Rest in Peace, Steve Bruhn -Thank you for all your support and friendship.

It is with a heavy heart, that I write about the passing of an old friend, who was a founding member of Huntsville Space Professionals, that was created in June 2010. Steve was there to help model the website's layout and design and always dedicated to snapping photos at our events. Steve moved to Memphis, Tennessee two years ago to work on a veteran FedEx airplane that he had previous experience with. It was an odd move from his NASA engineer job, but I recall how passionate he was about getting back to work on an engine he had learned prior to his career as "The Factory Spectator" within Motocross world.
Steve Bruhn at right, during our first interveiw with Channel 48 news.
I remember our meeting back in 2007 outside of a NASA building, as he was wearing a bowling shirt, and seemed to be one of the most-laid back individuals, I had ever met. He was an infinite resource of news, space news and politics. There is so much he has imparted to me over the years, as one of my questions to him was about CAD checking process--as I at the time was becoming a lead supervising about 10 CAD designers. He was so casual about the whole process. He said, "Forget about the computer, server, and the database. Just replicate what you would do if you had manilla folders and hardcopies." This jewel of information has stayed with me, ever since.

It pains us to know you have passed, but we are so incredibly thankful for your time and wisdom. Rest in peace.

Steve Bruhn, "TFS"--The Factory Spectator.

May 17, 1960 - May 8, 2013

comments President Obama urged to kill new NASA rocket being developed in Huntsville (video)

By Lee Roop | lroop@al.com
on January 28, 2013 at 10:19 AM, updated January 28, 2013 at 10:44 AM

This animation shows NASA's Space Launch System design, unveiled on Sept. 14, 2011. (NASA)

NEW YORK CITY -- A re-elected and re-empowered President Obama should finish the job he started and kill the big new NASA rocket being developed in Huntsville, Ala., according to a former congressional space advocate and a NASA adviser. Both men made their case in an article in Sunday's Wall Street Journal entitled "Commercial Space Development Needs an Obama Relaunch." The article is behind a Journal paywall, but it can be read by pasting the title into a Google search box.

Obama tried to kill NASA's plans for a new rocket capable of carrying astronauts to deep space after being elected for his first term. His position then -- that commercial companies should build the rockets while NASA concentrates on cutting-edge technology -- is the same argument made in the Journal piece by writers Robert Walker and Charles Miller. The article says, "Mr. Walker is a former chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee and now is chairman of Wexler & Walker. Mr. Miller is a former NASA senior adviser for commercial space and president of NexGen Space LLC, a space policy consulting firm."

According to Walker and Miller, Congress stopped the president because it was concerned about jobs in Florida and Alabama. Huntsville, Alabama, is where NASA is developing the compromise rocket Congress and the White House agreed on after a long and heated fight in 2010. The compromise has NASA funding both the new rocket, called the Space Launch System (SLS), and commercial companies' space efforts.

"So as the country struggles with trillions in debt and deficits," the writers say, "it makes no sense for NASA to build rockets that are already available or can be developed at much lower cost by U.S. private industry. Why spend approximately $20 billion to build an unneeded SLS super-heavy-lift rocket, for instance, when existing commercial rockets can carry payloads more often, efficiently and cheaply?"

Thousands of Huntsville workers, mostly in the aerospace contractor workforce, are at work on the new rocket. When the president killed its predecessor, the Constellation program, several thousand were laid off. Some have been rehired, and advocates of a continued NASA role in rocket development say the skills at risk are critical to national preeminence in science and space. They also doubt commercial companies will build rockets to explore deep space, which SLS is being designed to do, precisely because there is no clear profit potential.

What do you think? Is this article a trial balloon by a White House still intent on re-directing NASA? Or an attempt by commercial space advocates to get more of the budget pie? Or is it a serious second look at a national debate about NASA's future that won't go away?

Full Story: http://blog.al.com/breaking/2013/01/obama_urged_to_kill_new_nasa_r.html#incart_river_default

NASA seeks partners to launch projects

Photo courtesy of NASA. Space Shuttle Landing.

Story by Alex Byers. December 28, 2012 04:46 AM EST.

One giant leap for mankind. One small step for the GoDaddy Martian Rover?

With NASA’s budget unlikely to see a boost anytime soon, legislators and policymakers are left looking for a financial fix. Enter one option: selling private sponsorships to future NASA projects or vehicles.

Robert Walker, a former Republican chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, floated that idea at a committee hearing on NASA’s strategic direction earlier this month.

Far-fetched? Maybe. But with federal appropriations declining each year since 2009, NASA needs to look outside Washington for a cash infusion, Walker says.

“Sponsorship brings in people who have no place in aerospace but see an opportunity to have their name associated with it,” he told POLITICO.

And lawmakers have more to grapple with than just the question of NASA resources: Washington can’t even agree on what exactly the agency’s job should be.

Congress and the White House have butted heads over NASA’s direction, with many on the Hill supporting new human exploration missions, such as going back to the moon. The White House, while not writing off that goal, has also promoted technology development and a research mission that would study samples of asteroids that come from deep space.

The two bodies were able to pass a space plan in the partisan political climate of 2010 that included components from both sides, noted David Weaver, the agency’s associate administrator for communications. But that deal has been described as a compromise that made no one happy rather than a road map for NASA’s future.

That lack of consensus among political leadership was the key finding of a report commissioned by Congress and released earlier this month. The administration, a National Research Council Committee concluded, needs to take the lead in “forging a new consensus on NASA’s future” and eliminate “the current mismatch between NASA’s budget and its portfolio of programs, facilities and staff.”

One way to do that, the report states, is by committing to cost-sharing deals with other government agencies and international partnerships. And, as Walker pointed out at the House hearing, there are private-sector options. That includes sponsorships, but it also encompasses partnerships that could solidify or increase NASA’s access to technology or projects developed by innovative space companies like Space X or Virgin Galactic.

That’s a key component of the administration’s space policy, Weaver said.

“We now are hiring folks to transport our supplies to the space station, and eventually very soon, we’ll be hiring companies to take our astronauts to the space station,” he said. “That’s going to save us money — money that we will then plow into the development of the most powerful rocket ever developed and a space capsule that will take our astronauts further than we’ve ever gone before.”

There’s no indication that the agency is talking about selling naming rights, and it’s not clear whether sponsorships would be a viable funding source. Proponents of the idea would need to contend with federal rules that prohibit government employees from endorsing a private-sector project, said Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at The George Washington University.

Frank Slazer, vice president of space systems at the Aerospace Industries Association, said the sponsorship idea has been floated before — Pizza Hut put its logo on a Russian rocket in 2000, for example. But once the novelty hits, he said, it can fade fast.

“I don’t think these things have long-term potential for long-term funding,” he said.

Lawmakers may not have a strong stance on the sponsorship issue yet — incoming House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) hasn’t made up his mind. But he noted the option.

“The commercialization of space and space exploration can inspire our nation and encourage new generations of astronauts, engineers and innovators,” Smith said in a statement to POLITICO. “As the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee begins working on a NASA reauthorization bill next Congress, we will examine ways to promote the commercialization of space that help modernize NASA’s mission.”

A spokesman for outgoing Chairman Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas) said the lawmaker had no further comment on the naming rights issue. Immediately after Walker finished his sponsorship remarks at the House hearing, Hall, whose space priority is the International Space Station, did add, “and that’s the way it is.”

So far, at least one legislator is opposed.

“I’m very skeptical and the idea is distasteful to me,” Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) said in an interview. “I did not like the idea of selling naming rights to NASA missions, I don’t like the idea of astronaut spacesuits looking like a NASCAR uniform,” he added, concurring with concerns about the unreliability of corporate funding.

Naming rights are likely a long way off, if they come at all. NASA, Walker said, would have to restructure how some of its centers operate. And that possibility also depends on how well the commercial community can till the field.

“Everybody who looks at NASA says they are dramatically underfunded for the kinds of things they are asked to do,” Walker said. “This is just one idea.”

© 2012 POLITICO LLC

Full Story: http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/nasa-seeks-partners-to-launch-projects-85539.html?hp=r6

HEEEEEEEY SCIENCE DAI-LY--NASA JOHNSON STYLE!

1300 MSFC contractors could lose their jobs if the Nation heads over the cliff

From the Huntsville Times--

By Lee Roop

Marshall Space Flight Center's headquarters Building 4200 in Huntsville. (The Huntsville Times)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - More than 1,300 aerospace jobs will be at risk in Huntsville in 2013 if the national budget goes over the so-called "fiscal cliff," according to an aerospace industry study released Thursday.

None of those jobs would be NASA civil servants, who are protected by federal law from layoffs in 2013, the study's sponsors said. Civil servants might, however, face furloughs.

Instead, the job losses would be borne by contractors, sub-contractors and businesses providing goods and services to the Marshall Space Flight Center and its employees, according to the study released by the Aerospace Industries Association in Washington, D.C.. It was conducted by Dr. Stephen S. Fuller, a professor and analyst at George Mason University.

Cuts of that magnitude would chop Marshall's contractor workforce by more than a third as the center tries to build a new heavy-lift rocket to take astronauts to Mars. Marshall, with a $2.5 billion annual budget, employs about 6,000 people broken into 2,400 civil service employees and 3,600 contractor employees. According to the study, the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 exempted NASA civil servants from any job losses through fiscal year 2013.

U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Huntsville, said Thursday night that the job losses forecast "are consistent with (predictions) we saw on the defense side." Brooks said, "I'm not happy about it," but there is little Congress can do until President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner reach an agreement to stop it. He predicted that nothing will happen until "right before the new year."

• Click to read full article.