It was a year ago this week that NASA announced a set of Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) awards, using $50 million they agency got as part of a larger grant of stimulus funding. The CCDev awards to five companies—Blue Origin, Boeing, Paragon, Sierra Nevada, and United Launch Alliance—were announced at a Washington press conference also […]
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The turmoil surrounding the management of Spaceport America in New Mexico has been relatively quiet the last couple of weeks, after the resignation of executive director Rick Homans at the insistence of the new governor, followed by the dismissal of the spaceport’s board of directors early this month. That situation is still in flux, the […] On Sunday afternoon Eric Anderson, chairman of Space Adventures, and George Whitesides, president and CEO of Virgin Galactic, appeared on a panel at the Digital – Life – Design (DLD) conference in Munich. The half-hour panel, with the rather clunky title “New Space Mission”, was designed to provide attendees of this rather eclectic conference with […] Space Adventures announced today that it has concluded an agreement with the Russian space agency Roskosmos and RSC Energia for additional Soyuz seats for future flights of space tourists, starting in 2013. Three seats will be made available as Energia increases production of Soyuz spacecraft from four to five a year; the additional Soyuz flight […] Left: An illustration from the early 2000s of an Orbital Sciences space taxi concept launching atop a Delta 4 Heavy. Right: Orbital’s new concept for a commercial crew vehicle visiting the ISS. Orbital Sciences got a lot of attention earlier this month when it announced it had submitted a proposal to NASA for its […] Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn speaks at the Spaceport America runway dedication in October 2010, with Sir Richard Branson looking on. (credit: J. Foust) Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn will retire from the company next month and be replaced by current CEO George Whitesides, the company announced Thursday. Whitehorn, who has been working for […] At the Spaceport American runway dedication in October, Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson surprised some people when he said that the company “is going to put forward proposals” for NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program and “plan to start work on an orbital program quite quickly”. Today, Virgin confirmed its interest in orbital spaceflight, but those […] Sunday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has an extended account of George French and his involvement with Rocketplane, the company that, for a time, was developing both suborbital and orbital vehicles (the latter under a NASA COTS agreement) before running into financial problems and eventually going bankrupt. French had long been interested in space, but it was […] If all had gone well, the Falcon 9 would be launching this morning to test the Dragon spacecraft. However, SpaceX announced Monday afternoon that the launch would be postponed because of cracks in the nozzle of the rocket’s second-stage engine. Specifically, SpaceX is examining two small cracks in the aft end of the nozzle expansion […] |
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“It’s almost too easy”
The first SpaceX Dragon spacecraft descends to a splashdown on Wednesday. (credit: SpaceX)
OK… First I’ll access the secret military spy satellite that is in geosynchronous orbit over the midwest. Then I’ll ID the limo by the vanity plate “MR. BIGGG” and get his approximate position. Then I’ll reposition the transmission dish on […]