U.S. Air Force overstepped bounds in SpaceX certification: report

The unmanned Falcon 9 rocket, launched by SpaceX and carrying NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory Satellite, lifts off from launch pad 40 the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida February 11, 2015.

CREDIT: REUTERS/SCOTT AUDETTE

(FlightClub) - The U.S. Air Force overstepped its bounds as it worked to certify privately held SpaceX to launch military satellites, undermining the benefit of working with a commercial provider, an independent review showed on Thursday.

The report cited a "stark disconnect" between the Air Force and SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies, about the purpose of the certification process and recommended changes.

Air Force Secretary Deborah James ordered the review after the service missed a December deadline for certifying SpaceX to compete for some launches now carried out solely by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co.

The Pentagon is eager to certify SpaceX as a second launch provider, given mounting concerns in Congress about ULA's use of a Russian-built engine to power its Atlas 5 rocket.

The Air Force said on Monday it was revamping the certification process, but did not release the report on the review until Thursday and hoped to complete the work by June.

The report, prepared by former Air Force Chief of Staff General Larry Welch, said the Air Force treated the process like a detailed design review, dictating changes in SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and even the company's organizational structure.

That approach resulted in over 400 issues that needed to be resolved, which was "counterproductive" to a national policy aimed at encouraging competition in the sector.

In fact, the process was intended to show that SpaceX met overall requirements to launch military satellites, not carry out the more detailed review required for each launch on a case-by-case basis, he said.

Welch faulted SpaceX for assuming its experience launching other Falcon 9 rockets would suffice to be certified, and not expecting to have to resolve any issues at all.

"The result to date has been ... the worst of all worlds, pressing the Falcon 9 commercially oriented approach into a comfortable government mold that eliminates or significantly reduces the expected benefits to the government of the commercial approach. Both teams need to adjust," he said.

He urged the Air Force's Space and Missiles Systems Center to "embrace SpaceX innovation and practices," while SpaceX needed to understand the Air Force's need to mitigate risks, and be more open to benefiting from the government's experience.

Effects Reels That Brought Your Favorite Movies to Life (Vol. 1)

This is world-building at its best: go behind the scenes of your favorite films and shows, from Guardians of the Galaxy to Game of Thrones, to see how massive castles, spaceships, explosions, and more get created

Game of Thrones, season 4

The Rodeo FX team won an Emmy for its work on the fourth season of Game of Thrones.

Terminator 2

The Fifth Element

Gimme da cash! Visual effects house built Digital Domain built the incredible future version of New York in miniature for 1997's The Fifth Element.

Alien

Go deep inside the making of the terrible, claustrophobic world of Alien.

The Avengers

This is Industrial Light and Magic's Oscar-nominated visual effects work for 2012's The Avengers: watch The Helicarrier get built pixel by pixel.

Blade Runner

Watch Douglas Trumbull and Ridley Scott explain how they worked with designer Syd Mead to build the iconic Blade Runner universe.

Prometheus

British production and post-production house MPC built the visual effects on Ridley Scott'sPrometheus.

District 9

Neill Blomkamp worked with Vancouver's Image Engine for much of the visual effects onDistrict 9.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

MPC also built the mutant world of X-Men: Days of Future Past. Watch the Sentinels get built, piece by piece.

Dune

This is how David Lynch and his team shot the massive Harkonnen and Atreides ships in Dune.

Star Trek

ILM visual effects designers break down how they created the Star Trek reboot's skydiving sequence scene with Kirk, Mike Olson, and Sulu.

Star Trek Into Darkness

ILM also worked on JJ Abrams' Star Trek into darkness. This video breaks down the Enterprise's crash into San Francisco and Spock's fight with Khan.

The Dark Knight

Christopher Nolan worked with New Deal Studios to build scale models for The Dark Knight.

Fast & Furious 6

MPC also helped create the fast-drifting world of Fast & Furious 6.

Godzilla

MPC's VFX Supervisor Guillaume Rochern (who also worked on Life of Pi) led the effects work on Gareth Edwards' Godzilla, reinventing the lizard king for the 21st century.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

ILM also built 2014's Captain America: The Winter Soldier: watch as Helicarriers crash into S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters in the film's wild final action sequence just outside of Washington D.C..

Tree of Life

Visual effects legend Douglas Trumbull explains how he embraced "organic effects" instead of computer graphics in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life.

Cloverfield

Here's 22 wonderful minutes on how the visual effects team built New York, monsters, and more for 2008's Cloverfield.

Pacific Rim

ILM modeled much of downtown Hong Kong for the kaiju battles — and total destruction.

Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy British visual effects company Framestore conceived of and designed the most complicated Marvel environment ever created when they built Knowhere, the fictional outpost located inside the severed head of a celestial being in last summer's blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy.

Day of the Dead

Guardians of the Galaxy Tom Savini has been a go-to effects guy in horror for decades, not the least of which is for his realistic and gruesome splatter effects. Here's the behind-the-scenes of the last of George Romero's original zombie trilogy, 1985's Day of the Dead.

Re-creating the Transcontinental Railroad for Human Deep Space Exploration

On May 10, 1869, Leland Stanford raised a hammer and drove a golden spike into railroad tracks in Promontory, Utah. It marked the symbolic completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.

For the first time in American history, the East and West were connected. The Transcontinental Railroad would transform the United States by establishing a national economy driven by coast-to-coast commerce.

Today, thanks to a revolutionary idea envisioned by Lockheed Martin, we’re creating a new kind of Transcontinental Railroad – for delivery of supplies in space. One that enables human exploration to destinations deeper in space than ever before.

And it proceeds from a proposal on how to resupply the International Space Station (ISS) as part of the Commercial Resupply Services-2 contract issued by NASA.

The solution involves three major elements: a robotic spacecraft called Jupiter, a cargo container about the size of a railroad car named the Exoliner, and a robotic arm.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launches the Jupiter spacecraft and an Exoliner fully stocked with supplies into space. Jupiter then transports the Exoliner to the ISS, where it berths to the station so that astronauts can unload the cargo and fill the Exoliner with waste.

Later, when the ISS is ready for a new shipment, another Atlas V launches a new Exoliner. The already on-orbit Jupiter replaces the current Exoliner with the new one. The old Exoliner is disposed of using the Atlas V Centaur upper stage.

“This concept is based on flight-proven technology,” said Wanda Sigur, vice president and general manager of Civil Space for Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company. “We’re just bringing innovative technology together to make some much bigger things possible.”

Jupiter builds on the same design as the MAVEN spacecraft, now in orbit around Mars, the Juno spacecraft on the way to Jupiter, and OSIRIS-Rex, currently under construction for an asteroid sample return mission.  

The Exoliner derives from Thales Alenia Space’s cargo carrier used on the European Space Agency’s Automated Transfer Vehicle, a time-tested design that is proven to be safe, reliable and affordable. It has performed flawlessly in five successful trips to the ISS.

Built by MDA, Jupiter’s robotic arm draws from arms that have served on the ISS and Space Shuttle for more than 30 years.

This system for resupplying the ISS brings numerous benefits, including a reusable vehicle, expanded cargo capacity, fewer launches, and the option for sharing costs by carrying commercial payloads.

But even more, it promises much greater – and transformational – possibilities.

Imagine Jupiter and an Exoliner sent into deep space, with Orion. As Orion goes deep into space, be it near the moon or further out to Mars, the astronauts will need more room, and more supplies.

The Exoliner doubles the crew volume and provides room to stretch out. The Jupiter spacecraft is already designed for deep space since its siblings go to Mars and asteroids.

It’s even possible to send fully-stocked Exoliners ahead of a crewed Orion mission, pre-positioning supplies of food, fuel, water, construction materials and scientific equipment for the astronauts to access when they arrive.

These systems will be placed at points along the route, serving as a deep space resupply depot between Earth and Mars.

“Just imagine a future of interplanetary shipping lanes to the Moon and Mars, bustling autonomous spacecraft carrying supplies, scientific instruments and construction materials for habitats,” said Jim Crocker, vice president and general manager of Space Systems Company International. “Picture commercial hosted payloads and cube sats, sharing space with NASA instruments and reducing costs. Picture a fleet of space habitats, serving as orbiting labs and helping Orion astronauts on their journey to Mars.

With just three building blocks: Jupiter, the Exoliner and the robotic arm, we are forming a new Transcontinental Railroad in space. And with that comes the promise of a very similar revolutionary transformation for America.

CRS-2: HOW IT WORKS

CRS-2: FACTSHEET

Original

На Марс не летим!

Кто бы мог подумать! Программа полетов добровольцев на Марс Mars One оказалась конторой по зарабатыванию денег.

На всякий случай повторим общую суть затеи: «Mars One — задумка необычная и многими диванными скептиками воспринимаемая как бред сумасшедшего. Голландец Бас Лансдорп сотоварищи решил к 2024 году отправить четырех добровольцев прямиком на Красную планету. Впервые в истории. Затем еще четырех. И так каждые два года. Перед этим, правда, в 2018 году, планируется отправить туда пару беспилотников — так, на случай, если обнаруженные марсоходом Curiosity перхлораты окажутся и не перхлоратами вовсе, а свежими продуктами жизнедеятельности помеси местных Чужих и каких-нибудь Расчленителей из Dead Space». Мировая пресса, обычно настроенная скептически, настроилась на лучшее и приняла проект скорее благосклонно, больше рассуждая о том, какого это – навсегда улететь с родной планеты (возвращать никого не планировалось). Смущало одно: собственных денег или инвесторов у Баса так и не появилось, он планировал делать Mars One на некие «народные средства». Ну а что тут такого с другой стороны – вон сколько странных гаджетов было успешно профинансировано на кикстартере. В общем, будем кратки: ничего не вышло.

Покровы вскрыл Джозеф Рош, один из 100 финалистов программы и, вот незадача, ирландский физик. Он дал интервью изданию Matter, где в пух и прах разнес финансовую и организационную несостоятельность Mars One. Во-первых, сообщил он, организаторы надеются собрать денег с самих претендентов: «В ходе процедуры отбора вы получаете очки. Для этого нужно скупать товары под маркой Mars One или жертвовать деньги фонду…» Кроме того, финалисты получили список рекомендаций по общению с прессой. Где сказано: «Если вам предложили гонорар за интервью, просим пожертвовать 75 процентов от него Mars One». Во-вторых, в-третьих, и в-пятнадцатых, опять же со слов Джозефа, для соискателей не предусмотрено никаких тестирований, личных интервью и медицинских обследований. Для отбора в команду колонизаторов красной планеты с ними примерно 10 минут общаются… по скайпу.

С другой стороны, все это теперь не так уж и важно. В Массачусетском технологическом институте все равно уже подсчитали, что переселенцы на Марс продержатся не более 68 дней, после чего все равно погибнут. Убьют их, как это ни странно, выращенные на месте растения. Благодаря им концентрация кислорода на марсианской базе станет взрывоопасной – его придется как-то выпускать. Просто открыть окно, как ты понимаешь, не поможет. Но даже если найдется какой-то специальный иллюминатор, вместе с кислородом будет уходить и азот – в итоге колонисты или задохнутся или сгорят.

Через пару дней после первого марсианского скандала представители Mars One выступили с официальными объяснениями. В них, в частности, говорится о том, что «это все неправда, просто СМИ гонятся за грязными историями».