Keeping earth orbit clean is (will be) Mason Dash’s job. So of course he wouldn’t be too keen on some invisible brown dwarf 25,00o AUs out, dislodging comets from the Oort Cloud. Could be. Sounds like an Invisible Sun to me, though, as predicted by The Police.
Hey, and can we get some “closure” on the dinosaurs, please? They’re gone, okay? Why they’re gone is a matter of some interest, but does it have to come up in every story about asteroids or comets?
An invisible sun isn’t interesting enough?
You’ll see on until Tax Day April 15 at the president’s Space “Summit”. Skip the moon we’re adding some pocket change to the funding to zoom right out there to the…well, to the moon! And, oh yes, the asteroids, because that’s a spacey sounding word.And then evennnnntually…back to Mars. Mm hm. It would be back to Mars because as I’m sure the administration’s crack space advisers have told the summit organizers, Mars’ orbit is closer to Earth’s than the Asteroid Belt.
The President’s ambitious new strategy pushes the frontiers of innovation to set NASA on a more dynamic, flexible, and sustainable trajectory that can propel us on a new journey of innovation and discovery.
Catch that? Pushing the frontiers of innovation to propel us on a journey of…innovation!
And of course it all must be sustainable. A word that is already has the early lead as the decade’s most meaningless.
Is it political at all? You bet your retro rockets it’s political.
Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, like Houston’s Johnson Space Center and Alabama’s Marshall Space Flight Center, face thousands of threatened layoffs from Obama’s decision to end space shuttle operations at the end of the year and scrap NASA’s $108 billion back-to-the-moon Constellation program.
But it is the swing state of Florida that is getting the president’s attention, not perennially GOP states like Texas and Alabama.
“The Obama administration could care less about offending Texas politically,” says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia.
NASA releases the clearest composite picture of Earth ever taken. Assembled from images taken by the Terra satellite. The Daily Mail story includes a retorspective of Earth images from outside the atmosphere, included the first, taken from 65 miles up by a camera on a captured V-2 rocket.
The latest module added to the International Space Station has a cupola with as much glass as has ever been fitted to a space structure. The hexagonal blister allows a wide of the station and Earth below. The article implies that it could be the start of a trend. Well we’d sure hope so.
The current US administration’s proposed budget kills the Constellation/Ares rocket program that would have been the next step to getting the US back to the Moon. A worthy goal, the Moon…someday but short-sighted right at the moment. In the Sixties there was a race worth winning. Now not so much. Now’s the time for sensible outside-the-box thinking. But is NASA capable?
The administration may have made the right choice for the wrong reasons, but who can say what the reasoning might be? Can’t be to save money. It’s the biggest budget ever. Spite directed at the previous administration? Possibly. An effort to hinder any military applications of technological gains? Could be that too. Proponents of the program cite that as one of its benefits. Rand Simberg at TransTerrestrial Musings, blogging with the authority of an aerospace engineer, takes on that and other points in this post.
But whatever the reason, enough of blunt instruments. Maybe it will spur some innovation. Chemical boosters will get you there but a hundred years from now they’ll be equated with the biplane. Remember the biplane? It was all the rage, oh, just about a hundred years ago. NASA itself is the biggest blunt instrument, but there’s precious little chance of them scaling back to be the safety oversight agency and grant-writing they should be. Sure, let them keep deep space to themselves, but leave LEO to the entrepreneurs.
High time to get smart about space exploration, and it won’t happen with aerospace giants partnering with bloated government bureaucracies.
Get on the roof first. LEO is where it’s at. Then from there the Moon again and then the rest of the Solar System.
Figure out how to make a space station you can walk upright in like a human, instead of squeezing through little Habitrail tunnels and chambers. Yes, walk before you run, but walk upright, and when you can then humans will really be in space. That would be a major achievement, and it could be accomplished in Earth orbit.
Fascinating and reality-based analysis of space warfare in the context of imaginary futures at Rocketpunk Manifesto.
And the Open Luna Foundation is a volunteer organization working to get Earthlings back up there to harvest all that green cheese.
Latest review of Kite, by Colleen Wanglund, sci-fi-fantasy-horror reviewer for Horror Fiction Review:
“In the future Earth’s orbit is a vacation spot. It’s full of casinos, hotels, and time-shares. Someone has to keep the lanes clear of debris….that job falls to Mason Dash and the Earth Orbit Sweeper Kite. Dash just wants to do his three-month tour and then go home to his wife Janet and virtual “girlfriend” Sheila. On this most recent tour, however, Mason has seen something on what is supposed to be an unoccupied derelict space station. His curiosity piqued, Mason has Sheila do some research for him and he begins to formulate a plan for his next tour.
“Dash’s wife Janet knows about Dash’s “girlfriend” Sheila. Janet is an AI researcher and decides to add some upgrades to Sheila–for her own personal research. Sheila likes her new programs, but Dash isn’t so sure HE likes them.
Kite’s systems could probably use an upgrade. It’s Main Process has performed the same tasks over and over again for as long as it could remember. Deep in it’s functions, a single module has begun to think for itself…and doesn’t want to stay a lowly module for much longer. Revolution anyone??
“All this and a visit from an alien named Troy. What is a maintenence worker to do?
“I thoroughly enjoyed KITE. Bill Shears tells a great story, and has created some likeable characters without going overboard on character development. Mason Dash is a regular guy that anyone can relate to; Sheila seems more human than digital; and Janet loves her husband and wants him to be safe. Even Troy the alien, doesn’t seem all that alien.
“This may be a sci-fi novel taking place far in the future, but the themes are familiar ones. Government beauracrats, union work rules, countries arguing over who’s going to pay to dismantle a derelict space station. That space station is now occupied by someone, and Dash wants to know who they are and what they’re doing there…..and he will eventually find out. While all that is going on, we discover a whole new world inside the controls of the Kite; one that may not be so different from our own.
KITE is a great read. The story flows nicely and will keep you guessing until the end, which is good because I hate predictability. I give it four out of five stars.” – Colleen Wanglund
The Ares/Constellation blunt instrument space program gets funded with a boost. Good news? Partially. Mixed blessing if you’d like to see primal rethinking of the launch system and innovation in the technology. At least we’re still looking skyward; but we don’t suppose you can expect the supergeniuses in the US Congress to think anywhere beyond well inside the interior of The Box, let alone outside it.
Richard Shelby (R-AL) is pushing it, fine, but would he be if the Marshall Space Flight Center wasn’t in his state? Being lashed electorally (in other words, addicted) to protecting taxpayer-funded obsolete job descriptions is as stifling in a space program as in any other facet of an economy.
Plenty of other mixed blessings in here too. Some bad news that sounds like good news, etc. For instance: Administration makes free enterprise noises about turning over hauling to the ISS to private companies. Sounds good, and they’d make much PR hay about that to counter other massive anti-commerce moves. But that would be a small price to pay for getting what they really want, a law to make NASA one part of some international space exploration effort. In other words, turn NASA over to the UN so it becomes a handy conduit for funneling US advanced aerospace technology to our international “partners.” Not too much between-the-lines-reading needed there. Well we suppose it might be slightly more space-oriented of a change than making it officially subsidiary to the EPA, which parts of it already seem to have become.
Meanwhile: “As it stands, the U.S. must rely on Russia to ferry its astronauts to the International Space Station for most of the next decade.”
No mixed blessing there. That the US needs to rely on Russia for anything…well, since it’s too late to be unacceptable, we suppose it must be accepted. This would put the US officially behind them again in the space race for the first time in more than 40 years.
Sightseeing in Earth orbit
Virgin Galactic’s commercial space program is on track for putting tourists in space for about $200,000 a pop. Price is coming down some. Still a bit out of our range. Mm hm. Here they give a sneak peek at the vehicle. And here’s a conceptual cideo showing what the tripo might be like. Two stages and looks like a reusable booster. That last push looks like a thrill. And the all-important reentry…well, a little short on detail there. That may be a different kind of thrill.
Space Shuttle Discovery from the International Space Station (NASA)
Space Shuttle Discovery had to dodge a “mysterious” hunk of space junk while it prepared for reentry, now slated for this evening at about 7:35 PM EDT.
Here’s the Space.com report.
On the NASA Space Shuttle news page the guess is that the chunk is from one of their own space walks earlier in the mission.
And weather forced a wave-off the first landing try.
space | bshears March 12, 2010 | 
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