As many of you may know, the Falcon 9 launch date is closely approaching. Right now, it seems SpaceX has settled on an April 12 launch date, but this may or may not change to a later date. I bring this up to put the event into some perspective, especially in regards to Obama’s recent “change” to the space program. On a side note: maybe random acts of “change” aren’t so great after all? Did you ever think about that, Obama? Healthcare… Alright, I’ll stop there.

Back to space. What this new direction does entail is pushing space more and more into the private sector. In the short term, this could potentially mean layoffs within NASA and more budget issues, but looking ahead it gets better.

Some people are comparing this to how the computer industry shifted from being government managed to being privately managed. This, of course, spawned all sorts of goodness including the Internet, Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc. Similarly, with regards to the future of space, we’ll see reduced costs, improvements in design, and most importantly, more interest in space! With the Falcon 9 launch around the corner, we are that much closer to seeing the reality of these benefits. Plus, you’ll be that much closer to going to space. Which is what really matters.

Be sure to check out the launch.

Source: TheDailyGalaxy

So, I bet you thought there wasn't much in the way of arts & culture, as it relates to space.

Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you - Modern Space Dance


So, what did you do for your spring break? Go to Florida? Cancun? How about going to Washington DC, to lobby Congressman for Space?




















Yes, my name is Aaron Oesterle & I am a Space Geek

So, this year, for my spring break, I attended the ProSpace March Storm lobbying event. It consisted of us going to different Congressional offices, talking about the March Storm agenda. This year's agenda included:
ITAR reform

  • Support the addition to the Senate version of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act the authority to remove widely available satellite systems and components from the ITAR list.
  • Make certain that the bill presented to both the House and Senate for final passage retains this provision that is so vital to this nation’s international competitiveness.
Exploration
  • Require NASA to focus its human space flight development programs on technologies and processes designed for travel in space beyond low earth orbit.
  • Support robust funding for space exploration technology demonstration projects.
Commercial Services
  • Support the transition to commercial crew and cargo services for the International Space Station.
This year was rather exciting, because the president's budget is quite different then what its been in the past. Its a major change, but its a change that I really support. It was rather different, because many of the people we were talking to were fully engaged, which was quite different than previous years.

It was a lot of work, and rather tiring, but it was well worth. Its actually something I encourage every space.

But now I have a problem - I've been made Grassroots Organizing Coordinator. Which is why you should attend the next ProSpace Lobbying event

Hello,

I'd like to announce that the University of Michigan's RASC-AL team, Nergal, has been accepted into the RASC-AL competition. Team Nergal is investigating a manned mission to Mars. More information about the competition can be found here.

Nergal

Enrico Landi
Astrophysicist, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC

Thursday, March 18, 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm, 2246 Space Research Building

Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are among the most dramatic and violent dynamic events occurring in the solar atmosphere, and have significant impact on the near-Earth environment, human activities and commercial and military communications. So far, the physical processes responsible for their release and acceleration have not been completely understood, in part because of the lack of direct measurements of the CME plasma physical parameters and evolution during the CME onset. In my talk I will describe the analysis of multiwavelength observations from Hinode, SOHO and STEREO of the very early phases of a CME observed during the Whole Heliospheric Interval campaign. I first use SECCHI/EUVI, SECCHI/COR1, SOHO/EIT and SOHO/LASCO images to reconstruct the 3D trajectory of the CME, and to measure its velocity and acceleration up to 20 solar radii. I then use Hinode/EIS and Hinode/XRT high resolution EUV spectra and X-ray images to measure the physical properties and the thermal structure of the core of the CME ejecta as a function of time at 1.1 solar radii. The physical properties of the active region location where the CME erupted are also monitored with time before, during and after the event.

I am certainly not an ace of space. I’m an aerospace engineering student at the University of Michigan. The closest I’ll ever get to space is watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and crying, alone in my mother’s basement. If I want to get closer, I might throw on a Tiesto record for good measure. I will never know more about the policies, agenda, or future of the industry than the person sitting next to me, but I will act like I do. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s arguing. Mostly, I argue about things that I know nothing about. The less I know, the more likely I am to anger somebody who wastes time caring about what I have to say. That’s usually my focus.

Someone told me that I should begin this blog by empathizing with my potential readers. Then I thought, people that I want reading this blog will be on the same page as me from Day 1. No introduction necessary. They’ll just “get it.” In the time you would have spent reading about my personal life, I suggest you watch this video.

That is how I feel every time the government pushes through a new “plan” that effectively reroutes the space budget. Varying government funding implies that jobs may be lost. When jobs are lost, my future looks dim, and when my future looks dim, I drink.

For all of you that are concerned about the blog title, you can rest easy. It is in fact a reference to the transcendent Swedish rock band Ace of Base. For those of you not familiar with their music, this blog is not for you.

space-station

Talk about a great idea for a cubesat! I love beer, and I love space. So how could I not love beer from space? I’m not usually one for beer gimmicks, but somehow Sapporo’s Space Barley is an exception.

The beer was made with grains descended from barley that spent five months in the Zvezda Service Module on the International Space Station. The very limited results, just 250 precious six-packs, will be sold through a lottery for 10,000 yen ($110) each. But only people living in Japan are eligible. Sigh.

space_beerWhy are the Russian Academy of Sciences, Okayama University and presumably Russia’s space agency Roscosmos aiding this scheme? Well, science of course. And charity.

“This beer will be sold for charity, to contribute to the promotion of science education for children and the development of space science research in Japan and Russia, through donation of all proceeds to Okayama University,” Sapporo stated in a press release Dec. 3.

And that sounds nice. But I think the real reason is: Space Beer!

Also, what will astronauts drink on future extended spaceflight missions? They can’t take multiple years’ worth of beer with them, so clearly they will have to brew it themselves. But what about the hops, you say? Don’t worry, those were launched into space in August. Super Space Beer!

Indeed, according to Sapporo, the space-barley research was done for “the purpose of achieving self-sufficiency in food in the space environment.” Because how self-sufficient could one really be without beer?

Source: www.wired.com

On Monday, the Obama administration announced its 2010 budget for NASA. It cancels plans to return to the moon by 2020 and focuses on using commercial companies to ferry astronauts to and from orbit.

While some are up in arms over the future of human spaceflight, Buzz Aldrin is backing the president in an editorial in The Huffington Post.

Aldrin calls Obama's decision his "JFK moment." He praises the president for deciding "to redirect our nation's space policy away from the foolish and underfunded Moon race that has consumed NASA for more than six years, aiming instead at boosting the agency's budget by more than $1 billion more per year over the next five years, topping off at $100 billion for NASA between now and 2015."

Aldrin has been far from shy about criticizing the Constellation program, previously calling the launch of its prototype rocket, Ares I-X, "fake" and "a little more than a half-a-billion dollar political show." He thinks that NASA should be spending taxpayer dollars on developing technology for trips to Mars, and he backs a "flexible path" plan that would "redirect NASA towards developing the capability of voyaging to more distant locations in space, such as rendezvous with possibly threatening asteroids, or comets, or even flying by Mars to land on its moons."

NASA's administrator, Charles Bolden, said in a press conference Tuesday that he and senior White House officials will spend the next few months devising a new overarching goal for NASA, and a schedule for developing technologies to send astronauts to destinations as yet unknown.

But Obama's budget proposal still has to be approved by congress. "My biggest fear is that this amounts to a slow death of our nation's human space flight program," Representative Bill Posey, Republican of Florida, said in a statement.

Source: www.technologyreview.com

John Holdren
Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
March 22 - 5pm @ Rackham Aud

John Holdren trained in aeronautics, astronautics, and plasma physics and earned a bachelor's degree from MIT in 1965 and a PhD from Stanford University in 1970. Holdren taught at Harvard for 13 years and at the University of California, Berkeley for more than two decades. His work has focused on the causes and consequences of global environmental change, energy technologies and policies, ways to reduce the dangers from nuclear weapons and materials, and science and technology policy. Check it out...

Michael Sander
Manager of the JPL Exploration Systems and Technology Office
March 23 - 1:30pm @ 2246 SRB Aud.

Michael Sander oversees the office that conducts advanced technology development for future space missions and transfers JPL-developed technology to U.S. industry. Since February 1995, Sander has served as deputy director of JPL's Space and Earth Science Programs Directorate and as project manager for JPL's Develop New Products reengineering activities. Previously, he was manager of JPL's Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) project. With JPL since 1963, Sander has worked in various capacities in JPL management and project organizations, including management of JPL's Mission Control Center. His early career was spent processing science data from the first missions to Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and beyond.

Okay, so it's not as much of a problem as it is payload --one of the discoveries I made last week when Kevin Drumm allowed me to come into the the HAS workshop and poke through their stuff.

I wrote a piece a few months ago about HAS, but that was back when nothing made sense. Today, some of it made sense, proving that progress can be made even in the most confused of people.

Next week, weather permitting, of course, HAS will launch their balloon, which is made of latex by the way, and not some special space material (which I was under the impression they were made of, for some reason), ordered from a company called Kaymont. It's a "sounding" balloon, meaning that it must be. . . sound, I'm presuming. Technically, they were supposed to launch last week, but the glorious skies of Michigan prevented this from occurring.

I discovered many interesting things on my visit to what I refer to as the Balloon Room.

Discovery #1: You can track the path of the balloon online in real time during a launch! The website is aprs.fi and APRS stands for automatic position reporting system. All you have to do is type in the station name (like a radio station), which is KC9PHZ, and you can watch the balloon on its beautiful journey through the world.

#2: You launch from the Western parts of Michigan so that you can avoid situations in which your balloon lands in Lake Eerie or in the land of farmers. Essentially, you do you this to avoid having the Jet Steam push your balloon too far off course.

#3: You can kill the balloon: Attached to the payload, there is a flight termination unit that the FAA requires each balloon to be equipped with. This way, if your balloon goes berserk, you can end its life before it starts to terrorize a nearby a town or city. I imagine people don't take well to things falling from the sky these days. Especially if its as bizarre as a package of electronic do-hickeys attached to a parachute. I, for one, (if I was engineering-ly inept) would be a little concerned if such a thing fell into my yard. But hey, that is just me. And the FAA. And the rest of America.

#4: There is more. . . but I am going to draw this out for a bit and make this post a Part 1 of a two-part series. Instead, I will leave you with some pictures.


The Payload. This is where I wish I knew what this stuff was.


A tracking of a previous balloon launch!


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