NASA Launches David Bowie Concept Mission, The Onion

"NASA officials announced today the successful launch of the new shuttle Moonage Daydream, marking the beginning of a long-anticipated two-week conceptual mission inspired by British rock star David Bowie. The crew of Moonage Daydream embark on the 4.5 billion dollar, genre-defying mission. According to NASA administrator Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden, Jr., the highly experimental glam space program--dubbed Project Starman--has been in development for exactly five years. Though engineers initially feared the mission might "blow our minds," the historic launch ultimately proceeded without incident."

I wish more people could be here at the FAA Commercial Space Transportation conference in Crystal City.  The commercial space community is so vibrant and eager to step up to the challenges ahead.

DoD is looking to them to help usher in an era of operationally responsive space access.

FAA and NASA are working to safely build a suborbital and LEO industry, and, thus, enable NASA to focus on exploration.

I honestly think that anyone who says the United States is surrendering its leadership is either completely unaware of what’s really going on or simply reacting out of fear.  This is not just the work of a few ideologues, as I’ve heard some people suggest.

DOT and FAA are 100% behind this.  Every one of the DoD folks that presented today and that I talked to says this is the future.  NASA is giving the new Chief Technologist a portfolio with real funding authority that includes innovative partnerships with commercial space.

This is a broad-based shift from building centrally-planned programs to fostering a sustainable industry that is responsive to the operational needs of its customers.  Boeing already seems to be positioning itself to thrive in the new environment with their announcement of their own commercial capsule design being developed in partnership with Bigelow Aerospace.  I think this kind of partnership between the “New Space” companies with experienced system integrators is likely to be common.

Alan Stern said today that he thinks human space flight will be healthier under the new plan, but that NASA still needs to set clear exploration goals.  I agree, which is why I’m glad to hear that Administrator Bolden has a vision for building a pathway to Mars.

The details executing on all this are still to come and there’s a whole second day of this conference tomorrow, but I am genuinely excited for the future of the space program.  We need more ideas, more options, and more innovation.  It looks like we’re going to get it.

Keith'snote: The 13th Annual FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference is underway despite the closure of the federal government again tomorrow (Thursday) and blizzard/whiteout conditions in the DC metro area. Kudos to FAA and the AIAA! Live tweeting of FAA AST conference is going on at #astconf and #FAAcstc. Charlie Bolden was scheduled to speak tomorrow morning. Lori Garver will speak instead. I am not certain if NASA TV will carry Garver's speech.

Pave New Worlds, Are We Alone podcast, SETI Institute

"The extra-solar planet count is more than 400 and rising. Before long we may find an Earth-like planet around another star. If we do, and can visit, what next? Stake out our claim on an alien world or tread lightly and preserve it? We'll look at what our record on Earth says about our planet stewardship. Also, whether a massive technological fix can get us out of our climate mess. Plus, what we can learn about extreme climate from our neighbors in the solar system, Venus and Mars."

- Ken Caldeira - Climate scientist from the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University
- Keith Cowing - Biologist, and editor of NASAwatch.com (podcast segment)
- Kathryn Denning - Anthropologist at York University in Canada
- Gary Davis - Director of the Joint Astronomy Center in Hilo, Hawaii
- David Grinspoon - Curator of the Denver Museum of Science and Nature

Analysis: NASA must take next giant step, Houston Chronicle

"The rationale given by administration officials was viable, said Keith Cowing, a former NASA manager who for years has served as editor of the NASA Watch Web site as well as Spaceref.com. "The costs were spiraling, the rockets weren't working and the cost would have been something NASA never would have been expected to get. I was surprised they went as far as they did. ... There's something to be said for killing it completely, once and for all." What Cowing and others -- meaning just about everyone else -- have a difficult time understanding is where exactly manned exploration under NASA is headed. "Flexible is an interesting word," Cowing said. "It means you adapt, you listen, you learn. But path means there is a direction you are heading. I don't see that yet."

Obama overhauls NASA's agenda in budget request, Washington Post

"The decision to kill Constellation is akin to President Richard M. Nixon's decision to end the Apollo program in the early 1970s and build the space shuttle."

Space group attacks Obama's plans for NASA; calls for lunar return, Orlando Sentinel

"The National Space Society, which was once headed by NASA's current deputy administrator Lori Garver and chief of Staff George Whitesides, said in a press release today that the White House plans to increase spending on science, technology and commercial space companies to ferry astronauts for the international space station was commendable. "However, we believe the President's 2011 budget request would leave the job only partly done," the release said. "NSS calls for the President and Congress to restore funding for human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit."

Impact of a scale-back goes far beyond Houston, Sen. Corwyn, Houston Chronicle

"But NASA cannot pass the baton of human spaceflight to a runner that is still trying on its shoes. The private sector requires years of further development before it can send a human being to the moon or compete with America's international rivals. NASA was assigned the Constellation mission for the same reason it took on Apollo: It remains the only entity in the country capable of getting it done."

NASA chief: Mars is our mission, Houston Chronicle

"The president's plan is not what our country needs at this time," said Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land. "We have been the world's leader for 50 years, and I can't accept that we're going to fall behind. We are going to fight, fight, fight to ensure that the next person who steps on the moon is an American." Olson said the right thing to do is add $3 billion to NASA's budget annually for the next five years to ensure Constellation is fully funded."

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden looks to work out NASA future, Huntsville times

"I've got tiger teams out there looking to put meat on the bones" to define future NASA work, Bolden told a group of reporters and editors during a meeting at The Times today. "This is not a decision that will be resolved in a day."

Davis defends NASA, Huntsville Times

"Davis, a candidate for governor, joined Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle and former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin in the meeting with 20 aerospace executives from companies such as Boeing and Dynetics to discuss strategies to keep the Ares rocket and return trips to the moon in the federal budget."

Research has shown that including
up to 5 percent w/w carbon nanofibers
in a silica backbone of polymer crosslinked
aerogels improves its strength,
tripling compressive modulus and
increasing tensile stress-at-break fivefold
with no increase in density or
decrease in porosity. In addition, the
initial silica hydrogels, which are produced
as a first step in manufacturing
the aerogels, can be quite fragile and
difficult to handle before cross-linking.
The addition of the carbon nanofiber
also improves the strength of the initial
hydrogels before cross-linking, improving
the manufacturing process. This
can also be extended to other oxide
aerogels, such as alumina or aluminosilicates,
and other nanofiber types, such
as silicon carbide.

The New Space Race, Paul Spudis

"Although it is not currently popular in this country to think about national interests and the competition of nations in space, others do not labor under this restriction. Our current human spaceflight effort, the International Space Station (ISS), has shown us both the benefits and drawbacks of cooperative projects. Soon, we will not have the ability to send crew to and from the ISS. But that's not a problem; the Russians have graciously agreed to transport us - at $50 million a pop. Look for that price to rise once the Shuttle is fully retired. To understand whether there is a new space race or not, we must understand its history. Why would nations compete in space anyway? And if such competition occurs, how might it affect us? What should we have in space: Kumbaya or Starship Troopers? Or is the answer somewhere between the two?"

As @bethbeck mentioned yesterday in her post “Ideas on How to Open NASA?  Spill!” -

We’ve deployed a cool idea-sharing tool to let you give input, comment on input of others, and vote ideas up or down. Your ideas will feed into NASA’s Open Government Plan. You need an account first, but that’s as simple as adding your e-mail and a password.

We are looking forward to your ideas!

P.S. If you are interested in visiting the Open Initiative websites of other government agencies, Sunglight Labs has a great tracking site setup.  I’ve also included a list of all the sites for you here:

JSC chief 'anxious' about facility's future, Houston Chronicle

"Coats and NASA administrator Charles Bolden met with reporters after Bolden spoke with Johnson employees in Houston. "The workers are hurting," Bolden acknowledged. Bolden said he could not say what new programs the Houston space center will attract in the wake of Constellation that may account for some of the jobs lost. "We're at the very beginning of trying to understand what this really does mean," said Bolden, himself a former astronaut. "We can't give any answers until we find out what the follow-on programs will be, and what people we can transition to them."

Manned Flights Beyond Earth's Orbit Unlikely Until at Least 2020, Wall Street Journal

"The Obama Administration's revised manned space program doesn't envision U.S. astronauts venturing beyond Earth's orbit until at least 2020, and perhaps years later, according to the head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration."

Mission correction, Boston Globe

"I hear a lot of people saying, 'Obama kills moon program.' It's not true; the moon program was moribund. What killed the Constellation program [to return to the moon] was years of underfunding since President Bush announced it in 2004,'' said Jeffrey Hoffman, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former astronaut who made five space shuttle flights. "NASA is now engaged on a quick study of what really are the technologies we need to have another go at human space flight beyond the earth."

A New Space Program, opinion, NY Times

"If done right, the president's strategy could pay off handsomely. If not, it could be the start of a long, slow decline from the nation's pre-eminent position as a space-faring power. We are particularly concerned that the White House has not identified a clear goal -- Mars is our choice -- or set even a notional deadline for getting there. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Congress need to keep the effort focused and adequately financed."

The Last Shuttle To Leave Earth at Night, SpaceRef

"An hour after the orange glow of Endeavour's liftoff lit the Kennedy Space Center press site on Feb. 8, NASA officials beamed at the bit of bright news illuminating an otherwise tough couple of weeks. The smooth countdown for STS-130 and the relatively few technical problems -- a bit of foam loss, but nothing judged too serious -- shifted the tone of the press conference to one that joked about workers missing the Super Bowl. "While I was getting evil glares for making them come in -- I don't know why it was my fault -- they were happy with the result," said Mike Moses, the shuttle program's launch integration manager, as journalists chuckled."

NASA Administrator, JSC Director Set Media Roundtable Today at JSC

"NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Johnson Space Center Director Mike Coats will be available for a roundtable discussion with media at 2:30 p.m. CST today, Monday, Feb. 8, at the Johnson Space Center. Bolden and Coats will discuss the fiscal year 2011 budget request and bold new developments in the nation's civil space effort. Media planning to attend should contact the JSC newsroom at 281-483-5111 no later than noon CST.

The event will not be broadcast on NASA Television. For more information on NASA and its programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov"

Keith's update: @Astro_Sugar is twittering comments from Bolden's employee event at JSC in real time here.

Keith's update: These comments (Tweets) were posted by a NASA employee during (and about) an official NASA event during the course of their work day. Astro_Sugar is now protecting their Tweets but you can still read them here. Earlier in the day these Tweets were made without any protection and were reteweeted and referenced by other NASA employees during work hours. Members of the media are also among this person's followers before I made mention of them. I was asked to remove mention of this from NASA Watch but due to the public nature of these Tweets and the fact that people were readily telling others about them I decided to leave the link intact. These comments were overtly public. Those postings (Tweets) aprovide a nice snapshot of Charlie Bolden's employee interactions today at NASA JSC.

Are you someone who knows exactly what it takes to make NASA the best agency possible? Do you doodle ideas on cocktail napkins and mail them to a NASA Center? Do you wake up early in the morning to watch Space Shuttle launches (like this morning’s 4:14 a.m. EST STS-130 launch) or stay up all night for mission coverage of Space Station? Do you wish you could wear a NASA badge and sit in a cubicle somewhere in the bureaucratic maze at a NASA installation?

Have we got a job for you!

Get your creative juices flowing. Capture all your ideas. We’re listening. You have until March 19, 2010 to share your ideas with us about how NASA can be more:

1. Transparent,
2. Participatory,
3. Collaborative, and
4. Innovative.

We’ve deployed a cool idea-sharing tool to let you give input, comment on input of others, and vote ideas up or down. Your ideas will feed into NASA’s Open Government Plan. You need an account first, but that’s as simple as adding your e-mail and a password.

Go ahead. Give it a try.

And if you find any ideas by me in the system, feel free to give them a generous thumbs up!  (I’m just getting started….)

“We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.” – John Gardner 1965

Let’s tackle those opportunities!

Crosspost on GovLoop and BethBeck’s Blog.

China space program shoots for moon, Washington Times

"Senior Chinese space officials have told their state media that China could be on the moon by 2022 at the outside. Other authoritative Chinese space engineers see a moon landing as a next step in the Tiangong program that will launch three Chinese space stations into Earth orbit between 2011 and 2015. In 2008, NASA scientists told the Bush White House that, with the technology currently available to the Chinese space program, Chinese cosmonauts could be on the moon by 2017."

The Boy Who Looked at the Moon, Homer Hickam

"The man stood watching the glowing television sets stacked in the storefront window. The window was dirty, the glass cracked and repaired with a strip of tape. A boy stood beside him. "What are you looking at, Dad?" "I'm watching the Chinese celebrate the completion of their moonlab, son. Look, there they are on the moon. See how happy they are?" "They always seem to be so happy. How come nobody around here is ever that happy, Dad?" The man looked at his son in surprise. "Well, I don't know. I guess I haven't thought much about that."

NASA: "Just before midnight the six STS-130 crew members will be climbing into their flight suits, helmets and gloves at Kennedy's Operations and Checkout Building. The flight suits contain an oxygen supply, communications equipment and a temperature control system that offer protection in the event of an emergency and pressure changes during liftoff. The crew also will be attending a briefing with flight controllers to discuss details on weather conditions at Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility and the transoceanic abort landing, or TAL, sites."
 
Keith's note: Stay up to date with STS-130 on spaceflightnow.com for the best web coverage with Miles O'Brien, David Waters, and Leroy Chiao. Alas, they never link back to us ...

According to NASA: "Managers officially have scheduled space shuttle Endeavour's next launch attempt for Monday, Feb. 8 at 4:14 a.m. EST.

The Mission Management Team will meet at 6:15 p.m. Sunday to give the "go" to fill Endeavour's external fuel tank with propellants.

Tank loading would begin at 6:45 p.m."

NASA Idea Brainstorming Tool, Open Government at NASA

"NASA is seeking input on the creation of the NASA Open Government Plan. As outlined in the Open Government Directive, this brainstorming tool is a mechanism gain input on how to make the key principle of openness a meaningful pillar of NASA's mission, and how to implement participation, transparency and collaboration activities such that NASA becomes more relevant, efficient, and accountable. Key ideas and suggestions developed through this process will be prioritized in the NASA Open Government Plan."

"OPM: The Federal Government will be open in the morning operating under an unscheduled leave policy with a planned 4 hour early dismissal. Employees reporting for work should be dismissed by their agencies 4 hours earlier than their normal departure time from work. OPM is continuing to closely monitor developing weather conditions should there be a need to reassess the Government's operating status."