Shuttle

James King got into politics to help small businesses. And already, the new delegate from Anne Arundel County seems to have given a boost to one: a bar called The Rockfish, which is suddenly mobbed on Monday nights. King owns the bar. And the crowds? Fellow delegates, senators, legislative staffers and lobbyists, who arrive courtesy of a free shuttle bus King started running a few weeks ago between the State House and the bar. "They've kind of dubbed it `Lawmaker Mondays,'" said King, who in addition to transportation offers drink specials, free food and live music.

WHAT'S NEW Beach shuttle service Crossing Ocean Highway with kids and coolers in tow just got a little easier in Ocean City. Beachgoers can now turn to e-cruzers, an east-west shuttle service that will ferry vacationers from the bayside to the beach and back. The open-air vehicles have professional drivers, can carry six passengers plus gear and are powered by rechargeable batteries. "We're not adding to traffic congestion or pollution; we're reducing it by giving people a safe and convenient way to get to the beach," says Russell G. Rankin, founder and president of e-cruzers, who ran a test trial of the shuttle last summer.

HOUSTON -- Astronauts added a room to the International Space Station yesterday morning, working outside the station and inside to move the Harmony module, which will serve as a connection point for two new laboratories in the station, to a temporary location on the side of the station. The space station's robot arm, operated by Stephanie Wilson and Daniel Tani, smoothly moved the 16-ton module out of the shuttle and onto the station, where automatic bolts secured it in a temporary home to the side of the station's living quarters.

An airport shuttle bus at Baltimore-Washington International Airport went up in flames yesterday morning, destroying or damaging 11 cars, forcing the closure of a satellite parking lot, and sending airport passengers scrambling for parking spaces.The bus driver and the five passengers aboard the airport's Super Shuttle were not injured, and managed to grab their luggage before bolting from the smoking bus, which was consumed in flames in two minutes."It was pretty much a meltdown," said Chuck Holm, a shuttle passenger who boarded another bus with his fellow passengers in time to catch his flight to Detroit.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The countdown clock is ticking. The weather looks good. And after four months of repairs, shuttle Discovery appears ready at last to blast off tonight on a crucial 10-day flight to service the Hubble Space Telescope.It's the last human spaceflight of the 1900s. It's also the first shuttle launch from Kennedy Space Center since July.Then, a short circuit moments after liftoff knocked out a pair of computers used to control two of Columbia's three main engines. Backup computers allowed Columbia to safely complete a tense ride to orbit.

A vital gyroscope on board the Hubble Space Telescope has sputtered and quit, forcing the high-flying observatory to shut its eye on the heavens until a crew of astronauts can get there to make repairs.The shuttle Discovery and its crew of seven are scheduled for blastoff Dec. 6 on a much-postponed mission to replace all six of Hubble's gyroscopes and to make other repairs and improvements.On the ground, astronomers will lose an estimated 74 observations each week until the telescope is working again.

WITH LAST WEEK'S opening of the General Assembly, Annapolis transportation officials have gone to their bag of tricks to try to prevent the event from turning the historic city into one big parking lot with traffic clogging Rowe Boulevard, parking garages full and residential neighborhoods choked with illegally parked cars.It's an annual battle in the state's capital -- and at times, it's not pretty.City traffic officials spent Friday lecturing rookie legislators on parking and shuttle etiquette, while the old-timers were warned against trying to beat the system.

The old man hasn't even been sick to his stomach -- he's been up there trading one-liners with Jay Leno, for heaven's sake.At 77, John Glenn is flying flawlessly through the hoops and motions aboard the space shuttle Discovery, set to return today. If research warrants, NASA administrator Daniel Goldin has promised to send more seniors into space. "Famous people" are apparently lining up for space flight, he says. NASA didn't name names, but just imagine -- a shuttle mission featuring an entire crew of celebrity 77-year-olds.

HURRY UP and wait is a good description of how traffic moves up and down Main Street in historic Ellicott City on weekends.Tourists jam the narrow thoroughfare looking for a place to park so they can get inside the antiques shops, restaurants and attractions such as the B&O Railroad Museum.Merchants with an eye out for customers wouldn't have it any other way. But it can be frustrating to a motorist stuck in a conga line of vehicles.A weekend shuttle service is offering another route. The bus will run from the nearby Howard County Circuit Court to Main Street.

The Sun, not WOLB, offers 'poisonous talk'Curious.In the same Jan. 18 edition in which columnist Michael Olesker rails against "airwaves filled with poisonous talk, all offered in the defense of Larry Young" there also appears a Sun report about a Hampden resident who, in reference to Mr. Young, jokingly says, "Shoot him."The day I listened to station WOLB (the airwaves to which Mr. Olesker refers), the only "poison" I heard was a stellar effort by talk show host Lisa Mitchell to mobilize ordinary citizens in the exercise of their democratic rights.

One image appears uncannily like a butterfly, its ethereal wings extending into the blackness of space. But looks are deceiving, and the apparently tranquil scene actually depicts a violent nebula of superheated gas charging across the Milky Way Galaxy at 600,000 miles per hour, with a dying star once five times the mass of the sun at its center. In another picture, a cluster of several swirls of light seem to interact in a celestial dance, while a smaller, glowing circle hovers at some distance from the others.

Preakness transit service Light rail service * Take Light Rail to the Cold Spring Lane stop. * Take the connecting shuttle bus to the track. Shuttle bus service ends at 2 p.m. * Return service begins at approximately 6:15 p.m. and operates until 7:30 p.m. * $3.50 day pass required Metro subway service * Take Metro Subway to the Rogers Avenue Station. * Take the connecting shuttle bus to the track. Shuttle bus service ends at 2 p.m. * Return shuttle bus service to Rogers Avenue Station begins at approximately 6:15 p.m. and operates until 7:30 p.m. * $3.50 day pass required Local bus service * Nos. 27, 91, 44 lines, plus No. 54 via Park Heights Avenue all stop near the track.

Light Rail service * Take Light Rail to the Cold Spring Lane stop. * Take the connecting shuttle bus to the track. Shuttle bus service ends at 2 p.m. * Return service begins at approximately 6:15 p.m. and operates until 7:30 p.m. * $3.50 day pass required Metro Subway service * Take Metro Subway to the Rogers Avenue Station. * Take the connecting shuttle bus to the track. Shuttle bus service ends at 2 p.m. * Return shuttle bus service to Rogers Avenue Station begins at approximately 6:15 p.m. and operates until 7:30 p.m. * $3.50 day pass required Local bus service * Nos. 27, 91, 44 lines, plus No. 54 via Park Heights Avenue all stop near the track.

The space shuttle Atlantis is racing to catch up with the Hubble Space Telescope after a nearly flawless launch Monday into clear skies. If all goes well, four astronauts will begin a series of spacewalks Thursday to repair and upgrade the 19-year-old observatory for the last time before the shuttle program ends next year. "It was fantastic," said Mario Livio, a senior scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore who was at the Kennedy Space Center for the launch. "There were tears in my eyes when I saw the shuttle go off," he said.

NASA's space shuttle Discovery has been cleared for blastoff next week on a two-week mission during which a former Maryland science teacher will help to install the International Space Station's fourth and final pair of solar energy panels. Discovery is scheduled for a nighttime liftoff at 9:20 p.m. Wednesday, carrying a crew of seven. www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main

NASA has named a Baltimore native to pilot the shuttle Endeavour on a flight next December to the International Space Station. Col. Terry Virts Jr., 41, a graduate of Oakland Mills High School in Columbia and the U.S. Air Force Academy, will be making his first space flight since joining the astronaut corps in 2000. The mission, labeled STS-130, is assigned to deliver another module to expand the orbiting space station, as well as a seven-window cupola designed as a control room for robotic operations on the station's exterior.

Hopkins shuttle shows how transit can succeed I hope everyone read the article on the success of the Johns Hopkins shuttle bus, which is reported to be reliable and is better than affordable since it's free for the Hopkins and Peabody community and, as the article suspects, many freeloading bounders as well ("Bus service picks up," Nov. 10). I hope readers see the moral of the story: Public transit that is well funded and efficient will be very popular. It is not hard to see why. An individual living in Charles Village going downtown would waste money profligately on parking lots if he persisted in driving.

At 5 p.m. on Monument Street in East Baltimore, the line of doctors, nurses, researchers, students and others winds down the block and around the corner. Coffee cups in hand and headphones in ear, they file on to the buses that line up three deep. They are riding what has become a highly popular shadow transit agency - the Johns Hopkins shuttle. Every day it provides 5,000 rides to and from Charles Village, Mount Vernon and the east side, to anyone associated with Hopkins, or sometimes just anyone at all. That's up from 3,100 daily riders just three years ago. Riders do not pay a fare and need not show an ID. The big white buses with "Johns Hopkins" emblazoned on the side depart as often as every five minutes during rush hour.

NASA officials have again postponed the launch of the shuttle Atlantis on a final mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. The delay, from February to at least May, means astronomers will have to wait three months more before two of Hubble's key scientific instruments can be used again. Engineers told Hubble managers they need more time to inspect and test the 18-year-old hardware that will replace a science data computer that failed on Sept. 27, and to train astronauts and build the tools they need to install it. "Our plan is to try to have it ready to ship to Kennedy [Space Center]

The Baltimore City Council voted yesterday to increase the parking tax and use the expected $4.5 million in revenue to operate a fleet of shuttle buses to ferry people around downtown neighborhoods. Trips in the hybrid shuttles would be free to passengers, with pickups every 10 minutes along three routes. The service is expected to begin in July 2009. Mayor Sheila Dixon's administration proposed the legislation. The tax increase, which takes effect in December, will likely mean a 50-cent increase in the cost of daily parking, and a $5 to $6 rise in monthly parking costs, city officials estimate.