Horizons, the AIAA Houston Online Magazine
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Volume 31, Number 4 AIAA Houston Section www.aiaa-houston.org March / April 2006 SPACEHAB Apex AIAA Houston Horizons March / April 2006 Page 1 March/April 2006 T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S From the Editor 3 HOUSTON Chair’s Corner 4 Horizons is a bi-monthly publication of the Houston section SPACEHAB Apex 5 of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Lunch-n-Learn: Nanobacteria, The Discovery of a New Life Form 7 Jon S. Berndt Lunch-n-Learn: Finite State Dynamic Modeling … 9 Editor Public Policy: Congressional Visits Day 10 AIAA Houston Section Executive Council Dinner Lecture: Saving Saturn V 11 Steven R. King Lunch-n-Learn: Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI) 12 Chair Texas Space Authority Act 12 Dr. Jayant Ramakrishnan Call for Award Nominations 13 Chair-Elect Staying Informed 14 T. Sophia Bright Past Chair Membership Page 15 Dr. Syri Koelfgen Annual Technical Symposium Agenda 16 Secretary Dinner Lecture: Space Shuttle Integration Lessons Learned 17 Dr. Brad Files An Insider’s View Treasurer Local Industry News and Announcements 18 John Keener Tim Propp Vice-Chair, Operations Vice-Chair, Technical Outreach and Education: The Spirit of Apollo Scholarship 19 Operations Technical Calendar 20 Dr. John Valasek Dr. Al Jackson Cranium Cruncher 21 Dr. Rakesh Bhargava Dr. Zafar Taqvi Elizabeth Blome William West Odds and Ends 22 Joy Conrad King Ellen Gillespie Upcoming Conference Presentations by Houston Section Members 24 Daniel Nobles Dr. Michael Lembeck Nicole Smith Aaron Morris AIAA Local Section News 25 Dr. Douglas Schwaab Dr. Kamlesh Lulla Laura Slovey Padraig Moloney Michael Begley Bill Atwell Jon Berndt, Editor Andy Petro Steve King Gary Brown Gary Cowan Paul Nielsen Amy Efting Councilors Brett Anderson Elizabeth Blome Ellen Gillespie This newsletter is created by members of the Houston section. Opinions expressed herein other than Glenn Jenkinson by elected Houston section officers belong solely to the authors and do not necessarily represent the Barry Tobias position of AIAA or the Houston section. Unless explicitly stated, in no way are the comments of Dr. Merri Sanchez individual contributors to Horizons to be construed as necessarily the opinion or position of AIAA, Douglas Yazell NASA, its contractors, or any other organization. Please address all newsletter correspondence to Albert Meza the Editor:[email protected] Mike Oelke JR Reyna Cover: SPACEHAB Apex. Image courtesy of SPACEHAB. More information at: www.aiaa-houston.org/orgchart Galveston Bay sunrise image at top by Cheryl Empey, Seabrook. AIAA Houston Horizons March / April 2006 Page 2 Page 3 From the Editor JON S. BERNDT “… when I talk about "human that is something new. rocket. Granted, the flight was a presence" - I really mean short one, but by all accounts I "settlement" of the solar system. Days ago, six contractors were have read, SpaceX is very com- And I want to pause on that chosen as finalists for considera- mitted to making Falcon work. I word - "settlement" because that's tion for COTS (Commercial Or- believe they will succeed. what we are truly embarking upon bital Transportation Services) con- and that's the really exciting part tracts. The six finalists are Transformational Space Corpora- of what we are about. Now these (according to several space news tion (t/Space) is a company which are the key questions then: How web sites): Rocketplane/Kistler, has key partnerships with other do we sustain the vision for space Andrews Space, Transformational growing space-related companies exploration to lead us to settle- Space Corporation (t/Space), including Scaled Composites, ment? How do we afford it? How Space Exploration Technologies AirLaunch. t/Space also crafted a do we nurture it? My answer - (SpaceX), SpaceDev, and SPACE- creative exploration strategy as and I think a lot of yours' - is the HAB. part of a NASA funded study on private sector.” innovative exploration strategies. One of the earliest and most suc- As part of that strategy, t/Space Are these the words of a “space cessful commercial space ventures proposed some concepts to maxi- frontier” spokesperson? How is of course SPACEHAB, based mize commercial involvement: about these words: right here in the Clear Lake area. SPACEHAB describes their Apex Use CEV program to spur pas- “We are on the verge of incorpo- system (now under development) senger travel to LEO: rating the Solar System into man- in this issue. kind's economic sphere, in a way • If NASA “invents” a competi- that will vastly expand the eco- There have been some concerns tive passenger market through nomic opportunities provided for raised about the COTS program, its contracting strategy, it will all people. Most obviously, the within space circles. Some think reap huge economies of scale. sheer tonnage that we will need to that the total amount of money • Economies make human- put in orbit invites and necessi- said to be allocated for the pro- assisted, in-orbit assembly cost- tates the development of a truly gram (about $500 million) is not effective. commercial space industry. There enough to accomplish anything. are many things needing to be According to NASA, the COTS • Commercial market will rap- done that NASA could purchase program goals are to: idly overtake dollar volume of from an exploration-enabled NASA ETO spending, shifting space industry, including in-space development cost to the private • Implement U.S. Space Explora- fuel delivery, lunar resource pros- sector. tion policy with an investment pecting…” to stimulate commercial enter- prises in space, SpaceDev built the engine that The latter, recent, comment is powered SpaceShipOne to its X- from NASA Administrator Mike • Facilitate U.S. private industry Prize victory. Griffin. The first quote is from demonstration of cargo and the newly appointed NASA Ames crew space transportation capa- When considering the current Research Center director, Simon bilities with the goal of achieving state — and the potential — of P. “Pete” Worden, in a statement reliable, cost effective access to commercial space companies made just days ago at the Interna- low-Earth orbit, today, I have to agree with Pete tional Space Development Con- • Create a market environment in Worden’s words (Worden par- ference. [from www.spaceref. which commercial space trans- ticipated in the first President com] That “space settlement” and portation services are available Bush’s Space Exploration Initia- tive): “We are off to a much better “space commercialization” are to Government and private sec- start now than we were in 1989.” being talked about at this high tor customers. level may not be something terri- — JSB bly new or unheard of. That real As seen above, one of the COTS money is in play to increase in- goals is to facilitate—not to fully centive for private firms to dem- fund development of anything. onstrate provision of services that SpaceX has already demonstrated NASA could purchase … perhaps the ability to build and launch a AIAA Houston Horizons March / April 2006 Page 3 Page 4 Chair’s Corner STEVE KING, AIAA HOUSTON CHAIR “All Hail Columbia!” was the toast Visit the Houston Section website Mercury through Skylab, the Rus- of the day a quarter century ago as to view Mr. Bejmuk’s entire pres- sian human space program, com- STS-1 took flight. While the entation. Too often we have all mercial satellites, interplanetary Shuttle is still a magnificent flying seen organizations reinventing the probes, dissimilar industries, etc. machine; its high operational cost, proverbial wheel and end up step- Look to the AIAA’s extensive limited crew escape options, and ping on the same mines. One of electronic libraries as a key re- other vulnerabilities justify the Bo’s messages was that develop- source at your finger tips to ex- need for its retirement in 2010. ment of the Constellation ele- plore our aerospace history, why ments will have their share of things were done a certain way, On the brighter side, the Shuttle challenges, so there is no need to and what things would be done Program does provide the engi- revisit the scares and minefields of differently if they had a chance. neers and planners of our next Shuttle. generation of human spacecraft Let’s continue the journey… with a tremendous treasure trove But don’t limit yourself to just the of lessons learned. Many of them Shuttle, there is a rich history of were excellently presented by Bo valuable lessons learned from Bejmuk, Boeing’s Orbiter Pro- gram Director, at the Houston Section dinner meeting on April 5th. A few of these that stood out to me involved: · Not allowing operations and maintenance to take the back seat to satisfying performance require- ments. It is felt that this added up to $40B to Shuttle operations over its history. Excessive operational cost also contributed to the ending of the Apollo program even when most of the hardware for three additional flights to the moon was already built. · Having sufficient margin (or con- servatism) in your design to cover environment and analysis uncer- tainties. Performance needs drove a lot of Shuttle hardware, which does have appropriate fac- tors of safety applied, to have very limit margin. Even today the Shuttle experiences redesign and repair to correct hardware nega- tive margins resulting from refined analysis, additional testing, and flight experience. Often these changes create a domino effect resulting in added cost, excessive turnaround maintenance periods, and exposure of other subsystems to damage during repairs. · A need for a strong, vocal inte- gration organization which it not the first to be reduced when budg- ets get tight. · Test, test, test… AIAA Houston Horizons March / April 2006 Page 4 Page 5 SPACEHAB Apex Feature ELAINA POLSEN, SPACEHAB, INC Article While attention is focused on NASA’s goals are to make an in- company has seen significant inter- NASA’s return to flight and the vestment to stimulate commercial est from various and diverse mar- Agency’s new Crew Exploration enterprises in space; support pri- ket sectors.