"… SLS cost is almost two-thirds of NASA’s entire annual budget …"

Robbing NASA blind: 

Notice that [in this scenario] the Falcon XX launch cost for this operation is comparable to the current cost of paying the Russians to ferry our crews to the space station each year, while the low SLS cost is almost two-thirds of NASA’s entire annual budget, and the high estimate exceeds its budget by over $4 billion. We cannot know the actual cost of an SLS operation since no launch cost has been posted. The only comparable costs would be if we were using a fleet of expendable cargo aircraft, which were thrown away after each cargo flight to a distant shore due to lack of aviation fuel at the destination.

"The SLS is draining away the lifeblood of the space program"

Looks like Orion/SLS will be an unmitigated disaster for spaceflight (both crewed and uncrewed) – sigh. At the current rate, a single (!) launch of an Orion capsule by an SLS launch vehicle will cost up to 14 billion (!) USD.

Instead of worrying of their "dependence" on Russian launch vehicles, the people in the US space industry should worry that they are being robbed blind by the major privateers private companies in the aerospace industry.

Wordpress suspended "The Road To Endeavour" blog for TOS-violation?

I can't believe that! The Road To Endeavour is gone! I am really scratching my head as to what went wrong there. There was nothing remotely that I would think of as being in violation of the Wordpress' Terms Of Service.

I hope this was an error and the blog will return shortly.

[Update] Stu already tweeted about it.

Was Vesta hit side on?

Just speculating here, but what if Vesta was hit side on, and then "erected" itself due to the imbalance? Would explain the fast rotational period of Vesta.

Voyager 1 has left the Solar System.

Voyager 1 has (probably) become the first spacecraft in human history to leave the Solar System.

Wow.

News like this is for me truly inspiring on what the human race can accomplish.

Why don't we do more of this?

Kepler SETI finds candidate signals

Kepler SETI finds candidate signals

We know these signals are interference, but look similar to what we think might be produced from an extraterrestrial technology. They are narrow in frequency, much narrower than would be produced by any known astrophysical phenomena, and they drift in frequency with time, as we would expect because of the doppler effect imposed by the relative motion of the transmitter and the receiving radio telescope. Even though these signals are interference, detecting events with similar characteristics to what we expect from ET is a good indication that the first steps of our detection algorithms are working properly.

So this is just a test. No, SETI has not detected an alien signal from a Kepler planet.

The Space Shuttle was designed as a carrier for a First-Strike-Weapon

At the end of the 1960's and the beginning of the 1970's the United States began new research in the use of spacecraft for the destruction of military targets in and from space. In the late 1960's development began at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory of a space-based nuclear weapon-pumped laser. This was originally envisioned as a fearsome weapon, consisting of several dozen independently aimed lasing rods arranged around the bomb. When the bomb exploded, a large percentage of its force would be conducted down the lasing rods toward the targets at which they pointed (in the microsecond before the rods themselves vaporised).

At the same time the Air Force and NASA were studying reusable space shuttles. A single shuttle payload bay of such weapons had the potential of destroying the entire Soviet ICBM force - not just in launch phase but in a first strike, frying them right through the silo covers. One of the most heavily classified projects of the time, it still came to the attention of Soviet intelligence.

During this same period NASA was struggling to justify a post-Apollo space program. The Nixon administration decided that the USAF shuttle project would be dropped, and their requirements incorporated into the NASA design. One of these requirements was a mission involving a launch into polar orbit from Vandenberg Air Force base, release of unspecified payloads into orbit, and return to Vandenberg after a single orbit of the Earth. This requirement forced NASA to drop their preferred straight-wing design for a heavier double-delta wing that had the necessary cross range.

Start from Vandenberg. Fly over the (north-)pole. Release a weapon (and detonate it over the Soviet Union). Return to Vandenberg. Rinse and repeat if necessary.

But in my view, this "First Strike" capability of the Space Shuttle was more a selling point than reality, just like the supposed ease and frequency of the Space Shuttle launches. But to the Soviet leadership, it seemed like a real threat.

The Soviet leadership saw their worst fears confirmed. This was a modern version of the first-strike multiple-warhead UR-500 and N1 super heavy rockets which they had developed but then abandoned in the early 1960's. 

The reaction to the Space Shuttle was the Buran shuttle, which was supposedly very expensive.

It seems that two things broke the back of the Soviet Union: The Afghan War and the Buran project. Both were a reaction to the US – how ironic.

The real moon hoax

Studying declassified Corona spy satellite photographs, Vick is able to show that there was substantial unexplained activity at the Baikonur cosmodrome during December 1968. Although no photographs exist during the 8-12 December launch window, images made during a pass on 15 December show a Soyuz spacecraft - booster combination mounted on its pad and the Proton pad gantry in position, although no booster is mounted. A week later, the Soyuz booster is being removed from its pad, but now a Proton - L1 combination is on the Proton pad. This seems to clearly indicate that attempts were being made, right up to and beyond the day Apollo 8 was launched, to beat the Americans to the moon. The authors theorise that an attempt at a manned launch to the moon using the two-launch podsadka scenario was attempted, but that some serious spacecraft problem must have resulted in the Proton launch being scrubbed.

So all these years the Ruskies said "No, no, comrade, we never planed to go to the moon, I swear on Lenin's tomb!", and they were almost there to go to the moon BEFORE the Yankees.

Interestingly, they had not one manned moon flight program, no, they had TWO manned moon flight programs. One was run by Korolev (and then after his death by Mishin) using Soyuz-spacecraft and N1 rockets, the other was run by Chelomei using a Soyuz variant and Proton rockets. Both ran into problems with, both with their spacecraft, both with their rockets. The Soyuz capsules were too heavy for a N1 single-shot-mission (and anyway delayed), the N1-rocket was not reliable, Soyuz-1 failed killing its Kosmonaut, the Proton looked promising (and is one of the backbones of Russia's space industry today) but ran into reliability problems. So Korolev's team aimed for a "bastard" version, using Proton and Soyuz/R7s for a two-launch mission with prior docking in LEO. Well, it didn't work – the rest, you know.