Buzz Aldrin is my Hero

Best. Clip. Ever.

http://www.csicop.org/articles/20021018-aldrin/buzz-aldrin-punch-video.mpg

X Prize Contendors Beware!

Looks like Scaled Composites and the Mojave Aerospace Ventures team is about to clean up the much sought-after $10 million Ansari X Prize next month! With the first launch scheduled for this Wednesday (9/29) at 10:00 AM Eastern, and if all goes well, the follow-up on Monday, 10/4, not much can stop the fledgling aerospace company from finally meeting the goals set forth by the St. Louis-based X Prize Foundation almost 10 years ago. Visit the Ansari X Prize website to read more about this landmark accomplishment.

And before the first flight has even been launched, British entrepreneur and owner of Virgin Records, Virgin Mobil, and Virgin Airlines, Richard "Big Dick" Branson has already signed a deal with Mojave Aerospace to market the use of their technology to form the first commercial spaceflight company, appropriately named: Virgin Galactic. Branson's visionary goals include establishing public spaceports on multiple continents, and having thousands of paying customers in just the next five years. I personally look forward to buying a ticket once safety can be assured, and the prices drop from the initial $200,000 a pop.

Next, we'll just need places to go once we're up there... Any takers, Hilton? Best Western? Hopefully MirCorp will come through for us and get the first commercial space station in orbit before too long so that Virgin Galactic can actually have some orbital destinations for it's space-hungry customers. Hopefully in 6 or 7 years, I'll be blogging about my latest trip! ;)

Planetary Society Saturn Links

Found some cool links on The Planetary Society's website regarding the Cassini mission and Saturn in general:

Detailed description of Cassini's flighpath

A Timeline of Exploration of the Outer Planets

Cassini Reaches its Destination... At Last!

After almost 7 years hurtling though space, NASA's Cassini spacecraft, along with it's European Huygens probe entered orbit around Saturn late Wednesday. Check out the MSNBC article here, or the CNN article here. The spacecraft has already sent back some beautiful and startling images, revealing minute details in the rings that have never been observed before. A slideshow containing some of these images can also be found at the MSNBC link above.

Cassini is the first man-made satellite of the ringed planet. Our previous visits to Saturn were merely flybys by the Pioneer and Voyager probes in the late 1970s and early '80s. We now have the means to get up close and personal with this marvelous planet, it's rings, and it's many intriguing moons.

Next January, Cassini will release the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, which will penetrate the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and the only moon in the solar system known to have an atmosphere. It is an exciting time!

I had been tracking the Cassini mission for several years, but apparently had not been doing a good job of it lately because I had been under the impression that it would not enter orbit until 2005, and then on Wednesday morning, I saw the article saying it was happening later the same day! Anyway, I'm sure I will have some interesting posts in January once the Huygens probe has completed its mission to Titan.

SpaceshipOne, Government Zero

Well, in case you havent heard, we have entered a new frontier in space travel, that of private sector flights. I wasn't lucky enough to be at Mojave Airport on June 21, but I managed to watch the live webcast of the launch of SpaceshipOne on MSNBC. It has been a long time coming, but this is truly a landmark achievement. The first privately-funded, privately-built, and privately-piloted space vehicle crossed the 62-mile "space threshold", and marked the dawn of non-government space travel! Check out the article and video here.

Private spaceflight has been an interest of mine for years, and when Dennis Tito became the first space "tourist" in 2001, I thought that would be the opening of the floodgates. Remember though that Mr. Tito rode to the International Space Station aboard a Russian government rocket, and had to pay $20 million to fund his flight. What we are seeing now, 3 years later, is an entirely new animal. There was no government funding for SpaceshipOne's construction or flight. It was not launched from a military installation or large complex rocket facility, but from a civilian airport under the wings of a custom-built aircraft. The White Knight mothership flew to an altitude of 47,000 feet, where it released SpaceshipOne, which then fired up it's rocket engines for the final stretch into outer space.


SpaceshipOne was designed and built by Scaled Composites, one of the entrants for the Ansari X-Prize, a $10-million dollar reward for the first company to build and launch a private craft into space twice in two weeks. The deadline for this feat is the end of this year. I have been following the X-Prize competition since shortly after its inception in 1996.

With the groundbreaking flight of SpaceshipOne on June 21, 2004, we have witnessed the dawn of a new era of spaceflight, one in which
everyone can hopefully take part. How long until I can fly to space for $50? Only time will tell...