Category Archives: Space Patrol

National Insecurity, Space Patrol

Still Shuttling?

Shuttle flights would continue under new proposal

The space shuttle era could get a new lease on life under a bill filed today by U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

The measure would delay the shuttle’s planned retirement in 2010 until NASA is confident that a replacement spacecraft is ready or that the shuttle and its massive payload bay is no longer needed to keep the International Space Station afloat through 2020.

The 37-page bill also authorizes an additional $1.3 billion in NASA spending next year above President Barack Obama’s request of $19 billion. The extra money would help prepare NASA for as many as two additional shuttle flights per year after 2010, as well as fund new spacecraft development.

“This must not be an ‘either or’ proposition where we are forced to choose between continuing to fly the shuttle to service the station and maintain our independence in reaching space, or investing in the next generation of space vehicle. We can and must do both,” Hutchison said in a statement.

The Chief doesn’t always appreciate Sen. Hutchinson’s brand of semi-conservatism, but in this case she’s spot-on:

…the Hutchison measure emphasizes the need for NASA to have a government-run system that could lift astronauts into space. The new bill also calls for the “continuation or modification” of programs initiated under the Constellation program.

“While commercial transportation systems may contribute valuable services, it is in the United States’ national interest to maintain a government operated space transportation system for crew and cargo delivery to low-Earth orbit and beyond,” it notes.

The private spaceflight efforts need to encouraged, and have administrative hurdles lowered. At the same time, as noted above, a continuing ability for the US to directly access the orbital high-ground is absolutely critical as a matter of national security…the space station be damned!

Space Patrol

Private Space – Soon Available!

RocketShip Tours to Sell Rides to Edge of Space Aboard XCOR’s Lynx

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A travel entrepreneur who introduced hundreds of thousands of Americans to European travel in the 1960’s has taken luxury travel to new heights – the edge of space.

Jules Klar, founder of Phoenix, AZ-based RocketShip Tours, has announced that his company will immediately begin selling rides to the edge of space for $95,000 per flight. Participants will fly aboard the Lynx, a two-seat suborbital vehicle being built by California-based XCOR Aerospace.

The future is now.

Anyone got an extra $95K to sponsor the Chief for a great report? Ha ha.

Space Patrol

Another Step Toward Commercial Space

White Knight Two space rocket in Mojave Desert for testing

The Chief continues to relish anything that gives us a greater presence in space.

Sir Richard Branson’s dreams of operating the world’s first commercial spaceline will move a step closer today when he unveils his new space rocket.

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The billionaire will present White Knight Two to the world in the searing heat of the Mojave Desert – ahead of the first proper flight which is expected as early as next year.

White Knight Two will be the mothership, on which a much smaller spaceship will sit until it is projected into sub-orbital space flight at a certain altitude.

Designs for both White Knight Two, which is the world’s largest aircraft made entirely from carbon composite, and the smaller SpaceShip Two were unveiled in New York in January.

What’s the point? It’s like anything else…the more you use something (in this case space flight), the better you get at it. As far as the broader national strategic security view is concerned, there’s NOTHING like being present on the higher ground!

National Insecurity, Space Patrol

Space Race with ChiComs?

Uh…not unless we start to run! Otherwise it’ll be a default loss for us, and we’ll be on a slide down towards Eurotrash style mediocrity.

Buzz Aldrin: Invest in Nasa to beat the Chinese to Mars

Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the Moon, has issued a stark warning that America must invest now in the space agency Nasa, or surrender leadership of space exploration to Russia and China. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Aldrin revealed that he intends to lobby Barack Obama and John McCain, the two US presidential candidates, in an effort to ensure they find sufficient funds for Nasa’s goal to establish a permanent base on the Moon and then send a manned mission to Mars.

This would be really BAD in so many ways…Russia and China literally holding the high ground?

Mr Aldrin, 78, said: “To me it’s abysmal that it has come to this: after 50 years of Nasa, and after putting about $100 billion into the space station, we can’t get our own astronauts to our space station without relying on the Russians.”

Really!

He said his message to the next president is this: “Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we’re going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.”

Any bets on this getting the attention of either of the major presidential candidates? No?

Didn’t think so. How sad.

Space Patrol

Who’s on First? The Doctor is In!

The stars line up for Doctor Who

‘You know, as an actor, the things to do here are to play at the National, open at the West End, do a BBC film that’s so good it’s really a quality movie – and be in Doctor Who?!” says Michael Brandon, the American actor and committed anglophile who gave us Jerry Springer on stage and Dempsey of Dempsey and Makepeace on TV. He’s not joking: a guest role in the new, regenerated Doctor Who, the fourth series of which begins tomorrow, has become, if not quite the holy grail of the thespian world, then certainly an acting badge of honour.

Interesting. The Chief really liked the Doctor…it seems he isn’t alone.

Space Patrol

Competition for Branson’s Virgin Galactic

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XCOR AEROSPACE SUBORBITAL VEHICLE TO FLY WITHIN TWO YEARS

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A small California aerospace company today unveiled a new suborbital spaceship that will provide affordable front-seat rides to the edge of space for the millions of people who want to buy a ticket.

The company, XCOR Aerospace, of Mojave, CA, announced that its two-seat Lynx suborbital spaceship will carry people or payloads to where they will experience weightlessness and see the stars above and the Earth and its atmosphere below. This will launch XCOR into the emerging space tourism market, estimated at over a half-billion dollars.

The Lynx will offer affordable access to space for individuals, researchers and educators,” said XCOR CEO Jeff Greason. “Future versions of Lynx will offer ever-improving capabilities for scientific and engineering research and commercial applications.

The spaceship, roughly the size of a small private airplane, will first take off in 2010 and will be capable of flying several times each day.

First, Sir Richard Branson’s budding Virgin Galactic suborbital servide, and now this…Great!

Competition for the space tourism market! Maybe someday it’ll be cheap enough that even the Chief will be able to afford a trip to space!

Space Patrol, Uncategorized

Chief’s Hypothesis: Possible Alien Connection?

‘Frog from Hell’ that ate baby dinosaurs

A squat beachball sized toad dubbed ‘the frog from Hell’ has been found in Madagascar, where it it once may have snacked on baby dinosaurs and other small animals. The 70 million year-old fossil frog is likened by researchers to a “slightly squashed beach-ball” and has been nicknamed Beelzebufo.

OK you might say…just another weird fossil critter. One can only be glad that these guys aren’t still running (hopping?) around.

But then the artist’s rendition of the appearance started a whole new line of thought:

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Anyone else notice the clear familial resemblance to Jabba the Hutt?
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Space Patrol

Obama Lost in Space.com

The Chief noticed ads for B. Hussein Obama’s campaign over on Space.com.

This particular bit of ad placement seems akin to say…David Duke running a campaign spot on Black Entertainment Television.

Based on Obama’s stated priorities, one has to wonder:  how much investment he would be willing to commit to any serious space efforts, given the Euro/Ingsoc  direction of most of his campaign rhetoric?

The best bet is not much!  Hopefully most of the readers there, who presumably have some interest in space development, realize this – and that B.H.O.’s ad placement there is little more than a money sink, and a true act of moonbattery bereft of situational awareness.

Space Patrol

Branson’s Private Spaceflight: Update

Virgin Galactic Unveils Suborbital Spaceliner Design

The Chief has previously noted with interest, Sir Richard Branson has been developing plans, and more to the point, technology to press ahead with Virgin Galactic – a venture into private suborbital spaceflight.

The SpaceShipTwo spacecraft and its WhiteKnightTwo carrier will begin initial tests this summer to shakedown the novel spaceflight system designed by aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan and his firm Scaled Composites. “2008 really will be the year of the spaceship,” said British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, who unveiled a 1/16th-scale model of the new spacecraft here at the American Museum of Natural History. “We’re truly excited about our new system and what our new system will be able to do.”

Virgin Galactic’s Spaceship-2

The idea seems to be proceeding nicely.

While the initial round of tests is slated for sometime this summer and the first spaceflights pegged for 2009, Whitehorn stressed that safety is paramount. “We’re in a race with nobody, apart from a race with safety,” Whitehorn said.

Rutan said he is targeting a safety factor akin to that of the earlier airliners of the 1920s, which should still be 100 times better than the safety of today’s manned spacecraft used by large governments today. “Don’t believe anyone who tells you that the safety level of new spacecraft is as safe as a modern airliner,” Rutan said.

I STILL think it’s way cool – given the money, I would fly in it in a second! It also seems good enough for the FAA:

Patricia Grace Smith, the FAA’s associate administrator for commercial space transportation, lauded the commitment of Virgin Galactic and Scaled to safety after SpaceShipTwo’s unveiling. “It is the entrepreneurial spirit that will take this country forward,” Smith said. “This is going to catch like a wild fire we have never seen.”

Hear, hear!

Space Patrol

Private Space Progress

Bigelow Space Modules: Sky High Plans Face Transportation Concerns

Two privately-built prototype modules are circuiting the Earth – prelude technology to seed space with far larger orbital housing that support human occupants.

This has been a very thoughtful, systematic development of the technology and capability of extending the reach and presence of “private” space (i.e. non-governmental space development).

It’s high time!

Meanwhile, Bigelow is far from the only one to have irons in the fire:

Carnegie Mellon Sets Sights on Google’s Lunar X Prize

William “Red” Whittaker and the wizards at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh, hope to use their expertise to snag $20 million in the Google Lunar X Prize.

Carnegie Mellon is one of seven teams so far to have sent in a letter of intent and a $1,000 deposit to compete for the $20 million grand prize, according to Brett Alexander, the X Prize Foundation’s executive director of space prizes and the Wirefly X Prize Cup.

The private space moon race has started.

Space Patrol

Moon Race Re-established…by Google

Google Backs $25 Million ‘Lunar X Prize’

Every so often the Chief sees something that is really heartening…a light in the forest of the current plethora of news noire. This is one of those items.

Although the Chief doesn’t like everything that Google has been up to…like helping the ChiComs “sanitize” net access…but this is a good thing.

The group whose $10 million prize spurred privately funded rocketeers to send a small piloted craft to the cusp of space in 2004 has issued a new challenge: an unmanned moon shot.With the audacious new contest comes a much bigger prize — as much as $25 million, paid for by Google, the ubiquitous Internet company.

The “Google Lunar X Prize” was announced today in Los Angeles at Wired Magazine’s NextFest conference. The contest calls for entrants to land a rover on the moon that will be able to travel at least 500 meters and send high-resolution video, still images and other data back home. The X Prize Foundation saw the new contest as one of “the grand challenges of our time that we can use to move people forward,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and C.E.O. of the foundation.

The prize for reaching the moon and completing the basic tasks of roving and sending video and data will bring the winner $20 million, according to the contest rules; an additional $5 million would be awarded for additional tasks that include roving more than 5,000 meters or sending back images of man-made artifacts like lunar landers from the Apollo program.

Let the race begin. There are a number of groups that are possible contenders…gentlemen, start your engines!

Space Patrol

Forward, Into the Past!

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Time travel could be possible … in the future

It may take more than a nuclear-powered De Lorean or a spinning police box, but time travel could actually be a possibility for future generations, according to an eminent professor of physics. Prof Amos Ori has set out a theoretical model of a time machine which would allow people to travel back in time to explore the past.

…Doctor Who?

The way the machine would work rests on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, a theory of gravity that shows how time can be warped by the gravitational pull of objects. Bend time enough and you can create a loop and the possibility of temporal travel.

Prof Ori’s theory, set out in the prestigious science journal Physical Review, rests on a set of mathematical equations describing hypothetical conditions that, if established, could lead to the formation of a time machine, technically known as “closed time-like curves.” In the blends of space and time, or spacetime, in his equations, time would be able to curve back on itself, so that a person travelling around the loop might be able to go further back in time with each lap.

In the blends of space and time, or spacetime, in his equations, time would be able to curve back on itself, so that a person travelling around the loop might be able to go further back in time with each lap. In the past, one of the major challenges has been the alleged need for an exotic material with strange properties – what physicists call negative density – to create these time loops.

“This is no longer an issue,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “You can construct a time machine without exotic matter,” he said. It is now possible to use any material, even dust, so long as there is enough of it to bend spacetime into a loop. Even though Prof Ori, of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, believes his new work strengthens the possibility of a real Tardis, he would not speculate on when a time machine would be built, or even if it would ever be possible.

This is way cool.

Space Patrol

NASA to Meet Armageddon?

NASA Insiders Propose Stepping Stone Path to Deep Space

No, this one isn’t a thermonuclear war, or the set of military events prophesied prior to the appearance or reappearance of the Messiah, but a more banal reference to the Bruce Willis movie that featured a space mission to land on an asteroid & destroy it.

Other than being a showcase of some hideously erroneous physics, the one thing from the movie that is being seriously proposed is a manned landing on an “earth crossing” asteroid to take place sometime between the currently planned goals of returning to the moon, and then later going to Mars.

…there’s ongoing discussion of mounting a piloted mission to an asteroid – a voyage by astronauts to a near-Earth object, termed NEO for short. These proponents feel certain of the scientific payoff from reaching, first-hand, an asteroid – perhaps even becoming able to exploit these chunks of celestial flotsam to further humankind’s plunge into the cosmos. Space technologists argue that a NEO trip could be a valuable shakeout of people, equipment, and procedures prior to hurling astronauts beyond the Moon to the distant dunes of Mars.

For others, NEOs are viewed as downright dangerous, in terms of a head-on collision between Earth and a space rock. It’s best to get to know these incoming beasts ahead of time.

This would be a sort of neat project…and would have some real scientific merit on its own well beyond that of another robotic mission.

Space Patrol

Euro Entry into Private Spaceflight

Europe Unveils Space Plane for Tourist Market

Along with Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, XCOR, and Rocketplane, Euro aerospace giant EADS’ Astrium division is planning on entering the sub-orbital space tourism market, for a planned cost of approx. $225K per 90 min. flight. They have a kind of neat video showing their concept, essentially a corporate-jet looking craft that will use jet runway take-off and landing, with a rocket boost into the edge of spaceflight.

Bert Rutan, designer of Spaceship One which won the Ansari X-Prize for successful repeated suborbital spaceflights, is now designing and building Branson’s Spaceship Two series for Virgin Galactic. He is less than impressed with the concept, noting extra weight, and costs associated with hauling jet engines and fuel into space, but hey, the Chief says the more the merrier in this game.

Besides, there’s more than one way to solve a technological problem, especially at this early stage of private spaceflight, and what direction the technology takes at this time is virtually wide open spaces!

Space Patrol

SciFi Brought into Reality

An Introductin to Planetary Defense

Speaking of advance planning…these guys are really serious about this topic.

This book offers a serious look at defending the planet in the event of an extra-terrestrial invasion. Travis Taylor, et al, have written the definitive book on the defense of earth against a potential alien incursion. Whatever your beliefs on the subject, the book serves as an important primer on the potential future of warfare on every level. It is tightly grounded in current day realities of war and extrapolates thoughtfully but closely about future potentials. It should be on the reading list of anyone who is serious about national security and the future of war.

The authors carefully make their case from every angle beginning with the statistical probability of an alien invasion. Chapter two discusses possible weapons, tactics and strategies for defense. This is followed with a look at what might motivate such an attack. And finally, who should know about preparations for defense, what a first and subsequent responses should be, and how we should be preparing and funding our defense.

Perhaps this seems to be…a bit far out?…but perhaps it shouldn’t be.