Jeff has been involved in aerospace journalism since the mid 1990s. Prior to joining Aviation Week, Jeff served as managing editor of Launchspace magazine and the International Space Industry Report. He has been the editor and chief of Aviation Week's Aerospace Daily & Defense Report since 2007 and has been a regular contributor to Aviation Week magazine. He received his B.A. from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
If the International Space Station (ISS) is left at a "core complete" state of assembly, it will be an "enormous disappointment," but not a total waste of effort, according to ISS Task Force Chairman A. Thomas Young. The U.S. core complete state, which limits the crew to three persons, omits the Crew Return Vehicle (CRV), Node 3, the Habitation Module and the Propulsion Module, while reducing the research budget by $1 billion. U.S. core complete assembly is scheduled for completion by 2004.
Although momentum exchange tethers may not be quite as well known as electrodynamic tethers (EDTs), NASA still believes they have an important role to play as a low-cost method of sending spacecraft to explore the solar system. "They often get lost in the shuffle, but as it turns out, for interplanetary missions, these hold a lot of potential," Les Johnson, manager of the in-space transportation investment area of NASA's Advanced Space Transportation Program (ASTP), told The DAILY.
Outgoing NASA Administrator Dan Goldin expressed support for the recommendations of the recently released International Space Station Management and Cost Evaluation (IMCE) Task Force report, while emphasizing that science, rather than engineering, must drive the future of the program. "I'm hoping that the NAC will put those recommendations into perspective so we will be able to have maximum acceptance by the NASA team in as short a period as possible so we can carry it out," Goldin said at a NASA Advisory Council (NAC) meeting Nov. 6.
