Words cannot express how much I admire Buzz Aldrin. But…
He seems to think that America faced a choice of going to the moon or going to Mars, and wisely chose the latter. NASA’s new  course in space is allegedly to spend time and money doing research and finding the best way to send people to [...]

According to the New York Times, the Obama administration’s new budget and plan for NASA outsources manned spaceflight to private companies.
The guys who brought us Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the space shuttle are done designing rockets and spacecraft.
It somehow seems appropriate for this news to come out this last week of January. Because this time [...]

America sent monkeys into space before men. But Apollo sent men, not monkeys, to the moon.
According to a report late last year, Russia plans to send a monkey on a 520 day round trip flight to Mars. The Russians believe that the radiation would make such a trip by a human currently inadvisable.
The monkey would [...]

Now NASA is expected to re-organize. Why? Maybe to make up for the failures of the government to provide a steady budget that’s necessary to complete a multi-year project? Maybe because people somehow expected the agency to develop a new generation of space vehicles without unforeseeable s cost over-runs?
Yeah. That must be it…
Now, NASA is [...]

The Senate passed an $18.7 billion funding bill for NASA, including $3.8 billion for exploration. Beyond that, the Senate inserted language into the bill designed to protect the Constellation Program—NASA’s planned successor to the retiring space shuttle.
Will Constellation (the Ares rocket and Orion spacecraft) survive?
Well, first of all, the President has to sign the bill. [...]

Thirteen years ago, a team of scientists who examined a meteorite from Mars concluded that it contained evidence of ancient Martian life. This was a big story, on the cover of the news weeklies and the lead story on the evening newscasts…back when that was the big place people went to for news.
Scientists agree that [...]

Just as the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper is possibly on the verge of extinction, the editorial board has spoken out to keep alive the hope of sending American astronauts beyond earth orbit. In an editorial titled “Can We Boldly Go?”, the Inquirer suggests that someone slip in a DVD of “The Right Stuff” aboard Air Force [...]

While the Augustine Commission and the U.S. government contemplate further curtailment of NASA’s manned space program, Russia is planning to boldly go where no man has gone before.
The Russian president has said he is committed to funding a Russian effort to send cosmonauts to Mars. And with a recent technological breakthrough, the Russians believe they [...]

Newsweek has an article with the silly title “A Private Space Shuttle“. It goes on to talk about private space firms (many of which I find impressive) as if their projects are comparable.
This reveals a profound ignorance about the capabilities and complexity of the space shuttle. Newsweek makes the following errors:
Blames NASA for allegedly bad [...]

Yes. You read that right.
The headlines portrays the Augustine commission’s position as a call for a “public-private partnership” for manned space travel. But what’s important here is what’s NOT being emphasized. The commission wants funding to be provided to commercial companies to develop their own manned spacecraft and for NASA to cancel its entire manned [...]