news in spaaaaace!
Some pretty pictures from space today, but first: required reading.
Internal NASA email from NASA Administrator Griffin regarding Space Shuttle, ISS, Russia, Ares, Orion, OSTP, OMB and Budgetary Issues
In a rational world, we would have been allowed to pick a Shuttle retirement date to be consistent with Ares/Orion availability, we would have been asked to deploy Ares/Orion as early as possible (rather than “not later than 2014″) and we would have been provided the necessary budget to make it so.
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The rational approach didn’t happen, primarily because for OSTP and OMB, retiring the Shuttle is a jihad rather than an engineering and program management decision. Further, they actively do not want the ISS to be sustained, and have done everything possible to ensure that it would not be. They were always “okay” with buying Soyuz/Progress, and if it didn’t happen, well, that was okay too….
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…The Russians are not going to back out of Georgia any time soon, certainly not prior to the election. If they don’t, INKSNA is DoA, despite Sen. Mikulski’s and Nelson’s favorable comments in support of a “bipartisan solution”. We might get relief somewhere well down the road, if and when tensions ease, but my guess is that there is going to be a lengthy period with no U.S. crew on ISS after 2011. No additional money of significance is going to be provided to accelerate Orion/Ares, and even if it were, at this point we can;t get there earlier than 2014, so it doesn’t solve the basic problem. Commercial solutions will ultimately emerge, but not substantially before Orion/Ares are ready, if then. The alternatives are to continue flying Shuttle, or abandon U.S. presence on ISS.
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…Practically speaking, the Russians can sustain ISS without US crew as long as we don’t actively sabotage them, which I do not believe we would ever do, short of war. So I will not make the argument that “dependence” works both ways. We need them. They don’t “need” us. We’re a “nice to have”….
Sorry for the long quote, but this is the future of American manned spaceflight. Now, politics aside…
Rosetta probe flies by ‘diamond in the sky’
Spacecraft flies by remote asteroid, camera stops
Cassini Images Ring Arcs Among Saturn’s Moons
It’s all about the unexplained growths on that strut on the left:
Underneath Phoenix Lander 97 Sols After Touchdown
An Icy Discovery on Mars, but Where’s the Water?
Mars Phoenix Will Bravely and Passionately Twitter Until the Final Beat of Its Adorable Electronic Heart
And finally this. No idea how seriously to take this project, but you never know until they get off the ground. If they ever do.
Prototype orbital seaplane in Texan blimp-base blast
