The next movie in queue at the Grove was "The Invasion" so I snapped up a ticket and slipped into my plush chair as the credits started to roll.

From the offset the stylistic pace was able to draw a captive audience in.

Without hesitation, the suspenseful tale unfolded before our watchful eyes, as we sat on the edge of our seats.

A space shuttle mysteriously plummets from the heavens and crashes to the earth below.

Puzzled scientists stumble on a curious organism - other-worldly - in nature?

Perhaps, but they can't quite put their finger on it.

But wait - one Doctor manages to - and suddenly an odd transformation takes place that night as he falls into a deep sleep.

At this juncture, the audience is introduced to a well-manicured, professionally-coiffed woman, played convincingly by Nicole Kidman.

Ah, Kidman has come a long way since her first big movie entrance (she of freckled face and tangled hair) opposite Tom Cruise in the Days of Thunder.

Mindful that she's a mature actress now (thank God the frizzies are gone) she appears here in the role of a psychiatrist with a look that is decidedly right for the role of a busy working professional.

When a patient laments that her husband is not "himself", she prescribes some meds; obviously, the woman is having an episode, she thinks to herself.

But when she strides down the street later, and spies the odd behavior of pedestrians all around her, it is evident to her keen eye that something more ominous is afoot.

Daniel Craig's character, who is pining for a relationship with Kidman's, plays a down-to-earth masculine guy who comes to her assistance.

He's an uncomplicated supportive foil, but a bit on the boring side.

Just what the film needed, a touch of sanity somewhere.

If you're familiar with the film - The Body Snatchers - then you'll be wise to what's going down about a quarter of a way through the thriller.

But the truth of the matter is, there's nothing original in this script.

In fact, the body of another idea integral to the premise was also lifted from an earlier sci-fi pic of the fifties. Once you've pretty much fathomed that, just sit back and take in the ride.

Material like this, in the hands of a director other than Oliver Hirschbiegel, may have fallen victim to high melodrama.

But under Kidman's skin, is handled with aplomb.

When zombie-like characters lope down the streets after her, spewing a virus-like vomit in her wake, she manages to keep a straight face and walks a tightrope between suspense and belief.

It's the same old story, though.

Alien gets human, alien loses human, alien -

Plausible, no; but for ten bucks, what the heck.

Gee, what's this flaky piece of skin on my face?

          I’m joined in my shock and dismay at this post-dated development, by NASA’s administrator, Michael Griffin, who called the situation of being unable to launch our own astronauts, no matter how well they get along with the cosmonauts, “unnecessary in the extreme”. He is reported to have initiated a re-evaluation of the possibility of operating the shuttle past the scheduled decommission date of 2010 “about five minutes after the Russians invaded Georgia.” Fine, but where would the money come from? NASA’s budget of $17bln can’t handle both the shuttle program and the Constellation program for shooting capsules and rockets beyond the ISS’s low orbit.  That program is the one Cap’n Kirk – I mean the President – was touting so hard that no one really noticed the axe falling on the shuttle. And then there’s  the $700bln for the bad boys of banking and the $600bln for a pointless war in Iraq.  Those things, obviously, come first. So if we aren’t dependent on dependable ol’ Russia for getting a lift to the ISS, who knows? Maybe  we’ll be hitching on to China’s wagon. After all, the way things are going, the Chinese will be getting to the moon before we do. Where’s Jackie Gelason when you need him?

          Representative Tom Feeny (R- Florida), responding to the suggestion that the first lunar base be named after Neil Armstrong said “What makes you think the Chinese are going to give us permission to name their base after one of our astronauts?” Which is a point that might have Dwight Eisenhower spinning in his grave, since 50 years ago he inaugurated NASA  by vowing that the US would lead the space race. The problem isn’t so much that any of us have such an enormous interest in being first in the space race (we didn’t even notice the axe fall back in ’04, did we?), but that it’s another example of politics trumping science and long-term interests. As Griffin said: “Within the administration retiring the shuttle is a Jihad, rather than an engineering and program-management decision.”  And that particular Jihad rallies to the war-cry of “Privatize!”

          NASA has put out a bid for contracts for hauling stuff to the ISS, and it got some 16 tenders. The good news is that the bid was only tendered in the US, so we won’t be having the Russkies carrying our people while Belarus launches our stuff, but still. Isn’t it enough that we’ve contracted out or food supply to those Champions of Safety China and Mexico?  Certainly if Grandpa and Gidget get into the White House in January (105 days 4 hours, 14 minutes and 33 seconds until the transfer of power, but who’s counting?) they’ll take the privatization route and instead of investing in NASA, they’ll give our tax dollars to Elon Musk, founder of Pay Pal AND a rocket-building enterprise who has tried to launch three privately funded ($100m of his own money) spacecraft into orbit. Unfortunately for him, they failed to reach escape velocity. No matter how he does in future ventures, I’m just uncomfortable in a quaint sort of old-fashioned way that something so fundamentally important as space exploration is being privatized while a huge sector of the economy is being nationalized (hi, Hugo! Que pasa?). Its just, you know…wrong? Like wearing white after Labor Day, or eating foie gras at a tailgate party.

* By the way; Star City, back in the cold war days didn’t appear on maps.  Here in the US, as far as I know (and I know very, very little, I admit) the only way to wipe a town off a map is to discontinue its Post Office, which just might happen here soon, as the Postal Service plans layoffs and closings and consolidations because the “run it like a business” mantra has just about run it into the ground, and is apparently more important than the principle of Universal Service. I seem to have forgotten, so someone remind me: with the establishment of the modern Postal Service in 1972, did we not as a nation express a principle which states that all Americans should have profit-free mail delivery? And  by extension, don’t we value all Americans having high-speed, affordable internet access? If not, let’s just send a memo to rural America saying that they are all second-class citizens. At least it would be in writing. So there. Now I’ll step off my soap-box. Or maybe not. Just in case you or anyone you know is still fence-sitting: John McCain voted in 2003, 2004 and 2006 to privatize federal jobs. I want my mail delivered to me and all my fellow Americans at cost, not by companies who pay their CEOs gajillions. Ta, ta, now.

Now here is something I definitely didn't have when I was a kid: YouTube Mobile. 

A couple of nights ago, I was reading a book on Space to the kids. Up came a pop-up Space Shuttle (which one of the twins attempted to rip before I quickly averted his hand). We then had a discussion on the Space Shuttle and then I took out my iPhone, logged on to YouTube and showed them a space shuttle launch for real.

Their jaws dropped.

Then a few nights later I was reading my eldest son a book on Mexico. We came to a page where the voladores swing around a high pole on a rope tied to their legs. Out comes the iPhone, YouTube is called up and in seconds we are seeing it happening on video. 

He yawned and muttered something like "whatever" under his breath... 

Anyway, moody 9 year olds aside, I think it's really cool.

     It seems unbelievable that the pages survived.  Is it a miracle?

From the Associated Press:

The diary belonged to Ilan Ramon, Israel's first astronaut and one of seven crew members killed when Columbia disintegrated upon re-entering the atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003. Part of the restored diary will be displayed at the Israel Museum beginning Sunday.

A little over two months after the shuttle explosion, NASA searchers found 37 pages from Ramon's diary, wet and crumpled, in a field just outside the U.S. town of Palestine, Texas. The diary survived extreme heat in the explosion, extreme atmospheric cold, and then "was attacked by microorganisms and insects" in the field where it fell, said museum curator Yigal Zalmona.

"It's almost a miracle that it survived — it's incredible," Zalmona said. There is "no rational explanation" for how it was recovered when most of the shuttle was not, he said.

NASA officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The U.S. space agency returned the diary to Ramon's wife, Rona, who brought it to forensics experts at the Israel Museum and from the Israeli police. The diary took about a year to restore, Zalmona said, and it took police scientists about four more years to decipher the pages. About 80 percent of the text has been deciphered, and the rest remains unreadable, he said.

Two pages will be displayed. One contains notes written by Ramon, and the other is a copy of the Kiddush prayer, a blessing over wine that Jews recite on the Sabbath. Zalmona said Ramon copied the prayer into his diary so he could recite it on the space shuttle and have the blessing broadcast to Earth.

Non che la NASA sia la migliore agenzia spaziale, il sovietici prima e la Russia poi hanno dimostrato nel tempo di non essere secondi a nessuno, nè sotto il piano tecnologico e nemmeno su quello scientifico. Ricordiamo infatti la lunga lista di primati che l'agenzia sovietica detiene alla faccia del "cugini" americani: il primo satellite: lo Sputnik, il primo essere vivente nello spazio: la cagnetta Laika, il primo uomo nello spazio: Yurj A. Gagarin, la prima passeggiata spaziale: Alexey Leonov, la prima stazione spaziale permanente: la Mir, e così via.

Ma rimane immutato il fatto che, nel mio immaginario di bambino, come in quello di tantissimi bambini di oggi, la NASA era "l'esplorazione spaziale", solo in età più avanzata ho saputo come stavano effettivamente le cose ed ho scoperto che loro non erano certo nè i migliori nè i leader.

La NASA comunque ancora oggi detiene grandissimi primati: su tutti spicca l'esplorazione umana della Luna con il programma Apollo; per chi fosse interessato, soprattutto per i non tecnici segnalo la magnifica serie televisiva "Dalla Terra alla Luna", prodotta da Tom Hanks che in guisa di telefilm ripropone l'entisiasmante cammino che portò l'umanità a scendere sulla Luna insieme a Neil Armstrong quella notte del 20 Luglio del 1969.

Come poi non ricordare l'entusiasmante primo volo dello Shuttle Columbia o i ben più tragici momenti delle esplosioni del Challenger e del Columbia stesso o ancora l'incendio di Apollo I?

A tutti quelli che hanno perso la loro vita inseguendo un sogno di conoscenza, a tutti coloro che vi lavorano oggi e che vi hanno lavorato in passato rendendo possibili con la loro immaginazione e capacità le meravigliose imprese come quella dell'Apollo o delle sonde Viking , Pioneer e Voyager dedico questo post ringraziandoli per la conoscenza e le emozioni che ci hanno dato.

A little background and trivia - in two weeks time space shuttle Atlantis will lift-off for the fifth and last Hubble Telescope service mission.  It will also be the last shuttle mission not dedicated to the construction of the International Space Station.
Now, because Hubble is in a completely different orbit than the ISS, if something goes wrong with Atlantis and it prevents them from returning to earth, they won't be able to use the ISS as a safe haven.  So for a possible rescue mission NASA has placed Endeavour as that backup.  This situation has brought forth a rare occasion - there are now two space shuttles on the launch pads, at the same time.  This is the final time we'll see such a duet.

That's it basically.. enjoy the cool pics.

We took the bus tour out to several points of interest at the Cape.  Each stop was amazing.  They were mini-visitor complexes complete with movies, snacks, displays and gift shops.  When I was a kid they stopped on the side of the road, let you off the bus to take pictures and that was it.  The boys had a really good time seeing all of the sights even if they didn't really know what they meant.

After the bus tours we headed back to the main Visitor Complex for lunch and ice cream.  We ended up running into our friends B and F and their kids.  They joined us over at the kid dome play area to let the kids blow off some steam and then went to the Rocket Garden with us.

We had a great time and the boys were completely exhausted by the time we left at 4 PM.  It's something that I want to do again with them when they are a little older and can understand more about the space program.

: : : : : : : : : : :

http://www.entertainment.mastiminds.com/Main/Entertainment/games.html

Shown in the foreground is Space Shuttle Atlantis on Launch Pad A. The shuttle in the background is Endeavour, on Launch Pad B. Currently, both shuttles are locked and loaded for launch, should something go wrong up in space with the October 11 Atlantis mission. As Tom explains over at his Astronomy Blog, having two shuttles on the pad at the same time is rare, but it is not a cause for concern. When the ISS is not available for rescue purposes, as it might not be for this mission, a second shuttle is made ready for a quick launch. What is sobering, however, is this image is potentially the last of its kind. The space shuttle program is scheduled for retirement in 2010, leaving little chance for similar shuttle family photos in the future.

[gizmodo.com]

This is the 17th and final time that two Shuttles will be on the pad together.  The Shuttles are scheduled to be retired in 2010, unless NASA has a change of plans.

From the cosmosmagazine.com article:
Don't be mistaken, this is no Space Shuttle. This is the Buran, product of Soviet suspicion, ingenuity and scant funds; and doomed to failure.

IN THE EARLY 1970S, at the height of the Cold War, Soviet space officials cast a concerned eye towards NASA's new Space Shuttle Program. From all they could tell, it looked like an expensive boondoggle, so why on Earth were the Americans planning to pour so much money into it?

"They figured there were other reasons for doing this," they just didn't know what they were, says Asif Siddiqi, a historian of the Soviet space program at Fordham University, in New York City.

Roger Launius agrees. Chair of Space History at Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, he thinks the Soviet reasoning probably went like this: the Americans have either lost their minds; or know something we don't; therefore we'd better find out what it is by building our own one.

The great fear, of course, was that the 'something' was military. And so the Soviets embarked on the most ambitious space program they ever attempted. It was a mad, money-sucking plan that included not only the Soviet shuttle, called the Buran (Russian for snowstorm or blizzard), but an expanded military presence in space, including what Siddiqi describes as, "laser battle stations and all kinds of crazy things."

The program would never succeed in launching a human into space, and today, the abortive shuttles and their prototypes are scattered around the globe. So for all the billions it siphoned from the struggling Soviet economy, the program can only be described as a masterful failure.

Read the article here.

Read full article and HiRes Image at NASA

Here is the tricky part...They revved up the BSCMF on September 10th. They successfully spun some stuff this way for a while, then they successfully spun some stuff that way for a while...then something broke, and they flipped that infamous switch to turn it off just one day after turning it on. One week later, they decide to let the world know that they encountered a "glitch".

After so much fanfare on this machine why would they wait a week to release news that it is broke only a day after turning it on? If the press hadn't inquired on some rumors, they would probably still be keeping it a secret. I guess on some level we should be happy that they aren't telling us about their "glitch" from inside some "doomsday" bunker and wishing us all the best of luck.

So, the BSCMF overheated or something like that. No big deal. It is bound to happen when you have mega-tons of equipment and about a billion moving parts. These scientists are smart, but they are still human and therefore aren't perfect. They may be certain that their big science project is safe and not going to cause the end of the world, but how could they have known it was going to over heat?

"Glitches" are no big deal, right? They are just harmless little errors that occur and rarely lead to anything bad happening like nuclear meltdowns, airplane crashes, ships sinking, etc. Sure, it is rare, but it does happen on occasion, and generally when it does it is isolated to large or fairly new technology with lots of moving parts. Here are just a few examples of some of the worlds most famous "glitches".

• Chernobyl - April 26, 1986 at 1:23:45 a.m., reactor 4 suffers a massive, catastrophic power excursion, resulting in a steam explosion, which rips the top off the reactor like a soda can, exposes the core and disperses a crap load of radioactive junk, allowing air (oxygen) to contact the super-hot core of combustible graphite moderator. The burning graphite moderator thereby increases even more the emission of radioactive particles.
• Space Shuttle Challenger - January 28, 1986 - Disintegration of the shuttle began 73 seconds into its flight after an O-ring seal in its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed at liftoff. The seal failure caused a breach in the SRB joint it filled, allowing a flare to reach the outside and impinge upon the adjacent attachment hardware and external fuel tank. The SRB breach flare led to the separation of the right-hand SRB and the structural failure of the external tank. Aerodynamic forces promptly broke up the orbiter.
• Japan Airlines Flight 123 - August 12, 1985- All 15 crew members and 505 out of 509 passengers died, resulting in a total of 520 deaths. About 12 minutes after takeoff, as the aircraft reached cruising altitude the rear pressure bulkhead failed. The resulting explosive decompression tore the vertical stabilizer from the aircraft and severed all four of the aircraft's hydraulic systems. No stabilizer and no hydraulic systems pretty much means you have no control of the aircraft other than velocity of your engines. Therefore, you have several minutes at a high altitude to contemplate your life and your impending death while the plane flies around at its own volition waiting to crash into something. Many of the passengers on this flight had time to write letters to their loved ones.
  
• The Hindenburg - May 6, 1937 - The German rigid airship Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed within one minute while attempting to dock with its mooring mast at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. Of the 97 people on board, 35 people died in addition to one fatality on the ground. No one knows for sure what caused the fire on the Hindenburg. There are some sabotage theories, but most relate to some kind of electrical spark from somewhere that caused the chain reaction. My guess is the latter and I quantify that as a "glitch" in the engineering of this gigantic flying ball of fire.

So, technology is created by humans, and humans make errors. Irregardless of how many brainy scientists check, double-check, and triple-check, when there are a million moving pieces you are never going to think of every possibility. "Glitches" happen every day that we don't know about, and the world keeps turning. However, when it comes to giant machines that have massive power to create and destroy, then the word "glitch" is not so innocent and harmless sounding. In fact, it can be a little ominous or scary.

Do you really want to hear the pilot on your flight say "We seem to have a glitch in our landing gear, so..."? Maybe that is cool with you, but it would have me reaching for a clean pair of underwear in short order.

All I am saying is that "glitch" is no simple word to be dismissed or taken lightly at any time. It is serious business that costs companies billions and in worst case scenarios it costs lives.

As for the BSCMF, I am sure that glitches will be a normal routine in the beginning, and I really hope that it has a very long and healthy future ahead of it. I'll keep my fingers crossed that one of the glitches doesn't cause some unforeseen chain-reaction that sucks our world down some huge cosmic toilet. That would really suck.

That's just my opinion...and it ain't worth much.

In fantasy it thrived as well, Mr S. Kubricks portrayal of the future in 2001: A Space Odyssey, showed us the immediate future as well, it swarmed around you, the real (Apollo 8 going around the moon) and the prediction of the next 20 years in the swirling revolving space station dancing to The Blue Danube, here was the future, and only a short period of time away, this was the evolution of the next step, the last frontier.

Only here now in 2008 its not, or maybe half of it....yes there is a massive space station circling around above us, almost complete, just like in the movie, a Space Shuttle flying up there every other month to service it and build more of it, its real and its exciting, the space truck worked, well maybe, If you asked the average American about the Space Shuttle they will say things like "Oh that", or "Its costs a fortune", "waste of money" or mostly "Its a failure"....so like Concorde another step forward it goes into mothballs in 2010, and humankind takes a step backwards, or in this case stops altogether, only problem is there is still a bloody big space station up there, and hundreds of satellites working or not, and a telescope, and god knows what else.

So what went wrong?, first lets get something clear, The Space Shuttle and its concept was not a failure, in fact it was a giant success, a giant leap forward, It delivered, pronto, only problem was it wasn't developed, refined and was constantly restrained by funding, both Shuttle accidents was caused by the shortage of funds and NASA's inability of quality control, and flying a vehicle way past its used by date, as to machine itself its a miracle of engineering, The Shuttle failed because of administration and vision, the two things that made NASA brilliant in the first place, it lost its way, and now it is paying the ultimate price, shutdown.....

The only way for Nasa to keep its doors open now is to use 1950's aged technology to send cheap boosters filled with cannon fodder to get stuff hopefully up into space, after using for years a reuseable (If expensive) versatle vehicle, they are going back to throwaway capsules (Aries), and disposable boosters, and this is the cheaper option, only unlike the late sixties, Its a one small backward step for man, A giant leap backwards for about everybody on the planet..

The first debate is why the Shuttle is so expensive to fly, First it was built as a compromise, NASA wanted one thing and the US airforce wanted something to scare the Russians, So it had to be large enough to carry heavy spy satellites and laser guns to orbit over Moscow, Silly now the Cold War is over, but that is not a bad thing, the Shuttle's capacity to lift full sized modules and telescopes into orbit, is amazing, plus unlike boosters, people can go along too, and that's the difference, and its achilles heel, when people get killed (Challenger, Columbia), the country and the program goes into freefall, here is the point, everytime something goes wrong the money goes down....look people it will still go wrong, space is dangerous and will still kill people, no matter what you do, every person who steps aboard a Shuttle knows the risk, its their choice, the rewards are out of this world, but the disadvantages if it goes wrong is its over, your life, that is the risk, to date there has been 120 missions, think about that 120, 830 people have flown on the Shuttle with 14 fatalities, 5 to 7 people at a time that in itself is a amazing record, The Shuttle can bring down eleven souls if something goes wrong on the ISS, the new Aries capsule (yes a capsule) can carry three, and needs a ship to recover it, plus the amount of work the shuttle has done in space is phenomenal, launching and servicing sateliltes, launching and servicing a space telescope (1990, Hubble), space laboratories, and building a complete space station ISS, its service to the planet in research is uncountable, plus the old plain adventure of learning about ourselves, and furthering our knowledge of a place so extreme it is a human milestone in our evolution.

The second debate is why it went wrong, first and foremost is cost, its incredibly expensive to fly, but you shouldn't blame the shuttle for that, first its the Thermal Protection System (TPS) that has given it the most headaches, little solid foam bricks (Tiles), stuck on the outside of the Orbiter creates a thermal blanket to protect the vehicle on re-entry to the atmosphere, problem is they are problematic, from Columbia's first flight (STS 1) they broke or just plain fell off, after every mission hours are spent putting them back on or replacing these thousands of tiles, its time consuming and expensive, they work but are not very reliable, The SSME (Space Shuttle Main Engines) are a masterpiece of design, but require to much maintenance between flights, in fact the whole vehicle requires to much downtime, and to make things worse, poor standards of quality have broken its back, The Challenger accident was caused by poor O rings on the boosters sited on either side of the external tank to give the vehicle its first shove into orbit, a cold night plus poor workmanship & cheap materials, caused a disaster, an avoidable accident, Columbia was lost due to a chunk of ice hitting the wing,  avoidable, maybe not, but a better design of the fuel tank could avoid the ice forming in the first place or form in a non impact area, The shuttle was and still is the first design of a new era, so ideas and engineering are going into new boundaries and areas never encountered before, its computers were last replaced in 1990, 18 years ago, think of the computer you used 18 years ago, so problems and design are going to come to the surface, and here is the basic failure of the Shuttle program, they never made a Mark II, its still the first, its old, its not refined, it was not made better, no new Thermal Protection System, no new better cheaper, more efficient engines, no better external tanks or boosters, they just patched it up and made it fly again, and are still doing so today, every new area of or mode of transport has had it's refinements, cars, ships, aircraft, made better, cheaper, finding the faults, better design, more efficient, more cheaper to run, so the Shuttle cost more and more to fly, and they called it a dud, people should be shot for allowing that, because that sort of thinking can kill people and it did, in Challenger and Columbia, point is it would have been cheaper and safer to replace it years ago, they didn't so the dream is over in 2010, and to make it worse there is nothing absolutely nothing to replace it, and the cost to do so is simply enormous, NASA has backed itself into a corner, and the only option is find a cheaper option not a better one, just cheaper, and are fooling themselves because soon or later they are going to have to fix the basic problem,  you can't have a Space Station Program or a Moon program or the dream Mars program if you can't simply get stuff up there, cheaply and reliably, everyday any time you want to and 60's style throwaway boosters is not the solution, nothing should be thrown away, nothing...... and nothing is going to go right for NASA until they fix this basic problem......

Once they had it right, with The Right Stuff, brave pilots once reached the boundaries of space and came down again, using and wasting nothing more than their fuel, The X15 program was canceled to allow the rockets to have their day, it worked, it got men to the moon, but it also set NASA on a course self destruction, Pilots of their day couldn't believe that cutting back at the point of success of easy access to space was happening, the Shuttle was a fusion of both programs, Rocketry & Winged flight, but the failure is it still needs a whole lot of fuel to get a pound of weight off the earth, not to mention a few tons, and its here it still fails and with it a heavy cost.

So can it be done cheaply, yes, nothing is cheap about going into space, but technology has come a long way since 1970 when the shuttle was conceived, first to start the vehicle has to be smaller and many of them say twelve, two they have to reliable engines as reliable as commercial jet engines are today, impossible, no, because the most load on a spacecraft is at its launch, big thrust means big engines and lots of fuel, so the first point is to get the thing off the ground cheaper, a launcher body aircraft is needed to get the orbiter to higher faster point so it uses less fuel (and Weight) getting there, Commercial aircraft have engines today that can lift 300 tons or more and push to speeds of 8oo mph,  the carrier aircraft can come home anytime to launch another orbiter, no waste, the orbiter uses an expandable fuel tank, not expendable, but expandable, to carry fuel to push it to an higher velocity then fold up when empty into a minimum space inside the vehicle or as part of the vehicle, can't be done, nothing is impossible, then, it will require a better Thermal Protection System, new safer and above all cheaper, and very simple but reliable engines, every orbiter must be turned around on the ground as simply as a commercial aircraft, load in, slot into Carrier aircraft and fly, boost up to speed to obtain orbital velocity, dock with ISS or replace or repair satellites, and come straight back down the same day, Yes-the same day!,  ready to again fly the next, a dream, no a commercial reality, and if NASA doesn't do it soon then a private operator will, the commercial advantages are to much to ignore, but the cheap little Virgin Galactic joy ride will get better and bigger, with bigger and better vehicles, until NASA finds itself out of a job, they are not waiting around, there is money to made in thar hills (or space) in this instance, and the evolution of a sensible ground to orbit vehicle must be designed, if NASA's head in the sand attitude doesn't then someone else will, because we can't function or go forward without it, we need a cheap reliable daily space truck into space, nothing less will do, the old "can do"attitude and not the "can not because its to expensive or to hard", its not too expensive if you work smarter and be clever, but then that comes from the evolution of design, and on that one NASA failed....and the dream could die too, going back to the Moon, Mars, plus with an empty Space Station orbiting around us overhead, we need the basics fixed first, and we need that reliable everyday space truck....right now!

Let's go old school, shall we?

This post is going to be totally tubular. I mean, it'll be like, radical, man. Last night, sitting on my couch, trying desperately to fall asleep, I had a cultural epiphany.

I have lived long enough to truly be able to refer to my childhood as "old school."

That's Smurfin' unbelievable. I can actually point to the days when we not only had a VCR, but the "remote" was attached to the deck with a cord. In fact, not only did the VCR "remote" have a cord, most of the telephones in our house did too. We made mix tapes that were actually on tape, and had songs that we waited hours to hear on the radio - so we could record them for our mix tapes.

We drank whole milk, used real butter, ate fatty bacon and drank fully caffeinated coffee. Our cars were built like military personnel carriers and drank gasoline, and still, somehow, the economy survived.

Our clothes were primarily made of synthetic, scratchy fabrics, and smokers occasionally burst into flames because of that, but for the most part we made out okay. By the power of Greyskull we were able to use our imaginations to transform our backyards, neighborhoods and nearby woods into playgrounds for our most inventive creations.

How about this: my parents would actually let me leave the house unattended, go and play for almost and entire day unsupervised, and they never really had to worry about me disappearing, being dismembered, being molested, being arrested, or otherwise being harmed. They could just let me out the door to go and be a kid.

Our video game platforms were the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64. The programs for those games were smaller than your average Word file. And the graphics were Rorshack tests that moved - you really had to squint to see that the stick figure in "Pitfall" was, in fact, wearing a fedora.

I'm so old school, the launching of a Space Shuttle was still shown live on television.

I'm so old school, I can actually remember what the term "pennant race" really means.

I'm so old school, I get hungry whenever I see Avacado Green, Riverbed Brown and Golden Field paint chips in the Home Depot. (If you don't get that one, then you were never in anyone's kitchen circa 1979-1983.)

I'm so old school, I can remember when baseball players were on the bottle, not on the juice.

I'm so old school, I can remember when the special effects in "Jaws" were incredible.

I'm so old school, the following phrase actually means something to me: Chief Nockahoma.

I'm so old school, I used to think this guy was the coolest person on the planet:

I will actually have to explain to my daughter the following terms: Ford Pinto, tap water, white bread, YooHoo, "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop?", Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Hooper (from Seasame Street, not the "Hanging with..." show), Dr. J, stirrups (in baseball), passenger trains, passenger trains with names (The Silver Comet, The City of New Orleans), Kenny Rogers, the Electric Company, and sea monkeys.

For whatever reason, it hit me square in the eyes last night - my generation is rapidly becoming the old people for the next generation. I've already noticed that I pull my pants up higher than I used to, and I gripe about "the cost of things these days." My wife has to trim my ear hair. I have trouble seeing without my glasses or my contacts.

In short, a lot of the things that I associated with "old" when I was growing up have started creeping into my life. And last night, for the very first time, I knew that things would never be the same.

And knowing, of course, is half the battle.

The current USA Space Shuttles are set to be decommissioned in 2010. This is a move that could probably leave the US as well as the rest of the Worlds space exploration community in a bind. The new replacements, dubbed Orion are updated with shuttle technology and larger than/but similar in appearance to the old Apollo space craft series. The Orion series are also supposed to be capable of returning the USA to the moon and eventually Mars, though they are not likely to be serviceable until 2015. The period between the current shuttles and the new Orion will reduce our space exploration as well as limit our access to the International Space Station for a period of four to five years, depending on political whims. The problem is not going unnoticed in Europe either. Europe, Japan and Canada rely on an agreement with the USA Space Shuttle Program as a method of transportation between the ISS & Earth for their science experiments. Without a form of transportation, the ISS could become something akin to an expensive ghost town during that period.

Do you think Engineering might be good fun, but you are put off by the idea that Engineering is not the kind of thing girls do? Look at this photo:

This shows a point in the assembly of a Shuttle spaceship, where a rocket engine is being positioned into the ship. And that's a woman there making sure they do it right.

So study hard, pass your exams, get that Degree and become an Engineer.

More fantastic photos here