It is only your future!

Better get liberals out, they are anti space. Control of space imperative for survival !
Better wake up, before it is too late!!!!!

Fwd: NEW! Apollo 11 Launch

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Peter M. Callahan" <pmcallah@ix.netcom.com>
Date: July 27, 2016 at 9:20:45 PM CDT
To: Martin Bobby <bobbygmartin1938@gmail.com>
Subject: NEW!  Apollo 11 Launch

Go NASA!  Go USA!

NEW!  Apollo 11 Launch As It Happened: NBC NEWS TV original full coverage, July 16, 1969

https://youtu.be/fY02SoExbhs

Sent from my iPhone

WHY??

Jim Hillhouse

March 5, 2014 at 7:19 pm

Well, after talking to Capitol Hill staffers, they too are suffering the same head issues I am. At least I'm in good company.

Rather than talk about what Congress will or will not pay for, let's review what Congress has done since 2010 on space funding.

Congress has, on its own and despite both opposition from the Administration and aggressive delaying tactics on the SLS and Orion programs from NASA, appropriated those amounts needed to keep both Orion and SLS on track. And just as it's done since 2010, Congress is going to do what it wants on HSF, which is fund Orion and SLS fully. 

What Congress sees is not a justification for Commercial Crew. Far from it. Congressional staffers are well aware of the true progress of that program and no, none of those players are getting us to ISS anytime soon. That's largely NASA's fault since Congress has informed it that the CCP program needed to down-selected years ago to better focus limited resources for faster progress. But NASA's leadership didn't do that for political reasons. Loose Boeing and CCP looses luster and respectability. Loose Sierra Nevada and we working on three capsule programs. And if you want to make engineers working in GN&C or ELSS laugh, tell them that one of the CCP companies will be flying crews by 2016. Guffaws galore. 

And those in Congress specializing in space are well aware that, had getting independent access to ISS for our nation really been Job #1 for NASA's leadership, then the Administration would have approved Boeing's proposal for the X-37B follow-on, the 5 crew X-37C. We are talking about a dependable spacecraft that can sit in orbit for over a year and NASA said no to making it a crewed vehicle. Why?

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/03/x-37b-expanded-capabilities-iss-missions/

What Congress does see is that if we had not gone through the nonsense of 2010, we would be much closer to our own capability to launch crews to ISS than we are today. Instead, Neil Armstrong was right–the Administration changed our nation's HSF course in secret, without consultation, and mucked things up.

When it comes to the Moon, Congress is funding $3.5B annually on the DDTE for Orion and SLS. Anything else will have to wait for a new Administration as there is zero trust right now in Congress of anything the White House or NASA HQ are selling about human spaceflight.

Sent from my iPad

A BIG PROBLEM!!!!!!

Lack of control of space will be a big issue in the next ten years !
Obama/ Clinton pleased they have destroyed this important/unique capability-- re Abbey-- Lost in Space--- Washington Examiner. Wake up AMERICA !

John Kerry: Climate change as dangerous as ISIS - Uncensored

https://www.zerocensorship.com/uncensored/john-kerry/climate-change-as-dangerous-as-isis-297447


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AGW

In Science, Ignorance is not Bliss

by Walter Cunningham  

NASA has played a key role in one of the greatest periods of scientific progress in history. It is uniquely positioned to collect the most comprehensive data on our biosphere.

For example, recently generated NASA data enabled scientists to finally understand the Gulf Stream warming mechanism and its effect on European weather. Such data will allow us to improve our models, resulting in better seasonal forecasts.

NASA's Aqua satellite is showing that water vapor, the dominant greenhouse gas, works to offset the effect of carbon dioxide (CO2). This information, contrary to the assumption used in all the warming models, is ignored by global warming alarmists.

Climate understanding and critical decision making require comprehensive data about our planet's land, sea, and atmosphere. Without an adequate satellite system to provide such data, policy efforts and monitoring international environmental agreements are doomed to failure. Our satellite monitoring capability is being crippled by interagency wrangling and federal budget issues. As much as a third of our satellites need replacing in the next couple of years.

NASA should be at the forefront in the collection of scientific evidence and debunking the current hysteria over human-caused, or Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Unfortunately, it is becoming just another agency caught up in the politics of global warming, or worse, politicized science. Advocacy is replacing objective evaluation of data, while scientific data is being ignored in favor of emotions and politics.

There are excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the Sun and the Earth's temperature, while scientists cannot find a relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption, and global temperatures. But global warming is an issue no longer being decided in the scientific arena.

Saying the Earth is warming is to state the obvious. Since the end of the ice age, the Earth's temperature has increased approximately 16 degrees Fahrenheit and sea levels have risen a total of 300 feet. That is certain and measurable evidence of warming, but it is not evidence of AGW—human-caused warming.

We can track the temperature of the Earth back for millennia. Knowing the temperature of the Earth, past or present, is a matter of collecting data, analyzing it, and coming up with the best answer to account for the data. Collecting such data on a global basis is a NASA forte.

I believe in global climate change, but there is no way that humans can influence the temperature of our planet to any measurable degree with the tools currently at their disposal. Any human contribution to global temperature change is lost in the noise of terrestrial and cosmic factors.

Our beautiful home planet has been warming and cooling for the last 4.8 billion years. Most recently, it has been warming—be it ever so slightly—but there is nothing unusual about it! The changes and rates of change in the Earth's temperature, just since the Industrial Revolution, have occurred many times in our climatic history. While climate scientists generally agree that the Earth's temperature is always changing, not many of them would say that humans are responsible for those changes.

None of this is to say there are not legitimate reasons to restrict emissions of any number of chemicals into the atmosphere. We should just not fool ourselves into thinking we will change the temperature of the Earth by doing so.

In a December 2007 Senate report, 400 prominent scientists signed a letter pointing out that climate change was a well-known natural phenomenon, and that adapting to it is far more sensible than attempting to prevent it. Their ranks included experts in climatology, geology, oceanography, biology, glaciology, biogeography, meteorology, economics, chemistry, mathematics, environmental sciences, engineering, physics, and paleo-climatology. Their message: When changes are gradual, man has an almost infinite ability to adapt and evolve.

The fearmongers of global warming base their case on the correlation between CO2 and global temperature, even though we cannot be sure which is cause and which is effect. Historically, temperature increases have preceded high CO2 levels, and there have been periods when atmospheric CO2 levels were as much as 16 times what they are now, periods characterized not by warming but by glaciation. You might have to go back half a million years to match our current level of atmospheric CO2, but you only have to go back to the Medieval Warming Period, from the 10th to the 14th Century, to find an intense global warming episode, followed immediately by the drastic cooling of the Little Ice Age. Neither of these events were caused by variations in CO2 levels.

Even though CO2 is a relatively minor constituent of "greenhouse gases," alarmists have made it the whipping boy for global warming (probably because they know how fruitless it would be to propose controlling other principal constituents, H2O, CH4, and N2O). Since human activity does contribute a tiny portion of atmospheric CO2, they blame us for global warming.

Other inconvenient facts ignored by the activists: Carbon dioxide is a nonpolluting gas, essential for plant photosynthesis. Higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere produce bigger harvests.

In spite of warnings of severe consequences from rising seas, droughts, severe weather, species extinction, and other disasters, the U.S. has not been stampeded into going along with the recommendations of the UN Panel on Climate Change—so far. Even though evidence supports the American position, we have begun to show signs of caving in to the alarmists.

With scientific evidence going out of style, emotional arguments and anecdotal data are ruling the day. The media subjects us to one frightening image of environmental nightmare after another, linking each to global warming. Journalists and activist scientists use hurricanes, wildfires, and starving polar bears to appeal to our emotions, not to our reason. They are far more concerned with anecdotal observations, such as the frozen sea ice inside the Arctic Circle, than they are with understanding why it is happening and how frequently it has occurred in the past.

After warnings that 2007 would be the hottest year on record and a record year for hurricanes, what we experienced was the coolest year since 2001 and, by some measures, the most benign hurricane season in the Northern Hemisphere in three decades.

Even though recent changes in our atmosphere are all within the bounds of the Earth's natural variability, a growing number of people are willing to throw away trillions of dollars on fruitless solutions. Why do we allow emotional appeals and anecdotal data to shape our conclusions and influence our expenditures with the science and technology we have available at our fingertips?

The situation is complex, but the sad state of scientific literacy in America today is partially to blame for belief in AGW. When a 2006 National Science Foundation survey found 25 percent of Americans not knowing the Earth revolves around the Sun, you know that science education is at a new low and society is vulnerable to the emotional appeal of AGW. And don't underestimate the role of politics and political correctness.

The public debate should focus on the real cause of global temperature change and whether we can do anything about it. Is global warming a natural inevitability, or is it AGW—human caused?

The conflict over AGW has deteriorated into a religious war; a war between true believers in human-caused global warming and nonbelievers; between those who accept AGW on faith and those who consider themselves more sensible and better informed. "True believers" are beyond being interested in evidence; it is impossible to reason a person out of positions they have not been reasoned into.

It doesn't help that NASA scientist James Hansen was one of the early alarmists claiming humans caused global warming. Hansen is a political activist who spreads fear even when NASA's own data contradict him.

Warming in the upper atmosphere should occur before any surface warming effect, but NASA's own data show that has not been happening. Global temperature readings—accurate to 0.1 degree Celsius—are gathered by orbiting satellites. Interestingly, in the 18 years those satellites have been recording global temperatures, they have actually shown a slight decrease in average temperatures.

Hansen is currently calling for a reduction of atmospheric CO2 by 10 percent and a moratorium on coal-fired power plants, while claiming the Bush administration is censoring him. Other so-called scientists are saying the world must bring carbon emissions to near zero to keep temperatures from rising.

In today's politically correct environment, many are reluctant to dispute the popular wisdom; when they do, they are frequently ignored. When NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, Hansen's boss and a distinguished scientist in his own right, attempted to draw a distinction between Hansen's personal and political views and the science conducted by his agency, he was soon forced to back off.

It is the true believers who, when they have no facts on their side, try to silence their critics. When former NASA mathematician Ferenc Miskolczi pointed out that "greenhouse warming" may be mathematically impossible, NASA would not allow him to publish his work. Miskolczi dared to question the simplifying assumption in the warming model that the atmosphere is infinitely thick. He pointed out that when you use the correct thickness—about 65 miles—the greenhouse effect disappears! Ergo: no AGW. Miskolczi resigned in disgust and published his proof in the peerreviewed Hungarian journal Weather.

For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric CO2 has continued to accumulate—up about 4 percent in the last 10 years—the global mean temperature has remained flat. That should raise obvious questions about CO2 being the cause of climate change.

Instead, AGW enthusiasts are embracing more regulation, greater government spending, and higher taxes in a futile attempt to control what is beyond our control—the Earth's temperature. One of their political objectives, unstated of course, is the transfer of wealth from rich nations to poor nations or, as the social engineers put it, from the North to the South, which may be their real agenda.

At the Bali Conference on Climate Change in December 2007, the poor nations insisted that the costs of technology to limit emissions and other impacts of climate change on their countries be paid by the rich nations. Most anticipated a windfall of money flowing into their countries to develop technology or purchase carbon credits. In this scenario, selling allotments for CO2 emissions would provide a temporary boost to their own cash flow, while severely limiting the economic development of those countries purchasing the carbon credits.

In the face of overwhelming evidence for natural temperature variation, proponents of AGW are resorting to a precautionary argument: "We must do something just in case we are responsible, because the consequences are too terrible if we are to blame and do nothing." They hope to stampede government entities into committing huge amounts of money before their fraud is completely exposed—before science and truth save the day.

Politicians think they can reverse global warming by stabilizing CO2 emissions with a cockamamie scheme of "cap and trade." A government entity would sell CO2 allocations to those industries producing it. The trillions of dollars in new taxes and devastation to the economy would be justified by claiming it will lower the temperature of the Earth. This rationalization is dependent on two assumptions: (1) that CO2 is responsible for the cause of changes in the Earth's temperature, and (2) a warmer Earth would be bad for humanity.

The reality is that atmospheric CO2 has a minimal impact on greenhouse gases and world temperature. Water vapor is responsible for 95 percent of the greenhouse effect. CO2 contributes just 3.6 percent, with human activity responsible for only 3.2 percent of that. That is why some studies claim CO2 levels are largely irrelevant to global warming.

Without the greenhouse effect to keep our world warm, the planet would have an average temperature of minus 18 degrees Celsius. Because we do have it, the temperature is a comfortable plus 15 degrees Celsius. Based on the seasonal and geographic distribution of any projected warming, a good case can be made that a warmer average temperature would be even more beneficial for humans.

For a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars a cap-and-trade system would eventually cost the United States, we could pay for development of clean coal, oil-shale recovery systems, and nuclear power, and have enough left over to pay for exploration of our solar system.

By law, NASA cannot involve itself in politics, but it can surely champion the role of science to inform politicians. With so many uninformed and misguided politicians ignoring the available science, NASA should fill the void. NASA is synonymous with science. Allowing our priorities to drift away from hard science is tantamount to embracing decadence. NASA will surely suffer; and politicizing science is killing it.

I do see hopeful signs that some true believers are beginning to harbor doubts about AGW. Let's hope that NASA can focus the global warming discussion back on scientific evidence before we perpetrate an economic disaster on ourselves.

Sent from my iPad

Fwd: Air Force: DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 involved in “debris causing event”

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: July 20, 2016 at 10:17:36 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Air Force: DigitalGlobe's WorldView-2 involved in "debris causing event"

 

U.S. Air Force: DigitalGlobe's WorldView-2 involved in "debris causing event"

by Mike Gruss — July 19, 2016

Artist's concept of DigitalGlobe's Worldview-2 satellite. Credit: Ball Aerospace

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Air Force said one of DigitalGlobe's high-resolution imagery satellites was part of what they described as a debris-causing event July 19, but the company said that the satellite remains operational.

The Joint Space Operations Center, which is the Defense Department's nerve center for space operations and tracks space objects from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, tweeted July 19 that it had identified a debris-causing event related DigitalGlobe's WorldView-2 satellite.

 

19 Jul: JSpOC ID'd debris causing event related to @DigitalGlobe WorldView-2; 8 debris pieces but WV2 confirmed operational &
maneuverable!

— JSpOC (@JointSpaceOps) July 19, 2016

As a result, the JSpOC is tracking eight pieces of debris related to the incident. An estimated time of the event was not immediately available.

"Earlier today JSPOC issued a 'debris causing event' notification related to DigitalGlobe's Worldview-2 satellite," the Longmont, Colorado-based company tweeted. "WorldView-2 is currently operational and is performing standard maneuvering and imaging tasks."

 

[1 of 2] Earlier today JSPOC issued a "debris causing event" notification related to DigitalGlobe's Worldview-2 satellite.

— DigitalGlobe (@DigitalGlobe) July 19, 2016

[2 of 2] WorldView-2 is currently operational and is performing standard maneuvering and imaging tasks.

— DigitalGlobe (@DigitalGlobe) July 19, 2016

As if to underscore the satellite's health, the company tweeted an image of downtown Oakland, California from the satellite taken this afternoon.

 

@SpaceNews_Inc hot off the presses: WorldView-2 image of downtown Oakland captured 3-1/2 hours ago! pic.twitter.com/GoHMBTW7le

— DigitalGlobe (@DigitalGlobe) July 20, 2016

Air Force Capt. Nicholas Mercurio, a spokesman for U.S. Strategic Command's Joint Functional Component Command for Space and the 14^th Air Force, said DigitalGlobe is conducting an investigation into what happened.

WorldView-2 prior to its 2009 launch.

 © 2016 SpaceNews, Inc. All rights reserved.

 

---

 

 

Fwd: 55 Years Since Gus Grissom’s Flight in the Liberty Bell

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: July 24, 2016 at 6:09:09 PM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: 55 Years Since Gus Grissom's Flight in the Liberty Bell

 

AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
July 23rd, 2016 

'Isn't That Good Enough?' 55 Years Since Gus Grissom's Flight in the Liberty Bell (Part 1)

By Ben Evans

 

The white crack on the side of his capsule, paralleling that on the real Liberty Bell, is visible to the left of this pre-launch image of Virgil "Gus" Grissom. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

Had Virgil "Gus" Grissom lived longer, wrote Deke Slayton in his autobiography, Deke, he would have been the first man on the Moon. Slayton found himself in charge of the selection and training of astronauts for the two-man Gemini and Moon-bound Apollo missions by late 1962. After Grissom's death in the Apollo 1 fire, it was Slayton who ultimately chose Neil Armstrong to command the first manned lunar landing. Yet, he wrote, "had Gus been alive, as a Mercury astronaut, he would have taken that step … my first choice would have been Gus." Grissom was America's second man in space, the first astronaut to eat a corned beef sandwich in orbit, and a man who fiercely guarded his privacy. "Betty and I run our lives as we please," he once said. "We don't care about fads or frills. We don't give a damn about the Joneses."

Fifty-five years ago, this week, America delivered its second citizen beyond the "sensible" atmosphere and into space. Grissom's mission—like that of his predecessor, Al Shepard—lasted barely 15 minutes and achieved suborbital flight. It was a far cry from the complete Earth orbit accomplished by the first man in space, Russia's Yuri Gagarin, but it demonstrated that America was definitively in the game of human space exploration.

Unwilling to fly a desk in the aftermath of World War II, Grissom left the U.S. Air Force, but subsequently rejoined the service and rose to become one of its most accomplished fliers. Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

Born in the Midwestern town of Mitchell, Ind., Grissom was small for his age and was nicknamed "Greasy Grissom" as a child, but grew up with a determination to "prove I could do things as well as the big boys." His father worked for almost a half-century on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and Grissom, too small to participate in school sports, eventually established himself as a Boy Scout, where he led the Honor Guard. He delivered newspapers and, in the summertime, picked peaches and cherries for local growers to earn enough money to date his school sweetheart, Betty Moore, whom he married in July 1945. By this time, he had left school—described by his principal as "an average, solid citizen, who studied just about enough to get a diploma"—and served a year as an aviation cadet. His hopes of joining the theater of war evaporated when Japan surrendered.

Unwilling to fly a desk, Grissom left the U.S. Air Force and took a job installing doors on school buses, before studying mechanical engineering at Purdue. Whilst there, his wife worked as a long-distance operator and Grissom flipped burgers at a local diner. He received his degree in 1950, crediting Betty for making it possible, and re-enlisted in the Air Force, finished cadet training, and won his wings the following year. His completion of training coincided with the outbreak of war in Korea, and Grissom soon found himself in the thick of the conflict for six months, flying a hundred combat missions in sleek F-86 Sabre jets.

An interesting tale surrounds his early days in Korea. Each morning, the pilots rode an old school bus from the hangar to the flight line and only those who had been involved in air-to-air combat could sit. The uninitiated had to stand. Grissom stood only once.

His first taste of war came as a surprise—"For a moment, I couldn't figure out what those little red things were going by," he said later, "then I realized I was being shot at!"—and he returned to the United States to be awarded both the Air Medal with a cluster and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Subsequent assignments, which he actually considered more dangerous than combat flying, included instructing new cadets at Bryan Air Force Base in Texas, studying aeronautical engineering at the Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and being chosen in October 1956 for Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. By this time, Grissom had earned a reputation as one of the best "jet jockies" in the service, with more than 3,000 hours of flight time, and was also father to two young boys.

Haunting view of Gus Grissom on his way toward the Redstone rocket, ahead of becoming America's second man in space. Photo Credit: NASA

When the Soviets launched Sputnik in late 1957, Grissom took notice, but was far too preoccupied with his job of wringing out new jets at Wright-Patterson to give much consideration to space travel. Then, a little over a year later, he received a teletype message, labeled "Top Secret," which instructed him to go to Washington, D.C., in civilian clothes for a classified briefing. Mystified, Grissom found that he had been picked as one of 110 candidates for "Project Mercury"—the initiative to send a man into space—and the events of 1959 would truly change his life. "I did not think my chances were very big when I saw some of the other men who were competing for the team," he said later. "They were a good group and I had a lot of respect for them, but I decided to give it the old school try and take some of NASA's tests." Whilst at Wright-Patterson Aeromedical Laboratory, undergoing test after test, his run on the treadmill had to be stopped abruptly when his heart soared to almost 200 beats per minute. On the other hand, he endured the heat chamber perfectly, keeping cool by reading a dog-eared copy of Reader's Digest, "to keep from getting bored."

He nearly flunked, when the doctors discovered he was a hay fever sufferer, but Grissom, without missing a beat, convinced them that the absence of ragweed pollen in space probably would not be a problem. He viewed the psychological tests as illogical. "I tried not to give the headshrinkers anything more than they were actually looking for," he said. "I played it cool and tried not to talk myself into a hole." Fortunately for Grissom, "talking" was not one of his strengths. Astronauts and managers recalled that he rarely spoke unless he had something to say, and during a visit to the Convair Corp. in San Diego, Calif.—prime contractor for Project Mercury's Atlas rocket—he told workers to "do good work." Ironically, those three words turned into a motto of incalculable value to the Convair workforce.

Even after his selection as one of the "Mercury Seven"—alongside Scott Carpenter, John Glenn, Gordon Cooper, Wally Schirra, Al Shepard, and Deke Slayton—Grissom would privately question why he had volunteered to fly a bomb-carrying missile into space. The answer came instantly: "I happened to be a career officer in the military and, I think, a deeply patriotic one. If my country decided that I was one of the better-qualified people for this new mission, then I was proud and happy to help out." However proud he might have been, one thing that Grissom despised was the moniker of "astronaut." In his mind, it had an irritating PR undertone. One day, his frustration with the title boiled over: "I'm not ass anything," he said. "I'm a pilot. Isn't that good enough?"

On 21 July 1961, he would put his skills to the test … and he almost lost his life in the process.

 

Copyright © 2016 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

---

 

 

 

AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
July 24th, 2016 

'The First Thing I Had Ever Lost': 55 Years Since Gus Grissom's Flight in the Liberty Bell (Part 2)

By Ben Evans

 

This was one of the final views of Liberty Bell 7 on 21 July 1961, before it was lost beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Not until 1999, more than three decades after Grissom's death, would the sunken capsule be returned to the surface. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

Fifty-five years ago, a small, tough, ex-fighter pilot named Virgil "Gus" Grissom became America's second man in space … and almost lost his life in a watery demise at its conclusion. As described in yesterday's AmericaSpace article, he had grown up with a determination to be the best and by April 1959 was selected as a member of the Mercury Seven. His space mission on 21 July 1961 lasted barely 15 minutes. Launched atop a Redstone missile, "Mercury-Redstone 4" would arc high above the Atlantic Ocean and splash down a couple of hundred miles east of Cape Canaveral. In that sense, it was a similar mission to that of America's first astronaut, Al Shepard, in May 1961. In several other senses, however, the two missions were poles apart.

For starters, Grissom's Mercury capsule—which he had nicknamed "Liberty Bell 7"—was the first of its kind to boast a large, trapezoid window, instead of two tiny portholes, which improved his field of view. A makeshift urine collector was also aboard, as was an explosively actuated side hatch. Early plans had called for the Mercury pilots to depart their craft through an antenna compartment in the capsule's nose, but this was so awkward that two hatches were developed: one manual, the other explosive. The hatch was held in place by 70 titanium bolts, each a quarter-inch in diameter, and a mechanical version was flown on Shepard's mission. However, it was three times heavier than its explosive counterpart. As a consequence, the explosive hatch was to be trialed on Grissom's mission. It was a decision which almost proved fatal.

Grissom heads out to the Redstone booster in the small hours of 21 July 1961. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

The explosive hatch contained a mild detonating fuse, installed in a channel between an inner and outer seal around the edge of the hatch. When fired, the gas pressure between the two seals fractured each of the 70 bolts and blew off the hatch. Small holes, drilled into each bolt, provided "weak points" and aided the fracturing process. The fuse could be triggered manually by the astronaut himself, using a plunger close to his right arm, or from outside the capsule by means of an external lanyard. The performance of the hatch on the Liberty Bell 7 mission would, in some eyes, tarnish Grissom's reputation for the rest of his life and even today continues to arouse fierce debate.

During training, Grissom established his reputation as a "hands-on" pilot, attending meetings, supervising some of the engineering work and, he said, "fretting a little over whether all of the critical parts would arrive from the subcontractors on time and get put together." Among his concerns were mistakenly switched instruments, which caused the spacecraft to yaw to the left instead of the right, and the failure of the attitude controls, which did not properly center themselves after maneuvers. Throughout June 1961, nagging problems were encountered whilst testing his pressure suit and the spacecraft's rusted clock needed replacement. To ensure that he did not take himself out of the running for the mission, Grissom gave up water-skiing and calmed down some of his raucous exploits in his Corvette. As souvenirs for the flight, he took two rolls of Mercury dimes—a hundred in all—which he stuffed into the pocket of his suit. It was a decision that he would later live to regret.

Grissom's selection as the prime pilot for Liberty Bell 7, with John Glenn serving as backup, was ratified on 15 July 1961 and launch was scheduled for three days later. Part of what was becoming traditional was naming the capsule. Grissom's choice honored the famous Liberty Bell, today housed in Philadelphia, Penn., and considered one of the most important symbols of the American War of Independence. The Bell epitomizes freedom, nationhood, and the abolition of slavery. Cast in 1751, its most famous ringing, supposedly, occurred a quarter-century later to summon Philadelphia's citizenry for a reading of the Declaration of Independence.

When questioned, Grissom explained that the bell's message of freedom and similarity of shape with the spacecraft had influenced his decision. To further honor the original bell—which cracked during its first ringing, was repaired, cracked again in 1846, and was eventually rendered unusable—it was decided to paint a large white fracture along the side of the spacegoing Liberty Bell. "No one seemed quite sure what the crack looked like," said Grissom, "so we copied it from the tails side of a 50-cent piece."

On 17 July, the day before the planned launch, Grissom and Glenn relaxed in the crew quarters at Cape Canaveral's Hangar S. Late that same night, the launch was scrubbed by low cloud cover. This decision was taken before the lengthy procedure of loading the Redstone booster with liquid oxygen had begun. This meant that only a 24-hour delay, as opposed to a 48-hour stand-down, would be necessary. Physician Bill Douglas woke Grissom at 1:10 a.m. on 19 July and informed him that the scheduled launch time had been moved up by an hour, to 7 a.m., in the hope that the mission could be underway before a spell of bad weather settled over the Cape.

The plan was for Grissom to eat breakfast and undergo a physical examination. Unfortunately, the astronaut recalled later, "someone forgot to pass the word about the earlier launch time, because breakfast was not ready at 1:45 as it was supposed to be."

The Redstone was a converted weapon of war, retasked to deliver America's first two astronauts into space in May and July 1961. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

After the now-customary procedure of gluing sensors to his body, Grissom was helped into his pressure suit and, at 4:15 a.m., clambered into the white transfer van. Inside, technicians had helpfully stenciled a sign which read Shepard and Grissom Express. Despite the presence of cloudy skies along the entire Atlantic coast, "from Canaveral on north," the astronaut was given the go-ahead at 5 a.m. to board his spacecraft. To alleviate any boredom, Douglas handed Grissom a crossword book. The countdown, though, proceeded normally, albeit with a keen eye on the weather, until T-10 minutes, when the clock was stopped in the hope that conditions might improve.

They didn't.

The launch was scrubbed and, since the Redstone had been fully loaded with liquid oxygen, a 48-hour turnaround was now unavoidable. Early on 21 July, Grissom again suited-up and headed out to Pad 5. Delay after delay hit the countdown: firstly, one of the 70 titanium bolts around the rim of the hatch became cross-threaded, then the pad's searchlights had to be switched off to avoid interfering with telemetry from the rocket. All the while, cloud cover was given the opportunity to move away from the launch area. The astronaut, meanwhile, spoke briefly to his wife, did deep-breathing exercises, and flexed his arms and legs so as not to become too stiff.

At length, at 7:20:36 a.m., Liberty Bell 7 lifted-off.

Passing through the sound barrier, Grissom experienced none of the vibrations that had affected his predecessor, Al Shepard, and the Redstone's engine shut down, as planned, 142 seconds after liftoff. The astronaut felt a "brief tumbling sensation" at this stage and would later describe the clear sound of the escape tower being jettisoned. Two minutes after launch, at an altitude of 18 miles (30 km), Grissom noticed the sky turn rapidly from dark blue to black. He also noticed what he believed to be a faint star, roughly equally as bright as Polaris, but which actually turned out to be the planet Venus; this won him a steak dinner from John Glenn, who had bet him that he would not be able to see any stars or planets.

Observing Earth proved more difficult. Cloud cover over the Gulf of Mexico between Apalachiocola, Fla., and Mobile, Ala., made it virtually impossible for him to discern any land. Still, Grissom was granted a fascinating glimpse through the trapezoid window. "I could make out brilliant gradations of color," he said, "the blue of the water, the white of the beaches, and the brown of the land."

Re-entry posed no significant problems, with the exception that it gave Grissom the peculiar sensation that he had reversed his backward flight through space and was actually moving face-forward. Plummeting toward the Atlantic, he saw what appeared to be the spent retrorockets passing the periscope view. Nine minutes and 41 seconds after launch, the drogue chute deployed, slowing Liberty Bell 7, before the descent was arrested by the jolt of the main canopy. "The capsule started to rotate and swing slowly under the chute as it descended," he said later. "I could feel a slight jar as the landing bag dropped down to take up some of the shock." In spite of a small tear in the main canopy, it did its job, and the spacecraft impacted the Atlantic at 7:35 a.m., completing a mission of 15 minutes and 37 seconds—barely nine seconds longer than Shepard's flight—with what Grissom described as "a good bump." After splashdown, it nosed underwater, with the astronaut lying on his left side with his head down, but slowly righted itself as the impact skirt filled with water and acted as a sea anchor.

After several minutes in the water, and having come close to drowning, Grissom is winched out of the Atlantic to safety. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

He disconnected his oxygen inlet hose, unfastened his helmet from his suit, released the chest strap, lap belt and shoulder harness, and, finally, detached his biosensors. At first, he considered not bothering to unroll a rubber neck dam to keep air in and water out of his suit. "It's a chore to secure the dam," he said of the device, "and I didn't think I'd need it. Fortunately, I reconsidered."

As Grissom moved smartly through his post-landing checks, a quartet of Sikovsky UH-34D helicopters, dispatched from the recovery ship U.S.S. Randolph, were already on the scene. One of their crews, Jim Lewis and John Rinehard, had been tasked with raising Liberty Bell 7 from the water, after which the astronaut would explosively blow the hatch, exit the capsule and be winched aboard the chopper. Seconds after splashdown, Grissom radioed Lewis, callsigned "Hunt Club 1," to ask for a few minutes to finish marking switch positions. Finally, after confirming that he was ready to be picked up, he lay back in his couch and waited.

All at once, "I heard the hatch blow—the noise was a dull thud—and looked up to see blue sky … and water start to spill over the doorsill." The ocean was calm, but Mercury capsules were not designed for their seaworthiness, particularly with an open hatch, and Liberty Bell 7 started to wobble and flood. Grissom, who later admitted that he had "never moved faster" in his life, dropped his helmet, grabbed the right side of the instrument panel, jumped into the water, and swam furiously. "The next thing I knew," he said, "I was floating high in my suit with the water up to my armpits."

Although both cap and safety pin were off the detonator, Grissom later explained that he did not believe he had hit the button to manually blow the hatch. "The capsule was rocking around a little, but there weren't any loose items … so I don't know how I could have hit it, but possibly I did," he told a debriefing that morning aboard the Randolph. Lewis had to dip his helicopter's three wheels into the water to allow Rinehard to hook a cable onto the now-sinking Liberty Bell 7. "Fortunately," Lewis recounted, "the first time John tried, he managed to hook-up while the capsule was totally submerged." Grissom, now in the water, was puzzled, anxious, and then angry, when the helicopter did not lower a horse collar to hoist him aboard.

Lewis, whose own training had shown him that Mercury pressure suits "floated very well" and had seen the astronauts apparently enjoying their time in the water, had no idea that Grissom was in fact close to drowning. The astronaut had inadvertently left open an oxygen inlet connection, which allowed water to seep into his suit and air to leak out. Although he closed the inlet, some air also seeped from the neck dam, causing him to sink lower and regret the weight of souvenirs in his pockets.

The white crack on the side of his capsule, paralleling that on the real Liberty Bell, is visible to the left of this pre-launch image of Virgil "Gus" Grissom. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

Grissom did not know that Lewis was himself struggling with the spacecraft: in addition to the waterlogged capsule, the landing bag had filled with seawater and it now weighed in excess of 4,400 pounds (2,000 kg)—some 1,100 pounds (500 kg) more than the helicopter was designed to lift. Although Lewis felt he could generate sufficient lift to raise Liberty Bell 7 and take it back to the Randolph, every time he pulled it clear of the water and it drained, a swell would rise and fill the capsule again. Lewis' instruments told him that the strain on the engine would allow him only five minutes in the air before it cut out. He therefore released the capsule to sink in 17,700 feet (5,400 meters) of water and requested that another chopper fish Grissom from the water while he nursed his own aircraft back to the ship.

Unaware of the difficulties the astronaut was having—they assumed that his frantic waving was to assure them that he was fine—it was several more minutes before the second helicopter, with George Cox aboard, dropped him a horse collar, which he looped around his neck and arms (albeit backwards) and lifted him to safety. Grissom was so exhausted that he could not even remember the helicopter had dragged him across the water before he finally started ascending. He had been in the water for only four or five minutes, "although it seemed like an eternity."

His first request upon arrival on the Randolph's deck was for something to blow his nose, as his head was full of seawater. A congratulatory call from President John F. Kennedy fell on deaf ears as, for the first time, "my aircraft and I had not come back together. In my entire career as a pilot, Liberty Bell 7 was the first thing I had ever lost."

Worse was to come. At his first post-mission press conference, and in the years to follow, Grissom would be grilled by journalists, not over the success of his mission, but over the festering question of whether he had contributed to the loss of his spacecraft by blowing the hatch. It was an accusation that Grissom would refute until the day he died.

Not surprisingly, his temperature and heart rate were both high when he arrived aboard the Randolph. Physicians described him as "tired and … breathing rapidly; his skin was warm and moist." Years later, in his book The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe pointed to his physiological state as "evidence" that he had panicked inside Liberty Bell 7 … even though Grissom was known to have an abnormally high heart rate. Even the astronaut himself, at his first post-flight press conference in Cocoa Beach's Starlight Motel, admitted that he was "scared" during liftoff, an admission later jumped upon by the media as proof that America's second spaceman had displayed a chink of weakness. Test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., scornfully mocked that Grissom had "screwed the pooch" and his sons were lambasted by their schoolmates for the loss of the capsule. In his own summary for Life magazine, Grissom admitted that "if a guy isn't a little frightened by a trip into space, he's abnormal."

A subsequent investigation from August to October 1961, which included fellow Mercury astronaut Wally Schirra, determined that the astronaut did not contribute in any way to the detonation of the hatch. Indeed, said Schirra, "there was only a very remote possibility that the plunger could have been actuated inadvertently by the pilot." During the inquiry, a fully-suited Schirra wriggled into a Mercury simulator and, no matter how hard he tried, could not "accidentally" trigger the hatch's detonator.

One of the conclusions was that a balloon would be installed in future capsules to allow recovery ships to pick up the spacecraft if the helicopters were forced to drop them. Many other engineers and managers shared the astronauts' conviction that Grissom was blameless. However, even though confidence in him remained high and he went on to command the first Gemini mission, the stigma refused to go away. Some engineers continued to mutter of "a transient malfunction," but had no way to identify it because the evidence lay on the floor of the Atlantic. Not until 1999 would Liberty Bell 7 be salvaged and raised to the surface.

Grissom himself participated exhaustively in the investigation. "I even crawled into capsules and tried to duplicate all of my movements," he said, "to see if I could make the whole thing happen again. It was impossible. The plunger that detonates the bolts is so far out of the way that I would have had to reach for it on purpose to hit it … and this I did not do. Even when I thrashed about with my elbows, I could not bump against it accidentally."

Moreover, to hit the plunger manually would have required sufficient force to produce a nasty bruise, which Grissom did not have. Possibilities explored over the years have included the omission of the ring seal on the detonator's plunger, static electricity from the helicopter, a change of temperature of the exterior lanyard after splashdown, or—a hypothesis that Grissom supported—the entanglement of the lanyard with the straps of the landing bag.

Certainly, launch pad leader Guenter Wendt fiercely discounted all of these theories but one: the entanglement of the exterior lanyard. "It is the most logical explanation," he said, but acquiesced "Can we prove it? No." It is a pity that the mishap—however it happened—should have, in the eyes of the public, marred what had otherwise been a hugely successful mission and which cleared the way for John Glenn's historic orbital flight in February 1962. Was the unfortunate, twice-cracked Liberty Bell to blame for its space-flying namesake's watery demise?

All Grissom would ever say was that Liberty Bell 7 "was the last capsule we would ever launch with a crack in it!"

 

Copyright © 2016 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

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An improved version should be operating today, but libs have destroyed our capabilities and have seriously damaged our economy in many areas!

This unique capability built ISS & Repaired Hubble -- now in museum courtesy of our potus who believes the world in great shape!

Destroyed by this adm!

Fwd: Eileen Collins to GOP: Return space program to past glory

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: July 21, 2016 at 9:17:46 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Eileen Collins to GOP: Return space program to past glory

 

Astronaut Eileen Collins to GOP: Return space program to past glory

By Eric DuVall   |   July 20, 2016 at 9:01 PM

 

 

CLEVELAND, July 20 (UPI) -- Eileen Collins, the first female NASA astronaut to command a space shuttle mission, addressed the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, calling for new leadership to restore America's space program to its former glory.

Speaking on the 47th anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldron first landing on the moon, Collins called on Americans to renew their commitment to the exploration of space.

"In 2011 the space shuttle program ended. The last time the United States launched our own astronauts from our own soil was more than five years ago. We must do better than that," she said.

Space exploration, Collins said, has also benefitted the American economy and contributed to technological advancements and scientific discoveries.

"We landed on the moon to fulfill a leadership challenge and to explore. We know that exploration leads to innovation and discovery," she said.

Collins' speech did not mention any politicians by name, though she did plead for a president who will "make America's space program first again" -- a play on the theme of the convention's third night.

"Nations that lead on the frontier lead in the world. We need that visionary leadership again, leadership that will inspire the next generations of explorers," Collins said.

 

© 2016 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 

 

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Collins, in convention speech, wants the U.S. to be "first again" in space

by Jeff Foust — July 20, 2016

Former astronaut Eileen Collins speaking at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 20. Credit: RNC webcast

WASHINGTON — In a brief but highly anticipated speech at the Republican National Convention July 20, former astronaut Eileen Collins called for the U.S. to be "first again" in space, but stopped short of explicitly endorsing the party's presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

Collins, who spoke for less than four minutes as part of a series of speakers in the first hour of that evening's convention session in Cleveland, praised the country's achievements in the Apollo program on the 47th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 landing, while also suggesting the nation was no longer a leader in space.

"Forty-seven years ago, on this very day, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin answered that call and they walked on the moon," she said, referring to the goal set by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to land humans on the moon by the end of the 1960s. "We landed on the moon to fulfill a leadership challenge, and to explore."

Collins, who became the first woman to shuttle mission in 1999 and also, in 2005, commanded the first shuttle mission after the Columbia accident, was subtly critical of the decision to cancel the shuttle program. That decision that dates back to the rollout of the Vision for Space Exploration by President George W. Bush in January 2004.

"In 2011, the space shuttle program ended. The last time the United States launched our own astronauts from our own soil was over five years ago," she said. The final shuttle mission, STS-135, launched on July 8, 2011. "We must do better than that," she continued, with some cheers from the audience.

"Nations that lead on the frontier lead in the world. We need that visionary leadership again," she said near the end of her speech. "We need leadership that will make America's space program first again, and we need leadership that will make America great again."

Collins did not mention Trump by name in her speech, although the "make America great again" line is also the slogan of the Trump campaign. However, in prepared remarks distributed by the Republican National Committee, her speech included a different final line: "We need leadership that will make America first again. That leader is Donald Trump."

Collins, who retired from the NASA astronaut corps in 2006, criticized the Obama Administration's 2010 decision to cancel the Constellation program in testimony at a hearing of the House Science Committee in February on legislation that would restructure the management of the space agency.

"I was shocked, as were my colleagues, first because it was so unexpected, and second because the timing was so close to the end of the space shuttle program it left NASA with no options," she said.

"I believe program cancellation decisions that are made by bureaucracies behind closed doors, without input by the people, are divisive, damaging, cowardly and many times more expensive in the long run," she said.

Collins spoke after a video aired marking the Apollo anniversary that also recognized Ohio's connections to spaceflight, including the Wright Brothers, Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, the first American in space who later represented the state in the U.S. Senate as a Democrat.

"Say an extra prayer that the U.S. will soon reclaim its rightful place as the leader in space exploration," the video's narrator said near its conclusion. "Because we will summon the courage and strength to make America great again."

Trump, during the primary campaign to win the Republican nomination, made only passing references to space in speeches, and his campaign has not issued a space policy. The Republican platform, approved earlier this week, includes only a brief passage about space, much of it endorsing the use of public-private partnerships.

Hillary Clinton, who will formally receive the Democratic Party nomination for president at that party's convention the week of July 25 in Philadelphia, has also said little about space during the campaign and has not issued a policy. Her campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Collins' speech.

 

 

 © 2016 SpaceNews, Inc. All rights reserved.

 

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Astronaut Eileen Collins Calls for US Space Leadership at GOP Convention

By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | July 20, 2016 11:37pm ET

NASA astronaut Eileen Collins, the first woman ever to pilot and command a space shuttle mission, poses for a photo in the leadup to the STS-93 flight of the shuttle Columbia, which launched in July 1999.

Credit: NASA

The first woman ever to command a space shuttle mission lamented a perceived lack of leadership in the United States' space program tonight (July 20) during a speech at the Republican National Convention.

Speaking on the 47th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing, retired NASA astronaut Eileen Collins urged the nation to reclaim the spirit and glory of the Apollo era.

"We landed on the moon to fulfill a leadership challenge, and to explore," Collins said, referring to President John F. Kennedy's famous 1961 call for NASA to put an astronaut on the moon, and bring him safely home, by the end of the decade. [NASA's Historic Apollo 11 Moon Landing in Pictures]

"We are all so proud of our Apollo program that put our astronauts on the moon first, in peace, for all mankind," she added. "Nations that lead on the frontier lead in the world. We need that visionary leadership again."

Collins pointed to the lack of American crew-carrying spaceships as evidence of a current leadership void.

"In 2011, the space shuttle program ended. The last time the United States launched our own astronauts from our own soil was over five years ago," said Collins, who spent more than 36 days in space over four different space shuttle missions between 1995 and 2005. "We must do better than that."

American astronauts currently launch toward the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft, but things should change soon. Over the past few years, NASA has been funding the development of private astronaut taxis, including Boeing's CST-100 Starliner capsule and SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft. Both vehicles are on track to begin flying astronauts next year, NASA officials have said.

Collins has been critical in the past of the Obama Administration's 2010 cancellation of NASA's moon-oriented Constellation program. Her four-minute speech tonight didn't include any political jabs or endorsements, though she did wrap it up by echoing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's campaign slogan.

"We need leadership that will make America's space program first again," Collins said. "And we need leadership that will make America great again."

Collins wasn't the only one to do some Apollo-gizing tonight. Texas Senator Ted Cruz invoked Apollo 11 as well, linking the historic lunar landing to what he said is a key characteristic of the nation, and the Republican Party in particular.

"That was the power of freedom," said Cruz, who chairs the Senate's Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness. 

 

Copyright © 2016 TechMediaNetwork.com All rights reserved. 

 

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We must do better! Words from Eileen Collins-- WAKE UP! Control of Space IMPERATIVE!!!

You may not believe it, but YOUR SURVIVAL depends on US CONTROL of Space!!

We must do a hell of a lot better-- OR it is OVER!!

Your Survival!!!

I can not stress enough the critical importance of the control of space by the USA ! The way we live in America depends on absolute military supremacy , including operations in space, especially earth orbit. This adm has destroyed our capability & we must get it back. We need our friends to spread the word, to get congress to act. I know this is an uphill battle, but we must keep up the pressure! The astronauts ( older ones) have blogs, & there are many on the net. Mine is keeptheshuttleflyingc.blogspot.com. Real Space Act of 2013, Nasaproblems.com, waltcunningham.com plus many others are available. If you would like to support, please set up a blog & spread the word, we , our country needs your help! Thanks
Bobby Martin

Sent from my iPad

Eileen Collins fmr shuttle cmdr

In any case, her speech was closely watched in the space community and, as delivered, sounded familiar pro-space themes. She did point out that the United States has been unable to launch astronauts into space since the termination of the space shuttle in 2011, exclaiming "We must do better than that," but stayed away from attributing the shuttle's cancellation to either political party. 
Eileen Collins at RNC

Shuttle termination very damaging to the U.S. Bm

Sent from my iPad

At Republican Convention, astronaut Eileen Collins will talk about 'making America first again' in space

http://mashable.com/2016/07/20/astronaut-eileen-collins-republican-convention-speech/#kxyqvs6gNEq1


Sent from my iPad

Men Walk On Moon

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0720.html


Sent from my iPad

Not many give a _____, it seems, but the liberals destruction of this capability may result in the end of AMERICA !

China & Russia weaponizing space & we have to pay russia to get to our Station!

People, you ought to be pissed off! We have nothing & no plans to get our capability back in so far as capability!

As far as I can tell, nobody is raising hell with congress! Lack of control of space will be the end of AMERICA as we know it!!!

Fwd: China Plans to Build Own Space Station

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: July 18, 2016 at 9:35:46 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: China Plans to Build Own Space Station

 

 

China Plans to Build Own Space Station Similar to ISS

© Sputnik/ Ilya Bogachev

 

20:48 15.07.2016

11270130

China is developing its own space station and is building a new site which will be used to launch space stations and space technology. The trial run for the new rocket was a success so the construction of the station will begin in 2018.

 

It is likely that China will play a leading role in this sphere and might replace the ISS program, in which Japan also participates.

Hainan Island is located in the south of China. On June 25 the new space station which was built in one part of this island, a new Changchan-7 rocket, was launched.

China seeks to play a decisive role in the field of space exploration and develop a Chinese version of a space station called Tiangong.

This year should be a historic one for the program development of the Chinese space station. The Chinese Space Agency plans to launch a research orbital module Tiangong-2 in September. It will form the basis for the following modules.

The manned Shenzhou-11 spacecraft, which will go into space in October, is set to dock with the module in orbit. Two astronauts will spend one month on the Tiangong-2.

China's Tiangong space station  involves the idea of allowing a manned spacecraft, as well as two research modules, to attach themselves to the main body of the station.

The station will be located at about 400 kilometers from Earth.

The station will always have three astronauts and the crew will be changed every six months. The crew will carry out scientific experiments and conduct other work.

Construction of Tiangong should be completed in 2022. It is assumed that the station will operate for ten years, but depending on the technical state, the lifetime can be increased. Thus, China will have at its disposal a space station which will be very similar to the International Space Station (ISS).

Moreover, China plans to launch into the near orbit a high-tech telescope. It is expected that in terms of functionality it will not differ from NASA's Hubble space telescope. It is expected to contribute to the study of dark matter and other cosmic questions.

"We will develop international cooperation. We will provide an opportunity to all of countries in space research and will take in astronauts," according to the representative of the manned space flight program Wu Ping at the session of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes, held in mid-June in Vienna.

Wu Ping also reported that China has signed an agreement with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs for the development of international cooperation.

In this regard, Chinese Heritage Foundation specialist Dean Cheng warns that cooperation with China will have great risks. China has no experience in international cooperation in the field of space research. In addition, there are problems with the budget and transparency of the project.

Russia also is entertaining the idea of operating its own space station after 2024. As for the United States, with which Japan has to keep pace, its attention is currently focused on the program of a manned flight to Mars set to take place in 2030.

Currently, Japan is also considering the possibility of cooperation with China.

The main difference between Tiangong and the ISS is the fact that China's space station is set to be two research modules. The development of new materials in microgravity and fundamental research will be the main mission of the space station. China is also ready to provide any country with the opportunity to conduct research.

On the other hand, the research by ISS is carried out by Japan, the US and other European countries. In the Japanese research module Kibo experiments are being conducted on high-quality protein crystallization to create medicinal drugs.

Also Tiangong can accommodate up to six people and Europe is interested in sending their astronauts.
On ISS there are six permanent employees. There are shifts of three astronauts who are then situated on the station long-term.

 

© 2016 Sputnik All rights reserved. 

 

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