The National Aeronautics and Space Association

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space association was founded in the late 50’s by President Dwight D. Eisenhower with a distinctly civilian orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science and exploration. NASA science is focused on better understanding Earth, advancing heliophysics (understanding of the sun), exploring bodies throughout the solar system and researching astrophysics topics, such as the Big Bang, through the Hubble Deep Field studies and with Cosmic Background Radiation studies. NASA shares data with various national and international organizations . NASA has been one of the United States most expensive government programs as well. Apollo; the missions to put men on the moon, was one of the most expensive American scientific programs ever. It is estimated to have cost $205 billion in present-day US dollars. To put that into perspective, the Manhattan project (the research and development of the Atom Bomb during World War II) cost only about 26.2 Billion accounting for inflation. The massive capitol drain has made NASA subject to many aggressive budget cuts over the years as the government has been cited as being too frugal in its spending. NASA Research has only very recently been fully funded by government money, but other private businesses have stepped in to the game and a private company has already docked spacecraft on the ISS. We are moving into an age of unprecedented technological development, and more funding to NASA makes watchers of the night sky expect good things over the coming decade.

http://www.nasa.gov/

http://www.nasa.gov/about/whats_next.html#.U4u86JbvVGQ

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/programmissions/missions/future/m2020/

 

 

Our Stellar Footprint

Michael Stevens: LONELY.  http://youtu.be/_QPcclYWOr4

Nixon’s undelivered moon speech: http://watergate.info/1969/07/20/an-undelivered-nixon-speech.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon

In this video, Michael Stevens talks about the United States moon missions, Voyager I, and the human emotion of loneliness. On July 20th, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon. Meanwhile, orbiting around the moon was Michael Collins; the lesser known of the three astronauts, in the command module waiting to reconnect with the moon walkers later. While he was orbiting the other side of the moon he lost all radio contact with Earth and his fellow astronauts, and he was the farthest a single human has been from another human since the beginning of humanity. For the 48 minutes Michael Collins was orbiting the dark side of the moon, he was quite literally the most lonely a human being has ever been.

On July 18th, 1969 Nixon’s speechwriter prepared a speech for Nixon to read if the moon mission failed and the astronauts were unable to return to earth. It reads;

“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”

This speech was never given, as the astronauts landed safely in the pacific ocean on July 24th, effectively ending the space race and fulfilling the words of the late President Kennedy in a speech given before congress in 1961;  “before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth”.

In the 1960’s, a Grand Tour to study the outer planets was proposed. This prompted NASA to begin work on a mission in the early 1970’s. Voyager I is a 1600 lb space probe launched by NASA on September 5th, 1977. Operating for 36 years, 8 months and 22 days as of 27 May 2014, the spacecraft still continues to receive routine commands and return data. At a distance of about 127.74 AU (1.911×10¹⁰ km) from the Earth as of May 8, 2014, it is the farthest human-made object from Earth.  Due to three  radioisotope thermoelectric generators, the probe will continue to operate some of its functions until 2025.

 

 Attached to Voyager 1’s outer hull is a gold plated disc, speaking in a universal tongue of binary code and physics. The front shows how to play the record with the correct playback speed of video and audio in binary code, and the position of Sol (our sun) in perspective to the direction of 14 pulsars. Contained as information on the record are pictures of scientific interest such as mathematical and physical quantities, the solar system and its planets, DNA, and human anatomy. Contained as audio are recordings representing different human emotions, sounds of nature, and a wide musical selection.

On the golden disc representing the human emotion of Loneliness, is a song by “Blind” Willy Johnson, titled “Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground”. There are no words to the song, just humming. Willy Johnson wasn’t blind his whole life, but when he was seven his stepmother threw lye in his face, and he died of malarial fever when his house burned to the ground and he had nowhere else to go. To think that his song is immortalized on a golden disc, floating through the cosmos representing a loneliness for all of humanity is very humbling. I think we took the right step in humbling ourselves before the vast unknown, and I hope we continue to follow this path in our future explorations.

Moon Vehicles

http://www.topgear.com/uk/

In a season of UK Top Gear on BBC they aired a episode deviating away from their usual reviews of very fast super cars for the British people. One of the Top Gear hosts; James May, travels to NASA in the United states to test the Moon Rover mark II. Upon arrival he finds all of the improvements they have done to the lunar vehicle over the nearly 50 year span of the lunar rover Mark 1 going to the moon. NASA had spent a huge sum of money on the tests, research and the production of the amazing-do-everything six-wheeled vehicle, even though it will never see action in space. Due to NASA’s budget cuts following the economic recession, a huge amount of space missions were wiped off the board for being too expensive, and the space program in general to be “visually appealing, but unnecessary”.

However, 3 days ago on May 28, 2014 President Obama announced that NASA’s budget will be increased for the long fought for “penny on the dollar”, or 1% of the United States total yearly budget, rounding out to an astronomical 435 million dollar yearly budget increase for NASA.

Much of the reason for the increase of NASA’s budget is in preparation of the launch of the James Webb space telescope. NASA states, “Webb will be the most powerful space telescope ever built, able to detect the light from the first galaxies ever formed and explore planets around distant stars.  It will study every phase of our universe’s history, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of stellar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own solar system.”

http://www.ibtimes.com/nasa-gets-budget-increase-congress-new-spending-bill-james-webb-space-telescope-safe-cuts-1541344

http://guardianlv.com/2014/06/nasa-budget-increase-brings-men-closer-to-mars/