STARFLEET has a wealth of science talent amongst its membership. On this page, Starfleet Sciences provides links to those science articles written by members who seek to share their talent online. This page of links can grow only if you provide me with information on articles you have written, so please send me the url's of the online articles you'd like listed!
- Starfleet Sciences Space Shuttle Columbia Memorial Page
Contains material (poem, commentary, artwork) by STARFLEET members and links in memory of the Space Shuttle Columbia astronauts
- Bill Downs
- Kevin Faux
- Colonel Neil Yawn
- Alan Anderton
- Treknology in Paper Models - The Science Department of the USS Magellan takes pleasure in hosting an index of all the free, Star Trek related "Paper Models" - actually made of heavy paper or card - available for downloading right now over the Internet.
- Web Cadet Corps
- Here are some pieces Kevin Faux (co-editor of the Tricorder) and I did for the last issue (2003 June):
- USS Alaric crew
- NASA's New Space Exploration Mission - Back to the Moon, and On to Mars! But Let's Not Forget About Hubble! Or Voyager!
- Following is a collection of news reports and opinion -- Richard Heim.
- Christine Hawkins' Mars science-fiction book bibliography
- Pluto no longer a planet, it's a dwarf planet - compilation of reports, 8/06
- Moon/Mars Crew Exploration Vehicle given the name Orion - Spaceflight Now report, AP/New York Times report, 8/22/06
- Mission Impossible: Senate Appropriations Hearing on NASA Budget Request - Few hearings on science and technology budget requests have revealed a greater gap between what an agency head and Members of Congress would like to do and the money available to do it than this week's Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing on the NASA FY 2007 request. - AIP report, 4/28/06
- U.S. Planning Base on Moon To Prepare for Trip to Mars -- For the first time since 1972, the United States is planning to fly to the moon, but instead of a quick, Apollo-like visit, astronauts intend to build a permanent base and live there while they prepare what may be the most ambitious undertaking in history: putting human beings on Mars. - Washington Post article, 3/25/06
- Schedule to Complete Space Station Is Advanced -- Partners in the International Space Station agreed Thursday to launch European and Japanese components earlier than originally planned to ensure they were functioning by 2010, when the orbiting space laboratory is to be fully assembled. Michael D. Griffin, the NASA administrator, said the agency planned 16 more flights of the space shuttle to finish the station by the end of the decade. NASA's three shuttles -- Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour -- are the only spacecraft large enough to carry major station components. - New York Times article, 3/3/06
- Budget Woes at NASA: NASA Cancels Mission to Visit 2 Asteroids -- NASA on Thursday canceled a mission to visit two asteroids five months after the program was told to stand down because of cost overruns and technical problems. The cancellation is the latest setback for NASA, which has been forced to delay science missions to focus on developing a new manned spacecraft to return to the moon in the next decade. Mr. Bush's proposal to return to the Moon, while pushing to cut taxes for the rich and force the federal budget into eternal deficit, makes one wonder if cutting NASA science programs is actually his goal all along. - Washington Post article, 3/2/06
- Budget Woes at NASA: New Budget Delays or Cancels Much-Promoted NASA Missions -- Some of the most highly promoted missions on NASA's scientific agenda would be postponed indefinitely or perhaps even canceled under the agency's new budget, despite its administrator's vow to Congress six months ago that not "one thin dime" would be taken from space science to pay for President Bush's plan to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars. Among the casualties in the budget, released last month, are efforts to look for habitable planets and perhaps life elsewhere in the galaxy, an investigation of the dark energy that seems to be ripping the universe apart, bringing a sample of Mars back to Earth and exploring for life under the ice of Jupiter's moon Europa -- as well as numerous smaller programs and individual research projects that astronomers say are the wellsprings of new science and new scientists. - New York Times article, 3/2/06
- NASA Supporters Fear Bush May Cut Space Plan -- President Bush has finally won endorsement of his "Vision for Space Exploration" from a once-skeptical Congress, but supporters now fear the administration is backing away from its own initiative to send humans back to the moon and then on to Mars. The question now being asked on Capitol Hill is whether Bush will ask for enough money to keep the vision on track when the administration rolls out its 2007 budget Feb. 6, or whether he will shortchange the shuttle program or cripple the new exploration initiative or both. Bush has said he intends to freeze discretionary spending unrelated to national security for the next five years. The only way to ensure that there is enough money for the space program is for Mr. Bush to stop cutting taxes for the rich, which is starving the "goose that lays the golden eggs", and he should even roll back his earlier tax cuts for the rich. - Washington Post article, 1/28/06
- SUITSAT: There's a new satellite orbiting Earth, and it's a weird one. On Friday, Feb. 3rd, at 6:02 pm EST, astronauts threw an old Russian spacesuit overboard from the International Space Station. This strange experiment is a test of a sensible idea--that old spacesuits might be transformed into useful satellites. The disembodied suit, nicknamed SuitSat, is now circling Earth and transmitting a radio message which you can hear using a police scanner or ham radio tuned to 145.990 MHz (FM). Would you like to listen to SuitSat? Sign up for Spaceweather PHONE (http://www.sciencecentral.com/site/4542555) and you'll receive alerts when the suit is about to orbit over your area.
- NASA Takes Giant Step Toward Finding Earth-Like Planets -- Are we alone in the universe? Are there planets like Earth around other "suns" that might harbor life? Thanks to a recent technology breakthrough on a key NASA planet-finding project, the dream of answering those questions is no longer light-years away. On a crystal clear, star-filled night at Hawaii's Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea, NASA engineers successfully suppressed the blinding light of three stars, including the well-known Vega, by 100 times. This breakthrough will enable scientists to detect the dim dust disks around stars, where planets might be forming. Normally the disks are obscured by the glare of the starlight. - ScienceDaily article, 9/30/05
- NASA Administrator Griffin briefs Congress on NASA's Exploration Architecture -- Earlier this week, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin described how the agency intends to fulfill President Bush's vision for a manned return to the moon, human exploration of Mars, and beyond. Immediate reaction from Capitol Hill was guardedly supportive. - AIP article, 9/22/05
- Experts might scuttle the shuttle -- Recurring problems that have forced NASA to ground all its shuttles until further notice could persuade officials to speed up work on a new generation of space craft. - Yahoo News article, 8/14/05
- House to Back Bush on Moon, Mars Trips - The House for the first time in five years will weigh in on national space policy today, considering a bipartisan endorsement of President Bush's initiative to send humans to the moon and Mars and authorizing an extra $1.3 billion over the next two years to forestall cuts in NASA's traditional programs in science and aeronautics. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2005 also endorses a maintenance visit by the space shuttle to the Hubble Space Telescope and calls on NASA to develop a national aeronautics policy. - Washington Post article, 7/22/05
- The American Geophysical Union said programs that are finally giving people an understanding of the complex world on which they live will be decimated by the NASA budget cuts. - New York Times article, 6/8/05
- House Panel Examines Cuts in NASA Earth Studies - NASA's new quest to explore the Moon and Mars appears to be coming at the expense of studying a world closer at hand, scientists and lawmakers said. - New York Times article, 4/29/05
- Plan to Abandon Hubble Challenged: NASA engineers have taken a successful first step in showing they could service the Hubble Space Telescope using only robots, implicitly challenging NASA headquarters' insistence that Hubble will have to be abandoned because the controversial $470 million mission is too expensive and too difficult. ... The letter was completely at odds with the Bush administration's determination to abandon the mission. - Washington Post article, 4/12/05
- Historic Voyager Mission May Lose Its Funding: In a cost-cutting move prompted by President Bush's moon-Mars initiative, NASA could put an end to Voyager, the legendary 28-year mission that has sent a spacecraft farther from Earth than any object ever made by humans. "It's as if Lewis and Clark had got all the way to the Rocky Mountains, and then turned around and headed home," says one scientist involved in the project. - Washington Post article, 4/3/05 - Washington Post article, 4/6/05
- The American Astronomical Society has issued a statement expressing "considerable disappointment" in NASA's decision not to service the Hubble Space Telescope. - AIP report, 3/29/05
- Congressional Hearing Witnesses Question Priority of a Hubble Servicing Mission - AIP report, 2/23/05
- NASA Budget Cuts Plan To Service Hubble, either with the space shuttle or with a robot repairman - Washington Post article, 1/22/05 - New York Times article, 1/23/05
- NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe Is Resigning After 3 Years - (I have a feeling it's because he has led NASA so poorly during his tenure and he stubbornly refuses to rescue the Hubble space telescope.) - New York Times article, 12/13/04
- AAS Supports Manned Servicing Mission to Hubble - The recommendation that NASA plan for a manned space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope has now received support from the American Astronomical Society (AAS). A National Research Council committee, tasked with reviewing the options for servicing the space telescope in the wake of the Columbia shuttle tragedy, concluded late last year that "a shuttle astronaut servicing mission is the best option for extending the life of Hubble" (see http://www.aip.org/fyi/2004/158.html). The NRC committee's report contained three recommendations: that NASA commit to a Hubble servicing mission; that NASA consider flying a shuttle servicing mission reasonably soon after the shuttle fleet's return to flight; and that a robotic mission only be considered for deorbiting the telescope at some time after a shuttle servicing mission has extended its scientific life. - AIP report, 1/20/05
- NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe Is Resigning After 3 Years - (I have a feeling it's because he has led NASA so poorly during his tenure and he stubbornly refuses to rescue the Hubble space telescope.) - New York Times article, 12/13/04
- Although NASA officials have sometimes denigrated the Hubble as a waning asset whose best years are behind it, the National Academy of Sciences panel concluded that Hubble's future discoveries would be every bit as spectacular as its past successes. That is a remarkable statement to make about any mature scientific instrument. Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, has scrubbed the Hubble mission as too risky to undertake. That excuse has now been exposed as a sham. The great danger is that NASA will convince itself and Congress that robotics will work, and then down the line confess failure and let a spectacularly successful telescope die from neglect. - New York Times article, 12/12/04
- National Academy of Sciences Panel Urges Shuttle Mission to Help Hubble: Contradicting NASA policy in a long and bitter debate over science and safety, the panel said Wednesday that the agency should send astronauts to repair the Hubble Space Telescope rather than rely on a robotic device. As for the risk to a space shuttle crew, the panel said, there is a "very small" difference in safety between a mission to the telescope and a typical mission to the International Space Station. - New York Times article, Washington Post article, 12/9/04
- Near-Earth Size Extrasolar Planets Discovered: Three planets have been discovered in other solar systems and are the closest ever found to Earth in size, marking an important step in the search for planets that could support life elsewhere in the universe, scientists have announced. The planets are significantly smaller than the many dozens found so far and might even be rocky, an essential platform for life to evolve. The scientists who discovered the three planets said they were probably too hot to support life themselves, although one has a lukewarm zone that could conceivably support biological organisms. ... Many conditions would need to be met for any other planets to support life. Candidates need to be at an optimal distance from a star, and neither too hot nor too cold. They would probably need liquid water and would not trap harmful radiation, as Venus does. - NASA report; Washington Post article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49815-2004Aug31.html?referrer=email), 9/1/04; New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/01/national/01planet.html?th), 9/1/04
- NASA Plans Robotic Fix For Hubble: NASA has decided to move ahead with an ambitious mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope using a robotic repairman to change batteries and yroscopes, add new instruments, and maybe fix a malfunctioning spectrograph. ... The decision marked a sharp turnabout for O'Keefe and NASA, which has suffered withering criticism since a January announcement that it would no longer service Hubble at all and would develop a robot whose only purpose would be to steer the telescope out of orbit and safely into a watery grave. - Washington Post article, 8/11/04
- House Panel Cuts Bush's Budget Request for NASA: A key congressional subcommittee slashed President Bush's NASA budget request by more than $1 billion yesterday, dealing a sharp early blow to the administration's efforts to set in motion an ambitious plan to send humans to the moon and Mars. The panel eliminated $438 million the administration had requested to begin work on a new "crew exploration vehicle" to replace the space shuttle, cut its request for medical and biological research in space by $103 million, and eliminated $70 million for lunar exploration. - Washington Post article, 7/21/04
- NASA is allowing a highly successful satellite to fall out of Earth's orbit by refusing to fund it for as little as $28 million, dismaying the scientists and forecasters who use its unique abilities to study climate change and track hurricanes. NASA officials said engineers did not order a planned firing of its rockets in early July to hold the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite in orbit 241 miles above Earth. Without periodic assists from its thrusters, atmospheric drag will send the satellite's remains to a watery grave in six to nine months. Engineers said the satellite, a joint venture with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, is working perfectly and could still be saved. - Washington Post article, 7/19/04
- Scientists Say Shuttle Can Service Telescope - A NASA-ordered report by the nation's top scientists yesterday urged the space agency not to rule out a potentially risky space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, which it described as "arguably the most important telescope in history." ... The report challenged statements made by NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe over the past six months, in which he repeatedly ruled out a shuttle-servicing mission for safety reasons. - Washington Post article, 7/14/04; AIP report, 7/19/04
- Robotic Effort May Refurbish Telescope; Safe Descent Is Priority - NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said yesterday the space agency was soliciting proposals for a robotic mission to refurbish the Hubble telescope, but the first priority would be to ensure the telescope's safe descent to a watery grave. - Washington Post article, 6/2/04
- With the end in sight for the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers said Wednesday they are posing the most basic cosmic questions to the orbiting observatory, including queries about extraterrestrial life. - ENN article, 5/6/04
- Hubble's distress touched a national nerve. It has become the people's telescope, its fate of vital interest to everyone from the scientists who use it and minister to its needs to amateur astronomers to breakfast-table enthusiasts who marvel at Hubble's spectacular images. What has happened, said University of Michigan psychologist Daniel J. Kruger, is that Hubble has become a national treasure. "Hubble is the only truly useful piece of work NASA has done in years," one man wrote to Hubblesite in January. "Let me get this straight. We are going to take the greatest telescope ever conceived . . . and then we are going to blow it up?" another man wrote on Hubblesite. "Do you people have a clue? . . . The American People own the Hubble. How dare you even consider blowing her up?" - Washington Post article, 3/21/04
- As the controversy continues to swirl around NASA's decision to kill the final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, the space agency has responded with a paper explaining the decision. - http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0403/14hstwhitepaper/, 3/14/04
- The premature termination of the Hubble telescope is too important a decision to be left to NASA's administrator. - New York Times article, 3/13/04
- NASA agreed to have the National Academy of Sciences examine plans to cancel a space shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. - New York Times article, 3/12/04
- Why not use a space tug to lift the Hubble Space Telescope to a safer orbit? - Dennis Wingo SpaceRef.com article, 8/20/03
- NASA may send a robot to service the Hubble Space Telescope instead of astronauts, in a bid to save the telescope from abandonment. - SpaceDaily article, 3/12/04
- John Glenn, the former senator who was the first American to orbit the Earth, said Thursday that he opposed cutting money from the International Space Station and basic scientific research to pay for President Bush's goal of sending astronauts to the Moon and Mars. - New York Times article, 3/5/04
- When a Hubble-hugger like John Grunsfeld is comfortable with killing the telescope, does that make it the right decision? - New York Times article, 3/5/04
- The gains that would be realized from extending the Hubble Space Telescope's life should not be sacrificed for a distant exploration program. - New York Times article, 2/29/04
- Greenhouses for Mars: Long-term explorers, on Mars or on the moon, will need to grow plants for food, for recycling, for replenishing the air - http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/25feb_greenhouses.htm?list647810, 02/25/04
- web page of President's Commission on Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration Policy, more colloquially know as the President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond - http://www.moontomars.org/
- NASA Rebuts New Criticism Over Hubble - Dennis Overbye New York Times article, 2/10/04
- Engineer's Papers Dispute Hubble Decision - Dennis Overbye New York Times article, 2/7/04
- The Space Review comments about the President's plan:
- Choosing our destination --- Did President Bush make the right decision in choosing to go back
to the Moon first before going to Mars? David Boswell believes that the answer may be no - http://www.thespacereview.com/article/91/1, 01/26/04
- Near Earth asteroids: the third option --- The long-running debate of Moon versus Mars has ignored a third option: near Earth asteroids. Jeff Foust reports that some people have made a compelling case for human missions to these surprisingly-accessible bodies - http://www.thespacereview.com/article/90/1, 01/26/04
- The President's plan will not work --- The new Bush space initiative is doomed to failure because a multi-decade government program is unsustainable, argues Phil Smith. Instead, the government needs to stoke the engine of commerce in order to create a sustainable human presence in space - http://www.thespacereview.com/article/92/1, 01/26/04
- The European (French) response to Bush's space strategy --- Europe is weighing what role it can play in the new US space initiative. Taylor Dinerman suggests that the US would be better off limiting any European participation in the program - http://www.thespacereview.com/article/89/1, 01/26/04
- It was a mistake when NASA recently sentenced the Hubble Space Telescope to a slow death. - Michael Benson New York Times editorial, 01/31/04
- NASA Administrator O'Keefe on Bush Space Initiatives - AIP report, 01/30/04
- Mars Liberators - Newsweek political cartoon, 01/26/04
- Mars Klingons - political cartoon, 01/18/04
- The Next Space Race: China Heads to the Stars - New York Times article, 01/22/04
- If humans get to Mars, what might they do? - Environmental News Network, 01/20/04 article
- The Citizen Astronaut: To fulfill the promise of the space age, everyone should have a chance to go into space - New York Times article, 01/17/04
- A day after President Bush announced renewed efforts for human space exploration, NASA said it would make an office to develop the technologies - New York Times article, 01/16/04
- The first manned spaceflight to Mars, though invaluable to science, would most likely be a one-way trip for the astronauts (i.e., establishing a permanent Martian colony now) - Paul Davies-New York Times editorial, 01/15/04
- Bush's Space Vision Thing: Before Congress approves President Bush's billion-dollar promise to NASA, it should carefully consider the focus and future cost of the plan - New York Times article, 01/15/04
- Highlights of Bush's Space Initiative - AP/Yahoo article, 01/15/04
- NASA transcript of Bush's Space Initiative Speech - Bush vision highlights, transcript (pdf file), NASA Missions home page, 01/14/04
- For Space Glory, Reach for the Stars, Experts Say - New York Times article, 01/10/04
- Bush to Announce Ventures to Mars and the Moon, Officials Say - New York Times article, 01/09/04
- Howard Dean: Making the solar system safe for Republicans (and most Democrats) - The Space Review article, 01/05/04
- Fly Me to L 1: The next step in our space program should be to create a floating launching pad for manned and unmanned missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. - Buzz Aldrin-New York Times editorial, 12/05/03
- Will the Space Race Move East? - Jacqueline Newmyer-New York Times editorial, 10/20/03
- China in Space - New York Times editorial, 10/19/03
- Our bedraggled space program needs a new goal: a permanent human presence on the moon - New York Times editorial, 10/14/03
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