Tag Archives: NASA

national news

NASA gets big boost to its manned program

Human beings were put on this Earth to explore.

We’ve sought new worlds on our own planet. We’ve committed to seeking new worlds “out there,” beyond our worldly confines.

To that end, Donald J. Trump has signed into law a bill that commits $19.5 billion to NASA with the aim of launching human beings into deep space, possibly for exploration of Mars.

Oh, how I want to live long enough to see that day.

The president signed the bill into law in a ceremony at the White House surrounded by astronauts and politicians. It was a jovial affair that — I’m sorry to say — got overshadowed this week by the rancorous and raucous debate over overhauling the nation’s health care insurance system.

The NASA appropriation is worth the money, the effort, the emotional capital and the anxiousness that goes along with what many of hope will transpire: a mission to Mars.

“For almost six decades, NASA’s work has inspired millions and millions of Americans to imagine distant worlds and a better future right here on Earth,” Trump said during the signing ceremony. “I’m delighted to sign this bill. It’s been a long time since a bill like this has been signed, reaffirming our commitment to the core mission of NASA: human space exploration, space science and technology.”

As the Albany (N.Y.) Times-Union reported, “The measure amends current law to add human exploration of the red planet as a goal for the agency. It supports use of the International Space Station through at least 2024, along with private sector companies partnering with NASA to deliver cargo and experiments, among other steps.”

I was among the Americans disappointed when NASA grounded its shuttle fleet. We now are sending Americans into space aboard Russian rockets. I’m trying to imagine how Presidents Kennedy and Johnson would feel about that idea, given their own commitment to the space program and the defeating the then-Soviet Union in the race to the moon … which we won!

Space exploration isn’t a “frill.” It ought to be part of our political DNA. It’s already ingrained in human beings’ desire to reach beyond our grasp.

I spent many mornings with my late mother waiting for Mercury and Gemini space flights to launch. Then came the Apollo program. Our nerves were shot as we waited for astronauts to return home walking on the moon.

I grieved with the rest of the country when that launch pad fire killed those three astronauts on Apollo 1, when the shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff and when the shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it flew over Texas on its way to landing in Florida.

I’ll be a real old man — I hope — when they send humans to Mars.

This new NASA appropriation could take us a bit farther along on that journey.

entertainment news

Hollywood creates fascinating juxtaposition

3 Comments

Hollywood gets panned and pounded for the occasional liberties it takes with historical events.

But consider this for a moment.

Today is the 55th anniversary of a space flight in which the late John Glenn, a young Marine Corps test pilot, orbited the Earth three times. It would be the first of his two flights into space; the second one occurred in 1998, when Sen. Glenn was 77 years of age.

But get this: February also is Black History Month and Hollywood has managed to merge an important aspect of Glenn’s first flight with another. Glenn owed his flight’s success to the genius of a group of African-American women who relatively few Americans knew about until the release of the acclaimed film “Hidden Figures.”

Think of it. Glenn’s historic flight now can be celebrated as a key event to salute African-Americans. What’s more, that it occurred on Feb. 20, 1962 puts it in the middle of the month we set aside to commemorate the contributions of black Americans to the development of this great nation.

“Hidden Figures” tells the story of three young African-American women — two mathameticians and an engineer — who, with their team of fellow geniuses, worked with NASA to calculate the math associated with space flight.

The contributions of these women were kept under wraps at the time. It was the early 1960s and America was in the throes of the civil-rights movement. The country was unable — or unwilling — to accept the contributions these women gave to this great adventure known as the “space race.”

The film has put an entirely different spin on the “race” aspect of the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union.

I am one who is thrilled to meld these two events — Black History Month and the flight of our first space orbital mission — into one.

Well done, Hollywood.

national news

Another space hero leaves us

Eugene Cernan wasn’t among the seven original astronauts chosen to fly into space. He was, though, among the second group, the men who would fly aboard the two-person Gemini craft.

Cernan died today at age 82 and I want to say “so long” to another space hero.

I have two distinct memories of Eugene Cernan while watching the space program launch Americans into space — when we used to hold our breath waiting for their safe return.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/eugene-cernan-last-man-to-walk-on-the-moon-dead-at-82/ar-AAlVhOv?li=BBnb7Kz

Cernan flew aboard the Apollo 10 mission in May 1969. He and mission commander Tom Stafford separated the lunar lander from the command ship as the assembly neared the moon’s surface. The lander began gyrating violently and Cernan could be heard over the radio cursing like the sailor he was as he and Stafford fought to regain control of the craft.

Routine? Hardly. That mission was the setup for the historic Apollo 11 moon landing flight two months later.

A dozen years after that, Cernan was providing expert broadcast commentary as the space shuttle Columbia would launch on the maiden voyage of the shuttle program.

As Columbia’s rocket ignited and the ship lifted off the pad toward Earth orbit, you could hear Cernan cheer Columbia on, yelling: “Fly … fly like an eagle!”

Cernan would be the last man to leave footprints on the moon as he commanded the Apollo 17 mission. NASA canceled the rest of the program.

I long for the day when we can restore our manned space program and hope as well we can revive the pithy excitement expressed by Eugene Cernan.

 

national news

Film reminds us of space race thrill

We just returned from watching a film that reminds me of the excitement of an earlier time.

I wish we could gin it up once again.

“Hidden Figures” is a story about a math genius, a computer genius and a budding engineer — all of whom are African-American women — who go to work for NASA in the early 1960s. The space race was getting revved up. The Soviet Union had launched Sputnik and sent Yuri Gagarin around the world in a 100-minute orbit. The United States was still trying to figure out how to launch its Redstone rocket that would take Alan Shepard on a 15-minute up-and-down flight into space before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean.

They needed this young math whiz to figure out landing coordinates. Taraji P. Henson portrays Katherine Goble Johnson, the math genius who is asked to verify the coordinates where John Glenn’s spacecraft is supposed to land after completing a few orbits around the planet.

The film relays the sense of urgency we felt then. President Kennedy implored the nation to pursue space flight “not because it is easy … but because it is hard.”

It occurred to me while watching the film with my wife that our recent presidential campaign didn’t produce a single policy statement or pledge — that I heard, at least — from either Donald J. Trump or Hillary Rodham Clinton about restoring and resuming the U.S. manned space program.

The candidates were too busy insulting each other and impugning each other’s integrity to spend time talking about much of anything of substance.

I consider manned space flight a fairly substantive issue to pursue.

The United States scrapped its space shuttle program and is now hitching rides aboard Russian space ships into Earth orbit. I’m trying to imagine how Presidents Kennedy and Johnson would feel about that particular turn of events.

Even during his farewell speech to the nation Tuesday night, President Obama said not a single thing about the future of space flight. I wish he would have at least offered an ode to the future of manned space exploration as something future presidents and Congresses should pursue.

The film we watched today affirms to me that this nation has it within its soul and spirit to reach farther than ever before. We’ve landed on the moon. We made space flight “routine,” through those shuttle missions, if you believe a program that took the lives of 14 astronauts should ever deserve to be considered routine.

NASA is developing a deep-space craft that is supposed to take human beings to Mars, or perhaps to one of the asteroids, or perhaps to one of Jupiter’s moons.

I don’t know if I’ll live long enough to see that happen. I damn sure hope so. The film we saw today has reinvigorated my desire to see us reach beyond our comfort zone yet again.

national news

Hoping for the next true American hero

08butlandweb-master768

Dale Butland has written a truly depressing essay about the death of John Glenn.

Writing for the New York Times, Butland — who once worked for the one-time Ohio U.S. senator — seems to think Glenn is the “last American hero” … ever!

I wince at the thought. I shudder to think that there won’t be someone who can capture Americans’ hearts the way Glenn did in 1962.

The essay itself isn’t depressing. Its premise, though, surely is.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/opinion/john-glenn-the-last-american-hero.html?smid=tw-share

Do I have any clue, any idea where the next hero will appear?

Of course not!

However, I am going to remain the eternal optimist that we haven’t yet traipsed through the portal that takes us all into some parallel universe where no heroes can ever exist.

Sure, Glenn was an exceptional American. A Marine Corps fighter pilot who saw combat in World War II and Korea. The astronaut who became the first American to orbit the planet. A successful business executive. A close friend of John and Robert Kennedy and their families. A four-term U.S. senator. A man who got the call once again, at age 77, to fly into space aboard the space shuttle Discovery.

He became “an American legend.”

That, dear reader, is a full life.

Is he the final legendary figure ever to walk among us?

Oh, man … I pray that someone will emerge.

national news

Let’s get back into space

space_flight-wide

John Glenn’s death reminded many of us old enough to remember such things about how space travel once thrilled the nation.

It was a new thing back then, when Glenn orbited the planet three times in just a little less than five hours. We were riveted to our TV screens. We held our breath. We prayed for the safe return of these men.

Then, oh so strangely, space flight became “routine.” Routine! Are you kidding me?

How ridiculous! You put human beings on top of a missile loaded with flammable fuel, light the rocket and hurl these humans into orbit at 17,000 mph. That becomes routine?

We launched men into orbit during the Mercury space program. Then came the Gemini program that featured two-person space ships. After that, it was the big one, the Apollo program that sent men to the moon.

Those missions became so “routine” that the space agency stopped sending men to the moon, apparently believing they had done all they could do.

Skylab came later. The space shuttle program followed that.

About six years ago, we grounded the remaining shuttle fleet — after two of the ships, Challenger and Columbia, were lost, killing 14 crew members. Routine? Hardly.

I’m recalling the adventure associated with John Glenn’s first flight into space and hoping for a time when we can send human beings back into space aboard our own rocket ships. Today, we’re relying on Russia to ferry our men and women into Earth orbit — and I’m trying to imagine how President Kennedy, who challenged the nation to put men on the moon by the end of the 1960s, would react that knowledge.

I came of age watching the space program take flight. I am old enough to remember how these missions forced us all to hold our breath when these heroes were thrown into space.

The next step awaits. It no doubt will involve sending humans way past the moon and toward places like Mars. I hope to live long enough to see that occur.

I will wait anxiously for a day when we can view spaceflight once again as the spine-tingling adventure it’s always been.

national news

A great American has just left us

aalhlnh

A great American life has come to an end.

We shouldn’t mourn John Glenn’s death, which was announced this afternoon. We should celebrate what this man accomplished during his 95 years among us.

What a man! What a life! What an extraordinary legacy he leaves!

I almost feel as though I’ve lost a member of my family.

Glenn and six other Americans burst onto the scene in the late 1950s when a newly formed agency, NASA, selected these men to become the first Americans to fly into space.

Glenn would be third of them. He was the first American to orbit the planet.

This is just one chapter of this great man’s life.

He joined the Marine Corps. He flew combat missions during the Korean War. Then he became a test pilot. Then NASA selected him to fly into space. He took three quick trips around Earth, returned home and didn’t fly again into space again for another 36 years.

In the meantime, he got elected to the U.S. Senate from Ohio, ran or president once in 1984. Along the way, he became friends with presidents, princes and potentates.

aalh90m

In 1998, he flew aboard the space shuttle Discovery. Sen. Glenn had a distinct advantage over two other members of Congress who flew previously into space — U.S. Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah, and U.S. Rep. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. The Discovery flight crew and its support team didn’t have to translate their unique language to Glenn as they prepared for their flight. Glenn was fluent in astronaut-speak.

He boarded Discovery and the ship roared off the pad as the public address announcer told the world about the launch of the shuttle carrying “six astronaut heroes … and one American legend.”

***

Why the family-like connection with Glenn?

My mother and I were addicted to watching these early Mercury launches. We would awaken early and wait, and wait and wait some more for these rockets to blast off.

On Feb. 20, 1962 — after an interminable number of weather-related delays, holds, and mission scrubs — Mom and I watched on our black-and-white TV as Glenn Mercury-Atlas rocket roared into space.

The flight lasted about five hours. Then he splashed down — and came home a hero. They had a ticker-tape parade in New York. President Kennedy toasted him at the White House.

John Glenn was a glamorous kind of guy. Ruggedly handsome, he fit central casting’s description of a test pilot-turned astronaut.

There’s perhaps a touch of irony that Glenn would be the final Mercury astronaut to pass on. He was the oldest among them; Glenn was 40 at the time of his first flight aboard Friendship 7 in 1962.

So it is, then, that we remember this great American.

I’m thinking at this very moment of something his late Mercury colleague Scott Carpenter said to Glenn as his friend sat atop the rocket waiting to be blasted into space.

Godspeed, John Glenn.

national news

Get well, Sen. Glenn

I just heard that former U.S. Sen. John Glenn is in the hospital.

He’s 95 years of age now. He has lived an extraordinary life.

Marine Corps fighter pilot during the Korean War; test pilot; astronaut selected among the first men to fly into space; the first American to orbit planet Earth; U.S. senator; a return to space on the space shuttle Discovery.

The video here chronicles the launch of Glenn’s second trip into space. It took place in 1998, 36 years after he flew those three orbits aboard the Mercury spacecraft.

I get choked up every time I hear the space flight communicator announce the launch of “six astronaut heroes and one American legend.”

Get well, Sen. Glenn.

national news

Hoping for a return of manned space program

6938210-space-shuttle-photos

The thought just occurred to me that of the original men chosen to fly into space, only one of them remains among us.

He is John Glenn, who’s now 94 years of age.

From what I understand, Glenn remains in good physical condition. But, hey, he is 94. At that age, you live one day at a time, or so many of the 90-somethings I’ve known have told me.

What troubles me particularly about Glenn’s advanced age is that once he leaves us, there will no one left from that exhilarating time who can argue forcefully for the return of the manned space program in this country.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2010/06/john-glenn-still-a-legend/

The Bush administration announced plans to retire the space shuttle program and then the Obama administration followed through with the plan. Two of the shuttles were destroyed by tragic accidents, leaving just three ships in use: Atlantis, Endeavor and Discovery. Challenger blew up shortly after liftoff in January 1986 and Columbia — with Amarillo’s Rick Husband in command — disintegrated upon re-entry in February 2003.

After the final shuttle mission — the flight of Atlantis in July 2011 — U.S. astronauts have been ferried into space aboard Russian rockets to spend time in the International Space Station. Think of that for a moment. During the height of the space race, of which Glenn was a major player, it would seem unthinkable that we’d ever have to depend on our adversary to take our astronauts into space.

We’re not hearing much talk during this presidential election campaign about the future of manned space travel. We don’t know whether Republican Donald J. Trump or Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton will light the fire that re-ignites our national pride in the effort to explore beyond the bounds of our planet.

I know that NASA is working on a new launch vehicle that will take humans into space. I understand the space agency has plenty of work on its plate; it has unmanned probes to launch and plenty of research to complete. NASA, though, seems to be working in a closet. Does anyone ever hear updates, progress reports on the development of that launch vehicle?

Americans have few legends who can speak with authority on such things. John Glenn — who later served several terms as a U.S. senator from Ohio — is one of them who can speak with clarity and credibility on the value that space exploration brings to us.

If only we could keep him around forever.

We cannot, of course.

I get that we have a lot of pressing issues that are consuming presidential candidates’ time and attention.

My hope is that we will start hearing from one or both of the major candidates about how they intend to accelerate our return to space exploration.

I relished those mornings awaiting those flights by John Glenn and his early astronaut colleagues. I’m ready to get excited once again.

national news

Sen. Nelson wasn’t an astronaut

10 Comments

nelson

I just listened to a brief interview that I cannot let pass. I put something on Facebook about, but I have to expand it just a bit.

MSNBC anchor Brian Williams was interviewing Florida U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson as part of the on-going coverage of this morning’s horrific massacre in Orlando, Fla.

Williams introduced Nelson to his audience as “an astronaut-turned-politician.” He then referenced Nelson’s “many years at NASA” while commenting on the prospect of extra security in the wake of the shooting.

I now want to set the record straight.

Sen. Nelson is a politician-turned-one-flight-astronaut. He served in Congress when he got picked for a flight aboard the space shuttle Columbia in January 1986.

He served as a payload specialist aboard the shuttle. He flew once, came back to Earth and went back to work in Congress.

What is equally fascinating is that Nelson didn’t correct Williams on either occasion.

—-

Nelson, a Democrat, was the second member of Congress to fly on a shuttle mission. The first was Utah Republican Sen. Jake Garn, who flew aboard the shuttle Discovery a year earlier, in 1985.

Oh, and the third member of Congress to fly? That would be a Democratic senator from Ohio, John Glenn. Yes, that John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth in February 1962 aboard the Mercury capsule.

I should note here that Sen. Glenn had an advantage that his congressional “astronauts” didn’t have. The crews with which Garn and Nelson worked had to translate the jargon they spoke among themselves, as their rookie crewmen weren’t fluent in “astronaut-speak.”

Glenn needed no translator as he trained to fly aboard Discovery in 1998. He knows the language well. He spoke it himself while training with his six other initial American space travelers back in the 1960s.

Check out this video of that shuttle mission.