December 12, 2005
Speaking of New Horizons...
  • Boeing replacement workers delivered the third stage to NASA, on schedule;
  • Space News has a summary of the mission and its progress to-date. Interesting tidbit:
    In 2001, under pressure from the U.S. Congress, NASA held an open competition to find a cheaper way to do a Pluto flyby and ultimately selected the $500 million New Horizons proposal but did not request any funding for the mission. Congress funded the New Horizons program as a budget earmark for two years before NASA finally got the message and started requesting money for the mission.
  • Alan Stern, "leader" of the New Horizons mission, explains the mission (including the need for an RTG to power it) in an editorial in the Daytona Beach News-Journal, which last week featured a bit of misleading fearmongering by anti-nuclear/anti-space "terrorist" Karl Grossman in the same space;
  • PhysOrg.com profiles Gerard P. Kuiper and the science behind New Horizons;
  • Florida Today opines that the safety risk from the New Horizons launch is small based on the design of the RTG being used and the testing the technology has been put through (though they appear to confuse "fail-safe" with "failure proof");
  • Meanwhile, in USA Today, Florida Today's Todd Halvorson regurgitates Grossman's talking points about lottery odds, and quotes Bruce Gagnon worrying about "making that area a nuclear wasteland" (what, like Nevada?) -- giving both Grossman and Gagnon more attention than they merit;
  • Preparation of the Atlas V launch vehicle continues, with on-pad dress rehearsal completed last week, encapsulation of the payload scheduled for today, and stack scheduled for Friday.
Posted by T.L. James on December 12, 2005 11:01 AM

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