
This is one of the images taken from the last flight of Columbia. I've been meaning to post it up for weeks.
- Art Neuro
A household iron warns users: "Never iron clothes while they are being worn."
"My position is that it is high time for a calm debate on more fundamental questions. Does human spaceflight continue to serve a compelling cultural purpose and/or our national interest? Or does human spaceflight simply have a life of its own, without a realistic objective that is remotely commensurate with its costs? Or, indeed, is human spaceflight now obsolete?" van Allen writes.
Van Allens call for discussion is prompted in part by NASAs grounding of the remaining space shuttle fleet following the Columbia accident, while the agency takes steps to improve their safety. Also, the scientist notes that President Bush has put on the table "a far more costly and far more hazardous program" to return humans back to the Moon and for sending astronauts to Mars and worlds beyond.
Supporters of human spaceflight "defy reality and struggle to recapture the level of public support that was induced temporarily by the Cold War," van Allen charges."Almost all of the space programs important advances in scientific knowledge have been accomplished by hundreds of robotic spacecraft in orbit about Earth and on missions to the distant planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune," van Allen writes. Similarly, robotic exploration of comets and asteroids "has truly revolutionized our knowledge of the solar system," he adds.
Rutan said the first flight will carry only the pilot but he did not rule out passengers for the subsequent attempt.
"I really do want to fly passengers in this ship," he said.
Backers of a Canadian effort called the Da Vinci Project announced that their spacecraft will roll out next week in Toronto and they intend to begin flying sometime in the fall.A total of 26 teams in seven countries are developing spacecraft to compete for the X Prize, which is sponsored by the privately funded X Prize Foundation in St. Louis.
The SpaceShipOne project is bankrolled by billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who is spending more than $20 million.The three-seat requirement demonstrates the capacity for paying customers; the quick turnaround between flights demonstrates reusability and reliability.
Although SpaceShipOne's June flight appeared to go flawlessly, Rutan revealed afterward that there was a serious malfunction in the trim system, used to adjust stability and steering, causing it to miss its atmospheric re-entry point by 22 miles.Hitting the re-entry point is important because after the rocket motor shuts down the plane becomes a powerless glider and cannot simply fly to its destination.
Rutan and his Scaled Composites development company gained wide fame by building the lightweight, propeller-driven Voyager aircraft, which flew around the world nonstop without refueling in 1986.
Whatever the case may be it's ruining my day. :)Sunspots are areas of intense magnetic energy, cooler and darker than the surrounding surface of the thermonuclear furnace. Sometimes the magnetic fields let loose and huge amounts of radiation and charged particles are hurled into space.
The Sun's last bout of intense storminess occurred last fall, when a string of 10 major flares over two weeks knocked out satellites, damaged others, and forced the FAA (news - web sites) to reroute airlines away from exposed polar routes.
No one can say if this sunspot group will let loose with a major storm, but it has the characteristics of a potentially big event."The implications of this spot have scientists on the edge of their seats," NASA (news - web sites) said in a statement Friday. "If the active region generates coronal mass ejections (CMEs), massive explosions with a potential force of a billion megaton bombs, it will be a fairly direct hit to Earth and its satellites and power grids."
When you think about it, it sort of makes sense seeing that the fortune will eventually pass to her sons, one of whom will inherit the throne and the vast wealth of Her Majesty the Queen. It ain't exactly money going anywhere but back to the family. So, clearly Prince Charles thought it was worth expending every penny he had to get rid of this woman from his life. Charming, Prince Charming."Princess Diana took every penny he had," Bignell was quoted as saying. "I was told to liquidate everything, all his investments, so that he could give her the cash.
"He was very unhappy about that. That's when I stopped being his personal financial adviser because he had no personal wealth left. She took him to the cleaners."
A spokeswoman for Prince Charles refused to comment on the settlement issue, saying it was a "private matter." But she confirmed that Bignell had worked for the heir to the throne. The Sunday Telegraph said he had worked for Charles for free.
Are we impressed yet? It turns out we haven't been back to mercury for this long because we have not had the technology to even consider it. Now, with th heat shielded thermos bottle design, Messenger will be able to get up close and personal with the little fella who lives in the furnace heat of the sun.Even at that, members of the Johns Hopkins University spacecraft team assembled in Cape Canaveral realize this mission can't compete with Mars and its rovers, or Saturn and its newly arrived sentry, Cassini.
But there are plenty of cool facts about this red-hot mission, besides the off-the-charts-SPF sunscreen that was baked for days in ground testing.You can see yourself in Messenger's twin solar wings, made up of a couple thousand little mirrors to reflect the intense sunlight in Mercury's neighborhood. The wings are two-thirds mirrors and just one-third electricity-producing solar cells.
Diode heat pipes burrowed into the extraordinarily insulated spacecraft will radiate internal heat from all the electronics. When Messenger passes between the sun and Mercury and it gets really sweltering — not too often and not for long because of Messenger's cleverly conceived flight plan — these pipes will shut down and the boxy craft will be like a house with all the windows closed on a steamy afternoon."It's basically a Thermos bottle," Ercol explained.
"We're actually taking on a very brutal mission from the standpoint of the sun and then from the orbiting standpoint because the planet itself is very hot."Even though Mercury is 50 million miles from Earth at closest approach, Messenger will travel 5 billion miles to get there. It's technologically infeasible to fly straight to Mercury, a trip of a few months, and so the spacecraft must swing once past Earth, twice past Venus and thrice past Mercury before slowing down enough to slip into orbit around Mercury.
Estimated arrival time: March 2011.
"Star Wars" creator and filmmaker George Lucas did not attend the event, but sent fan relations chief Steve Sansweet in his place.
Sansweet announced the title by pulling off a baseball jersey to reveal a black T-shirt emblazoned with "Revenge of the Sith.""For some time now, the naming of a new 'Star Wars' movie has taken on some special meaning among core fans who love to take part in guessing games and speculation before a title is announced," Sansweet told nearly 6,500 convention attendees. "And then (they) engage in debate once it is ... so let the debate begin."
Minutes later, a sampling of audience members dressed as Jedis, stormtroopers and other "Star Wars" characters showed they approved."I thought it was great, I loved it,' said Barren Wright, 35, a graphic designer from Modesto who was dressed as the green-armored bounty hunter Boba Fett. "This takes it back to the classic trilogy, It's a smart move by Lucasfilm to tie it all together since the logo and everything is identical to 'Return of the Jedi.'"
Wright said the symmetry between the titles reflects the story lines.
Anyone who has seen the original "Star Wars" from 1977 knows that the good guys — that is the Jedi — would be wiped out by Darth Vader in "Episode III" just as Vader and his evil Empire were toppled in 1983's "Return of the Jedi."In addition to the title, Lucasfilm also sent concept artist Ryan Church to show off drawings of a Wookie tree civilization from "Episode III" and played footage of Christensen's climactic light-saber duel — minus all the special effects — with co-star Ewan McGregor, who plays Obi-Wan Kenobi.
"Return of the Jedi" was originally to be titled "Revenge of the Jedi." Some advance promotional material even featured that title, but Lucas changed it later in production.
"This time, George tells us he's going to keep 'Revenge' in the title," Sansweet said.
He had one other announcement for fans: "Revenge of the Sith" T-shirts would go on sale inside Comic-Con's main hall in five minutes.
"When we do get ready to do the X Prize flights, we will be ready to fly three flights, not two," Rutan said. "We can fly SpaceShipOne a little quicker than in one week. In other words, we can fly three flights in two weeks," he added.Meanwhile here's the interesting one. A consortium from Canada plans to fly up with a Helium Balloon, then launch a rocket.
Rutan said that SpaceShipOne could conceivably fly every week. An early plan of Rutan, in discussions with the projects backer, billionaire Paul Allen, was to fly the craft every week for five months.
"What that would do it would give us a lot more data on our operating cost," Rutan said. "We jointly decided not to have that one funded...and find out how it flew first."
Canadas da Vinci Project's flight plan calls for a giant helium balloon to hoist Wild Fire, the team's spacecraft, to an altitude of 80,000 feet (24,384 meters).Now that, pardon the pun, would be gas.
The da Vinci Project, led by Brian Feeney of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, registered as a contender for the X PRIZE on June 2, 2000.
This concept utilizes a reusable helium balloon to lift the teams spacecraft, dubbed "Wild Fire", to high altitude. At that point, Wild Fire's rocket engines will ignite and propel the crew to edge of space and the Ansari X Prize winning altitude.
Hawking, 62, said he no longer believes a 1980s theory that black holes might offer passage into another universe, a rival explanation for identifying where matter and energy go when consumed by a black hole.What's amazing is that he did all of his rethinking because of a bet with a particle physicist, John Preskill (nice name). And the Particle Physicist who won the bet now gets a baseball encylopedia. So much for that; there, but to underscore the greatness of baseball, I guess. :)
Hawking now sides with particle physicists who have long insisted that any matter swallowed by a black hole can't just disappear but must eventually generate a specific output. The latest theory offers hope that scientists one day may identify the history of what a black hole has taken in over the eons — by decoding what it emits.
"There is no baby universe branching off (inside a black hole), as I once thought. The information remains firmly in our universe," Hawking said in a speech to about 800 physicists and other scientists from 50 countries. "I'm sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes.
"If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe, but in a mangled form, which contains the information about what you were like, but in an unrecognizable state."
"This is an election year," she told the Los Angeles Times Tuesday. "I want people to get their head up out of their mashed potatoes and learn something about the issues and go and vote. ... I'm not telling them how to vote. I'm saying, get information about the issues."Now that sounds about right to me. The Las Vegas Casino Hotel then went on to say they wouldn't ask her back and she said she'd already told them she didn't want to go back and their grapes were sour enough. However, she did make an interesting point:
"I didn't even know there was trouble," she said. "Those places operate like little city-states. They are all-powerful..."So a singer says on stage, get your info, and watch this movie, you might learn something. People get angry and storm out, demanding their money back. Doesn't this strike you as over-reacting? Yet I believe the true nature of politics in fact lies in this very point.
In Los Angeles, there were about 100 calls for refunds for Ronstadt's performance at the Universal Amphitheatre Tuesday night.
"We were much less risk averse. Now with the Challenger accident and the Columbia accident and some of the other things, we have become so risk averse that we don't dare do things," he said, adding: "The key is to take responsible risks."And here we are today, saying we're going back to the moon. It makes you wonder what the last 35years of promises were about. What exactly happened to us all in that time? Well, we won't go into that again today, but there you have it. The reason why we started to agitate on this page.
Randy Stone, deputy director of the Johnson Space Center, said many things made the Apollo era easier than today for space projects. "We were in the Cold War," he said. "We were in a technological race that most people believed we could not afford to lose.
"The naysayers didn't have as much influence," Stone said. "It was still hard to get money, but it wasn't near as hard as it is today."
An International Lunar Decade (ILD) is being viewed as a vehicle to promote multi-nation space cooperation.The idea, apparently, is well-received. True collaboration may come true through this process. I guess it beats the recent shut-out the kettle-flying-Chinese paradigm, so I guess we should be welcoming it. But the Moon? Again?
The ILD would be modeled on the International Geophysical Year (IGY) -- a comprehensive and coordinated series of global geophysical research tasks that were carried out between July 1957 and December 1958 in order to let researchers pool their talent, work and insights. Initially 46 countries agreed to participate in the IGY, but by the end of the study, 67 countries had become involved. For the IGY, a variety of scientific tools were used, including the introduction of Earth-circling "artificial satellites" lofted by the Soviet Union and United States.
Oh yeah!!! Hand me my 12 gauge shotgun shaped double-barrell pencil and the titanium armor of the ballot paper! let me vote!!! I don't even know what the issues are, but hey, he's the Terminator, calling me to arms! :)Schwarzenegger added, "They cannot have the guts to come out there in front of you and say, 'I don't want to represent you. I want to represent those special interests: the unions, the trial lawyers'…. I call them girlie men. They should get back to the table, and they should finish the budget."
Democratic lawmakers, gay and lesbian advocates and feminist groups bristled over the governor's comments, which were greeted with sustained applause by hundreds of people who were invited to the rally through automated phone calls put out by Schwarzenegger's camp.
The governor used the "girlie men" reference twice in a 16-minute speech aimed at pressuring the Legislature to pass his budget, now 17 days late. The remarks were apparently references to an old "Saturday Night Live" skit parodying Schwarzenegger. Comedians Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon played "pumped-up" bodybuilders with Austrian accents who dismissed anyone without a muscled torso as a "girlie man."
Though the four leaders in the Senate and Assembly are men, women head some of the Legislature's most influential committees, ranging from Appropriations to Energy. The California Legislative Women's Caucus website lists 33 members — more than one-fourth of the Legislature.
Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) said he was "nonplused" by Schwarzenegger's comment.
"I don't know what the definition of 'girlie man' is. As opposed to his being a he-man?" Burton asked. "I can't think of a way to have the he-man and the girlie men join hands around the Capitol and sing 'Kum Ba Ya.' "
Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles) said, "Those are the kinds of statements that ought not to come out of the mouth" of the governor.
"He says he's going to 'terminate' members in November? I really don't know what he means by that. That's not funny any more," Nuñez said.
Frustrated by the stalemate over his budget, Schwarzenegger has been using a series of weekend public appearances to drum up calls to lawmakers demanding completion of the budget. He plans to continue his campaign today at a shopping mall in Stockton.
Having used his charisma and celebrity to build relationships with lawmakers over the last eight months, the governor is adopting a combative new tone. Schwarzenegger said he would strive to oust Democratic lawmakers who vote against his budget."I want each and every one of you to go the polls on Nov. 2," he said Saturday. "That will be judgment day. I want you to go to the polls…. You are the terminators, yes!"
NASA estimated in February that it would spend $265 million in 2004 and $238 million in 2005 on safety improvements associated with returning its shuttle fleet to flight status next spring. NASA now estimates that it will spend $450 million on return to flight activities this year and $350 million to $650 million in 2005.It gets better. Check this out:
NASA Comptroller Steve Isakowitz said NASA's $3.9 billion shuttle budget can absorb the higher return to flight expenses this year, but 2005 could be a problem even if the agency gets its full $4.3 billion it has requested for the space shuttle program.
Isakowitz said the higher than expected return to flight costs make it "imperative" that Congress approve NASA's full $16.2 billion request for 2005. NASA's request represents a 5.6 percent increase over the agency's 2004 budget making it a tough sell on Capitol Hill during a year when most other federal agencies are being held to increases of 3 percent or less.
"It's not that we couldn't estimate the cost, we couldn't estimate the content," Kostelnik told reporters July 16. For example, he said, when NASA estimated its return to flight cost in February, it did not know that it would be pulling and refurbishing the rudder speed brakes on each orbiter. NASA has also since decided to make more changes to the shuttle's foam covered external tanks than previously believed necessary.El Duque keeps going
You gotta smile at that kind of thing. I could pitch a 56mph curve ball; I just don't have a 89mph fastball or any of the other array of pitches in his arsenal.In his second start since being elevated from Triple-A Columbus, El Duque went five innings, allowed three runs, six hits and threw 99 pitches. While his velocity increased a tick from his first outing a week ago, he got by with off-speed pitches and guts.
"I need to work on my control ・speed for me is not important," said El Duque, whose fastball reached 89 mph several times, while his breaking ball wouldn't have gotten pulled over on an interstate.
"That's the slowest curveball I have ever seen," said Gary Sheffield, who clubbed a two-run homer in the fifth that broke a 2-2 tie, delivered an RBI single in the seventh that stretched the lead to 5-3, and went 3-for-5.
"This is a moment in which we can take great pride in achievement, both of people and in nature," Norton said at a wildlife science center in front of a pen containing six wolves, which watched their human audience with some curiosity.I've been a follower of the American Wolf cause since I was over there in the '70s, and this recent development just... irks me. Is it just me?
Norton announced a proposed rule that would lift protection under the Endangered Species Act for gray wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan — where the population has grown to 3,200 animals — as well as in at least 20 other states. The proposal calls for states to assume management of the gray wolf populations in those states.
The gray wolf nearly disappeared in the lower 48 states in the 1950s.
The rule change includes New England, where conservationists fear that loss of federal protection would hurt attempts to develop future wolf populations through migrations from Canada.
Here at NASAs Dryden Flight Research Center, the third X-43A is undergoing "short-stack integration," explained Joel Sitz, X-43A project manager at the center. The craft is being outfitted and tested for a Mach 10 mission in the September-October time frame, he told SPACE.com .The upcoming Mach 10 flight concludes the seven year project. It would be a shame if NASA shut down on its hypersonic flight research, but then NASA is schizophrenic. The smaller projects always seem to have interesting pay-offfs that then sit on the shelf while their flagship projects flounder.
Jacking up the speed will mean the vehicle will see higher heat loads than those observed on the Mach 7 flight on March 27.
"At Mach 7, the front leading edge of the vehicle would see about 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit. At Mach 10, its probably twice that -- twice the heat load essentially," Sitz explained.
Those blistering temperatures will be tamed by special thermal protection applied to the Mach 10 vehicle, Sitz said. "The coatings that we are using were sort of a mini-research experiment in itself."
Hometown icon takes the mound as tears flow and vocal cords rupture.The American League triumphed over the National League for the seventh time in a row. Joe Torre who was 8-1 as an All-Star player, has now managed the American League to 5 straight wins under his watch. Yes there was a re-match of last year's Eric Gagne/Hank Blalock moment. This time Hank Blalock just flew out, but by then the AL had the game in their firm grasp. Mariano Rivera trotted to the mound and retired 3 lefty power hitters, all on fly balls.
Strikes out six guys in a row on 18 pitches, all of which are clocked at 146 miles per hour.
After which Roger Clemens leaves to one final thunderous standing O, putting a perfect poetic stamp on his glorious All-Star career.
Remember it. Savor it. And please buy the DVD for a mere $29.99.
Yeah, that's how this All-Star Game should have unfolded Tuesday night. Unfortunately, this game of baseball is sure one screwy sport. Its beauty is that it makes no sense, follows no scripts, constantly allows the impossible to become possible.
Somehow, though, we have a feeling that "beauty" is not a word the great Roger Clemens will be using to describe the seemingly impossible stuff that happened to him on this particular All-Star evening.
Unfortunately, we're forced to speculate on Roger's exact choice of words, since Clemens was long gone by the time the American League had finished administering a 9-4 whomping on Roger and his National League buddies.
So the only media member allowed to converse with him, on this stupendous evening, was Fox's Joe Buck. Whom he told, succinctly, during an on-the-field ceremony in the middle of the game: "I put our guys in a hole."
Soriano, a three-time All-Star at age 28, hit .289 with 17 homers and 55 RBIs in the first half, helping the surprising Rangers take a two-game lead in the AL West after three years of last-place finishes with A-Rod.Joe Torre described Soriano as inexperienced, but the man is actually not that young; he's the same age as Alex Rodriguez. While I miss having a 'homegrown' star in the lineup, I have to admit A-Rod at 3B is better for the Yankees than Alfonso at 2B, mainly because it seems to have freed up Derek Jeter's range at SS. As for 'The man' Derek Jeter himself, he went 3-for-3, making his career All-Star Average, .700 (7-for-10). The highest in History. How does he keep doing these clutch things? here's the answer:
Rodriguez, an eight-time All-Star and the 2003 AL MVP, hit .270 for the AL East-leading Yankees with a team-high 22 homers, 58 RBIs and 18 steals -- fine numbers, but below the even higher expectations he created for himself. He was 1-for-3 with an RBI triple Tuesday night.
``I think he's doing his job with the Yankees and I'm doing my job in Texas,'' Soriano said. ``I'm happy for him, but happy for me, too.''
Soriano's 343-foot shot off Clemens was his second All-Star homer following a drive off Dodgers closer Eric Gagne two years ago. It sailed over the ``This One Counts'' banner hanging over the out-of-town scoreboard on the short porch in left field and gave the AL a 6-0 lead.
He followed that with a third-inning single and a fifth-inning strikeout, going 2-for-3. He also made a nice pickup on Sammy Sosa's third-inning grounder to second.
``I've seen him do it for several years,'' said former Yankees teammate Derek Jeter, who knows a star when he sees one.
Surrounded by his friends, Soriano felt as if he was back in the Bronx.
``I feel tonight, honest, like I'm coming back to play for the Yankees,'' he said, ``Having Joe Torre (as) manager, Jeter at short, (Jason) Giambi at first.''
``I don't know, it's not just good fortune,'' said Jeter, whose three hits all went to the opposite field against Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson and Carl Pavano. ``I'm up there swinging early in the counts, especially when you're facing guys like Rocket and Randy Johnson.''At first I think, it must be easy because he's simply got it. However, upon reflection I think what it is, is that the greatest of anything have a knack of making what they do look smooth, fluid, effortless; even under the greatest of pressures. And these things take the greatest of efforts to achieve.
Jeter's perfect night against the NL's best arms makes it even more mind-boggling that this is the same player batting under .200 a month into the season.
His turnaround was evident in June when he hit .396 with nine homers, helping lift his average to .277 at the break.
``Well, it's a long season. It's not over after the first month and a half or two months,'' Jeter said. ``We've still got a long way to go. I just try to keep things in perspective and take it day-to-day.''
...
This was Jeter's second 3-for-3 performance in an All-Star game. He also did it in Atlanta in 2000, earning the MVP award. He went on to win the World Series MVP that season, making him the first player to pull off that double.
The slam-bang Don Quixote mission would help scientists figure out how to deflect or destroy any asteroid in the future that might be found to be on a collision course with Earth. The project uses the Spanish spelling of Don Quixote, the protagonist in Cervantes' novel who has chivalrous ideas that tend toward the impractical.The mission involves launching 2 craft - Sancho and Hidalgo - and slamming them into a designated asteroid of about 500m diameter. Sounds like the sort of fun I'd get a kick out of. A kind of contact hitting with 2 strikes, swinging in space, so to speak.
The lofty modern-day Don Quixote would help solve a practical problem.
Scientists don't know enough about asteroid insides to predict how one would respond to attempts to nudge it off an Earth-impact course or turn it into harmless dust. While no asteroids are currently known to be on track to hit the planet, experts say a regional catastrophe is inevitable in the very long run, over millennia. And run-ins with small asteroids that could incinerate a large city occur ever few thousand years.
"We want to investigate the internal structure of an asteroid, and at the same time develop and test the technology necessary, in a worst case scenario, to deflect a sizeable asteroid," says Andrea Milani, an asteroid expert at the University of Pisa who is helping to plan the mission.
By Robert Roy BrittSo the Cassini craft is fine. It's only Chicken-Little-Reporting on the vines that gave us the scary headline. The bastards! :)
Senior Science Writer, SPACE.com
The Cassini spacecraft was hit by storms of dust as it passed through Saturn's rings twice just before going into orbit June 30.
Cassini sliced through known gaps in the rings so that it wouldn't be destroyed by huge icy boulders. But the gaps are not entirely empty, it turns out.
Cassini was peppered by microscopic bits of dust that slammed into it at about 45,000 mph (20 kilometers per second). At the peak of activity, 680 bits per second pummeled the probe, according to the website Science.NASA (news - web sites).gov.
The impacts were recorded and converted to a sound file that is available on the Internet.
"When we crossed the ring plane, we had roughly 100,000 total dust hits in less than five minutes," said Cassini science team member Don Gurnett, of the University of Iowa. Gurnett said the bits were about the size of particles in cigarette smoke.
Most of the dust hit the spacecraft's high-gain antenna, which was designed to handle such impacts. No apparent damage was done.
Each impacting particle generated a puff of superheated, ionized gas called plasma. Cassini's Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument recorded the puffs.
"We converted these into audible sounds that resemble hail hitting a tin roof," said Gurnett, who is the instrument's principal investigator.
In other observations, the probe gained new insight into the composition of the icy, dirty rings. Cassini has begun a four-year tour of Saturn, with plans to study its rings and moons in several close flybys.
"So much emotion today," Hernandez said in English after a question posed to him in Spanish. "I'm excited, I'm feeling good. I'm happy today to come back to the Yankees again. It's the life. I need the work. I waited a long time to come back to the Yankees and pitch."The guy's a one-of-a-kind. So that's the really cool thing for the day for me. Otherwise, my life is in total chaos. Kind of an emotional freefall, if you will, without a parachute. Details will be presented here at a later date, hopefully when I get through the jungle of ghosts.
The legend of Hernandez began with the story of a daring escape from Cuba, which might have been exaggerated, and winks about his age, which might be exaggerated the other way. He says he's 34 but is believed to be at least 38.
The legend continued with a knack for big-game pitching, which is all true (he's 9-3 in the postseason). He was 53-38 for the Yankees after defecting from Cuba in December 1997; after going 12-12 his final two seasons, he was part of a three-way trade in January 2003 in which the Yankees sent him to the White Sox and Chicago sent him to Montreal. He never pitched for the Expos because of his injury.
Before the first pitch, Hernandez walked behind the mound and gestured toward his fielders - positioning them, or introducing himself? The only players on the field who were Hernandez's teammates with the Yankees in 2002 were Jeter, Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada.
Numerous people -- including its supporters -- feel that the Agency has wandered off the yellow brick road, and has lost sight of meaningful goals. I recently attended a space conference at Cape Canaveral; a three-day event that finished up with an awards ceremony for school kids. Presiding at the ceremony were a handful of Mercury and Apollo astronauts, including Wally Schirra, Jim Lovell, and Al Worden. These guys are not spring chickens anymore, although their minds are keen. On stage, they poked one another, joking over past missions and who among them was the oldest. I sat in the audience tingling with a faint sadness: these were the now-frayed heroes of my youth. Giants going to seed before my eyes. Where are today's space heroes? Were the boots of these men so impossibly large?It's interesting at the end there that 'flame and blame' raises its head as part of the accountability process. The commentator then goes on to let NASA off the hook, which I think is a little too easy; but his perspective is that the current pile-on is too easy, so what can you do? The chasm is large even amongst critics.
Its NASA's fault, many say. The Agency, wed to the crushingly expensive Space Station and still reliant on the inefficient, doubtful Shuttle, needs a shake-up. That's been the decade-old mantra intoned by hundreds of editorials in the space press. Shake-up.
Well, the agitation has begun. First there was the Columbia Shuttle investigation, which pointed its finger at bureaucratic stumbling as much as at falling foam. Then, in January, President Bush (news - web sites) sharply delineated a new objective for NASA: return to the moon, and send humans on to Mars. Last week, the Presidents Commission on Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration Policy added its own fillip: streamline the organization chart, focus on missions rather than projects, and involve the private sector in a far larger share of the work. The obvious appeal of this last point was underscored on June 21, when Scaled Composites, a privately funded aeronautics firm, lofted a rocket plane to a height of 100 km, the near neighborhood of space. They did this for a fraction of the cost of a NASA launch.
The suggested changes are practical and, importantly, politically palatable. They're a well-reasoned response, framed in accord with contemporary practice. Today, when an organization suffers a dramatic setback, the most common reaction is to first indict, and then to reorganize. (Neither seems to have been considered when Britain's Royal Geographic Society sent Robert Scott on his ill-fated expedition to the South Pole in 1911. Times change.) The shake-up of NASA will undoubtedly prove beneficial in the long run.
One of our lessons learned from this program is that its a very good idea to not reveal to the media what were doing until after," Rutan said. Giving press statements and carrying out interviews would mean a year delay, in regards to SpaceShipOne work, he added.So the lesson of the day is: don't grow old like the Mercury/Gemini boys did, and do save up for a ticket to space.
"So you're not likely to find out what were going to do next until we have to push it outside, where that spy gets a camera in and takes a picture," Rutan told reporters the day before SpaceShipOne rocketed into history.
Just like the early days of aviation, Rutan said, there will be barnstorming-like flights as vehicles give passengers a brief sub-orbital flight relatively soon. "The crazy $100,000 stuff," he added.
"But I don't look at that as space tourism," Rutan said. A mature industry is one that has a passenger spending on the order of $30,000 to $50,000 dollars, with a second generation vehicle capable of lowering a seat price to around $10,000 or $12,000, he said.
When pressed on when passenger-carrying spaceships will show up on the scene, Rutan remained cagey. "All I ask you to do is stay tuned. I think its going to be interesting. I believe there will be a lot of activity."
Kevin Baines, a member of the visual and infrared spectrometer team, said scientists were disappointed that they hadn't seen evidence of liquids through reflections of sunlight on smooth surfaces of the moon.Has to be said these pictures are seriously cool.
"We thought we'd see some flashes, and we haven't seen any. So we're a little perplexed," he said after a news conference at NASA (news - web sites)'s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
Among the new pictures released were four images of a cluster of clouds near Titan's south pole that are believed to be composed of methane. They were the only brightly distinct spots on otherwise fuzzy images of Titan.
Blue-sky thinkers like Edwards envision the space elevator as a revolutionary way of getting from Earth into space. The primary system is a ribbon attached at one end to Earth on a floating platform located in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. The other end of the ribbon is in space, beyond geosynchronous orbit.The problem of course is that lay-people respond to this project with the usual 'That's Crazy' kind of knee-jerk scepticism; which is understandable, but not very productive without informed opinions making informed input.
Once operational a space elevator could ferry satellites, spaceships, and various structures into space using electric lifts clamped to the ribbon. Research points to a space elevator capable of lifting five-ton payloads every day to all Earth orbits, the Moon, Mars, Venus or the asteroids - in 15 years after formal go-ahead.
The first space elevator would reduce lift costs immediately and drastically, as compared to current launch costs. Additional and larger elevators, built utilizing the initial design, would allow large-scale activities in space and reduce lift costs even more.
Admittedly, years of research are required to turn this pipedream into actual space hardware. Nevertheless, major organizations are taking the notion seriously. That is clear from the list of sponsors for this week's meeting: Los Alamos National Laboratory, NASA (news - web sites)'s Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, as well as the National Space Society.
"There's a broad range of issues but we're trying to hit the biggest issues we can," Edwards said.
At a JPL press briefing today, Robert Mitchell, Cassini program manager, said that a weather forecast Tuesday from Canberra, Australia -- site of a key 230-foot (70 meter) diameter dish antenna -- did not look promising. High winds may force technicians to safe the large dish in such a way as to avoid wind damage.Our message to the JPL is as follows, "Look, mate, no worries, she's a little Aussie battler, she'll be right mate."
Australia is one of three complexes that constitute NASA (news - web sites)'s Deep Space Network which is used to monitor such missions as Cassini, the Mars Rovers and Stardust.
Losing the dish at Canberra "would mean that we would be unable to acquire the Doppler signal [from the Cassini spacecraft] that we're counting on to be able to monitor the progress of the burn tonight, Mitchell told reporters.
Though recent weather looked more favorable, it didn't eliminate the wind threat entirely, Mitchell added.
Gleaning data from the Columbia mishap is considered a more favorable alternative than simply entombing debris, as was the case following the fiery, catastrophic explosion of Challenger in 1986 shortly after liftoff.Also, there is this section which is of some interest:
In looking over select pieces of recovered shuttle wreckage, specialists hope to shed light on the forces encountered during the space plane's fatal plunge to Earth. Those studies may well help design and build safer, more robust components for the spacecraft of tomorrow.
The Aerospace Corporation has conducted studies on the breakup and reentry of spacecraft for more than 35 years. The organization created in 1997 a Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (CORDS). This center is gathering information and delving into what happens to human-made objects and the materials they comprise as they slice through Earth's thin to thick atmosphere.Picking up the pieces on the shuttle program and continuing with flights is proving to be a lot harder than thought.
It's dark but very beautiful," said Padalka as he emerged on Wednesday during a nighttime pass over Earth.It cracks me up that the Russian is going on about how beautiful the Earth is and the prosaic American only has 'the sun is in my eyes' line to offer. Paucity of our cultural wealth in the west, I guess. :(
Later, as Fincke rode the end of a 50-foot (15-meter) construction boom operated by Padalka, swinging out some 240 miles above the ground, the sun was shining but visibility was poor.
"The sun is in my eyes," Fincke said.