Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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October 21st, 2020
Credit: NPO Lavochkin/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Take a virtual walk through history in a Russian museum of cosmonautics.
JSC NPO Lavochkin in Moscow has inaugurated an unprecedented look at the Soviet history of aircraft and rocketry development, including space heritage craft such as the country’s Lunokhod wheeled Moon explorer and its Venus landing craft.
All exhibits are presented in high quality and there is an English version for foreign virtual visitors.
Credit: NPO Lavochkin/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Luna stations
The museum of JSC NPO Lavochkin was founded on June 25, 1965, undergoing a renovation in 2012.
Exhibits tell the story of the enterprise (Design Bureau and Plant No. 301, Machine-Building Plant named after SA Lavochkin, and then, NPO) from 1939 to the present.
This superb collection includes 26 spacecraft, including genuine reentry vehicles from the Luna-16, Luna-20 and Luna-24 stations, as well as a flight copy of Lunokhod-3 and its correcting and braking propulsion system.
Credit: NPO Lavochkin/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Pioneering enterprise
Also featured are models of aircraft and missiles developed by the enterprise are presented ( LaGG-3 , La-5 , La-7 , experimental fighters: 160 , 176 , 200 , La-250 , missiles: ZUR-205 , ZUR-217 , intercontinental cruise missile “Tempest” ), personal belongings of the leaders of the OKB – S.A. Lavochkin and G.N. Babakin.
“The creation of a virtual tour embodies the idea of the availability of modern museums, which is especially important in the current epidemiological conditions,” the museum explains. “A friendly team of the Lavochkin NPO Museum took part in the implementation of the project.”
To take a virtual tour of this amazing museum and its collection of pioneering spacecraft that is typically visited by nearly 3,000 people a year, go to:
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Credit: Courtesy Pew Research Center (Nelson Almeida/AFP; Joe Raedle; Russian Defence Ministry/Contributor; Pallava Bagla/Corbis; and David Silverman, all via Getty Images; and NASA/Cover Images/AP)
A new opinion poll has been released showing that science and scientists are held in high esteem across global publics.
However, there is ambivalence in many publics over developments in artificial intelligence, workplace automation, and food science.
The poll indicates positive views in other areas such as space exploration.
Meanwhile, public concerns around climate change and environmental degradation remain widespread. In most publics, majorities view climate change as a very serious problem, and say their government is not doing enough to address it and point to a host of environmental concerns at home, including air and water quality and pollution.
The survey was carried out before the COVID19 outbreak reached pandemic proportions.
Pew Research Center is author of this informative appraisal. It is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world.
Chart shows majorities in most publics surveyed see their government’s space program as a good thing for society.
Credit: Pew Research Center
Positive impact
One element of the wide-ranging survey found that space programs are generally seen as having a positive impact on society
Majorities in most publics see their government’s space exploration program as a good thing for society.
Among the 20 publics surveyed, a median of 72% say their government’s space exploration program has mostly been a good thing for society.
Survey stats
Data in the report came from a survey conducted across 20 publics from October 2019 to March 2020 across Europe, Russia, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region.
The surveys were conducted by face-to-face interviews in Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, India and Brazil. In all other places, the surveys were conducted by telephone. All surveys were conducted with representative samples of adults ages 18 and older in each survey public.
To view the entire Pew Research Center report — Science and Scientists Held in High Esteem Across Global Publics – go to:
Credit: NASA
Mars is a perplexing world, a complex planet to probe and one that does not easily give up all its stealthy truths – expressly if that globe is a remote abode for life.
A four-day online virtual event brought together some of the world’s top leaders and experts on Mars and space exploration to spotlight the on-going efforts to propel humans to the Red Planet.
It is clear that opening up Mars to the first footfalls of Earthlings is a daunting undertaking – and not just technologically.
Credit: NASA
Fatal attraction
In closing remarks of the 2020 Mars Society Virtual Convention, held October 15-18, society leader Robert Zubrin zeroed in on “planetary protectionists” versus “frontierists.”
Mars Society’s Robert Zubrin
Credit: Mars Society/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Zubrin said there is “need to loosen the bonds of this thing that calls itself the planetary protection program but is really a bureaucracy-in-ignorance protection program.”
They, the planetary protection group, have installed themselves in various bureaucracies, Zubrin said, and “want to use this to expand their power and are crippling the space program.” Furthermore, the planetary protection people, he said, “have so distorted and inverted the priorities…that they are a tremendous impediment.”
Zubrin said the frontierists are “quick to recognize that the planetary protection bureaucracy is fatal to their aspirations.”
Credit: Mars Society
Planetary footing
Earlier in the Mars Society convention, Elon Musk, visionary SpaceX rocketeer, underscored his Starship project that involves placing humans on planetary footing elsewhere, with Mars as a near-term objective and thereby have our species attain multi-planet status.
SpaceX’s Elon Musk has a visionary space agenda for Mars.
Credit: Rob Varnas
“When the will and the way intersect we will have a multi-planet species,” Musk explained.
“You provide the way…we’ll provide the will,” responded the Mars Society’s Zubrin.
As for those concerned about contamination of life on Mars, Musk advised:
“Listen…anything that can survive on Mars is so freakin’ tough it’s insane. It is cold and there’s like a lot of UV radiation and it’s not going to be too worried about anything we send from Earth, let’s put it that way. It’s just tougher than anything on Earth,” Musk said.
Balance must be found
“Zubrin is absolutely correct that planetary protection rules should be loosened. If we don’t, we will not be able to send humans to the surface of Mars or anywhere else under the current rules,” said Chris Carberry, chief executive officer of Explore Mars, Inc., an organization that advocates for the human exploration of Mars by the 2030s.
Credit: Bob Sauls – XP4D/Explore Mars, Inc. (used with permission)
However, planetary protection, forward and backward – that is, hauling life from Earth to Mars and the prospect of bringing Mars life back to Earth – “should not be abandoned completely,” Carberry told Inside Outer Space.
“Precautions need to be taken to help our search for indigenous life on Mars and protect the astronauts and Earth from potential back contamination,” Carberry said. “A balance must be found to accomplish these protections, but does not create a substantial impediment to human exploration on the surface of Mars.”
Taming Mars
“To say that Zubrin sounds like a broken record on this subject is both a measure of its repetitive nature, as well as the era in which someone might say something this ignorant and be considered ‘edgy,’” said John Rummel, a former and founding chair of the panel on planetary protection of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), an international confab of experts.
Rummel previously worked at NASA Headquarters (1986 to 1993 and 1998 to 2008) as the space agency’s senior scientist for astrobiology and as NASA’s Planetary Protection Officer.
NASA’s next Mars explorer, the Perseverance rover.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
This subject is one that Zubrin’s followers like, Rummel told Inside Outer Space, “because most of them don’t believe in microbes (even ones that cause COVID-19), or can’t believe that such a benign place as Mars would wish them anything but well in their noble quest to tame it.”
Tsetse flies and Kudzu
Advocating knowing less about Mars than we do today, Rummel added, is no way to lead a group that might be, and should be, serious about making it possible for humans to live there.
“The concept of applying planetary protection principles to current and future Mars missions — to serve them, not to stop them — and the need to do so is akin to the situation faced by Europeans who ventured into places like Africa and North America without knowing anything about what they faced in terms of Tsetse flies and sleeping sickness, Aedes mosquitoes and Yellow Fever, or the problems with releasing starlings, gypsy moths, or Kudzu,” Rummel advised.
Answerable questions
One of the oft-stated motivations for going to Mars to live and work, Rummel added, is that one might find “life on Mars,” but that finding comes with no guarantees of a future friendship. “Introducing Earth microbes into an aquifer on Mars where it could mineralize and solidify the whole water source is just stupid,” he said.
Features called recurrent slope lineae (RSL) have been spotted on some Martian slopes in warmer months. Some scientists think RSL could be seasonal flows of salty water. Red arrows point out one 0.75-mile-long (1.2 kilometers) RSL in this image taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
The “planetary protection bureaucracy” as Zubrin labels it, is no impediment to Mars exploration and habitation for dozens of reasons, Rummel said.
Planetary protection is no impediment to a future on Mars, Rummel continued, but like wondering what Mars dust will do to a human lung if you breathe it in, planetary protection presents answerable questions and a potential need to mitigate difficult circumstances.
“Mars is not another Earth, and even Earth is not the paradise we wish it were, so it would be helpful, and perhaps even essential, for the Mars Society to help Zubrin fix that broken record and turn to a real analysis of the issues and answers that any potential move to another biosphere, or to start another biosphere, demands,” Rummel said. “To do otherwise is a foolish waste of time and talent, which we can’t really afford if we want to get to Mars anytime soon…with people, and in the face of whatever challenges Mars might bring to bear,” he concluded.
NASA 1976 Viking 2 lander image of the Mars Utopian Plain.
Credit: NASA/JPL-CalTech
Enemies of science
In his convention remarks, Zubrin made it clear that not only are planetary protectionists opponents of the frontierists, he also explained how they are enemies of science.
“I am devoted to Mars both for the search for life and for creating an open space frontier. The planetary protection program is inimical to both. Science needs an open frontier,” Zubrin later told Inside Outer Space.
Zubrin said that there has not been a life detection experiment sent to Mars since 1976 because of planetary protection guidelines. There are now some scientists who want to send a life detection experiment to the Red Planet, but need to couch it as an investigation to show that a certain region of Mars has no life, so astronauts should be sent there, he said.
Credit: NASA/Pat Rawlings
“That is absurd. Imagine waiting half a century to send a life detection experiment to Mars, and then spending a decade of the lives of a group of talented scientists and engineers and a billion dollars of the taxpayers’ money on a life detection mission, only to target to a place where it is least likely to find life. That is the nuttiness that the ‘planetary protection’ program is demanding of us,” Zubrin said.
We should send life detection experiments to Mars to find life, “not to avoid finding life,” Zubrin added. “And if we find life…that is precisely where we should send astronauts. We should send explorers to the most scientifically interesting places on the planet, not to the least interesting.”
Resources
Mars Society leader Robert Zubrin’s interview of SpaceX’s Elon Musk can be viewed here:
For Zubrin’s closing remarks, including talking points on SpaceX’s Elon Musk and Starship plans, looking for life on the Red Planet, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, robotic versus human exploration, along with the technical challenges ahead, go to:
https://youtu.be/7F3RVIljLac?t=6
Zubrin’s closing comments can be viewed at: 3:10:12/3:30:42
Mars Society’s Robert Zubrin
Credit: Mars Society/Inside Outer Space screengrab
In closing remarks today of the 2020 Mars Society Virtual Convention, society leader Robert Zubrin zeroed in on “planetary protectionists” versus “frontierists.”
Credit: Elon Musk/SpaceX
Zubrin said there is “need to loosen the bonds of this thing that calls itself the planetary protection program but is really a bureaucracy-in-ignorance protection program.” They, the planetary protection group, have installed themselves in various bureaucracies, he said, and “want to use this to expand their power and are crippling the space program.”
Credit: NASA/Pat Rawlings
Furthermore, the planetary protection people, Zubrin said, “have so distorted and inverted the priorities…that they are a tremendous impediment.”
Vision to be realized
Zubrin said the frontierists are “quick to recognize that the planetary protection bureaucracy is fatal to their aspirations.”
“There’s a vision to be realized. It’s now closer than ever,” Zubrin said. He noted that the virtual meeting from October 15-18 drew over 100,000 people that viewed one session or another from around the world – thus making the meeting 10 times larger than any space conference in history, he said.
“This has been an epic event,” Zubrin said.
For Zubrin’s closing remarks, including talking points on SpaceX’s Elon Musk and Starship plans, looking for life on the Red Planet, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, robotic versus human exploration, along with the technical challenges ahead, go to the last day of the 2020 Mars Society Virtual Convention at:
https://youtu.be/7F3RVIljLac?t=6
Zubrin’s closing comments begin at: 3:10:12/3:30:42
Illustration of the Gateway. Built with commercial and international partners, NASA says the Gateway is critical to sustainable lunar exploration and will serve as a model for future missions to Mars.
Credit: NASA
Mike Griffin previously served as NASA Administrator (2005-2009). He spoke during the Mars Society’s “Rising Together to Mars” meeting, offering a set of what he termed “provocative comments.”
Prevent stupid
Provocative comment #6: “We need to prevent stupid,” Griffin said.
Four Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit types, multiple revolutions in a rotating Earth-Moon frame.
Credit: NASA/JSC
Mike Griffin speaks to Mars Society attendees.
Credit: Mars Society/Inside Outer Space screengrab
“Space professionals need to speak up when stupid is being advocated. So if you’re going to go to the Moon and if you view that as a step along the way to Mars, as I do, then publicly-offered architectures, such as use of a Lunar Gateway and near-rectilinear halo orbits and such clap trap — invented because the deep space vehicle Orion, in its current incarnation doesn’t have enough total impulse to get itself in and out of lower lunar orbit or better lunar orbit — architectures like that need to be labeled as stupid and set aside…we need to prevent stupid and advocate smart.”
To view Griffin’s remarks, view them at:
https://youtu.be/0j4brmQri4k?t=75
Go to: 1:17:06/4:16:43
Curiosity’s latest drill hole, “Groken” in the nodule-laden section of rock. Nodules are the dark areas in the image.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now conducting Sol 2914 tasks.
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 2913, October 16, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Curiosity is mostly chilling out this weekend while researchers continue to investigate the latest drill hole, “Groken,” reports Ashley Stroupe, a mission operations engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The sample collected comes from a nodule-rich corner of rock.
“In the process of drilling, Curiosity broke the rock, which can sometimes happen when we are close to an edge, but still collected enough sample to perform detailed analyses,” Stroupe adds.
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 2913, October 16, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Strong signal
In a plan last week, sample was delivered to robot’s Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction/X-Ray Fluorescence Instrument (CheMin) for analysis in order to determine the composition of the nodules, Stroupe explains.
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 2913, October 16, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“The preliminary results look good – we have a full cell and a strong signal,” Stroupe notes. The top priority is to do more CheMin analysis on the sample and improve the data before deciding whether to deliver sample to the robot’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Instrument Suite.
This meant the rover planners had a day off before resuming the sampling campaign activities next week.
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) photo acquired on Sol 2913, October 16, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Local variability
In addition to CheMin, Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) and Mastcam are also being targeted on the area around the drill hole – on “Villians,” “Vond,” and “Clibberswick” – to support the investigation into the nodules by examining local variability.
ChemCam is also taking more high resolution Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) telescope images of the “Housedon Hill” area “to help us test hypotheses and inform where we should go in the Mt. Sharp sulfate unit,” Stroupe reports.
Storm season
“As we’re now fully into the windy and dust storm season at Gale Crater, we’ve tasked Curiosity with a lot of environmental observations,” Stroupe explains.
Atmospheric observations include standard Mastcam crater rim extinction, cloud movies, zenith movies, and taus (dust opacity measurements), as well as Navcam line of sight imaging and a suprahorizon movie.
“We’re keeping a sharp eye out for dust devils with both Navcam and Mastcam dust devil movies. Lastly, we’re looking at local changes with Mastcam deck monitoring and change detection on the ‘Upper Ollach’ trench target,” Stroupe concludes.
Credit: Nokia/Bell Labs
Nokia’s Bell Labs is working under a new $14.1 million NASA Tipping Point award to deploy the first LTE/4G (Long-Term Evolution) communications system in space. The system could support lunar surface communications at greater distances, increased speeds, and provide more reliability than current standards.
According to Bell Labs, the first wireless network on the Moon would start with 4G/LTE technologies and evolve to 5G.
Bell Labs is partnered with Intuitive Machines of Houston, a group that also was awarded a $41.6 million Tipping Point award to develop a small, deployable hopper lander capable of carrying a 2.2-pound (1-kilogram) payload more than 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers). This hopper could access lunar craters and enable high-resolution surveying of the lunar surface over a short distance.
NASA has selected Intuitive Machines to deliver a drill combined with a mass spectrometer to the Moon.
Credit: NASA
Back in April, Intuitive Machines (IM) engineers selected an area in Oceanus Procellarum near Vallis Schröteri as the landing site for its upcoming IM-1 lunar mission with an anticipated launch date in
October 2021.
On October 16, NASA also selected IM to deliver the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment (PRIME-1) drill, combined with a mass spectrometer, to the Moon by December 2022. The ice drilling mission is the Houston-based company’s second Moon contract award under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
Credit: Intuitive Machines
High-definition streaming
According to Bell Labs, the communications network will be keyed to data transmission applications, including the control of lunar rovers, real-time navigation over lunar geography, & streaming of high definition video.
The mission critical Long-Term Evolution network is specially designed to withstand the extreme temperature, radiation and vacuum conditions of space, as well as vibration impact during launch and landing on the lunar surface.
“This fully integrated cellular network meets the stringent size, weight and power constraints of space payloads in the smallest possible form factor,” reports Bell Labs. “This mission will validate the future of other operational deployments and the potential for human habitation on the Moon.
Curiosity Mast Camera Right image taken on Sol 2910, October 13, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA Curiosity Mars rover is now carrying out Sol 2912 duties.
Curiosity Mast Camera Right image taken on Sol 2910, October 13, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Curiosity has been hard at work, taming the “Groken,” the 29th successful drill hole on Mars, reports Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick.
A recent plan saw the Mars science team transition into the analysis part of a drill campaign sol path.
“We have practiced this quite a bit now, having drilled six holes in the past 9 months, three of which are on the bedrock slab in front of us,” O’Connell-Cooper says.
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Right B image taken on Sol 2911, October 14, 2020. Photo shows three successful drill holes on the same bedrock slab. “Groken” is the furthest away, at the top of the slab. “Mary Anning 3” is closest to the front of the image, and “Mary Anning 1” is in the center of the bedrock. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The sample will be delivered to the robot’s Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction/X-Ray Fluorescence Instrument (CheMin) to determine the mineralogical composition of the specimen.
Close approach
O’Connell-Cooper underscores the close approach between Earth and Mars that occurred on Oct. 6th. Mars was a mere 38.6 million miles from Earth (closest approach in 15 years, not to be beaten until 2052) and full opposition on Oct. 13th. “Mars and Curiosity feel almost close enough to touch!”
While the Curiosity rover is currently closer to home than at any point in her mission, “we will still have to wait until the weekend for the results,” O’Connell-Cooper adds. “As we wait, ChemCam [Chemistry and Camera] is documenting the drill hole, and some additional bedrock targets here, along a fracture in the drilled bedrock (“Fladdabister” and “Glendaruel”) and on a neighboring bedrock slab (“Melby Fish Beds”).”
The rover’s Mastcam will document the ChemCam targets, in addition to taking images of the CheMin inlet before and after the sample is dropped off, and a tau (atmospheric opacity) measurement for the environmental group, O’Connell-Cooper concludes.
Credit: NASA/HeroX
There’s a new challenge on the table – developing miniature payload prototypes that can be sent to the Moon – to fill in the gaps in our lunar knowledge.
Back in April of this year, fourteen teams were recognized and rewarded for their innovative approaches to miniature payload development.
But now there’s a larger agenda in the shaping of micro-payloads for the Moon; five of the teams will rely on crowdsourcing to recruit new team members and fill any resource gaps they might have.
Insert payload here
Credit: NASA/HeroX
The teams recruiting new members have indicated the expertise they are seeking in their respective project description. Those teams are as follows:
— Puli Lunar Water Snooper
— M.E.G.A.M.A.N. (Moon Element Gas Absorption to Mark Abundant Nodes)
— Lunar Radiation Characterization
— Moon soil resources from seismic waves
— Adaptable Science Box for Lunar Rovers
Roomba®-sized rovers
Announced today, the teams in this second phase competition will have the opportunity to win $800,000 in development funds and prizes and potentially see their payloads deployed on the Moon.
Imagine a rover the size of your Roomba® crawling across the lunar landscape.
Small rovers developed by NASA and commercial partners provide greater mission flexibility and allow researchers to collect key information about the lunar surface.
However, existing science payloads are too big, too heavy, and require too much power for these rovers and new, miniaturized payload designs are needed.
Payloads need to be similar in size to a new bar of soap to fit cleanly inside the rover (maximum external dimensions: 100mm x 100mm x 50mm).
More efficient payloads
“Smaller, more efficient payloads provide us with greater mission flexibility,” said Andrew Shapiro, Manager of Technology Formulation for the Space Technology Office at NASA JPL.
“Ultimately, the information gathered by these miniature rovers and their payloads,” Shapiro added, “will inform our near-term mission designers and help us prepare for long-term habitation on the Moon.”
Moon base design.
Credit: ESA/P. Carril
To get involved, visit the Teams tab of the challenge and see the teams that are recruiting new members and what capabilities and areas of expertise those different teams need.
New team members must be aged 18 or older and may originate from any country, as long as United States federal sanctions do not prohibit participation (some restrictions apply).
Give a tiny bot a new set of tools to explore the Moon. Share your ideas for a mini-payload to make lunar exploration more effective.
Working with NASA on this competitive journey is HeroX – a social network for crowdsourcing innovation and human ingenuity, co-founded in 2013 by serial entrepreneur, Christian Cotichini and XPRIZE Founder and Futurist, Peter Diamandis.
For detailed information regarding the first phase of the tournament – and the who’s who regarding the already selected 14 teams, go to:
https://www.herox.com/NASApayload/community
NASA is set to launch their “Honey I Built the NASA Payload, The Sequel” challenge on the HeroX website today at:
https://www.herox.com/NASAPayload2
The Magic and Menace of SpaceShipOne by Brian Binnie; Black Sky Enterprise; 500 pages; October 4, 2020; Ordering information at: https://brianbinnie.net/
This is an extraordinary book and it is a true, “can’t put it down” volume. Binnie is a former United States Navy officer and test pilot for SpaceShipOne, the experimental spaceplane created by aeronautical pioneer, Burt Rutan, and his innovative company, Scaled Composites.
On October 4, 2004, with Binnie at the controls of SpaceShipOne, he flew the second suborbital flight in one week’s time to capture the $10 million Ansari X Prize flight purse. That pioneering passage of space and time marked a new era of commercial space flight. How the author claimed his rocket ride into the history books is an entrancing story.
“Spaceships are dangerous things. There are no intentions implied to suggest otherwise,” Binnie writes. And that’s found well before the main text, carried on the “All rights reserved” page.
The author is far from being reticent, scripting an absorbing, humbling and tell-all account of his following Rutan’s “Looking Up… Way Up” credo to his own insights of “Looking Down…Way Down.”
By way of 47 chapters and scads of edifying sidebars, the author steers the reader through a saga of volatile technical challenges encountered in his career, doing so in humorous, often self-effacing writing style.
There’s great historic content in the chapter, “Rotary Unraveled,” describing his 1999 copilot experience in flying Rotary Rocket’s Roton vehicle, built to be a single stage to orbit spaceship.
The three-and-a-half years it took to pull off the milestone-making SpaceShipOne program spared no one, Binnie notes, and by the end, those involved were left exhausted.
Binnie writes in admiring detail about his colleague, Mike Melvill, the person that, among a number of flight test duties, flew SpaceShipOne on its first flight past the edge of space in June 2004, months later to pilot the first competitive flight in the Ansari X Prize competition.
“Burt’s spaceship, like many of his aeronautical designs, was elegant. Simple. Tidy. Reusable. And very, very clever. You could say it was magic,” Binnie points out.
In detailing his December 17, 2003 flight — the craft’s first powered trip skyward that ended in a skid off the runway — he dryly recalls: “There was magic in the air. That is, until I crashed SpaceShipOne,” he explains “And as the grating, grinding noise gradually subsided, the only sound left in the cockpit duly recorded — but thankfully muted in the Discovery Channel documentary — was me practicing my French,” Binnie explains.
Once again, the reader will find this book revealing and riveting.
As Binnie makes clear, this volume was created entirely by an author that has had forty years of “wrestling with recalcitrant machinery” doing its best to be lethal, but proving to be useful training.
That said, he adds “if you’ve got no fears, you’ve got no dreams.”
For more information on this book, go to:
