New NOAA commercial fishing regulations established last year are destroying small family-owned businesses.
A reason to avoid US Airways: A woman was thrown off of a US Airways plane for taking a photo of a rude employee.
It is also a reason to fly Southwest, as that airline stepped forward and got the woman and her husband home.
Mining the moon for water and fuel.
Texas-based Shackleton Energy Company has already begun operations aimed at mining the Moon within the next few years. The company’s plans for mining and refining operations would involve melting the ice and purifying the water, converting the water into gaseous hydrogen and oxygen, and then condensing the gases into liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen and hydrogen peroxide, all potential rocket fuels.
Shackleton CEO Dale Tietz says the water extracted would be used almost exclusively as rocket fuel to power operations both within Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – such as space tourism and the removal of space-debris – on the Moon, and further out into space. ‘We are a for-profit business enterprise moving forward, and so we are only going there really for one reason and that is to mine, prospect mine and harvest water for rocket propellant production,’ says Tietz.
Getting rare-earth elements, needed for electronics, from ocean floor mud?
The families of the Challenger astronauts come out in favor of commercial private manned spaceflight.
Hooray for imperialism! In a poll Jamaicans overwhelming long for the return of British colonial rule.
A report on the first tests of the LightSquared wireless service says that it will produce widespread interference to GPS systems, especially for aviation. LightSquared meanwhile has told the FCC the problem is the fault of the GPS industry.
Who wins? NJ legislature has passed a ban on fracking for natural gas, while NY has moved to lift its ban.
Biosphere 2 gets a new owner and a boost in funding.
Capitalism in space: China has purchased a three Earth observation satellite constellation from a United Kingdom firm.
Another private space plane moves forward.
The cost of solar energy is plummeting.
Though it can’t work in many places in the world and therefore can’t completely replace the electrical grid, this is still good news.
One of the rocket engines for Orbital Science’s Taurus rocket, to be used to supply cargo to ISS, was badly damaged in a fuel fire June 9.
The results of the investigation and prognosis for the engine and the Taurus II should come together by the end of this week or early next week, Beneski says. Two other AJ26 engines have completed hot-fire acceptance testing without mishap, according to the Aerojet website. Beneski said the engine mishap potentially affects the testing planned to get the Taurus II ready for operational missions to resupply the ISS.
From Clark Lindsey: Branson says Virgin Galactic will fly a suborbital flight within a year.
Better buy that ticket now if you want to see the last shuttle launch from the best spot: Online prices have soared for space shuttle Atlantis launch tickets.
Busy day for travel to and from ISS: The European unmanned ATV freighter Johannes Kepler burned up in the atmosphere even as a Russian Progress freighter was launched.
In related news, the U.S. and ESA are in negotiations to merge the European unmanned ATV freighter program with NASA’s manned Orion derivative. At the same time, Europe has announced its plans to test fly a reusable space plane.
The first Soyuz launch from French Guiana has now been scheduled for October 20, 2011.
According to the chief of the Russian space agency, it presently does not have the capacity to produce additional Soyuz capsule for tourist flights.
How pasta became the world’s favourite food.
SpaceShipTwo completes two glide test flights within twenty-four hours.
SpaceX gets another launch contract for its Falcon 9.
Scaled Composites continues to ramp up the test flight program of SpaceShipTwo. More here.
Another example of airline stupidity, which is why I drive whenever I can: Delta Airlines charges returning GIs $2,800 in bags fees.
Most of the GIs, it seems, had four bags. Delta only allows three for free in coach, “and anything over three bags, you have to pay for,” another soldier said, “even though there’s a contract between the U.S. government and Delta Airlines.”
A bright future for commercial space: A market research firm predicts the launching of more than 1,600 satellites, worth $250 billion, in the next fifteen years.
The photography of the first clown in space.
The first test flight of the Copenhagen Suborbitals rocket, designed to carry one passenger, launched successfully today, though there were problems with the parachutes.
Oil money in Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Venezuela is fueling their modest space efforts.
This week there was a bit of a political kerfuffle during House hearings over a House report [pdf] that stated that the cost per pound for launching cargo to ISS was much cheaper using the shuttle versus the new commercial companies under the COTS program. This is shown in this table from page 5 of the report:
The problem is that these numbers are a complete lie, as they are based on a yearly cost of $3 billion to operate the shuttle (highlighted in yellow). I have been following NASA budget battles now for decades, and the shuttle operational budget has never, ever been that low. Routinely, NASA figures the cost to operate the shuttle per year, regardless of number of flights, to be about $4 billion per year.
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Bigelow expands its space station factory. Via Clark Lindsey.
There is a pattern here: Gasoline prices by county.
