Events in Spaaaace!

Blue Origin's spacecraft failed during a test launch on September 2.  It didn't get a lot of news, in part because Blue Origin isn't being especially public about its endeavors yet.  The spacecraft was to go suborbital on this flight, and at 45,000 feet started going unstable and they had to destroy it.  Blue Origin is one of the commercial space industries vying to supply the ISS and to promote manned spaceflight.  It was founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.  (Glad to see those millions are going to something.)  http://www.space.com/12824-blue-origin-private-spaceship-rocket-failure.html

NASA Astronauts to return today:  (Note, this was written on 9/14).  So there will be three astronauts on the ISS until the Russians send up a crew on November 12.  I'm not sure when the next three are going up, but the remaining crew is supposed to come down in the end of November.  http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Three_ISS_crew_members_scheduled_to_return_on_Friday_999.html

Star Ripping Its Planet Apart.  'K, the "Death Star" reference is a stretch, IMHO, but it's very cool that we can see so far so well that we can tell that this star's magnetic field is tearing the planet apart.  Check out the video:  http://tv.ibtimes.com/real-life-death-star-found-frying-nearby-planet/1899.html

Oh, Look.  NASA isn't getting out of the rocket business after all:  The Obama Administration has unveiled its plans to build a huge liquid fueled rocket.  http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2011/sep/14/nasa-unveils-giant-new-rocket-design-ar-1308453/  Now NASA says they want this to get to Mars and the asteroid belt, but I'm going to have to get some explanation on this because...

1.  Didn't Obama cancel a rocket program already in development?
2.  Didn't Obama say they were going to leave the space lift side to commercial interests and let NASA concentrate on developing technologies and furthering space exploration?  (Note this rocket is going "back to the future" with current technology.)
3.  Given NASA's track record on cost overruns and, well, the history of CANCELING programs in motion, is it really a good idea to have the government start producing a rocket that is, by nature, even more complex than the one they just scrapped because of production trouble and cost overruns?  Especially when it's "scheduled" to begin TEST launches in 6 years--plenty of time for the next president to come in and slash it.

Chicks dig giant rockets...but not government programs!

I'll be doing some research on solid, liquid, and hybrid fueled rockets for the blog later.