A Dangerous “Trek” to Tranquility Base
Astrobotics has announced an exciting and ambitious effort to land a robotic rover on the lunar surface at the site of the Apollo 11 landing as part of the Google LunarX Prize competition. Dubbed the “Tranquility Trek” they plan to land and explore the historic site where humans first...
Decision 2008 and the Future of the Space Program
Perhaps no election is more important to the future of the American Space Program than this one. Americans will have a difficult decision to make with pressing issues on many fronts, but buried in those issues is the very fate of the space program. During the late sixties, no...
Time, What Now?
On August 13, 2007 Time.com published an article called “Endeavour, What Now”. Throughout the mission of STS-118 there has been an endless stream of reports by journalists that reflect how uninformed the press is about the Space Shuttle and the space program. Jeffrey Klueger’s Time.com article ends by saying...
Tragedy in the Desert
Three pioneers of the new space age gave their lives as the sun was rising on the era of private space travel. We have learned that at least for now there is no such thing as a routine test and those individuals will not be remembered as the first...
Blame it on Nixon
Why haven’t we gone back to the moon? or landed on Mars? Why 38 years after first landing on the Moon and 35 years since we last set foot on another world have we not left low Earth orbit with a manned craft? The answer lies in the troubled...
Interest in the Space Program
Where does the myth come from that Americans don’t care or aren’t interested in the space program? I recently went down to the Kennedy Space Center to view the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on June 8th. The launch was scheduled for 7:38 and I got to the...