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Exploration

Building a True Spaceship – And Then Going Somewhere

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
February 23, 2010
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Spaceships Worthy of the Name, Buzz Aldrin, Huffington post
“In storage at Marshall Spaceflight Center, and elsewhere around the country are spacecraft components from which we can build a true spaceship, one worthy of the name. I’ve called the Exploration Module, or XM. This vehicle, lifted up to orbit aboard the Space Shuttle in its final missions, would be a true spacecraft that lives only in space. … My concept for a cycling spaceship, now universally called the Aldrin cycler, could be fashioned out of the XM. All we’d need would be a rocket to attach to it, maybe like the Centaur liquid hydrogen upper stage flown many times aboard many different launchers – and managed by Ohio’s Glenn Research Center.”
For NASA no easy answer for next space destination, AP
“Former NASA associate administrator Alan Stern said he’s waiting to hear what NASA officials outline in the Capitol Hill hearings, but he too has concerns about not having a precise destination. “We need a destination and a timetable and that’s really lacking,” Stern said. He said that relying on technology to dictate a location “sounds like a program to nowhere.” Because human spaceflight is about inspiration, science and international cooperation, Stern said, “you need a specific destination, a proper noun, something that’s capitalized.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.