No Bucks, No Buck Rogers. Until now.

Congress Takes Action on Space Funding
By Mark Daymont
Space Center Educator / Flight Director

It has taken over a year. When President Obama unveiled his plans for NASA's new direction, it set off a firestorm of complaints, praise, arguments and confusion. For many space enthusiasts, it seemed he was deliberately shutting down our only actual plans for continuing human spaceflight and surrendering our lead in space exploration to other countries. To other advocates, his plan seemed to put NASA on a flexible path to developing the new technologies we would use in the future. To be honest, it was a bit of both. The problem was, his plan definitely would have resulted in a longer "space gap" where the US did not have it's own ability to launch humans in space, and worse, there would have been a greater number of layoffs for specialists and engineers from the program.

Late last night, just as Congress prepared to adjourn so they could return home to campaign before the November election, they finally voted on and passed Senate Bill S.3729. This last vote now sends the bill to the President's desk for his signature. Once that is done, the Bill passes into law and the provisions therein become enacted. The money will begin to flow. The actions will be taken, the direction assured.

Many members of congress were not satisfied with the Bill. Many felt it was a poor compromise of the many, many ideas that had been bantered around, argued over and revised time after time. But most felt the time was right to do SOMETHING, and get NASA moving in a direction that felt better than what the White House was choosing. The final vote was 304 for passage, 118 against, with 10 not voting.

The Bill funds one more launch of the shuttle after two that are currently scheduled. It also anticipates helping the private sector develop commercial launchers to put astronauts and other payloads into orbit.

Funding also would go for starting to develop a new heavy launcher, which would be crucial for sending Astronauts to an asteroid of Mars, but also the International Space Station.

Seven billion dollars have been earmarked for work aimed at making the new heavy launcher operational by 2016.

Climbing to New Heights

Hello Troops,
No way, not for a million dollars or all the tea in China would you get me to do this. This gives "Reaching New Heights" an all new meaning. Watch and hold on tightly. I hope these guys are paid well for what they do.

Mr. W.

Tower video

A climb up the tallest tower @ Yahoo! Video

An Old Timer's Recollections.

The Original Voyager Gary Remembers.
Ahhh those were the Good Ole Days.
We've Come a Long Way Since Those Early Days :)

Hello Troops,
I want to thank Gary Gardiner, an old Space Center Veteran from the Voyagers earliest days, for this comment on yesterday's Space Center History Post. If any of you other old timers have a moment please considering a short post on your recollections of the Space Center's early days.

Mr. Williamson

And Now Gary's Post:

An invitation to old timers to post a comment? Y'know, before these reminiscent posts (including this one and the superb Space Center History posts a few months back), I didn't consider myself an old timer. But then I thought about it... did some math... and holy cow! I was shocked to discover how much of an old timer I actually am.

I attended the Space Center for the first time when I was in 5th grade. Looking back, I now realize that that was in 1992!! I couldn't believe that I attended the Space Center only two years after it opened its doors. From the star-struck vantage point of a 5th grader, there was absolutely no indication that the Space Center was that young at the time. Everything worked seamlessly... at least to my eyes, which is a tribute to the volunteers behind the scenes at the time.

That field trip in 5th grade captured my imagination and I haven't been the same since. I came back as often as my parents could afford (far too little), but I filled all the interim time with my own dreams and imaginings inspired by the Space Center experience.

I remember one camp (probably an overnighter) where we got to fly the brand-spankin'-new ISIS (the Odyssey, for all the younguns reading this). I was in the second crew to ever fly the ISIS... the other half of our group were the lucky ones to be the first.

It really wasn't until I read these blog posts that I remembered how crews used to alternate between the simulators and the classrooms. I'd completely forgotten about that, mainly because all my memories revolved around the simulators.

... Although... I do have one traumatic memory from the classrooms. Mr. Daymont was leading our group in an interactive board game that used one of those huge laser discs. Anyway, the video featured a Klingon who captured the Enterprise, and it was our duty as Federation officers to try to reclaim the ship. I was a little slow at jumping to attention when "Captain K'vok" hollered from his TV screen at us, and Mr. Daymont singled me out for jeopardizing the fate of the whole Enterprise by being self-conscious.

It's funny how everything that happens at the Space Center gets etched into your mind... whether it be traumatic embarrassment for a split-second delay, or unparalleled celebration for whooping the aliens and saving the galaxy.

Yikes, now that I'm thinking about it a whole slew of memories are coming back to me... but I'll save them for another day, since I know there are those among our readers who have attention spans the size of Twitter tweets, so I'll save my old timer yarns for another day.

-- Gary Gardiner