September 14 News Items

Recovery from Ike Likely to Stall Launches (Source: Florida Today)
NASA is starting what will be a slow recovery from Hurricane Ike at the Houston home of the Mission Control Center and the agency's next two shuttle flights face delays as a result. The expectation is that Johnson Space Center will remain closed for a week while a relatively small NASA recovery team restores power, phone service and other utilities around the center and surrounding communities struggle to recover from a monster storm that left the city of Houston without power. (9/14)

Minor Damage at Johnson Space Center (Source: KHOU)
NASA's Johnson Space Center appears to have weathered Hurricane Ike rather well, Houston emergency management officials said. A portion of Mission Control's roof was damaged, and a number of tree limbs and lamp poles fell. There was also minor cosmetic damage to some of the center's buildings. The space center was without power and has been running on generators since 5 a.m. on Saturday. Mission Control operations for the International Space Station were not disrupted, because flight control operators were dispatched to Austin and Huntsville, Ala., to conduct operations remotely. NASA's operations at Ellington Field sustained roof and awning damage. (9/14)

Editorial: U.S. Took a Pass on Big Bang, Now We're Stuck with NASA's Big Bust (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Fifteen years ago we confronted this choice: We could build a cutting-edge time machine to take us back to the Big Bang. And there, we would discover the mysteries of the universe. Or we could build a space station and watch astronauts float around in it. We went with the latter. Obviously, we picked wrong.

So now I take you back to the Big Doh! when this decision was made. And we will discover how pork-barrel space politics are turning us into a second-tier science nation. It was 1993, and Congress faced big tabs for two massive science projects. One was the space station and the other was a superconducting supercollider. The collider would be a 54-mile circular tunnel built underground in Texas. It presumably would lead to all kinds of revelations about things such as other dimensions, dark matter, antimatter, gravity and something called the "God Particle," which nobody has ever seen, but which supposedly holds the universe together.

By 1993, about 14 miles of the tunnel were completed. At the same time, Congress was considering the space station. And soon the debate boiled down to which was the priority. This is when science lost out to pork. A 1992 Orlando Sentinel story detailed how space-station contracts had been spread out to key congressional districts. NASA had achieved the budgetary Holy Grail: It turned the station into a jobs program. (9/14)

Weldon Wants McCain to Block NASA from Buying Soyuz (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Retiring Congressman Dave weldon says he is soliciting help from Florida's Republican Sen. Mel Martinez and Rep. Presidential nominee John McCain to block NASA's efforts to purchase more Soyuz spacecraft from Russia. Should either back his stance, the waiver NASA wants so badly dies. Weldon said Friday that he would undercut NASA's last-minute push to get permission to buy the Russian spacecraft. "I'm going to pull every lever I have," said Weldon, who retires at the end of this term.

NASA has warned that losing access to the Russian Soyuz spacecraft could mean no longer having NASA astronauts on the space station. "I've been putting every bit of political capital that I might have or can borrow behind securing an extension of that waiver," said NASA's Mike Griffin. The NASA chief hopes to ram the waiver through Congress, with the apparent backing of the White House.

Weldon needs to recruit only one senator to block legislative maneuvers to pass the waiver. Weldon said he opposes the waiver for two reasons: It would mean job losses at Kennedy Space Center, which launches the soon-to-retire shuttle; and it puts Washington in a weaker position with Moscow. (9/13)

NASA's Star Is Fading, Its Chief Says (Source: Washington Post)
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin charged in a leaked e-mail that some White House officials "have done everything possible to ensure" that the space station won't be maintained. He has retracted much of the e-mail. Griffin has clashed repeatedly with the White House in recent months -- a rift that escalated when budget officials heavily edited a statement he was submitting to Congress about China's space ambitions. In his draft comments to Congress, Griffin laid out in strong terms his often-expressed concerns about America's fading dominance in space, and he warned that China is emerging quickly as a rival.

"A Chinese landing on the moon prior to our own return will create a stark perception that the U.S. lags behind not only Russia, but also China, in space," he wrote. The OMB deleted that passage and several others before it went to Congress. The heavy OMB edits of Griffin's comments on China were made in March after Griffin appeared before Congress and was asked to supply additional information. A copy of Griffin's comments with the OMB's changes and deletions, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that the version ultimately sent to Congress lost much of Griffin's sense of urgency. "The bare fact of this accomplishment will have an enormous, and not fully predictable, effect on global perceptions of U.S. leadership in the world," Griffin wrote at one point. OMB deleted it.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said that it is widely thought in the NASA and space community that the "OMB tells NASA what it can and cannot do." Of the edits of Griffin's testimony, Nelson said, "This is very typical of how OMB sets policy, in terms of what they let [NASA officials] say and what they let them ask for." (9/14)

China Sends Festival Greetings, Taiwan Songs from Moon (Source: Reuters)
China broadcast greetings and two Taiwanese songs from its first moon probe on Sunday, to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival when families gather to enjoy the bright autumn moon. The Chang'e-1 satellite was launched in October 2007 and has orbited the moon thousands of times. "Let's (all Chinese compatriots) enjoy together the bright moon light and look forward to our reunion," the broadcast said, according to a statement from the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

The satellite also broadcast two songs with a reunion theme. One was "Ali Mountain Girl", a folksong of native Taiwanese aboriginals, and the other, "Wish to be with you forever." China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since their split in 1949 amid civil war and insists the self-ruled democratic island must one day return to the fold, by force if necessary. But ties between the two have warmed since the Nationalist party, or Kuomintang (KMT), was re-elected to the Taiwanese presidency this year. (9/14)