Word: spaceflight
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...move the White House probably saw as an election-year head snapper, President George W. Bush sketched out a long-term vision for manned spaceflight that goes far beyond the dog paddling in near-Earth orbit to which the space agency has confined itself since the 1970s. Back on the table is human exploration of the moon; back on the table is human exploration of Mars. Swept to the floor--or at least to the side--is the overbudget, underproducing International Space Station and the increasingly creaky, increasingly lethal shuttle fleet...
...nowhere near completion, and may well cross the $100 billion mark before it's done. No one realistically pretends that any commercial manufacturing will ever take place aboard the thing--a key selling point 20 years ago. Nor can there be much research on the effects of long-term spaceflight on human health--not with the small crews and relatively short stays the station can accommodate. Its current crew does little with its time but maintain hardware and fix problems, the latest being a worrisome oxygen leak that has so far bled away 4% of the station's air since...
Using the moon as a launching pad for Mars, as President Bush suggested last week, may not be the most sensible route to the Red Planet. But that doesn't mean a return to the moon shouldn't be part of a reinvigorated human spaceflight program. There are plenty of reasons to go back to the world we abandoned 30 years ago--some fanciful and futuristic, others quite practical...
...years. Since 1996, several teams have been racing to develop a three-person spacecraft that could reach the edge of the atmosphere and repeat the feat within two weeks--the qualifications required to win the $10 million X Prize created by entrepreneur Peter Diamandis to encourage private spaceflight. Leading that race is legendary aerospace engineer Burt Rutan, who is gearing up for another test after his rocket plane broke the sound barrier for the first time last December. Backing Rutan--reportedly with $30 million--is Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen...
...back a new version of the Apollo capsule, the expendable spacecraft that served the U.S. space program during its glory days in the 1960s through the mid-1970s. Supporters say they are not retreating into the past so much as waking up, at last, to the dangers of attempting spaceflight with winged shuttles, a notion given ample support by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's report released last week. Boosters on Capital Hill, in the aerospace industry and even inside the astronaut corps point out the capsule has is a more versatile design: it is modular and can be outfitted...