I'll let Warrior Tang and the others carry on about politics. Today I'm going to concentrate on the big wide world outside mere Earthly politics.
First up, we have the rather surprising announcement that the speed brake actuators on the shuttle Discovery were installed backwards. What's surprising about this is that this happened when Discovery was built - in 1984. That this problem wasn't discovered until twenty years later says a lot about the corporate culture at NASA, and none of it is good.
The big news today is of course the new findings about Opportunity's landing site. It seems that, yes Virginia, Mars did indeed have open water at some point in the past. How long ago, and if those oceans contained life, is still up in the air.
The Prometheus group (NASA's in-house project to design large-scale nuclear power sources for spacecraft) and the Dept. of Energy's Naval Reactor program have formally announced that joined forces. Their initial project is expected to be the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, a probe to go hunt around the Galileans. No word as of yet of a reaction from the "Nukes In Space = Evil!" crowd.
And finally, somebody managed to drag Neil Armstrong out of his hermitage to give a speech. He supported the Bush "space plan" in it, though only in passing. Which is, admittedly, more support than Bush has given it since making the initial announcement.
And that's all from me for today. Clear jets and clear skies.
Posted by the Fourth Man at March 23, 2004 06:35 PM