NASA / Tony Gray

WHY I’M GLAD THE SPACE SHUTTLE PROGRAM IS NO MORE... Earlier today, the orbiter Atlantis safely touched down at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida...officially ending a 30-year-old program that resulted in the launch of great observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the creation of a giant orbiting research outpost known as the International Space Station (ISS). While there are lots of folks out there who think that the space shuttles could’ve safely flown for many more years to come (which they most likely could have), I’m glad the program has ended. I’d prefer if people debate on how many more useful years the shuttles have than actually risk losing another of these amazing vehicles in an accident that would obviously conclude the program in a tragic and disgraceful note. But there are other reasons why I’m glad the space shuttle is now fully retired.

I’ve been interested in the space program since 4th grade. I’ve been interested in movies for just as long—with me growing an interest in filmmaking after drawing storyboards for my own submarine thriller upon watching The Hunt for Red October at the theater in 1990 (when I was also in 4th grade). It was filmmaking I pursued in college...and it was between early 2003 and mid-2005 (from the time I was in film school at Cal State Long Beach to me starting a cool 1-year employment gig at Paramount Pictures in Hollywood) that my interest in the movie industry was at its strongest. I worked on various short films, wrote feature-length screenplays, edited videos (on Final Cut Pro, but mostly on Windows Movie Maker, heh) that I shot using my old Fujifilm still digital camera and even worked on another short film that starred a gangsta rapper one of my college classmates knew. I got my first real job in the entertainment industry in October 2004 before starting work at Paramount Pictures in July of 2005. (Sorry to toot my own horn like that...just trying to make a point.) The reason why I could completely focus on my work in the entertainment industry at this time is because there was nothing major happening in the space program between early 2003 and mid-2005—due to the 2-year hiatus caused by the space shuttle Columbia disaster.

Sure, there were the Spirit and Opportunity rovers launching towards Mars in 2003, me submitting my name that same year to fly on the Deep Impact spacecraft to Comet Tempel 1 in 2005, Spirit and Opportunity landing on Mars in early 2004 and the Cassini spacecraft entering orbit around Saturn in July of 2004...but these awesome unmanned missions still didn’t attract my interest as strongly as watching 7 astronauts suit up and soar to the ISS or HST on a technological marvel like the space shuttle. I was on the computer watching NASA TV when Cassini did its Saturn Orbit Insertion Maneuver, and cut out practically every newspaper article there was about the Mars rovers. But it's human spaceflight that had the greatest impact on me.

Slowly but surely, my interest in the space program started to outgrow my passion for moviemaking in mid-to-late 2005. The launch of space shuttle Discovery on STS-114 (the first flight since the Columbia accident) in July of 2005 was an exciting time—but I started my job at Paramount Pictures that same month and wasn’t totally distracted by the Return To Flight mission then. My interest in space exploration quadrupled upon learning in late September of 2005 that I could’ve had my name fly to Pluto onboard NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft [I missed the opportunity by about two weeks...and grew obsessed with searching for the next robotic space mission that I could have my moniker on (which would be the Dawn spacecraft before it traveled to asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres)]. But what really diverted my focus away from nurturing my film career was the space shuttle officially resuming flight operations in the summer of 2006...when Discovery flew on the STS-121 mission. The countdown clock at the very top of this Blog was born in the days leading up to the launch of STS-121...and if you visit my archive section for July 2006 and onward, then you’ll see that the number of posts I made about spaceflight exploded tremendously once NASA was back to work constructing the ISS (starting with STS-115).

So almost 6 years after Discovery’s launch on STS-114, the space shuttle program is now a thing of the past. After half a decade of keeping track of ISS assembly missions, now is the time to get back to focusing on my film career (which has stagnated considerably). Sure, I’ll still be distracted by upcoming robotic missions such as Juno (which launches to Jupiter next month), GRAIL (which launches to the Moon in September) and the Curiosity Mars rover (which launches to the Red Planet in November), but hopefully there won’t be anymore space-related events that preoccupied me as much as shuttle flights did. NASA’s Space Launch System is scheduled to lift off for the first time in 2016 (don’t hold your breath, though)...with the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle along with it. So for the next five years presumably, I can focus on pursuing and advancing my career in an industry I wanted to be part of since watching a Tom Clancy novel-inspired submarine thriller on the big screen in 1990. Hopefully. Not to sound selfish—but human spaceflight's uncertain future in this country may be a blessing for me, personally. That is all.

NASA

ORION (or Whatever-You-Now-Call-It) Update...

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NASA Announces Key Decision For Next Deep Space Transportation System (Press Release)

WASHINGTON -- NASA has reached an important milestone for the next U.S. transportation system that will carry humans into deep space. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden announced today that the system will be based on designs originally planned for the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle. Those plans now will be used to develop a new spacecraft known as the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV).

"We are committed to human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and look forward to developing the next generation of systems to take us there," Bolden said. "The NASA Authorization Act lays out a clear path forward for us by handing off transportation to the International Space Station to our private sector partners, so we can focus on deep space exploration. As we aggressively continue our work on a heavy lift launch vehicle, we are moving forward with an existing contract to keep development of our new crew vehicle on track."

Lockheed Martin Corp. will continue working to develop the MPCV. The spacecraft will carry four astronauts for 21-day missions and be able to land in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast. The spacecraft will have a pressurized volume of 690 cubic feet, with 316 cubic feet of habitable space. It is designed to be 10 times safer during ascent and entry than its predecessor, the space shuttle.

"This selection does not indicate a business as usual mentality for NASA programs," said Douglas Cooke, associate administrator for the agency's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington. "The Orion government and industry team has shown exceptional creativity in finding ways to keep costs down through management techniques, technical solutions and innovation."

Source: NASA.Gov

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Lockheed Martin

PHOTOS OF THE DAY... In case you wanted to know how huge of an obsessive space nerd I am, here are the latest (or oldest) evidence of that. Ever since I was in 4th grade (back in um, 1989-90), I would cut out practically every space-related article from a newspaper (specifically the Los Angeles Times, since I live in SoCal) and put them in plastic report covers I bought at the local supermarket. My interest in the space program started in the 3rd grade, and increased dramatically around August 25, 1989, when the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past Neptune and its icy moon Triton. During this flyby, I would get up early in the morning and see a photo that Voyager 2 took of the giant gas planet and its main satellite on the front page of the L.A. Times almost every day during the following week. In the photos above is the very first album (I don’t want to call it a scrapbook, despite the fact the latest albums are entitled The Space Scrapbook, haha) I worked on. As you can see, it was actually autographed by someone who worked at NASA. He visited my elementary school and gave a presentation to the entire student body when I was in 6th grade back in 1992.





As you can see below, I also did an album (back in 5th grade, I think. Or maybe it was 7th grade?) on the Persian Gulf War (the first one in 1991, that is) and the U.S. involvement in Somalia (also in ’91). Yep, I’m a space/tech/war nut who has lots of free time on my hands...especially since last January. That is all.

SpaceX

IMAGES OF THE DAY... Meet SpaceX's newest creation, the Falcon Heavy rocket...which will become the most powerful launch vehicle to soar into the sky since the Saturn V rocket sent Apollo astronauts to the Moon more than 40 years ago. The Falcon Heavy is set to lift off on its maiden voyage from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California sometime in 2013 (which would also be the year that NASA's Orion spacecraft is suppose to undergo its first test flight onboard what is currently rumored to be a Delta IV vehicle. Is SpaceX trying to change NASA's mind on this?). For more info on the Falcon Heavy, click here.


SpaceX

NASA / Kevin O'Connell

THE DRAGON TAKES FLIGHT... At 7:43 AM, Pacific Standard Time today, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying SpaceX’s first fully operational Dragon vehicle was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. This was the second launch of Falcon 9 since its maiden flight last June, while this was Dragon’s first voyage to Earth orbit before it finally begins ferrying cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) next year. At 11:02 AM, PST, the Dragon capsule safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean (500 miles off the coast of Mexico, to be exact) after re-entering Earth’s atmosphere...making this the first time a commercial company successfully brought a spacecraft back to the Earth’s surface from orbit. SpaceX deemed this flight a 100% success.



Today is a historic day for manned spaceflight...especially for the United States. With the space shuttle fleet retiring next year, the launch of Falcon 9 had to be a complete success and the on-orbit performance of Dragon completely flawless to vindicate President Obama’s decision earlier this year to cancel NASA’s Constellation program and rely on private companies to send cargo (and even astronauts) to low-Earth orbit. SpaceX was suppose to conduct one more "demo" flight of the Dragon spacecraft before it was to finally dock the capsule to the ISS for actual cargo operations. Here’s hoping NASA will have a change of plans and allow SpaceX to consolidate those two flights into one mission, thus allowing Falcon 9 and Dragon to immediately usher in the era of commercial spaceflight just as the space shuttle program is about to come to a close. That is all.


SpaceX / Michael Altenhofen


SpaceX / Michael Altenhofen


SpaceX / Michael Altenhofen


SpaceX / Michael Altenhofen

KUDOS TO SPACEX for the successful maiden launch of its Falcon 9 rocket! Today’s historic liftoff oughta be a sign that the job of sending crew and cargo into low-Earth orbit by NASA can soon be handed over to commercial launch companies...and that NASA can focus on sending astronauts to asteroids by um, 2025...as envisioned by Obama. I’m still upset that he cancelled the Constellation moon program though.

All photos in this entry courtesy of Matt Stroshane/Getty Images

NASA TV

IMAGES OF THE DAY... Here are some still photos and screen captures from the video of the Pad Abort 1 (PA-1) test for the Orion spacecraft today. The test, which took place in White Sands, New Mexico, was very successful... It’s too bad Orion won’t need this launch abort system if the capsule indeed becomes a lifeboat for the International Space Station as planned. Thanks Obam— Nevermind.

Screen captures:


NASA TV


NASA TV


NASA TV


NASA TV

Still photos:


NASA


NASA


William Faulkner / Aviation Week & Space Technology


William Faulkner / Aviation Week & Space Technology


NASA


NASA


NASA


NASA


NASA

NASA / Jim Grossmann

OBAMA VISITS THE SPACE COAST... Earlier today, the President flew down to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to make a speech about his new plans for NASA. In his speech, Obama talked about how he wanted U.S. astronauts to visit an asteroid by 2025, finally get to Mars by the 2030s, continue to promote private companies like SpaceX to launch cargo and crew to the International Space Station (ISS), convert the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle into an ISS lifeboat instead (rather than canceling Orion as previously planned), and authorizing NASA to finalize a new design for a heavy-lift launch vehicle (HLV) by 2015.

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2015. What I find funny about this is that Obama wants NASA to finalize the design of the HLV a little more than one year before the President would complete a 2nd term in the Oval Office (assuming he got one). So even if NASA does design a new rocket that would efficiently and cheaply take astronauts out of low Earth orbit again, the space agency would be at the mercy of yet another White House administration that would make even more drastic (RE: crappy) changes to the U.S. space program by early 2017...and scrap the HLV and any other thing NASA will try to get done once the space shuttle program ends this year.

Awesome.


NASA / Jack Pfaller

29 YEARS AGO TODAY, Columbia embarked on its very first flight into space...starting a 2-day test mission that heralded the dawn of the space shuttle era. Now, this storied program is only three flights away (this excludes Discovery’s current mission on orbit) from coming to an end...leaving the International Space Station (ISS) behind as its prime legacy and paving the way for commercial launch vehicles to send NASA astronauts into orbit (which may be a bad thing depending on whether or not you supported the soon-to-be-defunct Constellation moon program, like I did) within the next few years. The last flight, STS-133 (which will be flown on Discovery), is set to launch on September 16 of this year...though it may be delayed because of current issues with the payload of STS-134: the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, or AMS. (The STS-134 flight is scheduled to launch before STS-133 for logistics reasons, on July 29.) Below is a short Youtube video chronicling Columbia’s inaugural flight from launch to landing...



If that blue ribbon panel (known as the Augustine Committee) that was appointed by President Obama last summer was correct in its assessment, then the shuttle program will conclude early next year. But assuming the hardware issues with AMS are resolved sometime this month, we’ll see Discovery’s final trip to the ISS complete the shuttle program early this fall. Which I’m hoping on. If the Augustine Committee is proven wrong with its forecast on the end of the shuttle program, then one must wonder what else it was wrong about in terms of the information it fed Obama that led him to end NASA’s moon program two months ago. Would the Ares I rocket be ready for launch by 2014-’15, as NASA stated? Or 2017...as Norm Augustine’s panel predicted? Would American astronauts have returned to the lunar surface no earlier than 2028, as this panel foretold? Or would Congress have dished out the money and provide NASA the funding that would’ve allowed it to return astronauts to Earth's only natural satellite by 2020, as originally envisioned? I know I’m getting extremely off-topic here, but the end of the shuttle era begs these questions. It remains to be seen where America’s human spaceflight program is headed...after almost 30 years of triumph and tragedy that began with Columbia’s quick stint into space in the spring of ’81.



All images and video courtesy of NASA

Jupiter DIRECT... Just thought I'd give props to the webmaster of NASAWatch.com for summing up how I myself feel about a rocket that’s been discussed on space-related message boards for the past few years: the Jupiter DIRECT, or just 'DIRECT', launch vehicle. I’m not gonna go into any technical detail about DIRECT (since I would essentially be promoting this fantasy rocket if I did), but the way some of its supporters—or ‘fanboys’ according to the NASAWatch webmaster, Keith Cowing—fawn over this vehicle on online message boards (particularly that of NASASpaceflight.com) would make you think that DIRECT was God’s gift to human spaceflight.


If there’s (currently) one good thing that came from President Obama’s plan to scrap the Constellation moon program, it’s that NASA will have to rely on commercial launch vehicles to send astronauts into space...taking a ‘shuttle-derived launch vehicle’ (SDLV) like DIRECT out of the equation. The only SDLVs that I would've supported were the ones NASA was developing before Obama changed its plans: the Ares I and V rockets. I would totally be annoyed if NASA gave serious thought to building a contraption that was conjured up by some chump on the Web. The way that several space fanboys talk about DIRECT is analogous to the way lots of movie fanboys (I’d include myself in this group, admittedly) talk about upcoming summer blockbusters: Getting into serious discussions about what they want to see and hope will be in the film...to the point where they start accepting rumors or ideas that are posted online as fact...and then realizing at the end that the powers-that-be in Hollywood created a final product that is totally far from what the fanboys visualized.

Case in point with that final (long-ass) sentence in the previous paragraph: The next Batman film. Type in ‘Batman 3’ on Google, and you’ll see rumors about Johnny Depp playing The Riddler, or Philip Seymour-Hoffman portraying The Penguin. Admittedly again, I’ve been guilty of writing fan fiction about the next Batman flick a few years back, but according to the NASAWatch article linked to at the top of this Blog, at least I would never write letters to Warner Bros. and/or plan to picket outside this studio to make the executives go with my ideas.

(If you’re too lazy to check out that NASAWatch article, it's about how the creator of DIRECT proposed to conduct a protest rally outside the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and sent letters to White House officials and other folks in Washington D.C. to influence space policy)

To end this entry... When it comes down to it, space advocates can keep harping on about a launch vehicle that they want to see become a reality, but NASA—like filmmakers working on the next Hollywood tentpole flick—will come up with its own rocket when the time (and money) comes. Fanboys on spaceflight and film message boards should realize that 97% percent of the time, an idea that they’re concocting online will remain just that: an Internet concoction.

That is all.



PS: That final 3% would be fanboys providing input on such movies as 2002’s Spider-Man (Peter Parker having biological webshooters instead of mechanical ones), 2006’s Snakes on a Plane (Samuel L. Jackson saying "motherf**kin" a couple of times in the film after it wasn’t originally in the script) and Transformers 2 (a ‘Pretender’ robot—played by Isabel Lucas—being included in this movie).

PHOTOS OF THE DAY... Since a flawless first launch of this rocket would somehow validate President Obama’s (crappy) decision to cancel the Ares rockets and the rest of NASA’s Constellation moon program last month, just thought I’d post up pics of the successful "hotfire" test of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle yesterday. The hotfire test involved the ignition of all 9 Merlin engines that comprise the first stage of the rocket. The engines fired for only 3.5 seconds, put presumably this was enough time for SpaceX to verify whether or not its newest vehicle (SpaceX's other one being the Falcon 1 rocket) will be ready for a maiden flight that is currently scheduled for April 12. We shall see.

FYI, an on-time launch of Falcon 9 on April 12 would be pretty symbolic...since Columbia ushered in the space shuttle era with the liftoff of STS-1 on April 12, 1981...and Falcon 9 will be ushering in a new age of commercial spaceflight to—low earth orbit. But not to deep space. That’s NASA’s job assuming it gets proper funding from Obama and Congress starting next year. Most likely not.

All images courtesy of SpaceX / Chris Thompson

NASA / Troy Cryder

ONE YEAR AGO TODAY, I flew down to central Florida to visit Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for the first time. What would’ve made today even sweeter would’ve been the launch of Endeavour on the first flight of this final year in the space shuttle program. Endeavour’s first launch attempt was scrubbed early this morning due to bad weather...and is making a second liftoff attempt a couple of hours from now (though the weather may be problematic yet again tonight). Will I visit KSC again, you ask? Well, I was planning to just so I could see in person an Ares I rocket on its launch pad, but Obama ruined everything last Monday. Oh well.



UPDATE (7:30 PM, PST): As for Super Bowl XLIV, I was rooting for the Indianapolis Colts...so y’all excuse me if I don’t say anything about the New Orleans Saints here. Who dat? SCREW dat.

NASA / Jack Pfaller

GOODBYE, CONSTELLATION... I would go off on a rant about how Obama validated my reason (and much more) for not voting for him in 2008, but I’ll leave it somewhat short. On the 7th anniversary of the space shuttle Columbia accident (which is tomorrow), Obama will not only delay NASA’s moon program by 5 years but outright cancel it. Good job, Obama. I hope you’re a one-term president. *Resists the urge to make political jabs regarding winning an undeserved Noble Peace Price and struggling in passing that health care reform bill*


NASA

But hey, there are some people online (Google 'NASA 2011 budget') that think this is the right way to conduct America’s space program (by encouraging free enterprise by having private companies develop launch vehicles to send NASA astronauts into space), but we’ll see. Obama is proposing a space budget of $100 billion over the next five years...to have NASA loiter in low earth orbit for the next 10-15 years. In the meantime, savor the last 5 space shuttle flights that are scheduled to lift off this year (starting this Sunday with Endeavour’s STS-130 mission, hopefully)...and hope that construction on Russian Soyuz vehicles that will launch our astronauts to the International Space Station (starting next year) is going smoothly. That is all.