Nasa has begun to wind down construction of the rockets and spacecraft that were to have taken astronauts back to the Moon — effectively dismantling the US human spaceflight program despite a congressional ban on its doing so.

Legislators have accused President Obama’s Administration of contriving to slip the termination of the Constellation programme through the back door to avoid a battle on Capitol Hill.

Constellation aimed to build upon what was arguably America’s greatest technological achievement, the first lunar landing of 1969, by launching new expeditions to the Moon and to Mars and worlds beyond. Mr Obama proposed in February that it should be scrapped because it was “over budget, behind schedule and lacking in innovation”, but he has met opposition in Congress, which has yet to approve his plan.The head of Nasa, Major-General Charlie Bolden — an Obama appointee — has now written to aerospace contractors telling them to cut back immediately on Constellation-related projects costing almost $1 billion, to comply with regulations requiring them to budget for possible contract termination costs.

The move has been branded a “disingenuous legal maneuver” and referred to Nasa’s inspector-general for investigation. “It’s bordering on arrogance by the Administration to boldly and brazenly go forward with this approach. It shows a blatant disregard for Congress,” said the Republican Congressman Rob Bishop, of Utah, whose constituency stands to lose thousands of jobs. Two weeks ago the Senate passed legislation that compels Nasa to continue work on Constellation unless Congress directs otherwise. That legislation is due to be signed into law by Mr Obama this month while Congress continues its deliberations over his proposal to cancel the current space space progam.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican and member of the Senate’s Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said: “The timing of Nasa’s decision to push forward with these actions now, before this becomes law, is highly questionable.” Nasa is “willfully subverting the repeatedly expressed will of Congress”, she added.

Scott Pace, a former Nasa executive and now the Director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said: “The effect will be to stop work on Constellation and lay off or transfer people to other jobs. If Congress then says it wants to continue going ahead with Constellation, those people will be difficult to re-hire. It’s already a difficult situation, but this will introduce more instability.”

Constellation was born in 2004 from President George W. Bush’s vision for returning Americans to the Moon by 2020 and using it as a base to build the knowledge and technologies for a manned mission to Mars by 2030. Since then, more than $9 billion has been spent on designing and building the necessary space vehicles.

An independent review panel appointed by Mr Obama last year concluded, however, that without an extra $3 billion a year Constellation was on an “unsustainable trajectory”. In his proposed budget for the 2011 fiscal year, unveiled in February, Mr Obama made it clear that there would be no extra money for its continuation. The proposal has yet to clear Congress.

Distinguished space veterans, including the first and last men to walk on the Moon, Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, have complained that the abandonment of Constellation will set America’s space capabilities on a “downhill slide to mediocrity”. They say that, while Mr Obama has outlined a vision for Nasa that includes sending people to Mars at some point, it lacks a concise plan for developing the rockets and spacecraft to get them there.

“The Administration has no planning, no program and no idea — they’d just have these things happen mysteriously,” Mr Bishop said. “Rockets aren’t something that Wal-Mart puts on its shelves. You have to have a plan for how you get from A to B, and Obama has just said we’ll work it as we go along and maybe some day we’ll end up on an asteroid or the Moon or somewhere. The bottom line is, those ‘maybes’ will never happen.”

Private rocket developers, to whom Mr Obama proposes outsourcing the task of carrying crews and cargo to the International Space Station after the shuttle fleet retires, are making advances. Ten days ago Elon Musk, a spaceflight entrepreneur — and founder of the online payment system PayPal — launched a near-flawless test flight of his Falcon 9 rocket, which is designed to take payloads and ultimately human beings into space.

Triumphs and tragedies

Oct 4, 1958 A year after the Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the US Congress passes “an Act to provide for research into the problems of flight within and outside the Earth’s atmosphere, and for other purposes”. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) is born

Feb 20, 1962 John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit Earth. The Russian Yuri Gagarin had made the first space flight a year earlier. Glenn returns to public adulation and later becomes a US senator

May 25, 1961 President Kennedy announces that he is setting the United States the goal of reaching the Moon by the end of the decade

January 27, 1967 Three US astronauts die in a fire during a simulated take-off, the first to die in the space programme

July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong takes man’s first step on the Moon and plants an American flag, a significant propaganda coup. The US is still the only nation to have put a man on the Moon

April 13, 1970 An oxygen tank explodes aboard Apollo 13. It becomes clear that there is not enough air in the capsule to keep the three astronauts alive. They manage to board the self-contained Lunar Module and land safely in the Pacific

April 12, 1981 The US launches Columbia, its first space shuttle and the first spacecraft to land on a runway instead of in the sea

Jan 28, 1986 The Challenger space shuttle explodes 73 seconds after take-off, killing its crew

April 24, 1990 The Hubble Space Telescope comes online after being carried into space by a US shuttle

Feb 1, 2003 Columbia breaks up over Texas returning from its 28th mission, killing the crew

Feb 1, 2010 President Obama announces plans to cancel additional funding of the programme to return US astronauts to the Moon by 2020

Earth and space are about to come into contact in a way that’s new to human history. To make preparations, authorities in Washington DC are holding a meeting: The Space Weather Enterprise Forum at the National Press Club on June 8th.
Richard Fisher, head of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, explains what it’s all about:

“The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms. The intersection of these two issues is what we’re getting together to discuss.”

The National Academy of Sciences framed the problem two years ago in a landmark report entitled “Severe Space Weather Events—Societal and Economic Impacts.” It noted how people of the 21st-century rely on high-tech systems for the basics of daily life. Smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by intense solar activity. A century-class solar storm, the Academy warned, could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.

Much of the damage can be mitigated if managers know a storm is coming. Putting satellites in ‘safe mode’ and disconnecting transformers can protect these assets from damaging electrical surges. Preventative action, however, requires accurate forecasting—a job that has been assigned to NOAA.

“Space weather forecasting is still in its infancy, but we’re making rapid progress,” says Thomas Bogdan, director of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.

Bogdan sees the collaboration between NASA and NOAA as key. “NASA’s fleet of heliophysics research spacecraft provides us with up-to-the-minute information about what’s happening on the sun. They are an important complement to our own GOES and POES satellites, which focus more on the near-Earth environment.” [Read The Rest:NASA]

With all the crap happening right here on earth, it seems like a crying shame to make these expenditures.

What with multiple wars and occupations, an accelerating economic meltdown, corporate malfeasance and environmental catastrophes such as the petroleum-fueled apocalypse in the Gulf of Mexico, I’d say we have a full plate already.

Now the Defense Department wants to up the stakes with new, destabilizing weapons systems that will transform low- and high-earth orbit into another “battlespace,” pouring billions into programs to achieve what Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) has long dreamed of: “space dominance.”

Indeed, Pentagon space warriors fully intend to field a robust anti-satellite (ASAT) capability that can disable, damage or destroy the satellites of other nations, all for “defensive” purposes, mind you.

Back in 2005, The New York Times reported that General Lance W. Lord, then commander of AFSPC, told an Air Force conference that “space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny. … Space superiority is our day-to-day mission. Space supremacy is our vision for the future.”

Five years on, that “mission” is still a top priority for the Obama administration. While some might call it “net-centric warfare” on steroids, I’d choose another word: madness.

Air Force X-37B

On April 22, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) successfully launched its robot space shuttle, the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Sitting atop a Lockheed Martin Atlas V rocket, the unmanned, reusable space plane roared into orbit after more than ten years of development by Boeing Corporation’s “Phantom Works” black projects shop.

The successful orbital insertion of the X-37B was the culmination of a decades’ long dream by the Department of Defense: to field a reusable spacecraft that combines an airplane’s agility with the means to travel at 5 miles per second in orbit.

From the Pentagon’s point of view, a craft such as the X-37B may be the harbinger of things to come: a johnny-on-the-spot weapons platform to take out the satellite assets of an enemy de jour, or as a launch vehicle that can deliver bombs, missiles or kinetic weapons anywhere on earth in less than two hours; what Air Force wags refer to as “operationally responsive space.”

Prior to launch, Air Force Deputy Undersecretary of Space Programs, Gary Payton, ridiculed speculation that the X-37B is the prototype for a new space-based weapons system. Payton told reporters, “I don’t know how this could be called a weaponization of space. Fundamentally, it’s just an updated version of the space shuttle kinds of activities in space.”

Needless to say, such denials should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.

The highly-classified program has a checkered history. According to GlobalSecurity.org, the project is envisaged as a “reusable space architecture” that would provide “aircraft-like operability, flexibility, and responsiveness, supporting AF Space Command mission areas.”

While early examples such as the Dyna-Soar/X-20 program of the 1950s-1960s never panned out due to technological constraints, the Air Force never stopped trying. Programs such as the X-40 Space Maneuver Vehicle (SMV) and the X-41 Common Air Vehicle (CAV), a hypersonic craft intended to serve as a key component in developing the off-again, on-again “Prompt Global Strike” project, demonstrate continuing Air Force interest in “high frontier” weapons programs.

The X-40 project eventually merged with the Air Force’s X-37B program and the X-41 CAV program has been absorbed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV-2).

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Over 70 years ago, scientists invented aerogel, the least dense solid known to man, and an insulator four times more efficient than fiberglass or foam. Famously, according to Dr. Peter Tsou of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “you could take a two- or three-bedroom house, insulate it with aerogel, and you could heat the house with a candle. But eventually the house would become too hot.”

Unfortunately, aerogels remained so expensive and unwieldy that only NASA used them with any regularity. However, thanks to recent production advances, aerogel insulation is now available and affordable for consumer purchase.

Aerogel Insulation :  Aspen Aerogels, via CNET

Even after the price drop, aerogels remain more expensive than common insulating materials. But since aerogels are more plastic than fiberglass or foam, permeable to water vapor, and flameproof, the extra cost may well be worth the investment when insulating masonry, shingles, or curved surfaces. Plus, since they’re so light and efficient, aerogels reduce other building costs as well.

Aerogels are made by constructing a conventional gel, and then removing the liquid though supercritical drying. The resultant material is 90 percent air, but retains the structure and rigidity of the non-liquid gel components.

This is a very good article by Edward Brotherton documenting his disciplined and effective effort to get his Congressman’s office to acknowledge that the science indicating ongoing 9/11 treason exists, even if they continue, like Senator Lindsey Graham and his office, to stick with NIST and the 9/11 Commission.

This article has been sent far and wide to those in the political realm and media. If you can help spread it, please do so.

the PDF of this article is linked to from HERE
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I have written an article for your knowledge and distribution as you deem fit about my dealings with Congressman’s Brad Sherman’s office. This is an issue of national importance as it relates to our national security. If you watch the short video’s below then read the PDF documents in the order listed you will get a very clear picture of what is going on.

This is the first article I’ve ever written so please be easy on me. It is primarily for your education and publication if you deem it neccessary. Personally there are several worthy and bigger stories within this article. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

This video is a must see. You can actually hear the explosions very clearly.

The video below is John Gross (one of the lead NIST investigators) telling a physics teacher that he knows of no evidence of molten metal found in the WTC site in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. It is important to point that when John told this teacher to send him the NASA images showing temperatures reaching in excess of 2000 degrees, he later refused to give him his email address to send him the pictures.

This is a video interview of Barry Jennings talking about the explosions he heard while being trapped inside building 7 before mysteriously dying at age 53.

October 30, 2009

By Edward Brotherton

After a 20-minute conversation with Congressman Brad Sherman’s office on Friday, October 10, 2009, I hung up the phone not believing what I had just heard. Congressman Brad Sherman represents the 27th district, one of the geographically largest districts in Southern California representing around 600,000 constituents. The congressman’s policy advisor in Washington, Erin Prangley, ignores the question as to how they got there. She kept repeating that the Congressman’s position is expressed by the report published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), as recommended by the San Fernando Valley chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

When it comes to the subject of the September 11th terrorist attacks, it appears that many political offices become a Bermuda triangle, where reports are lost and never seen again along with common sense, logic, basic math skills and the desire to protect the rights of the American people. To be fair however this political black hole wasn’t created after 9/11. On September 10th 2001 Donald Rumsfeld gave a press conference where he told the American people that the Pentagon could not account for $2.3 trillion dollars. That is no typo – that’s trillion with a “t”. Of course, the next day almost 3000 Americans lives were lost, along with the World Trade Center ,and the issue of the missing $2.3 trillion got sucked away into the 9/11 black hole.
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