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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (51762)	6/27/2004 7:30:44 AM
From: John Carragher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793838

How about Frist if republicans hold senate and he gets stronger. Otherwise look to governors?

To: D. Long who wrote (51762)	6/27/2004 7:31:06 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793838

McCain, but I think we can count him out. Too old, and too much skin cancer. They better get busy on a constitutional amendment.

To: D. Long who wrote (51762)	6/27/2004 4:47:30 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793838

'Anomalies' in first private spaceflight revealed 12:27 22 June 04 NewScientist.com news service The flight of the first private astronaut was not as perfect as it first appeared – a number of glitches occurred during the flight, some potentially catastrophic. The revelations were made by Burt Rutan, designer of SpaceShipOne, which on Monday became the world's first privately funded craft to enter space. Until the team fully understands exactly what went wrong during the flight, he said, they will not go ahead with the pair of flights needed to claim the $10 million Ansari X-Prize. Luckily, the glitches did not prevent a successful flight. But pilot Mike Melvill said that a partial failure of the system controlling the spacecraft's orientation could have been disastrous if it had occurred just slightly earlier in the flight. The problem struck at the end of the rocket engine's firing time of about 70 seconds, just as Melvill reached space. "As I came out of the atmosphere I no longer had any attitude control," Melvill told New Scientist and other reporters. "If that had happened earlier, I would never have made it and you all would be looking sad right now." Big bang Although that was the most serious anomaly, it was not the only frightening moment for the 63-year-old test pilot. There was also a loud bang behind him while the rocket engine was firing. The team believes this was caused by aerodynamic stresses crumpling a composite material fairing around the engine nozzle. However, Dick Rutan, Burt's brother and a famed test pilot himself, said that fairing could have fallen off completely without endangering the craft. Melvill's first frightening moment on the historic flight came at the very instant he flipped the switch to turn on the hybrid rocket motor. The craft suddenly lurched over 90° to the right, and as soon as he brought it back to level it then rolled 90° to the right. "I was ready to hit the switch" to turn off the motor and abort the flight, he said, but the craft remained steady and he was able to continue and achieve the 100 kilometre altitude that officially makes him an astronaut. This difficulty appears unrelated to the later failure of attitude control, Melvill said. Despite Melvill's 25 years of piloting experimental craft, he found even the normal operation of the rocketship alarming, as it travelled faster and higher than any previous privately-built craft. Speeding bullet SpaceShipOne was travelling "faster than an M-16 rifle bullet", Rutan said, about around 2400 km/h (1500 mph) or mach 3.2. As it reentered the atmosphere, falling like a badminton shuttlecock almost straight down, the rushing air sounded like a hurricane, said Melvill. "Coming down is frightening, because of that roaring sound," he said. "You can really hear how that vehicle is being pounded." Until the exact causes of the anomalies are understood, there will be no X-Prize attempt, Rutan said: "There's no way we would fly again without knowing the cause and being sure we had fixed it." But despite the problems, the mood among the team remained extremely buoyant about their success. Melvill recounted how, as he became weightless, he opened a bag of M&M chocolates to watch them float around the cabin. But it was the sublime view that affected him the most. "The sky was jet black, with light blue along the horizon - it was really an awesome sight," he said. "You really do get the feeling that you've touched the face of God." David L Chandler, Mojave © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

To: D. Long who wrote (51762)	6/29/2004 12:08:30 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793838

Going up, anyone? Scientist Sees Space Elevator in 15 Years By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: June 28, 2004 Filed at 10:34 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush wants to return to the moon and put a man on Mars. But scientist Bradley C. Edwards has an idea that's really out of this world: an elevator that climbs 62,000 miles into space. Edwards thinks an initial version could be operating in 15 years, a year earlier than Bush's 2020 timetable for a return to the moon. He pegs the cost at $10 billion, a pittance compared with other space endeavors. ``It's not new physics -- nothing new has to be discovered, nothing new has to be invented from scratch,'' he says. ``If there are delays in budget or delays in whatever, it could stretch, but 15 years is a realistic estimate for when we could have one up.'' Edwards is not just some guy with an idea. He's head of the space elevator project at the Institute for Scientific Research in Fairmont, W.Va. NASA already has given it more than $500,000 to study the idea, and Congress has earmarked $2.5 million more. ``A lot of people at NASA are excited about the idea,'' said Robert Casanova, director of the NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts in Atlanta. Edwards believes a space elevator offers a cheaper, safer form of space travel that eventually could be used to carry explorers to the planets. Edwards' elevator would climb on a cable made of nanotubes -- tiny bundles of carbon atoms many times stronger than steel. The cable would be about three feet wide and thinner than a piece of paper, but capable of supporting a payload up to 13 tons. The cable would be attached to a platform on the equator, off the Pacific coast of South America where winds are calm, weather is good and commercial airplane flights are few. The platform would be mobile so the cable could be moved to get out of the path of orbiting satellites. David Brin, a science-fiction writer who formerly taught physics at San Diego State University, believes the concept is solid but doubts such an elevator could be operating by 2019. ``I have no doubt that our great-grandchildren will routinely use space elevators,'' he said. ``But it will take another generation to gather the technologies needed.'' Edwards' institute is holding a third annual conference on space elevators in Washington starting Monday. A keynote speaker at the three-day meeting will be John Mankins, NASA's manager of human and robotics technology. Organizers say it will discuss technical challenges and solutions and the economic feasibility of the elevator proposal. The space elevator is not a new idea. A Russian scientist, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, envisioned it a century ago. And Arthur C. Clarke's novel ``The Fountains of Paradise,'' published in 1979, talks of a space elevator 24,000 miles high, and permanent colonies on the moon, Mercury and Mars. The difference now, Edwards said, is ``we have a material that we can use to actually build it.'' He envisions launching sections of cable into space on rockets. A ``climber'' -- his version of an elevator car -- would then be attached to the cable and used to add more lengths of cable until eventually it stretches down to the Earth. A counterweight would be attached to the end in space. Edwards likens the design to ``spinning a ball on a string around your head.'' The string is the cable and the ball on the end is a counterweight. The Earth's rotation would keep the cable taut. The elevator would be powered by photo cells that convert light into electricity. A laser attached to the platform could be aimed at the elevator to deliver the light, Edwards said. Edwards said he probably needs about two more years of development on the carbon nanotubes to obtain the strength needed. After that, he believes work on the project can begin. ``The major obstacle is probably just politics or funding and those two are the same thing,'' he said. ``The technical, I don't think that's really an issue anymore.''