“It was a different time, 1957 or ’58. America’s love affair with racism was in full swing. NASA was no exception.” Ted at The Late Adopter sends along a sordid tale of cosmic achievement and racial injustice in this award-winning documentary on The Old Negro Space Program, a film not by Ken Burns.
Tag: Space
Griffin in the door?
Finally, a Dubya nominee I can get behind. At his confirmation hearing, Michael Griffin — the administration’s pick for head of NASA — suggests the Hubble may still be worth saving. “Griffin, a physicist-engineer who holds six advanced degrees, is known as a devotee of human space travel and a firm advocate of Bush’s ‘Vision for Space Exploration’ aimed at the moon and Mars…He bluntly expressed his intention to lead a resurgence in American ‘spacefaring,’ noting that Russia and China had both put humans into space since the space shuttle last flew.”
Life on Mars, Death from Space.
“I’d give it a 50-50 shot that you could find it somewhere underground. But then that’s a guess.” The NYT surveys the current thinking about prospects of Martian life, and how astrobiologists plan to go about proving or disproving its existence. (To wit, the European Space Agency plans to send an tricked-up rover to the red planet after 2011…hopefully, it’ll get past the Dubya Pentagon’s rash of Moonraker weapons.) Update: In somewhat related news (to the second story), Slate‘s Fred Kaplan assesses the Pentagon’s overly enthusiastic vision for ground-based future tech.
Dark Globes No More.
Only a decade after the discovery of the first extra-solar planet, two separate teams of scientists manage to “see” exoplanets directly for the first time. “Dr. Geoffrey Marcy, a planet hunter at the University of California in Berkeley, called the results ‘the stuff of history books.‘”
Ice, Ice, Baby.
Alright, stop, collaborate, and listen — Images sent back by the ESA’s Mars Express show the remants of icebergs once floating in a Martian Sea near the equator, and suggest that large ice blocks may well still exist just underneath the dusty surface (increasing both the chances of life on the Red Planet and the prospects for a successful manned mission.) Word to your mother.
Caverns of Mars.
After perusing “methane signatures and other possible signs of biological activity,” two NASA researchers claim there may well be life presently existing in subsurface Martian caves. We’re talking mitochondria, not Morlocks…but still, such a discovery would be exciting stuff, to say the least.
Near-sighted.
It didn’t look good before, but now it seems the Hubble’s days are really numbered. NASA, who otherwise comes out ok under the new Bush budget, nevertheless cancelled plans to service the telescope by robot (strangely enough, before the engineers in charge could even present their work.) I have a bad feeling about this.
The Hubble Hamstrung.
By way of Blivet and 20-20 Hindsight, the Bush administration announces plans to decommission the Hubble Space Telescope, possibly as an opening salvo in a game of Budgetary Chicken. Grrr…if I give my life-changing $300 tax rebate back, can we keep the Hubble?
Rebel Fleet.
“‘Space is virgin territory,’ Branson says, trying out a prospective marketing line and shooting another grin. ‘Is that 21st-century enough for you?’” In this month’s cover story, Wired checks in with Richard Branson and his ambitions for Virgin Galactic. I am so loving this space race among the mega-rich.
Blame the Children.
Just as Tom Ridge did in his own resignation a few weeks ago, NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe steps down by citing his need to make more money to put his kids through college. “‘It is this [the president’s] very commitment to family that draws me to conclude that I must depart public service,’ O’Keefe wrote. ‘The first of three children will begin college next fall…I owe them the same opportunity my parents provided for me to pursue higher education without the crushing burden of debt thereafter.’” Am I missing something? I know tuition costs have skyrocketed, but is $158,000-a-year really too little money to send a child to college these days? C’mon, now.