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Despite a declaration from President Barack Obama that the moon is not a planned destination for American astronauts, senior NASA engineers have quietly begun reconsidering using it as a staging point for an eventual mission to Mars.William Gerstenmaier, the chief of human exploration for NASA, does not see the president's plan of a direct, 900-day mission to the red planet as achievable. Instead, Gerstenmaier believes large amounts of ice at the lunar poles may provide an important reservoir of oxygen and hydrogen fuel to propel rockets and spaceships across the 40 million miles of space to Mars."If propellant was available...

US ambitions to send astronauts back to the moon as a prelude to missions to Mars have been put in doubt by budgetary constraints 40 years after man's triumphant landing on Earth's nearest neighbor. After the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003, former president George W. Bush decided to phase out the shuttle flights by 2003 and set a more ambitious mandate for America in space. Launched in 2004, the so-called Constellation program aims to take Americans back to the moon by 2020 to use as a launch pad for manned voyages to Mars.

Nobel-winning boffin slams ISS, manned spaceflight 'Infantile fixation on putting people into space' By Lewis Page, The Register, Wednesday 19th September 2007 A Nobel laureate physicist has poured scorn on human space exploration, saying "the whole manned spaceflight programme, which is so enormously expensive, has produced nothing of scientific value". Professor Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas at Austin, co-recipient of the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physics, was speaking at a workshop in Baltimore. His remarks were reported by Space.com. Weinberg had especially harsh words for the International Space Station (ISS), saying that it was "an orbital turkey... No...

Wernher von Braun in his MSFC office, with models of the rockets he helped develop in the background. (credit: NASA) Remembering Wernher von Braun by Anthony Young Monday, July 10, 2006 June 16th passed with virtually no mention of one of the greatest names in the exploration of space. On that date in 1977, Dr. Wernher von Braun passed away. He was admired and loved by many he worked with during projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, yet vilified by others because of his wartime efforts developing the V-2 for the Third Reich. He profoundly influenced the course of history...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2, 2006 – As current recruiting successes continue, the Army will ensure the reserve-component force gets the full funding it requires, Army leaders told Pentagon reporters today. "To be clear, we have no intention of cutting the number of Guard or Reserve brigades, reducing the number of Guard or Reserve soldiers or cutting the level of Guard or Reserve funding," Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, Army chief of staff, said. Rather, Schoomaker said, the Army is intent on building reserve-component units that, like their active-duty counterparts, are fully manned, trained, equipped and led for the missions they'll face in...

First-Flight Shuttle Ride Aviation Week & Space Technology 01/16/06 author: Col. R. Mike Mullane Jan. 28 marks the 20th anniversary of the 1986 Challenger space shuttle accident that killed NASA astronauts Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Judy Resnik, Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Hughes corporate payload specialist Greg Jarvis and teacher-in-space Christa McAuliffe. Nearly 18 months before the Challenger accident, the Thiokol solid-rocket boosters used on Discovery's Mission 41D experienced the first major "blow-by" of gases around O-ring seals--the same problem that later doomed Challenger. Former astronaut USAF Col. (ret.) Mike Mullane, a mission specialist on that Discovery flight, describes his experience...

U.S. struggles on China-war planning - top officer Wed Jun 29, 2005 03:18 PM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Defense Department is struggling to determine the right mix of bombers and other warplanes to fight China if it ever became necessary, President Bush's choice to become the next Air Force chief of staff said on Wednesday. Lining up such firepower would top his list of priorities if confirmed as the Air Force's top military officer, Gen. Michael Moseley said at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Moseley said the right mix of long-range strike capabilities was "certainly...

  POSTAL STS - Solar Thruster Sailor RSS - Ring Segment System LTH - Launcher Transport Head EFO - Experimental Flying Object RSC - Rotational Slingshot Catapult L I N K S ENGLISH Search - Solar Sailing - Propulsion Systems - Thruster - Lifters - Magnetism, Diamagnetism - Gravity, Antigravity, Gyroscope, Rotation - Space Tethers and Catapults - Space - UFO - Materials - Space Settlement - Space Mining - Space Tugboats - deflection - Sun - micro-/ nano spacecraft - Billboards, Message Lists - News - Newsgroups - Search - Solar Sailing Sites www.solarsails.info Benjamin Diedrichs NEW (July...

Burt Rutan, designer of numerous state-of-the-art flying machines including the note-worthy "Voyager" aircraft that flew around the world non-stop and un-refueled, is poised to set another record. This time, he has designed and built an aircraft that is an entrant for the Ansari X-Prize competition. Pilot Mike Melvill will be at the controls for the record flight, the first private-owned flight into space (62miles/1000km high). Another aircraft, a "StarShip" built by Beechcraft (now known as Ratheon), is a unique modern composite-built design that will fly chase during the missions. "This flight is one of the most exciting and challenging activities...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - The government announced Wednesday that it has issued the first license for a manned suborbital rocket, a step toward opening space flight to private individuals for the first time. The Federal Aviation Administration gave a one-year license to Scaled Composites of Mojave, Calif., headed by Burt Rutan. He is best known for designing the Voyager airplane that made the first nonstop, unrefueled flight around the world in 1986.</p>

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Experts in the effects of space travel on the human body told a presidential commission on Wednesday that there were challenges but no "showstoppers" in building a permanent moon base, then sending astronauts to Mars. Aerospace medical experts Stanley Mohler and Mary Ann Frey, both longtime researchers in the field, identified a number of health risks future astronauts could face, from radiation poisoning to meteoroid collisions, but said NASA (news - web sites) was developing plans for every known contingency. "From the medical standpoint, there is further research to be done, but we don't see...

China to launch new solid-fuel rocket China plans to launch a new generation of rockets later this year. The small satellite launch vehicle, Explorer I, will use solid fuel to carry a scientific experimental satellite into space. The new breed of rocket is needed to complement the Long March group, the country's large-scale liquid-fuel space launchers. China plans to launch a new generation of rockets later this year. The small satellite launch vehicle, Explorer I, will use solid fuel to carry a scientific experimental satellite into space. The new breed of rocket is needed to complement the Long March group,...

<p>LONDON — Once again, an American president has offered a vision of humanity leaving the cradle of Earth and spilling out into the stars.</p> <p>In 1961, President Kennedy challenged scientists to reach the moon by the end of the decade. In 1989, the first President Bush proposed a manned mission to Mars, an idea that was scrapped because of the cost.</p>

Mars, as a certain pop star once put it, isn't the kind of place where you'd want to raise your kids. Nor is it the kind of place anybody is ever going to visit, as some of the NASA scientists know perfectly well. Even leaving aside the cold, the lack of atmosphere and the absence of water, there's the deadly radiation. If the average person on Earth absorbs about 350 millirems of radiation every year, an astronaut traveling to Mars would absorb about 130,000 millirems of a particularly virulent form of radiation that would probably destroy every cell in his...

WASHINGTON -- President Bush will outline a plan for returning humans to the moon as preparation for exploring deeper space destinations, including Mars, administration sources said late Thursday. The president's plan will call for phasing out the U.S. role in the international space station and abandoning the beleaguered space shuttle program, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. At the same time, the president is not expected to call for sending a human to Mars anytime soon, but instead will lay out a series of goals aimed at helping NASA recover from the Columbia disaster and build on...

China Launches First Manned Space Mission By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer GOBI DESERT, China - China launched its first manned space mission on Wednesday, becoming the third country in history to send a person into orbit — four decades after the former Soviet Union and the United States. Reuters Slideshow: China's Space Program Picking the Perfect PC Apple, AMD, Intel - which one's right for you? Plus, tricked-out laptops and the power of Athlon With a column of smoke, the Shenzhou 5 craft cut across a bright, azure northwest China sky at exactly 9 a.m. Wednesday (9 p.m. EDT...

Shenzhou - Divine Military Vessel by Mark Wade, Vienna - Oct 02, 2003 As the first Chinese astronauts rocket into orbit, their main concern will be completion of an ambitious programme of military experiments. The forward, orbital module of the Shenzhou manned spacecraft was designed to accommodate a variety of mission equipment. The orbital module remains in orbit after the service module and re-entry capsule have returned to earth. This means the mission equipment installed correspond in capability to a large unmanned satellite. Shenzhou's two different primary payloads, both of them military, were not discussed by Chinese authorities until...

Once again, NASA has proposed to develop a replacement for the troubled Space Shuttle. This year's project goes by the ungrammatical moniker "Orbital Space Plane". An interim version of OSP called the CRV (Crew Rescue Vehicle) to be developed by 2010 will take over the International Space Station lifeboat task now done by Soyuz. An improved OSP called the CTV (Crew Transfer Vehicle) will assume the ISS crew exchange task now done by Shuttle in 2012. To minimize development costs, the OSP will be launched on one of the new EELV family of expendable boosters, Delta 4 or Atlas V....

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 March 12 Lunar Farside from Apollo 11 Credit: Apollo 11 Crew, NASA Explanation: The far side of the Moon is rough and filled with craters. By comparison, the near side of the Moon, the side we always see, is relatively smooth. Since the Moon is rotation locked to always point the same side toward Earth, humanity has only glimpsed the lunar farside recently -- last century. The...

Reprinted from NewsMax.com China Moves Closer to Placing Man in SpaceNewsmax Wires Monday, Dec. 30, 2002 JIUQUAN SATELLITE LAUNCHING CENTER, D.C., China -- China launched the fourth in a series of experimental spacecraft early Sunday, part of an extended effort to put a Chinese astronaut or "taikonaut" into space. The successful night launch of the Shenzhou IV took place at the Jiuquan Satellite Launching Center in China's Gansu Province according to the main Communist Party newspaper, People's Daily. The spacecraft was used by Chinese astronauts for training prior to its launch. The program is part of a 10-year plan, announced...