The Ultimate Seven Minutes of Terror – Riding the MOOSE
In the early morning hours of August 6, 2012, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory also known as the Mars rover Curiosity will begin a harrowing descent through the thin martian atmosphere. For seven minutes, the fate of the $2.5 billion dollar rover will depend on a flawless performance by largely...
Watching the End of the Space Shuttle Era
It was estimated that between 750,000 and 1,000,000 people were at the Space Coast to catch a fading glimpse of American history. They crowded parks and straddled roadsides jamming into any available space that offered a line of sight to the last launch of the Space Shuttle Program. Several...
The Saga of the X-38
It was a chance trip to the Midwest on a cold winter day in December that took me within striking distance of the Strategic Air and Space Museum in Ashland, Nebraska. The museum had been on my list to visit if the opportunity ever afforded itself for me to...
Hawking: Beware Hostile Aliens Seeking Earth’s Treasure
Yesterday, there was the announcement of the discovery of five large planets orbiting the star HD 10180, 126 light years from Earth with the possibility of two additional smaller planets also in that system. The findings indicate that the planets orbit their star in a pattern that resembles the...
Meteorite Men
About 35 years ago, when the skies were darker in the suburbs north of Baltimore I would keenly wait for the large meteorite showers in August and November. I would stay up late and peer through my bedroom window hoping to catch a falling star. They seemed more impressive...
Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
Prior to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project there were several attempts by the United States to engage the Soviets in a joint space effort. President John F. Kennedy was the first to propose a combining of U.S and Soviet resources. Kennedy’s core focus was defusing tensions between the U.S. and...
Houston We Have a Problem….Again
“With a few exceptions, we have the technology or the knowledge that we could go to Mars if we wanted with humans. We could put a telescope on the moon if we wanted,” “The technology is by and large there. It boils down to what can we afford?” Norman...
NASA Adrift
As a veteran of many a bank mergers and transition where changes in strategy, direction, vision, personnel and operations were the norm I can relate to what NASA is feeling right now as a change in Presidential and organizational leadership has created that sense of being temporarily adrift. It...
Earth Day 2009
It seems only appropriate on Earth Day 2009 to talk about our planet in the scope of the much bigger scale of time and space. Are we the six billion human residents on this planet along with the other animals, insects and microbes all there is in this vast...
Which Fox Was Guarding This Henhouse?
Fox News the bastion of fair and balanced reporting published a piece on Thursday April 9th, 2009 that was a little out of character for them. Fox’s Space News section has very little original content and the space section found on Foxnews.com is interesting in that it contains far...