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Browser based game??? doomed to failure, just make it a I Phone  App.

I'm a Cylon, you're a Cylon, everyone is a frakk'in Cylon!

http://scifiblock.com/news/2010/3/9/battlestar-galactica-mmorpg-coming-but-theres-a-catch.htm

Kennedy Space Center, Florida (CNN) --

So you're in the market for a new vehicle. Any chance you'd consider one with more than 100 million miles on the odometer, a neat white paint job and a sticker price of $28.8 million? Probably not.

Even if you were ready to plunk down nearly $30 million, chances are your garage can't fit a space shuttle next to the lawn mower. But there are a few places willing to pay the price. And for the most part, they've got the space, too.

When the shuttle Atlantis touches down Wednesday morning (weather permitting), the orbiter will become the first of the three remaining shuttles to officially retire. By the end of the year, Discovery and Endeavour will follow.

The question is: Where will they retire to?

"These are unique spacecraft, and they truly are one-of-a-kind, said NASA spokesman Allard Beutel.

"Each one is a little different, and they are the only reusable spacecraft in the world, ever. I can't imagine an institution ... not wanting to have it for public display," he told CNN.

About two dozen museums and institutions around the country have submitted paperwork to take title on one of the most technologically advanced machines ever built -- a crown jewel for any entity which can afford one.

"We're not selling them, remember. This is what it's going to cost to get it cleaned up, make it safe to display and then actually get it there," said Beutel.

The price includes removal of any toxic chemicals and flying it to the nearest airport aboard the 747 shuttle transport jet.

Some of the institutions vying for one of the three shuttles include the usual suspects: the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington; the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City; the privately run Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex near the shuttle launch pads in Florida; the Johnson Space Center outside Houston, Texas; the Air Force National Museum, in Ohio; and the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Illinois.

NASA has earmarked the oldest shuttle, Discovery, for the Smithsonian, which already houses an extensive collection from the U.S. space program, including artifacts from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs and Enterprise, the test shuttle.

But the Air and Space Museum's entire annual budget, at $28 million, wouldn't cover NASA's asking price for Discovery, and since NASA has typically provided space artifacts at no charge, the museum has balked.

"Questions about costs associated with the transfer of Discovery, which have been estimated by NASA, have not been resolved although the Museum is exploring options," the Smithsonian said in a written statement supplied to CNN.

Others, however, are eager to pony up a check.

"Between our cash and our loan arrangements, we could take the shuttle tomorrow and get ready to go," said Bill Moore, the chief operating officer of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

But whoever takes charge of a space shuttle not only has to pay NASA dealer prep and transportation charges, that entity will also have to build an enclosed, temperature-controlled facility to house it.

"We need a wonderful building to put the shuttle in. It just demands that," said Moore.

"We want to put in the artifacts. We want to tell the story of the people that serviced and got this wonderful bird ready to fly," he told CNN.

The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex expects to draw a double digit increase in visitors yearly to see whichever shuttle they might acquire. Currently, about 1.5 million people visit each year.

"We get visitors from around the world. When they see a space-flown artifact ... they get emotional about these pieces of equipment," said Moore.

Up the Eastern Seaboard, the retired aircraft carrier Intrepid sits off Manhattan's west side. The mighty ship once raced across the Pacific Ocean to pick up astronauts and space capsules after splash down, and now its officials want the museum it anchors to be the new home for a space plane, too.

"It's the tourist capitol of the world, and we just really feel that we want to help bring the most eyeballs that we possibly can to what is this technological masterpiece," said Susan Marenoff, executive director of the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.

Marenoff says that the museum would have to move the Concord supersonic jet, currently on display, and put the shuttle in its current spot. She expects more than $106 million in economic benefit if the museum hosts one of the shuttles.

"The shuttle itself just offers the opportunity for science and education programs to be brought to multicultural institutions, generations of people that will be able to come and really learn what this icon is all about," said Marenoff.

Although Atlantis will be the the first of the shuttles to end scheduled flights, the second-oldest shuttle won't be quickly shipped out to pasture. It will be prepared to make another flight, if necessary, as a future rescue mission.

Of course, NASA hopes it never has to fly that mission. And when all three shuttles are safely on Earth for the last time, Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavor will be stripped down and readied for delivery in mint condition.

Well, almost, said NASA's Beutel.

"About as mint condition as you're going to get for a thing that has traveled over 115 million miles in a 25-year period."

 

 
 
 
 

 
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/25/space.shuttles.retirement/index.html 

I have always said that you find adventure in the most unlikely of places...in this case on Trail Canyon on Mt. Charleston on May 23,2010.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=5926311&l=ce453c2938&id=834969151

Most of the Loons play Battlefield Bad Company.

Moon Walkers Defend Space Flight at Senate Hearings

By Katy Steinmetz

In terms of Senate hearings, this one had all the right stuff: high stakes, passionate speeches, shutdowns and — as if that weren't enough — astronauts with a score to settle. Not just any old astronauts either. Attending the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee's forum on the future of human space flight were the first and last men to walk on the moon — the semi-reclusive Neil Armstrong and the slightly younger (and much sassier) Eugene Cernan.

The attendance of these two white-haired history-makers couldn't have been more poetically appropriate. At the heart of the hearing, which took place Wednesday on Capitol Hill, was Obama's recommendation to cancel the Constellation program, an expensive, Bush-bred collection of projects that involves building spacecraft meant to take Americans back to the moon by 2020.

So far the program has cost $9 billion and would require billions more that America doesn't have to spend. That made Constellation one of two things in the minds of those at yesterday's hearing: either a substantial investment that should be kept alive with some creative budgeting or a white elephant that should be put to sleep before it tramples any more government coffers. The towering committee chair, West Virginia Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller, called himself a "third-way" man open to other options, but his statements at the hearing landed him in the space-skeptic camp.

The termination of Constellation would crucially coincide with the retirement of America's rickety shuttle fleet, leaving the U.S. without its own means of propelling people to the moon or International Space Station until new crafts are developed and built.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the astronauts present were avidly against shutting the program down. Cernan went so far as to say that the president's proposal had no focus and was a "blueprint" for how to get absolutely "nowhere," that it was the "administration's pledge to mediocrity." Armstrong kept his testimony more tempered, but both had already signed open letters last month calling Obama's plan "devastating." And they meant that not just in practical terms; their rhetoric quickly soared, both in the epistles and the hearing, to heights where America's geopolitical standing, pride, leadership status and bright young minds could be seen on the chopping block below.

Obama's suggestion, supported by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, is to spend money shifting the spacecraft-building onus to the private sector while NASA concentrates on developing a super-advanced ship, one that probably relies on technologies still in the making, as was the case when Kennedy told NASA to get on up to the moon in 1962. Obama and Bolden's projections are that the ship could be designed by 2015, landing on an asteroid by 2025 and heading to Mars by the mid-2030s — dates and goals that the space community finds frustratingly general and uninspiring, especially compared to the detailed plans attached to the Constellation project.

Some of the senators, including Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison and Louisiana Republican David Vitter, expressed unbridled skepticism of the private sector's ability to create safe spacecraft. Vitter said there is "no evidence" that the commercial sector can supply this demand "in the near term," despite the progress of companies such as SpaceX, run by PayPal founder Elon Musk, which has built a rocket that sits at Cape Canaveral ready to test launch.

In any case, projections for using the private sector are cheaper at the moment. Musk has said he would sell astronauts seats for around $20 million. The only other option for getting into space, hitching a ride with the Russian government, costs about $50 million a pop. (America will be stuck with the Russians for a while even if Constellation goes on as planned, but the astronauts and some legislators worry that Obama's plan would extend the flightless "gap" by several years due to the commercial sector's inexperience.)

Much harder to compare were the relative arguments about how the intangibles should be figured into the plan for NASA's future. Rockefeller opened with a statement making it clear that he did not support manned space exploration as an end in itself. At one point, when he asked the astronauts point-blank what the merit of manned space flight was in terms of what concrete improvements it held for the "human condition," Cernan responded with an stage-worthy speech, as romantic and impassioned as it was vague: "Curiosity is the essence of human existence. Who are we? Where are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? ... I don't know. I don't have any answers to those questions. I don't know what's over there around the corner. But I want to find out. It's within our hearts and souls and desires to find out and seek knowledge. Discovery is what it's all about."

That last line has proven to be an especially critical point in the debate, given that trips to the moon, where we went 40 years ago, are most immediately on the line. While the astronauts pointed out, as other scientific stakeholders have, that landing on the moon raised more questions than it answered, that doesn't change the American taxpayers' general feeling that the moon isn't really a new frontier. Norm Augustine, who headed the committee that reviewed NASA's budgetary options, documented that public sentiment during months of research; he also dejectedly pointed out during the hearing that almost the same amount of time had elapsed between the Wright Brothers' first flight and the first moon landing as would have elapsed between the first moon landing and the return trip the astronauts were fighting so hard to salvage.

Arguments about what the plan would mean for America's geopolitical standing, the impetus for the space race in the 1960s, seemed similarly unsubstantiated. "I am convinced it will absolutely relinquish our leadership role in human space flight, certainly for our lifetimes, maybe longer," Vitter said. Some efforts are making Americans nervous for their leadership role. China, for example, is flowing unprecedented funding into its space program, unchecked by budget requests and delays, but their increased activity has still done little to motivate the U.S., unlike the Cold War worries that lit fires under previous administrations.

Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, a long-time NASA advocate and big believer in space for space's sake, ended the session by asking Armstrong why it was worth returning to the moon. The astronaut, whose appearance had been much anticipated given his habitual hesitance to speak out in support of space programs or otherwise, responded meanderingly. There could be valuable minerals, he said, or we could research how to make permanent settlements, amongst other things. Armstrong had previously urged the continued use of the soon-to-be-retired space shuttles, which Augustine's committee and other review boards have deemed to be on their last legs, and twice stumbled trying to turn on his microphone after almost sitting in the wrong chair. One couldn't help but wonder whether he's more an icon of NASA's past than a voice for its future. "We need a new direction," Rockefeller said at the beginning of the hearing. "The American people deserve the most from their space program. NASA's role cannot stay static."

Does anyone still play the original Battlefield 2.  I was thinking of bying it off of Steam and playing it again.

I will remember and cherish the times and laughter we had in our finest hours sitting before lit screens across  great expanse separated by continental lands masses yet together united in one spirit. Were I to re-start this life I lead I would not change a thing of those times, those memories, those revelries we shared at our communal meetings in the Cyber world. forever etched in my soul is the experiences we had as a extended family and I am terribly saddened that one so young so full of joy one who shared our journey is no more amongst us. Weep not my Extended family for now we have more to look forward to this next life. A guide to the hereafter awaits our journey to the other side and when we all meet again in the world beyond; it will be BEER O' Clock everlasting!
 

The Pirate King remembers...

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-433140?hpt=Sbin

iReport —
Yesterday, President Barack Obama spoke at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, attempting to spell out his vision for America’s future in space and allay fears of job losses surrounding his cancellation of the Constellation return-to-the-moon program.

Just two days ago, astronaut legends Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan, the first and last moonwalkers bookending the most traveled man in space of the Apollo era, co-signed a letter decrying Obama’s cancellation of Constellation as devastating to America’s leadership in space exploration. Traveling with the President was Armstrong’s counter and co-pilot from Apollo 11, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, who approves of Obama’s plans to sail past the moon, “Been there, done that.” says Buzz, and look toward longer-range manned missions to asteroids and ultimately Mars.

Critics believe suspending the program tarnishes US prestige, gives Americans no way to fly to the space station in the foreseeable future now that the shuttle is being retired- unless one hitches a ride on a Russian Soyuz rocket- and throws the 10 billion already spent into the wind along with NASA paychecks. Supporters state that Obama is actually increasing the NASA budget, prolonging the life of the ISS by five years, developing a heavy-lift booster for deep space and giving 6 billion in seed money to private enterprise for crew transport- SpaceX’s Falcon 9 test vehicle is, in fact, sitting at Canaveral right now, being readied for launch next month.

The problem with Constellation was that it was woefully under-funded and well behind schedule, already missing its mark of 2020 for new boots on the moon, and threatening to become another seemingly open-ended project under the banner of a creaking NASA bureaucracy.

Obama’s problem at the moment is one of presentation. The US got to the moon because Kennedy articulately stated the goal and the timeframe to achieve it- “…before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” Importantly too, he pointed out that if we, as a nation, should quit or second-guess halfway through the project, better to not go at all.

Obama has set no goals and given no timetable for the presumed glories of his plan, so hence can’t calm a jittery space industry, let alone enthuse the public and gain their support. Jim Lovell, of the dissenting astronauts, is correct when he commented that merely hoping industry coalesces around a plan isn’t going to make it happen. Obama needs to speak in particulars immediately, or else any vision he has, even if sound, of an American in space taking another ‘small step’ is going to look like two steps back.