Lasers to Clear Space Junk

With thanks to the Drudge Report, I found this article from the San Francisco local CBS station website had the following bit of news... NASA is considering using lasers to battle space junk.

Oh really? Those of us who are Sci-fi fans have known that this will be the ultimate way to deal with the garbage that is in orbit now.

Using mid-power lasers that could move the objects instead of totally vaporize the debris.

quote: The proposal for the laser took two years to complete. NASA estimates the cost would be much lower than a manned mission designed to collect debris. end quote.

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Ref.

1. http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com. "Another Look: NASA Considers Lasers To Battle Space Junk" (http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/05/10/another-look-nasa-considers-lasers-to-battle-space-junk/).

Space Adventures Looks Forward to Commercial Lunar Flight Missions

The company known for putting space tourist Dennis Tito into orbit has come out with a new plan. One can read the press release (link below) from Space Adventures.

What was released with this press release were some images of the Soyuz TMA configuration spacecraft with it's lunar booster. Attached to the booster is another habitat module that would increase the interior space of the spacecraft for the lunar circumlunar flight.

One seat has already been sold and they are waiting on one more to be sold before going ahead with ordering the equipment. It is possible that this private/commercial spaceflight can take place as early as 2015.

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Ref.

1. Comspacewatch.com. "Space Adventures Looks Ahead To Commercial Lunar Missions" Stacey Tearne, Vice President, Communications press release. May 5, 2011. (http://www.comspacewatch.com/news/viewpr.rss.html?pid=33481). images also from same website.

Stealth Helicopters Used in bin Laden Hit

Aside from the news on May 2nd that the US Navy SEAL Team 6 finally bagged Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. This raid, by accident; revealed some new US technology that we REALLY didn't want the rest of the world to know about just yet.

But,you know, when Murphy's Law get involved, accidents happen. Such is the case with one of two stealth helicopters used in that May 2, 2011 raid. Associated Press and European Press Agency photographers manage to get pictures of pieces of the wreck before Pakistan forces picked them up, and trucked them off. No doubt - to China.

As to what the final appearance of the helicopters look like - leading contender is a upgraded, stealth-optimized MH-60 Blackhawk helicopter. And that goes along with what CIA director Leon Panetta's assertion of May 3rd that the 25-man strong strike team was "carried in two Blackhawk helicopters that went in."

By the way, this blogger thinks there was a backup helicopter - just in case that there was problems with one of the other mission helicopters. One Blackhawk cannot carry 25 troops/crew, plus their weapons. There had to be something else to get the entire team plus the down helicopter crew out of that compound.

Sean Naylor of Army Times backs up this conclusion. Naylor quotes a retired Special Forces aviator saying the special Blackhawk, modified by Lockheed Martin, had the hard edges similar to the F-117 stealth fighter (also from Lockheed Martin).

Also, there is no doubt in my mind that these aircraft were flown by the pilots of the 160th Special Operations aviation regiment. They get some of the nicest toys to play with.

What this blogger found amushing was the following paragraph from the Wired article that I got this information from. quote: According to a source who spoke to our own Spencer Ackerman, the modifications might have taken place with the help of a mysterious Army organization called the “Technology Applications Program Office,” located at Fort Eustis, Virginia. The rumored nickname? Airwolf. That’s right, like the cheesy ‘80 TV show. end quote.

Hey, I'm a big Airwolf fan! Hell yeah if this baby is finally shown off to the public - I'm all for it to be the official name for this helicopter.

Aviation artist Ugo Crisponi produced a quick rendering of what the secret chopper (and that was included in the wired article). Then from Globalsecurity.org, John Pike talked about the "MH-X" project from the 1980s.

Elements from the RAH-66 Commanche project appeared to have made their way over to this new MH-X "Airwolf." The Commanche was killed off in 2004. It might actually ahve been a cover project for this MH-X project and was no longer needed - so that is why the Commanche was killed off.

Going by the Wired article, these special helicopters are not very many in numbers. In fact, they operate out of "Area 51" in Nevada.

Aviation Weeks's Bill Sweetman stated the following: the fact that the Pentagon was willing to risk its most secret whirlybird “shows the importance of the mission in the eyes of U.S. commanders." end quote.

The world's FIRST radar-evading helicopter proves that the USA still has the lead when it comes to designing helicopters - no decay there.

Our Special Forces has the ability to now strike fast and most important; unseen - all over the world.

MH-X Airwolf. I like the sound of that.

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Ref.

1. Wired.com. "Aviation Geeks Scramble to ID bin Laden Raid’s Mystery Copter" by David Axe. May 4, 2011. (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/aviation-geeks-scramble-to-i-d-osama-raids-mystery-copter/).

2. Wired.com "" by David Axe. May 4, 2011. (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/aviation-geeks-scramble-to-i-d-osama-raids-mystery-copter/3/).

3. images from the same articles (Reuters, Associated PRess), artwork by David Cenciotti.

4. Flight Gobal. "Secret helicopter revealed in bin Laden op?" by Stephen Trimble. May 3, 2011. (http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2011/05/secret-helicopter-revealed-in.html).

No Sex in Space - According to the Russians

Over the years, there have been rumors that both the Americans and the Russians may have explored the sexual frontier while in the final frontier.

Valery Bogomolov, the deputy director of the Moscow Institute of Biomedical Problems; recently told reports to Russian Interfax. As far as the Russian or Soviet space exploration the director stated.

People (unofficially) would like to know the effects of weightlessness on the sex act. And this blogger believes that it will be a future "space tourist couple" that will gain the title of First F**king Couple in outer space.

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Ref.

1. My Fox DC.com. "Secret Space Sex Experiment Rumors Denied By Russian Expert" by AFP. April 22, 2011. (http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/offbeat/secret-space-sex-experiment-rumors-denied-by-russian-expert-ncxdc-042211).

JFK Asked About UFOs in Memo - 10 Days Before His Death!

Leave it to the Brits to get this story out to the masses. The American Main Stream Media (MSM) wouldn't touch this with a 10 foot pole without making a joke about tin foil hats and the kinds of people who actually see UFOS.

It seems that John F. Kennedy wrote to the head of the CIA demanding some highly confidential documents and memos about UFOs 10 days before he was assassinated.

The memo is one of two letters written by the President asking about UFO and other paranormal information. Date listed on the letters is November 12, 1963. All this comes from the CIA in a recent document dump through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

William Lester aquired the FOIA documents for a new book he is writing about entitled, "A Celebration of Freedom: JFK and the New Frontier."

For more information, please use the link below.

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Ref.

1. Daily Mail. "Was JFK killed because of his interest in aliens? Secret memo shows president demanded UFO files 10 days before death" April 19, 2011. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378284/Secret-memo-shows-JFK-demanded-UFO-files-10-days-assassination.html).

2. image of JFK with same article.

The Shuttle Fight Begins!

Its all about politics. How else can you explain New York City getting a space shuttle to sit on top of a aircraft carrier and Houston - home of the Johnson Space Center; gets nothing.

New York?!

New Frackin' York?!

President Obama must have been paying back something to Senator Charles "Chucky" Schumer(D) for New York to get the shuttlecraft Enterprise.

Right now, the Enterprise is in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

To read the NY Daily News article about efforts underway to change this out come, the senator said, "Fughgeddaboutit." Actually, the NYD News said in the opening paragraph of their news article the following: "A peeved Utah Congressman, joined by a bunch of poor-loser Texans, is mounting a campaign to yank the NASA shuttle Enterprise from the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum."

Republican Rep Jason Chaffetz of Utah is pushing a bill that will reshuffle the final resting places of the shuttle fleet. Namely, one of the shuttles (either Enterprise or Endeavour) will go to Houston, Texas. The space shuttle Discovery will replace the Enterprise at the The Smithsonian Institutions National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar facility-in Hazy Center, Va.. Cape Canaveral/ Kennedy Space Center in Florida, gets to keep the space shuttle Atlantis. And the California Science Center in Los Angeles would get the remaining shuttle.

As for this Texan. I am somewhat resigned to the fact that Texas will not get a space shuttle do to the fact that our state did not - and still doesn't support President Obama very much. But Obama can and does expect New York to carry his waste water with loving care at his beck and call.

While the Enterprise never made it up into orbit - it was only a prototype test airframe to prove the shuttle concept. To leave Houston out of the picture was the most disturbing thing about this sorry mess. To my fellow Star Trek fans - don't jump the gun too fast next time when it comes time to name another spacecraft after a famous fictional spacecraft.

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Ref.

1. NY Daily News. "Star wars: Rep calls for Houston to get NASA shuttle, not Intrepid; Schumer says 'Fugheddaboutit'" by Richard Sisk. April 15, 2011. (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2011/04/15/2011-04-15_rep_calls_for_houston_to_get_nasa_shuttle_enterprise_not_intrepid_schumer_says_f.html)

2. photo is AP/Lisa Nipp.

Rare Battle of Britian Discovery Made

Yahoo news reported on a discovery yesterday that was made two years ago and reported in the British newspaper, the Daily Mail in back in 2010.

It appears that a rare Dornier 17, known as the "Flying Pencil", was discovered in a sand bar when a fisherman's net caught on it.

Buried under a sandbar for decades in Goodwin Sands-a ten-mile long sandbar off of Deal, Kent, UK.

The RAF museum announched planes to try and recover this rare find for display. Air Vice-Marshal Peter Dye, the Director General of the RAF Museum told reporters "The aircraft is a unique and unprecedented survivor from the Battle of Britain. It is particularly significant because, as a bomber, it formed the ehart of the Luftwaffe assault and the subsequent Blitz."

Work on the wreck will be undertaken at the RAF Museum's conservation center in Cosford, Shropshire.

The Flying Pencil attack some airfields in Essex on August 26, 1940. It was hit by RAF fightercraft and the German pilot, Willi Effmert, attempted to do a wheels-up landing on Goodwin Sands. But the aircraft flipped on landing and Effmert and one other crewmember were captured. Two others crew members died in the bomber.

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Ref.

(1). Daily Mail. "Up and away: Rare German wartime bomber found in Kent seabed to be raised for museum display" September 3, 2010. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1308589/Rare-German-wartime-bomber-discovered-Kent-sandbank-recovered.html). images come from same article.