Like your first love, you never forget your first model rocket launch. And therein hangs a tale, which among my friends and family is known as the Honest John story. I was about 11 or 12 years old. My neighbor friends had started flying model rockets and since I already was a true steely-eyed-missile-man-want-to-be, I[…]
I have some things to say about a variety of topics so let’s call this week’s Orbital Inclinations the good, the bad and the ugly in space. The good of course was the successful landing of the Mars rover Curiosity. Like every good self-respecting space cadet I stayed up most of the night to watch[…]
POSTED ON SUNDAY, AUG 5 AT 3:00 PM EDT. By this time tomorrow the nation, indeed the entire world, will be thinking one of two things about NASA and our space program. The better of the two is this: NASA is the greatest thing since sliced bread; a world class organization that, with its legendary[…]
This past week the space community lost one of its most respected leaders with the passing of retired Air Force Lt. General Forrest McCartney after a tragic but mercifully brief battle with cancer. It was Gen. McCartney who led the Kennedy Space Center through the dark days following the Challenger disaster, serving as KSC director[…]
With the Independence Day holiday behind us, and this being a presidential election year, we can expect to hear an increasing amount of campaign rhetoric from both Democrats and Republicans as we get closer to the big day in November. To what extent our space program will be a topic in the national debate remains[…]
Jill Tarter retired this past week after 30 years of doing what she did. That name may not be as familiar to you as Neil Armstrong or John Glenn, but she is famous enough within a certain segment of the space community that a movie was made about her work. Tarter was the inspiration for[…]
I woke up Saturday morning to learn there were three new humans and one less reusable spaceship in Earth orbit. Saturday morning at 6:37 a.m. EDT China launched its fourth manned mission into space atop a Long March rocket. The Shenzhou 9 spacecraft, which is based largely on the design of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft,[…]
Twenty-five years ago I graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach. When you attend an aviation-themed school an hour’s drive north of the Kennedy Space Center, you wind up with college buddies who are a mix of propeller heads and space cadets, and are generally kind of nerdy, but in a likable Star Trek[…]
With the successful launch, mission and splashdown of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft during the past two weeks, once again we have seen the general public – or at least the mainstream media – showing renewed interest in our nation’s space program. Most of the commentary I’ve read has hailed the launch of the first commercial cargo[…]
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[…]
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[…]
Not logged in 
