FINALLY - Only ONE Engine for the F-35!

Pratt & Whitney has finally beaten out General Electric and Britain's Rolls-Royce to power the troubled F-35 fighter jet program.

And all it took was a coalition of Democrats and Tea Party Republicans to get it done. The U.S. House of Representatives finally voted down the mandate to have a backup engine design (which was a thinly disguise jobs aid program to GE for House Speaker John Boehner's southwestern Ohio and surrounding districts.

For years, going back to former President George W. Bush, and current President Barrack H. Obama; have tried to kill off the GE engine for the F-35. But the House kept on voting funds for that engine. And that added to the cost of the overall F-35 program.

For more information, check out the link below.

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Ref.

1. CT Now.com. "Pratt Wins F-35 Engine Battle" by Mara Lee. February 16, 2011. (http://www.ctnow.com/business/hc-pratt-engine-20110216,0,4274620.story).

Private Sector Space Dreams

The American bureaucracy of which NASA is a part of, has by force of congressional decree and presidential inattention except in election years, become affraid to take any bold moves in manned spaceflight.

They talk a good game, the public takes it hook, line, and sinker, and nothing really ever becomes of it. The shuttle was just suppose to be a part of a shuttle-station program. Towards the end of its career, it finally did that job. But in the beginning, it was nothing more than a glorified dump truck.

And it was paid for by the American taxpayer.

Back in the 1990s, there was a chance to replace the shuttle with a newer spacecraft. The VentureStar from Lochkeed Martin or the DC-X vertical take-off/landing, single-stage to orbit spacecraft. The DC-X was a sub-scale, flight tested piece of hardware. The VentureStar was a computer animation only. Guess which one the Clinton Administration went with? That's right: VentureStar.

Then Columbia broke up on reentry.

President Bush proposed shutting down the shuttle program and replacing it with the Apollo on steroids program known as Constellation. Now President Obama will cancel even that and hope that the private sector will take over.

Well, I (slightly) agree with President Obama that it would be better for the private sector to come into its own as far as transporting folks up into Low Earth Orbit (LEO). But, the government should have kept the Constellation Program going.

I remember in a Air Force ROTC classroom in my college days, my instructor was describing the problem faced by FDR in the Pacific War. He had General MacArthur promoting a campaign that would go through the Philippines. Admiral Nimitz wanted to go straight across the Pacific to the China coast cutting the Japanese supply line in two.

President Roosvelt decided that it would be in the best interest of the war effort to go with BOTH strategys.

I submit to the reader that the same thing could have been applied to the Constellation Program. I'm on record opposing the idea of Super-Apollo, but NO American manned spaceflight program is even worse to think about.

So where this this lead us to? Private Space Industry.

In fact, I think it is going to be up to men like Bigelow and Rutan to get American civilians back up into space (without government aid). And more important, get them to the surface of the moon and back to Earth on a regular flight schedule.

Eventually, a lunar base will be built. And maybe then, NASA will get funding from Congress to lease a base on the moon.

So, are there enough deep pockets in the worldwide civilian sector to make it possible for the non-government space program to make it to the moon and Mars ? And do it before the Chinese gets there.

Check out the article "Moon dreams" from The Economist website(February 18, 2010) for the article that inspired me to write this posting.

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Ref. The Economist, February 18, 2010, "Private-sector space flight. Moon dreams" (http://www.economist.com/science-technology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15543675).

Obama: Pentagon and NASA To Work Ever Closer

In a article posted to Bloomberg.com (on January 02, 2009) and later on Drudge Report.com (where I found out about it); President-elect Barack Obama wants the Pentagon and NASA to work together to speed up a mission to the moon to counter what many preceive to be a new space race - between China and the United States of America. As a part of this effort to boost coperation between the two govermental agencies, the Obama team is promising to revive the National Aeronautics and Space Council which was in effect back in the First Space race era (basically from 1958 to 1973). The photograph above is of China's first space walk last year.

The Obama transition team is looking into a collaboraton between the Department of Defense (DoD) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)because the rockets used my the military are cheaper and more readly availiable than the space agency's planned Orion/Aries launch system. The later isn't expected to fly until around 2015 - five years after the shuttles are to be ground according to the rules that the President George W. Bush administration set into place.

One doesn't have to be in the Defense Department nor a Pentagon planner to be concerned over China's space ambitions. DoD is more concern over the fact of China's anti-satellite warfare capablitiy than if they land on the moon. But the technology to get to the moon such as in-orbit rendevous and docking, have our DoD sleeping less these nights.

The Pentagon's space budget is several times larger than the NASA budget. In the article, it was quoted as being about $22 billion for fiscal year 2008. That money, the Obama team sees, can be tapped in order to get the Orion/Aries moving quicker to flight status. And the Pentagon is actually in support of combining launch vehicles. NASA hasn't spoken with the Pentagon over man rating the Delta IV and or the Atlas V rockets built by United Launch Alliance (a joint venture of Boeing and Bethesda, which is a Maryland-based Lockheed Martin Corp.). The Delta IV and the Atlas V are designed for launching satellites.

One would think that it would not take too much time to man rate the newest generation of the Atlas booster. The Delta series has never launched a human occuplied space capsule. It would take longer to man rate it than the Atlas V.

As it current stands, China will be able to get their people to the moon before we can get back there. China space agency currently plans on testing a auto-docking system in 2010.

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Ref. article "Obama Moves to Counter China with Pentagon-NASA Link Part 1."by Demian McLean ( http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aOvrNO0OJ41g&refer=worldwide )