The first problem NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe wants his newly minted Advisory Council to tackle is how to use nuclear technology in space – a project that heavily involves Huntsville’s Marshall Space Flight Center. O’Keefe and other NASA officials outlined a new approach for the NASA Advisory Council Tuesday that would break the 20-member board into two groups – one for policy group and one for science and technology. Huntsville lawyer Mark McDaniel, who serves on the council, is lobbying to be placed in the policy group. The science group’s members would focus on which missions NASA should or could tackle, while the policy group would tackle how the space agency could solve key problems.
March 11th, 2004
Significant role ahead for Marshall on new craft The Huntsville Times
Marshall Space Flight Center will play a significant role in developing the Crew Exploration Vehicle, NASA’s latest spacecraft, but how large a part and where the program will be managed has yet to be determined, a top NASA official said in Huntsville Wednesday.
March 10th, 2004
Bush push to Mars may be slowed The Huntsville Times
Plans to return man to the moon, build advanced spacecraft and eventually land on Mars may be in trouble before the first spaceship blueprints are drafted, a top NASA official said during a meeting in Huntsville on Tuesday. Domestic needs and wartime spending might force Congress to delay funding for President Bush’s plan to return to the moon, NASA Comptroller Steve Isakowitz told members of the NASA Advisory Council, gathered at Marshall Space Flight Center for their quarterly meeting.
March 8th, 2004
Work on how to use nuclear power in space heating up at Marshall The Huntsville Times
A gangly collection of small, stainless steel pipes lashed together in a hexagonal shape could show Marshall Space Flight Center engineers how to build a nuclear-powered spacecraft. The pipes make up what Marshall engineer Ron Porter calls “a non-nuclear test bed,” meaning it has no nuclear material in it. By super-heating the pipes with electricity, Porter said, NASA and Department of Energy researchers can better understand how a nuclear reactor in space might behave. Nuclear reactions generate a lot of heat.
November 5th, 2003
China could shoot for moon, scientist says The Huntsville Times
Whatever nation has the will finds its way to the planets. That was the clear message from a discussion panel of space pioneers held at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center Tuesday night. Today, it appears the Chinese government is the only nation to have that will, said Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, who worked with Dr. Wernher von Braun’s German rocket team in World War II and later on the massive Saturn rocket program that lofted Apollo astronauts to the moon in 1969.
April 17th, 2003
Teen sets sail for space travel The Huntsville Times
Ulyana Horodyskyj calmly gave a 25-minute talk about space travel to a room full of rocket scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville on Wednesday. What’s so special about that? Dozens of speakers talked about space this week at the Advanced Space Propulsion Workshop at UAH, a semiannual event that brings the nation’s top rocket scientists to Huntsville. What’s special about Horodyskyj is she’s a 17-year-old high school student from Ohio.
January 25th, 2003
Marshall will help power NASA’s nuclear program The Huntsville Times
Marshall Space Flight Center will play a key role in NASA’s plan to develop and build nuclear-powered spacecraft, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said during a visit to Huntsville Friday. Dubbed Project Prometheus – after the Greek god who gave humans fire – the space agency plans to develop nuclear-power technologies that will advance exploration of space. O’Keefe, in a speech to Marshall employees, said nuclear power will extend man’s reach beyond where chemical rockets and solar arrays can take spacecraft today. “There is a need . . . to concentrate on how to do things in the future that we can’t do today,” O’Keefe said.
April 7th, 2000
Goldin says NASA may need more than $14B budget The Huntsville Times
NASA may have to ask for more money than was included in its $14 billion budget request for fiscal 2001, space agency Administrator Dan Goldin admitted Thursday. An outside panel reviewing NASA’s disastrous last two Mars missions also concluded the programs were underfunded by 30 percent, so NASA needs to find more money for similar missions to make sure they’re not shortchanged.
March 15th, 2000
Budget could postpone new space technologies The Huntsville Times
Marshall Space Flight Center is dreaming of building new spacecraft, but it may be in for a rude awakening if a budget being prepared by congressional Republicans becomes law.