Space Shuttle

If all goes as planned, sometime this morning a spacecraft will blast off from its launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and ride a fiery plume of contrails upward through the pre-dawn darkness to begin a two-week journey to the International Space Station and back. But the flight won't be just another NASA resupply mission. Instead, the Falcon 9 rocket and its unmanned Dragon cargo capsule built by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation - SpaceX for short - will be the first commercially owned and operated vehicle ever to rendezvous with the station's orbiting astronauts.

As a child, I remember a coloring book that pictured a "Buck Rogers" rocket that looked like a football with three fins at its base. It was my job to give it life by coloring the rocket blast with yellows, oranges and reds that lifted the craft to stellar flight and imagined adventures. The book was filled with such renderings and each page held a new mission to be wondered at. Years later came Alan Shepard, Walter "Wally" Shirra Jr., John Glenn Jr., and tragically Virgil "Gus" Grissom who later died in an Apollo 1 pre-launch test.

With the final flight of the stalwart space shuttle Atlantis just a few days away, America is beginning an exciting new chapter in human space exploration. This chapter centers on full utilization of the International Space Station, development of multiple, made-in-America capabilities for astronauts and cargo to reach low-Earth orbit, and pursuit of two critical building blocks for our nation's exploration future: a deep space crew vehicle and an evolvable, heavy-lift rocket. Today, we embark on a new knowledge and innovation-driven approach to space science and exploration that will lead us into the new frontiers of deep space.

In an age of austerity, can the United States still afford, in "Star Trek's" memorable phrase, "to boldly go where no man has gone before"? The answer: maybe. The space shuttle program - that long-running, always slightly disappointing successor to the thrilling Apollo moon missions - is no more. The Obama administration has made it plain that the future of human spaceflight, at least in the near term, will consist of federal partnerships with private enterprise. Entrepreneurs (that is, those whose bottom line is not to advance scientific discovery but to make a buck)

Tom Jones, a two-time Endeavour astronaut, dazzled students at Archbishop Curley High School with pictures from space and a film detailing the space shuttle's takeoff. But his real message during a visit to Baltimore yesterday was that students can accomplish anything if they refuse to give up."The space program turned me down three times before they would even interview me," said Dr. Jones, 39, who holds a doctorate in planetary science. The Essex native attended the Air Force Academy, was accepted into the space program in 1990 and flew two missions in 1994.

If you own an older vehicle, such as the space shuttle, you can expect to replace parts more frequently. Note: By the words "space shuttle," I am referring to my 1999 minivan, which has sustained one $2,500 altercation with an eight-point buck, and one $5,000 whack by a driver who failed to look past a snow bank. Since these collisions, the minivan has developed a few unexplained rattles and tremors, yet it continues valiantly on its scheduled missions; hence its nickname. Recently, the space shuttle required a replacement passenger seat belt.

In an age of austerity, can the United States still afford, in "Star Trek's" memorable phrase, "to boldly go where no man has gone before"? The answer: maybe. The space shuttle program - that long-running, always slightly disappointing successor to the thrilling Apollo moon missions - is no more. The Obama administration has made it plain that the future of human spaceflight, at least in the near term, will consist of federal partnerships with private enterprise. Entrepreneurs (that is, those whose bottom line is not to advance scientific discovery but to make a buck)

Could it happen again?Without a doubt, experts agree, though NASA says the likelihood of catastrophe is less today than on that icy morning a decade ago when the space shuttle Challenger, 73 seconds into its flight, erupted in a ball of flame that killed seven people.The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has invested more than $5 billion since the accident to rebuild the nation's fleet of winged spaceships and enhance the safety of hundreds of parts and systems, including the flawed engine and its leaky seal that doomed Challenger.

Richard H. Truly, the former astronaut who brought NASA back from catastrophe after the explosion of the shuttle Challenger, has resigned as head of the space agency after a series of bitter disputes with White House officials over the future of the space program.The retired Navy vice admiral has locked horns repeatedly with the National Space Council, chaired by Vice President Dan Quayle, over NASA's priorities, according to various sources.Mr. Truly met for half an hour with President Bush Monday night and shortly thereafter submitted a brief letter resigning the post he has held for three years.

Thirteen-year-old Eric Miles had a single question yesterday for the astronauts who blasted off from Earth a week ago on board the space shuttle Atlantis. "How do we know that you're really in space and not in a movie studio?" he wondered. It didn't take much to convince him and 19 other Baltimore middle-schoolers who participated in a live teleconference with the astronauts as their spacecraft flew more than 200 miles above Africa at a speed of about 17,000 mph. When mission specialist Robert Curbeam hung upside down, demonstrating his weightlessness, everyone knew it was the real thing.

Students could be moved to underused schools out west A careful reading of the Howard County Times provides solutions for the over crowding of public schools and the proposed tax payer funded Tennis Stadium. The new Elementary school, the public park and the adjoining tennis stadium are to be build on Duckets Lane. Perhaps, the Elementary School, the park and tennis stadium could share space (like at Veterans Elementary and the YMCA) so there is enough room for all the children at the school.

How fitting the crew of NASA's final space shuttle mission will end almost 42 years to the day men set foot on the moon. On July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to visit earth's closest neighbor in space. I'm fortunate to be able to recall that July evening in 1969 when the world held its breath as the Eagle landed on that airless world. Although Neil Armstrong and Buzz Armstrong planted the American flag on the lunar surface, I give credit to the Russians for making the "one small step for man" possible.

The scheduled touchdown of the space shuttle Atlantis Thursday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida marks the end of a 30-year era in the U.S. manned spaceflight program. The space shuttle Columbia first flew in 1981, and since then the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has completed 135 missions aboard the delta-winged space planes, which have carried into orbit everything from classified military satellites to the Hubble Space Telescope and components for the International Space Station.

With the final flight of the stalwart space shuttle Atlantis just a few days away, America is beginning an exciting new chapter in human space exploration. This chapter centers on full utilization of the International Space Station, development of multiple, made-in-America capabilities for astronauts and cargo to reach low-Earth orbit, and pursuit of two critical building blocks for our nation's exploration future: a deep space crew vehicle and an evolvable, heavy-lift rocket. Today, we embark on a new knowledge and innovation-driven approach to space science and exploration that will lead us into the new frontiers of deep space.

While some folks wish to see their names up in lights, students at Folly Quarter Middle School can boast that their names have gone up in space. The students at the Ellicott City school recently participated in the NASA and Lockheed Martin Student Signatures in Space (S3) program, which allows youngsters to sign posters that are scanned onto a disk and sent into orbit. The students signed the posters last spring, and their signatures were sent up in space in late February via the space shuttle Discovery.

You have to admire my minivan. It’s 11 years old and has more than 130,000 miles, and yet it continues to keep up with the snappier vehicles on the road. A couple of years ago, I nicknamed it “the space shuttle” because it definitely has some inexplicable rattles, and yet it boldly accomplishes its missions safely. It also handles remarkably like the space shuttle when you try to park it anywhere. Of course, the reason our space shuttle is still going strong is because we bring it in for scheduled maintenance, or whenever we get the feeling that we’re riding in a mobile toaster and could be ejected at any moment.

As a smart kid growing up in Baltimore, he loved to mess around with toy planes on his grandmother's living room floor. Tomorrow, he's scheduled to roar into space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery.For astronaut Robert L. Curbeam Jr., it's only the beginning.Two years from now, the Naval Academy graduate is scheduled to take three spacewalks as a member of what could be the planet's most elite construction crew. The six-foot, 200-pound weightlifter is one of 14 astronauts preparing to assemble the International Space Station, an orbiting habitat and scientific laboratory.

As NASA continued to investigate the shuttle Columbia's disintegration and ponder the future of the nation's manned space program, Wall Street seemed to draw its own conclusion yesterday and punished stocks of the shuttle's manufacturers - along with virtually any other company that does business in space. Shares of primary space shuttle contractors Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. tumbled yesterday, along with those of secondary NASA suppliers including L-3 Communications, Orbital Sciences Corp.

NASA Monday named Dulaney High School graduate and Navy Lt. Commander Gregory Reid Wiseman, 33, as one of nine candidates to begin astronaut training this summer. The Baltimore native is a test pilot serving with Strike Fighter Squadron 103 aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower out of Oceana, Va. He was selected from among 3,500 applicants for the 2009 astronaut class and begins training in August. "Complete disbelief. It still hasn't sunk in," Wiseman said of his selection, in an interview released by the space agency.

The space shuttle Endeavour landed safely in Florida yesterday after a 13-day mission marred by damage to the spacecraft's heat shield that led to a lengthy debate about whether to risk returning to Earth without fixing it. The dinged-up spacecraft touched down at Cape Canaveral at 12:32 p.m. after completing a 5.3 million-mile mission to the International Space Station. NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin said the damaged tiles "did very well on re-entry." After examining the gouged thermal tiles on the tarmac at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, shuttle Commander Scott J. Kelly said he was "a little bit underwhelmed by the size of the gouge.