Space
Greg Johnson set for Tuesday shuttle launch
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Air Force Col.
Greg Johnson,
a
1980 Park Hills High School
graduate,
is set to blast off from Kennedy Space Center in
Florida on Tuesday, March 11, aboard Space
shuttle Endeavour. The STS-123 mission is
officially set for launch after getting the "go"
from NASA's Mission Management Team on Sunday.
Liftoff is scheduled for 2:28 a.m. EDT.
The current weather forecast calls for only a 10 percent chance atmospheric conditions will delay the launch, with the primary concern coming from a slight chance of a low cloud ceiling around Kennedy, according to NASA.
As pilot, Johnson will add the space shuttle to the more than 40 different aircraft he's flown. U.S. Navy Capt. Dominic Gorie will command the shuttle. The crew also includes Mission Specialists Rick Linnehan, Robert L. Behnken, Mike Foreman, Garrett Reisman and Japanese astronaut Takao Doi.
The crew will deliver the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo Logistics Module and the Canadian Space Agency's Dextre robotics system to the International Space Station.
The mission was scheduled for launch in February, but problems that delayed the preceding mission pushed it back.
The current weather forecast calls for only a 10 percent chance atmospheric conditions will delay the launch, with the primary concern coming from a slight chance of a low cloud ceiling around Kennedy, according to NASA.
As pilot, Johnson will add the space shuttle to the more than 40 different aircraft he's flown. U.S. Navy Capt. Dominic Gorie will command the shuttle. The crew also includes Mission Specialists Rick Linnehan, Robert L. Behnken, Mike Foreman, Garrett Reisman and Japanese astronaut Takao Doi.
The crew will deliver the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo Logistics Module and the Canadian Space Agency's Dextre robotics system to the International Space Station.
The mission was scheduled for launch in February, but problems that delayed the preceding mission pushed it back.
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Greg Johnson: Astronaut's long wait gets longer
Friday, January 04, 2008
But a problem with the fuel sensor system on Space Shuttle Atlantis has delayed the STS-122 mission, and this has forced NASA to review its shuttle launch schedule, including Johnson’s flight. Atlantis was set to lift off in early December. Difficulty in troubleshooting the fuel sensor system has forced several delays, most recently a Jan. 10 launch date. On Thursday, NASA managers said the earliest Atlantis can fly is Jan. 24, and a February launch date is more likely.
Atlantis is to carry the European Space Agency’s Columbus Laboratory to the space station. Its flight may have to wait until after a Russian cargo rocket docks at the station on Feb. 9. Its launch is scheduled for Feb. 7.
NASA says it won’t announce dates for any subsequent shuttle flights until it’s set a firm launch date for Atlantis. But it takes several weeks after one shuttle mission to get ready for the next, so Johnson isn't likely to fly before March.
Even as he awaits his first space shuttle flight, Johnson has been working on the spaceship that’s to replace the space shuttle. In 2005, NASA appointed Johnson as a crew representative supporting the design and testing of the Constellation System’s Orion crew vehicle.
Still in the shadow of the moon
Friday, September 07, 2007
I've seen a press screening of the new David Sington
film, “In the Shadow of the Moon.” I
couldn’t help feeling the title should be,
“Still in the Shadow of the Moon.”
It’s good that, more than 38 years after the first moon landing, many of the men who walked on the moon or flew around it are still with us to tell their stories. (I touched on this topic a decade ago in my picture book, Grandpa Takes Me to the Moon.)
It’s sad that after all these years, the moon is the still the farthest humans have gone.
And it’s troubling that, with a new fleet of spaceships being designed for a return to the moon, nobody is talking about it. This film doesn't even touch the topic.
About the film: It’s another documentary about Project Apollo. Its strongest feature is that tells its story in the astronauts’ own words, often with their faces filling the screen as they talk or reflect. While it boasts some dramatic documentary footage found in NASA’s archives, to me the most arresting scenes are those of the astronauts’ eyes as they tell of things that only their eyes have seen.
The participating astronauts include Jim Lovell (Apollo 8 and 13), Dave Scott (Apollo 9 and 15), John Young (Apollo 10 and 16), Gene Cernan (Apollo 10 and 17), Mike Collins (Apollo 11), Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11), Alan Bean (Apollo 12), Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14), Charlie Duke (Apollo 16), and Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17). As you might expect, the publicity-shy Neil Armstrong didn't join them, but the others discussed his role as Apollo 11 commander and his dramatic job of guiding the lunar lander to a safe touchdown with seconds of fuel remaining.
I was disappointed the film didn’t at least mention the new moon program, if only to explore the vast difference in public sentiment between then and now. Then, as the astronauts recall, the whole world watched as they landed and walked on the moon. But after just two moon landings, President Nixon cancelled the final three missions. Apollo 17 reaped a tremendous scientific harvest, but it marked the end of the moon program. With the space shuttle and the International Space Station, NASA's manned spaceflight program has been stuck in a low-orbit rut ever since.
In 2004, President Bush announced his "Vision for Space Exploration" — a plan to finish the space station, retire the space shuttle, and build a new fleet of spaceships to get us back into deep space, with a lunar outpost and eventual flights to Mars. But, when was the last time you heard anybody talk about the Constellation Program? Outside of space interest groups, I never hear anyone mention it. I doubt if many people here in Ohio realize NASA's Glenn Research Center has a piece of it.
If the goal is to go to Mars, why don’t we go to Mars? Moon-first supporters say the moon will be a technological and logistical stepping-stone to the Red Planet — and politically more achievable because it can be done sooner and for less money. Another camp views the moon as a detour from what should be the next step in exploration — Mars.
I'm not sure either program will light a fire under the public. After the second moon landing, people quickly grew bored with Apollo. Mars is expensive, and it will be hard to sustain support for such a long-term program through several presidential and congressional terms. An alternative might be human missions to asteroids, to learn more about the hurtling rocks that wiped out the dinosaurs and pose a potential threat to civiliazation. An asteroid rendezvous mission could be done without the massive additional hardware that would be needed for a Mars surface expedition.
But it would, at last, get us out of the shadow of the moon.
It’s good that, more than 38 years after the first moon landing, many of the men who walked on the moon or flew around it are still with us to tell their stories. (I touched on this topic a decade ago in my picture book, Grandpa Takes Me to the Moon.)
It’s sad that after all these years, the moon is the still the farthest humans have gone.
And it’s troubling that, with a new fleet of spaceships being designed for a return to the moon, nobody is talking about it. This film doesn't even touch the topic.
About the film: It’s another documentary about Project Apollo. Its strongest feature is that tells its story in the astronauts’ own words, often with their faces filling the screen as they talk or reflect. While it boasts some dramatic documentary footage found in NASA’s archives, to me the most arresting scenes are those of the astronauts’ eyes as they tell of things that only their eyes have seen.
The participating astronauts include Jim Lovell (Apollo 8 and 13), Dave Scott (Apollo 9 and 15), John Young (Apollo 10 and 16), Gene Cernan (Apollo 10 and 17), Mike Collins (Apollo 11), Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11), Alan Bean (Apollo 12), Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14), Charlie Duke (Apollo 16), and Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17). As you might expect, the publicity-shy Neil Armstrong didn't join them, but the others discussed his role as Apollo 11 commander and his dramatic job of guiding the lunar lander to a safe touchdown with seconds of fuel remaining.
I was disappointed the film didn’t at least mention the new moon program, if only to explore the vast difference in public sentiment between then and now. Then, as the astronauts recall, the whole world watched as they landed and walked on the moon. But after just two moon landings, President Nixon cancelled the final three missions. Apollo 17 reaped a tremendous scientific harvest, but it marked the end of the moon program. With the space shuttle and the International Space Station, NASA's manned spaceflight program has been stuck in a low-orbit rut ever since.
In 2004, President Bush announced his "Vision for Space Exploration" — a plan to finish the space station, retire the space shuttle, and build a new fleet of spaceships to get us back into deep space, with a lunar outpost and eventual flights to Mars. But, when was the last time you heard anybody talk about the Constellation Program? Outside of space interest groups, I never hear anyone mention it. I doubt if many people here in Ohio realize NASA's Glenn Research Center has a piece of it.
If the goal is to go to Mars, why don’t we go to Mars? Moon-first supporters say the moon will be a technological and logistical stepping-stone to the Red Planet — and politically more achievable because it can be done sooner and for less money. Another camp views the moon as a detour from what should be the next step in exploration — Mars.
I'm not sure either program will light a fire under the public. After the second moon landing, people quickly grew bored with Apollo. Mars is expensive, and it will be hard to sustain support for such a long-term program through several presidential and congressional terms. An alternative might be human missions to asteroids, to learn more about the hurtling rocks that wiped out the dinosaurs and pose a potential threat to civiliazation. An asteroid rendezvous mission could be done without the massive additional hardware that would be needed for a Mars surface expedition.
But it would, at last, get us out of the shadow of the moon.
The Ocean on Mars
Friday, March 16, 2007
Connect the dots: Space tourism, Rickenbacker and Wright-Pat
Sunday, December 31, 2006
A Chicago
startup’s interest in bringing commercial space
tourism to Rickenbacker
International Airport has sparked a buzz among
space fans in the Buckeye state. Me, I’m ready to
scream.
Latest news: A Dec. 27 Columbus Dispatch report that Ohio development officials are offering incentives to PlanetSpace to open a spaceport at Rickenbacker where tourists would take off for suborbital space flights. (PlanetSpace is a joint venture between Chicago-based entrepreneurs and the startup rocket company Canadian Arrow, based in Barrie, Ontario.)
It isn’t clear to me exactly what PlanetSpace has in mind for Rickenbacker. Its website describes concepts for two basic space business models.
•Suborbital tourist flights would blast off from a barge floating on the Great Lakes. The booster and its passenger-carrying nosecone would separate, and both would parachute back for a water splashdown.
•Orbital flights would involve a cluster of booster rockets and a spaceplane dubbed the Silver Dart from a spaceport in Nova Scotia. The Silver Dart, an angular lifting body design, would glide back for a hypersonic landing. It’s aimed at meeting NASA’s request for a commercial company to ferry astronauts into orbit and back.
I can’t see the FAA or Ohio permitting manned rocket launches from an airport next to Columbus. I can see spaceplanes recovering on Rickenbacker’s 12,102-foot runway — when Ohio’s weather permits it.
But I can’t help noticing how much of PlanetSpace’s orbital plan hinges on work directed from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in the 1950s and 1960s. The company boasts its Silver Dart is based on an old concept called the FDL-7. FDL stands for Flight Dynamics Laboratory – what’s now the Air Force Research laboratory’s Air Vehicles Directorate.
FDL-7 was a part of the program that developed the lifting-body concept for hypersonic gliders. It led to the Martin X-24B, which flew re-entry landing profiles at Edwards Air Force Base in the 1970s and paved the way for the space shuttle. (The X-24B went to the Air Force Museum in 1976.)
So, it seems that Ohio has the technology, the facilities and the seed money for a commercial space enterprise. Why does it take out-of-state entrepreneurs to connect the dots?
Latest news: A Dec. 27 Columbus Dispatch report that Ohio development officials are offering incentives to PlanetSpace to open a spaceport at Rickenbacker where tourists would take off for suborbital space flights. (PlanetSpace is a joint venture between Chicago-based entrepreneurs and the startup rocket company Canadian Arrow, based in Barrie, Ontario.)
It isn’t clear to me exactly what PlanetSpace has in mind for Rickenbacker. Its website describes concepts for two basic space business models.
•Suborbital tourist flights would blast off from a barge floating on the Great Lakes. The booster and its passenger-carrying nosecone would separate, and both would parachute back for a water splashdown.
•Orbital flights would involve a cluster of booster rockets and a spaceplane dubbed the Silver Dart from a spaceport in Nova Scotia. The Silver Dart, an angular lifting body design, would glide back for a hypersonic landing. It’s aimed at meeting NASA’s request for a commercial company to ferry astronauts into orbit and back.
I can’t see the FAA or Ohio permitting manned rocket launches from an airport next to Columbus. I can see spaceplanes recovering on Rickenbacker’s 12,102-foot runway — when Ohio’s weather permits it.
But I can’t help noticing how much of PlanetSpace’s orbital plan hinges on work directed from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in the 1950s and 1960s. The company boasts its Silver Dart is based on an old concept called the FDL-7. FDL stands for Flight Dynamics Laboratory – what’s now the Air Force Research laboratory’s Air Vehicles Directorate.
FDL-7 was a part of the program that developed the lifting-body concept for hypersonic gliders. It led to the Martin X-24B, which flew re-entry landing profiles at Edwards Air Force Base in the 1970s and paved the way for the space shuttle. (The X-24B went to the Air Force Museum in 1976.)
So, it seems that Ohio has the technology, the facilities and the seed money for a commercial space enterprise. Why does it take out-of-state entrepreneurs to connect the dots?