Over twenty college teams competed in NASA’s 2014 Student Launch competition, which was held on Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats this past weekend. NASA Hosts Multiple Student Rocketry Challenge Events in May – NASA.
Here’s a Utah TV station news report on the event: NASA competition brings aspiring rocket scientists to Utah – FOX13Now.com
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I posted back in April a set of links to shows from the weekly podcast program of science fiction writer Doug Turnbull. He has continued with his interviews with Mars One expedition candidates and with the serialization of his latest novel, Zachary Dixon. Here are the
* Episode LI – ” Mars One volunteer and US Army Chemical Defense officer, Heidi Beemer, as well as a brief space science update and the next installment of my new novel Zachary Dixon”
* Episode LII – “Interview with rocket scientist and computer expert, Rick Kwan, as well as a brief space science update and the next installment of my new novel Zachary Dixon.”
* Episode LIII – “Second half of our interview with rocket scientist and computer expert, Rick Kwan, as well as a brief space science update and the next installment of my new novel Zachary Dixon. ”
* Episode LIV – “Interview with medical doctor and Mars One volunteer, Elena Shateni, as well as a brief space science update and the next installment of my new novel Zachary Dixon. ”
Carbon dioxide is the dominant component of the Martian atmospheric. In this interesting seminar, Paul Hayne describes the CO2 life cycle, which includes falling like snow onto the polar caps in winter time: Carbon dioxide snowfalls, polar caps, and the climate of Mars – Paul Hayne (SETITalks) – YouTube
The famous Space Camp at the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama nearly went out of business in the late 1990s when a failed project to provide free camp stays for fifth graders left it heavily in debt. After many years of working down that debt they are now in position to pursue a major modernization of their facility and programs: U.S. Space & Rocket Center celebrates ‘watershed’ financial achievement, upgrade Space Camp facilities | AL.com.
Glad to hear they are moving away from the out-of-date Space Shuttle-centric approach and will be including commercial spaceships in their programs:
“I’m going to be upgrading the Space Camp training and simulation areas substantially to match what is in the runway of my Space Camp students. We’ve already got the Orion capsule and the return to the moon mission. We’ll be adding the Mars mission, we’ll be adding capturing an asteroid activities. We will add (SpaceX) Dragon. We will add (SNC) Dream Chaser. We will be adding all the commercial and next generation NASA vehicles and mission scenarios to the Space Camp training curriculum. It’s not going to be the same ol’ fly-the-shuttle anymore.”
Rand Simberg lays out a plan for independent US access to space for American astronauts : Declare space independence from Russia: But Congress doesn’t seem to think the space program is important enough. – USA Today –
Astronauts are paid to risk their lives. They accept it as part of the job. We have invested decades and many tens of billions of dollars in a space station that we cannot currently get to without buying rides from an adversary in a renewed Cold War with temperature rising. If it were really important to end our dependence on them, you can bet that NASA would figure out a way to do it and quickly, by rapidly modifying a SpaceX Dragon like that currently at the ISS. And in fact, on the same day that Rogozin tweeted his threat, Elon Musk of SpaceX responded with his own: “Sounds like this might be a good time to unveil the new Dragon Mk 2 spaceship that @SpaceX has been working on w @NASA. No trampoline needed.” He announced that he will do so at the end of May.
But in its actions, Congress sends a clear message that it is not important. They could fix that, though, with a simple amendment to that bill when it gets to the House floor. Replace the word “safety” in that absurd phrase, and make it “having multiple means of getting Americans to orbit on American launch systems is the highest priority.” And tell Rogozin to get his own trampoline.
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More space policy/politics related links:
Update: