Today in the Whippet City: a day of thunderstorms, with high temperatures in the low nineties.
Over at Wired Science, there’s an optimistic – with good reason, I think — story about American spaceflight entitled, “Goodbye, Space Shuttle: Now the Space Race Can Really Begin.” David Axe observes that
In truth, the shuttle’s retirement could actually make the U.S. space program stronger, by finally allowing the shuttle’s two users – NASA and the Pentagon – to go their separate ways in space, each adopting space vehicles best suited to their respective missions.
Axe writes about some of the options that America will now use for space launches:
For routine sorties placing satellites and other space vehicles into orbit, NASA will use unmanned rockets, from the 1.6-million-pound Delta IV to the 1,300-pound Minotaur. That’s the Pentagon’s preferred approach, as well. NASA is trying a more commercial approach for resupplying the space station. For example, they’ve agreed to 12 resupply missions with SpaceX worth at least $1.6 billion.
Not a bad set of choices, among others that the story mentions. We’ll be fine.