Three pioneers of the Apollo space programme, Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham of the Apollo 7 mission were finally honoured yesterday, receiving the same Distinguished Service Award as the more well known Apollo crews received four decades ago. Too bad only one of them is still alive.
Its sobering to consider that NASA is rewarding its hero's so late. I wonder if this is some kind of exersize in nostalgia now that NASA faces a period with little to no ground-to-orbit capability. From 2011 the USA will not have any vessels capable of servicing the International Space Station. Russia is increasing its spending accordingly. Quite how the worlds foremost space service managed to paint itself into a corner like this is a mystery to me, but given how many interesting projects have been axed by NASA and its satelite corporations, it ought not to surprise. The Venture Star was supposed to have been online to take over from the shuttles but instead it was scrapped in 2001 apparently because NASA insisted on a particular type of fuel containment vessel which was too costly to make. The loss of the X-33/Venture Star programme was more than just a new shuttle design. Venture Star incorporated a full range of intermeshing technologies, and the cancellation ended a lot of interesting research that NASA could have used today.
There are currently no official replacements for the shuttle planned as far as I can tell.
- North American X-15 (museum)
- USAF X-20 Dyna-Soar (cancelled)
- Rockwell X-30 (cancelled)
- Lockheed Martin X-33 (Cancelled)
- Orbital Sciences X-34 (cancelled)
- Boeing X-37 (retired)
- NASA X-38 (cancelled)
- Boeing X-40 (retired)
- Blackstar (unconfirmed project)
- Black Horse (unknown)
- Chrysler Corporation Shuttle SERV (cancelled)
- Roton (cancelled)
10 comments:
That Venture Star and it's military applications was supposed to be really cool, but alas, apparently it's a big no-no to "weaponize space".
In theory we still have the Aurora zippin' around.
It wasn't the military applications that sunk the Venture Star though. At least not officially. It was NASA's insistence on burning up the budget on a revolutionary fuel containment system which failed every time they tried to built it.
And Aurora is a European programme that hasn't yet taken off ...unless I'm thinking of a different Aurora... Which Aurora are you refering to?
Okay scratch that question I just found it on Wikipedia. Your refering to the SR-91 Aurora.
Looks interesting, but its not exactly a replacement for the shuttle though.
And I really like this new comments format!
Well, never mind about what NASA's doing, they've obviously had ther're time in space. India has now entered the space program maybe they'll have beter luck.
Perhaps.
The Indian lunar probe carries two NASA payloads designed to scan the moon for the proposed US moon base though, and no matter how much trouble NASA has with its space planes, its still the only agency launching and operating multiple probes to the outer planets.
And that doesn't include its fantastic successes on Mars.
I'm happy for the Indians, but lets not forget their not doing anything that the Soviets didn't do in 1959, with only three computers.
Thats odd, the new style comments page disapeared again. Did any one else see it or was I hallucinating?
By the way, have you seen our Danish attempt at putting a man into space?
Maybe if India has some success, we'll get our feelings hurt and decide the space program is the measure of awesomeness again.
One is allowed to hope
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