April 30 News Items

Kirtland to Host Responsive Space Office (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Defense Department will establish a new program office for responsive space efforts at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., in May, according to a senior Pentagon official.

NASA Money Included in Iraq Supplemental Spending Bill (Source: Space News)
Additional money for NASA was included in a $124.2 billion emergency spending bill for 2007 that U.S. President George W. Bush has threatened to veto because it sets an April 2008 deadline for withdrawing American combat troops from Iraq.

Rocket Scientists Prepare for Sheboygan Blast Off (Source: Sheboygan Press)
46 teams are ready to launch for Rockets for Schools, Sheboygan's annual suborbital launch event. Mike Saeger, a 16-year-old sophomore at Riverview Academy, has vivid memories of the Rockets for Schools launch last year. "It's kind of adrenaline pumping," Saeger said. "You're in front of everybody, you get to see all of the other rockets go up, and it's just a lot of fun. I liked it." Rockets for Schools is a yearly event where teams from throughout Wisconsin, Illinois and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan come together to launch a high-powered rocket they built. When launched, rockets reach heights of a mile in the sky. This year's event is scheduled for Friday and Saturday. Besides designing the rocket, teams also design a payload for the rocket to conduct a scientific experiment during the launch. Teams compete against each other and are judged on rocket construction, a rocketry worksheet, payload design and a presentation.

Malaysian Airport Proposed For Space Tourism (Source: Bernama.com)
A group of space tourism consultants haw proposed to the Perak government to turn the Sultan Azlan Shah Airport (LTSAS) in Ipoh into a "space-bound airport". For the plan to become a reality, however, it should start as a ground for test flights. LTSAS was chosen for the project because of its low airline traffic unlike the KL International Airport in Sepang. It was also strategically located at the centre of Peninsular Malaysia and supported by a good transportation network. The initial cost was estimated at RM100 million and this included the plan to conduct 100 test flights using a spacecraft called the Ascender which could carry space tourists, astronauts and facilitate scientific experiments at 100km from earth. The suborbital spaceplane, developed by Bristol Spaceplanes Limited of Britain, can take off and land horizontally and also climb vertically.

Italian Group Breaks Record With Elderly Passenger (Source: SpaceLand)
Italy's SpaceLand group returned to Florida for a microgravity research flight aboard ZERO-G's G-Force One aircraft on Saturday, this one including a 93-year-old test subject, believed to be the oldest person to fly in microgravity. In 2006, SpaceLand flew the first fully disabled test subject aboard G-Force One. The organization hopes to conduct annual microgravity missions from Florida.

Will Rich Spacemen Come to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport? (Source: Virginian-Pilot)
The Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport has what real estate agents say makes a hot listing - location, location, location. The spaceport touts itself as an ideal destination for a range of space ventures - from resupplying the space station to sending well-heeled customers on rides into space. But as in many ventures, a shoestring budget sometimes trips up big dreams. A few years ago, a wealthy businessman came fishing for a base to launch rockets. He met with Billie Reed, the spaceport's director, in the facility's one-room cement and stucco office. The furniture, including a beat-up oak table where they talked business, was cobbled together from excess NASA property. The spaceport didn't make the cut.

"He sat here, and he wasn't impressed," Reed said, seated at the old table during an interview this month. "We just think we weren't sexy enough." That rejection lingers even as the spaceport celebrates its first two launches. Reed said Virginia needs to ramp up its support or risk getting left behind. The Virginia spaceport's current annual operating budget is about $580,000 - $100,000 from Virginia, $150,000 from Maryland and the rest from customers. One of those customers is the military, sponsor of the two recent Minotaur launches. "The Department of Defense is telling us they like us, so we expect them to come back," said NASA's Wallops Island director.

Perhaps the brightest prospect stems from resupplying the space station after retirement of the space shuttle in 2010. NASA plans to farm out the work to companies like SpaceX. CEO Elon Musk considers Wallops Island "arguably the best launch site in the country" for space station missions. "Wallops is better suited to service the space station than Cape Canaveral," he said. "I think Wallops is really a contender." Congress thinks so, too, and approved $500,000 for a study, due later this year, on turning NASA Wallops into a "next generation" spaceport to supply the station or send cargo to serve future missions to the moon and Mars. Musk estimates the spaceport would need to spend around $30 million to upgrade its facilities for larger rockets. State Sen. Nick Rerras, whose district covers the Eastern Shore, said: "We put resources into our seaports and our airports, and in the same way, we need to put more money into our spaceport."