The Art Neuro Weblog

Shuttle Update
Loyal reader JF sent in this info regarding cracks in the shuttle's fuel tanks.

Discovery was set for a Noon rollout to Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, before engineers detected the crack in the external tank. After consulting with tank engineers at NASA's Michoud facility, shuttle officials decide to proceed with rollout at 2:00 p.m. EDT. At 2:04 p.m. EDT the craft indeed began moving out of the Vehicle Assembly Building, according to a NASA statement

"The crack is about the size as a hair on the lens of a camera," NASA spokeswoman Eileen Hawley told reporters at NASA's Johnson Space Center. The crack was located just above the intertank door on the rear of the tank, opposite the orbiter, Hawley said."They said they will be flying as is," Hawley said.

The launch is to be the first since the disastrous end of the shuttle Columbia mission two years ago, which was blamed on a chunk of foam that fell from the external fuel tank during liftoff and struck a wing. The tank has been extensively redesigned since that disaster.

"It doesn't sound like it's a major issue, but because the foam is a sensitive issue we want to make sure we're in a safe and right configuration,'' Rye said earlier Wednesday, when the crack was discovered.

And so on.
Also, JF sent in the folloing bit where there's an update on...

Japan's Big Space Plan
They had to have one eventually. Apparently it has robots, it has nanotech, it has Mach-5 Hydrogen-fuelled craft, it goes up to 2025.

By 2015, JAXA will review whether it's ready to pour resources into manned space travel and possibly building a base on the moon. A decision to possibly to try for Mars and other planets would be made after 2025.

The plan emerges two months after JAXA sent a communications satellite into space aboard the country's workhorse H-2A rocket -- its first successful launch since November 2003, when a rocket carrying two spy satellites malfunctioned after liftoff and was destroyed in mid-flight. That accident forced officials to put the entire space program temporarily on hold.

It also marks a major policy shift that was set in motion last year when a Japanese government panel recommended that the agency focus on manned space flight instead of unmanned scientific probes.

Despite being Asia's most advanced space-exploring nation, Japan has been playing catch-up to Europe in commercial satellite launches. Tokyo also has struggled to outdo China, which put its first astronaut into orbit in October 2003 and later announced plans for a trip to the moon.

Well, there you have it. Another space program.

You have to be in it to play, and right now, Australia are not in it because, well, our powers that be just can't imagine it.

- Art Neuro