The Final Frontier for Space City?

[sonias]

Texas Tribune 7/21/11

The Final Frontier for Space City?

Houston’s official nickname since 1967: Space City. It’s NBA team: the Rockets. Its MLB franchise is the Astros, and they played in the Astrodome. It’s no wonder that the city that prides itself as the premier intellectual base of America’s manned space program is in a bit of a funk as space shuttle Atlantis makes its final landing today.

Aerospace is not Houston’s largest industry — it comes in at number four. So NASA jobs are just part of what the city is worried about. It's also that, ever since then-U.S. Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson helped pass the National Aeronautics and Space Act in 1958, the city has largely preferred to see itself not through the prism of its gargantuan energy and petrochemical sectors, but through the engineering and scientific accomplishments of what would become the Johnson Space Center.

(snip)

As the shuttle completes its last mission without a clear plan for the future, Houston’s aerospace community is left to fret — and fight — about its own path forward.

“It’s not like the Apollo program, where everything crashed but the shuttle was on the horizon,” says Wayne Rast, a 19-year veteran contractor at the space center who worked for Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and the United Space Alliance, among others.

So sad for all of us. Not just for Houston. :cry:

[WolverineDG]

1. Man, that sucks

No wonder Star Fleet set up shop in San Francisco. :(

dg

[sonias]

3. Thank god for Starfleet

Or else we'd never have a United Federation of Planets! There is something to look forward to.

:thumbsup:

[WolverineDG]

5. yeah, but

too bad First Contact isn't until a month after my 100th Birthday. :(

:rofl:

If I could chose an alternate universe to live it, it would be the one with Star Fleet in it. :D

dg

[sonias]

6. Time Travel

Don't worry dg we can always move back and forth in time.

Live long and prosper!

[ashling]

2. I was a little surprised that Texas was not on that list of states

Moodys warned today. That would give the teasecionists something to think about -- Oh, what am I saying ... well it least it would give them something else to grumble about.

:rofl:

[sonias]

4. Hey you!

Long time. :hi:

[sonias]

7. Neil deGrasse Tyson: “America is fading,” and NASA is the solution

SciGuy Blog Houston Chronicle 7/26/11

Neil deGrasse Tyson: “America is fading,” and NASA is the solution

Tyson says he’s very concerned about the lack of a real plan for a manned spaceflight program in NASA’s future. And make no mistake, Tyson understands that NASA has a “plan,” he’s just not convinced NASA will follow through without an actual destination and the funding to get there.

This, he says, bodes very ill for the country’s future:

Without a plan to go somewhere out of low-Earth orbit, we’ve got no force operating on the educational pipeline of America. NASA, as best I can judge, is a force of nature like none other. I have never seen, with all due respect to other federal agencies, eighth-graders sit up and say, “When I grow up I want to be an NSF researcher,” or “an NIH researcher.”

With all due respect to those federal agencies, they do important scientific work, but they are unknown and invisible at the age when people choose what they want to be when they grow up.

(snip)

Tyson then goes on to note that the world’s fastest trains are built in Germany and operated in China, and that the world’s most powerful particle accelerator is running in Europe. America, he says, “Is fading right now.”

:kick::kick::kick: