From the outbox of Meyer’s space inbox:
Every move the President makes finds its way back to that important question: “what about jobs?” Such was the case when the President recently traveled to the Kennedy Space Center to lay out his plans for NASA. The bottom line is that the idea of going to the moon again has been scrapped. To quote the President, “We’ve already done that.” Instead he has set the goals of America’s space program to go deeper into space such as Mars. Sounds like there would be plenty of jobs for that operation. What are your thoughts on our space program? Keep it going or let it fall by the wayside?
Has Obama’s NASA Policy Fizzled at Launch? By Jeffrey Kluger
Never mind the tropical sun. Visit Florida and dis the space program, and the reception you’ll get is going to be awfully cool. Nobody knew that better than President Obama on Thursday, when he toured the Kennedy Space Center and then spoke to a roomful of 200 VIPs about his plans for NASA after the shuttle program ends later this year. The President had to know that more than the agency’s future could be on the line. In Florida — the ultimate presidential swing state — his could be too. So how was the temperature in the room? Chilly — and not without reason.
Obama’s take on space has never been an easy thing to track. During the campaign, he targeted NASA as a likely area for budget-balancing cuts. Electoral arithmetic made that position untenable, and he quickly backtracked, pledging a robust future for the space agency, albeit one that would take it in a different direction from the one the previous Administration had pursued. That direction had involved mothballing the shuttles by this year and replacing them with what was known as the Constellation program, a collection of projects that involved building new spacecraft for both orbital flight and trips to the moon, as well as two new boosters — one for humans and a powerhouse version to lift heavy cargo.
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And for a bit of history, it was forty years ago that Apollo 13 found itself in a whole heap of trouble. But thanks to good ol’ American engineering that doomed mission had a happy ending. Worth reading about:
Apollo 13 at 40: Houston We Have A Miracle by Jeffrey Kluger
Say this about the flight of Apollo 13: The spashdown, which occurred 40 years ago today, was perfect. That’s not just because the crew actually managed a splashdown, as opposed to bouncing off the atmosphere or burning up on reentry. It’s because the maneuver was executed so deftly. The conical Apollo command modules were deliberately hung crookedly from their parachutes so that the ship wouldn’t slap into on the water on its blunt bottom, but would instead knife into it. That didn’t always happen, since the craft could still catch a nasty wave as it hit. But Apollo 13 caught no wave and slipped into the ocean with almost balletic ease — the only thing about the mission that went just right.
Four decades later, it’s easy to forget just how improbable that safe return was, following an oxygen tank explosion that forced the crew to take refuge in the lunar module. There’s a reason that during training the astronauts never simulated that kind of emergency — because everyone knew that if an explosion wrecked your ship and all your power and oxygen vanished, you’d surely wind up dead. It’s a little like taking a driving course and practicing what to do if your car hurtles off a cliff. What’s the point?
Read the rest here.
