NASA Plans: Asteroid or Bust
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...
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...
NASA Gets It Right
The successful launch of Discovery on Sunday March 15th after weeks of delays and the safe landing on Saturday March 28th was a clear demonstration of NASA “getting it right”. When you have a program that has the highest visibility and you suffer not one, but two tragedies that...
Energiya-Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle
I recently completed reading the book “Energiya-Buran: The Story of the Soviet Space Shuttle”. First, my kudos to the authors Bart Hendrickx and Bert Vis as well as Praxis for publishing a book with such a wealth of detail about a subject that only ten or so years ago...
Combining Forces: NASA and the Military
A trial balloon recently floated by incoming President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team raised the possibility of combining the U.S. military’s space capability and funding with NASA’s. An intriguing option that raises numerous possibilities that could help advance the civilian and military uses of space, but one that also warrants...