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...

In the early days of the space program there were several dynamics that worked for and against a winged, reusable space vehicle. First, the space race itself put resources and focus on a moon landing. A winged, reusable vehicle, while studied extensively by NASA and the Air Force through...

For those of us that passionately support the manned space program, there was a glimmer of hope in the news articles circulating yesterday that NASA was narrowing down targets to send human visitors to an asteroid. Sounds exciting and this would make for some great “Kodak moments” along with...

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...

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...

The Senate passed the NASA Authorization Bill that put the American space program somewhere in the middle between the drastic retooling that the Obama Administration had sought and the “stay the course” approach outlined in the Vision for Space Exploration. There are a few things we should never compromise...

Thousands of people came to the Kennedy Space Center on February 7, 2010 for the last night launch of the Space Shuttle program. I made the trek down hoping to catch one last piece of history and see a spectacular launch. The complex was as crowded as I had...

When the Bush era Vision for Space Exploration was released NASA said “it was going back to the future” for its next generation of space vehicles, they didn’t realize how right they were. They went all the back to 1970. Back to a time when Richard Nixon decided manned...

Standing on the Giza Plateau outside of Cairo, Egypt stands a modern marvel for its time, the Great Pyramid. For 3800 years it stood alone as the tallest man-made structures on the planet. The Egyptians don’t build pyramids anymore and haven’t for over 4500 years. At night they shine...

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...