Where are we supposed to meet? Here or down at the outfitters? Beats me was the answer…again. I was with a group of speakers at a conference, and we were headed to the speaker’s dinner at the Sami camp. The Sami are the native people who live above the arctic circle in Lapland. They are reindeer herders. Their art is spare, similar to Zuni imagery, their songs resemble cowboy yodeling. Once again, the out of towners were lost.  I was invited to speak in Sweden on space transportation. I traveled across the globe, got exactly where I was supposed to be, and was lost. What is the thread that weaves the hours into a memory? What is the smallest part of a big adventure? At a conference on space transportation, we couldn’t’ figure out where we were supposed to meet.

I like a schedule, and an agenda. I believe a schedule is a commitment, an agreement. A transportation industry must include schedules. Otherwise there is no industry, just people, goods and vehicles going on their own at random times to random places. That’s why I am well suited to work on this space transportation business. I am working to increase predictability and decrease random nature of space travel.

If you have ever traveled to watch a Space Shuttle launch, you knew to put an end date on your stay. You may see a launch, you may not. But, don’t wait around; launches can be delayed for months. For good reason launches are delayed. Those days of millions of moving parts and unsustainable maintenance costs are gone. Building in complexity to a transportation system creates more complexity.  The Shuttle was likely the most significant transportation machine ever built by man. Those who flew in them honor all the dedication, innovation and creativity that went into the vehicles and program. We will continue to reap benefits from this vehicle and its support systems for years. We are moving on to less expensive, more sustainable vehicles for a more diverse industry.

Simplicity. What is so hard about giving people a schedule? Be at Gate 37 by 12:15 to board your plane. As I discussed the confusion with my colleagues, it became a cherished thread linking each of us closer during the trip. Every time we discovered we didn’t know where we were going or why we were all standing around hoping someone knew what was next, each discovered how the others dealt with ambiguity. Sometimes the best parts of a trip include the ridiculous.

Yet, I believe the lack of predictability in the access to space has contributed to the ambivalence people have about the industry. If no one knows for sure when they will have access to a place, it is forgotten.   Think about our downtown mall. It was inaccessible for many years, people just didn’t go there. It was certainly not a market place.

At a recent meeting in the Long Beach Convention Center, I was intentionally looking at the spaces where people gathered. There was a main auditorium that seated 800 people. Lectures started at 8:30am and continued until 5:30 pm. Speakers included Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, and our Poet Laureate. There were fifteen hundred people in attendance. Throughout the Convention Center there were small lounges where small groups of people could watch the lectures on video, check their email and also talk. I had not seen bean bag chairs since I left college, but they were all over the place. And in use as people relaxed and listened.

I was sent a software tool prior to the meeting to help me connect with people who had similar interest to mine. I discovered most people did not use the tool. As the days progressed I became more focused on my original purpose for attending. I wanted to learn how people gathered at meetings, and how I could determine their interest in what we are working on here in New Mexico. The interesting conversations became frequent, one more exciting than the next, yet, where were they leading? Like this article you may be wondering, where are we going here? Is the feeling of being lost, aimless, uncertain part of the human journey? I avoid it. I like purpose. I am aim to get to space, and others want to go too. They expect to have interesting work to keep them productively occupied, they expect to explore. No lost in space for them or me.

As a gardener, I decided I would visit my friend Max Bleiweiss, a geophysicist, and get more information on La Nina. He works at NMSU, and is the founder of the CARSAME Center.  The Center is a remote sensing research resource for our region. Remote sensing is a scientific term to describe the process of using instruments to measure things like temperature from a distance. Max’s and his son Mark own the M. Phillips’s Gallery on the downtown mall. Combining a visit to the Farmer’s Market on a blustery Saturday, with a stop at the Gallery – there are cookies, and getting the low down on weather prediction for this article was a win-win-win.

Max and I met in 1998 when he was working to develop more capability at NMSU to enable farmers, ranchers, city and county planners, and resource managers in the state to use satellite data to help increase efficiency in farming, ranching and planning. For example, Max was helping people use satellite data to make more informed decisions on causes and effects of dust storms in our area. Once people saw most of the dust storms that hit Deming and I-25 in the Spring originate in the Sonoran desert in Mexico, it became more strategic to work with Mexican farmers to work the problem together. He came to me because of my work with NASA and because of my job with the New Mexico Space Grant. NASA was involved in developing and operating the Earth Observing System (EOS). We started funding classes, students, and writing grants to bring more research capacity to NMSU in this area.

When I spoke with Max about the current La Niña I asked him for his best advice on following the La Niña. He suggested the best way to stay on top of the development of different weather patterns is to go to the NOAA website on La Niña http://www.elnino.noaa.gov/lanina.html. According to the website, La Niña is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.

Ok, back to weather prediction. Frankly, I’d like to know if I need to get my reservation in early with my gardener. Last year after the freeze, getting him to come over was harder than getting a plumber on Sunday. Max explained, scientists don’t understand the cause-and-effect relationships among Earth's lands, oceans, and atmosphere well enough to predict what, if any, impacts these rapid changes will have on future climate conditions. Scientists need to make many measurements all over the world, over a long period of time, in order to assemble the information needed to construct accurate computer models that will enable them to forecast the causes and effects of weather. The only feasible way to collect this information is through the use of space-based Earth observing satellites.

I figured it was a long shot. Since Max and I first met, the government has consolidated a great deal of its weather prediction resources and as the NOAA site will indicate, into The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS).  The field of weather prediction is evolving. Developing the sensors is a big part of the effort and it has taken many years. Correlating data from across the globe, coming from sensors of different types that measure different weather patterns is a large problem. Rats.  Max suggested if you would like a good conversation about this, David DuBois at New Mexico State will be a good person to talk to. I hope you enjoy the weather, and get prepared.

While at SNC we toured the plant, viewed the test hardware for the Dream Chaser and flew the Dream Chaser simulator.  The HL 20 design has its origins in the BOR-4 Russian space plane. The BOR-4 was reverse engineered by NASA/Langley in the 1980’s and named the HL 20. The HL 20 is now being adapted by SNC into the Dream Chaser using the original Rockwell structural design concept.  The Dream Chaser is a manned orbital space plane and one of two efforts by private industry to launch cargo and crew to the Space Station under NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program (CCDev) program. You can read about Sierra Nevada Corporation’s progress on the Dream Chaser at http://www.spacedev.com/space_exploration.php  

The Russian space plane called the BOR-4 was designed because the Russians feared the U.S. intended to use the Shuttle for military purposes including delivery of nuclear weapons. As a response to this threat, the Russians began work on a program to possibly intercept the Shuttle.  Note that the BOR-4 should not be confused with the perhaps better known Buran, a near copy of the US Space Shuttle orbiter.  The Buran flew only once and it remained the only full sized space shuttle to ever perform an unmanned flight in fully automatic mode. You can watch a video of a Russian flight test of the BOR-4 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdlaBLomTZ4  The BOR-4 flew 4 times, twice in the Indian Ocean where it was filmed in this video. Decide for yourself where this footage came from. 

I was in Colorado for the first technical meeting of the FAA Center of Excellence for Commercial Space Transportation. You may remember, New Mexico State University won the national competition for this Center in August of 2010. As the Administrative Lead, I have the privilege of knowing many of the brilliant designers of space systems, but also have the opportunity to send NMSU students to learn about these companies and present at meeting such as this. 

After I visited the Sierra Nevada plant, and met with one of my students who now works at SNC, I went to the University of Colorado Bioastronautics Laboratory in Boulder. The university has a model of the HL 20 built by students from North Carolina State University. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReniUfN9GFY. 

A cooperative agreement between NASA, North Carolina State University and North Carolina A&T University led to the construction of a full-scale model of the HL-20 PLS for further human factors research, following Rockwell’s original structural design. Students at the universities, with requirements furnished by NASA Langley Research Center’s, and with guidance from university instructors, designed the research model during their spring 1990 semester with construction following during the summer. The research model was eventually moved to UC Boulder where students continue to work on this project in collaboration with SNC. 

The role of students in the space program is a long one. As we build our education programs in the aerospace engineering programs at universities in New Mexico, we will have companies looking to the research capabilities in our universities. Sierra Nevada is using UC Boulder students and faculty to help them gain a competitive advantage.  Through my NASA work with the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium, I will soon be entering into a Space Act Agreement with NASA’s Flight Opportunities Office. This agreement will enable us to partner with NASA on research flights from Spaceport America. We have a partner in this Student Launch Program.  This is another first for New Mexico. We have a lot to be grateful for as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday. 

Colorado has just announced they will be building a spaceport. They like New Mexico, realize there is a great deal of opportunity emerging from test and development programs as we evolve the next generation of space transportation vehicles. Colorado has the second largest space economy in the nation. They are now positioning themselves to surpass Florida as they evolve vehicle testing with the Dream Chaser program. 

I can only hope New Mexico continues to take advantage of the asset we have in Spaceport America. Efforts to involve students and research universities in the space industry have benefits to local economies that can only be known if we talk about them.

By ABC-7 Reporter Jill Galus

POSTED: 1:21 pm MDT May 20, 2011

UPDATED: 7:10 pm MDT May 20, 2011

New Mexico -- A shiny, metallic reflection at Spaceport America may not look look like much from far away, but it is actually the launch pad where the SL-5 rocket took off into space Friday morning.

"I've never seen that before," Joel Herrera, a fifth grader at Columbia Elementary School, said.

In a matter of seconds, or traveling at five times the speed of sound, the UP Aerospace Sounding Rocket vanished into the blue sky, and left behind a thick trail of white smoke.

"It was pretty amazing," Fredrick Hansen, an eighth grader at Sierra Middle School, said. "It went up there really fast, and it's just great to know that I had the opportunity to send an experiment up to space."

Hundreds of elementary to high school-aged students from Las Cruces, El Paso and as far away as Tucson, watched with wide eyes as their year's worth of projects launched into space.

The impact for students goes far beyond those brief exciting moments.

"Inspiration...that is the huge importance of this," Jeremey Sanchez, a fifth grade teacher at Loma Heights Elementary School, said.

Watching the 780 lb. rocket take off, was priceless, Sanchez said.

"Having this opportunity to actually try a real idea and see it come to full-term, it's just phenomenal for these kids," Sanchez said. "They just love it."

Experiments reached an altitude of 72 miles.

"These students designed, built and flew their experiments in one year; even NASA doesn't do that," Pat Hynes, Director of the Space Grant Consortium, said.

Some students say, this is the icing on the cake for them.

"We built a model rocket at the camp, but now that we're doing it in real life, it's really cool," Ethan Hentzel, a seventh grader at Brown Middle School, said.

Projects ranged from tracking temperature and radiation changes, to what happens to a marshmallow during weightlessness.

"We want them to understand how the pathway is constructed; when you have an idea, how to design it, build it, fly it," Hynes said.

NASA's 'Summer of Innovation Program' sponsored the third annual launch.

"This would be our work paying off," Victor Hernandez, a seventh grader at Brown Middle School said.

The experiment portion of the rocket returned back to the ground by parachute about 15 minutes after take off. That data collected will be analyzed by students to help prepare for next year's launch.

 http://www.kvia.com/news/27968684/detail.html

Posted: 05/21/2011 12:56:13 AM MDT

UPHAM, N.M. - Maybe it wasn't exactly Cape Canaveral, but 800 students had at least 21 reasons to celebrate what they described as an awesome aerospace adventure.

At 7:21 a.m. Friday, a nervous Aileen Montana of El Paso twisted a knob that hurled a 20-foot rocket with 21 student experiments from the desert floor 72 miles into space within three minutes. Estimated speed: 3,800 mph.

Montana, 14, an eighth-grade student at Brown Middle School, and her classmates designed an experiment to determine the effects of microgravity on a marshmallow.

"I was nervous, but I just turned the knob and the rocket took off," Montana said later. "Amazing."

Students cheered and high-fived each other as the rocket disappeared into the clear blue sky, leaving only a powerful sonic boom and a snake-like plume of smoke.

An estimated 1,200 visitors, including elementary, middle school, high school and college students from New Mexico, Arizona and Texas watched the rocket launch, the third student launch put on by the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium with NASA funding.

The launch site, not far from the historic Camino Real used by Spanish explorers, is about six miles from the futuristic-looking hangar and terminal building where Virgin Galactic will launch the first commercial flights into space sometime in the future.

While Virgin Galactic has not set a specific date for flying commercial passengers into space, Spaceport officials said the building is about 75 percent complete and is expected to be finished within six months.

The student launch rocket floated back to earth about 15 minutes later in a parachute. It was retrieved about 33 miles away at the nearby White Sands Missile Range.

An Army helicopter returned the experiment portion of the rocket to the launch area by mid-morning. Technicians then brought the rocket to a huge tent so that students could retrieve and examine the data from their experiments.

Hundreds of students poured into the tent, eager to photograph the rocket. The congestion prompted Pat Hynes, director of the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium, to comment: "This is like seeing the pope or something."

Students and teachers at Brown Middle School are still analyzing the results but they're convinced their experiment in space worked.

"It's totally awesome," Brown Middle School seventh-grader Francisco Manuel Dominguez said after checking out marshmallows that resembled white raisins after a quick trip into space. "Hopefully we got some good results."

Alex Armendariz, a science teacher at Brown Middle School, said what mattered most is that students had the opportunity to see a project they worked hard to develop go up in space.

The experiments varied widely, from Las Cruces Mesa Middle School's efforts to send text messages to a cell phone and a satellite phone on the rocket to Aztec High School's attempts to find out if a New Mexico chile would heat up or get roasted in space.

New Mexico Space Grant officials applauded the student launch. The consortium spent $250,000 for the rocket and other launch related costs.

"It was a huge success," said Joylynn Watkins, an engineer with the New Mexico Space Grant. "We plan to continue to educate and inspire students to do math and science projects."

The New Mexico program is the only program of its kind in the United States that gives students access to space once a year, usually toward the end of the academic year.

Christine Anderson, executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, gave students, teachers and parents a slide tour of what the spaceport will look like when completed. The Spaceport Authority operates on a $209 million annual budget and one day expects to be a commercial launch pad for research and development payloads as well as commercial space flights.

"This is such a fabulous venue to have space experiments," Anderson said. "Here, I look out and I see astronauts and I see scientists and I see engineers."

At least five Las Cruces schools put student experiments on the rocket.

Albert Prieto, a second-grade teacher at Mesilla Park Elementary in Las Cruces, took time off to go see his daughter's school experiment fly into space.

"They got to see the full gamut of their experiment," Prieto said. "That's really neat and practical."

Jeanette Miller, a middle school math teacher, and another teacher brought 31 students from Tohatchi, N.M., 20 miles north of Gallup in northwestern New Mexico.

"Just taking part in the experiments and making it real for the students instead of just learning in the classroom, that's the benefit," Miller said.

Jeff Berman, a producer with the Discovery Channel in Canada, conducted various interviews to try to capture the creative spirit depicted in the different student experiments for a show called "Daily Planet."

"This is a story about the whole launch and the chance for kids to get involved in the aerospace adventure," he said.

Ramon Renteria writes for the El Paso Times, a member of the Texas-New Mexico Newspapers Partnership, and may be reached at rrenteria@elpasotimes.com; (915) 546-6146.

http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-news/ci_18110336

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN Associated Press © 2011 The Associated Press

May 20, 2011, 5:14PM

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UPHAM, N.M. - In the remote desert of southern New Mexico, hundreds of students from across the state, Arizona and Texas gathered at dawn Friday to watch as a rocket whisked a year's worth of their work into space.

The SL-5 rocket lifted off following a bright flash as engineers from UP Aerospace supervised about a mile away from the crowd. At five times the speed of sound, the rocket carried the students' experiments to a record 73.5 miles high.

The high altitude winds turned the contrail into a corkscrew, and the students belted out their approval with a chorus of "cool" and "awesome."

More than two dozen experiments were launched from Spaceport America as part of this year's annual student launch sponsored by NASA through its Summer of Innovation Program.

George Whitesides, president and CEO of Virgin Galactic, the commercial space venture founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, said it's moments like the rocket launch that capture children's attention.

"We know that as a nation, we need to do a better job of getting our kids excited about science and technology. It's essential to our future, and I think space still has a really big role to play in terms of getting kids tied to those subjects," he said. "We're probably going to have 500 future astronauts because of this event."

After the payload reached its maximum altitude, a parachute deployed and the experiments were returned to earth so data could be downloaded by the students.

Some experiments were designed to monitor changes in temperature, pressure and radiation. Others challenged the viability of alternative power sources, while one tested whether a cell phone was capable of receiving text messages at the edge of space.

Being able to text family and friends will be important once commercial space travel becomes common, according to the excited group of middle school girls from Las Cruces who worked on the project.

"We've been planning and talking about it a long time," said Tatiana Prieto, one of the students. "Now we finally saw it go up, and it was like 'Yeah!'"

Virgin Galactic, the spaceport's anchor tenant, and the state Spaceport Authority plan to continue working with the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium to find ways to use the spaceport as a learning center for the region.

The $209 million taxpayer-financed spaceport is expected to be complete by the end of the year. It's the world's first dedicated spaceport, which aims to become ground zero for the burgeoning commercial spaceflight industry.

Some estimate Virgin Galactic could begin flights out of the spaceport sometime in 2013, but Whitesides declined Thursday to give any specific dates. He said the company is testing its spacecraft and rocket systems.

State officials also want to add to the tenant list companies for other commercial space endeavors, such as research and payload delivery.

Spaceport executive director Christine Anderson said she sees potential for many support businesses to spring up around development of the spaceport, resulting in more science and technology jobs.

As the students waited for their payload to be returned, Anderson talked about the spaceport and their future.

"Dream big, and don't let anybody tell you that you can't do something because you can do whatever you set your mind to, and today is a good lesson for that," Anderson said.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/7574209.html

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/7574209.html#ixzz1N2yTramD

by Ramón Rentería \ El Paso Times

Posted: 05/21/2011 10:48:45 AM MDT

SPACEPORT AMERICA, N.M. -- Maybe it wasn't exactly Cape Canaveral, but 800 students had at least 21 reasons to celebrate what they described as an awesome aerospace adventure.

At 7:21 a.m. Friday, a nervous Aileen Montana of El Paso twisted a knob that hurled a 20-foot rocket with 21 student experiments from the desert floor 72 miles into space within three minutes. Estimated speed: 3,800 mph.

Montana, 14, an eighth-grader at Brown Middle School, and her classmates designed an experiment to determine the effects of microgravity on a marshmallow.

"I was nervous, but I just turned the knob and the rocket took off," she said later. "Amazing."

Students cheered and high-fived each other as the rocket disappeared into the clear blue sky, leaving only a powerful sonic boom and a snake-like plume of smoke.

An estimated 1,200 visitors -- including elementary, middle school, high school and college students from New Mexico, Arizona and Texas -- watched the rocket launch, the third student launch put on by the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium with NASA money.

The launch site, not far from the historic Camino Real used by Spanish explorers, is about six miles from the futuristic where Virgin Galactic will launch the first commercial flights into space sometime in the future.

Though Virgin Galactic has not set a specific date for flying commercial passengers into space, Spaceport officials said the building is about 75 percent complete and is expected to be finished within six months.

The student launch rocket floated back to earth about 15 minutes later in a parachute. It was retrieved about 33 miles away at the nearby White Sands Missile Range.

An Army helicopter returned the experiment part of the rocket to the launch area by midmorning. Technicians then moved the rocket to a huge tent so that students could retrieve and examine the data from their experiments.

Hundreds of students poured into the tent, eager to photograph the rocket. The congestion prompted Pat Hynes, director of the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium, to comment: "This is like seeing the pope or something."

Students and teachers at Brown Middle School are still analyzing the results, but they're convinced their experiment in space worked.

"It's totally awesome," seventh-grader Francisco Manuel Dominguez said after checking out marshmallows that resembled white raisins after a quick trip into space. "Hopefully we got some good results."

Alex Armendariz, a science teacher at Brown Middle School, said what mattered most is that students had the opportunity to see a project they worked hard to develop go up in space.

The experiments varied widely. They included Las Cruces Mesa Middle School's efforts to send text messages to a cellphone and a satellite phone on the rocket, and Aztec (N.M.) High School's attempts to find out whether a New Mexico chile would heat up or get roasted in space.

New Mexico Space Grant officials applauded the student launch. The consortium spent $250,000 for the rocket and other launch-related costs.

"It was a huge success," said Joylynn Watkins, an engineer with the New Mexico Space Grant. "We plan to continue to educate and inspire students to do math and science projects."

The New Mexico program is the only program of its kind in the United States that gives students access to space once a year, usually toward the end of the academic year.

Christine Anderson, executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, gave students, teachers and parents a slide tour of what the spaceport will look like when completed. The Spaceport Authority operates on a $209 million annual budget and one day expects to be a commercial launchpad for research and development payloads as well as commercial space flights.

"This is such a fabulous venue to have space experiments," Anderson said. "Here, I look out and I see astronauts and I see scientists and I see engineers."

At least five Las Cruces schools put student experiments on the rocket.

Albert Prieto, a second-grade teacher at Mesilla Park Elementary in Las Cruces, took time off to go see his daughter's school experiment fly into space. "They got to see the full gamut of their experiment," he said. "That's really neat and practical."

Jeanette Miller, a middle-school math teacher, and another teacher brought 31 students from Tohatchi, N.M., 20 miles north of Gallup in northwestern New Mexico.

"Just taking part in the experiments and making it real for the students instead of just learning in the classroom -- that's the benefit," Miller said.

Jeff Berman, a producer with the Discovery Channel in Canada, conducted various interviews to try to capture the creative spirit depicted in the different student experiments for a show called "Daily Planet."

"This is a story about the whole launch and the chance for kids to get involved in the aerospace adventure," he said.

Ramon Renteria may be reached at rrenteria@elpasotimes.com; 546-6146.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_18108808

Updated: Tuesday, 17 May 2011, 6:04 PM MDT
Published : Tuesday, 17 May 2011, 6:03 PM MDT

Reporter: Bob Martin

LAS CRUCES, NM (KRQE) - Some fiery hot New Mexico green chile is about to get a ride on a fiery hot rocket.

A project to roast chile in space is one of three dozen experiments by New Mexico school kids and college students that will lift off on a NASA-funded flight Friday.

click here to view entire story:  http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/technology/green-chile-takes-hot-ride-into-space

Call 575-646-6414 for more information.

Date: May 4th, 2010

Time: 6:00 am

Agenda

Staging Times and Locations

North (Truth or Consequences) - 3:30 am - Old IGA Parking Lot

South (Las Cruces) - 2:30 am - Kmart Parking Lot - Highway 70

Please contact Aaron Perez, at aaperez@nmsu.edu for more details

We will have robotics displays, student experiments and a rocket launch. Register NOW!

Let us know if you are coming out.