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Moon

Submission + - Soprano Sarah Brightman to make 'ground breaking space travel announcement' (examiner.com)

Submitted by
MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: "Space Adventures has announced that famed British soprano singer Sarah Brightman will make a "ground breaking space travel announcement" in Moscow on Oct 10. Reuters has already reported that Brightman has received authorization for cosmonaut training, a prerequisite for a Russian operated space tourism trip to the International Space Station. However there is some suggestion that Brightman may be the second passenger in the longed planned Space Adventures voyage around the moon, costing about $150 million a seat."
NASA

Submission + - Different approach to NASA space program proposed in Romney white paper (examiner.com) 1

Submitted by
MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: "The Mitt Romney campaign has released a white paper describing the space policy that a prospective Romney administration would pursue. While there is a conspicuous lack of specifics in the policy paper, a read between the lines suggests a somewhat different approach to conducting a space program than is currently being undertaken by the Obama administration."
Censorship

Submission + - EU Officials Propose Internet Cops On Patrol, No Anonymity & No Obscure Lang (techdirt.com)

Submitted by king.purpuriu
king.purpuriu writes: The leaked document contradicts a letter sent from CleanIT Coordinator But Klaasen to Dutch NGO Bits of Freedom in April of this year, which explained that the project would first identify problems before making policy proposals. The promise to defend the rule of law has been abandoned. There appears never to have been a plan to identify a specific problem to be solved – instead the initiative has become little more than a protection racket (use filtering or be held liable for terrorist offences) for the online security industry.
The idea is that "virtual police officers" will be keeping an eye on you — for your own safety, you understand. Other ways in which users will be protected from themselves is through the use of filters.
And where there are laws, it must be OK for law enforcement agencies (LEAs) to ignore them and have content taken down on demand: "It must be legal for LEAs to make Internet companies aware of terrorist content on their infrastructure ('flagging') that should be removed, without following the more labour intensive and formal procedures for 'notice and take action'"
Due process, who needs it? The plans also require some interesting new laws, like this one criminalizing merely posting certain hyperlinks: "Knowingly providing hyperlinks on websites to terrorist content must be defined by law as illegal just like the terrorist content itself"
Incredible though it might sound, that seems to suggest that less common foreign languages would be banned from the European Internet entirely in case anybody discusses naughty stuff without the authorities being able to spy on them (haven't they heard of Google Translate?) You could hardly hope for a better symbol of the paranoid and xenophobic thinking that lies behind this crazy scheme.
NASA

Submission + - Republican lawmakers propose 'Space Leadership Act' NASA reform bill (examiner.com)

Submitted by
MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: "A group of Republican members of the United States House, including Rep. John Culberson, Rep. Pete Olson, and Rep. Lamar Smith each of Texas, has announced new legislation called the “Space Leadership Act” that they say will remove NASA from politics and an provide some continuality to NASA programs.

The lawmakers, which also include Rep. Bill Posey of Florida, Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia, and Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, suggest that the legislation is needed to prevent cost overruns, mismanagement, and abrupt changes of space policy due to changes in the presidency that they say has cost NASA $20 billion in wasted money."
Moon

Submission + - How the liberal critics of the Apollo program were proven wrong (examiner.com) 2

Submitted by
MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: "A recent story in The Atlantic reminds us that the Apollo program, so fondly remembered in the 21st Century, was opposed by a great many people while it was ongoing, on the theory that the money spent going to the moon would have been better spent on poverty programs. The problem with this view was that spending for Lyndon Johnson's Great Society dwarfed the Apollo program, that the programs in the Great Society largely failed to address poverty and other social ills, and that the Apollo program actually had a stimulative effect on the economy that fostered economic growth and created jobs by driving the development of technology,"
Moon

Submission + - NASA's Garver lists moon as goal for astronauts against Obama space policy (examiner.com)

Submitted by
MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: "NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver delivered an address to the AIAA 2012 Space Conference in Pasadena, California that consisted of a full throated defense of Obama administration space policy and the direction of NASA. Garver was especially keen to defend the Obama space exploration effort that has replaced the Bush era Constellation space exploration program.

However Garver included the moon as a future destination for American astronauts, despite the fact that President Obama specifically ruled out a return to the moon in his April 15, 2010 speech at the Kennedy Space Center. This raises questions about the future direction of NASA space exploration and who is really determining it."
Mars

Submission + - Early Mars Maybe Not So Wet (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "Early Mars may not have been as warm or wet as scientists suspect, a finding which could impact the likelihood that the Red Planet was capable of evolving life at the time when it was getting started on Earth. A new study presents an alternative explanation for the prevalence of Mars' ancient clay minerals, which on Earth most often result from water chemically reacting with rock over long periods of time. The process is believed to be a starting point for life."
NASA

Submission + - Blue Origin: A Peek Inside (citizensinspace.org)

Submitted by RocketAcademy
RocketAcademy writes: Among the emerging commercial space transportation companies, Blue Origin is the most secretive and mysterious. A VIP tour by NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver afforded a rare glimpse inside Blue Origin's headquarters, including a look at what appears to be a Blue Origin crew capsule.
Space

Submission + - Space vs. poverty debate in India similar to one raging in the United States (examiner.com)

Submitted by
MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: "Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was obliged recently to defend his country’s space program, which involves the spending of billions of rupees when India still has a large number of people living in abject poverty. The debate raging in India parallels a similar one that has simmered in the United States for decades."
NASA

Submission + - Democrats vague about NASA's 'new mission' in party platform (examiner.com)

Submitted by
MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: "While the 2012 Republican Party platform offers “thin gruel” about space policy and NASA and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney continues to be vague on space issues, the 2012 Democratic Party platform has next to nothing to say about space. Indeed, it has just one sentence, tucked into a section called “Out-innovating the Rest of the World.”

“President Obama has charted a new mission for NASA to lead us to a future that builds on America’s legacy of innovation and exploration.”

The Republicans were equally vague about space policy, but spent two paragraphs rather than just one sentence doing so."
NASA

Submission + - Paul Ryan's views on NASA space policy are unknown at this time (examiner.com)

Submitted by
MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: "With the selection of Rep. Paul Ryan, R-WI by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to be his running mate, the question on many people’s minds is, what is his attitude toward space policy? There is little if any indication what the congressman from Wisconsin, not considered a space related state, feels about space policy.

There are two actions by Ryan that space policy experts are looking at to try to discern what his attitudes are. One was his vote against the 2010 NASA Authorization Bill. The other is the 2012 budget he proposed that would have cut 6.5 percent across the board in science accounts that include NASA under what the Obama administration proposed."
NASA

Submission + - Rep. John Culberson, R-TX to propose NASA reform bill (examiner.com)

Submitted by
MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: "Rep. John Culberson, R-TX, along with Rep. Frank Wolf, R-VA, is developing a bill that will attempt to rationalize NASA’s budget process and provide some long term continuality in its administration.

First, a NASA administrator would be named to a ten year term. The intent is to provide some continuality in the way the space agency is run and to remove it, as much as possible, from the vagaries of politics.

Second, NASA funding would be placed on a multi-year rather than annual cycle. This is of particular importance to the space agency because the majority of its high level projects take several years to run their course. If funding were fixed for a number of years, the theory goes, money could be spent more efficiently. NASA planners would know how much they have to spend four or so years going forward and would not have to worry about being cut off at the knees by Congressional appropriators year after year."

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