The first module of China’s space station is scheduled for launch next year.
The station will be called “Heavenly Palace”. The initial module (called Mandarin) will form a core into which future modules will be docked.
Mandarin is pretty big. It’s 30 feet long and weighs in at 8.5 tons. (okay, in space it’s weightless…) Still, it’s [...]

While the United States puts on the brakes, and hands over the responsibility for manned spaceflight to private companies, India is accelerating its pace.
A budgetary increase (by 35%) is advancing ISRO’s (Indian Space Research Organisation) plan to send two Indian astronauts into orbit for that country’s first manned space mission. India is also planning to [...]

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 [...]

I find myself imagining this:
It’s September 2021. The world is watching as a Taikonaut—a Chinese astronaut—steps onto the lunar surface. It’s an incredible view, which I watch on my high-definition video glasses. I see it in real time, except for the 2 1/2 second delay to get the signal from the moon.
The Chinese lander is [...]

Most of the emerging private space companies are thrilled that the new NASA moon and beyond program—called Constellation—is probably going to be killed. I’m not sure why this is—there’s plenty of room for private companies to send astronauts into earth orbit. And private companies are a long way from sending people to the moon and [...]

Now that the United States has abandoned manned space flight, and will scrap its Constellation program, the new race for the moon has two players: China and India.
China—with a bigger budget and a few manned flights under its belt—has to be considered the favorite. That said, India has good engineers and seems determined to plow [...]

The first president Bush offered a vision for Americans to returnto the moon. (And this was a guy who said he wasn’t good at “the vision thing”.)
The second president Bush offered a similar vision twenty years (or so) later.
Both Bushes offered minimal budget to keep their visions alive.
Now, that will end. America will abandon plans [...]

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 [...]

Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in the Apollo 1 fire 43 years ago today. I can’t help but think that Gus, in particular, would be very unhappy with the state of America’s space program today.
A new committee to plan “the future” of the space program is starting. Previously, another committee put us [...]

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 [...]