The Space Shuttle's Southland Legacy

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-space-shuttle-legacy-pano,0,4326960.htmlst...

Click on the above link to view an interactive panorama...

.

Panorama: The Canoga Park facility where the space shuttle engines were built

Bryan Chan / Los Angeles Times

The main engines for the space shuttles were made by Rocketdyne at this plant in Canoga Park. The vertical lathe was used to machine metal for large engine parts. The furnace was used to join metal parts for the shuttles and other rocket engines. In the welding room these nozzles, which have been used on several flights, will be installed on shuttles that are going on public display.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-shuttle-astronauts-20110703...

Space shuttle's allure fostered a different breed of astronaut
The men and women who became shuttle astronauts lacked the star power of their 'right stuff' predecessors, but their accomplishments in and out of orbit were a giant leap forward.

PHOTO: From left, American shuttle astronauts Charles Precourt and Dominic Gorie listen as Franklin Chang-Diaz speaks at a news conference at Florida's Kennedy Space Center after the return of Discovery. (Roberto Schmidt / AFP/Getty Images / June 12, 1998)

.

Los Angeles Times...

By Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times

July 2, 2011, 7:02 p.m.
As a teenager in Costa Rica, Franklin Chang-Diaz had an improbable goal: becoming an American astronaut. Ultimately, he would fly a record seven shuttle missions and today wants to fly to Mars.

Scott Parazynksi also wanted to go to space and figured becoming a doctor at Stanford University would help him get there. He became a jack-of-all-trades spacewalker, and went on to climb Mt. Everest and become chief of medicine and technology at a research hospital.

Curtis Brown Jr. dreamed of cockpits while growing up on a North Carolina tobacco farm. He became one of the shuttle's top pilots. Now, he flies airliners for a job and races jets over the Nevada desert for fun.

The blastoff of Atlantis in Florida on Friday will end not only the 30-year-old space shuttle program but also an era defined by a different, more driven breed of astronaut.

The 358 men and women NASA says became shuttle astronauts lacked the star power of their predecessors in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, who were made of the "right stuff" and walked on the moon. The shuttle astronauts' biggest headlines came in tragedy, when seven died in the 1986 explosion of Challenger and seven more perished in the fiery reentry breakup of Columbia in 2003.

But in many ways, what they accomplished before they walked into NASA, during their flights and in their careers afterward was a leap forward.

They were well-educated, physically fit, intellectually curious and diverse — men, women, blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans mingled in what before was an exclusive club.

The shuttle pilots flew orbiters above Earth with their hands on the thruster controls, delicately docking with the International Space Station and making no-second-chance landings on Earth. They walked in space scores of times, repairing the Hubble telescope and methodically assembling the space station from bits and pieces flown up in the shuttle's big trunk.

And their stories became much more a part of the common American fabric, even as they achieved something rarer than winning a lottery. The shuttle astronauts came from every corner of the nation and every background, and scattered in every direction when their space days ended.

Some were former combat pilots in the Vietnam War who took command of the shuttle cockpit, becoming known as the "bus drivers." Others were elite scientists in the back seats, conducting arcane experiments in orbit, and became known as "talking ballast."

They had one thing in common: After one flight, they became addicted and waited for years to get one more flight, and then another.

"It is an awe-inspiring emotional experience," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former shuttle commander who, like other astronauts, struggles to describe the sensation of launching atop a 60-story column of fire.

The best of the corps were super-achievers — setting their academic and career sights incomprehensibly high, forgoing better-paying professions to spend months rehearsing sometimes mundane tasks. Even among the best, a few stood out.

Chang-Diaz wanted to be an astronaut growing up in Costa Rica in the 1960s when he wrote to legendary rocket scientist Werner von Braun. NASA wrote back, suggesting he come to the United States to study engineering.

"I made up my mind that I would emigrate to the USA to follow my dream," he recalled.

The teenager went alone to Connecticut and by 1977 graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a doctorate in plasma physics. He went on to have seven flights, a record he shares with Jerry Ross at the top of the astronaut pyramid. Today, Chang-Diaz, 61, is attempting to develop a revolutionary plasma rocket engine at his company, Ad Astra Rocket Co., that could reach Mars in a fraction of the time a conventional rocket would take.

Story Musgrave, who is the only astronaut to fly aboard all five shuttles and was the hands-on mechanic who fixed the Hubble Space Telescope, was perhaps the most highly educated of any astronaut. A chemist, mathematician, surgeon, biophysicist, business administrator and literary scholar by academic training, he has become a landscape contractor in Florida since leaving NASA.

"I own a bulldozer, a tree spade, two military dump trucks," said Musgrave, who flew six missions in all. "I do 20-acre projects. I was up in the cherry picker today trimming a tree."

Musgrave, 75, has a 5-year-old daughter, one of five children who range up to 50 years old. "Everybody's genes are different," he said.

.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nasa-green-20110531,0,4101016.story

NASA's Sustainability Base generates buzz for its eco-friendly architecture
The $20-million Silicon Valley office building, expected to be completed by mid-July, incorporates technology used by astronauts and will generate more electricity than it consumes.

.

ILLUSTRATION: An illustration shows the planned courtyard for NASA's Sustainability Base office building in Silicon Valley. The grass on the lawn will be irrigated with water from a contaminated groundwater treatment plant instead of drinkable water. Native plants have been placed on curved bioswales, or water-absorbing trenches, so their roots can filter contaminants out of rainwater before it enters storm drains. (William McDonough + Partners / May 31, 2011)

By Tiffany Hsu, Los Angeles Times

May 30, 2011, 8:01 p.m.
Reporting from Moffett Field, Calif.—

Instead of sending its employees to space, NASA is building them an office of the future closer to home.

The curvy, space-age building at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley incorporates technology used by astronauts and will be one of a few structures in the state that can generate more electricity than it consumes. Construction won't be complete until mid-July, but the federal government is already calling the $20-million facility its green building of the year.

It has a name only government officials could love — the Sustainability Base — but it is generating a lot of buzz among businesses and government agencies trying to be more green. The structure, near San Jose, was designed to be a model of eco-friendly architecture.

"Buildings of the future could actually produce more energy than they use and reverse the trend of being a big, sucking drain without compromising anything," said Steven Zornetzer, Ames' associate center director.

Compared to other office buildings of similar size, the Sustainability Base will be about 6% more expensive to construct, he said. But NASA expects to recoup the expense within a decade because the building will cost less to operate.

Executives from high-tech firms including IBM Corp. and Adobe Systems Inc. and the J. Craig Venter Institute have swung through the complex to get ideas for their own campuses. Constructing green buildings is gaining cachet for companies looking to cut energy costs while being environmentally chic.

The roughly 50,000-square-foot NASA building could help California rise in the ranking of states with eco-friendly commercial and institutional structures. It lags behind at least 10 other states, according to the U.S. Green Building Council. The group administers the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification program, known as LEED.

Each part of the Sustainability Base performs some environmental function, said Zornetzer, who expects the building to score a platinum rating, LEED's highest level. "Nothing is just aesthetic."

The facility, on a formerly empty field, was designed by architectural firm William McDonough + Partners and AECOM and built by construction company Swinerton Inc. About 92% of the waste created during construction was either recycled or disposed in an environmentally friendly way and kept out of landfills. Steel and other materials were sourced from local vendors to help reduce emissions from transporting them.

The structure was designed to allow more natural light and air inside, where 220 NASA employees and contractors are expected to work. NASA also said its design would make it one of the safest structures in an earthquake.

Outside of the building, a fuel cell from Bloom Energy will create electricity from natural gas, though Zornetzer hopes to eventually use methane gas captured from landfills. Photovoltaic solar panels blanket the roof and patio umbrellas.

The grass on the lawn will be irrigated with water from a contaminated groundwater treatment plant instead of drinkable water. Native plants have been placed on curved bioswales, or water-absorbing trenches, so their roots can filter contaminants out of rainwater before it enters storm drains.

Technology used by astronauts captures used water from showers and sinks and treats it before sending it to urinals and toilets. The building will consume 90% less drinkable water than conventional buildings of comparable size.

Instead of noisy air-conditioning vents, the building's cooling will rely on an elaborate system of 5,000 light and carbon dioxide-measuring sensors. When the sensors determine the building is too warm, they will activate a nearby underground geothermal well system that helps pump water through copper tubing snaking through the ceiling. The liquid cools the surrounding air.

Depending on outside weather conditions, the building's central computer can open or close windows, adjust overhead lighting levels or raise and lower window shades. The building uses recycled glass, carpeting and furniture. The oak flooring was salvaged from a demolished wind tunnel facility.

Extensive skylights and reflective white walls mean that overhead lights will be needed for only 40 weekdays a year, NASA said.

In keeping with the building's green focus, NASA said its library will feature digital subscriptions to science and technology journals to cut down on paper.

"This is the 21st century," Zornetzer said. "You shouldn't build something that could've been built in 1990."

.