For the first time ever, the Space Shuttle will fly with an all-composite "carrier" in its cargo bay. The Hubble Servicing team designed the carrier to be 900 lbs lighter and 51% stronger then the current aluminum carriers. The Super Lightweight Interchangeable Carrier (SLIC), is designed to carry the Wide Field Camera 3, and two new batteries to Hubble in September 2008.

Meanwhile at the NASA Engineering and Safety Center in Hampton,

Virginia, teams have been investigating the possible benefits of moving to a carbon composite design for the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV).

The team looked into a geometrically stiffened laminate, a stiffened honeycomb sandwich, and a "monocoque that integrates the aeroshell and pressure vessel into one thick layup." The conclusion? That composite designs were competitive with the metallic solutions- especially for a lunar lander or habitat.

I toured the high bay at NASA Goddard where the servicing mission is being prepped, and where every tool and every movement of the EVA dance is mapped out and reflected in the carrier designs.

Set to ship to the launch site in just less then a year, the 4th Hubble servicing mission team is in full swing, working long hours and pouring over details.

One of those details is how else can we use this carrier after the Hubble is fixed? The Institute for Scientific Research, ISR, discovered that by using the SLIC pallet as an Earth observatory, the entire Earth can be covered in 5 days and provide imagery up to 2-meter resolution.

I couldn't help but notice SLIC as I stand in the High Bay, there is just something very eye catching about the sleek black "carbon fiber with a cyanate ester resin and a titanium metal matrix".

You know it has the power to make spacecraft sexy again. (Not that you can tell that in the picture above when it is all under wraps...)



Of course, Scaled Composites has already demonstrated how sexy composites can be. The White Knight and SpaceShipOne carbon composite sub-orbital spacecraft were so beautiful you felt that pang of science-fiction-becoming-reality satisfaction as it taxied past you in Mojave.

Maybe it's not too late to make the CEV sexy. My suggestion? "Portholes, dammit, we need more portholes!"