Jupiter Direct Launcher Variants
NASA: Change of heart on new rocket that would reuse shuttle parts?
Orlando Sentinel
Dozens of Kennedy Space Center engineers and more at other NASA centers have been working quietly behind the scenes since August to design a new rocket made from parts of the space shuttle — a project similar to one that an agency official only two years ago said defied the laws of physics.
In The Space Review this week… Debating the future of human spaceflight Congress returns to work this week with a NASA authorization bill among the many items up for consideration. Jeff Foust reports on the continued debate about what should be in that legislation, which will shape the future direction of NASA’s human spaceflight program. The real mistakes of the space shuttle program As the space shuttle programs winds down, […]
A couple of updates from Mojave: @mojavewatcher (Mike Laughlin) – WK2 in the air (10:36 a.m. PT) @Virgin_Galactic – our new film will shortly be available to view ….
This Week on The Space Show… Monday, September 13, 2010, 2-3:30 PM PDT: We welcome back Dr. Pat Hynes to discuss the upcoming International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight to be held in Las Cruces, NM Oct. 19-22, 2010. For more information, visit www.ispcs.com. Tuesday, September 14, 2010, 7-8:30 PM PDT: OPEN LINES. All topics welcome. Please use the toll free line. Email and chat are OK. Friday, Sept. […]
Participants experience microgravity aboard a Zero-G Corporation parabolic flight. (PRNewsFoto/Zero Gravity Corporation, Al Powers)
Two eBay auctions for seats aboard a microgravity flight with “Avatar” director James Cameron have raised $30,000 for the X PRIZE Foundation.
Ares I-X lifts off from the Cape.
NASA’s Constellation Hallucination and the Congressional Money Drug
by Rick Tumlinson
The Huffington Post
In the coming weeks some in Congress will try to kill America’s future in space as they desperately work to prop up the tax sucking, pork eating dreamslaying monster known as the Constellation rocket program. Right now a bought and paid for cabal of hypocritical puppets in the House and Senate are trying to prop up this corpse of a dead end plan to go to the Moon and Mars that not only failed to deliver on President Bush’s promise of a permanent U.S. presence in space, but continues to eat the budgets of the very exploration it was meant to support.
NSS STATEMENT
The National Space Society (NSS) is today reaffirming its longstanding and unwavering commitment to further space exploration and development, by calling on the Executive and Legislative branches to incorporate their various proposals into a Unified Space Policy so that the United States can once again begin to move beyond low Earth orbit. Congress and the Administration need to work together to determine the best path forward relative to our space program, including how best to leverage the necessary partnership between the public and private sectors relative to launch capabilities and how best to maintain a skilled work force.
The NSS emphatically requests that the House of Representatives adopt the Senate version of the NASA Authorization Act of 2010.
Test firing of a Dynetics Multipurpose NanoMissile System (MNMS) first-stage demonstration booster. Photo Credit: Redstone Test Center
Huntsville company working to get Army satellites into orbit ‘on the cheap’
The Huntsville Times
Engineers at Dynetics are working with the Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command, leading a team to create a rocket system that can very quickly and very cheaply place “nanosatellites” into orbit.
Delaware business: ILC develops air bags for space station crew
The News Journal
ILC Dover, the Frederica-area company that gained fame making spacesuits for NASA, has developed air-bag systems that aerospace giant Boeing hopes will one day help safely land crew members traveling home from the International Space Station.
Spacevidcast interviews William Pomerantz, Senior Director of Space Prizes at the X PRIZE Foundation.
Sen. Richard Shelby
The Decatur Daily explains how the United Launch Alliance facility in Dacatur, Ala. got no love from Sen. Richard Shelby:
As U.S. senators carved up the leftovers of NASA’s Constellation program for their states, most of the meat went to Utah and Huntsville.
United Launch Alliance, with its assembly plant in Decatur, got the bone.
The ranking Republican member of the committee that wrote the budget authorization that would effectively exclude ULA from participating in the development of a heavy-lift rocket was Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa.
The El Paso Times has a story on yet another one of Virgin Galactic’s clients who is patiently waiting for the ultimate joy ride into the heavens:
Sometime within the next two to five years, Cathy Culver of San Jose, Calif., will board a commercial spaceship in Southern New Mexico and travel to the edge of space.
She will experience weightlessness for precious minutes like a giddy astronaut, look outside the spacecraft’s circular windows, and see breathtaking views of the Earth below and absolute darkness above.
