{"id":87108,"date":"2010-04-16T18:27:06","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T10:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/national-space-symposium-provides-forum-for-civil-space-concerns\/"},"modified":"2010-04-16T18:27:06","modified_gmt":"2010-04-16T10:27:06","slug":"national-space-symposium-provides-forum-for-civil-space-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/national-space-symposium-provides-forum-for-civil-space-concerns\/","title":{"rendered":"National Space Symposium Provides Forum for Civil Space Concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

[04-16-10] The 26th National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs brought technology enthusiasts and business leaders together to address the future of the commercial and civil value of the global space industry.
\n    In its program statement released April 12, The Space Foundation<\/strong> touted global space business growth during a tough economic climate. In 2009, the space industry took in $261.6 billion, a 7 percent increase from 2008 and 40 percent over the past five years.
\n    \u201cThe industry continued expanding in early 2010, reflecting greater demand for a wide range of space-related products and services \u2014 including low-cost GPS hardware embedded in cars and phones, communications services, and control of a growing number of unmanned aerial vehicles,\u201d the organization said.
\n
\nCivil Space Concerns<\/strong>
\nDespite the optimistic numbers, U.S. President Barack Obama\u2019s termination of NASA<\/strong>\u2019s Orion program, announced in February along with a new direction for NASA funding, was the looming issue for attendees.
\n    NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told anxious audience members at Tuesday\u2019s keynote speech that the new direction for NASA, outlined in the 2010 fiscal year governmental budget, should be seen as a transformative effort rather than a massive budget cut. \u201cBoth NASA and the president are absolutely committed to a vibrant future for human spaceflight,\u201d he said. \u201c\u2026 We will use innovative technologies developed in a step-wise approach.\u201d
\n    Some audience members remained skeptical. One NASA official, who asked not be name, said Obama\u2019s budget looks for answers to NASA\u2019s problems in the wrong direction. \u201cInstead of handing off space exploration development to private companies, I think Obama should fix the problems at NASA that got it into its mess in the first place. The Orion project needed better and more efficient management, and I think we will end up throwing a lot of good work to waste.\u201d
\n    Obama reaffirmed his support for NASA\u2019s space programs in an April 15 speech at the Kennedy Space Center, outlining his expectations that U.S. space exploration will reach beyond the moon and further into the solar system\u2019s reaches by 2025.
\n        Obama said he \u201cremains 100 percent committed to the mission of NASA and its future,\u201d but defended his plans to use federal funding to bring more private companies into space exploration following the retirement of the space shuttle program. \u201cWe want to leap into the future, not continue on the same path as before. \u2026 The bottom line is: Nobody is more committed to manned space flight, the human exploration of space, than I am. But we\u2019ve got to do it in a smart way,\u201d the President said.
\n      While Obama\u2019s NASA policy has its share of critics, the plan also has supporters in the U.S. commercial launch industry.
\n      SpaceX<\/strong> CEO Elon Musk said the President reached a \u201creasonable\u201d conclusion that spending $50 billion to develop a NASA launch vehicle replacement for the shuttle is too expensive. \u201cBy the time President Obama cancelled Ares 1\/Orion earlier this year, the schedule had already slipped five years to 2017 and completing development would have required another $50 billion.  Moreover, the cost per flight, inclusive of overhead, was estimated to be at least $1.5 billion compared to the $1 billion of shuttle, despite carrying only four people to shuttle\u2019s seven and almost no cargo,\u201d Musk said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Military Concerns<\/strong>
\nFor military space applications, addressing the need for space situational awareness was at the top of the list of concerns for U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn III, who spoke with conference attendees April 14 about the dangers of congested space.
\n    The U.S. Department of Defense<\/strong> \u201cwill work closely with foreign governments to ensure that all space-faring nations obey the same procedures when operating satellites in orbit. We need to share rules of the road in space to provide predictability. \u2026 There must be better coordination between nations to ensure that spacecraft do not collide with each other or with the growing amount of space debris,\u201d said Lynn.
\n    Space congestion also will lead to more difficult interference issues, according to Lynn. Interference, which hampers bandwidth efficiency needed for high-demand military applications such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), will only be intensified by the projected 9,000 transponders that will be transmitting sa-com signals by 2015 and an increasing reliance on commercially provided military satcom.
\n    To battle these issues, Lynn said the Pentagon is endorsing and developing an Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) concept for U.S. Strategic Command, which will launch its first ORS-1 satellite later this year. The program not only provides space management applications but space defense capabilities as well.
\n     Lynn also referenced a U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program, “fractured satellites,” which includes a variety of spacecraft components installed aboard a handful of smaller communications and remote sensing payloads. The program is important to the military because it spreads out the military architecture over a larger network, preventing hostile forces from taking out the entire system. \u201cIf one component fails, the operator would only have to replace one of the satellites instead of the entire system.\u201d
\n    According to Lynn, the program, which is set to complete reviews this summer, will promote competition among small satellite manufacturers to compete for contracts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[04-16-10] The 26th National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs brought technology enthusiasts and business leaders together to address the future of the commercial and civil value of the global space industry.     In its program statement released April 12, The Space Foundation touted global space business growth during a tough economic climate. In 2009, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87108"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}