NASA's Ares I rocket lifts off in this artist's conception. (Credit: NASA)
No Surprises Coming In Augustine Report
Aviation Week
The upcoming report of the Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee will follow closely the options for NASA programs already discussed publicly, and will not march off in any new directions.
The panel is bound by federal open meeting law, and it already has discussed what will be in its report in a series of public meetings (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 3, 6, 13).
NASA's COLBERT Treadmill
NASA MISSION UPDATE
NASA will broadcast a special message from comedian Stephen Colbert on Monday, Aug. 24, as the space shuttle Discovery prepares to deliver the COLBERT treadmill to the International Space Station.
Steve Heck is flying high. In fact, he recently took a training flight in California as one of two teachers from Ohio to be picked for the Teachers in Space program.
Manx Company buys Soviet Spacecraft
Isle of Man Today
Three Almaz stations were launched into space under the pretence that they were civilian research craft.
The Almaz programme only came to light when the Soviet regime collapsed and there have been reports that the orbiters were armed with cannons normally used on Mig jet fighters so that US satellites could be destroyed if they were used to attack Soviet cosmonauts in space.
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Professor joins spaceflight research group
Central Florida Future
An associate professor of planetary science at UCF was recently appointed to a prestigious research and development group that specializes in space vehicles.
Josh Colwell joined the Commercial Spaceflight Federation’s Suborbital Applications Researchers Group in August. He will serve on a panel with other professionals from universities such as John Hopkins University, Purdue University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology specializing in microgravity physics.
David Livingston’s guests this week include Dr. George Nield of the FAA, Leik Myrabo, and Greg Meholic.
The ALICE flight-vehicle accelerated to a speed of 205 mph and reached an altitude of nearly 1300 feet. (Credit: Dr. Steven F. Son, Purdue University)
NASA PRESS RELEASE
NASA and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, or AFOSR, have successfully launched a small rocket using an environmentally-friendly, safe propellant comprised of aluminum powder and water ice, called ALICE.
Artist's conception of WhiteKnight2/SpaceShipTwo in flight (credit: Virgin Galactic)
Some interesting news about Virgin Galactic’s efforts to launch space tourism in Scotland, courtesy of the Sunday Herald:
Based tales of UFOs, secretive government test sites, mysterious hangars and underground cities, it is a sales pitch that is literally out of this world. A group of industrious locals in Argyll have clubbed together to try and convince Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s new venture in space tourism, to turn the disused RAF base in Machrihanish on the Mull of Kintyre into its UK spaceport.
Japan: Fly Me to the Moon
Forbes
Japan’s $155 million launch, scheduled for the southern Tanegashima spaceport in the wee hours of September 11, is intended to showcase the new rocket that JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries spent the last five years building. It’s also likely to inject a new dimension into Asia’s ongoing rocket race, the latest salvo of which was South Korea’s planned satellite launch this week. Seoul’s hopes were first decried by Pyongyang, which saw its own recent rocket launch meet with U.N. sanctions. But technical glitches scrubbed the South Korean launch.
KSLV-1 Team Leader Park Jung-joo says that Korean engineers have learned a lot working with the Russians on the launch vehicle, knowledge that will allow them to build a follow-on rocket independently.
Officials from SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corporation pushed commercial alternatives to NASA’s human spaceflight program in a recent interview with the Houston Chronicle’s Eric Berger.
The anonymous author of the RocketsandSuch blog gives an account of a visit on Thursday to Louisiana by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Deputy Administrator Lori Garver that, if accurate, points to stunning changes for future human spaceflight.
