Teachers In Space

“Unmanned” space supporters would have us believe that humans are obsolete and space should be the exclusive domain of robots, but an incident that occured last spring shows why humans (especially pilots) are not yet obsolete.

In February, a flight of six F-22 Raptors (the USAF’s newest, most high-tech fighter) was being deloyed to Japan for the first time. When the Raptors crossed the International dateline, all software in the  six planes abruptly failed. The aircraft were without communications, navigation, even fuel management (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6225).

If the Raptor had been an “unmanned” aircraft, all six planes would have crashed. They would have been lost in mid-ocean; the wreckage (including flight recorders) might never have been recovered. Engineers would have spent months, perhaps years, trying to determine what went wrong.

Instead, pilots were able to improvise emergency procedures for a situation no one had anticipated. Human skills and courage allowed them to follow their tankers back to Hawaii and an emergency landing. Having pilots onboard saved a billion dollars worth of aircraft from a watery grave.

Software errors like the International dateline bug are common in new systems. A similar bug led to the loss of NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter. In that case, programmers accidentally used English rather than metric units. Unlike the Raptor,  however, Mars Climate Orbiter had no pilot who could compensate for the error. Instead of going into orbit around Mars, it crashed on the surface.

The ability of humans to improvise and correct for unexpected situations is useful not only in operational missions but also during flight test. That’s one reason why piloted aircraft are generally cheaper to develop than Unmanned Air Vehicles. (In fact, many of the larger UAVs are flown as piloted aircraft first and transition to unmanned operation later in the development program.)

Such lessons should be kept in mind when designing future space programs.

Two sources are offering teachers free seeds that have flown in space for classroom use. The NASA Engineering Design Challenge is offering cinnamon basil seeds to the first 100,000 takers. NASA wants students from elementary to high-school level to design, build, and test lunar plant growth chambers using the seeds, which flew aboard the International Space Station and Space Shuttle flight STS-118. Sign up here. Epsori Space Systems is offering a mix of seeds that have flown in space, including alfalfa, radish, and the dreaded broccolli. Teachers can sign up here. Below, basil seeds are exposed to space on the Materials on ISS-3 experiment.

XCOR Aerospace, one of the companies signed up to help take teachers to space, has just made Inc. magazine’s Inc. 500 list of fast-growing private companies. The magazine says:

Why it’s growing: Speed to market. The company strives to design, build, and test rockets on a much shorter schedule than the rest of the industry, where the norm is to conduct only a few rocket tests a year and then analyze the results at length. Among its process innovations, XCOR uses a mobile test launch pad and eschews toxic propellants, which require delicate handling.

An XCOR press release says:

XCOR’s journey from a start-up in 1999 to the Inc. 500 was not easy. Aerospace veterans Jeff Greason, Dan DeLong, Aleta Jackson, and Doug Jones formed XCOR, where they built and tested their first rocket engines on a tiny budget. The breakthrough came when the team decided to modify a pusher-propeller-powered Long EZ airplane and replace its conventional piston engine with XCOR-designed and built rocket engines. This demonstrated XCOR’s re-usable and re-startable rocket motors on actual flying hardware. The rocket plane not only proved the reliability of XCOR’s technology, it generated publicity and helped raise the firm’s profile in the aerospace industry. This attracted serious investors, including Esther Dyson and the investment group Boston Harbor Angels.

The higher profile and proven technology helped XCOR compete for and win a series of contracts with NASA and the Department of Defense. These contracts include building and testing a methane engine for NASA, and designing a suborbital space plane for the Air Force….

XCOR is currently working on a craft designed to carry people and payloads into suborbital space, but its longer term goal is to build a craft that can place them into orbit.

For the complete press release, look here.

The Northrop Grumman Foundation is continuing its successful program of microgravity aircraft flights for teachers. Together with Zero Gravity Corporation, Northrop Grumman flew 248 teachers on 12 flights in 2006. In 2007, they have 16 flights scheduled.

The program is open to accredited middle-school math and science teachers and to college education majors at universities near the locations where flights take place: Bethpage, New York; Baltimore, Maryland; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Dallas, Texas; Los Angeles, California, Newport News, Virginia; New Orleans, Louisiana, and Washington, DC.

The program is still taking applications for two flights out of Newport News. All other flights are full for this year. For more details or to apply, see Northrop Grumman’s Weightless Flights of Discovery pages.

August 21, 2007 (Kennedy Space Center) – As the Space Shuttle Endeavour touched down with Educator Astronaut Barbara Morgan on board, Teachers in Space project leaders called for NASA to announce flight dates for the three remaining Educator Astronauts.”NASA has taken the first step toward keeping the commitment it made to education more than 20 years ago, but it’s only the first step,” said Teachers in Space project manager Edward Wright. “We call on NASA Administrator Mike Griffin to immediately announce flight dates for the next three Educator Astronauts - Joe Acaba, Ricky Arnold and Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger.”

Teachers in Space was a NASA project in the 1980’s, but NASA discontinued the effort after the Challenger accident that claimed the life of teacher Christa McAuliffe in 1986. Teachers in Space has been revived as a private nonprofit project by the Space Frontier Foundation and the United States Rocket Academy. Instead of flying teachers aboard the Shuttle, the new Teachers in Space program will use suborbital passenger vehicles now under development by commercial companies.

“The Educator Astronaut program is taking teachers out of the classroom to join the NASA astronaut corps,” Wright said. “Our goal is to put astronaut teachers into American classrooms.”

Space Frontier Foundation chairman Bob Werb believes NASA still has a role to play as well. “We call on NASA to fly the three remaining Educator Astronauts as soon as possible and to give them more time to teach lessons from space. After flying, they should return to the classroom, alongside the astronaut teachers we will be creating.”

Teachers in Space is preparing to begin the process of selecting the first of many teachers who will fly in space on suborbital vehicles. The start of the selection process will be officially announced at the Wirefly X Prize Cup, a public spaceflight show at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico on October 26-28.

The Teachers in Space logo is currently flying in Earth orbit, inside Bigelow Aerospace’s Genesis II prototype space station module:

August 8, 2007 (Alamogordo) – As Educator Astronaut Barbara Morgan prepares to blast into space, the Space Frontier Foundation and the United States Rocket Academy announced that the new Teachers in Space effort will begin accepting applications from teachers this October.

“We congratulate Barbara Morgan on the beginning of this historic voyage,” said Space Frontier Foundation Executive Director Jeff Krukin. “NASA is keeping a commitment to education that was made more than 20 years ago. Now, we need to take the next step. The Educator Astronaut program takes a teacher out of the classroom to join the NASA astronaut corps. Our goal is to let many teachers experience spaceflight and return to American classrooms to educate and inspire the next generation.”

President Ronald Reagan announced the first Teacher in Space program in 1984. NASA selected Christa McAuliffe and Barbara Morgan to be the first teachers to fly in space, but NASA backed away from the program after the Challenger accident claimed the life of Christa McAuliffe in 1986. Under political pressure in the 1990s, NASA created the Educator Astronaut program and accepted Barbara Morgan as a permanent NASA employee. Unfortunately, the goal of returning flown teachers to American classrooms was lost.

“We’re returning to that original vision,” said Teachers in Space project manager Edward Wright, “and expanding on it. The average teacher touches thousands of students during a teaching career. Imagine the impact of hundreds or even thousands of astronaut teachers, men and women who have been to space, in American schools. For 40 years, we’ve held forth the false promise that if students studied math and science, they would have a chance to go into space. A student still has a better chance of playing professional basketball than flying as a NASA astronaut. Today, we’re changing that. Private companies are developing a new generation of reusable suborbital vehicles that promise dramatic reductions in the cost of human spaceflight. We are working with leading suborbital companies. When they’re ready to fly, we will have teachers who are trained and ready to go.”

The rules for the first competition will be announced at the Wirefly X Prize Cup on October 26-28, and we will begin accepting applications at that time.

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The Space Frontier Foundation is an organization of people dedicated to opening the Space Frontier to human settlement as rapidly as possible. Our goals include protecting the Earth’s fragile biosphere and creating a freer and more prosperous life for each generation by using the unlimited energy and material resources of space.

The United States Rocket Academy is a non-profit educational institution founded to provide spaceflight training to meet the needs of the commercial, military and scientific sectors.

The Wirefly X Prize Cup is an annual two-day air and space exposition. This year the Cup will be held in conjunction with Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, NM to create the first ever Air & Space Expo with live fire/fly demonstrations and competitions. This event is free and open to the public and will be held on October 27th and 28th from 10 am to 5 pm. Launch and airshow demonstrations will feature Rocket Racing League’s X-Racer; Air Force single-ship demos including F-22, F-16 and F-117; as well as the return of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge – a two-level, $2 million competition requiring a vehicle to simulate trips between the moon’s surface and lunar orbit. Nine teams are registered for this year’s competition, with NASA funding the prizes through its Centennial Challenges program. Additionally, visitors can tour a massive ground display featuring space and rocket exhibits and Air Force aircraft. For more information, please visit www.xprizecup.com or call (310) 576-3473.