Ferrying the Shuttle – Part One: How Do You Ship A Space Shuttle?
In April of 1972, John Young and Charlie Duke landed Apollo 16, the next to last Apollo lunar mission, in the Descartes highlands. It was during one of the moonwalks that the word came from Mission Control in Houston – Congress had approved the NASA budget for fiscal year 1973...
Ferrying the Shuttle – Part Two: The Orbiter is the Ferry
It did not take long to figure out that the concept of ferrying the shuttle like an airplane between ground destinations was not going to fly. The numbers just were not adding up, but the risk factors were rising. The idea was to install six airbreathing jet engines beneath...
Ferrying the Shuttle – Part Three: Hitching a Ride
If the shuttle could not fly itself across the country then how do you get a spacecraft that weighs as much as a Boeing 757 from California to Florida? One idea proposed by Lockheed was to “tow” the Orbiter behind a C-5. This method would be used to ferry the vehicle...
Ferrying the Shuttle – Part Four: The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft
The bragging rights to carry the Shuttle on its back came down to the Air Force’s C-5 and Boeing’s 747. The C-5 was a potential budget buster for NASA. It was a large and expensive aircraft that entered production in 1968. The initial version of the aircraft had developed problems with...
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...
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...
NASA Vision Keeps Going
When President Barack Obama indicated in his speech Tuesday night that everyone would have to make sacrifices and everyone’s favorite programs would have to take hits it sent shudders through the space community. Despite frequently relying on analogies related to the space program as examples of what America can...
A Triumph for the American Space Program
Today, the U.S. House of Representatives defied the wishes of President Bush and by a wide margin of 409-15 approved an extra $2b dollars for NASA. The rare, almost unanimous support sends a strong message that the space program is vital to America and still the most visible sign...