Orion Medical Blog

After a trip out of town its time to catch up on last weeks news.

NASA, Lockheed fret over Orion funding

Astronauts, NASA brass recognize Phoenix contributions to space program 

Orbital to provide Orion crew exploration vehicle launch abort test booster for NASA

NASA turns to past for ideas – Orion will use Apollo-style equipment for ocean recovery

NASA’S Orion Program: Hardware Progresses, Challenges Ahead

Space program needs to pick up pace

Orbital to Provide Abort Test Booster for NASA Testing

DED chief hopes funding keeps NASA plant in N.O.

NASA urged by Congress to continue planning robotic missions

Less is more for astronauts – As spacecraft get smaller, greener, shorter occupants in big demand

Remarks to Conference on Quality in the Space and Defense Industries
Cape Canaveral, Florida
Rex Geveden
NASA Associate Administrator
March 26, 2007

Thank you Rob (Rob Ellison, KSC) for that generous introduction and good morning ladies and gentlemen. It pleases me to be here back at the Cape to kick off the nation’s pre-eminent aerospace quality conference. I’ve spent almost exactly half of my life, which turns out to be 23 years, in the aerospace business. The first six of those were in strategic space and the last 17 in civil space with NASA. And, as an engineer, project manager, program manager, and institutional manager, I’ve worked closely with your community, the quality community, in every single one of those years. So, I count you as friends, and I hope the feeling is mutual. I doubt it, but I hope it. By the way, you picked a perfect setting for the conference. A few miles north of here, on Banana Creek at Launch Complex 39, is the place where America’s space exploration dreams come true. Occasionally, I’m called upon to deliver guest briefings in connection with our Shuttle launches, and I always remind people that this is only one of three spaceports on planet Earth from which humans have been launched into orbit. And Launch Complex 39 is the only site from which humans have departed Earth for another heavenly body.     Read more

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Shana Dale
NASA Deputy Administrator
JPL’s 19th Annual High-Tech Conference for Small Business
March 5th, 2007

Thank you Glenn (Delgado Assistant Administrator for the Office of Small Business Programs) for those kind words of introduction. I’d also like to thank Eugene L Tattini, Deputy Director JPL and Tom May, JPL Business Opportunities Office and Supplier Diversity Program.   Read more

With the promise of spring warmth finally headed for a cold-weary east coast, the Orion and Ares programs are making steady progress towards the major events of the year.

The ESMD (Exploration Systems Mission Directorate) top priorities remain selection of prime contractors for the Ares 1 second stage and the launcher’s instrument unit. A number of meetings marked the March and early April calendars at several different NASA facilities.  Read more

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.announced the appointment of Bill Townsend as vice president for Exploration Systems. Townsend will lead the company’s pursuit of the Instrument Unit contract for the Ares I launch vehicle. He
will relocate from Boulder to the company’s Huntsville, Ala. office.

Townsend has been vice president and general manager of Ball Aerospace’s Civil Space Systems division since joining Ball Aerospace in September 2004. In that role, he led the company’s pursuit of civilian remote-sensing instruments and scientific instruments, spacecraft, and other flight hardware for prime contractors and civilian government
agencies.  Read more

NASA continues to have too little funding for everything that the space agency, authorizing committees, appropriations committees, and the science community want it to do. This lack of money was a consistent theme at a series of recent hearings, echoing the same problem that was raised a year ago at hearings on Capitol Hill.

In late February, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) and his colleagues on the Space, Aeronautics, and Related Sciences Subcommittee received testimony from NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. Nelson highlighted the funding problem in his opening remarks, citing the NASA Authorization Act of 2005 and then commenting that “the White House has requested less funding for NASA than authorized by that act. For that reason, and due to the continuing resolution for this fiscal year, NASA will receive $1.7 billion less than authorized in 2007. If the President’s 2008 budget is adopted, NASA will have received $3 billion less than the amount planned under the two-year authorization act. These shortfalls are in addition to the $2 billion that this little agency had to take from other programs to recover from the tragedy of the Columbia accident and return the shuttle to flight. If we continue on the President’s path, we face an extended period when the United States will have no human access to space. I say this is unacceptable – especially at a time when other nations are aggressively developing space technology.” The “extended period” Nelson was referring to is the time between the retirement of the space shuttle by the fall of 2010 and the earliest operation of its replacement vehicle that has been delayed by funding shortfalls to late 2014 or 2015. During these four+ years, NASA will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase transportation to the space station from Russia, China, or yet-to-be developed private interests. Griffin acknowledged that this was “unseemly.”    Read more

As early as 2009, applicants to the astronaut corps will face new size limits, including on weight and sitting height. That’s a result of NASA’s plan to retire the space shuttle in 2010 and switch entirely to smaller vehicles. The exact limits haven’t been determined because new vehicles are still in development.

Since shuttle flights began in 1981, NASA has restricted only height. The last time it recruited a new batch of astronauts, in 2003, the minimum height was 4 feet 10 1/2 inches; the maximum was 6 feet 4 inches.  Read more

The competition is on for two aerospace industry teams vying for the contract to build part of NASA’s next astronaut-launching rocket.

Boeing unveiled its team March 28 in the competition to build upper stages for NASA’s planned Ares I crew launcher, a program that represents the company’s last chance for the next several years to win a major hardware-building role in the emerging U.S. human space exploration program.

Bids are due April 13 for the estimated $900 million contract, scheduled for award late this summer, to produce the hardware based on NASA specifications. The competition pits Boeing’s team, which includes Northrop Grumman, against one led by Alliant Techsystems.  Read more

Sometime in 2010, the world’s leading space agency will say goodbye to human spaceflight for more than four years. And that has U.S. policymakers worried.

The flight gap will occur because NASA is winding down its space shuttle program near the end of 2010 to move into the next phase of space exploration — the moon and Mars. NASA’s next-generation spacecraft, the Orion capsule, won’t be ready for piloted flight until March 2015.

During those gap years, the United States must rely on private contractors and other nations if it wants to send astronauts and cargo to the international space station. Read more

NASA’s Kathryn Henkel Kynard has spent a career working main propulsion systems, first for the space shuttle and now for Ares I, the crew launch vehicle that will carry the Orion spacecraft and its crew to Earth orbit in the coming decade.

Kynard is systems engineering integration lead for the main propulsion system and integrated production team for the Ares I upper stage. She and her team, part of the Engineering Directorate at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., are responsible for integrating all main propulsion system hardware components, software and avionics into the upper stage and J-2X engine, which will power the stage to orbit. This hardware, which includes the valves, feedlines and tanks, are vital to the operation of the stage’s main propulsion system.  Read more