Endeavor

Space Shuttle Endeavor is scheduled for its final launch April 29. Once again, the launch has been delayed more than once. Launch delays have been a consistent weakness of the shuttle program. Sometimes delays have been due to the fickle Florida weather, but more often they've reflected the complexity of the technology involved in the shuttle program. Even though the innards of the orbiters have been updated over the program's thirty year run, the basic system has not changed, and it is that complexity that both allowed the shuttle to fly at all and kept it from becoming the regular launch service originally promised. Today, several private companies are working to develop commercial, dependable launch systems. They are trying to keep the systems as simple as possible.

NASA Money

The agreement that averted a government shutdown last week funds the government through the rest of the current fiscal year. NASA's overall budget for the fiscal year was set at $18.45 billion. The agreement also finally, formally cancels Constellation. However, the agreement also directs NASA to continue developing the Orion spacecraft and to build a heavy lift launcher. Both of those were key elements of Constellation's return to the Moon effort, but the heavy lift launcher, some argue, now has no mission.

Early Galaxies

A new study has found evidence that galaxies were forming a mere 200 million years after the Big Bang, much sooner than previously thought. That fact, if confirmed, would force physicists to revise their theories about the nature of the earliest epoch. Of course, physicists have only been working on the universe we know today for a few scant decades, and even then they've been working with an incomplete data set and a similarly incomplete knowledge of the basics of extremely high energy physics, so it shouldn't be a shock that some current ideas will have to be revised. Others, no doubt, will turn out to be precisely wrong.

Increasing The Pace

With the retirement of the space shuttle later this year, SpaceX says NASA wants it to speed up the development of its Dragon cargo capsule so that it can begin delivering supplies to ISS next year. Without that, according to SpaceX, NASA said it may have to de-man ISS for periods due to a lack of supplies. That would almost certainly be seen generally as a huge step backwards. It would also be inexplicable. NASA and the other ISS partners have known for years the shuttle program was coming to an end. They should have planned well enough for that end to allow the continued operation of ISS without a last minute push to guarantee a supply capability.

Human Spaceflight At 50

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first human spaceflight-- and the 30th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch. In that twenty years, we went from the small capsule of Yuri Gagarin to the huge, capable shuttle of John Young and Robert Crippen, but at the cost of limiting humanity to low Earth orbit after some forays to the Moon. Since then, human spaceflight has focused on learning to build and operate space stations, and on demonstrating humans can do real work in space. The Hubble repair mission, for example, was a remarkable example of human ingenuity that led directly to a new understanding of the universe. While the first 50 years were dominated by government run programs, the next 50 years of human spaceflight may well be dominated by private sector efforts. If that happens, we'll likely see a welter of spaceship designs. We'll also see the first true human spaceships-- vehicles built in space that will only ever operate in space. When those ships are ready, the opening of the Solar System to human exploration and commerce can begin in earnest.

Alan Or Yuri

History will forever record that Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, not American astronaut Alan Shepard, was the first human in space. Some historians argue, however, that it could have gone differently. They say that Shepard's mission was probably ready to go by March, 1961, but program managers decided on one extra test flight of the Mercury-Redstone rocket stack, which pushed Shepard's flight back to May 5. Gagarin flew April 12. How might history have changed had Shepard gone first? Possibly, not much. Shepard's mission was suborbital while Gagarin made one orbit of Earth. So, if Shepard had flown in March, all else being the same, Gagarin's orbital flight in April would have quickly trumped the American achievement. A young, aggressive President Kennedy may well have still seen the need to demonstrate the superiority of the American model, and of American technology. The Space Race may still have been run.

Ice Volcanoes On Titan? Maybe Not

In December, NASA researchers announced they had good evidence that ice volcanoes existed on Saturn's huge moon, Titan. Now, however, in a new study, other researchers say there is little evidence for that, and that the preponderance of the evidence suggests the surface features of Titan can be explained as the result of the action of wind, rain, and meteor impacts. An interesting point, however, is that the second group says the surface of Titan resembles the surface of Jupiter's moon, Callisto. Callisto may not have ice volcanoes, but neither does it have an atmosphere, so wind and rain were not factors there. So, the resemblance has to ignore the atmospheric sculptors. Whether Titan has ice volcanoes or not may have to wait for a future mission there.