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Lunar Enterprise Daily (LED), the world’s most comprehensive and focused lunar news source, is now available directly at www.lunarenterprisedaily.com. Space Age Publishing Company (SPC) also encourages space professionals and LED readers to visit its homepage, www.spaceagepub.com, which contains links to its LED and Space Calendar publications, as well as other resources and private space initiatives.

Space Champions - Home

I sense a cross between Top Chef, American Idol and Survivor - yet there is something strangely interesting about this. If it was in micro-g it would be LOTS cooler, up and down 60 times on the vomit comet sounds more like an endurance test than sports...we shall see...

Space Champions: Zero Gravity is its first reality TV show, featuring the creation of a Zero Gravity Sports League, a football-like game played on an airplane artificially creating the weightlessness of spaceflight.

Sign up today!

Rolling Stone : Mars or Bust

An excellent article from Rolling Stone that looks at future NASA Mars plans in detail.

The Space Review: Battle of the new spaceports

The decision by the New Mexico Legislature to spend $100 million or more on building up the infrastructure of the Southwest Regional Spaceport to support future space tourism activities is a sign of just how much some people think is riding on the future of this new industry. Some people also say, however, that this money is just a payoff by the prosperous northern part of New Mexico to the poorer south. If so, it’s a pretty original kind of payoff.

In any case, Las Cruces has a good chance of becoming the center of the American space tourism industry. From October 19–22 of this year they will be hosting the X Prize Cup event, created by Peter Diamandis and the same team that brought us the Ansari X Prize. This will be a festival for the “Personal Spaceflight Industry”, but one could also call it a “Rocket Rodeo”. There will be exhibits, a conference, a variety of rocket flights, and competitions, including NASA’s $2.5-million Lunar Lander Challenge.

The Space Review: The challenges of manned Mars exploration (page 1)

Why 2040 is the earliest NASA can hope to send humans to the Red Planet - by Donald Rapp

If one examines the many specific occurrences where NASA’s Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) Report mentions the word “Mars,” it is found that essentially all of them are very thin and lacking in content. It seems quite apparent that NASA has not yet made the effort to revisit the 1990s legacy of Mars human mission analysis to any depth at all, and seems to be content (at least for now) with handwaving, platitudes, and goal statements. The likely reason for this is that NASA has its hands full right now attempting to deal with lunar missions, and Mars missions have been pushed back beyond the back burner, to the point where they have fallen off the stove.

ESA - Venus Express

This morning, at the end of a 153-day and 400-million km cruise into the inner Solar System beginning with its launch on 9 November 2005, ESA’s Venus Express space probe fired its main engine at 09:17 CEST for a 50-minute burn, which brought it into orbit around Venus.

Yuri's Night 06 | Home

Celebrate April 12th—the world party for space! On this day 45 years ago, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into space. On the same day, 25 years ago, John Young and Robert Crippen flew the first Space Shuttle flight to orbit. Join events around the world to celebrate your passion for space and a positive future for the people of planet Earth.

At UND, our party will be held at the Loading Dock in the Memorial Union from 8pm till midnight. DJ - Prizes - Drinks!!
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The Space Review: Does investing in transportation to Earth orbit make sense?

The last few years have seen an ever-growing number of extremely wealthy investors investing in or talking about investing in space transportation. Andrew Beal spent $200 million by the time Beal Aerospace shut its doors in 2000. Kistler Aerospace, before declaring bankruptcy, raised and spent almost $900 million, about two-thirds of that in the form of debt, to build a reusable cargo vehicle for transportation to Earth orbit. More recently, Paul Allen invested over $20 million in financing Burt Rutan, who built a reusable vehicle capable of transporting three people beyond Earth’s atmosphere in a suborbital trajectory and which won the Ansari X Prize. Richard Branson is said to be investing $100 million in commercializing that technology for his suborbital space tourism venture, Virgin Galactic. Elon Musk, who founded PayPal and sold it to eBay, says he has or will spend over $100 million developing a partly reusable launch vehicle. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, is financing Blue Origin, which is developing a suborbital passenger-carrying ballistic vehicle. John Carmack, a founder of id Software, spends his free time building rockets at Armadillo Aerospace. Other millionaires and billionaires have indicated an interest in investing in space. Dennis Tito, the first person to pay his way into orbit, and Larry Page, the cofounder of Google, have indicated an interest in investing in space transportation.

Do these space investors know something Wall Street doesn’t? Read this article for more info!

The Space Review: The American Spectator fails the Mars test

“The ultimate goal is not to impress others, or merely to explore our planetary system, but to use accessible space for the benefit of humankind. It is a goal that is not confined to a decade or a century. Nor is it confined to a single nearby destination, or to a fleeting dash to plant a flag. The idea is to begin preparing now for a future in which material trapped in the sun’s vicinity is available for incorporation into our way of life.”

The Space Review: Rocketplane is big in Japan

It is not uncommon for foreign dignitaries to visit Congress or even give an address there. Less common, but certainly not unheard of, are ceremonies for foreign visitors in state legislatures. Still, it was a bit unusual to hear that Japanese officials were recognized on the floor of the Oklahoma State Senate in February. What drew a pair of distinguished Japanese officials to Oklahoma City?

The two, Ryojiro Akiba and Kenichi Ito, were recognized for signing up as the first commercial microgravity research users of the state’s spaceport, which will host flights by Rocketplane Ltd. as early as next year.

Chinese Space Progam Chief Regrets US Refusal To Cooperate

In a meeting Monday with National Aeronautics and Space Administration chief Michael Griffin, Luo Ge reminisced how "very open" he found the United States when he first visited this country in 1980, and later in the 1990s.

"Now, it's the other way around," he said through an interpreter at the privately-run Center for Strategic International Studies, after meeting with Griffin.

The Pentagon has publicly said it considers China's space program a potential threat to the satellite systems so crucial to US military supremacy, a concern shared by many US lawmakers.
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Sex Sport And Space - Is Something Missing

Is sex in space how we are going to get the public interested? Apparently, NASA research shows that you won't need Viagra in space. But, that was said with a hushed toned as talking about sex and space can have "repercussions".

Or was that sports in space. The banter then moved to games played during the 22 seconds of zero g in planes.

Dr. Fred Best, Director of the center of Space Power explained zero G as something like this: "I've done the superman in zero g and many other tricks and the most fun still comes from the 'WOOOOOOOOOW' first timers scream as they have their first zero g experience." While continuing under his breathe, "except for the ones that get... sick."

Noahs Ark On The Moon

Within the next few hundreds of years, a large asteroid could collide with our planet. Although there is no evidence that an asteroid is currently on a collision course with Earth, craters on Earth and the moon indicate that asteroid strikes have occurred often over the lifetime of the solar system. The damage to the Earth's environment from a large impact can be catastrophic, with fatal consequences for life. It is widely believed that the dinosaurs went extinct because of such an impact event 65 million years ago.

We also face the possibility of manmade catastrophes. A nuclear conflict could end life as we know it and destroy a large part of the biosphere. Global warming, whether it occurs through manmade pollution or because of some natural climate cycle, also could result in the extinction of many species.

But if we have a laboratory where we can maintain a DNA bank and a pool of species, creating a modern Noah's Ark, then we can potentially recover from such catastrophes.

I think the moon could be used as such a repository in case there is ever a global disaster on Earth. As a lifeboat, the moon is a lot closer than Mars. Plus, we don't know yet if there is life on Mars, and we have to figure that out before we do any life experiments there.

- Bernard Foing, principal scientist for ESA's SMART-1

Weaponization Of Space Will Have Unpredictable Consequences

The United States has promised to make public in the next few months its new space doctrine, which allows for the deployment of weapons in outer space. Colonel Anthony Russo, chief of the U.S. Strategic Command's space and global strike division, said the time was ripe for clearly stipulating the Pentagon's responsibility for the security of the national space group. Space-based laser and kinetic energy weapons will be used against those who create obstructions to U.S. satellites. Logically, this will lead to the creation of a space theater of war.