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Calvert: Nation needs to keep focus on space enterprise
ALLISON GATLIN ^ | February 25, 2006 | ALLISON GATLIN

Posted on 02/25/2006 9:37:10 AM PST by BenLurkin

LANCASTER - The country is entering a second space age, one driven not by Cold War rivalries, but by the challenges of maintaining and further promoting the nation's historic excellence in space enterprise. "The second space age must feature exploration of the universe while achieving synergy among commercial, civil and military space programs," said. Rep. Ken Calvert, speaking at the Antelope Valley Board of Trade's 2006 Business Outlook Conference on Friday.

Maintaining the nation's focus on space enterprise is important even as the country faces budgetary challenges such as those brought on by war or natural disasters.

"We can not and should not allow short-term events to jeopardize our long-term investments," Calvert said.

The nation is in danger of losing its pre-eminence in space, however, to nations with emerging space programs such as China and India.

China, for example, graduates as many engineers in a month as the United States does in a year, Calvert said.

In a global economy, losses in the space industry lead to an erosion in the country's competitive edge in science, engineering and other high-tech fields vital to the economy, he said.

Two years ago, President George W. Bush proposed the Vision for Space Exploration, setting forth a road map to revitalize the country's space enterprise. Late last year, Congress approved the NASA Authorization Bill of 2005, providing the funding authority for the effort over the next two years.

Among the points the bill supports is encouraging completion of the next-generation Crew Exploration Vehicle close to the space shuttle fleet's retirement in 2010, balancing the agency's human and robotic space exploration efforts as well as space science and aeronautics research and encouraging cash-prize contests such as the Ansari X Prize to entice outside development of various projects.

(Excerpt) Read more at avpress.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; US: California
KEYWORDS: aerospacevalley; allisongatlin; antelopevalley; cev; nasa; xprize

1 posted on 02/25/2006 9:37:12 AM PST by BenLurkin
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To: BenLurkin

It has long been known that the chemical rocket is horribly inefficient in injecting mass into LEO. How inefficient? It costs $20,000+ per pound to put that pound into LEO with the shuttle. The actual energy cost(mv^2/2 + mgh)of that pound 100 miles up and moving at 5 mps is 4 KWH. At 10 cents/KWH that's 40 cents for 16 oz, a postage stamp to send a 1 oz letter costs 39 cents....Thus we have this space elevator concept : a satellite in geo-orbit with a 22,300 mile long elevator cable to grade, so as to elevator-lift mass to orbit. Several problems therein : icing/water vapor condensing on cable in troposphere = lightning path, red sprites in stratosphere, reactive O and N ions in LEO plasma-degrading it, orbiting space junk, possible interaction with Van Allen belts and magnetosphere; but most deadly : shorting out the earth-ionosphere capacitor of 400,000 V and 1800 A natural flow. That gets rid of electro-potential gradient(50V/m)and drastically changes the entire earth's weather.....20 years ago a small slice of the aerospace industry evolved the EMSL(ElectroMagnetic Space Launch)concept(s) during the SDI/star wars salad days: shooting projectiles into LEO with advanced EM cannons. At a 10% system efficiency that's $4/#, about the same as postage rates. The quenched superconductor rings-cannon was probably the best idea to come out of the study. Why wasn't NASA interested? Vested interests : $20,000 to do $4 worth of real work is one hellava mark-up, yes?


2 posted on 02/25/2006 11:10:41 AM PST by timer
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