Obama Administration May Cancel Ares I-X Project

The following small paragraph is the most heinous of actions to be undertaken by NASA and the Obama Administration. Following the grounding of the shuttle fleet, there is quite a bit of talk and pushing towards abandoning the Ares I-X in favor of commercial start up companies. Allowing the commercial companies to be the sole lifter of materials and 'maybe' humans, without the accompanying NASA main launch capacity is close to being treason. .... lakotahope

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Once the shuttles stop flying, NASA intends to buy rides for its astronauts on Russian Soyuz vehicles until a new service — either commercial or government — materializes.

NASA, courtesy of Scott Andrews

A bow shock forms around the Ares I-X test rocket traveling at supersonic speed during its Oct. 28, 2009 launch from the Kennedy Space Center, Fla.

If this project is canceled, America will probably be last to develop any program to land a settlement on the Moon or putting men on Mars. ... lakotahope

WASHINGTON — As the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama prepares to propose changes to NASA's human spaceflight program in the president's 2011 budget request to lawmakers Feb. 1, an independent NASA safety advisory panel is warning the space agency against abandoning its current plans.

In an annual report issued Jan. 15, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel cautioned the United States against halting work on NASA's Ares I rocket to fund unproven commercial alternatives.

"To abandon Ares I as a baseline vehicle for an alternative without demonstrated capability nor proven superiority (or even equivalence) is unwise and probably not cost-effective," the report states.

SLIDESHOW: Ares I-X: The Next Generation of American Space Flight

Designed to launch the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle into low Earth orbit, Ares I is a key element of Constellation, NASA's five-year-old effort to replace the space shuttle with rockets and spacecraft optimized for the Moon.

The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel report praises Ares I as a vehicle "designed from the beginning with a clear emphasis on safety" and notes approvingly "that Time magazine cited the Ares rocket as the 'best invention of 2009.'"

The future of Ares I, however, came into question last year when a White House-appointed committee led by former Lockheed Martin chief Norm Augustine urged Obama to consider dropping Ares I in favor of paying commercial firms to transport astronauts to the international space station.

NASA awarded a pair of contracts totaling $3.5 billion in December 2008 to Dulles, Va.-based Orbital Sciences Corp. and Hawthorne, Calif.-based Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) to haul cargo to the space station aboard unmanned vehicles the companies say could evolve to carry people.

SpaceX, in particular, has been urging NASA to commit billions of dollars to fostering development of commercial crew launch services through the expansion of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) the agency created in 2006 to subsidize development of new cargo delivery systems. SpaceX and Orbital stand to receive a combined $450 million under the COTS program for their competing unmanned systems by the time the two complete demonstration cargo flights.

While the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel report notes satisfication with the COTS program's evolution, progress and demo-first approach, the panel expressed concerns about NASA expanding COTS in the absence of a clear human-rating process for commercial vehicles.

Specifically, it says NASA's current procedures "were not specifically intended to establish requirements for vehicles produced by entities external to NASA, such as COTS firms or international programs."

The panel recommends NASA accelerate its efforts to develop a human-rating process for would-be commercial providers.

"It is the Panel's position that no COTS manufacturer is currently [human-rating-requirements] qualified, despite some claims and beliefs to the contrary," the report states. "Questions that must be answered are: What is the process for certifying that potential COTS vehicles are airworthy and capable of carrying astronauts into space safely? [and] How is compliance assured over the life of the activity?"

The panel also took issue with the Augustine committee's decision to embrace the outsourcing of human spaceflight without having conducted a safety analysis of the commercial concepts SpaceX and others presented to the committee last summer.

"In making this recommendation, the [Augustine] committee also noted that while human safety never can be absolutely assured, safety was assumed to be a 'given,'" the report says. "The Panel believes that this assumption is premature and oversimplifies a complex and challenging problem because there is not a 'cookie-cutter approach' to safety in space."

The report points to the Ares I program as an example of the right way to go about ensuring astronaut safety.

"Its architecture was selected by NASA's Exploration System Architecture Study (ESAS) team because of its potential to deliver at least 10 times the level of crew safety as the current shuttle," the report says. "The launch vehicle configuration has been developed to provide the best possible allowances for crew escape in the event of a launch failure. The independent launch escape system pulls the capsule clear of the launch pad and any attendant explosion or fire. The demonstrated high reliability of the solid rocket booster (SRB) suggests a low likelihood of first stage failure on ascent, but the launch escape system would cover even this low probability of failure."

The panelists warn that switching from a "well-designed, safety optimized" system to commercially-developed vehicles based on "nothing more than unsubstantiated claims would seem a poor choice," according to the report. "Before any change is made to another architecture, the inherent safety of that approach must be assessed to ensure that it offers a level of safety equal to or greater than the program of record."

The report also warned against extending the life of NASA's fleet of aging space shuttle orbiters "significantly" beyond their planned September 2010 retirement absent a thorough vehicle recertification effort.

"With sufficient money, manpower, and recertification efforts, it is possible that the Shuttle could be extended," the report states. "While we are aware of no major systems that are 'on the knee of the curve' of wear out, the funds needed to allow full recertification are substantial, and the probability of finding things that demand even more resources during recertification is very real."

NASA plans to launch five more shuttle missions by October, shut down the program and transfer the three orbiters to museums and science centers.

Once the shuttles stop flying, NASA intends to buy rides for its astronauts on Russian Soyuz vehicles until a new service — either commercial or government — materializes. Space.com

Medal of Honor Recepient Draws Support for Flag Pole

There are 26 pages of comments and climbing in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. In Richmond, VA, we have a population that appears to be quite patriotic and isn't ashamed to admit that there is a problem with not being able to fly the Flag of the United States of America from a flagpole, rather than from a small stick coming from the front porch. It made Fox News. That’s hilarious. The Board of the HOA that had a law firm notify this Medal of Honor recipient, this man who has had a highway named after him, that he is in violation of a covenant in the by laws of the neighborhood, in which he lives.

The story, he goes out everyday to raise the American flag up the flag pole in his yard, then in the evening he lowers the flag. According to his story, he has always been around the flag, from WWII to Vietnam. That's 3 wars he has been involved with and 3 wars that the flag of the United States has been beside him.

Maybe, just maybe, there should be something in the U.S. Constitution stipulating the right of Americans to display the Flag of the U.S.A. in a manner, which would override a local zoning ordinance or Home Owners Association's (HOA) rules governing how the Flag is displayed.

I can enjoy the fact that we have this many people still remembering what things are great about America. Our men and women who serve in our Armed Forces and the Flag for which they saluted and fought beside. I think the HOA is outgunned and outclassed. But, I can see a future where this may just slip away, quietly after a surrender. ...lakotahope
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Col. Van T. Barfoot, the 90-year-old Medal of Honor recipient who refuses to remove his flagpole from his property, speaks out on what the flag means to him.

RICHMOND, Va. -- A flood of help is building for an embattled Medal of Honor winner in Henrico County who was ordered this week to remove a flagpole from his yard by his community's homeowners association.

From the halls of Congress to the 90-year-old colonel's old infantry unit, a local law firm and scores of service members, help is making its way to Col. Van T. Barfoot.

"He said he was outraged and wanted to help," Barfoot's daughter said yesterday, speaking of U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., who learned of Barfoot's plight on TimesDispatch.com yesterday.

In a five-paragraph letter that he received Tuesday, Barfoot was ordered to remove the flagpole from his yard in the Sussex Square community in far western Henrico County. The decorated veteran of three wars raises the American flag every morning on the pole, then lowers and folds the flag at dusk in a three-corner military fashion.

The Coates & Davenport law firm in Richmond sent a priority-mail letter ordering Barfoot to remove the pole by 5 p.m. Friday or face "legal action being brought to enforce the covenants and restrictions against you." The letter states that Barfoot will be subject to paying all legal fees and costs in any successful legal proceeding pursued by the homeowners association's board.

A Richmond law firm, Marchant, Honey & Baldwin, offered yesterday to represent Barfoot at no cost, partner John Honey said.

In a statement released last night, the association said Barfoot is in direct violation of its board's July decision to deny his request to erect a flagpole.

"This is not about the American flag. This is about a flagpole," the statement reads, noting that many homes in the neighborhood display the American flag.

Margaret Nicholls, Barfoot's daughter, said last night that the statement is using semantics to back up a board decision about the pole that was made on aesthetic, not regulatory grounds. There is no covenant that expressly forbids flag poles, she said.

Warner has known Barfoot for years and has a high regard for him, Warner spokesman Kevin Hall said. "The senator definitely wants to step in to get something resolved."

Nicholls said her father's phone "is ringing off the hook." Members of the 157th Infantry Unit, with which he served, have called along with scores of people concerned about Barfoot's welfare, she said.

Barfoot can't understand why the board allows a flag to hang from an angled pole mounted to the side of a house but disallows a flag flown from a free-standing vertical pole.

"Where I've been, fighting wars, displaying the flag, military installations, parades, everything else, the flag is vertical. And I've done it that way since I was in the Army," Barfoot said.

"Dad sort of feels like this is the end," said Nicholls, who lives a few doors away. But she said yesterday that she and her husband are attempting to generate support for her father's cause, a flag-raising rite that he has undertaken for most of his life.

Barfoot received the Medal of Honor on the battlefield during World War II in Italy and fought as well in the Korean and Vietnam wars. A portion of a highway in rural Mississippi, his native state, was named in his honor this fall. A building at McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Richmond, also carries his name.

Barfoot regularly began flying the flag on Veterans Day this year, after he returned from an extended trip that began in September, despite the Sussex Square board's decision.

He said last month that not flying the flag would be a sacrilege to him.

"There's never been a day in my life or a place I've lived in my life that you couldn't fly the American flag," he said.

Barfoot's neighbors are split, with some saying that the community covenants should have no exceptions, and that Barfoot was given the community's covenants before he bought the property. Others support him regardless.

Sally Hedleston, whose house has a legal flagpole attached, said she has asked board members to make an exception for the Medal of Honor winner.

"Some board members say that rules are rules -- well, how many of them have broken the speed limit every day here?" she asked.

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Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or bmckelway@timesdispatch.com .

Ahmadinejad: Says Israel Cannot Stop Iran From Enriching Nuclear Fuel

The President of Iran is quite outspoken about what Iran will do to its neighbors and what it will do to have "peaceful power" options in place for itself. Stating Israel can't stop Iran from making enriched uranium, Ahmadinejad forgets that the world can stop them and if needed, the United States can and will stop them from producing nuclear weapons. Whether the USA acts after weapons are produced is quite the unknown. As of this time, I believe if the USA discovered Iran had weapons, it wouldn't be long into the future that we would be quite adamant about removing Iran from the nuclear club.

Iran is isolated to the point that only North Korea would support them as Russia recently voted along with the Western Nations in denouncing Iran and its nuclear ambitions. Russia and its sale of the S-300 long range missile system to Iran is still being held up and will be a "large game changer" where Israel and the United States is concerned. . ... Lakotahope

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Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said there isn't a "damn thing" Israel can do to stop its nuclear program, Reuters reported.

"The Zionist regime (Israel) and its (western) backers cannot do a damn thing to stop Iran's nuclear work," Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech, according to Reuters.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday Iran will now enrich its uranium to an even higher level, defying a U.N. call to halt the process due to fears over the country's nuclear program.

Ahmadinejad expressed frustration with negotiations over a U.N.-backed deal to swap Iran's low-enriched uranium for higher-enriched fuel rods to power its medical research reactor.

"I declare here that with the grace of God, the Iranian nation will produce 20 percent (enriched uranium) and anything it needs itself," Ahmadinejad told a cheering crowd of thousands in the southern city Isfahan.

"We told them, give us the 20 percent fuel (in an exchange)," he said. "But then they started adding conditions. So we said, if you want to give us the fuel we'll take it. If not, then fine and goodbye."

The defiant call is similar into tone to the president's announcement Sunday that the country would boost its nuclear activity 10-fold, despite the widespread belief that Iran simply does not have the resources to match its boasts.

Iran currently has one operating enrichment facility, at the central town of Natanz, which has churned out around 3,300 pounds of 3.5 percent enriched uranium over the past years.

The research reactor in Tehran, however, needs uranium enriched to 20 percent.

Enriching uranium even further, to levels around 90 percent, however, results in material suitable for a nuclear war head, something the West feels Iran is striving to do secretly.

The idea behind the swap was to get the bulk of Iran's uranium out of the country so it would not have enough material build a bomb.

Iran denies the charge and insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.