Space

October Sky Festival: Coalwood with Homer Hickam

October 7, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

Last Saturday, October 4, I was a guest in Coalwood, WV, at the 10th annual October Sky Festival, hosted by Coalwood citizens and best-selling author Homer Hickam. The day was blessed with beautiful early autumn weather: temperatures about 70 under a cloudless blue sky. The forested ridges surrounding the little town (population, 180, down from 2000 sixty years ago) where Homer grew up were brushed lightly with the first traces of yellow, orange, and rust-red. The mining town’s main street was lined with art and craft vendors, food stalls, and plenty of happy families.

Along with Homer’s boyhood pals, I participated in a series of model rocket launches just after lunch at “Cape Coalwood,” where Homer and the Rocket Boys once lofted their home-built missiles. Most of Saturday’s rockets managed to parachute back into the former mining dump site without damage, although the surrounding tall trees claimed a few reentering vehicles.

Homer’s latest book is Red Helmet, and he always had a line out front of the Methodist Church for signing. My table was on the church’s front lawn, where I signed copies of Hell Hawks! and Sky Walking through the day. With both my grandfathers having worked in the coal mines of Wilkes-Barre, PA, my visit to Coalwood was a glimpse into their lives 75 years ago. For a day, at least, I could trace a direct path from the mines to the stars. Plan on visiting the October Sky Festival in 2009.

Rocket launches at Cape Coalwood (credit D. Kilpatrick)

Signing "Sky Walking" and "Hell Hawks!" at Coalwood (D. Kilpatrick)

Signing "Sky Walking" and "Hell Hawks!" (credit -- D. Kilpatrick)

Coalwood Main -- October Sky Festival (credit D. Kilpatrick)

High Praise from Wenatchee

September 21, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

After my visit on Sept. 17th to the elementary school students of Wenatchee, Washington, I received this note from the mother of a certain second grader:

“He is in the 2^nd grade and getting him to tell me ANY details about his day is like pulling teeth! Today his first words when he got off the bus were, “Mom we had a real-life astronaut at our assembly today”, I even got a few details regarding your time on the space station. You must do a pretty fantastic presentation to get a reaction like that from him. He’s a tough audience unless you are a yellow cartoon sponge!”

Those kids sure recharged my own enthusiasm for space flight. Go out and inspire a future explorer today.

www.AstronautTomJones.com

Association of Space Explorers — Exploration and Planetary Stewardship

September 21, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

Speaking to students in Wenatchee, Wash. -- Newberry Elementary School

I joined the Association of Space Explorers after my third shuttle flight in 1996. This past week in Seattle, astronauts and cosmonauts from around the world met in Seattle to discuss space exploration, education, and planetary stewardship. Our technical sessions dealt with human space exploration, astronaut observations of Earth and its geological links to our neighboring worlds, health for long-duration spaceflight, fundamental research on the space station, and the latest developments in world space programs, including the NASA effort to return to the Moon with Ares and Orion. My talks dealt with how astronauts contribute to the science of Planetology with their Earth-orbital observations, and opportunities to journey deep into space with astronaut voyages to nearby asteroids.

Our community day activities brought 50 space fliers to schools all over the State of Washington, reaching 42,000 students, all of whom had a chance to meet and ask questions of a space traveler. My visits took me to four elementary schools in Wenatchee, where I addressed 1,800 future explorers, aged 5 to 11.

The week of September 22 brings a few of those space travelers together with our ASE Panel on Asteroid Threat Mitigation, for final edits to our decision-making document, “Asteroid Threats: A Call for Global Response.” We will complete our document, sign it, and submit our work to the United Nations for debate and adoption of an international program to prevent future asteroid impacts on Earth. The Association of Space Explorers’ theme of planetary stewardship is the impetus behind this effort to use our space technology and international cooperation in space to prepare for a future threat from a Near Earth Object.

Of course, while in Seattle I didn’t miss the opportunity to sign copies of “Hell Hawks!“, at the Seattle Museum of Flight, a great venue for this aerial band of brothers story about a heroic group of Thunderbolt pilots.

Extending the Space Shuttle

September 8, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

NASA finds itself in a terrible dilemma. It has cash enough only to fund shuttle ops through 2010. The administration and Congress have flatlined NASA’s budget and so the new Orion cannot appear sooner than 2015. We will rely totally on Russian Soyuz transport to the ISS after 2011, and Congress has not even granted authority for NASA to purchase those services. Russia now seems a shaky partner to entrust with the key to the space station for 4+ years. Yet that is the prospect.

Mike Griffin’s latest interview is technically astute: we need to retire shuttle to free up funds to build and test Orion. There seems little prospect Congress will bump up the budget top line. A new administration will have a stark choice: surrender US access to ISS by relying solely on Russia, or keep flying the shuttle, which is risky to crews and will eat up the funds for Orion and other major NASA programs. A new administration may decide to choose the short term expedient of keeping shuttle flying, and not increase the NASA budget. Result — long-term disaster. We would squeeze Orion and delay its debut, defer the heavy Ares V cargo rocket and the Altair lander, and essentially delete the deep-space goals set for NASA by the administration and Congress in 2004.

Such a move would guarantee that the US will surrender leadership in human spaceflight, expressing a lack of will to keep Americans on the exploration frontier. The only solution I see is to educate a new administration that maintaining US leadership in space will now be expensive, the result of four years of fiscal neglect. The NASA budget will have to be increased if we are to maintain Americans on the station, and yet accelerate Orion to minimize our reliance on a risky Russian monopoly.

The question: will our leaders care?

www.AstronautTomJones.com