Volume 37, Issue 7 AIAA Houston Section www.aiaahouston.org May / June 2012 The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Hubble Revisited on NASA’s 50th Anniversary Morpheus AIAA Houston Section Horizons May / June 2012 Page 1 May / June 2012 T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S From the Chair 3 HOUSTON From the Editor 4 Horizons is a bimonthly publication of the Houston Section Cover Story: Project Morpheus 5 of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Dinner Meeting: 50th Anniversary of AIAA Houston Section 12 Douglas Yazell The 1940 Air Terminal Museum at Hobby Airport 13 Editor Past Editors: Dr. Steven E. Everett The Annual Technical Symposium (ATS 2012) 14 Editing team: Don Kulba, Ellen Gillespie, Robert Bere- mand, Alan Simon, Dr. Steven Everett, Shen Ge Editorial by Shen Ge: Planetary Resources: Flight of Fancy or Real Wealth? 18 Regular contributors: Dr. Steven Everett, Don Kulba, Philippe Mairet, Alan Simon, Scott Lowther Will Europe Participate in the Orion MPCV Project of the USA? 20 Contributors this issue: Dr. Jon B. Olansen, Sean Carter, Raphael Munoz, Michael Frostad Ellington Field, Airport, Spaceport & The Lone Star Flight Museum 22 AIAA Houston Section Yuri’s Night Houston 2012: The 5k Fun Run and Space Day 24 Executive Council Current Events: Launch of Chinese Astronauts, June 15, 2012 26 Sean Carter The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) Chapter 12 (Houston) 27 Chair Space Fighter: 1963 (APR by Scott Lowther) 28 Daniel Nobles Irene Chan Chair-Elect Secretary Spirit of Apollo Scholarship Winner Donya Ziraksari 33 Sarah Shull John Kostrzewski Current Events: SpaceX COTS Success & Space Shuttle Replica in Houston 34 Past Chair Treasurer Staying Informed: Rest in Peace, John Llewellyn 36 Julie Read Alan Sisson Calendar 38 Vice-Chair, Operations Dr. Satya Pilla Vice-Chair, Technical Cranium Cruncher by Dr. Steven E. Everett 39 Operations Dr. Gary Turner Technical Section News 40 Shen Ge Dr. Albert A. Jackson IV Melissa Gordon Bebe Kelly-Serrato The Back Cover: Venus Transit 42 Lisa Voiles Dr. Zafar Taqvi Rafael Munoz Bill Atwell Svetlana Hanson Sheikh Ahsan Michael Frostad William West Horizons and AIAA Houston Section Web Site Dr. Benjamin Longmier Paul Nielson AIAA National Communications Award Winner Matthew Easterly Dr. Steven E. Everett Douglas Yazell Gary Brown Gary Cowan Dr. Kamlesh Lulla Joel Henry Ludmila Dmitriev-Odier Councilors Ellen Gillespie 2004 2005 2006 2007 Brian Banker Matt Johnson This newsletter is created by members of AIAA Houston Section. Opinions expressed herein other Clay Stangle than by elected Houston Section officers belong solely to the authors and do not necessarily repre- Melissa Kronenberger sent the position of AIAA or the Houston Section. Unless explicitly stated, in no way are the com- Sarah Barr ments of individual contributors to Horizons to be construed as necessarily the opinion or position Donald Barker of AIAA, NASA, its contractors, or any other organization. All articles in Horizons, unless other- Shirley Brandt wise noted, are the property of the individual contributors. Reproduction/republishing in any form Holly Feldman except limited excerpts with attribution to the source, will require the express approval of the indi- Gabe Garrett vidual authors. Please address all newsletter correspondence to editor-in-chief[at]aiaa-houston.org. www.aiaahouston.org Cover: Morpheus testing. Image credit: NASA. AIAA Houston Section Horizons May / June 2012 Page 2 Page 3 Looking Back at our 2011-2012 Year From the Chair SEAN CARTER, CHAIR Wow! What a year! It’s gone Yuri’s Night Houston nition of all that came before by too fast. This month of 2012 Fun Run and Cele- us. JSC Center Director Mike June 2012 marks the last bration Event Coats attended with his wife month of my term as your 2012 AIAA Houston and shared warm memories of AIAA Houston Section Chair. Section’s Annual Tech- AIAA and wishes for the next It has been a wild ride to be nical Symposium 50 years of our partnership sure. This year we’ve heard AIAA Houston Section’s with JSC. from members of Congress, 50th Anniversary Gala the JSC Center Director, and Celebration Please accept my thanks for an impressive cadre of distin- allowing me to serve as your guished speakers. It’s been a busy and fun year. Chair for this great 2011-12 We also marked our 50th year year. I would like to sign off This spring alone, our section anniversary. To celebrate, we by recognizing those who hosted the… brought back members from have been our most consistent 2012 AIAA Region IV throughout our history to members through the years! Student Paper Competi- share stories and give recog- Congratulations! tion 60 Years with AIAA Dr. Angelo Miele Left: Dr. Angelo Miele in 1987 from our 25th anniversary book- let. 50 Years with AIAA Roy W. Meinke 40 Years with AIAA Thomas E. Diegelman Anita E. Gale Above: Roy Meinke on March 25 Years with AIAA 27, 2012, at the dinner meeting with guest speaker Douglas Ter- Walter J. Barnett Dr. J. Olusegun Thomas rier. At left is Wes Kelly. Image Charles H. Campbell Victor H. Treat, Jr. credit: Douglas Yazell. Lee A. Coggins Keith D. Zimmerman Toby B. Martin Larry S. Bell Norman N. Parker Dr. Tak Kahto Donald H. Peterson, Sr. Jeffrey S. Osterlund Dr. James H. Stramler Dr. Eric L. Petersen Timothy D. Suit AIAA Houston Section Horizons May / June 2012 Page 3 Page 4 From the Editor Weather, Climate, Special Editions & Dreams DOUGLAS YAZELL, EDITOR “We can say with high confi- as, but not Europe, and Eric In other news, we produced a dence that the recent heat concludes: special edition of Horizons waves in Texas and Russia, for the 50th anniversary of and the one in Europe in “Here’s the real problem. AIAA Houston Section, a 15 2003, which killed tens of Hansen is entirely correct in MB PDF file with 46 pages, thousands, were not natural saying that climate change is extending the 20-page 1987 events — they were caused by happening, that humans are a booklet that celebrated our human-induced climate principal driver, and some 25th anniversary. This is on change.” extreme weather will get our web site, and our new worse. But to obtain political web site is That is a quote from a New movement and public support www.aiaahouston.org instead York Times article, “Game for this issue, there needs to of www.aiaa-houston.org, as Over for the Climate” from be more than dire warnings of July 1, 2012, but it will “op-ed contributor” James about the future. We need to take a while to fully populate Hansen. The New York see effects now in order to the new web site. Times wrote at the end of this spend money to improve the article, “James Hansen di- future. Thanks to Dr. Jon Olansen rects the NASA Goddard and the Project Morpheus Institute for Space Studies “That’s why there’s a great team for this issue’s cover and is the author of Storms of desire among climate activ- story! They are doing inspir- My Grandchildren.” ists to tie climate change to ing work. (Morpheus is the E-mail: extreme weather events. That god of dreams and dreamers.) douglas.yazell[at]me.com Since we have a French sister provides a good reason in the section (www.3af-mp.fr) and pragmatic world of politics to Additional links: For a Horizons archive on a other European contacts, that address a pressing need. national AIAA web site click quote about Europe sticks in http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/clima/ here. my mind. “Unfortunately the science of mission/index_en.htm climate change and extreme Starting July 1, 2012, our new Eric Berger is an outstanding weather isn’t quite yet up to http://www.eea.europa.eu/ web site will be science, space and weather the task, and Hansen, here, themes/climate www.aiaahouston.org, but it reporter for the Houston appears to be overreaching might not be fully populated Chronicle. His Chronicle some.” right away. Thanks to our new SciGuy blog addressed these webmaster Irene Chan! claims about Russia and Tex- Corrections to page 10 of last issue: See this issue’s Section News page! Right: Skylon is a design for an unpiloted space plane by the British company Reaction En- gines Limited (REL). Specifica- tions (Skylon C2): Capacity: Potential for up to 30 passen- gers (in a special passenger module). Caption and image: Wikipedia. Image attribution: GW_Simulations. Since we have a Houston connection, maybe this will make a good Horizons article one day soon? AIAA Houston Section Horizons May / June 2012 Page 4 Page 5 Project Morpheus Cover Story DR. JON B. OLANSEN, NASA/JSC It’s early morning and numer- Left: Morpheus test prepara- ous engineers, rocket scien- tion. Image credit: NASA/Joe tists and various support per- Bibby. sonnel are already hard at work in the field west of JSC’s building 14. The Mor- pheus team is preparing for another tether test – this time with a suite of instruments from the Autonomous Land- ing & Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) project integrated on board the vehi- cle. This scene has become a regular occurrence on site at the Johnson Space Center, as the Morpheus project has vides an autonomous, reusa- the aforementioned technolo- worked to fully characterize ble, rocket-powered, terrestri- gies in an integrated flight the performance of its vertical al Vertical Takeoff / Vertical system in the terrestrial envi- test bed in preparation for Landing (VTVL) vehicle for ronment. some approach and landing testing integrated spacecraft tests at KSC later this sum- and planetary lander technol- NASA’s strategic goal of mer.