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NASA announced the formation of the Office of Program Analysis & Evaluation today. From the ESAS project description: bq. The Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) is a 90-day study examining many of the larger questions associated with the Vision for Space Exploration. Some of the topics the ESAS is reviewing include the requirements for returning to the Moon and extending human exploration to Mars, as well as possibilities for accelerating the development of the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). The ESAS is being led by Dr. Douglas Stanley.

It sounds as though a lot of what the Aldridge Commission did in terms of strategy is being redone by this new office. Which probably means that while the Aldridge Commission was mandated by federal law to hold public meetings, I doubt if this office will be doing that within its 90 day time limit. So much for transparency…

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After contributing here and at Masten (the launch company we both work for), Jonathan Goff has finally bit the bullet and created his own blog: Selenian Boondocks. Welcome Jonathan to the blogosphere and wish him well….

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Depending on what minute you catch Congress it looks as though NASA's aeronautical budget is going to be restored. The problem is that it isn't clear what the demand is. Some suggest that the workers will be paid to dust unused wind tunnels. If there is money but no work then it might make sense to see if they can be used by industry somehow.

My suggestion is a type of externship. This has been suggested elsewhere but often it required the company to deal with the onerous overhead of dealing with NASA regulations. For many companies that overhead would be a severe distraction from the business of building products.

The prefered system would be to flip the point of view around: make NASA apply to the companies. Create a system whereby companies can easily advertise positions and/or research that needed to be done and have NASA's budget pay for the time needed to implement it. The same could go for resources: a NASA wind tunnel staff could make proposals to “alt.space” companies such as “instead of doing all that CFD analysis, just come down to our wind tunnel and we can do it for you”. The proposal could even include monetary or resource allocations that the company would provide. I.e. “NASA Ames wind tunnel #7 plus two engineers would like to help you do supersonic tests of your airframe, NASA will kick in 80% of the employee costs and 100% of the wind tunnel costs. We believe that our resources can save you X percentage in your vehicle development costs.” The NASA employee technically works for the company as an independent contractor. They follow company policies and procedures. But their salary and benefits are paid by NASA.

This puts the onus on the NASA staff to find something interesting to do. And it sets a bar such that the company only gets motivated staffers that apply. It really is a classical externship. And once the employee rotates back into NASA they now have a different perspective on how things can be done.

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I've re-enabled comments but Anonymous posting is gone completely. Sorry 'bout that. If you don't like it then find a spammer and beat them up…

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Just in case anyone was still suffering from the delusion that the VSE is actually going to lead to humanity's settlement of space, Spaceref has the scoop.

Stay tuned? Yeah right, I've had about enough of this lousy rerun.

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Given these two NASAWatch reports: NASA Kills Space Academy Procurement and Griffin Seeks to Reverse O'Keefe Outsourcing Plans, it now appears that the Aldridge Commission report isn't just being ignored, its being actively considered the wrong path. If it were just being ignored you could imagine that statistically something in there might end up being adopted in some fashion or other. Instead it appears that the Whitehouse is not only actively ignoring it but that Griffin is doing the exact opposite of whatever the report recommended.

NASAWatch's Keith Cowing ends the outsourcing piece with a “Stay tuned” comment. Well, Griffin said the same thing over a month ago. The thumb is sitting above the channel change button on the remote. If this had been any other station I would have switched long ago.

Remember, a vision is only as good as the execution behind it.

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Clark Lindsey expands on a topic that has been randomly and lightly touched on at several recent conferences and actually says that we should setup a Space Press Syndicate.

Well, count Rocketforge in! I definitely think we shouldn't try and recreate MSM's version of syndication. Something along the lines of Pajamas Media would be interesting. But as Rand says, the problem is making it pay. Well, the real problem is making it pay enough to be interesting. Hmm… The Pajamas in Space News Service. I wonder if spacepajamas.com is available…

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Due to comment spam and postnuke issues with moderating comments I've decided to turn off comments until I can fix the problem. If there's something in particular you want to comment on then send it to michael@rocketforge.org and I'll figure out something.

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According to this release from JSC NASA will “collaborate on strategies for spaceflight systems”:

bq.

NASA and California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) have signed a two-year agreement to research strategies for future human spaceflight systems for exploration missions and commercial space access.

The Space Act Agreement is part of NASA's collaboration with private industry to seek innovations in space flight that may one day lead the way in expanding the frontiers of exploration. The results may benefit both NASA's exploration activities and assist in developing new capabilities for commercial access to space.

Through this partnership, NASA and SpaceX also may identify other technical areas of collaboration that could leverage research and development resources.

I'm not sure if I would have done this but so far I think Elon is doing everything right so I have to think this is a good thing or else he wouldn't be doing it.

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I'm sure someone has already thought of this but here it is anyway….

So lets say we don't find large amounts of hydrogen stored as frozen water at the lunar poles. But there's all that great oxygen there! Its such a shame to let all of it go unused as oxidizer. Yea, we could have fun with the aluminum and other minerals but those would be as solids and those just don't do well in areas where you need small and precise burns for orbital corrections. So that means you still really want hydrogen (and possibly carbon) to either make some nice hydrocarbons for easy tanking and storage or you still want pure hydrogen for those long burns to Mars.

So that means, at least until we can mine comets and such, that we still need to bring some hydrogen up from the surface with us. But why do we have to “bring” that stuff up on big boosters. I mean that stuff floats anyway. Who needs an engine?

So here's the question for all the engineers reading this: given what JP Aerospace is doing with its balloons, why can we fill up some REALLY FREAKING BIG BALLONS with insane gobs of hydrogen and let them float up high were they can be grabbed by a teather in LEO and boosted up higher and then cryogenically stored or converted? How big of a balloon could you make that wouldn't get ripped to shreads by winds?

Just a thought… Comment from Charles Radley:

bq.

The devil is in the details.

Air drag primarily……

The highest a balloon can go is about 60 km, there is still a ton of air

drag at that altitude.

Objects like orbiting balloons decay rapidly, need to be in an orbit at

least 10,000 km altitude to be reasonably stable.

Getting up from floating in the stratosphere at 60 km to a 10,000 km orbit

requires a lot of acceleration and delt-vee, the propellant consumed would

probably exceeed the amount of hydrogen recovered….need to run some

numbers and do some simulations.

Also the air drag during acceleration to orbit will cause the ballon to get

very hot, it will melt unless made of some thick heavy refractory

materials….the weight penalty for that will be a killer, many times more

weight than the weight of the H2 itself.

The structural loads on something as flimsy as a balloon would rip it to

shreds, loads due to two sources, first the acceleration, second the air

drag. Making a balloon strong enough would be a challenge, the added

weight would probably mean the balloon would not get off the ground. Have

to be made of some exotic material, like the stuff proposed for a lunar

tether (cf Jerome Pearson).

That gets expensive.

Also……

Rendevous between an orbiting tether and an object in the atmosphere is

tricky, and confined to the equatorial plane. Changing inclinations is

prohibitive. Getting a balloon to stay in the right place for long enough

will be challenging, winds will tend to blow it every which way.

Interesting concept, but probably not economic due to the practicalities.

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