Construction Begins for Newest Goodyear Blimp

"Iconic airships will become larger, faster, more maneuverable..."

AKRON, Ohio, March 22, 2013 – The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company announced today that it has begun construction of the first of a new generation of airships to replace its fleet of world famous blimps.

The new Zeppelin LZ N07-101 airship, manufactured by Germany’s ZLT Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik, will be assembled at Goodyear’s Wingfoot Lake Hangar near Akron, Ohio. An agreement with ZLT Zeppelin to supply Goodyear with the new airships was announced in May 2011.

Relatively low tech Goodyear blimps have been flying since 1925. In a related story, the space shuttle, admittedly higher tech, took its first orbital test flight in 1981. Operational flights began the next year. The shuttle was discontinued in 2011. The next generation of shuttles is scheduled for... scheduled for.... Wait! Don't tell me! The next generation space vehicle of the preeminent leader of the exploration of space, is scheduled for... scheduled for... aw, nuts!

The Poetry Corner

Ju Les Ver Negre En Cheese

Gagar inale xe
Ileon ovlu nikth reeze, rogas cendin
Gno de Claire, de Lunem
Arehy per bori umva nall eradia tiondi
Urnal libra ti onarte mus
Count? Dow nandge minied "Wardwhit" ecavor!
Ite sa turnfi velo-vell Teresko Vajames M.C.D.
I , Vittand ju, liussch midy "com"
Mandmo dule doer fulmoun

Tainsrob ertgod, dardret rorock et high!
dry denlif toffand luna cybluem oon peri
Lunebail lysbe ads bishop
Franc isgod, winandt hetid, albul gesun
riseter minat orco brahea danddon
Alds lay tonspla shdownsput
Nikallsy stems "Gooce anofs" torm swalt ersch irramis
Si oncon trolf lyme, tot hemo onsur
Veyore clipsemad?
Lerand beergor; Doncoo, Perran, Gerseven, Wernh
Ervon B. Raunro, gerch affeesay ro gerch affeeal
Anshe pherd bar rycen, terse ro gerch affeeal

Aofnec. Tarjo hannke plarla, lat mi nus
Fi vendco unting carpen?
Tercape kenne dyo negi antlea
Pformank indlala!
Ju les ver negre, en cheese
Ju les ver negre, en cheese
Ju les ver negre, en cheese

-Kniss Stookey


This was originally set to music. I could not find a recording, but I at least could set forth the words here. The meaning, incidentally, is hidden in plain sight. A sense of space may help you gain understanding.
You can hear the words and music here. It helps if you open another window for the audio while you follow along with the words.- proof

California Going Out of Business -Bill Whittle

Another excellent episode of Afterburner!

WTF Without NASA, Mr. President?

April 2010, Obama was lying through his teeth talking to NASA employees, hoping to bamboozle them into voting Democrat, no doubt, in the midterm elections. From the BBC:

Barack Obama says it should be possible to send astronauts to orbit the planet Mars by the mid-2030s and return them safely to Earth. The US president made the claim in a major speech to staff and guests at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He was laying out the details of his new policy for the US space agency.

Forget the moon, says Obama! We're aiming for a Mars mission! So, imagine my surprise to read this today:

In its budget submitted to Congress on February 13, the Obama administration zeroed out funding for NASA’s future Mars-exploration missions. The Mars Science Lab Curiosity, currently en route to the Red Planet and the nearly completed small MAVEN orbiter, scheduled for launch in 2013, will be sent, but that’s it. No funding has been provided for the Mars probes planned as joint missions in 2016 and 2018 with the European Space Agency, and nothing after that is funded either. This poses a grave crisis for the American space program.

One last orbiter and then...no funding whatsoever? How will this further your announced goal of manned missions to Mars? Was this just another in a long line of promises with an expiration date, Mr. Obama? Another line in a speech pandering to whatever audience you were in front of because it sounded good at the time?

It used to be a common rhetorical question, "If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we do ______?" My question is, if the government can funnel million of dollars to failing solar companies like Solyndra, that they know will fail, and millions of dollars for overseas companies to make electric cars and batteries, why can't we put a man on the moon any more?

When Obama talks about "Winning the Future", he's talking about future elections, not the future of our country. WTF.

He was laying (ab)out the details of his new policy for the US space agency.

There! Fixed it for you, Mr. Obama!

Update : I didn't think of it before (second cup of coffee hadn't kicked in), but in line with the political cartoon, maybe Mars won't be the only "Red planet"?

Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything.

Sic Transit Gloria Americanus?

I wasn't planning on writing about this today, but the fading glory of our space program moves me to write. In 1977, Jerry Pournelle wrote about the "2007 expedition to Ceres". The old Buck Rogers TV show spoke of the "last of NASA's deep space probes in 1987". The last?? when was the first???

Robert Heinlein spoke of the expectation that many of us had growing up of the inevitability of space travel. In 1949, he wrote in the preface to "The Man Who Sold the Moon":

" (the stories)...are of the "What-would-happen-if" sort, in which the "if", the basic postulate of each story, is some possible change in human environment latent in our present day technology or culture. Sometimes the possibility is quite remote; sometimes the postulated possibility is almost a certainty, as in the stories concerned with interplanetary flight."

Did you get that? In 1949, R.A. Heinlein considered interplanetary flight "almost a certainty".

How did we get from the first Model A Ford to the first walk on the moon in forty two years and from the first walk on the moon to the last flight of the shuttle program in exactly the same time?

And perhaps, more importantly, how do we get back?

Cross posted at LCR, Lady Cincinnatus , Say Anything.

Free Frontier - An Alternative to NASA?

If you, like many Americans, are disappointed in, or outright appalled at, the apparent collapse of our space exploration program into the irrelevancy of junk science and self esteem social science, you might find some encouragement in this video.

H/T Sister Toldjah

Decision to Curtail Space Program "Catastrophic"

Former NASA astronauts who went to the Moon have told the BBC of their dismay at President Barack Obama's decision to push back further Moon missions.

Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, said Mr Obama's decision would have "catastrophic consequences" for US space exploration.

The last race to the moon created jobs, pushed forwards the boundaries of science and knowledge and provided us with new and better technology both for defense and for consumers.

The last race with Obama benefited ACORN.

Graphic shamelessly stolen from Weasel Zippers