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A Private Space Shuttle
Fred Guterl 10/9/2009 12:00:00 AM
In the early 1970s, Freeman Dyson wrote an essay comparing space travel to the colonization of the New World and the settlement of the American West. The subject was fanciful, but that didn't keep Dyson, an eminent physicist and writer for the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, from making a meticulous effort to quantify and compare the costs of these vastly different ventures. From letters of Gov. William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony, Dyson calculated that the Mayflower's voyage in 1620 from England to Massachusetts cost the average family about 7.5 years in wages. The westward trek of the Mormons in the 1840s cost each family about 2.5 years, according to records left behind by Brigham Young, the Mormon leader. Even a modest space voyage, Dyson calculated, would set the average family back 1,500 years in wages. The difference reflected the relative difficulty of space travel, but also the limitations of big government programs to do things on the cheap.
Space Junk
Fred Guterl 8/1/2009 12:00:00 AM
Cosmos 2251 was an ordinary satellite designed to transmit signals across the vast Russian landmass. Launched in 1993, it would appear every 90 minutes or so over the northern skies, relay electronic blips of information among a network of satellites and ground stations like a hockey player passing the puck, and disappear over the southern horizon.
OUTER SPACE
Space Odyssey
1/24/2008 12:00:00 AM
Billionaire Richard Branson and aerospace designer Burt Rutan have unveiled their model for the world's first tourist spaceship, which they plan to put on trial later this year. Branson's Virgin Galactic company aims to have the craft, SpaceShipTwo, pressed into full service for fare-paying passengers as soon as next year, for $200,000 a ticket. NEWSWEEK asked former NASA engineer and "Rocket Boys" author Homer Hickam about the final frontier for tourism--and whether those brave first passengers will likely need the return portion of their tickets. Excerpts:
NATION
A Galaxy of PR Woe
Lynn Waddell 12/14/2007 12:00:00 AM
It was perhaps the most unusual public-relations challenge in NASA history. One astronaut drove across country to confront another over a spaceman they both admired—leaving a criminal case and a trail of tabloid headlines in her wake. The February arrest of then-astronaut Lisa Nowak on charges of assault and attempted kidnapping (her lawyer has filed notice that he plans to plead not guilty by reason of insanity) brought unwanted scrutiny to a space program already beleaguered by mechanical malfunctions and shrinking financial support. This week, NASA released e-mails offering a glimpse into how the agency handled the scandal. One officer's e-mail suggested trying Nowak (who, along with her love interest, is no longer a member of the astronaut corps) in military court to limit media access, a suggestion the agency quickly dismissed. So how did the space crew do in fending off these public-relations asteroids? NEWSWEEK spoke with Gene Grabowski, vice president of Washington, D.C.-based Levick Strategic Communications, who worked damage control on the national pet-food recalls and the toxic Chinese toy imports earlier this year. Excerpts:
SCIENCE
Up, Up And Ka-Ching!

For decades after Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth in 1961, the notion that space travel could ever be possible—or affordable—for ordinary people remained the stuff of Hollywood fantasy and comic strips. Now the dream is on the launchpad. The quickest of trips—five minutes of weightlessness and spectacular views—is a viable business proposition. Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which recently unveiled its SpaceShipTwo, is only one of several competitors that hope to introduce flights costing a mere $200,000 apiece in the next few years, eventually bringing the price tag down to $20,000.
CULTURE
The Earth Behind a Man’s Thumb

There was at the end of 1968 an event that remains an inspirational symbol for the challenges ahead. For the Sixties were also the glory years of the American space program, and of astronauts such as Captain Jim Lovell. Lovell, who will be eighty in 2008, retains the boyish enthusiasm of an Eagle Scout, an award he earned growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the Depression, the son of a single mother. His father had died, and times were not easy for the Lovells. "We had a one-room apartment with a Murphy bed that came out of the wall," he remembers.