As Keith Cowing of NASA Watch notes, Wonkette’s tried sophomoric humor and missed.

Now, I make phallic jokes about rockets all the time: my favorite is to point at the Saturn V in Huntsville and solemnly say, “Huntsville: Our rockets are bigger than your rockets.” But …

You guys feel free to enjoy these vaguely dirty (in a sophomoric way) photos from the NASA “We’re Still Incompetent” presser, courtesy Getty Images. We couldn’t pick just one to snicker at, so there are more after the jump.

Even if the shuttle does blow up tomorrow, we’re still not working.

Yeah, I think they missed.

Woohooooo! We’re getting close, people.

AP shits brick over 1-in-100 risk of crew loss.

Between freaking out over the risks of dying in a war zone and the risks of dying on a Shuttle flight, the media annoys the shit out of me lately. Folks, this is rocket science: we send a crew of three-to-seven people to orbit atop millions of pounds of explosives that happen to go the other way [well, most of the time]. We learn lessons out of every single one of these flights—they’re all flight tests.

Manned spaceflight is never, ever routine and normal. The crew know the risks, and they climb up, strap in, and clench their sphincters tight. We drones down here on the ground do the same: we know the risks, and most of us worry like hell about it. But … shit is going to happen. Something that we didn’t think would ever break breaks. A contingency that we thought we’d planned for exceeds our response capability. At the worst, people die. We have to live with that.

If you freak out over the risks, that generally means that you don’t have the balls to sit at the pointy end of the rocket. Don’t worry: you’re not alone. I’m not sure that I’d do it myself. These folks, though … they know the risks, accept them, and go on with life.

Ad astra per aspera.

NASA MSFC has announced that ATK Thiokol will receive $28.6MM to continue its development of the first stage of NASA’s new Crew Launch Vehicle. Well, duh. ATK are the only folks capable of doing man-rated solids for NASA these days.

Twenty-five years ago right this second, STS-1 launched, the first mission of the Space Transportation System [STS, or Space Shuttle]. It was America’s first launch into space in six years.

Frankly, I fear that we’ll go that long from the end of STS’s life to the new Crew Launch Vehicle’s maiden voyage. Six years doesn’t seem like a long time, but think of it this way: when the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project ended in July 1975, Gerald Ford was President. When STS-1 went up, the President was Ronald Reagan—Jimmy Carter’s administration was the first and only to not have a manned spaceflight launch. At this rate, Bush’s successor will see the last STS flight, and we might skip another Presidency before we get this thing off the ground.

We can’t have that, folks. Six years ago, 9/11 hadn’t happened, we were just coming out of the dot-bomb bubble, and it looked reasonable to expect that Al Gore might be President. Seems forever ago, doesn’t it?

Ad astra per aspera.

Jerry Madden’s One Hundred Rules for NASA Project Managers really rings true with me, especially:

Initial Work

Rule #15: The seeds of problems are laid down early. Initial planning is the most vital part of a project. The review of most failed projects or project problems indicate the disasters were well planned to happen from the start.

Oh Lord yes.

NASA Supporters Fear Bush May Cut Space Plan (Washington Post): Just disheartening. This country does so much better when we spend taxpayer dollars wisely in pursuit of manned spaceflight—the direct and indirect economic benefits are great.

“Without risk, there’s no discovery, there’s no new knowledge, there’s no bold adventure. The greatest risk is to take no risk.”

– June Scobee Rodgers, wife of Dick Scobee, commander of STS 51-L, commenting on the 20th anniversary of the Challenger disaster.

Godspeed, Challenger. Hard to believe that it’s been 20 years. Challenger is the reason I work in the space program today. That might be a story that you want to read, but … I don’t want to tell it today. Today, I just want to remember.

Scobee.
Smith.
Resnik.
Onizuka.
McNair.
Jarvis.
McAuliffe.

GAO has made some suggestions to NASA about how it could better manage future programs, including Vision for Space Exploration:

GAO’s recommendations include requiring that NASA projects demonstrate:

• that key technologies have reached a high maturity level before approving the projects for transition from the formulation to the implementation phase,
• that the design is stable before approving the projects for transition from the design phase to the fabrication, assembly, and test phase; and
• that the design can be manufactured within cost and schedule and meet quality targets prior to any decision to enter into production.

Sounds about right to me!

NASA/MSFC issues sole-source justification to use ATK Thiokol to peform the DDT&E task on the first stage of the CLV. And so it begins.

More links when appropriate.

China announces plans for moon landing in 2017.

I smell a small panic from the northeast. Smells like … fear and funding.

As with his excellent dissection of what was wrong with STS, which I really loved, Maciej Ceglowski has written an excellent essay on the Vision for Space Exploration, the Crew Exploration Vehicle, and the real impetus behind a Moon and Mars Shot. As before, one minor niggle:

O’Keefe, you may recall, was the political genius who cancelled the Shuttle mission to upgrade the Hubble telescope, the most beloved piece of scientific apparatus in the world, on the grounds that it was too dangerous to fly anywhere but to the Space Station. Since the Hubble is one of the most useful tools ever to come out of NASA, and the Hubble upgrade is the only Shuttle mission that genuinely requires a manned crew, the decision didn’t go over well with anyone. But rather than back down, O’Keefe had the audacity to ask for over a billion dollars in funding to develop an alternate plan. We will save the Hubble, he said, with robots. But we must hurry.

I’d agree with the bolded bit only if you argue that ISS isn’t a necessary function. You can’t do ISS robotically—we just don’t have the capability to do the complex EVA activities that ISS requires with robots. Even the stowage of stuff in the MPLMs really can’t be done by robots given the dexterity issues.

But other than that, Maciej is very much on the mark. The re-use of Shuttle components is probably more important than he’d think—we’ll get some significant cost efficiencies from not having all the non-recurring design engineering costs—but given that they’ll be integrated differently, there’ll still be all sorts of fun involved.

And yes, … this promises to be a lot of fun. I think I’ll have to ask corporate what I can discuss.

NASA has announced its plans to develop craft to return to the moon and then go on to Mars.

This journey begins soon, with development of a new spaceship. Building on the best of Apollo and shuttle technology, NASA’s creating a 21st century exploration system that will be affordable, reliable, versatile, and safe.

The centerpiece of this system is a new spacecraft designed to carry four astronauts to and from the moon, support up to six crewmembers on future missions to Mars, and deliver crew and supplies to the International Space Station.

The new crew vehicle will be shaped like an Apollo capsule, but it will be three times larger, allowing four astronauts to travel to the moon at a time.

The new spacecraft has solar panels to provide power, and both the capsule and the lunar lander use liquid methane in their engines. Why methane? NASA is thinking ahead, planning for a day when future astronauts can convert Martian atmospheric resources into methane fuel.

Bring on the work!

That ugly bastard’s back.

Wonder what the crew of Discovery have been doing since they undocked from the International Space Station and will be doing until they land in a little under 24 hours? Well, a big part of that work is to adjust their sleep schedules. [Heh.] Station sleep/wake cycles don’t match up with when Discovery is to land, so they spend some time getting enough sleep so that, once the time comes to land, that’s about “mid-morning” or so for them.

Am I happy with how STS-114 has gone? Generally, yeah. It’s been a great mission. But I won’t feel good I see two puffs of smoke come out from under the tires on the Orbiter’s landing gear and then see that big ol’ nose come down on the third axle.

Godspeed, Discovery, and we’ll see you soon.