Dallas Morning News: Editorial: Shuttle decision more than a disappointment; it’s an outrage
Forget that we’re all Texans here and more than a little biased. If you asked unbiased people in Botswana to name the city they most associate with space exploration, chances are they’d say Houston.
When humans landed on the moon in 1969, the very first sentences out of commander Neil Armstrong’s mouth were heard around the world: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” For all of the past 135 shuttle missions, the first and last sentences out of the mission chief’s mouth included some reference to Houston.
It boggles the mind, then, to contemplate the Washington decision-making that, on Tuesday, awarded exhibits of retired shuttle orbiters to New York, Washington, the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and a fourth to (drum roll) … Los Angeles.
The announcement came on the 30th anniversary of the first space shuttle flight — a flight that shuttle biographer Henry Dethloff describes as having been conceived in large part during discussions on Oct. 27, 1966, about creation of a reusable launch vehicle. And where did those discussions occur? Houston.
The commander of the first shuttle mission, STS-1, was John Young, who spent nearly all of his career training at the Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston. From his current home near Houston, Young can drive to the space center’s museum and look over capsules and all kinds of memorabilia from his early days in the Gemini program and its Mercury predecessor.
Young can tour various gigantic Saturn V rocket components that carried Apollo vehicles like the one he commanded to the moon and back. And he can recall incredible stories of Apollo 13 — the infamous “Houston, we’ve had a problem” flight. Young was part of the Houston team that scrambled to adapt filters, tubes and other odds and ends to extend the crew’s life on the lunar landing module as the Apollo 13 capsule slowly died.
Young and millions of visitors to the Johnson Space Center can tour just about every aspect of the U.S. space program except one big one: the shuttle itself. Like the rest of us, he’ll have to hop on a plane to Florida, Washington, New York or … Los Angeles.
Texans were warned weeks ago that politics would play a role in this decision, even though Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden, the NASA administrator, insists that’s not the case. Bolden, himself a former astronaut, could not possibly have overlooked Houston’s pivotal role in the shuttle program.
This newspaper shares the skepticism of Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who stated, “It is clear political favors trumped common sense and fairness in the selection of the final locations for the orbiter fleet.”
This decision isn’t just a disappointment. It’s an outrage.
Rabu, 13 April 2011
Selasa, 12 April 2011
BRP To Contribute To Canadian Moon and Mars Exploration Programs
UTV Weekly: BRP To Contribute To Canadian Moon and Mars Exploration Programs
BRP, in cooperation with the Centre de technologies avancées BRP-Université de Sherbrooke (CTA), will develop the chassis and locomotion systems for a Lunar Exploration Light Rover and a Mars Exploration Science Rover.
BRP was awarded $5.6 million in contracts by MacDonald Dettwiler and Associated Ltd. (MDA) after they received the mandate of two contracts by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) for the design, development, construction and testing of advanced space vehicles under the CSA’s Exploration Surface Mobility Program.
Terrestrial prototypes of the rovers will be constructed from advanced aluminum alloys with electric propulsion systems powered by battery and, in the case of the Mars rover, solar energy. They will also be capable of integrating hydrogen fuel cells. The rover prototypes will target improvements to the performance of existing Martian and lunar exploration vehicles by a factor of between 5 and 10, in terms of speed, range and size.
“Future vehicles will be tasked with accessing harsher, rougher and more remote regions of planetary surfaces than ever before,” said Dr. Christian Sallaberger, vice-president and director for Space Exploration at MDA. “For Canada to play a role, we must demand the very best that our nation has to offer. BRP’s world leadership in terrestrial off-road vehicles make them a natural partner for MDA on these projects. We are thrilled to welcome them to our growing team in Canada and we are truly excited by the rich synergy between Canadian space and terrestrial technology advancements.”
“BRP is proud to participate in Canada’s space program,” said José Boisjoli, president and CEO. “While this type of R&D is outside our regular activities, we have the resources with the CTA to take advantage of this opportunity. Employees from BRP’s triad of R&D facilities located in Canada and in Austria work together to explore the unexplored and challenge existing paradigms; this is part of our DNA. We look forward to pooling our knowledge with MDA and the CSA to help further Canada’s role in space exploration. Such a project will no doubt also increase our knowledge and speed up our development of more eco-performing technologies that could, in time, be integrated into our existing products.”
Three base vehicles will be developed and built at the CTA, a private-public partnership between BRP and Sherbrooke University, before delivery to MDA for integration with a range of smart sensors and payloads. “The CTA’s team is used to thinking outside the box,” said Mihai Rasidescu, president and general manager of the CTA. “We are developing systems that may eventually need to function in the most remote and hostile environments with extreme variations in temperature, reduced gravity, and of course, the inability of the locomotion system to be serviced once in use. That’s definitely outside the box.”
About the CTA
The Centre de technologies avancées BRP – Université de Sherbrooke (CTA) is the result of a partnership between BRP and the Université de Sherbrooke. Its mandate is to develop new cutting-edge technologies in the field of motorized recreational vehicles. Since it opened in 2006, the CTA has developed two technologies that have been integrated into BRP products and is currently developing a hybrid version of the Can-Am Spyder roadster. The CTA employs more than 70 researchers and students.
About BRP
Bombardier Recreational Products Inc. (BRP), a privately-held company, is a world leader in the design, development, manufacturing, distribution and marketing of motorised recreational vehicles. Its portfolio of brands and products includes: Ski-Doo and Lynx snowmobiles, Sea-Doo watercraft and boats, Evinrude and Johnson outboard engines, Can-Am all-terrain and side-by-side vehicles and roadsters, as well as Rotax engines. BRP products are distributed in more than 100 countries.
BRP, in cooperation with the Centre de technologies avancées BRP-Université de Sherbrooke (CTA), will develop the chassis and locomotion systems for a Lunar Exploration Light Rover and a Mars Exploration Science Rover.
BRP was awarded $5.6 million in contracts by MacDonald Dettwiler and Associated Ltd. (MDA) after they received the mandate of two contracts by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) for the design, development, construction and testing of advanced space vehicles under the CSA’s Exploration Surface Mobility Program.
Terrestrial prototypes of the rovers will be constructed from advanced aluminum alloys with electric propulsion systems powered by battery and, in the case of the Mars rover, solar energy. They will also be capable of integrating hydrogen fuel cells. The rover prototypes will target improvements to the performance of existing Martian and lunar exploration vehicles by a factor of between 5 and 10, in terms of speed, range and size.
“Future vehicles will be tasked with accessing harsher, rougher and more remote regions of planetary surfaces than ever before,” said Dr. Christian Sallaberger, vice-president and director for Space Exploration at MDA. “For Canada to play a role, we must demand the very best that our nation has to offer. BRP’s world leadership in terrestrial off-road vehicles make them a natural partner for MDA on these projects. We are thrilled to welcome them to our growing team in Canada and we are truly excited by the rich synergy between Canadian space and terrestrial technology advancements.”
“BRP is proud to participate in Canada’s space program,” said José Boisjoli, president and CEO. “While this type of R&D is outside our regular activities, we have the resources with the CTA to take advantage of this opportunity. Employees from BRP’s triad of R&D facilities located in Canada and in Austria work together to explore the unexplored and challenge existing paradigms; this is part of our DNA. We look forward to pooling our knowledge with MDA and the CSA to help further Canada’s role in space exploration. Such a project will no doubt also increase our knowledge and speed up our development of more eco-performing technologies that could, in time, be integrated into our existing products.”
Three base vehicles will be developed and built at the CTA, a private-public partnership between BRP and Sherbrooke University, before delivery to MDA for integration with a range of smart sensors and payloads. “The CTA’s team is used to thinking outside the box,” said Mihai Rasidescu, president and general manager of the CTA. “We are developing systems that may eventually need to function in the most remote and hostile environments with extreme variations in temperature, reduced gravity, and of course, the inability of the locomotion system to be serviced once in use. That’s definitely outside the box.”
About the CTA
The Centre de technologies avancées BRP – Université de Sherbrooke (CTA) is the result of a partnership between BRP and the Université de Sherbrooke. Its mandate is to develop new cutting-edge technologies in the field of motorized recreational vehicles. Since it opened in 2006, the CTA has developed two technologies that have been integrated into BRP products and is currently developing a hybrid version of the Can-Am Spyder roadster. The CTA employs more than 70 researchers and students.
About BRP
Bombardier Recreational Products Inc. (BRP), a privately-held company, is a world leader in the design, development, manufacturing, distribution and marketing of motorised recreational vehicles. Its portfolio of brands and products includes: Ski-Doo and Lynx snowmobiles, Sea-Doo watercraft and boats, Evinrude and Johnson outboard engines, Can-Am all-terrain and side-by-side vehicles and roadsters, as well as Rotax engines. BRP products are distributed in more than 100 countries.
Why we should embrace the end of human spaceflight
Salon.com - an opinion piece! - Why we should embrace the end of human spaceflight
If God wanted us to live in outer space, we wouldn't have inner ears
By Michael Lind
This week NASA is announcing where the soon-to-be-retired space shuttles will be displayed as museum relics. On April 19 the space shuttle Endeavor will be launched, on the penultimate mission of the program. The end of the space shuttle program will mean that the U.S. will have to rely on Russian rockets to deliver American astronauts to space, pending the development of private commercial spaceflight.
It is tempting to say that this is an outrage; that the effective end of the American manned spaceflight program is a national humiliation; that the program's demise is yet another symbol of the gap in mentality between the confident, ambitious Kennedy-Johnson years and today's solipsistic, penny-pinching America. It is tempting to say all that, but the temptation should be resisted.
The truth is that the American space program is flourishing. In recent years Mars has been visited by the Phoenix lander and the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. At the moment the Messenger probe is orbiting Mercury and the New Horizons probe is scheduled to pass Pluto in 2015. With the help of the orbiting Kepler space telescope, more than 500 planets in other solar systems have been identified. We live in the greatest age of cosmic exploration in history, even if the public pays little attention because there are no astronauts to engage in white-knuckle landings or to clown around for the cameras.
When the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon, many assumed that this was the first step toward permanent colonization of the moon and journeys by astronauts to other planets. From today's perspective, though, the space race was like the races to the North Pole and the South Pole. Once explorers had reached those destinations, the world lost interest.
Another parallel is ocean exploration. Back in the 1960s, visions of colonies on the moon competed with plans for domed cities on the ocean floor that gave a new meaning to the phrase "real estate bubble." Scientific exploration of the ocean depths continues to produce marvelous discoveries, like whole ecosystems that have evolved to take advantage of the heat and emissions of undersea volcanic vents. But the year 2000 came and went and millions of homeowners are "underwater" only in metaphor.
The parallel is not complete, of course. The poles and the ocean depths are far more hospitable to human life than near Earth orbit or the moon or Mars. Astronauts have learned that prolonged weightlessness does terrible things to the bones and the circulatory system. If God wanted us to live in outer space, we wouldn't have balancing systems in our inner ears. When and if the science-fiction alternative of providing a simulacrum of gravity by spinning a spaceship or space station is tried, let us hope there will be a plentiful supply of barf bags.
The worst enemies of human spaceflight are its proponents. Their arguments are so weak that you keep waiting for the real, knock-down argument, which never comes.
The success of robot space probes has discredited the idea that machines are too stupid to do science in space. When that argument for human spaceflight collapses, those that remain are preposterous.
One is the assertion that life has always sought out new environments. Just as plants and animals moved from the seas to the land, it is said, so humanity must transcend the boundaries of the Earth.
This is just silly. Animals never leave a comfortable habitat for a harsh one, unless they are forced to. That is why we don't see buffalo, raccoons and turtles marching off to Death Valley in great numbers to test their mettle, in a spirit of adventure.
Our vertebrate ancestors did not come ashore hundreds of millions of years ago because they decided to boldly go where no fish had gone before. Instead, generations of proto-amphibians in shallow water got stranded in separated ponds. The ones that were accidentally equipped to survive by desperately gulping air survived long enough to breed, and here we and our fellow land animals are. No lungfish congress would have voted to colonize dry land.
Equally silly is the comparison between the exploration of America by Europeans and the exploration of outer space. The Americas had native people to be enslaved by greedy Europeans, abundant resources and lots of pleasant places to live -- to say nothing of breathable air and drinkable water. That's why the European powers fought to control the Western Hemisphere, while ignoring the continent of Antarctica.
What about the argument that part of the human race needs to dwell somewhere other than on Earth, if humanity is to avoid extinction? In 500 million years the gradually warming sun may boil the oceans, and a few billion years later the sun will evolve into a red giant, incinerating or engulfing the Earth. Our descendants, if there are any, might consider relocating.
In the half-billion years until then, the chances of war, plague or global warming producing the total extinction of a species as numerous, widespread and versatile as humanity are pretty low. A sufficiently large asteroid or comet impact like the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs could do the job. But if a massive bolide threatened the Earth, we would send unmanned spacecraft, not Robert Duvall or Bruce Willis, to steer it away or destroy it.
In the event some other natural catastrophe -- a supervolcano, a nearby supernova -- rendered the surface of the Earth temporarily or permanently uninhabitable, it would be cheaper and easier to build and maintain underground bunkers than to use the same technology to do the same thing at vastly greater cost on the moon or other planets or in space stations. By the same token, if humanity had the technology to "terraform" the surface of Mars, it would have the power to make the ruined surface of a dead Earth habitable again, making the colonization of Mars unnecessary.
If there is no compelling argument for government-sponsored human spaceflight, there is no convincing rationale for private commercial spaceflight, either. The Robert Heinlein wing of science-fiction fandom has always combined Tea Party-style anti-statism with a love of big rockets. Now that the dead hand of the NASA bureaucracy is out of the way, will visionary billionaires inspired by Ayn Rand inaugurate a new age of commercial space travel for the masses?
Don't count on it. There might be a niche market for a few space-planes or rockets to take bored plutocrats into orbit for a joy ride. But investors would be wiser to invest in private bathyscaphes offering tours of the Mariana Trench. After 9/11, can anyone believe that the world's governments are going to foster a regime of laissez-faire toward private space shuttles that could be hijacked for suicide missions from orbit, or that might disintegrate over several time zones?
And then there is the problem noted by the late William F. Buckley Jr. Because of security precautions, he joked, the increase of speed with each new mode of transport is neutralized by waiting times. A plane is faster than a train or bus, but you have to get to the airport two hours in advance. A spaceplane might take you across the continent in an hour -- but you would have to arrive at the spaceport the day before.
In the next few generations there will probably be more human spaceflight on a small scale. In time there might even be tiny teams of scientists in orbit, on the moon or other planets, like those in Antarctica. But for the foreseeable future space exploration will be undertaken mainly by machines that don't horrify a watching world when they die slowly, with no hope of rescue.
The epitaph for the dream of human travel to outer space might be borrowed from Samuel Johnson's verdict on a natural monument, the Giant's Causeway, in Ireland. It is worth seeing, he said, but it is not worth going to see.
Michael Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation and is the author of "The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution."
If God wanted us to live in outer space, we wouldn't have inner ears
By Michael Lind
This week NASA is announcing where the soon-to-be-retired space shuttles will be displayed as museum relics. On April 19 the space shuttle Endeavor will be launched, on the penultimate mission of the program. The end of the space shuttle program will mean that the U.S. will have to rely on Russian rockets to deliver American astronauts to space, pending the development of private commercial spaceflight.
It is tempting to say that this is an outrage; that the effective end of the American manned spaceflight program is a national humiliation; that the program's demise is yet another symbol of the gap in mentality between the confident, ambitious Kennedy-Johnson years and today's solipsistic, penny-pinching America. It is tempting to say all that, but the temptation should be resisted.
The truth is that the American space program is flourishing. In recent years Mars has been visited by the Phoenix lander and the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. At the moment the Messenger probe is orbiting Mercury and the New Horizons probe is scheduled to pass Pluto in 2015. With the help of the orbiting Kepler space telescope, more than 500 planets in other solar systems have been identified. We live in the greatest age of cosmic exploration in history, even if the public pays little attention because there are no astronauts to engage in white-knuckle landings or to clown around for the cameras.
When the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon, many assumed that this was the first step toward permanent colonization of the moon and journeys by astronauts to other planets. From today's perspective, though, the space race was like the races to the North Pole and the South Pole. Once explorers had reached those destinations, the world lost interest.
Another parallel is ocean exploration. Back in the 1960s, visions of colonies on the moon competed with plans for domed cities on the ocean floor that gave a new meaning to the phrase "real estate bubble." Scientific exploration of the ocean depths continues to produce marvelous discoveries, like whole ecosystems that have evolved to take advantage of the heat and emissions of undersea volcanic vents. But the year 2000 came and went and millions of homeowners are "underwater" only in metaphor.
The parallel is not complete, of course. The poles and the ocean depths are far more hospitable to human life than near Earth orbit or the moon or Mars. Astronauts have learned that prolonged weightlessness does terrible things to the bones and the circulatory system. If God wanted us to live in outer space, we wouldn't have balancing systems in our inner ears. When and if the science-fiction alternative of providing a simulacrum of gravity by spinning a spaceship or space station is tried, let us hope there will be a plentiful supply of barf bags.
The worst enemies of human spaceflight are its proponents. Their arguments are so weak that you keep waiting for the real, knock-down argument, which never comes.
The success of robot space probes has discredited the idea that machines are too stupid to do science in space. When that argument for human spaceflight collapses, those that remain are preposterous.
One is the assertion that life has always sought out new environments. Just as plants and animals moved from the seas to the land, it is said, so humanity must transcend the boundaries of the Earth.
This is just silly. Animals never leave a comfortable habitat for a harsh one, unless they are forced to. That is why we don't see buffalo, raccoons and turtles marching off to Death Valley in great numbers to test their mettle, in a spirit of adventure.
Our vertebrate ancestors did not come ashore hundreds of millions of years ago because they decided to boldly go where no fish had gone before. Instead, generations of proto-amphibians in shallow water got stranded in separated ponds. The ones that were accidentally equipped to survive by desperately gulping air survived long enough to breed, and here we and our fellow land animals are. No lungfish congress would have voted to colonize dry land.
Equally silly is the comparison between the exploration of America by Europeans and the exploration of outer space. The Americas had native people to be enslaved by greedy Europeans, abundant resources and lots of pleasant places to live -- to say nothing of breathable air and drinkable water. That's why the European powers fought to control the Western Hemisphere, while ignoring the continent of Antarctica.
What about the argument that part of the human race needs to dwell somewhere other than on Earth, if humanity is to avoid extinction? In 500 million years the gradually warming sun may boil the oceans, and a few billion years later the sun will evolve into a red giant, incinerating or engulfing the Earth. Our descendants, if there are any, might consider relocating.
In the half-billion years until then, the chances of war, plague or global warming producing the total extinction of a species as numerous, widespread and versatile as humanity are pretty low. A sufficiently large asteroid or comet impact like the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs could do the job. But if a massive bolide threatened the Earth, we would send unmanned spacecraft, not Robert Duvall or Bruce Willis, to steer it away or destroy it.
In the event some other natural catastrophe -- a supervolcano, a nearby supernova -- rendered the surface of the Earth temporarily or permanently uninhabitable, it would be cheaper and easier to build and maintain underground bunkers than to use the same technology to do the same thing at vastly greater cost on the moon or other planets or in space stations. By the same token, if humanity had the technology to "terraform" the surface of Mars, it would have the power to make the ruined surface of a dead Earth habitable again, making the colonization of Mars unnecessary.
If there is no compelling argument for government-sponsored human spaceflight, there is no convincing rationale for private commercial spaceflight, either. The Robert Heinlein wing of science-fiction fandom has always combined Tea Party-style anti-statism with a love of big rockets. Now that the dead hand of the NASA bureaucracy is out of the way, will visionary billionaires inspired by Ayn Rand inaugurate a new age of commercial space travel for the masses?
Don't count on it. There might be a niche market for a few space-planes or rockets to take bored plutocrats into orbit for a joy ride. But investors would be wiser to invest in private bathyscaphes offering tours of the Mariana Trench. After 9/11, can anyone believe that the world's governments are going to foster a regime of laissez-faire toward private space shuttles that could be hijacked for suicide missions from orbit, or that might disintegrate over several time zones?
And then there is the problem noted by the late William F. Buckley Jr. Because of security precautions, he joked, the increase of speed with each new mode of transport is neutralized by waiting times. A plane is faster than a train or bus, but you have to get to the airport two hours in advance. A spaceplane might take you across the continent in an hour -- but you would have to arrive at the spaceport the day before.
In the next few generations there will probably be more human spaceflight on a small scale. In time there might even be tiny teams of scientists in orbit, on the moon or other planets, like those in Antarctica. But for the foreseeable future space exploration will be undertaken mainly by machines that don't horrify a watching world when they die slowly, with no hope of rescue.
The epitaph for the dream of human travel to outer space might be borrowed from Samuel Johnson's verdict on a natural monument, the Giant's Causeway, in Ireland. It is worth seeing, he said, but it is not worth going to see.
Michael Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation and is the author of "The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution."
Langganan:
Postingan (Atom)
