Early Friday morning when astronaut Don Pettit grabbed hold of the SpaceX Dragon capsule with the space station’s robot arm, and I sat at my desk staring at the picture-perfect image on my monitor, a surge of emotions washed over me. It was an incredible moment, when a private company had launched its own rocket[…]
Lost in the noise of all the preparations to launch the SpaceX Falcon 9 a week or so ago, I’m not sure anyone in the space community really noticed it, but on one day, Thursday, May 17, here’s what happened… After launching from Kazakhstan late on Monday the 15th, on Thursday the 17th at 12:36[…]
April 6, 2013 This week President Obama will officially present his administration’s request to Congress for a budget to run the government during the fiscal year that begins this October 1st. (We’ll just ignore that he was required by law to have done this by the first Monday in February, and that both the House[…]
March 16, 2013 A half century ago, a charismatic young president stood before the nation and threw down the challenge of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth, and to do it before the decade of the 1960s was out. At that time, in May of 1961, there was[…]
Feb. 23, 2013 There was another report in the news on Friday of a fireball in the sky over Southern California. The glowing green object was caught on camera as it burned up, with the spectacle lasting just a few seconds. When I read of the incident I smiled to myself, not really because of[…]
Feb. 9, 2012 A couple of weeks ago, or so, I had the rare privilege of being on TV for about five seconds. My brief, far-short-of-15-minutes-of-fame appearance was part of a WFTV channel 9 news report by Vanessa Welch about NASA and its foray into the world of computer apps and gaming. Now I should[…]
Feb. 2, 2003 Friday was the official Day of Remembrance this year for NASA and the entire space community. At events around the country, in our nation’s capital, around the world in places like Israel, and certainly here in Florida, people took time to reflect on the losses we experienced related to the Apollo 1[…]
Jan. 19, 2013 To paraphrase Will Rogers, I never met a Russian that I didn’t like. Like others in my general age bracket, I grew up at a time when the Cold War was just a term I heard on TV. I wasn’t old enough to comprehend the potential horror of nuclear war, or understand[…]
Jan. 12, 2013 Having survived the end of 2012 with our planet and civilization intact — such as it is and despite supposed predictions by ancient Mayan calendar makers — if you were one of those who were truly worried about the end of everything then you may take great comfort to know that it[…]
Dec. 8, 2012 Forty years ago on Dec. , 1972, at 12:33 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, Florida’s Space Coast and indeed the entire southeast of the United States lit up in a way never seen before, and not seen since, as Apollo 17 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center to begin our nation’s final[…]
Dec. 1, 2012 Scientists this past week announced that NASA’s Messenger probe, launched from Cape Canaveral and now in orbit around Mercury, has confirmed the presence of ice on a planet whose daytime highs can reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit. The ice is located at Mercury’s north pole within deep craters that are forever in shadow,[…]
As we gain more distance from the election and watch as our elected leaders continue to posture along party lines, assuring continued gridlock with Congress that may indeed drive us over the fiscal cliff everyone is talking about, we also are seeing subtle signs of change within the Obama Administration. Possibly as an example of[…]
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