November 8 News Items

Editorial: Brevard and Florida Need to Bolster Incentives for the Space Industry (Source: Florida Today)
The economic forecast for Florida's Space Coast from NASA's latest plans is a mixture of sun and clouds. The realization that Uncle Sam alone won't sustain the Space Coast's economy should galvanize Florida lawmakers to get behind efforts to lure more commercial space activities to the state. Space Florida is shooting not just for more work from NASA, but also for "emerging commercial space markets." The second category is still relatively small, but it has enormous potential. It includes space missions for NASA and the military that increasingly will be turned over to private operators, space tourism, and eventual transport of people and cargo through space.

As Space Florida argues, the state needs to expand its identity beyond just a launchpad to a location for building spacecraft and conducting research and development for missions. Those activities can be cheaper when done closer to launch sites, and Florida already is the world's premier spaceport. That's the good news. The bad news is that other states and other countries are aggressively trying to catch up. They don't have Florida's historic advantage, but they're putting up big bucks to offset it. Boosting the space industry in Florida would advance the broader goal of diversifying the state's economy. Lawmakers need to reach for the stars.

EADS Posts Wider Net Loss Amid Delivery Delays (Source: Wall Street Journal)
Airbus parent European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. (EADS) cut its earnings guidance for 2007 after posting a big third-quarter loss on a charge related to delays on a military aircraft program. For the third quarter to Sept. 30, EADS said its net loss widened to €776 million ($1.14 billion) from a loss of €189 million a year earlier.

Satellites Will Monitor Trucks Crossing U.S.-Mexican Border (Source: AIA)
Federal officials will equip commercial trucks participating in a cross-border program with satellite tracking devices to ensure that they follow federal safety and trade laws. The trucks travel between the U.S. and Mexico.

Small Fire Slows Demolition Work at Launch Complex 40 (Source: SpaceX)
Workers dismantling the Titan-4 infrastructure at Launch Complex 40 caused a small fire that was extinguished without injuries. Demolition contractors using steel cutting torches were sectioning an aging structure in preparation for removal, when adjacent materials ignited. The demolition work is being done to make LC-40 ready to accommodate SpaceX Falcon-9 launch vehicles, with a first launch planned as early as the fourth quarter of next year. LC-40 is being made available by the Air Force for SpaceX use.

NASA Blows Millions on Flawed Airline Safety Survey (Source: New Scientist)
Has NASA wasted $11.3 million on a flawed survey of airline safety? likely. The agency commissioned a telephone pollster to ask 29,000 pilots about their near misses, runway collisions and technical problems. At first, the poll seemed to show that these events had previously been alarmingly under-reported. Engine failures, for instance, were cited in NASA's survey at four times the rate recorded in the Federal Aviation Administration's incident records. The problem is that NASA appears to have counted some incidents more than once. Pilots were given anonymity, so NASA can't tell when several reports of an incident refer to the same event. Explaining the gaffe to the House Committee on Science and Technology on 31 October, NASA chief Mike Griffin admitted the figures were "simply not credible".

Space Shuttle Discovery Lands at Kennedy Space Center (Source: SpaceRef.com)
STS-120 Commander Pam Melroy and Pilot George Zamka fired Space Shuttle Discovery’s jets at 11:59 a.m. EST to begin the descent to Kennedy Space Center. Discovery touched down at Kennedy at 1:01 p.m. ending its mission to the International Space Station.

Scotland Should Have its Own Space Agency (Source: The Herald)
If I told you I thought Scotland should have its own space agency, you might say I was a mad rocket. So when Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield stepped on stage in Edinburgh and told the Association of Space Explorers that he thought Scotland should have our own wee version of NASA, it was greeted with a smirk. But his argument was compelling. After all, he said, Canada has no shuttles and no launch pads, but it has a thriving space agency, manned by scientists and engineers who are tapping into the lucrative new markets for space technology. Scotland, too, has talented space scientists, he said, so why not make the next leap? With a change of mindset, could we see space innovation as part of Scotland's proud heritage of engineering achievement?

Air Force Seeks Greater Control Over Military and Spy Satellites (Source: Wall Street Journal)
The Air Force, facing escalating budget pressures on its satellite programs, has launched a drive to gain control over development, construction and operational support of nearly all national-security space systems. The new, long-term campaign, sketched out in a speech here earlier this week by Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Hamel, the service's top uniformed space acquisition official, seeks to roll back the role of the Army and the Navy in overseeing future satellite programs. It also envisions more direct Air Force control over other, multibillion-dollar surveillance satellites desired by the U.S. intelligence community.

No Rest for NASA: Jammed-Pack Schedule Looms (Source: USA Today)
After one of the most complex and dramatic space shuttle flights in history, Discovery glided to an uneventful landing Wednesday on Earth. The coming months for NASA's human space program look anything but smooth. The power system on the International Space Station is partially on the fritz. The delivery of a European laboratory to the station is in jeopardy. And there's such a logjam of construction work on the station that the crew there won't get a day off for Thanksgiving.

DirecTV Revenues Surge, Earnings Fall (Source: CNN)
DirecTV Group's third-quarter earnings fell 14 percent because of higher costs, but revenue surged as customers opted for more high-definition and digital video recorder services. Net income dropped to $319 million, from $370 million in the year-ago period. Revenue rose 18 percent to $4.33 billion from $3.67 billion last year and beat estimates of $4.25 billion.

Editorial: KSC and Smithsonian Should House Shuttle Orbiters (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
A battle is brewing over where the Shuttle Discovery and its sister ships will land in 2010 when NASA ends flights. Museums across the country want a shuttle to display and there are only four -- Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour and Enterprise, the test vehicle that never traveled into space. If the goal is to provide access to Americans and inspire interest in the space program, two sites win, hands down. The Kennedy Space Center, which attracts thousands of tourists each year, is obvious. The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington should also display a shuttle that has flown in space. The Smithsonian, after all, is America's museum.

Did our Solar System Once Have Another Planet? (Source: Cosmos)
The fiery demise of a fifth rocky planet in our Solar System might have led to a flurry of asteroid impacts that pockmarked the Moon and Earth billions of years ago. The Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) is a relatively brief period, about 3.9 billion years ago, when wayward space projectiles heavily pelted the Moon and inner planets. Craters from that chaotic time are still visible on the Moon, but have been erased from Earth, where the crust is continually recycled. Astrophysicist John Chambers says the size distribution of craters on the Moon point to asteroids from the Asteroid Belt, located beyond the orbit of Mars. And he thinks the misbehaviour of a long-lost, fifth rocky planet called 'Planet V' was the trigger that upset the gravitational balance of the belt and ejected some of its inhabitants.

Using a new computer model detailed in a recent issue of the journal Icarus, Chambers provides the most compelling evidence yet that a hypothetical Planet V could have existed for hundreds of millions of years before minute gravitational tugs from Mars and Jupiter destabilised its orbit, causing it to fall into the Sun. "Before it was lost, its orbit would have moved across the Asteroid Belt for quite a long period of time, scattering asteroids as a result," Planet V's orbit was between that of Mars and the Asteroid Belt, Chambers predicts, and it may have been smaller than Mars but larger than our Moon. "If it was bigger than Mars, then Mars should have been the one that was lost," he said. "If it's smaller than the Moon, that's not really big enough to disturb the Asteroid Belt much."

Former Space Center CEO Gets 10 Years (Source: Huntsville Times)
A federal judge in Texas in September sentenced former U.S. Space & Rocket Center CEO Mike Wing to 10 years in prison and ordered him to pay more than $9.1 million in restitution to dozens of victims after he pleaded guilty to wire fraud. But Alabama officials said that doesn't end their efforts to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars Wing owes the state. "The only option that Alabama has at this point in time is to try to position ourselves in the long line of participants who are trying to receive something from Mr. Wing," said a spokesman for Alabama's Attorney General. The Texas case is unrelated to the lawsuit Alabama officials brought against Wing for losses incurred while he was head of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, from September 1998 until he resigned under pressure a year later. His Space Center tenure was marked by controversy and led to then-Gov. Don Siegelman's replacing nearly every member of the Alabama Space Science Exhibit Commission, which oversees the center.