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Click here to visit the new home of Politics Daily!(Oct. 25) -- Last week, a science fiction vision of the future seemed to get one step closer when Virgin Group's Sir Richard Branson unveiled a completed runway at the new Virgin Galactic Spaceport in the New Mexico desert. But some scientists are now worrying that the environmental impact of private spacecraft might make the future less "The Fifth Element" and more "Mad Max." A recent study published in Geophysical Research Letters warns that the effects of these particular spacecraft on climate change will be even worse than the baseline one might assume from blasting tourists into space. ...
(Feb. 1) – With NASA's Constellation program cut from the budget President Obama proposed Monday, private companies have the chance to play a bigger role in the next space race. While the budget request for fiscal year 2011 eliminates the Constellation program – which would have replaced the space shuttle with new rockets to return humans to the moon and ultimately land them on Mars – it provides funds for NASA to work with private industry to provide transportation to the International Space Station (ISS) and take on other exploratory and scientific projects. NASA ...
(Nov. 18) -- I turned 40 this year and, alas, like many before me who've entered middle age, I've fallen quite short of my long-term career goal. In my case, that was to become a space-suited technician in a dusty lunar city. AP Photo/Heinz Ducklau This year also happens to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, the first time a human being ever set foot on another world. This event was always in the background during my '70s-era childhood, that giant leap for mankind a mere first step toward .... what? Huge, circular space stations, gracefully pirouetting in low Earth ...
Thursday is the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 to the moon, where astronaut Neil Armstrong famously took a giant leap for mankind (that's us, too, ladies!) and a small step for man (just you fellows that time.) How to celebrate this? Well, you could read up on the history of space travel! You could watch old footage of the moon landing! You could get some cardboard boxes, markers and tin foil and build an Apollo 11 replica of your own! Or, you could sweep up clippings of Neil Armstrong's hair into a little plastic bag and dig up his voided checks to be sold to the highest bidder! ...
"Yes, We Can" was an imprecise political slogan, but it was certainly optimistic – and in keeping with Barack Obama's basic approach. With few exceptions, he ran an upbeat presidential campaign that appealed to Americans' can-do spirit. Unfortunately, space exploration was one of those exceptions. In fact, early in the going, Obama proposed cutting NASA's budget in a way that would delay, if not cripple, the space agency's long-anticipated manned mission to Mars. ...
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