Vandenberg visit includes briefing on SpaceX mission

About 60 community leaders, including Mayor Elizabeth Patterson, visited Vandenberg Air Force Base recently on a tour designed to show military bases’ importance not only to national security but also to local economies.

“The federal government works in strange ways,” Patterson told The Herald after the tour. “They’re concerned about the stability of Travis (Air Force Base, near Fairfield).”

It wasn’t the first such trip Patterson has made: Three years ago she visited Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, in which she saw Air Force training at multiple levels, including for the president’s plane, Air Force One. She also toured a “cutting-edge” hospital where service personnel were being treated.

Visits such as that one and the one Patterson made about two weeks ago to Vandenberg are designed by military organizers to help civic leaders become “ambassadors” for local Air Force bases. For those coming from Solano County, that meant Travis Air Force Base.

“The Air Force feels the Travis community is supportive,” Patterson said, not just in national security but as one of Solano County’s most important employers. “It has played a major role in all the theaters,” she said, but Travis also needs local decision makers to be supportive of the base, too.

“Travis is a key place for rescue missions,” she said. From natural disasters as close as Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana to the Sri Lanka earthquake and tsunami, Travis has been able to provide aid.

The base has planes that are virtual flying hospitals, and Patterson has been able to see first-hand demonstrations of the emergencies the Air Force can handle.

Travis has both reserve and active employees as well as equipment that can be valuable resources to Benicia, the mayor noted. That includes becoming a source of hard-working employees at Benicia Industrial Park.

Schoenstein and Company, a Benicia firm that builds internationally famous pipe organs, understands this, Patterson said. The national concern that Air Force employees may have the skills, but that their certifications may not match a company’s specifications, doesn’t worry Schoenstein’s president, Jack Bethards.

“Shoenstein will hire them. They have the work ethic and will get the job done. He’s happy to hire them,” the mayor said.

The Air Force’s Civic Leaders Program strives to keep the lines of communication open between local governments and communities and the Air Force and its bases, Patterson said.

Though Vandenberg Air Force Base is about 10 miles northwest of Lompoc, northwest of Santa Barbara, those invited to participate in the Civic Leaders Program were from cities neighboring Travis. The Air Force used the program to enhance pilot training as they flew participants from Travis to Vandenberg; those attending paid for other expenses, Patterson said.

The KC-10 in which Patterson rode left early, and landed on a long runway that originally was built for the Space Shuttle program. After the Challenger disaster, the runway no longer was considered a candidate for Shuttle landings, though an unmanned shuttle uses the landing strip periodically.

Participants were given a briefing on Vandenberg. It’s a space and missile testing base that launches satellites, but originally it was a training center for the U.S. Army before it became a coastside Air Force base.

Union Pacific tracks already were built by the time the Air Force took over the base, Patterson said, “And the Air Force didn’t shut it down.” Train traffic still travels through the base, and launch times are based both on train and ship traffic.

“They monitor shipping traffic,” Patterson said, and at times — for public safety as well as security — officials will communicate with boats and ships, telling them to maintain their distance.

The coastal base has a variety of launch pads on its 99,000 acres, because there are different requirements for different launches, he mayor said. But the “elbow” shape of the Lompoc area makes Vandenberg a good choice for those launches, because it means rockets won’t go over urban areas.

“It’s the only place like that in California,” Patterson said.

While at Vandenberg, she and the other participants toured control rooms, a portion of the trip she said was “fascinating.” The data center control rooms are enormous, filled with banks of computers. Because launches are a worldwide effort, information delivery is essential, she said.

“People need to be notified, so there is no miscommunication,” Patterson explained. Countries need to be informed so they don’t mistakenly believe they are under attack, for instance.

The data center also gets real-time weather information, much of which comes from weather balloons launched by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Patterson said information on the East Coast, particularly because of hurricanes, is detailed. “We don’t have as good information on the West Coast,” she said. On this side of the country, she said, “they know a storm is coming in,” but the data isn’t as specific as it would be about storms in the East.

She asked whether the information is shared with California in general, and water management agencies in particular, so that managers know whether a storm is expected to dump so much water that some in storage needs to be released to prevent a flood.

“We don’t always have that information,” Patterson said, adding that collaboration between California and officials on the federal level would be beneficial.

At another data center, the focus is on public safety, not mission success. “It boils down to one button,” Patterson said. If those on duty see an anomaly, or don’t like a rocket’s trajectory, the launch is terminated, either on the pad or in flight.

“We left with confidence the people are trained, and we have got the best and brightest,” Patterson said. “I’m often impressed with the quality of state and federal workers, and this is a perfect example. We all were impressed.”

She also got to tour SpaceX, which began leasing a second pad from the Air Force in February. Founded by Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Motors, SpaceX also leases space in Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., and tests its equipment at McGregor, Texas.

A relative of Vacaville City Councilmember Dilenna Harris was the lead engineer on the SpaceX briefing Patterson received, and it pleased her that someone with a Solano County connection was giving the briefing.

“The goal is commercial flights to Mars,” Patterson said about SpaceX’s mission. Another goal is to reduce the costs of the launch programs, particularly through equipment reuse.

SpaceX’s Falcon 1, a liquid-propelled rocket, is the first privately funded rocket to reach orbit. Its Dragon was the first privately funded spacecraft to be launched into orbit then recovered. The Dragon also is the first privately funded spacecraft to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. SpaceX rockets also have launched a satellite into geosynchronous orbit.

The company, like the early days of NASA, also has seen its share of failures. Its Falcon 9 rocket containing a Dragon cargo capsule intended for the Space Station failed June 28 minutes after launching from Cape Canaveral.

In addition, SpaceX is still trying to land its booster rocket on a barge, a goal that Musk has said could reduce space launch costs by a factor of 100.

The rocket “has three big legs,” Patterson said. The legs come out and are expected to hold the rocket as it lands on a barge. But during the most recent failure, wave action tipped over the rocket.

“They think they know the cause of the failure,” Patterson said.

A launch is a complicated operation, she said. A rocket may be carrying a French satellite, used for remote sensing, or a payload from another country, each with its own peculiarities. SpaceX launches the payload, but the U.S. Air Force decides “‘go’ or ‘no go’ over everything,” Patterson said.

“They’re focused on safety.”

She got to see engineers working on engines for Atlas rockets. “It was really hard not to take pictures,” she said. “It’s huge — and fascinating.”

A part of the program was about missiles that are tested at night. “There was not a lot of explicit detail,” she said, though the tests are designed to determine whether components are sound.

Another part of the day was spent in a vintage 1950s site that contained an old bunker house. “In the 1950s, they thought you could be safe in a bunker,” Patterson said. Now, three miles is considered the minimum safety distance.

The old building is used for education programs that describe the old rockets, the way parts were engineered and the enormous computers that didn’t have the capacity of a modern-day cellphone.

“The teacher has a hands-on philosophy,” she said. His two-week program teaches students, primarily in middle school, the importance of mathematics as well as language and science.

“The kids travel through the air base, sit in the room with artifacts and compare and see the advances that have been made,” Patterson said.

That part of the visit reminded her of when she worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, back when the Surveyor program was operational and exploring the moon.

She recalled working with analog photography. The IBM computers were the size of refrigerators. “This —” she said, holding up her cellphone, “does what that computer did.”

But there is value in those comparisons, Patterson said.

“Students can see they’re not in the age of perfection,” she said. There’s more to do — “If we go to Mars, there are things we will need to survive.”

When she worked in the era of the Surveyor, the space program wasn’t as concerned with returning a spacecraft safely. When the nation turned its attention to landing astronauts on the moon and returning them safely, the Surveyor program was ended.

Patterson learned that scientists are tracking space debris, not just intact obsolete satellites but also the small particles left over when the Chinese government decided to blow up one of its satellites. At 30,000 mph, a particle the size of a bead can penetrate the skin of a spacecraft. “That would be a serious issue,” she said. “But I had no idea they monitor garbage in space.”

Patterson said there is concern about declining interest in space, and that Congress won’t support funding at necessary levels. Yet scientists have taken finances into consideration, too, such as how to cut three years off the Jupiter program.

Patterson said space exploration isn’t just about adventure. It has a practical side, too.

“The value of understanding the universe … is it makes us realize how precious our Earth is, and the technical knowledge of the universe drives the point home,” she said. “We’re unique. Let’s protect the resources we have here.”