October 2004
October 2004
Oh
dear, didn't the
Genesis probe go spectacularly wrong or what? The
intention was to recover this probe in mid-air because the particle
collectors onboard were very delicate and might not survive a
parachute landing. In the end, they got a few more particles than
anticipated when the thing slammed into a lake bed at 180km/h with
all the grace of a 24,491-piece dinner service. It would have been
nice if the parachutes had come out to play, but the best guess at
the moment is that the batteries that should have set off the
deployment charge went flat.
But after digging it out of the mud and examining the surviving fragments, NASA researchers (who kindly provided this photo) think they can probably get all the primary science data out – it'll just be a much harder job. You see, the particles from the sun that they hope to analyse are travelling at a darned sight more than 180km/h. This means they're embedded deep in the surface of the collector plates (or fragments thereof). Using some fancy machines designed to create silicon chips, they can scrape off the thin, contaminated top layer and leave the bit with the particles in it exposed. In theory.
The MIB have inspected the site – not Men In Black, the Mishap Investigation Board – to make sure no useful chunks of spacecraft have been left behind. The latest news is that some of the more robust collector plates made from metal foil have already been sent to the labs for analysis.
The
Ansari X-Prize progresses slowly, with the Da Vinci Project having to
make an announcement of a delay. A specialist machine that they need
to make a crucial spacecraft part out of carbon fibre is very hard to
get hold of. There are only two in the whole of Canada and they're
both fully booked. They couldn't have done it earlier because they
did not have the money. Now they have money, and no machine. Bugger.
[Note to overseas readers: We Kiwis can use that word in polite
company.] The Rubicon craft that featured so spectacularly in
the last issue is set to emerge phoenix-like from the ashes and have
a launch in October. But for the moment, SpaceShipOne is the
front-runner.
So why the photo of a well-groomed Sir Richard Branson? Well, he has just signed a £14 million deal with Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which is the company that the owners of SpaceShipOne created to sell rides into space. Sir Richard reckons he can charge about NZ$450,000 a seat and still sell 3,000 tickets over the next 5 years. Of course, this is not all going to happen with SpaceShipOne, in fact it is going to need 5 spacecraft – yes, a private space fleet. The reports I've seen suggest each flight might take 5 people, and the current design takes two plus a pilot. Sir Richard has been seen playing with a model of a slightly stretched version of SpaceShipOne all decked out in Virgin colours. Apparently, he is going to call the first one VSS Enterprise and hopes to fly on the inaugural flight together with the owner of Mojave Aerospace, Burt Rutan.
Of course, Virgin Space Services are not going to be the only ones putting money into this – it has now suddenly become a competitive industry. In not too much time, people are going to want to go orbital, and Enterprise-class vessels might even be able to do this if given a big enough rocket and a small enough payload. Even if they can't they'll certainly lead to a class of vessel that can. So the news that Robert Bigelow from the Budget Hotels chain is going to build space hotels shows that the tourist industry just found itself a new class of customer.
Tying
in with all this, SpaceDev – the people who make the engine for
SpaceShipOne – are telling me that they have signed a
Memorandum of Understanding with NASA Ames Research Centre to develop
a more powerful version of the rubber/nitrous SpaceShipOne
engine for use in a vehicle called Dream
Chaser (eyes left, courtesy SpaceDev). Love the paint-job –
log into the WWW and have a look in colour. If you're a space
enthusiast and notice a resemblance to the X-34A, congratulations
'cos it's based on the X-34A design that was retired in 2001. I
wonder if they might also have another client in mind, like Sir
Richard?
The current idea is to produce a craft that takes of vertically using their tried and tested “rubber rocket” technology, can reach 160km, and come back down again to land like a conventional aircraft. No cryogenic fuels, cheap servicing, regular and frequent flights – in short, everything the Shuttle wasn't. It's chalked down for a tentative launch in the year 2008, and it is hoped that a scaled-up version could fly all the way to the International Space Station (ISS). Just as well given that the shuttle might not be flying by then.
This
potential lack of transport presents a small problem to the ISS, as
the shuttle is needed to get the cupola structure up there. The
cupola is a spaceman's version of a conservatory window, and it has a
chequered past. It was originally funded by NASA and Boeing, but when
NASA's budgets were tightened in 1998, the project ran out of money
and the European Space Agency (ESA) picked up the tab.
The Elektron equipment that manufactures breathable oxygen from waste water and less savoury waste fluids broke down – again. On the plus side, there is plenty of spare oxygen onboard and Commander Gennady Padalka demonstrated his plumbing prowess in clearing a blockage the pipe that carries waste gasses off in time for the 3-man crew to visit this month – the 3rd guy goes back down with the current 2 man crew after a week or so. Still, sanitary plumbing is not a job I'd like to do in zero-g, that's for sure. At least, not without some kind of mask and filter...
This edition is
also on the web, just point your web browser to
http://olliver.family.gen.nz. vik@olliver.family.gen.nz
"If
you're embarking around the world in a hot-air balloon, don't forget
the toilet paper. Once, we had to wait for incoming faxes!" -
Richard Branson
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