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Tuesday’s CSExtra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space-related activities from around the world. In Florida, NASA starts the countdown today for shuttle Endeavour’s scheduled launching on Friday. The 14-day voyage to the International Space Station will be Endeavour’s last flight. A look at the efforts planned by four companies with NASA backing to establish commercial space transportation services. Current commercial options for the space travel experience. NASA’s 2011 compromise budget is absent funding for technology development, something that may hobble efforts by human explorers to leave Earth orbit. Were early assumptions about space travel too optimistic? Spaceflight’s legacy of medical breakthrough.
1. From Florida Today: At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the countdown for the launching of shuttle Endeavour’s 14-day mission is scheduled to get under way at 2 p.m., EDT. Endeavour’s crew, Mark Kelly, Greg Johnson, Mike Fincke, Roberto Vittori, Drew Feustel and Greg Chamitoff will arrive by airplane from the Johnson Space Center at 12:15 p.m., EDT, as well. With considerably less fanfare, the wives and children of the six fliers will also travel to Florida to see their husbands and fathers off. Lift off is scheduled for Friday at 3:47 p.m., EDT.
http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20110426/NEWS02/104260321/Shuttle-families-ease-into-quiet-KSC-roles?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Home.
A. From Florida Today: Every shuttle launch means business to those who sell T-shirts and other space memorabilia. Roger O’Brien will set up shop in Titusville, to hawk his “Going out of business” t-shirt tribute to the shuttle program.
http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20110426/NEWS01/104260320/T-shirts-mark-space-shuttle-era-s-close?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|New
2. From Spaceflightnow.com: Last week NASA announced that Boeing, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada and SpaceX would share $270 million over the next year to develop components for commercial space transportation systems that could carry astronauts to and from Earth orbit. The website examines how each plans to spend the money to achieve their goals by the middle of the decade.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1104/25ccdevgoals/
3. From Space.com: Several companies are or soon plan to offer paying passengers a spaceflight experience. From Armadillo Aerospace to XCOR, space.com offers a snap shot at what’s in the works.
http://www.exploredeepspace.com/11477-space-tourism-options-private-spaceships.html
4. Two From Monday’s The Space Review:
A. In “Funding the seed corn of advanced space technology,” regular contributor Louis Friedman takes note of an omission in the recent 2011 federal budget Continuing Resolution — new technology investments. Significant investments in technology developments for future lower cost human/robotic mission was eliminated. Friedman wonders if it will return in the proposed 2012 budget now under consideration by Congress. President Obama seeks $1 billion annually through 2016 in space technology investments.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1832/1
B. In ” Fifty years of piloted spaceflight: where are we going?” Canadian journalist Claude Lafleur gazes back at our cultural expectations of the 1950s, visions grounded in science fiction and the accomplishments of the industrial age. We’ve fallen short of the predictions of a massive orbiting space station that houses dozens of astronauts, lunar colonies and Martian bases because the space frontier proved to be far more daunting than terrestrial frontiers, Lafleur concludes. “.. as long as we use rockets to “explode” up to Earth orbit, we will never be able to settle space as we once dreamed fifty years ago,” he writes.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1830/1
5. From space.com: A look at medical breakthroughs made possible by NASA’s space explorations accomplishments.
http://www.exploredeepspace.com/blog/nasa-medical-breakthroughs-spotlighted-on-howstuffworks-com
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