0745 PDT -- White Knight continues its climb to
approximately 50,000 feet, where it will release SpaceShipOne. Dick
Rutan, speaking to CNN's Miles O'Brien, said, "Everything is nice
and quiet."
A Look Inside The FAA Office That Regulates Commercial Manned
Spaceflight
Since 1984, Patricia Grace Smith's office at the FAA has been
licensing commercial rocket launches. The payloads have always been
satellites or research equipment -- until Burt Rutan and Paul Allen
changed things with the flight of SpaceShipOne back in June. It was
Smith's office that gave Scaled Composites and pilot Mike Melvill
the final regulatory go-ahead for that record flight and it was
Smith who pinned the first ever commercial astronaut wings on
Melvill's chest when he returned. Somewhere in that entire process,
someone had to do a lot of paperwork.
NASA aeronautics researchers are looking forward to flying the
X-43A research aircraft at speeds up to 10 times the speed of sound
later this fall, following a successful "captive carry" dress
rehearsal flight from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center Sept.
27.
Northrop Grumman And JPL Team Up To Go To Moons Of Jupiter
NASA's JPL has chosen Northrop Grumman Corp. as a partner in
developing a preliminary design for the Prometheus Jupiter Icy
Moons Orbiter (JIMO), an electric propulsion vehicle powered by a
nuclear fission reactor. The contract award is for approximately
$400 million, covering work through mid-2008.
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