Waiting to Exhale

Posted: 03:16 PM ET

Imagine the anticipation of a countdown before rocket engines roar to life. Smoke billows, and it’s three G’s and eight-and-a-half minutes to space.

After you slip the surly bonds, you float over to the window and gaze wide-eyed at the majesty of Planet Earth. Perhaps you’d spot the Great Wall of China, or even a big hurricane. I’d have Bowie’s “Ground Control to Major Tom” playing on my iPod.

Spaceflight tickles the imagination. It’s the stuff of heroes and explorers. We remain in awe of the cosmos, and amazed at each incremental step toward the infinite.

Source: NASA

Now take a look at this photo. The folks at Johnson Space Center in Houston sent this picture to me today. Not exactly what you imagine while reading Jules Verne or Arthur Clarke. It might be the NASA equivalent of witnessing hot dogs in the making.

You’re looking at a test chamber scaled to be the size of the Orion crew capsule. Orion, of course, is NASA’s next-gen exploration vehicle. It will carry crew and cargo to the space station and on to the moon.

The umbrella name for the entire program is Constellation, and the space agency is hoping to launch the first manned mission by 2015.

The chamber is the size of a walk-in closet - about 570 cubic feet - and the people sitting inside are volunteers recruited to test a lunar breathing system called CAMRAS. (NASA likes its acronyms!) It stands for Carbon-dioxide and Moisture Removal Amine Swing-bed. Go figure.

But imagine sitting for eight hours in this thing with five other people you just met? Twenty-three volunteers did just that for a series of tests over a three-week period last month. The point: to breathe and sweat. Sounds like the perfect job for an executive producer!

Seriously though, NASA has to measure the amount of moisture and carbon dioxide absorbed by the system so Orion crews can breathe easily and live comfortably in space. Volunteers were asked to sleep, eat and exercise in the chamber. Some test sessions lasted a few hours and others were overnight.

CAMRAS uses very little energy. An organic compound called amine absorbs the CO2 and water vapor from the cabin. And when the system vents the waste overboard, the vacuum of space regenerates the amine. Think of the venting as wringing out a dirty sponge.

For more on the test and NASA’s Constellation Program, visit www.nasa.gov/constellation.

NASA delays Hubble mission to fix shuttle fuel tanks

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- NASA's final visit to the Hubble Space Telescope has been delayed at least a month, until the fall, because of extra time needed to build the shuttle fuel tanks needed for the flight and a potential rescue mission.

The Hubble Space Telescope orbits 350 miles above Earth.

Atlantis and a crew of seven were supposed to fly to Hubble at the end of August but now won't make the journey until the end of September or early October.

Shuttle program manager John Shannon said it's taken more time to incorporate all the post-Columbia design changes to the external fuel tanks than had been expected.

"It's a small price to pay, to tell you the truth, four to five weeks for all the improvements that we're getting on this tank," Shannon said Thursday.

The fuel tank for the next shuttle launch is the first to be built from scratch with the design changes. That work delayed Discovery's flight to the international space station from April until May 31.

The mission to Hubble, orbiting 350 miles above Earth, is unique. Not only must Atlantis be ready, another shuttle must be on the launch pad ready to rush to the rescue in case Atlantis suffers severe launch damage that might prevent a safe re-entry.

Unlike other shuttle crews, which travel to the space station, the astronauts on the Hubble mission would have nowhere to seek shelter in the event of a gaping hole in their ship's thermal shield. In the case of a rescue, the Hubble astronauts would put on spacesuits and float out of their ship and into the other shuttle.

Columbia was destroyed and its seven astronauts killed during re-entry in 2003 because of a plate-size hole in the shuttle's left wing. A chunk of fuel-tank foam insulation broke off during liftoff and gashed it.

Because of the delay in the Hubble mission, NASA will have to settle for five shuttle flights this year instead of six. Despite the setback, NASA still hopes to complete the space station and retire its shuttles in 2010, Shannon said.

As for Russia's trouble-plagued Soyuz re-entry April 19, NASA's space station program manager, Mike Suffredini, said Thursday that the investigation into the mishap will determine whether the three astronauts were at any more risk than normal.

The Soyuz spacecraft descended much more steeply than usual and subjected the crew to considerably more gravity forces. It was the second time in a row that the capsule malfunctioned like this.

The crew included U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson, who was ending a six-month space station stay, as well as a Russian and a South Korean who ended up in the hospital with back and neck pain.

Russia hopes to complete its investigation by the end of May. With U.S. astronaut Gregory Chamitoff scheduled to fly to the space station aboard Discovery and remain there for several months, NASA will have to decide before May 31 whether the Soyuz will serve as a safe lifeboat if there is an emergency.

Suffredini said it would be "pretty dramatic" for NASA to pull Chamitoff or anyone else off the space station. "But we will do whatever is necessary based on the findings of the commission," he said.

As countries and companies plan to go to the moon

LONDON, England -- One of Francis Williams' favorite stories to tell is about the time he was pulled over for speeding.

As countries and companies plan to go to the moon, a debate heats up on lunar property rights.

Williams, who had been in London on business, was driving home through the English countryside when a police officer stopped him and wanted to know two things: Was Williams aware of how fast he was driving? And, what was his profession?

It turned out the response to the second question would help Williams resolve the first: "I said, 'I sell land on the moon,'" said Williams. "And [the police officer] said, 'Do you know, my wife has bought some of that.'"

The answer to the first question was subsequently forgotten.

Williams, who describes himself as the "Lunar Ambassador to the United Kingdom," is the owner of MoonEstates. He claims to have sold around 300,000 acres of moon land since he and his wife, Sue, founded the Cornwall-based company eight years ago. One-acre plots of lunar turf go for about $40.

As proof of purchase, new property owners receive a silver tin containing a personalized "Lunar Deed" and a moon map with a tiny black X marking their tract's approximate location. Most of the land Williams sells is in the northwest, in an area known as Oceanus Procellarum, or Ocean of Storms -- a desolate lava plain formed by volcanoes billions of years ago. "I know the Japanese are [selling] further east," he said.

Williams received his license to sell lunar land in the UK from Dennis Hope. In 1980, the Nevada-based entrepreneur claimed ownership of the moon after finding what he calls a loophole in the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty, which forbids countries from owning the moon but, according to Hope, does not forbid individuals from owning it.

Hope, who estimates he has sold over 500 million acres of moon land, said he immediately filed a "declaration of ownership" with the U.N. along with the United States and Russian governments.

After 28 years, the moon mogul still has not received a reply. "I have never heard from them on that note ever," Hope told CNN in a phone interview.

While the U.N. may have ignored Hope's lunar land claims for almost three decades, it is unlikely the organization will be able ignore what could soon become a question of increasing international importance: Who, exactly, does own the moon?

"At some point the world community needs to come together and draft some new convention or treaty," said Paul Dempsey, director of the Institute of Air and Space Law and McGill University in Montreal. "It is an open wound that needs to be healed."

Dempsey pointed out that at the time the U.N. drafted the Outer Space Treaty, there were only two spacefaring nations -- the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Now there are over a dozen. And many of them, including China, Russia, the U.S., India and Japan, want to go to the moon.

NASA, for example, recently announced plans to return by 2020, eventually building a permanent base on the lunar surface. The Russian space agency, Roskosmos, has confirmed similar intentions.

The burgeoning commercial space sector is also casting its gaze towards Earth's only natural satellite with companies considering everything from mining the lunar surface to building extraterrestrial resorts on it.

"It is quite a complicated issue because it is international law we are dealing with," said Niklas Hedman, chief of the Committee Services and Research Section of the U.N.'s Office for Outer Space Affairs in Vienna.

There are five treaties that govern international affairs in space, said Hedman. Two of them -- the Outerspace Treaty and the 1979 Moon Agreement -- deal with lunar law.

The Outer Space Treaty provides a legal framework for the international use of space for peaceful purposes, including the moon and other celestial bodies. Widely considered the "Magna Carta of space law," this treaty lays down the fundamental principle of non-appropriation and that the exploration and use of space shall be the province of all mankind.

According to the treaty, states bear international responsibility for national activities in space, including by non-governmental entities. The Outer Space Treaty says governments cannot claim ownership of the lunar surface and that stations and installations on the moon shall be open to others, said Hedman.

The Moon Agreement builds upon the Outer Space Treaty but also says that any natural resources found on the moon are part of "the common heritage of mankind" - in other words, they must be shared.

While 98 nations, including all the major spacefaring ones, have ratified the Outerspace Treaty, only 13 countries have approved the Moon Agreement -- Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Uruguay and Mexico, to name four.

But Hedman said this does not mean the other 179 countries that have not ratified the Moon Agreement are free to make a lunar land rush.

"They are still bound by the fundamental provisions [of the Outer Space Treaty]," he said, adding that "when enough states of the world have ratified a treaty, and it becomes binding, then certain fundamental provisions become binding even on states that have not ratified it."

Henry Hertzfeld, a space analyst at George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, said he is not so sure the U.N.'s treaties provide an adequate answer to the question of lunar property rights.

"These treaties don't really have any teeth to them in terms of enforcement," said Hertzfeld. "They are agreements on principle."

Instead of focusing on who owns the moon, the international community needs find ways to incentivize future business activity on the moon by guaranteeing that rights to land and resources will not be preempted by competing interests, said Hertzfeld.

"Owning property is not the issue, the issue is finding a mechanism for businesses to make a fair return on their investment," he said. "Otherwise there is no point in investing."

But first, Hertzfeld said, there also needs to be a guarantee that there is something on the moon worth investing in at all.

"My feeling is until we know what is there, we shouldn't mess with it," he said.