Guy Laliberté recalls ‘amazing ride’ in space
Vancouver Sun
Canadian billionaire space tourist Guy Laliberté spoke with wonder Tuesday about his two-week voyage in space, calling his experience an amazing ride while admitting he had on occasion felt queasy.
NASA considering job cuts: Reduction tied to manned flights may affect Johnson Space Center
Houston Chronicle
NASA is considering cutting as much as 20 percent of its employee costs on the manned space program — including jobs at Houston’s Johnson Space Center — in hopes of salvaging money for ambitious back-to-the-moon plans, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver has told contractors for the agency.
Computer generated image showing the debris cloud around Earth.
SECURE WORLD FOUNDATION PRESS RELEASE
How best to cope with the rising tide of orbital space debris? What international rules of behavior are required for safe operations in space? Can there be a sustainable space environment for world-wide space activities?
These and other issues are to be addressed in a special panel discussion on “Achieving a Sustainable Space Environment for Future Space Activities.â€
Artists conception of WhiteKnightTwo and the SpaceShipTwo space tourism vehicle. (Credit: Virgin Galactic)
The War is Boring blog provides an interesting post about how the military is attempting to capitalize on work that Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic are doing in space tourism:
SUSTAIN would be two vehicles. The jet-powered mother-ship, based in the U.S. or at a secure, overseas facility, would loft a smaller, rocket-powered “lander†to high altitude — say, 50,000 feet — before launching it. The rocket would quickly boost the lander to an altitude of around 400,000 feet, just shy of the orbital threshold. On completing its mission, the lander would deploy air brakes and spiral down to a landing.
ZERO G is “slashing” prices for its Halloween flight out of Fort Lauderdale.
ESA PRESS RELEASE
Ministers from the 29 European Space Agency and European Union Member States will meet in Prague on 23 October for the 1st EU-ESA International Conference on Human Space Exploration, to prepare a roadmap leading to the definition of a common vision and strategic planning for space exploration.
ATK PRESS RELEASE
Alliant Techsystems (NYSE: ATK – News) has delivered a technological first to NASA: a full-scale, crew module structure made of composite materials. The Composite Crew Module (CCM) is a unique capsule design that has the potential to reduce the overall weight of future manned launch vehicles.
NASA PRESS RELEASE
For the first time, NASA Twitter followers are invited to view a space shuttle launch in person at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA is hosting this unique Tweetup on Nov. 11 and 12. Space shuttle Atlantis is targeted to launch at 4:04 p.m. EST, Nov. 12 on its STS-129 mission to the International Space Station.
SpaceX says that it is no threat to NASA’s Constellation program.
NASA predicts links with Korea space program
JoongAng Daily
Korea has the potential to become an important partner in efforts aimed at advancing exploration and technology for the peaceful use of space, the head of the U.S. aerospace administration said yesterday.
U2’s Bono and Edge visited Mission Control in Houston today, chatting with the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station.
The Coalition for Space Exploration has released some new videos arguing for maintaining a strong American space program.
