrabacher said, adding that the study gave him "the ammunition to make a case" to revisit NASA's plans for human spaceflight."

- NASA Studies Show Cheaper Alternatives to SLS, earlier post
- Fuel Depots and Congress, earlier post
- In-Space Cryogenic Propellant Storage and Transfer Demonstration Mission Concept Studies, 2011, NASA GRC, earlier post
- Using Commercial Launchers and Fuel Depots Instead of HLVs, earlier post
- The HLV Cost Information NASA Decided Not To Give To Congress, earlier post

NASA head visits Baltimore to show off Webb telescope

"Bolden said Friday he does not intend to cut any single program to make sure that Webb proceeds as planned. Instead, NASA is working with the White House to provide Wolf and his subcommittee with a list of cuts across the agency, he said. "We didn't want to reward Webb by killing a program that was doing well," said Bolden, who became the head the agency about two years ago. The cuts would be proposed from both the institutional and science sectors of NASA, he said."

Republicans Send Deficit Reduction Recommendations to Select Committee (NASA excerpts)

"Cancellation of OCO-2 mission ... Reduce by 20% "Other Missions and Data Analysis" account within the Earth Systematic Missions ... Reduce by 20% "Venture Class Missions" account within the Earth System Science Pathfinder Missions ... "