NASA Ready To Move On With First Domestic Human Space Flight After Nearly A Decade

On July 21st 2011 at 9:57 UTC STS-135, the last NASA manned space mission landed, effectively ending for the foreseeable future the United States' domestic space program.  The shuttle Atlantis landed with its final four-member crew officially ending the Space Shuttle program. It has been nearly a decade since NASA astronauts used a domestic American space program to send its astronauts to the International Space Station and solely relying on the good offices of Roscosmos, the Russian space program, to ferry them back and forth.  This use of the Russian space program as a taxi cab for our astronaut crews to man and return ISS crews averaged around $60-$80 million dollars and flight.  The big news for NASA and its supporters and followers is today, Tuesday, May 20^th the astronaut crew for NASA’s Crew Dragon Demo-2 or its official designation SpX-DM2, is scheduled to arrive at Cape Canaveral to begin its preflight activities for  it’s planned Wednesday, May 27^th launch date from pad 34A.

The SpX-DM2 crew will be the first two manned astronaut crew since NASA shuttle mission STS-4 launched on June 27^th, 1982.  The two astronauts will be Spacecraft Commander Douglas G. Hurley and Joint Operations Commander Robert L. Behnken.  This will be the third spaceflight for both.  In a twist of irony Commander Hurley was a member of the crew for STS-135 the last space shuttle mission referenced above that ended America’s domestic human spaceflight program.  Now Commander Hurley will find himself in the inaugural NASA mission to kick off a new era of the United States domestic human spaceflight program officially ending its sole reliance on Rocosmos transportation to low earth orbit and the ISS.

 

This author/blogger as a longtime space enthusiast and follower is pretty excited at the prospects of this new era.  Aspirational plans to kick off planned missions beyond the currently restricted LEO (low earth orbit) expeditions will be welcome and refreshing.  This is supposed represent our first tentative steps leading to future expeditions to the moon, mars, and beyond.   I am excited to use this blog to follow the arc of this new era for all that are interested.  Stay tuned.

SpX-DM2 Flight Simulation

Chinese Media Wants To Believe

Recently a well publicized (well, on the Internet anyway) UFO sighting in China's Zhejiang provincial capital Hangzhou caused quite an international media stir (except here that is). The photographic and subsequent video record of the actual sighting aren't very convincing. I've seen to many video clips of old post cold war ICBM & lost derelict spy satellite boosters succumbing to Newtonian law and finally finding its way back to the insane world that launched them in secrecy no longer able to cling to their anonymity. The Hangzhou airport sighting actually looks pretty mundane in light of past clips of old spacecraft hardware giving up the ghost and de-orbiting to a fiery end.

I was just somewhat amused this event caused this much excitement with the weighty logical explanations on hand for what they obviously observed. Though I'm sure there's a little Fox Mulder in all of us when it comes to the possibilities of extraterrestial life. I reside quite comfortably in my skeptic's easy chair when it comes extraterrestrial visitations due to the distances involved and the resources needed to make the trip. As to the possibility of the existence of life as we define it outside the confines of our solar system I am definitely in that camp. This puts me in the S.E.T.I. school of thinking as opposed to the Roswell mindset and the expectations associated with that community.