—Apollo 11–40 Years Later

The original step-off footage of Armstrong:  http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/apollo11Splash/index.html

40 years ago—I remember staying up all night to watch Walter Cronkite and the Moon landings. I had to explain patiently to my mother why I was staying up so late (I think Armstrong stepped out at around 3am local time. The wiki says 2:56 UTC July 21, 1969)

In a serious setback for the fake-Moon-landing cultists; photos of Apollo 11 landing site from the current Lunar orbiter:  http://www.space.com/news/090717-lro-apollo11-images.html

Apollo veterans had a lot to say about the current state of manned spaceflight on the occasion of the 40^thanniversary—apparently little of it complimentary:

ApolloAstronauts Blast Today’s NASA – Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News – FOXNews.com

And Despair.com shows that if people have enough time on their hands,they can find something sarcastic about nearly anything:

http://www.despair.com/ac.html

—Fraud at NASA!

A husband-wife team of non-civil-service-managers has been caught committing fraud and misappropriating millions of dollars of Federal funds!

FOXNews.com – Professor, Wife Accused of Defrauding NASA of Hundreds of Thousands of Taxpayer Dollars

Let’s see—-fraud at NASA—-how does that old adage go?

Selling coal to Newcastle – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

—”…A Sense of Unease…”

How complicated is too complicated?  After 30 years of the Shuttle program, many of its flight-critical systems are still only marginally understood:

Spaceflight Now | STS-119 Shuttle Report | Shuttle launch put on hold

floridatoday.com | The Flame Trench | Florida Today's Space Team Blog

During the STS mission in November, a hydrogen pressurization control poppet cracked, and released a small fragment of metal into a critical pressurization line.  There are several potentially catastrophic scenarios for a failure of this kind, including puncturing the line or failure of LH2 tank pressure control.  They’re talking about pieces of metal dinging around in the line at speeds from 200-600 mph.  Nobody seems sure whether the breakage occurred due to an existing undetected crack, or the crack occurred during the ascent.

Meanwhile, Discovery’s next flight is off the calendar pending a decision about how to evaluate existing valves, and possibly redesign them to avoid the problem. 

[Finding something mean to say about the political situation in the U.S. is like shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel (as thoroughly evaluated by the Myth Busters).   I'm just going to have to find someone else to talk about for a while.]

—Meltdown in NASA Transition?

Orlando Sentinel: NASA chief Griffin bucks Obama’s transition team

From the Orlando Sentinel, reports of serious friction in between the NASA Administrator and Obama’s transition team:

Soon after, Garver and Griffin engaged in what witnesses said was an animated conversation. Some overheard parts of it.
“Mike, I don’t understand what the problem is. We are just trying to look under the hood,” Garver said.
“If you are looking under the hood, then you are calling me a liar,” Griffin replied. “Because it means you don’t trust what I say is under the hood.”

I’m afraid Michael Griffin is NASA’s equivalent of Albert Speer—he knows better than to work for the devil, but just can’t break the habit.  Griffin once called STS and ISS “mistakes”, but now he is prepared to defend Ares/Orion/Constellation with his last administrative breath, even though somewhere deep inside he must know it can’t possibly work.  He isn’t the only tragedy in the collapse of manned space exploration, but he is one of the most visible.

—Ares 1X

FLToday: Ares 1X Preps Pick Up Around KSC

A detailed report on the planned 7-11 suborbital test of NASA’s melon-on-a-fishing-pole concept for the future of manned space exploration.

—Extrasolar Planets Imaged

Two groups have produced the first direct images of planets orbiting other stars:

First-ever images taken of extrasolar planets – Space.com- msnbc.com

One is a sort of spooky infrared image from the Hubble ACS of the relatively nearby star Fomalhaut.  Images were taken 4 years apart to verify that the object is actually in orbit around Fomalhaut.  The object appears to be “herding” the outer portion of Fomalhaut’s accretion disc into a distinct, bright edge.

The other set of images is of several planetary object in orbit around HR 8799.  These were apparently imaged in visible light by ground-based telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. 

The technology for planet detection is improving dramatically.  Of course, when the excitement dies down a bit, astronomers will go back to squabbling about the definition of “planet”.  The smallest of these objects, now labeled Fomalhaut B, is three times the mass of Jupiter.  Several of the others are estimated to be around 10 times Jupiter’s mass.  Somewhere around 13xJupiter is apparently the lower limit for a type of failed star called a “Brown Dwarf”.  As techniques improve, it should become possible to resolve planets of  a more practical size.

—Critical ISS Joint Damaged, Pluto, Horses at H’ween

Metal shavings found in ISS solar array joint

My Way News – Trouble Found on Space Station Device
They were hoping that power spikes in the drive for the newest of the solar array “ferris wheels” on the Space Station would turn out to stem from a misadjusted bolt or something. So it must have come as quite a shock when astronauts on the latest EVA removed insulation from the joint assembly, and found it critical parts covered in metallic grit. The current wishful thinking about the grit being flakes of aluminum from the metalized mylar insulation must be tempered by accounts of discoloration of some parts of the giant drive gears for the 10 ft.-diameter joint:
SPACE.com — NASA Eyes Worrisome Debris in Space Station Joint
The only upside I can see is that when the Russians become sole residents of the ISS in 2010, it’ll very likely be a “fixer upper”.

Update 10-29:
SPACE.com — NASA Eyes Delayed Shuttle Launch, New Spacewalk Plans
After the EVA, the sample of shavings found in the solar array mast joint was found by the STS crew to be magnetic—almost certainly steel from the bearings or their races.

SPACE.com–Keck Pluto-Charon
Here’s the best ground-based photo so far of mini-planet (?) Pluto and it’s moon, Charon. If nobody goobered anything up too badly, New Horizons should get much more detail in a few years.

But seriously….

Horse costume
Just in time for H’ween. Should not be viewed while drinking milk or really fizzy soda.