The lighthouse keeper

Camping at Tengboche

2012-02-14T22:00:00.003Z

I was now beginning to feel some effects of being at high altitude. Normal actions seemed to take much longer and I was surprised how rapidly one becomes out of breath when walking up a gradient. Everything required more effort.

It started to rain a little (low cloud) on the afternoon's final approach to Tengboche. Arrived about 3.45. Drink to stave off altitude headache; thankfully it went almost straight away.

Bitingly cool this evening, especially with the damp air. Dinner was in mess tent at about 6.30 pm. Many other parties here. Tengboche is a regular stopping point for treks.

Had found lunch a little hard to digest (again an effect of altitude). Dinner this evening comprised bombay potatoes, coleslaw, bread pancakes and banana delight. Always hot juice when we arrived at campsite, and tea and biscuits in tent. I bought a can of Sprite for extra liquid.

Went to see sort film about Tengboche monastery but fell asleep. It was warm and the chairs were relatively comfortable.

Everest still seemed a distance dream but after first light in morning we should have a stunning view from the campsite, given clear weather.

It’s 9 pm. Sky is now clear. Giant mountains are silhouetted by twinkling stars. Several of us had discussion about coming days and how we would make it to Basecamp. Determined to keep going.

Some of our party started taking Diamox tablets to help thin the blood and thus combat some of the effects of altitude. Along with others I decided to wait and see how things went the next day.

Last night I slept from 11 pm until 0530 am without a break. Socks staying on tonight as colder but will try to save really warm clothing for the severe cold higher up. Others are already using long johns, hats and gloves etc at night.

Can't imagine what the coming days and nights are going to be like. For us ’office guys’ this is a test of determination and character.

Probably not enough pre-trek training with hingsight - and some more gym work might have helped as tiredness kicks in very quickly. Daytime walks are not technically difficult, though.

Our Yaks are tied up this evening near tents. Their thick shaggy coats glistened in the frost as we turned in. They are lying down but the bells clank every now and then - a comforting sound.

Awoke at 0540. Cold overnight in sleeping bag but only woke a couple of times and didn't need to venture out. People now out of tents. Sun just catching tops of mountains - looks like it will be an excellent day.

I took a short walk to top of the Tengboche site to view the sun rising on mountains. Monks in their colourful robes were gathered outside to witness the rising sun too, a daily ritual. Our campsite is white with a heavy frost and we wait for the warmth of the first swun rays of the day. It happens quickly, like the end of an eclipse. In the sun it iswarm but in the shadows still bitterly cold.

I can see the distant Everest from this campsite but it is dwarfed by other mountains in the foreground. The first part of the trail today is down through woods on sandy ground. Then across a suspension bridge. After crossing we contour around a mountainside, with a fast flowing icy river below.

There is a string of high mountains opposite, with Everest in the distance. The mighty mountain is becoming a familiar, if a little discreet, in the range beyond. Most of this part of the walk is dominated by the mcuh closer to hand and distinctively-shaped Ama Dablam.

At 12 noon it has turned a little cooler and we stop for lunch. By the time we leave an hour later the sun has disappeared as the afternoon clouds build; it will be much colder in the afternoon.

I can hear but not see the roar of water below. By now I have neck ache and a pounding lower head; not sure whether result of gaining altitude. I struggle to walk quickly after lunch. The gradient has become hard work.

The scenery is turning to barren tundra as we lose trees and vegetation. I’ve developed a severe headache in back of neck and have bad indigestion.

We come to a small wooden bridge across a raging tributary. I took a short break here and drank a can of Sprite bought at the campsite shop that morning. Then it was a steep climb up onto open land. Taking it steady, I tried to establish rhythm.

My own head had cleared now but a number of our party werenow suffering bad headaches and stomach upsets. As a result we will probably stay extra night at our next scheduled stop - Dingboche.

Altitude emergency

2012-01-31T22:09:00.000Z

No walking this afternoon as having lunch at Kangjung which is also where we are sleeping. Stopped at Everest View Hotel en route and also visited simple Sherpa Museum just after we set out from Namche.

Turned colder early this afternoon as the sun disappeared about one o’clock. The youngest member of our team, David, aged 19, rather worryingly asleep in a room at the tea house. He came on lower level easier walk as he was suffering since yesterday evening quite severe symptoms, in my opinion, of advanced mountain (altitude) sickness.

Our trek leader said we’ll see how he is tomorrow, although I heard her at lunchtime tell the Sirdar she was worried. Altitude sickness should be taken very seriously, according to the books I had read.

So far everyone else seems okay. The pace was slower today and easier to cope with. Apparently there are a number of contingency options and alternative routes to cope with a variety of circumstances.

My own cold and cough, which struck me on the second night, is much the same, not really bothering me until I lie down, mainly a running nose and hacking cough.

It’s 15:30 now. There is thick monstrous cloud all around. The light is bright but flat. The tent cold. I will transfer to our room in the tea house soon to keep a little warmer. I expect we should make the most of this luxury as it will only get colder as the trek progresses.

Ninety minutes later after a flurry of activity inside two of our porters burst through the door with a very ill-looking David propped between them. It was dark and they were all dressed for the extreme cold. I sensed a real emergency was unfolding before our eyes.

David was carried back across the mountain by the two brave porters and led by our Sirdar. It was a walk of mercy through the bitterly cold night, taking some four hours to reach the Kunde hospital where we had taken a short break that morning shortly after leaving Namche.

Our trek leader was visibly upset by now and told us she wanted a ‘second opinion’ on David’s rapidly deteriorating condition which had rapidly turned into acute altitude sickness.

It was 21.20 and I had just turned in. We had spent the evening chatting in the warmth, drinking hot tea and playing card games for 10 Rupees a go in the tea house. It was reported back that David had been put on oxygen and was staying in the remote mountain hospital overnight. That was a life-saver.

Cloudy mist hangs over the campsite tonight. Somehow it doesn’t feel so cool and it’s nice to have been inside the warm of the tea room for much of the late afternoon and evening. Heated by a stove powered by Yak dung and lighted by Tilley lamps.

We heard the next day that David had been evacuated by helicopter to hospital in Kathmandu. At the lower altitude he would thankfully make a full recovery - it had been a close shave and this trek was definitely over for him.

Namche Bazaar

2012-01-21T22:01:00.006Z

A day of crossing and re-crossing the thundering glacial ‘Dudh’ (milk) river, walking through pine forests and cleared areas of terraced fields, growing a surprising variety of crops. A series of small hamlets mark the way as we slowly gain altitude, with spectacular 6000 m mountain peaks unfolding above.

We pass through the gates of the Sagarmartha National Park, the establishment of which has seen a significant attempt to stem the use of firewood in the area. Today, self-contained trekking groups must use only kerosene fuels for cooking, and tea-houses and lodges are encouraged to use kerosene or yak dung.

We follow the river course to the confluence of the Dudh and Bhote rivers, and cross a spectacular high bridge before commencing our ascent to the village of Namche Bazaar, the Sherpa ‘capital’ of Nepal.

It is a tough climb towards the end of the day as the trail zig zags steadily upwards through a forest of pine to a vantage point that provides our first glimpse of distantMount Everest. The trail continues to climb and meander to Namche, and the sight of this prosperous village spread within a horseshoe-shaped valley opposite the beautiful peak of Kongde Ri is worth every step.

At Namche we have emerged from the narrow lowland valleys and after an acclimatisation day will continue into a changing landscape of broad glacial valleys punctuated by the moraines left by retreating glaciers.

This stunningly located gateway to so many paths in history straddles the sides of the valley at some 12,000 feet above sea level - you can almost taste the atmosphere in the air, the sense of hope, joy and wonder to come.

It was called a rest day but after breakfast we were off, thought this time with a light pack. We climbed steadily up the side of the village to a museum and then up towards a view point. It was hard going as we put on 500 m.

The skies had been rather cloudy to start with but the sun came out mid-morning. It was a steep twisting climb, but first chance to see Everest in the distance though was thwarted by distant clouds. Some of our group walked on to the Everest View Hotel but they didn’t see it from there either.

The walk back down was equally punishing in the heat of the day - twisting hairpin footpaths with wonderful panoramic views of Namche at every turn.
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By the time we got down I was tired with a headache, even though it had been a fairly slow pace. After drinks and lunch the headache disappeared and so did the weariness.

I spent time in the afternoon looking round local ‘shops’. Very colourful and spread along tiny, steep streets with Yak passing-room only. I bought a fake North Face down jacket at a bargain price which I thought might be useful later for the cold nights at higher altitude.

It seemed my body was adjusting to the altitude. Today’s up and then down again walk had helped. Breathing was now easier than the first night at Namche.

But we would be back at square one tomorrow After the climb out of Namche the first part of the day would be fairly level, then a descent into the valley followed by a steady and steep climb.

Under Himalayan skies

2012-01-11T20:22:00.011Z

After lunch in a wooden tea house we set off from Lukla about 12 noon for a relatively short up and down trek along a well-trodden path into the valley.

Our starting height was 10,000 feet and the path seemed more down than up. The terrain, if not the view, was not too different from a practice weekend earlier in the summer on Ben Nevis in Scotland. The warm sun was on our backs and the air felt clean and fresh.

This part of our 10 day trek is not a wilderness trail with many people were going back and forth, including the Yaks with their shaggy mountain coats and porters carrying impossible loads.

At this point the altitude didn’t appear to be making any significant difference. We camped behind a lodge and tents were allocated. Tea and local biscuits, then chance to sort out our gear before a meal at 6 pm.

It had been a brilliant first day - from the bustling streets of Kathmandu to the foothills of the Himalayas inside a few hours. Quiet, peaceful and now turning quite cool, with the sound of crashing water in the river gorge below.

We had a briefing from our Sirdar called Tek who was responsible for making sure everything went smoothly. We could expect much harder days to follow.

We would be woken at 6 am with hot tea to drink and a bowl of warm water for washing. Breakfast would be at 7 am, by which time we would have been expected to clear and pack our packs, leaving our tents empty and ready to hit the trail by 8 am, just as the sun was rising above the mountaintops.

We were camping tonight at the tiny settlement of Phakding where the first of many suspension bridges was slung high across the raging river below. In our deep, sheltered gorge the thunderous sound of the river filled the air. The night air was fresh and sharp, and the sleeping bag warm.

Our first night of camping under Himalayan skies was one of relative comfort.

Kathmandu to Lukla

2011-12-31T17:24:00.032Z

Awoken at 0545 am after a restless, noisy night. Breakfast in the hotel 30 minutes later followed by some last minute packing. By 7 am we were heading in a rickety old coach towards Kathmandu’s national airport. Despite the hour the streets were already chaotic.

At the airport we entered through ‘local' departures. It was a hurly burly, do-it-yourself kind of check in but somehow it seemed to work.

There were already some eight planes awaiting as we were bused out to a twin engined Otter operated by Yeti airways. These planes can make four or five trips a day to somewhere like Lukla, some 30 to 40 minutes of spectacular flying time away.

Localised fog out on the runway meant everything was grounded until the sun was properly up to burn away the early morning mist. We hung around outside the plane with the chance to closely examine what looked like a flying relic of days gone by. Hopefully good enough for one more trip into the mountains.

Thought it’s not entirely logical, I feel thankful that we have two pilots as we career down the runway and buzz up into the air away from Kathmandu.

It’s a tight fit for 16 people and all the trekking gear for 10 days and we have an intimate view of the two pilots at the front. Soon we are flying over hilly farmland at about 10,000 feet. To the left there are distant towering mountain ridges.

As we can see through the cockpit window the tiny mountainside landing strip comes into view. It has to be a pinpoint touchdown here as the runway is short and ends in a wall of mountainside. No second chances as the pilots line up for what must be one of the most exciting landing strips in the world. It is a unique and truly memorable flight.

The mountainside settlement of Lukla, gateway to Everest, is bustling with people and small aeroplanes and even a couple of helicopters. No sooner has our plane turned into the tiny parking area and another is buzzing down the runway to leap into oblivion over the mountain edge. Bags and people are unloaded immediately.

The airstrip at bustling Lukla was built by Sir Edmund Hillary and his friends to service the Everest region when he began his work of building schools and hospitals for the Sherpa people.

We are immediately impressed by the scale of the huge peaks that surround the settlement, as we greet our Sherpa team and take time loading gear with the porters and yaks.

Our party sets off from Lukla at about 11 o’clock, down from the landing strip through a narrow cobbled street. Tiny shops spill onto the walkway and there is the smell of wood fires with smoke rising into the still air.

We snake downhill on a broad and well-marked rocky trail towards the Dudh Kosi, a raging river that flows from the highest peaks. At 10,000 feet the air is already thinning and cool, and you can taste the mountains with every breath as - it is both intoxicating and exhilarating.

Flight to Kathmandu

2011-12-30T18:17:00.003Z

Our flight from London to Kathmandu seemed dark. By the time we flew into the bright lights of Bahrain for a 1.5 hour stop-over it was early evening. Then it was on to Abu Dhabi in the twilight hours. A two hours delay in a dome-shaped terminal, with little to do in the middle of the night.

We were travelling Go Air, an Arab-based airline which serves curry flavoured meals whatever the time of day. Tasty, but lamb curry at 3 am in the morning local time was a big adjustment and just the first cultural challenge for a momentous trip ahead.

There was a delay on our morning flight into Kathmandu international airport as a bank of fog formed on one end of the sloping runway. Our pilot circled for 30 minutes then went into land - but just 30 seconds or so before touchdown, as dropping into the cloud tops, he pulled out in a steep climb, up and out and away.

We flew on to Dakar where we landed for refuelling. Just over an hour each way and about 45 minutes on the ground before returning to Kathmandu. It had been a long ‘day’ since leaving London Heathrow but at last we had arrived.

Stepping off a plane into Kathmandu is an exhilarating shock - the sights, sounds and smells quickly lead to sensory overload after the confines of several aeroplanes.

Buzzing around the crazy traffic in a local bus, trundling down the narrow winding streets of the old town in a rickshaw, marvelling at Durbar Square or dodging the tiger balm sellers and trekking touts in Thamel - it is an intoxicating, amazing and exhausting place.

As the largest (and pretty much the only) city in the country, Kathmandu also feels like another developing-world city rushing into a modern era of concrete and traffic pollution.

But a walk in the back streets and the Nepali capital's amazing cultural and artistic heritage reveals itself in hidden temples overflowing with marigolds, courtyards full of drying chillis and rice, and tiny hobbit-sized workshops.

At an altitude of 1336 metres above sea level, Kathmandu is an exotic and fascinating showcase of rich culture, art and tradition - and for us, of course, an important gateway to the Himalayas.

Late afternoon we arrived at Hotel Shanker, a stunning former royal palace full of character and charm. The weather was warm and sunny, if a little bit muggy.

Beautiful manicured gardens with potted plants, many of them Marigolds. We were all given garlands of Marigolds on alighting bus from the airport, a traditional form of Nepalese welcome. Darkness had descended by 6 pm.

Our hotel for the night had a restaurant called Kailash restaurant and two bars - the Kunti Bar and the One Eyed Bar. The former boasted a traditional setting of intricate wood carving and lattice windows.

At 21:50 local time we had a buffet meal in hotel dining room. Pick up remaining gear and back to room for bed to grab as much sleep as we could. The mountains of our dreams beckoned.

Land of great cathedrals

2011-12-28T14:20:00.023Z

The ‘circus’ at Everest Basecamp was non-existent on this bright and sunny morning in early November in the heart of the Himalayas. The still air was crisp and cool, and the midday sun pierced the iridescent sky, rays of warmth feeling good on the face.

No tents, no people, no cameras – the buzz of expedition fever had dissipated along with the changing weather. Just a few tattered prayer flags every now and then, breaking the ground-level monotony of grey rock and Khumbu ice. You can’t even glimpse the summit of Everest from this fabled ‘launchpad’, and so I wondered...

In the days approaching Basecamp we had learnt from other trekkers along the way that it was now ‘empty’, the last and unsuccessful summit expedition of the year having returned to Spain three weeks earlier.

For a trek that was billed ‘Everest Basecamp’ it was now something of a dilemma – it had been our big chance to fleetingly rub shoulders with those taking on the highest mountain on Earth. But the circus and its paraphernalia had left town.

Several hours back from Basecamp along a tortuous, zig zag route of rock and ice is the remote settlement of Gorak Shep, in the shadow of Nuptse. Here the trappings of Everest expeditions past and to come can be seen – neatly stacked aluminium ladders lashed behind huts for self-keeping and a compound of empty ‘gas’ bottles.

But we jump ahead. Back in September, the Lighthouse Keeper asked ‘How high is Everest?’ and promised to enliven the dark winter nights by marking the tenth anniversary a first visit to Nepal with a retrospective blog, re-living the journey in words and pictures – from the excitement and heat of Kathmandu to the extreme cold and wilderness of the lower reaches of Everest.

So, in the words of John Ruskin, our journey to these ‘great cathedrals of the earth, with their gates of rock, pavements of cloud, choirs of stream and stone, altars of snow, and vaults of purple traversed by the continual stars’, starts here.

Here comes the sun

2011-11-28T09:41:00.001Z

It went largely unreported by the general media but late into the night of 22 November the UK's Daylight Saving Bill cleared another hurdle.

Parliament granted what's called a 'money resolution', procedural geekery but crucial for it to move ahead, which means it is now with a committee of MPs to thrash out the fine details over the coming weeks.

Business minister Mark Prisk stated the Government will support the bill - proposed by Conservative MP Rebecca Harris - aimed at moving Britain's clocks forward by an hour all year round so long as amendments to the legislation are agreed.

Evidence for the positive effects of shifting the clocks forward by an hour has mounted in recent years, with the latest academic research showing that the change could save over 80 lives and at least half a million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions every year.

Knock-on benefits of reduced electricity bills, improved health and a boost for the leisure and tourism sector mean that lighter evenings now have a wider range of supporters than ever.

From tourism trade bodies to road safety campaigners, and from sporting organisations to serving government ministers, a new and diverse movement for lighter evenings is growing day by day.

Meanwhile opposition to the change is melting. Today, the old arguments about milkmen and postal workers needing early-morning sunlight to carry out deliveries look exactly like what they are – arguments from the 1970s.

The National Farmers Union, which had been a vocal critic of earlier proposals, recently announced that the reasons for farmers' past opposition to advancing the clocks had been ‘lost in history'.

With the next big Parliamentary vote just around the corner, the 10:10 Lighter Later campaign I stepping up its efforts to argument right across the UK by funding coalition meetings in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Its £5,000 fund target for the next phase was surpassed in just a few days and Lighter Later is now hoping to raise £7,500 to support its lobbying efforts.

Daniel Vockins, 10:10's campaign manager, said: "This is an idea whose time has come. All we need now is one big push from the British public.

"We commissioned research into a whole host of policy measures through which government could rapidly and painlessly reduce UK emissions. Reforming daylight savings hours came out top because of its substantial energy savings and a whole host of co-benefits."

Unfrozen planet

2011-11-18T07:31:00.000Z

Whilst much of the world is in the grip of a financial, economic and industrial crisis, the remorseless growth of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming continues unchecked.

New figures on global carbon dioxide emissions for 2010 from the US Department of Energy make sobering, not to say chilling, reading.

The headline figure is that world carbon dioxide jumped by its largest ever amount in a single year, from 31.6 to 33.5 billion tons. However, close scrutiny of the data from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory reveals other patterns that are just as disturbing.

The key one is the explosive and seemingly unstoppable growth in emissions from China, which leapt by 9.3 per cent over the year to 8.15 billion tons of carbon dioxide. The Chinese are now producing 24.3 per cent of global carbon emissions and have firmly overtaken the US the role of the world's biggest polluter.

Polar scientists also warned this month that Earth's frozen ‘cryosphere’ - from the Arctic Sea in the north to the massive Antarctic ice shelves in the south - is showing unequivocal signs of climate change as global warming accelerates the melting of the planet's coldest regions.

A rapid loss of ice is clear from the records kept by military submarines, from land measurements taken over many decades and by satellite observations from space. It can be seen on the ice sheets of Greenland, the glaciers of mountain ranges from the Andes to the Himalayas, and the vast ice shelves that stretch out into the sea from the Antarctic continent.

The effect of the melting cryosphere will be felt by rapidly rising sea levels that threaten to flood coastal cities and low-lying nations, changes to the circulation of ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream, and possible alterations to the weather patterns that influence more southerly regions of the northern hemisphere.

One of the greatest threats is the melting of the permafrost regions of the northern hemisphere which could release vast quantities of methane gas from frozen deposits stored underground for many thousands of years. Scientists are already seeing an increase in methane concentrations in the atmosphere that could be the result of melting permafrost.

"The melting of the cryosphere is such a clear, visibly graphic signal of climate change. Almost every aspect is changing and, if you take the global average, it is all in one direction," said Prof David Vaughan, a geologist at the British Antarctic Survey based in Cambridge, England.

One of the clearest signals of climate change is the rapid loss of floating sea ice in the Arctic, which has been monitored by satellites since the late 1970s and by nuclear submarines since the beginning of the cold war, according to Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University.

Sea ice is retreating faster and further than at any time on record and this year it probably reached an all-time record minimum in terms of volume and a close second in terms of surface area. On current projections, if the current rate of loss continues, there could be virtually no September sea ice as early as 2015, Prof Wadhams said.

The illustration below, based on NASA satellite data, shows how minimum sea ice extent for 2011, reached on 9 September, declined to a level far smaller than the 30-year average (in yellow) and opened up Northwest Passage shipping lanes (in red).

Italian hospitality

2011-11-10T21:00:00.019Z

While the politicians of Rome were combusting, if not actually burning, this week, the medieval town of Lucca in the heart of Tuscany was a pretence of calm and polite political dialogue.

In the heart of the walled town, the ornately decorated Palazzo Ducaleis - adorned inside with monumental paintings and wall murals - was the focus for a very different kind of political forum, the Third International Conference on Space Exploration.

Representatives from 28 countries, the European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA) met for what was described as the first high-level ‘international space exploration platform', which in itself sounds rather like it could be an orbiting satellite.

The organisers shipped in 15 or so journalists from the far reaches of Europe - including Poland, Latvia, Finland and other seemingly unlikely space-faring nations - to help get the message out.

For the rookie space writers among them you could say news was a bit thin on the ground because this wasn't a conference about bold new space projects but more of an attempt to create a new forum where the politics of future space endeavours can be discussed and agreed upon - with the aim of bringing about greater degrees of international cooperation in the future.

Apart from the noticeable absence of anyone from India, all the major space-faring nations - and many who have aspirations in that area but don't really do much at present - were represented at various levels of authority.

Britain's space minister David Willetts, for example, apologised for not being in Lucca in person through his representative Keith Mason.

His opening gambit described the UK as being "well-positioned and very interested" in developing nuclear technology for powering future exploration spacecraft.

Mason also emphasised that lowering the cost of access to Earth orbit was becoming increasingly important.

"We are backing technology to reduce this cost by an order of maginutude," he said, hinting at but not exactly naming the Reaction Engines' Skylon spaceplane project.

"We see exploration as means of stimulating economic advance and developing wider international cooperation, broadening and expanding human horizons."

The conference went on to endorse the ‘Lucca Declaration' and recognise the benefit of a continuing dialogue on future space exploration ‘to help identify potential areas for international cooperation'.

Essentially the government representatives committed to begin open, high-level policy dialogue on space exploration at government-level for the benefit of humankind. The United States offered to host the next get-together in 2013.

China's delegate Jianalin Cao was proud to trumpet recent Chinese successors and highlighted the country's slow but steady progress in taking up the space mantel.

I asked him whether China had aspirations to take its involvement with Europe's long-delayed and woefully over budget Galileo satellite navigation system further?

Speaking through an interpreter - despite his seemingly perfect command of the English language - Cao stated that his country was "starting a new cooperation" with Europe on satellite navigation.

But other than confirming that problems with equipment compatibilities and frequency spectrums were being overcome, little else was forthcoming.

The question of whether China might soon dip into it's pockets and become a major part of Galileo must remain conjecture for the time being.

Tuscan delight

2011-11-09T12:00:00.016Z

An unexpected turn of events. I find myself on BA’s midday flight from London Heathrow to Pisa, Italy. The Airbus 320 is packed to the rafters and I have to settle for a middle-of-the row seat between two Italian ladies.

Soon we have left the murky British weather of recent days far below and are flying at around 35,000 feet in clear blue skies and sunshine, probably somewhere over Paris.

I’m heading out for a first visit to the medieval Tuscan town of Lucca, one of the most quaint and beautiful towns in this part of Italy, about 30 minutes’ drive from Pisa and maybe an hour from Florence.

As it happens, the Lighthouse Keeper and his then young wife visited Pisa and Florence in the early 1980s. The towns were stopping off points on one of those quite popular (in that decade) 'overland treks' by minibus.

The visit to Pisa was particularly noteworthy because it was in the days before serious ‘health and safety’ rules and regulations had blighted most of Europe and elsewhere.

It meant that, for a few Italian lira, tourists could climb the leaning tower’s ancient stone steps and peer precariously out over the flimsy metal balustrade from very near the top.

Of course, we had no digital cameras or mobile phones in those days to photograph the experience, though somewhere we have faded colour prints and a few precious colour slides as a record of our adventure.

This year’s Tuscan visit to Lucca was prompted by attendance at the grandly titled ‘Third International Space Conference’, thanks to sponsorship of a dozen or so European media people by ESA and the European Commission.

There’s a bit more on the conference to come later but in the meantime here are a selection of photos I managed to shoot whilst getting lost in the streets of Lucca for a couple of hours on a sunny November afternoon.

Journey through space

2011-11-05T07:37:00.000Z

Spaceflight magazine was first published in 1957 and in all this time there have been only four editors — Patrick Moore, Ken Gatland, Gerald Groves and myself — which must be approaching a record for a magazine with such a long publishing history.

Like the long-running science fiction series Dr Who on BBC TV — where every so often the Doctor regenerates in a new bodily form — it is time for some ‘regeneration’ on Spaceflight. I’ve been at the helm since September 2000 and will be moving on, so this December 2011 (published this weekend) issue is my last as editor.

My association with the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) dates back to the early 1980s when I first became a BIS member, and later started writing occasional articles for Spaceflight.

After working for the marketing departments of two international companies — Perkins Engines in Peterborough and Matra Marconi Space in Portsmouth — for several years I received a phone call in the summer of 2000 to ask if I’d be interested in taking over as editor from Gerald Groves. At the same time I was also running SimComm Europe, a marketing and PR agency founded by myself a few years earlier in south-east Hampshire.

Producing a publication such as Spaceflight every month and maintaining high standards in terms of content and appearance is always a big challenge on a part-time contract — but it has been a privilege to guide and develop the magazine for the past 10 years.

All along the way it has been a great team effort and I have had invaluable support from many people, including a dedicated and expert team of contributors who have all freely given their time — writers, photographers, media and PR people, as well as those with a genuine passion for spaceflight.

It’s not possible to thank everyone but I’d like to acknowledge some of those who have directly supported me with great enthusiasm over the past years and helped enhance Spaceflight’s long-standing reputation.

My sincere thanks to Tim Furniss, Ken Kremer, Gerard van de Haar, Joel Powell, Philip Corneille, Dwayne Day, Ralph Gibson, Ed Hengeveld, Rudolf van Beest, Jacques van Oene, Kelvin Long, Andrew Green, Nick Spall, Rob Coppinger, Tony Quine, George Spiteri, Geoff Richards, Francis French, David A Hardy, Michael Cockerham, Mark Williamson, Lucy Owens (my invaluable deputy editor between 2001 and 2004), and BIS staff Suszann Parry, Mary Todd and Ben Jones, along with Society President Bob Parkinson for allowing that valuable commodity ‘editorial freedom’, and of course to my family for their love and support.

As for the future, the Spaceflight editorial chair ‘regenerates’ forthwith and passes to David Baker, who has a life-long passion for astronautics and the exploration of worlds beyond our own.

It’s funny how things go in circles. I first met David when I was a student and he was lecturing on space exploration in South Lincolnshire. In fact, it was he who introduced me to the BIS. Perhaps there is something in this Dr Who time travel business after all?

Time travelling Dr Who (Matt Smith) with his assitant Amy Pond ( Karen Gillan).

A rare photo-call for some of the Spaceflight writers, photographers and editor who gathered at KSC this summer for the final Space Shuttle flight. Pictured during the roll over of the decommissioned Space Shuttle Discovery are (from left): Rudolf van Beest (Netherlands), Andrew Green (UK), Clive Simpson, Joel Powell (Canada), Ken Kremer (USA) and Gerard van de Haar (Netherlands).

'Journey through space' - based on article in Spaceflight magazine, December 2011

Sunshine in Rutland

2011-10-31T16:25:00.025Z

We can’t consign the balmy month of October 2011 to history without noting that in the UK temperatures soared, reaching a new record high for the month of 29.9 C.

The top temperature was recorded on the first day of the month in Swanscombe, Kent, which basked in 165 hours of sunshine this month, an average of more than five a day. The previous hottest October day was 29.4 C, recorded in Cambridgeshire in 1985.

Although the temperatures dropped back somewhat in the following days, overall Britain enjoyed its warmest October for five years and its seventh warmest since records began.

The balmy autumn was relatively dry too, with average rainfall of 64 mm for the month and less than 20 mm in the East Midlands, East Anglia and the north Home Counties. This made it drier than three out of four of the last 100 Octobers.

It was sunnier than three-quarters of all Octobers in the last 100 years, with an average of 123 hours of sunshine for England and Wales, and 69 hours for Scotland.

The month almost ended as it started too as October seemed intent on signing off on a high note. It was a pleasant surprise to enjoy a picture-prefect day on 28 October - the last day of school half-term week - with warm sunshine and a deep blue sky.

A day trip to Rutland Water, a man-made reservoir in the east of England, was all the more special for the fine weather, with the opportunity to picnic outside and bask in the bright sunlight.

As these pictures show, however, much of East Anglia is still in drought conditions. The reservoir’s water level is well below where Anglian Water would like it to be.

Rutland Water, set in 4200 acres of open countryside, is Anglian Water's drinking water reservoir in the county of Rutland, England, just east of the county town Oakham. It was known as Empingham Reservoir during its construction and until its official opening in 1976.

It provides a reserve supply of water in the driest and most densely populated quarter of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest artificial lakes in Europe. By surface area it is the largest reservoir in England, though by capacity it is exceeded by Kielder Water in Northumberland.

Let there be light

2011-10-10T20:59:00.002+01:00

The Milky Way strode across the sky, a band of faint light spanning almost from horizon to horizon. In the distance, lights sparkled like ships on a dark ocean. Such a dark sky with a myriad twinkling stars is a sight that is becoming altogether too rare, or even beyond the experience of many.

This is the heart of the Fens at night. A natural planetarium with glorious low horizons in every direction and a pitch dark sky, just far enough from the sodium city lights of Peterborough and the market towns of Stamford and Spalding.

Indeed, this part of South Lincolnshire, an industrial farming and food-producing landscape by day, is by night one of Britain’s dwindling exceptions to our light-polluted lives.

According to the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), places with the ‘purest’ night-time darkness are (perhaps by definition) among the least populated in the country.

Dartmoor, Exmoor and the Quantock Hills in the south west; Salisbury Plain and the top of the Chilterns in southern England; parts of Lincolnshire to the east; the Black Mountains and the Brecons in Wales; the Yorkshire moors and some of Northumberland; plus large swathes of Scotland, outside major cities and the Borders.

Early this year Sark – the smallest of the four Channel Islands at just a couple of square miles – became the world's first officially-designated ‘Dark Sky Island’. The US-based International Dark-Sky Association measured Sark's night-time illumination levels and assessed the degree of visibility of constellations in the night sky. And to assist Sark's claim, one of its government officers visited every outside light on the island and recommended measures to cut artificial light seeping into the sky.

Sark is not Britain's only dark success. In 2009 Galloway Forest in Scotland was designated Europe's first ‘Dark Sky Park’. As a result visitor numbers are booming, a new observatory is planned for the edge of the forest and neighbouring local councils have introduced restrictions on outside lighting to preserve the quality of darkness.

The Inner Hebrides’ island of Coll, 13 miles long and three miles wide with two main roads and a small airport, is another dark spot with no security lights on homes, or traffic or street lights.

Much closer to home, the Rutland village of Market Overton recently reduced its light pollution by replacing its old sodium street lights with modern light-emitting diode lamps. Its 39 lamps cost over £20,000 in total to convert but immediately produced an 80 per cent saving in electricity.

These locations, however, remain the exceptions to the light-polluted rule. And they are getting rarer thanks to what the Campaign for Dark Skies describes as ‘wasteful’ over-provision of domestic lighting by British householders.

CPRE has, for several years, urged government action to limit light pollution from street lamps, overnight illumination of shopping centres, office blocks and public buildings, stark upward lighting from floodlit sports complexes and, at the household level, outdoor lights that are unnecessarily bright or disperse their illumination. Of course it would also save a lot of money and energy too – Britain's street lamps alone cost an estimated £500 million a year to run.

The most common forms of such pollution are ‘light trespass’ when illumination from Britain's 22 million homes and 7.5 million street lights, even if designed with the intention of shining downwards, typically also extends upwards. You can see it in this picture of the UK at night as seen by astronauts passing overhead aboard the International Space Station.

Two other common forms are ‘sky glow’ – that orange glow visible for tens of miles around towns and cities easily seen from the air or from distant roads – and ‘glare’, the harsh white light on some modern housing estates and golf driving ranges at night.

As October marches onwards, here in the northern hemisphere we are plunging headlong into days of less daylight, longer nights and the clocks going back – all marking the onset of winter. And, while we say we prefer it lighter for longer, in reality most of us only now experience a limited degree of darkness.

Modern electricity's triumph over the night keeps us all busier. We live in a fast-moving, fully lit world where night still happens but is more of an optional to experience – a kind of failed daylight. Our 24/7 supermarket culture has done it’s best to phase out the night.

Yet slowness and silence – the different rhythm of the night – are a necessary correction to the day. Life is too short to be all daylight. Moments of life take on a different quality at night-time, where the moon reflects the light of the sun and we have time to reflect what life is to us. So why not turn down the lights and rest awhile? Night is not less – it's more.

How high is Everest?

2011-09-24T09:16:00.001+01:00

In an effort to put an end to generations of controversy, the authorities in Nepal are trying to ascertain the precise height of the world's biggest mountain. The project could take up to two years - and even then it is more than likely that not everyone will agree.

While for well over 100 years Everest has been recognised as the planet's highest point, there are differences of opinion as to the exact dimensions and even over what should actually be measured.

For more than half a century, Nepal has recognised the generally accepted height of 29,028 ft for the mountain they call Sagarmatha - despite the insistence by neighbouring China that what it refers to in Tibetan as Qomolangma (Holy Mother), is actually 29,017 ft. The mountain straddles the border and neither side wishes to back down.

"We have begun the measurement to clear this confusion," Gopal Giri, a spokesman with Nepal's land management ministry. "Now we have the technology and the resources we can measure ourselves. This will be the first time the Nepal government has taken the mountain's height."

The task of measuring the height of the world’s highest mountain was first performed during the days of British rule in the subcontinent by a Bengali mathematician, Radhanath Sikdar, employed in the office of the surveyor general, Sir Andrew Waugh.

At the time the British authorities were conducting the so-called Great Trigonometric Survey and it was believed that Kangchenjunga in Sikkim was the world's highest. But based on data collected from the field, Sikdar concluded in 1854 that another nearby peak, at the time referred to simply as Summit XV, was higher.

For two years, the team reassessed the findings and then, confident of what they had discovered a new giant, announced their news. Several years later, in 1865, Sir Andrew declared that the peak would be known as Mount Everest, in honour of his predecessor, Sir George Everest. Based on the average figure obtained from six separate surveying stations, each 100 miles from the mountain, it was said to have a height of 29,002 ft.

This height remained in accepted use for the best part of a century, including in 1953 when Edmund Hilary and Norgay Tenzing made their way to the summit and safely descended.

The following year, a survey by the Indian authorities suggested a new height for the mountain, of 29,028 ft, based on the average reading for 12 survey stations, located between 30 and 50 miles from Everest. But the availability of new technology in the subsequent years led new teams to question the estimate. In 1992 a joint Chinese and Italian expedition team was the first to use GPS technology and came up with a figure of 29,031 ft.

In 1999, a team led by the late American mountaineer Bradford Washburn spent several years working with GPS devices to make a new calculation. Washburn's climbers were able to reach the summit and use their measuring devices.

Not only did they come up with a new height, 29,035.3 ft, but they said they had also been able to measure the movement of the Everest massif, being pushed by the Eurasian continental shelf. They estimated that the mountain was moving north-east by around a quarter of an inch a year.

There the matter may have ended, but for the wishes of the Chinese to take yet another measurement. In 2005, a team of mountaineers and researchers climbed Everest from the Chinese side and announced a new reading of 29,017 ft. However, they said this only measured the actual rock formation of Everest and not the snow cap on the very top.

Nepali officials complained that during discussions about the border with their much larger neighbour, China insisted on using its own measure. But last year, the two countries agreed that both measurements might be correct.

"Both are correct heights. No measurement is absolute. This is a problem of scientific research," Raja Ram Chhatkuli, director general of Nepal's survey department, said at the time.

Mr Chhatkuli will be overseeing Nepal's own attempt at a precise assessment in which scientists will place three GPS devices on different locations on the mountain from which to obtain data.

If you are a regular reader you may be asking, why the sudden interest in Everest by the Lighthouse Keeper on a blog that has previously made its name largely covering the final two missions of the US Space Shuttle?

Well, the Lighthouse Keeper hasn’t made it any where near the top of this mighty mountain - but this autumn is the tenth anniversary of my first visit to Nepal and a high-level trek through the Everest region.

That was in the days before blogs so, come next month, the Lighthouse Keeper will be putting things right and embarking on the trip all over again - this time from the relative comforts of home.

A kind of day-by-day blog retrospective reliving the journey in words and pictures - from the excitement and heat of Kathmandu to the extreme cold and wilds of the lower reaches of Everest. Stay tuned for a great upcoming adventure!

Pictures from above

2011-09-16T17:02:00.003+01:00

As a keen photographer the Lighthouse Keeper is always looking for a new angle or perspective on a familiar subject - but from an earthly vantage point even perched atop of a high crane is no match for the kind of views astronauts have from the orbiting International Space Station.

This night time view of India-Pakistan borderlands was one of a series of night-time shots captured recently by one of the six crew members, who often say that one of their favourite off-duty pastimes is gazing back at Earth as there is "always something spectacular to see".

Clusters of yellow lights on the Indo-Gangetic Plain of northern India and northern Pakistan reveal numerous cities both large and small.

Of the hundreds of clusters, the largest are the metropolitan areas associated with the capital cities of Islamabad, Pakistan, in the foreground and New Delhi, India, at the top. For scale these metropolitan areas are approximately 700 km apart.

The lines of major highways connecting the larger cities also stand out. More subtle but still visible at night are the general outlines of the towering and partly cloud-covered Himalayan ranges immediately to the north (left).

A striking feature of this photograph is the line of lights, with a distinctly more orange hue, snaking across the central part of the image.

It appears to be more continuous and brighter than most highways in the view and is actually the fenced and floodlit border zone between the countries of India and Pakistan. The fence is designed to discourage smuggling and arms trafficking between the two countries.

This image was taken on a digital SLR camera with a 16 mm lens to provide a wide field of view, as the Space Station was tracking towards the southeast across the subcontinent of India.

The distinct, bright zone above the horizon (visible at top) is produced by airglow, a phenomena caused by excitation of atoms and molecules high in the atmosphere (above 80 km altitude) by ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Part of the ISS and a solar panel array are visible at right.

This photograph below, taken from the Space Station at the end of July 2011, shows the Moon with the limb of Earth near the bottom, transitioning into the orange-coloured troposphere, the lowest and most dense portion of Earth's atmosphere.

The troposphere ends abruptly at the tropopause, which appears in the image as the sharp boundary between the orange and blue-coloured atmosphere. The silvery-blue noctilucent clouds extend far above the Earth's troposphere.

Faith and fragrance

2011-09-14T09:07:00.007+01:00

Warm rain poured out of a dark sky on a typically humid evening in Hyderabad, India. But along the Hussainsagar lake it was a cacophony of noise and light, a carnival atmosphere as the climax of the boisterous Hindu Ganesh festival was in full swing.

People had been arriving all day for the traditional ending which involves immersing carefully prepared Ganesh idols in the murky waters of the lake. A series of cranes lined the lakeside, lowering each Ganesh on a platform into the water to be received by holy men.

Trucks and vehicles of all shapes and sizes, decorated with flowers and flags and stacked with families and Ganesh idols began arriving early in the day and continued throughout the evening as people poured into the city to experience the religious fervour.

Ganesh is one of the best-known and most popularly worshipped deities in Hinduism and, although known by many other attributes, Ganesh's elephant head makes for easy and familiar identification.

The Ganesh festival for 2011 - an occasion on which Lord Ganesh, the son of Shiva and Parvati, is believed to bestow his presence on earth for all his devotees - has just ended.

It is the birthday of Lord Ganesha and is observed in the Hindu calendar month of Bhaadrapada, starting on the shukla chaturthi (fourth day of the waxing moon period), typically between 20 August and 15 September.

The Lighthouse Keeper’s own and unexpected eye-witness experience of the Ganesh festival came during a stay several years ago in Hyderabad for a business conference and exhibition, which was hijacked for the day as police closed roads and access across the city.

As it happened the city's Marriott hotel was just across the road from the Hussainsagar lake so, being ‘confined to quarters’ for a day and night was not such a bad option, as the thick of the action was just a ‘stroll’ across the road and offered a great opportunity for photography.

The Ganesh festival is completed only with the immersion of the idols but civic bodies in many Indian cities are becoming increasingly concerned with the ecological issues surrounding the festival and the environmental impact on the bodies of water that are a focus of the ceremony.

This year an estimated 1,300 tonnes of rubbish has already been lifted from the main spots around the Hussainsagar lake as more than 100 vehicles and 2,500 municipal staff were pressed into service during a massive clean-up operation.

Misty mellowness

2011-09-07T11:21:00.004+01:00

There seems to be no doubt that the seasons are advancing and arriving earlier each year. And it is becoming a rather peculiar thing.

September is traditionally renowned as the genteel easing from summer into the golden days of autumn, a calm, collected and wonderfully settled time of year when the harvest is finally gathered.

So, here we are in the very first week of the month experiencing fearsome gales and storms associated more with the unpredictability of October. Perhaps there has been some kind of shift in the matrix?

We know from the changing habits of migrating birds and tree records that in recent years spring has been arriving at our shores considerably earlier than in the past - some three or four weeks compared with even 20 years ago.

If spring is around the corner as we’ve barely closed our curtains on the winter calendar surely the other seasons are marching forward apace too.

Even before the UK’s most recent late summer public holiday at the end of August a farmer friend was delighted to tell me during a chat in the local pub that he had already completed the annual harvest - some three to four weeks earlier than normal.

And the very next day, as if to prove a point, a low morning mist hung in the dewy autumnal early morning air. It certainly seemed that the ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ as portrayed so eloquently by John Keats back in 1820 was well and truly upon us.

The powers that be already preform minor adjustments to our calendar and time-keeping to hold our days and time in check - every four years we have a leap year. Infact, it’s actually more like a ‘leap day’, inserted at the end of February.

So, to combat our rolling seasonal disorder why not introduce a leap month? It could be just the solution governments have been looking for. A cheeky way to ignore the vagaries of encroaching climate change - a kind of turning back the clock.

But would it really be a good alternative to buckling down and getting to grips with excessive power and energy consumption, which might at least slow down the man-made acceleration to climate change in the first place?

Questions, questions. I guess in the end it comes down to a personal level - how which are we all prepared as individuals to change our lifestyles, if at all?

In today’s quick fix society having a ‘leap month’ every now and then might just prove more politically attractive. A solution without solving the actual problem. And instead of ‘climate change’ we could rebrand it ‘season change’.

The only thing then to decide is which month should we skip to bring things back into alignment? We might all have our favourites - which one would you pick?

A twist of fate

2011-08-31T22:04:00.009+01:00

No one would have dared predict that the first Russian rocket to be launched to the International Space Station (ISS) following the retirement of the US Space Shuttle this summer would be doomed to failure.

It is an ironic turn of events that means for the time being the ISS is currently flying with no means of replacing the astronauts and cosmonauts working on the recently completed orbiting outpost.

At the very least last week’s Russian rocket failure will likely delay the first post-Shuttle era launch of new crew members to the Station. And at worst it could mean a complete withdrawal of all crew before the year’s end if Russia is unable to resume manned flights of its Soyuz rocket.

Despite the delivery of important logistics by the final Space Shuttle mission in July, safety concerns with landing Soyuz capsules in the middle of winter could force the Space Station to fly unmanned beginning in November, according to Michael Suffredini, NASA's ISS programme manager.

Investigations started immediately into why the upper stage of a Soyuz-U booster carrying an unmanned Russian Progress supply ship malfunctioned and shut down five minutes and 20 seconds after launch from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

Some 2.9 tons of supplies and equipment for the Space Station were lost as the Progress M-12M/44P spacecraft crashed back to Earth during what was ironically the first launch to the orbiting complex since the Space Shuttle was retired in July.

The supply train to the ISS is critical for supporting a full-time crew of six but for now the Station remains in good shape thanks to the deliveries by Atlantis in July.

The Soyuz-U upper stage is virtually identical to the third stage used by Russia’s manned Soyuz spacecraft, which was targeted to launch again on 22 September.

With two Soyuz crew launches and two Progress deliveries scheduled before the end of 2011, the failure is certain to disrupt plans to ferry new crews and cargo shipments to the ISS.

Three current crew members — Expedition 28 commander Andrey Borisenko, Alexander Samokutyaev and Ronald Garan — will have their return to Earth, which was scheduled for 8 September, postponed for several weeks to keep six people at the ISS for as long as possible.

But Garan and his two cosmonaut colleagues could only extend their stay until late October when they would have to return to Earth. The Soyuz spacecraft they will fly home in has an orbital life due to ‘expire’ around 22 October - which means the ship is certified by engineering teams as safe for the return flight to Earth until that date.

A departure at that point would leave just three people on the ISS until Soyuz launches can resume. A crew of three can maintain the outpost but science and research work would suffer.

The other half of the Station's six-person crew — NASA flight engineer Michael Fossum, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa — are supposed to return home on 16 November.

"The November crew has a little different issue," Suffredini said this week. "If we're not launching by then and we have to de-man the Space Station, we pretty much have to do that probably by about the middle of November."

That crew's Soyuz capsule, named Soyuz TMA-02M, blasted off June 7 and would need to land in late December or early January.

"One of our requirements is to land in daylight, and it has to be an hour from sunset or sunrise," Suffredini said. "On 19 November we reach that cutoff and we go dark."

The next daylight landing window opens in late December, but NASA and Russian officials will then be concerned about extreme winter weather conditions in the Soyuz landing zone on the steppes of Kazakhstan.

"The weather is severe out there in the winter time," Suffredini said. "So from a search and rescue standpoint, that's probably something we don't want to do. Even if it's within our requirements, we probably don't want to be landing two hours before sunset. If we had any problem at all, we would be searching for the crew in a blowing snow storm in the middle of night."

The Soyuz-U rocket has a good safety record over the past four decades of operations — 745 successful launches and 21 failures — and this is the first time there has been such a failure since construction of the Space Station started a decade ago.

With the United States' Shuttle fleet retirement last month, Russian Soyuz spacecraft are currently the only vehicles capable of flying astronauts to and from the Space Station. NASA is investing in the development of commercial ‘private’ space taxis, but those craft remain in development stage and are not estimated to be ready before 2015 or 2016.

Ken Kremer, who has reported on all of the last Space Shuttle flights to the ISS in recent years for Spaceflight magazine, said the loss of the Russian Progress highlighted the "utter folly" of the Shuttle programme shutdown.

Close encounters

2011-08-20T22:22:00.010+01:00

For some time NASA has been working hard to counter the notion that the end of the Space Shuttle era means the end of US human spaceflight. And there are commercial companies waiting in the wings.

At Kennedy Space Center just before the launch of Atlantis in July several companies were taking advantage of the large media presence to showcase their proposed spacecraft and rockets of the future.

In one air conditioned ‘tent’ Lockheed Martin displayed a test model of its Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle that may one day take Americans to destinations beyond the Space Station – like the asteroids and Mars.

Next door, Boeing showcased its CST-100 capsule concept, one of the ‘crew taxis' NASA eventually hopes to hire to get its astronauts to and from orbit by mid-decade.

And Elon Musk's SpaceX company threw open its doors on the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station where it has a rocket integration hanger and launch pad. From here it flies its Falcon rocket – the next test flight is planned for this autumn – and ‘Dragon Rider' capsule, another commercial answer to America's astronaut taxi dilemma.

Whilst these companies are all pursuing the more ‘traditional’ route into orbit others, like the US Air Force and the Colorado-based Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), are convinced the future is still in winged reusable spacecraft. SNC's mini-shuttle called Dream Chaser could be launched for the first time in 2015.

Many argue that these new spacecraft represent a more affordable, commercial and even more exciting approach to future human spaceflight.

Not surprisingly NASA administrator, Charlie Bolden, himself a former Shuttle astronaut, is convinced that human spaceflight has a bright future. "You'll hear me say that over and over and over again. The future is incredible and you're witnessing the first steps NASA is taking to create that future right now," he told the gathered media.

As a clear signal of its intention to crank up the momentum wherever possible NASA this week gave SpaceX approval to launch its next Falcon 9 on 30 November — followed nine days later by the Dragon capsule berthing at the International Space Station (ISS).

During the tour of its facilities in July, SpaceX was keen to show us that its has been hard at work preparing for this next flight — a mission designed to demonstrate that a privately-developed space transportation system can deliver cargo to and from the Space Station.

NASA has now agreed in principle to allow SpaceX to combine all of the tests and demonstration activities originally proposed as two separate missions into one time-saving flight.

After catching the ISS and coming alongside, the capsule will be grappled by the Station's Canadian-built robot arm and transferred to a docking port. It will likely stay at the ISS for a few weeks, delivering some non-essential cargo in its pressurised cabin before returning to Earth via a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

This next mission represents a huge milestone — not only for SpaceX but also for NASA and the US space programme. When the astronauts stationed on the ISS open the hatch and enter the Dragon spacecraft for the first time, it will mark the beginning of a new era in space travel.

SpaceX was keen to show us the workings of the launch pad where it has made significant upgrades over the summer to streamline the countdown. New liquid oxygen (LOX) pumps, for example, will reduce previous loading time from 90 minutes to under 30, inching the company closer to its long term goal of Falcon 9 going from hangar to liftoff in under an hour.

We also saw the first stage of the 15-story Falcon 9 — the rocket that is now due to blast off 30 November — lying on its side in the integration hanger at Cape Canaveral's Complex 40. It had arrived in April, followed by the launcher's second stage in July.

Company officials, however, were nervous when it came to photography, particularly where the rocket engines were concerned. We were forbidden to take close-ups that showed the engines in detail, though no objections were raised to the ‘space paparazi’ scrambling on their backs underneath the first stage to capture shots of the SpaceX logo!

Also proudly on show, this time in a tent in the grounds of the SpaceX launch control centre close to Port Canaveral, was the burnt and battered Dragon capsule that was successfully flown into orbit and parachuted back to Earth last December. Here you could closely inspect and almost touch something that had orbited Earth less than a year before.

Mighty machines

2011-08-12T15:26:00.005+01:00

The Space Shuttles Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis are now all in various stages of preparation as part of their transformation from mighty flying machines to museum exhibits.

Back in July when I watched Discovery rolled out from the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) to the giant Vehicle Assembly Building to make room for some work on Atlantis it looked in a sorry state. Engines and the large tail pods had been removed from the rear, as had the flight avionics from the nose cone and thruster jets.

For their new lives in museums these parts will be rebuilt and simulated - so although each spaceship will look as though they could one day fly again into Earth orbit this will never be possible.

It was in April that NASA announced the new permanent homes for the retired spacecraft - Shuttle Enterprise, the first orbiter built for testing but not to fly in space, will move from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Steven F Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York.

The Udvar-Hazy Center will become the new home for Discovery, which retired after completing its 39th mission in March. Endeavour will go to the California Science Center in Los Angeles and Atlantis will be displayed at the KSC Visitor’s Complex in Florida.

Yesterday, meanwhile, NASA engineers had the opportunity to play with their toys another time as Discovery and Endeavour were rolled out to switch places.

Discovery, which was temporarily being stored in the VAB, switched places with Endeavour, which has been undergoing decommissioning in OPF-1.

Both Shuttles stopped briefly outside for a ‘nose-to-nose’ photo opportunity, captured in the pictures below by NASA photographer Frankie Martin flying overhead in a helicopter. After the brief pause Discovery (at right) was rolled into OPF-1 and Endeavour into the VAB.

Space Shuttle flying days are over and their fate is now similar to some of the other mighty beasts of the past - the great railway locomotives of the steam age, many of which have now been in retirement for decades.

I spent a day at the UK’s National Railway Museum in the city of York this week viewing at some of these engineering marvels up close. Each of these rail transport legends - ranging from Stephenson’s ‘Rocket’ looked pristine and ready to fire up.

It was a timely visit as the world record-holding Mallard loco (LNER class A4 locomotive 4468) had returned for display in York for the summer holidays.

Mallard holds the world speed record for steam traction on rail, travelling at 126 mph on 3 July 1938. She was designed by Sir Nigel Gresley, who thought of the name 'Mallard' while feeding ducks at Salisbury Hall. Sadly, like the Space Shuttles, she is beyond mechanical repair and can no longer ‘fly’ again.

With over 100 locomotives and nearly 200 other items of rolling stock on show, the National Railway museum tells the story of railways from the early 19th century to the present day.

Some of the engines can still be fired up, and for those who need a fix of the real steam and smoke experience there’s a working engine near some of the outside displays, towing children and adults up and down a short piece of track in a guard’s truck.

Tunnel vision

2011-08-03T22:18:00.003+01:00

Travel through the Alps in Switzerland or Austria and you get used to long road tunnels cutting through the spectacular mountain scenery.

One country not famed for such tunnels is the UK as we hardly have the kind of ‘big’ scenery to warrant them. But don’t despair - a new 1.1 mile long tunnel has just opened south west of the M25 on the A3 road linking London to Portsmouth.

This is the latest development on a stretch of the A3 that has seen a number of major improvements over the years to alleviate bottlenecks.

The first came in the 1980s when a dual carriage way was hacked between the chalk downland adjacent to Butser Hill, part of the South Downs way a few miles south of Petersfield.

In the late 1990s came the long awaited Petersfield by-pass relieving time-consuming and an often bumper to bumper trek through this pleasant Hampshire market town.

The Lighthouse Keeper and his family first started travelling up and down the A3 between the M25 and Portsmouth in 1990 after moving to the south coast from the Fens of Lincolnshire.

Like many a commuter or holiday-maker travelling to this part of the south coast we were often caught in long delays as traffic snaked towards Hindhead and round the Devil’s Punch Bowl beauty spot.

Our latest foray to Portsmouth at the weekend hit the jackpot as far as road travel was concerned, the new £371 million Hindhead Tunnel having just been officially opened after a four-and-a-half year construction project.

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond MP (pictured) described the new tunnel as "a cutting-edge road scheme that has surpassed expectations" when he cut the ribbon the previous Wednesday before dashing out of the way to let the traffic stream through.

Construction began on the twin-bore tunnel in January 2007. It is one of the longest in England and is part of a four mile bypass of the Surrey village of Hindhead.

Seven safe crossing points have been built over or under the new road, most of them specifically for pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders.

The tunnel, which will be used by an estimated 30,000 vehicles a day, runs under the bowl which is a large hollow of dry, sandy heath, to the east of Hindhead.

As the ground conditions in the area are predominantly sandstone, the twin tunnel bores had to be constructed using a sprayed concrete lining to prevent them caving in.

Traffic safety features include the UK's first radar-based incident detection system and 100 percent CCTV coverage.

The project has already won awards for its innovation and its safety record, and it’s nice to note that it has also been delivered within budget and on schedule.

In the final phase of the project work will soon begin on returning the old A3 to nature, reuniting the Devil's Punchbowl with Hindhead Common for the first time in almost 200 years.

Hammond’s press statement issued for the opening described traffic as being held up at the Hindhead crossroads "for years".

For those of us who sat in the queues it always seemed like years at the time though was probably closer to 20 or 30 minutes. But even that will be a great saving on those journeys to and from the south coast.

On the beach

2011-07-29T17:10:00.003+01:00

The Space Shuttle programme may be over and the Lighthouse Keeper back in England, now well-recovered from the effects of jet-lag after the return flight.

But before we head to pastures new there is more to tell about this part of Florida - some of the experiences that it wasn’t possible to write about in real-time during the long, frenetic days around the launch of Atlantis.

Four days after launch (12 July 2011) and it is early evening on Cocoa Beach, a stone’s throw from my temporary home at the rustic and friendly Pelican Landing Resort.

For the first time in a week the coast has seen day-long clear blue skies and, in the middle of the day at least, an almost unbearable sun.

But things have cooled off just a little by 6 pm and with a refreshing breeze off the sea it is as good a time as any to sit on the shoreline and muse a little.

The great six mile long stretch of sand disappears into the distance on both sides, a faint misty spray blurring the distant detail like some desert heat haze.

It starts in the north at Jetty Park, a park and campground area with its own sand dune and beach area, waterside picnic spots and fishing pier, all at the entrance to the busy Port Canaveral.

From Jetty Park you can watch and boats and ships go by, and across the tidal inlet you can see towards the launch towers of Cape Canaveral Air Force base, a good spot for watching unmanned launches of Atlas and Delta rockets.

The Shuttle pad itself is blocked from here by a low mound of land but if you didn’t mind joining the action a few seconds after launch then it was still a good spot to watch Shuttles climbing rapidly into the sky on their way into orbit.

There is an abundance of wildlife all around - seabirds, bottlenose dolphins, manatee and sea turtles, as well as the occasional Raccoon venturing out onto the rocks.

The loud clear whistle of the Osprey is one of coastal Florida's most characteristic sounds. Sometimes mistaken for a bald eagle (because of the white head), the Ospreys are often seen flying with a fish grasped tightly in their talons.

From my spot on the beach some four miles down from Jetty Park I am surveyed by a passing Pelican, which gracefully shadows the wave-line, seemingly without effort for such a large bird.

Just offshore more Pelicans appear to plunder a shoal of surface-feeding fish. Suddenly their wings fold and they dive-bomb into the water with a great splash, and then you see them bobbing on the water whilst devouring their catch.

It’s also time for the myriad of ‘sand spiders’ to come out of their holes in the sand. Though they have an uncanny resemblance to spiders they are actually crabs and come in all sizes and camouflaged colours, emerging sideways from the sand hole before darting back and forth as the waves roll and retreat.

The smallest look like they are floating over the fine sand. All crabs scamper at lightening speed and disappear down their hole as soon as anything moves or spooks them.

A wave rushes in and for a moment they all disappear. And then, at the sand hole near my foot, a pair of pointy black eyes pop out, flicking around to assess the landscape once more before deciding to dash here and there.

Shuttle slips into history

2011-07-21T14:28:00.020+01:00

The iconic soul and heart of the US space programme for the past three decades slipped gracefully into history this morning.

Space Shuttle Atlantis swept into the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) making a poignant touchdown on a dark runway just before sunrise at 0557 local time.

Despite the dark pre-dawn skies over Florida large crowds came out to try to glimpse Atlantis as it made its historic return from orbit.

Its de-orbit track brought the orbiter across central Florida and then over Titusville before a hard bank to the left put the vehicle on a line to Runway 15 at KSC.

Touch-down marked a moment of high emotion for the local region - not least because it will trigger a big lay-off of contractor staff. Several thousand involved in Shuttle operations will lose their jobs within days.

Launching people into space is a potent symbol of technological and engineering prowess - but for the Space Shuttle programme it was the pre-dawn landing of Atlantis that truly signalled the end.

"When the wheels stopped on the runway, the displays went blank and the orbiter was unpowered for the final time there was a rush of emotion," said commander Chris ‘Fergie' Fergueson after stepping from the orbiter.

"That was the moment when we all finally realised that it's all over, the crowning jewel of our space programme.

"The Space Shuttle changed the way we view the world and it changed the way we view the Universe."

Pelican brief

2011-07-15T12:25:00.032+01:00

In the interests of completeness and as a diversion from the upcoming landing of the Space Shuttle Atlantis next week some readers might be interested in a little information about my Florida base for the trip.

I stayed in downtown Cocoa Beach, a ribbon of development that spills along this section of the Florida coast. Just six miles long and mostly less than one mile wide, it is located on a barrier island, nestled between the Atlantic ocean and the Banana River lagoon.

Apart from its proximity to Kennedy Space Center, a primary attraction for the thousands of tourists that visit Cocoa Beach each year is the weather.

With its coastal location and juxtaposition between two climatic zones (sub-tropic and temperate), the weather usually avoids extremes. This unique location also attracts an abundance of wildlife indigenous to both climatic zones, as well as coastal and migratory species.

Cocoa Beach is about 30 minutes’ drive from all the action at Kennedy Space Center, so all in all is a convenient and very pleasant location.

However, this being the last ever Shuttle launch in the 30 year history of the programme, accommodation was at a premium - hotel prices treble the normal rates and self-catering condos seemingly all booked for this week in July.

As the official target launch date for Atlantis was only confirmed towards the very end of June so there was not much room for manoeuvre or advance booking. But with my flight ticket reservation within hours of expiring I struck gold.

Shelly Suttle (if ever there was an omen in a name) of the Pelican Landing Resort got back to me to say there had been a cancellation for exactly the dates I required. Things were slotting into place.

My ‘home’ for the eight day trip would be at 1201 South Atlantic Avenue, Cocoa Beach, a former two-storey motel now converted into a 10 individual apartments each for two people, located about 1.5 miles south of downtown Cocoa Beach.

I knew from the description on the Pelican Landing website that it was located on a relatively isolated section of the beach amongst the sand dunes and a stone’s throw from the Atlantic.

But even that didn’t prepare me for the stunning view from unit number six on the first floor with its panoramic picture window overlooking the beach and sea, and the glorious early morning sunrises.

Wings of Discovery

2011-07-13T22:45:00.027+01:00

On a wonderfully bright and sunny morning with temperatures in the 90s, I and a couple of dozen other writers and photographers had the privilege to witness the first outside public appearance since retirement of the Space Shuttle Discovery.

It was the first day of my trip that skies had dawned cloudless and a perfect crystal blue, providing a beautiful backdrop to the spectacle.

As Discovery was pushed slowly out of her processing facility by a bright yellow tow truck the enormity of the changes wrested up on this craft struck home.

She emerged without any main engines, nose thrusters or aft rocket pods. Seeing the stripped down orbiter with a gaping hole in the nose was a harsh reminder that the spaceship's flying days are over.

Discovery was being moved to the nearby Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to enter storage, opening up the processing hanger to receive Atlantis after the final Space Shuttle landing next week.

Technicians are in the midst of a multi-month process of making safe Discovery's systems and readying the orbiter for the Smithsonian museum in Washington. Before she leaves Florida next year NASA will outfit the ship with mocked up engines and thrusters so that it looks ‘normal’ in the museum display.

"We're currently in the process of decommissioning Discovery," Stephanie Stilson, Discovery’s long-time process flow manager, told me. "Part of doing that means we have to go in and safe the major systems that have hazards."

A hundred or so NASA office workers gathered by the rope boundary to witness and photograph the giant spaceship, the likes of which will probably never fly in space again.

The Shuttle fleet has been the life-blood of Kennedy Space Center for three decades and many employees, a good number of whom face redundancy in the coming days and weeks, expressed their sadness at seeing the orbiter like this at the end of its flying career.

"It is like Discovery has become disfigured," one person me, whilst others said they found it too emotional even to come out and see the orbiter in such a decimated state.

For the rest of us it was another very special moment as Discovery moved closer and towered overhead before being slowly and carefully towed from the main roadway on the final stretch towards the VAB.

At one point we were standing right under the wing of a craft that had altogether spent a full year in space during 39 missions, has orbited Earth 5,830 times and travelled 148,221,675 miles during a flight career spanning 27 years.

Picture below - a rare photo-call for the British Interplanetary Society Spaceflight team at KSC during the roll over of the decomissioned Space Shuttle Discovery. From left: Rudolf van Beest (Netherlands), Andy Green (UK), Clive Simpson (UK), Joel Powell (Canada), Ken Kremer (USA) and Gerard van de Haar (Netherlands).

Lost in time

2011-07-12T22:00:00.014+01:00

As an aside the main theme of this blog a number of people have asked me about some of the titles used above the various entries about the final Space Shuttle mission.

Well, apart from the obvious ‘label’ headings, there was a musical bent to some of the others - ‘A beautiful day’ (the U2 song), the rather obvious ‘Final countdown’ (explained in that blog), ‘Big boys don’t cry’ (lyrics from 10cc’s' 'I’m not in love') and ‘Tears in the rain’.

The latter is perhaps the least evident but has two potential origins - the 1988 television movie directed by Don Sharp and starring Sharon Stone and Christopher Cazenove, which was based on the romantic novel of the same name written by Pamela Wallace. How likely is that? Or, the science fiction film Blade Runner.

As the 1982 film Blade Runner - directed by Ridley Scott and based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick - is an all-time favourite of the Lighthouse Keeper then there was no contest.

‘Tears in the rain’ is the title of one of the Vangelis compositions on the soundtrack and also forms part of an introspective phrase used by Roy Batty (played by Rutger Hauer), one of the replicant characters, regarding his own death during a rain downpour.

"I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments, will be lost in time like tears in rain..."

It is far too early to know for sure how long-lasting the legacy of Atlantis and the other Space Shuttles will be for future generations - or will these fine flying machines become ‘lost in time’ themselves?

Either way, maybe Atlantis was shedding a tear or two of her own during the torrential downpours on the day before launch.

Booster recovery

2011-07-11T22:30:00.021+01:00

A special water cannon salute welcomed the NASA tow ship Liberty Star as it cruised into Port Canaveral on a hot Sunday afternoon with the Shuttle's right solid rocket booster in tow. We watched and took pictures from Jetty Pier alongside fishermen and hundreds of onlookers as the giant 'sea slug' slid past.

The twin reusable solid rocket boosters helped propel Atlantis on the 135th and final Space Shuttle flight and after each launch the boosters are recovered in the ocean after being jettisoned some two minutes into the flight.

The water canon tribute was put on specially to mark the end of the programme - but the sister ship Freedom Star missed out on the special welcome after suffering engine problems at sea which meant it only arrived back into port under cover of darkness at around midnight.

NASA and manufacturer ATK off-load boosters at Hangar AF at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. There, the boosters are put in stands and engineers and technicians make certain they are safe for workers to handle.

Initial post-flight inspections are done and then the boosters receive the ultimate pressure-washing - a 'hydrolasing' process that removes thermal protection system foam from the rockets.

For all Shuttle missions the various segments of each booster are recombined in different configurations. The specific combination was kind of special for STS-135 as the boosters included segments from Shuttle flight, STS-26 (the first return-to-flight after the Challenger tragedy), STS-71 (Atlantis’ first docking to the Mir space station), STS-101 (Atlantis’ first ISS docking), STS-114 (the second return-to-flight after the loss of Columbia).

By around 2 pm on Sunday afternoon most of the media who had been photographing the first SRB coming in from the open sea at Jetty Park were encamped in the ‘Fish Lips’ ocean front restaurant for welcome refreshment.

Myself, Andy Green and Japanese journalist Kanoko Nakashima had not long joined them and just ordered our burgers when there was a sudden scramble from the others to pay and go.

Liberty Star, with the booster now firmly lashed alongside, had appeared in the channel right below the balcony where we were all sitting on its way to the Canaveral lock and the final stage of its journey home.

We elected to remain and eat our meal, with the knowledge that we’d likely get the chance to see the second booster’s trip through the lock gates, which separate the salty Atlantic from the freshwater Banana river, later or the next day.

To the sightseers and photographers at the lock all seemed to have gone according to plan. The first booster was delivered to ATK and the second would now make the journey early on Monday morning.

It was only when Andy and I arrived at the lock gates around 7 am the next day and started chatting to lock leader Michael Mannhardt that we learned the back end of the first booster had hit the side of the lock and been damaged as it was manoeuvred out.

This morning the rest of the media were waiting further up to first catch shots of the combination as it approached the lock system through a lifting road bridge, so we'd had an exlcusive first insight into what had happened.

Mike told us that the accident was due to a sand bar caused by the deep water drop off at the lock exit which, although it had recently been excavated from eight to 13 feet, could still present a problem to some vessels.

As a result - and because the Freedom Star with the second booster was carrying excess fuel which made it lower in the water - NASA decided to instigate a small boat ‘handover’ instead.

Freedom Star would bring the booster into the top end of the lock and then the booster would be detached and towed through and out of the other end by three Zodiac inflatable and passed to Liberty Star.

Though the exercise was not unique in the history of the Shuttle programme it made for a much more dramatic finale and photo opportunity for this normally straight forward aspect of recovery.

Big boys don't cry

2011-07-10T09:30:00.010+01:00

A delay of a few seconds between a live event and it being broadcast on the TV is normally neither here nor there. But in this case timing was crucial.

For Spaceflight writer Dwayne Day it proved rather more significant, as he explained to me later in the day. He had flown in from Washington and was at Cocoa Beach watching the launch on TV in a friend’s apartment.

The idea was to dash to the outside balcony at the moment the countdown hit zero. As the engines fired on the TV screen he rushed outside, only to see the distant Shuttle already climbing well above the pad!

Watching a Space Shuttle launch is always an emotional experience - but especially so when it is the last one ever in the 30 year history of the programme.

NASA managers at the post-launch media briefing were visibly moved and there was spontaneous and heartfelt applause for the two ‘Mikes’ - Mike Lienbach, Shuttle launch director, and Mike Moses, Shuttle integration manager - as they entered the press room some 90 minutes after liftoff.

When asked about his feelings Mike Moses (left) admitted that he was normally ‘choked’ up after a launch. This time, he said, it was before blastoff.

"It looked like it was lifting off in slow motion," he said. "It was very moving, very beautiful."

After the launch was over we stood around to reflect on the moment. For everyone it was a shared experience. We patted backs and shook hands with friends we had come to know and work with over the years.

For the tightly knit launch team the fun was over too. They lingered in the firing room after the successful launch, exchanging hugs and pats on the back and taking photos together.

"We will never see that again," Mike Leinbach and a colleague remarked to each other. "It was a special moment."

"It seemed like we didn't want to leave," he added. "It was like the end of a party and you just don't want to go."

A jewel of brightness

2011-07-10T09:15:00.014+01:00

If there could be a downside to standing near the countdown clock at KSC to witness a launch from the closest point possible - a fraction over three miles - then it is because they no longer broadcast the launch commentary over the PA system.

There are probably good reasons, like the fact that it would upset all the TV companies doing their live broadcasts from the back of the site.

So, we have only the countdown clock as our means of assessing the state of progress and to mark the passage of time towards launch.

When 00:08:59 suddenly appears after the final scheduled ‘hold’ at t-minus nine minutes you know things are getting closer to the grande finale.

There’s excited chatter and people begin shouting out the numbers as the time clicks closer to zero - two minutes and counting, one minute... The excitement and tension is spilling out.

And then we stare in disbelief. Just as it seemed Atlantis had beaten the odds the countdown clock freezes. Cries of dismay - what can have happened at such a late stage? Surely that’s today’s launch attempt over?

Indeed, as the seconds ticked into long minutes some people even started retreating from their spots thinking that it really was all over for today at least.

Out there we had no way of knowing what was happening. No announcements to the assembled crowd - instead of the roar of the mighty engines all remained silent.

Of course, those watching round the world on NASA TV knew that mission control was unsure whether the ‘beanie cap’ that covers the top of the giant orange external tank had properly retracted.

Sounds crazy when you are at the actual launch site but I quickly dialled up home 4000 miles away in England where my wife was glued to NASA’s broadcast.

"It’s a problem with the beanie cap," she quickly explained and then, "but it’s been sorted and they are going!" With that the countdown clock burst to life again, resolutely marking off the last 30 seconds.

Smoke billowed from the pad and at first the Shuttle rose in silence. Then the crackling of its engines comes rumbling across, transforming into a noise that shakes the ground and rocks through your whole body.

Rising majestically one final time, Atlantis spread her wings and powered into the sky with what is understood to have been one million people watching from every available viewpoint in this part of Florida.

The orbiter climbed on a blinding column of fire from the same pad that launched Columbia in 1981 on the very first Shuttle flight, a rippling roar emanating from its main engines and boosters as spectators everywhere cheered, clapped and cried.

The flame was brighter than anything you can manage, almost too piercing to look at in real life - a jewel of brightness climbing into the heavens.

Though it didn't take long for Atlantis to disappear through the clouds, it left a lasting impression for those on the ground.

Even after it reached orbit some eight minutes after liftoff the billowing trail of smoke and steam it left behind maintained a steady link between the launch complex and cloud deck, as if holding on to the last departing Shuttle.

My 'automated' snaps turned out surprisingly well and some of them are added above along with (below) an official NASA shot of the KSC crowd, in which I can be spotted in the foreground if you know exactly where to look.

Atlantis spreads its wings

2011-07-10T09:00:00.013+01:00

Just experienced history in the making - a once (and last) in a lifetime event. It will take a while to sink in, hence I am posting my thoughts and impressions in the days afterwards.

Friday morning 10.30 am. It was getting hotter by the minute as the clouds scattered over Kennedy Space Center, like curtains unveiling a giant stage for one last drama. The forecast showers hadn’t materialised and controllers in the ‘firing room' gave the ‘go' for ascent after a positive poll from their ground teams.

In reality the weather was just good enough for launch – based on some additional acceptance on the forecasted conditions at the nearby Shuttle Landing Facility had a Return To Landing Site abort been required.

But then the countdown clock dramatically stopped at T-31 seconds, just prior to the final automatic sequence. This was based on a lack of an indication that the‘beanie cap’, technically known as the GOX Vent Arm, had properly retracted and latched from the top of the external tank.

We were told in the post-launch briefing that this is something engineers were aware could happen but were still surprised it showed during an actual launch countdown.

Thankfully, the Firing Room teams were prepared. In three long minutes they ran through a pre-determined procedure to verify the arm was retracted and latched using a closed circuit camera.

As the countdown resumed - with only 58 seconds left of the launch window - launch director Mike Leinbach told the Atlantis crew - Chris Ferguson, Doug Hurley, Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim - to "have a little fun up there" with "a true American icon".

Rocket roll

2011-07-08T10:30:00.006+01:00

Excitement and anticipation at the press site mounted as the minutes towards countdown rolled back and it looked as if the cloud cover might thin out just in time.

Now to chose a spot and set up the camera tripod. I wasn’t really here to take photos but if the cameras were pointing in the right direction they could do their business unattended while I viewed the launch unencumbered. And at least I would have some of my own pictures of the moment too.

I wanted to shoot a general view of liftoff with the amassed crowd in the foreground, along with the famous countdown clock and flag - my Nikon D70 was mounted atop the tripod for still views and a Fuji compact for movie footage was wrapped around the stem using a mini Gorillapod.

Astronomy and space lecturer Andy Green, from Cambridge in the UK, was just behind me and to the side was Steven Kates, known as ‘Dr Sky’, a TV and radio broadcaster in the US with a mission to ‘educate and entertain the world on all that is in the sky’. This was his first live launch and he kept us entertained with live pre-launch reports and commentaries.

As I’d left before the crack of dawn without any breakfast and we still had an hour or so of the countdown to go so there was time to visit the legendary NASA Snack Mobile parked amongst the US TV outside broadcast wagons, with their giant satellite dishes and bright logos.

The Snack Mobile looks like it has been around since the days of Apollo and, it being NASA, you kind of hope it might sell some kind of magical space food.

Adding to its mystique is the fact that the van only ever appears on launch days - so its future appearances now seem even more restricted, at least in the near term.

Entry is through the back and once inside you can select hot snacks from stainless steel pull-out drawers and drinks from a chiller before paying the lady sitting in the driver’s seat at the front.

Rather than fancy astronaut food I settled for a burger in a soft bun and an ice cold can of Sprite. The food was actually quite tasty (or maybe I was just so hungry). But that is not what really counts - more the fact that you’ve actually stepped inside and made a purchase from the famed NASA Snack Mobile.

It's a beautiful day

2011-07-08T10:00:00.000+01:00

Thirty years and 135 missions after its debut, NASA got down to the business of launching a Space Shuttle for the final time this morning.

It was a privilege to be amongst the 1,350 media representatives from around the world who had descended en masse - many to witness a launch for the first time - for this history-making occasion.

My day started with a 4.30 am wake up call, which was at exactly the same time the four astronauts were woken in their quarters at KSC for breakfast and to begin their preparations.

It was still dark and the air heavy and humid as I started the 35 minute drive from downtown Cocoa Beach towards the space centre.

Traffic was already heavy and vehicles of all shapes and sizes were beginning to congregate on the roadsides to reserve distant views across the Banana River to the launch site for their bleary-eyed occupants. With up to a million visitors expected, many had ‘camped’ overnight to reserve their spot.

As well as the normal security gate a second advance checkpoint had been instigated on the approach to the KSC perimeter and by 6 am cars were backing up in both lanes, cop cars and trucks parked alongside adding to a sense of occasion with their blue flashing lights cutting through the dark.

There had already been a few spits of rain as the first light of dawn began appearing through a crack in the dark overnight clouds - and with it came a glimmer of hope that it might just clear enough in a few hours’ time to get Atlantis off the pad.

For much of the week, and particularly with yesterday’s torrential rain and thunderstorms, a launch had been thought highly unlikely today with only a 30 percent chance of the weather being acceptable.

I arrived at the press site in the nick of time for another security check, this time with an army trained sniffer dog, as four NASA coaches lined up to take a elite group of mainly photographers to witness the traditional crew walkout.

We had less than an hour to wait behind a barrier for the astronauts, clad in their distinctive orange flight suits, to make their brief appearance. Many of the regular photographers position small step ladders to get an elevated view of the heads of others.

The photographers are joined by other guests and onlookers as the time for walkout draws nearer and the sense of excitement and anticipation is heightened when a military helicopter begins circling overhead.

Word comes that the astronauts are in the elevator and then a huge cheer goes up as the four - Chris Ferguson, Doug Hurley, Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim appear from behind the silver Astrobus. They wave and pose before climbing onboard for the 15 minute journey to Pad 39A.

The crowd begins to disperse and I glimpse a familiar face - Nichelle Nichols, known to millions around the world as ‘Uhura’, the communications officer on Enterprise in the original Star Trek series.

With three hours to go before launch we head back to the press site. Overhead the cloud ceiling seems a little higher than before and some small breaks have appeared here and there.

Despite the previous day’s dire predictions maybe it had been a good call to proceed with the overnight tanking of Atlantis. The Florida weather can be as fickle as anywhere.

Tears in the rain

2011-07-07T23:00:00.004+01:00

Torrential rain, thunder and lightening made for an atrocious day at Kennedy Space Center today. Rain doused the Space Shuttle orbiter and two lightning bolts struck on or nearby the launch pad.

Officials said a preliminary assessment found no major problems or systems affected and while additional data reviews were planned, engineers did not expect to need any time-consuming system re-tests.

Forecasters predicted a 70 percent chance of stormy weather triggering a launch delay tomorrow, though the forecast improves slightly to 60 percent ‘no go’ Saturday and then to 40 percent on Sunday.

"Weather is not looking good for launch," shuttle weather officer Kathy Winters told reporters during a morning briefing.

"As you can see outside, the clouds have rolled in, we're starting to see some showers. We even had a thunderstorm show up this morning. So we are expecting more of this for the next couple of days."

The appalling conditions didn’t prevent NASA going ahead with the retraction of the Rotating Service Structure protecting Atlantis on launch pad 39A. It began rolling back at 2:38 pm, about 30 minutes later than planned.

Rain was pounding KSC at the time and a couple of hundred media photographers, including myself, were drenched as we waited in the open for security checks before being bused out to the launch pad to see the Shuttle.

With temperatures in the mid-80s Fahrenheit it was steamy and humid as we viewed Atlantis from the crawler-way which leads up to the launch pad. As well as the media the mosquitos were out in force.

A three hour tanking operation to fill the giant external tank with fuel was scheduled to begin at 2 am Friday morning after an assessment of the weather conditions by mission managers.

Thunder and lightening

2011-07-07T13:15:00.001+01:00

With just 45 minutes to go before the planned roll back of the launch tower currently encapsulating Atlantis, mission managers and weather experts are still deciding if they should proceed.

The KSC site was doused in torrential rain with thunder and lightening around midday and safety rules do not permit tower roll back if there are electric storms in the vicinity.

They have between six and seven hours leeway in the schedule to perform the manoeuvre if they are to keep on course for a launch attempt tomorrow morning.

In NASA-speak we are still in a ‘Phase 2 Lightening Alert’ which means everyone is confined to buildings and shouldn't be walking out in the open.

Storm clouds brew

2011-07-07T08:00:00.002+01:00

A hole may need to open in the clouds at just the right time for Atlantis to fly on the final Shuttle mission tomorrow morning.

At Wednesday’s pre-launch briefing to the media NASA managers said the weather forecast had worsened overnight to a 70 percent chance of stormy conditions that would postpone the planned 11:26 am (16:26 BST) launch.

But in the past Space Shuttles have blasted off from Kennedy Space Center with much worse odds. "It could be pouring rain everywhere in the county, and if we get that hole in the right spot at the right time, we can go," said Mike Moses, NASA’s launch integration manager.

He described Atlantis as being in "fantastic shape" for launch as the so far trouble-free countdown continued with teams loading chemical reactants into Atlantis’ power-producing fuel cell system.

Three orbiter fuel cells will generate electricity for Atlantis and its four person crew during the 12 day mission to stock the International Space Station with food and spare parts.

At 2 pm today, crews plan to swing open the rotating gantry at launch pad 39A to reveal Atlantis, poised for the Shuttle programme’s 135th launch in 30 years.

Fuelling of the craft’s 15-story external tank should then begin about 12 hours later — assuming managers give the go-ahead after a weather briefing at 1:30 am Friday morning.

"I only know of one way to make it a 100 percent no-go forecast, and that’s to not put propellant in the tank," said Moses.

If the weather doesn’t cooperate Friday, the outlook improves slightly Saturday and Sunday.
After that, NASA plans to pause until at least July 16 to let the Air Force launch a satellite from Cape Canaveral — but if it comes to the crunch the two parties might negotiate freeing up most of next week for Atlantis.

But launch director Mike Leinbach said his teams weren’t hoping for delays. "Friday is game day for us, so we don’t want to wait until Saturday," he said. "We want to play the game Friday."

Also playing on managers' minds are the huge crowds expected on Florida’s Space Coast to view the final ascent — and the impact that mass of people could have on launch operations.

Local police expect half-to-three-quarters of a million people travelling to the area and, because of the heavy traffic that would be generated, Leinbach is reserving the option to skip a Saturday launch try out of concern the launch team could not get home and make it back to the spaceport in time for a 24 hour turnaround.

Weather officer Kathy Winters said she expected conditions to improve over the weekend, with a 40 percent chance of good weather on Saturday and a 60 percent chance Sunday.

The final countdown

2011-07-06T22:00:00.004+01:00

There could hardly be a more appropriate soundtrack to events at Kennedy Space Center this week. ‘The Final Countdown’, a rock song originally released by the Swedish band ‘Europe’ in 1986, reached number one in 25 countries, including the UK. In the United States the song peaked at number eight.

The clock has been ticking for the Space Shuttle programme for some years now but yesterday the last ever countdown began in earnest when the launch clock at Kennedy Space Center — the giant digital display familiar to TV viewers the world over — began counting down from 43 hours. When it reaches zero, Atlantis will be on its way.

But during a countdown the time on the clock does not translate to actual time — considerably more than 43 hours will elapse between countdown and liftoff. In reality some 70 hours separate the start-up of the countdown clock at 1:00 pm yesterday and the planned launch of the Shuttle at 11:26 this Friday.

The reason for the difference in timekeeping is a series of planned ‘holds’ — built-in pauses that allow launch managers to take stock of the mission's status and respond to changing conditions.

In all, a Shuttle launch countdown contains seven holds, which take place when the countdown clock reads 27 hours, 19 hours, 11 hours, six hours, three hours, 20 minutes and nine minutes.

A specific list of safety checks (inspect external fuel tanks at T-minus 11 hours), launch-preparation tasks (clear launch pad and surrounding area of personnel at T-minus six hours) and decision points (final ‘go/no-go’ poll among launch managers at T-minus nine minutes) are addressed before ending the hold and proceeding into the countdown.

For this final Shuttle mission, designated STS-135, the planned holds range in duration from 10 minutes to 14 hours.

Only after the countdown clock resumes following the final hold at T-minus nine minutes will it reflect the actual amount of time remaining until liftoff.

Enterprise visits Stansted

2011-07-06T10:11:00.000+01:00

One of the most exciting assignments I was ever given as a young local newspaper reporter back in the early 1980s was to cover the visit to Stansted airport of the Space Shuttle Enterprise, riding piggyback on its 747 carrier aircraft.

It was in the early days of the Space Shuttle programme and NASA had flown Enterprise round Europe as a PR stunt, accompanied by the commander of the first ever flight John Young who, with Bob Crippen, had flown the orbiter’s maiden voyage on 12 April 1981.

The stop-off on a Sunday afternoon at Stansted airport north of London attracted thousands of people eager like myself to catch a glimpse of the new spaceship.

Strictly speaking it was not ‘local’ news for the Lincolnshire Free Press/Spalding Guardian weekly newspapers - but my Editor David Young knew it would attract many visitors from our area and was astute enough not to curb a young hack’s enthusiasm.

As a newly qualified reporter with a mainstay diet of local courts, councils and police work I could hardly of dreamed that the 80 mile trip to Stansted would sow the seeds for a career that would one day take me to many of the iconic space centres of the world, including Kennedy Space Center (KSC) itself to witness the countdown and launch of Space Shuttles.

The piece I wrote for the Lincolnshire Free Press — in those days a traditional broadsheet paper owned by East Midlands Allied Press (EMAP) — reflected the optimism surrounding the fledgling Shuttle programme.

Dr Hans Mark, deputy director of NASA at the time, predicted that by the mid-1990s there would be almost one Shuttle mission per week and that before the end of the century several thousand people would have flown in space.

Of course, in the end things didn’t quite turn out quite as he and many others had predicted.

So, some 28 years later, after collecting my press badges and passing through security on a sultry July morning, I find myself driving up the long approach road to NASA’s KSC.

The giant Vehicle Assembly Building dominates the view ahead and round the corner somewhere a Space Shuttle stands on launch pad 39A ready to make history.

Mademoiselle Rouge

2011-07-05T22:00:00.006+01:00

Thankyou Sir Richard - Branson of course - for a ride on one of your brand new Airbus A330-300 aeroplanes across the Atlantic today.

Virgin Atlantic introduced the first of its new A330 aircraft ‘Beauty Queen’ on the Manchester to Orlando route just this April, with the second ‘Mademoiselle Rouge’ following on the Gatwick-Orlando schedule from early May.

According to Virgin, the A330 deliver savings in emissions and fuel consumption, and offers customers a ‘cutting-edge product which will transform their flying experience’.

Within two years Virgin will be flying 10 of the long range twin engined aircraft which are among the most efficient aircraft in their class today. All will be powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 700 engines manufactured in Derby, UK.

The new planes, which will use 15 per cent less fuel per seat than the airline's A340-300 aircraft, also feature a revolutionary new in-flight entertainment system created by Panasonic. It uses the latest touch screen technology and features over 300 hours of content.

And so was my flying experience transformed by Mademoiselle Rouge? I have to say it was a pretty good flight all round, with lower noise levels and much improved seating arrangements in economy class.

As for the entertainment system - that’s pretty cool too with 65 of the latest films to watch ‘on demand’, and a bewildering range of TV programmes, news flashes, music and games to keep you glued to the screen.

But, no matter how good the ‘facilities’, after nine hours in the air I’m more than ready to leave the confines of an A330.

Ninety minutes after the smoothest of landings I was through customs and car hire, heading out in the bright evening sunshine to the east coast of Florida where a craft of an altogether different era is waiting patiently on its launch pad.

Dollars for Russia

2011-07-04T21:36:00.006+01:00

The UK was just finishing a glorious Easter weekend and entering the final run-up to Royal wedding madness when I started this blog on 26 April en route to witness the penultimate launch of the US Space Shuttle.

Now, a couple of months or so on and with Endeavour’s spectacular mission done and dusted, we are entering the final countdown for the very last Shuttle launch.

This time it is the turn of the United States to kickoff countdown week with today’s 4th July public holiday to celebrate Independence Day.

Though the four-strong crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis arrived at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) this afternoon the day was, for the vast majority of NASA employees working on the mission, the end of a welcome long weekend before mission control gets down to serious business.

Just as the technicians, engineers, mission planners and pad workers arrive at their stations to start the clock on Tuesday lunchtime, I hope to be well on my way across the Atlantic courtesy of a Virgin flight.

In principle I will be catching up with some work on the laptop - in practice my battery may be dead and so I may just be catching one of the latest film releases on the in-flight entertainment system.

The atmosphere at KSC this week will be one of high drama and excitement, tinged with sadness and probably some unbelief to those more closely involved than I that this will be the last opportunity to work on or witness a Space Shuttle launch.

I will be meeting up with many old friends on the Shuttle media circuit at KSC. Some of them, like Gerard van de Haar and Rudolf van Beest from the Netherlands, are veterans of many more ‘live’ Shuttle launches than myself.

Spaceflight’s Ken Kremer, from New Jersey, will be there too, along with many other regulars and, of course, the great US TV media, rolling into town like a posse of modern-day cowboys on their giant satellite wagons.

But there is also a touch of irony to this whole affair. Barely a week after American’s toast Independence Day with patriotic pride, the country’s human space programme will slip into a new phase that will be far from independent.

Political shenanigans in the last two US administrations have left a gaping hole in the country’s space infrastructure. It means that after the final flight of the Space Shuttle the US will loose its only means of launching its own citizens into space.

This time it is the Russians who have come to the rescue, offering NASA a rather neat ‘pay as you go’ commercial service for at least the next three years, and probably longer.

So there you have it. America is about to pay Russia around 60 million bucks a throw to blast its astronauts into space on a rocket that has changed little since the days of Yuri Gagarin.

But first we have a final Shuttle mission to enjoy!
　

Coast to coast

2011-06-30T11:44:00.003+01:00

The Lighthouse Keeper, his beautiful wife and loveable dog don’t actually live in a lighthouse. They reside in a more conventional ‘box’ with a nice garden in the middle of the Fens, the flatlands of eastern England.

It’s a seascape of kinds but there’s no view of the sea from here, just big open skies. As the local crow flies, however, it is only some 10-15 miles to the muddy Wash, the largest estuary system in Britain.

If vast swaths of the Fens — land mostly at or just above sea level — become flooded as sea levels rise through climate change in the future the sea view could one day come to us.

But to other matters. Let me introduce our dog, a cute Italian Greyhound called Rosie, or various derivatives of the name according to mood, including ‘Rosebud’,‘Buddy’, ‘RD’ and other affectionate unmentionables. She was 14 last week, so is an old lady now. Generally healthy and enjoying the occasional walk but with failing eyesight due to cataracts.

For those of you not familiar with this breed, or never having met an ‘Iggy’, they are the coolest member of the sight hound family but weigh in at a rather diddy size. A bit dropped off your regular racing monster and generally about half the size of a Whippet. But in every other respect they look and behave in the same laid back way.

Not sure that RD would appreciate living alongside or beneath a giant flashing light but if we ever did transfer to a real lighthouse then a candidate might be this one.

This warning outpost is located on the sandy cliffs above the traditional seaside town of Cromer on the North Norfolk coast so it is not exactly remote in terms of lighthouse locations.

Cromer, and its surrounding countryside and beaches, are a long-time favourite haunt for family holidays and weekends away. It lies some 25 miles north east of historic Norwich and much of its charm is that - apart from the necessary trappings of modern life - little has changed since its Victorian heyday.

A welcome addition about four years ago to Cromer’s growing café and restaurant society was ‘The Rocket House’, just down from the town’s iconic pier which still boasts a theatre for summer shows and a lifeboat station on the end.

The Rocket House is so-called because the café, with the Henry Blogg lifeboat museum below, is built on a site that was used during the Second World War to fire warning rockets out over the North Sea.

The food is always great, the coffee the best in Cromer, and the staff friendly. The view across the beach and sea through porthole windows or from the outside balcony is enthralling whatever the weather.

And with a word like ‘rocket’ in its name where could be more appropriate for the Lighthouse Keeper and his wife to repose on a sunny Norfolk afternoon?

Photo passion

2011-06-20T11:17:00.007+01:00

It was the kind of opportunity that dreams are made of. Not only was Paolo Nespoli working in space as an astronaut but he was about to get the once-in-a-lifetime chance that us Earth-bound photographers can only dream of.

First the comparisons. Paolo and I both grew up in the 1960s harbouring dreams that we might one day fly in space. And we both got keen on photography from an early age too.

I went on to write about space, interviewing guys like Nespoli and editing a magazine called Spaceflight. He joined the Italian Air Force and became one of ESA’s astronauts, flying to the Space Station in 2007 and then again at the end of 2010, this time for a six month stay.

Both of us continue on our photographic quest - me from down here and Paolo from his temporary home 200 miles high. During his recent, and probably last, trip into orbit he enthusiastically photographed his view of Earth, downloading an impressive 667 images and capturing many more stunning views.

But on his way home, just after his Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station at the end of May, Paolo had one final very special job to do - capture unique images of the orbiting outpost with both the Shuttle and Europe’s ATV ferry attached. His spacecraft stopped about 200 metres away and the Station tilted to present a better view.

Paolo took his photos through a small window in the Soyuz orbital module before returning to his seat in the descent module alongside crewmates Dmitri Kondratyev and Catherine Coleman for the landing.

"This was a complex and delicate manoeuvre that could have caused serious problems if not executed properly, but I felt it was worth the risk," says Paolo, who had only few seconds to admire the view for himself.

"Taking these pictures was not as straightforward as aiming the camera and shooting," he explained.

"When we undocked, we were already strapped in our seats wearing spacesuits. Our suits and the three hatches between the landing and orbital modules were leak-checked and normally after undocking the seals are not broken any more because retesting them costs oxygen – and there is not so much of it onboard."

The problem for Paolo was that the tiny window where the pictures needed to be taken was in the orbital module – already then partly depressurised.

He had to remove his gloves, unstrap from his seat, float to the hatch, repressurise the forward module and open the hatch.

"I had to slide over Dmitry, paying attention not to hit the manual controls, and go up to the orbital module where I had prepared the cameras before hatch closure," he said.

Paolo recorded stills and video, alternating them while paying attention to the composition. "The position of the Earth, the reflections on the glass of the window - and I had to make sure that the lens was in the centre of the window.

"I really prayed that these would be good, since I was conscious of their value. But what was done was done – and I quickly forgot them when I had to concentrate on redoing the hatch and suit leak checks, and pick up the reentry and landing procedures."

It was not until a number of days after landing when his precious camera cards were retrieved from the capsule that his incredible photos of an orbiting Space Station and Space Shuttle could be viewed.

He described taking the historic photos as an honour. "Since I was a kid, photography has been a hobby dear to me and all through my life its has brought me to unusual places and made me live unexpected experiences," he said.

"Like a photographer who has a gorgeous model in front of him, I was more concentrating on getting a good technical and artistic product than admiring it.

"I saw the view when changing from still to video images, but I purposely limited looking because I know I would have been mesmerised by the beauty of it."

And then there was one...

2011-06-01T16:12:00.009+01:00

The Space Shuttle Endeavour slipped back to Earth this morning under cover of darkness. And just as it made a perfect touchdown at Kennedy Space Center, its elder sister Atlantis was arriving at launch pad 39A a few miles away.

Endeavour has now safely completed her spaceflight career that covered 25 voyages to Earth orbit over 19 years, spanning 122,883,151 miles travelled, 4,677 revolutions of the planet and 299 days aloft.

In reality, STS-134 was the final mission to the International Space Station of any real substance. Barring emergencies on this summer’s Atlantis flight there will be no more spacewalks by Shuttle astronauts or major payloads carried into orbit.

The eerie night-time landing of NASA’s youngest orbiter brought out the emotions even more than Discovery’s final flight a few months earlier.

Now the reality hits home - there is just one more flight ever in the 30 year history of the Space Shuttle programme.

A few hours before a sonic boom heralded Endeavour’s arrival in the dark skies above KSC, the Space Shuttle Atlantis emerged from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to a cheering crowd and a barrage of camera flashes for its final journey to a launch pad.

The Florida sun was setting and this was the last time any Shuttle was scheduled to make the slow 3.5 mile trek from the VAB in preparation for its currently planned launch on 8 July.

Patriotic music blared from speakers as powerful xenon floodlights ushered the vehicle through the crowd, which was estimated to be as large as 8,400. Among those in attendance were the four astronauts who will make up the final Shuttle crew.

Workers and their guests were also invited to witness the historic rollout as part of a NASA morale programme to thank employees for their years of service before many of them loose their jobs.

"In my opinion this is the most graceful, beautiful vehicle we've had to fly in space ever," said astronaut Rex Walheim. "It's going to be a long time until you see a vehicle roll to the pad that looks as beautiful as that. How can you beat that - an airplane sitting on the side of a rocket? It's absolutely stunning."

As America looks to more commercial solutions for launching its citizens into space in the future it seems certain that something of the romance of space travel will be lost along with the retirement of the Space Shuttle.

Endeavour's last blast

2011-05-17T10:01:00.003+01:00

It was an awesome launch for Endeavour in the end - even viewed from 4000 miles away on the internet courtesy of NASA TV rather than from the thundering proximity of Kennedy Space Center (KSC) press site close to the famous countdown clock.

Endeavour's breakfast-time launch yesterday thrilled 45,000 spectators on the grounds of KSC and a crowd of many thousands - though likely less than the 500,000 who turned up in April - on Florida’s beaches and causeways and the shores of the Banana and Indian rivers.

It's a scene that will occur only one more time in the history of the Space Shuttle programme, when Atlantis launches in mid-July on the 135th and final, final flight.

Though Endeavour had a smooth countdown this time around, all was not quite perfect. A cloud deck - that did not threaten launch the launch itself - obscured the view of spectators closer to KSC once the Shuttle was about 22 seconds into flight.

"You can see that we don't have any flight rules or launch commit criteria that dictate how long you can see the launch before it goes out of sight," Mike Moses, NASA's Shuttle Program Launch Integration manager, joked to reporters in the post-launch press conference.

Countdown to layoffs

2011-05-14T10:10:00.006+01:00

Kennedy Space Center's shrinking Space Shuttle workforce is looming larger in the programme's final days.

Repairs like those Endeavour needed after its 29 April launch postponement pose a greater challenge with fewer workers available and managers careful not to overtax them.

And launch of the final Space Shuttle mission has slipped into July, mainly because remaining crews can't perform as many major operations simultaneously or without interruption.

Atlantis' move to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to be joined with an external tank and boosters, for example, has had to wait because teams are tied up with Endeavour's preparations for its 8:56 am (1356 BST) launch on Monday.

The picture below shows Atlantis in NASA’s Orbiter Processing Facility-1 as workers guide a transporter system into place for its move, or rollover, to the nearby VAB.

"We're being affected by our workforce reductions," said Mike Moses, NASA's Shuttle launch integration manager at a press briefing yesterday. "In the past, we would have had extra teams to be able to help with that."

Even as the second countdown began on Friday to Endeavour's last ever launch, planning for the biggest NASA workforce reduction yet marched forward.

Lead Shuttle contractor United Space Alliance this week sent 60-day notices of potential layoffs to some 1,900 local employees.

Most of the layoffs are expected to take effect on 22 July, though the exact timing depends on when Atlantis launches on the 135th and final mission of the three-decade Shuttle programme.

"It's coming, and everybody knows it's coming," said Moses. "The concept of, we're here until Atlantis flies is still what the team knows is the true milestone."

Kennedy's total contractor workforce, including non-Shuttle workers, now numbers 8,900 - down from about 13,000 two years ago.

Elsewhere across the US, the Shuttle programme has dropped from 14,000 contractors in late 2006 to about 5,500 now, a 60 percent decline.

NASA and its contractors have closely monitored the down-sizing to ensure critical skills were retained so that the remaining missions could be flown safely.

See you later

2011-05-04T17:03:00.001+01:00

I’ll be heading back to England on a flight leaving at teatime this evening, leaving behind some hot sunshine, blues skies and cheap (for us Brits) car fuel.

By now there should have been just one more Space Shuttle blastoff to come. But Endeavour, now cocooned is the grey metalwork of launch pad 39A, was in no mood to go for its final flight time at the first attempt.

Yesterday, the Load Control Assembly-2 (LCA-2), which feeds power to the fuel line heaters, was removed from inside Endeavour's aft section (NASA picture below).

It is believed to have caused the heaters for Endeavour's auxiliary power unit-1 (APU-1) to fail on 29 April during the first launch attempt. The assembly is now being replaced and systems will be retested before the launch is rescheduled.

When it eventually gets off the ground, the STS-134 mission will deliver the Express Logistics Carrier-3, Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS), a high-pressure gas tank and additional spare parts for the Dextre robotic helper to the International Space Station.

So, this is the Lighthouse Keeper signing off from Cape Canaveral for now, as I have to go pack my bags. Hope you’ve enjoyed this foray into the world of NASA and the Space Shuttle - and thank you for joining me.

The era of one of the most remarkable flying machines ever built is almost ended. But, for the moment at least, Endeavour lives to fly another day.

Shore view

2011-05-03T20:08:00.004+01:00

4.30 pm. The beach is not nearly so packed this afternoon, though the day is equally as nice as yesterday, and the day before, and the day before.

From my vantage point on the damp sand from the retreated tide, I can see in the distance Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and the famous black and white Canaveral lighthouse.

To the left of the lighthouse is a giant monolith, a dark block that reaches high into the sky even from this great distance.

It houses a Delta IV Heavy rocket, currently number one on the US size and power manifesto. Can’t tell whether the doors are open from this distance but inside I know there is rocket being prepared for launch later this year.

If you squint against the blue horizon you can just make out the nearby launch pad lightening-conductor towers with their distinctive cigarette-style tops.

Whilst technicians continue to work the changes on Endeavour’s pad (which you can’t see in a direct line-of-sight from the beach), NASA has confirmed it will not be considering a launch before 11 May.

Earlier this afternoon I took off to nearby Jetty Park, located at the sea entrance to Port Canaveral to see about some wildlife spotting.

The pier-cum-breakwater juts out into the Atlantic for a couple of hundred metres or so on the northern-most edge of this east coast beach.

A couple of pelicans were preening themselves on the rocks and the busy little sand birds, as I call them, were darting around searching for insects.

I sighted several sea turtles working the shallow rocky ledges, diving deeper and then popping their bald round heads above the water for a breath of air before heading down again. These apart, my foray wasn’t so successful - no dolphins, no manatee.

I’ve added a few of my ‘wildlife’ snaps to the end of this piece. All were taken at Jetty Park, except the Osprey with the fish in its claws, which I shot from near Cape Canaveral locks.

Stuck in a moment

2011-05-02T16:16:00.012+01:00

It’s been all quiet on the space front today as NASA engineers work to remove and replace the faulty electrical distribution box before starting an exhaustive round of tests over at least 48 hours.

I had lunch at a Cuban restaurant called Roberto’s - a few miles south of Cocoa Beach - with Steve Young, who also had a stint working on Spaceflight magazine in the 1990s.

He bought Astronomy Now magazine on leaving Spaceflight and also launched the spaceflightnow.com website.

Space Shuttle missions have been his great passion and Steve’s own ‘mission control’ is an office building (pictured below) at KSC, over-looking the countdown clock and launch pads.

Like for many Shuttle workers, things will probably have to change for the spaceflightnow.com team after the final Shuttle mission is concluded this summer.

Which brings me to when the launch of Endeavour on the penultimate Space Shuttle flight might actually taken place.

A launch this coming Sunday, which also happens to be Mother’s Day in America, has already been ruled out as the repair work pushes the crew's next launch attempt to at least Tuesday, 10 May. An official launch date will probably not be announced until Friday, after repairs have been given the all-clear.

If liftoff doesn't occur next week things become decidedly more complex to organise at the Space Station - and there is even talk of the flight slipping right through to the end of June, the next most favourable launch window.

During last Friday’s countdown, the electrical fault could have easily gone either way. But it took the wrong path - and, to borrow the title from the U2 album ‘All that you can’t leave behind’, Endeavour became ‘Stuck in a moment you can’t get out of’.

Setting sail

2011-05-01T23:30:00.001+01:00

NASA finally confirmed mid-afternoon what everyone had been expecting - that the launch of Endeavour would be put back to at least next Sunday and perhaps May 10 so a faulty electronic switch box that routes power to critical systems can be replaced.

The hopes of a new launch attempt early in the week evaporated after it became clear that the switch box would have to be replaced, and the work and extensive testing could not be been completed in time to launch prior to a planned Atlas rocket flight on Friday.

Mike Moses, chairman of the launch management team, stressed that 8 May was only a working target at this stage, hinting that if the box changeover and testing was not straightforward the delay could be longer.

He said they hoped to announce a new target launch date by the middle of the week.

An initial launch attempt was scrapped on Friday after heaters on one of the Shuttle's Auxiliary Power Units failed. The problem was traced to the switch box, which will be replaced early this week. The testing of a spare switch box is expected to take an additional two days.

Meanwhile, at nearby Port Canaveral on Sunday afternoon, a procession of three giant cruise ships embarked on their own voyages of discovery.

This picture shows the Freedom of the Seas with 5000 passengers and 1000 crew making its way out into the Atlantic.

Two ships that shouldn’t have been in dock today - or at least on their way back in to port - were NASA’s booster recovery vessels, Liberty Star and Freedom Star.

Had Endeavour launched as originally planned on Friday, the two ships would normally have been arriving back during the day with the recovered solid rocket boosters in tow.

Safety first

2011-05-01T15:56:00.000+01:00

Okay, well the news is not good from KSC this morning. The media briefing is off until 2 pm this afternoon but the launch of Endeavour is definitely off for a few days at the very least.

Rather than just change a thermostat it looks as though they need to change the whole electrical box of tricks - which has to be followed by 48 hours of testing.

There is a chance the launch could switch to Thursday or Friday if the negotiations depending on how the Atlas launch is progressing and whether that could be changed. Otherwise it is most likely to go until early next week. A new launch date will be set tomorrow.

All gutted here - but that’s the way of these things. Safety of the Shuttle and its crew is paramount, and with only two Space Shuttle launches left no one wants to take any chances.

Status briefing

2011-05-01T13:31:00.004+01:00

Rumours and stories are flying about early this Sunday morning by text, email and twitter about whether Endeavour could launch this week.

The problem is they only have until Wednesday before the launch attempt has to stand down so that an Atlas rocket can be prepared for launch on Friday.

Rules dictate that only one launch vehicle can be fuelled and in the final stages of preparation at any one time. The next launch window for Endeavour opens on 8 May.

NASA management meetings to work out a plan are taking place as I write this and should be finalised soon. Then there will be a news briefing at the press centre at 1030 am (which should be aired live on NASA TV at 3.30 pm BST).

At the moment it seems the weather forecast is ‘red’ for Monday as well, with strong crosswinds and rain showers. It gets better if there is to be an attempt on Tuesday.

The electrical problem is likely either an open circuit in a hydraulic system fuel line heater thermostat or trouble inside an avionics box in the Shuttle's aft engine compartment.

Initial thermostat tests were consistent with a problem in the avionics box but engineers have not ruled out a connector problem or some other wiring issue elsewhere in the system.

If the problem can be isolated to an open circuit in a suspect thermostat, it is possible to install a replacement in time to support a second launch attempt this week.

Standby!

Time for a break

2011-04-30T22:06:00.006+01:00

With the KSC media centre closed on Saturday it was a chance to take a break from the space routine and recharge the batteries with an afternoon walk along Cocoa Beach to the resort's small pier.

Among the more interesting sights was a beach wedding and the departure of a cruise ship from nearby Port Canaveral.

Meanwhile, back at the launch site, Endeavour's countdown was being held at the T-minus 11 hour mark.

News came out late on Saturday afternoon that an APU thermostat had failed tests. If so, this is the better of the two most likely failures and would allow work to proceed towards a new launch attempt on Monday.

Technicians continued working late into the night to test thermostats for Endeavour's APU-1 fuel line heater to help determine what caused it to fail.

NASA flight planners also tweaked Endeavour's target liftoff time for a Monday launch attempt to 2:34 pm (7.34 pm GMT).

If a Monday launch is possible, the countdown would resume at 10:07 pm on Sunday, with fuelling starting at 5:09 am and the crew strapping in at 11:14 am on Monday.

Meet and greet

2011-04-30T18:57:00.006+01:00

A few hundred metres - I guess it’s about as close as I’ll ever get to the President of America.

With the launch postponement still fresh, the visit of President Barack Obama and his family to Kennedy Space Center on Friday afternoon gave the assembled media something else to focus on.

I joined some of the TV crews and presenters on the roof of the CBS tower which is a good two storeys high and provided a grandstand view of the space centre landscape.

Obama was arriving on site by Marine helicopter after landing at the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station - and the media cameras were scouring the horizon, all wanting to be first to pick up the imminent arrival.

America doesn’t do things by halves and in the end there were five military helicopters buzzing over KSC as the President swooped in, taking in a view of Endeavour on the pad on the way over.

From our distance it wasn’t easy to identify exactly which helicopter he was in - but then it turned out we’d been dupped anyway.

As we all focussed on the four big helicopters manoeuvring in from the north east behind the giant Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), Obama’s chopper had discretely moved in at lower level from a westerly direction.

The first family was already on the ground as the four military escort helicopters put on a mini display for the live TV cameras, making it look as though they were landing the President.

So there was President Obama, wife Michelle and their two girls already being shown around the Atlantis Space Shuttle in the Orbiter Processing Facility, in reality not so far from where we were standing.

It would have been the first time in NASA history that a sitting President and his family had witnessed a Shuttle launch.

As well as seeing Atlantis in the VAB, The President and his wife met briefly with Endeavour's crew. Obama told them he was still hoping to get back to Florida for a liftoff.

So, unhappily but not unexpectedly, I didn’t get remotely close enough for a Presidential meet and greet or that all important handshake. The official party remained mostly inside while we media were cocooned on our tower, watching from afar in the afternoon sunshine. 　

Last minute hitch

2011-04-29T23:00:00.024+01:00

"We will not fly this machine until it is ready - and today it was not ready." These were the words of flight director Mike Leinbach at the end of a press briefing this afternoon following the postponement of the launch of Endeavour.

At the Kennedy Space Center it was a day of highs and lows. Despite the early overcast skies there was optimism and excitement in the air.

Ironically, by the end of the day, it was the weather that was cooperating and the technology that had gone arry. An hour before the scheduled launch time clear blue skies had returned making perfect conditions for liftoff.

The Shuttle team had worked hard through the previous night, performing the Rotating Service Structure retraction at the launch pad shortly before midnight to leave Endeavour bathed in bright arch lights, looking pristine and ready to go.

The milestone in preparing the Shuttle for launch came some five hours later than planned but the team still managed to start fuelling on time first thing in the morning.

From an outside perspective it seemed as though things were all going to plan - but behind closed doors the team had been alerted at around 9 am to a potential problem with a heater associated with the Shuttle's hydraulic power system.

Blissfully unaware of the unfolding situation, things continued as normal and I was among about 150 of the reporters and photographers present signed up to witness the crew walkout at the start of their journey to the launch pad.

Before being allowed on the NASA buses to transport us to the viewing point all bags and equipment had to be placed in a line for inspection by an army sniffer dog. This is standard practice when being taken to any secure KSC area.

A drive of several miles brought us to the Operations and Checkout building where the astronaut crew had been quarantined in their quarters since arriving two days previously.

We had a wait of about 45 minutes, a security helicopter with a machine gunner positioned in the open door swooping overhead. When it began to hover above at about midday we knew the crew, dressed in their orange flight suits, were about to appear.

After posing for photos they were off in the silver Astrovan with military escort to the launch pad. The iconic Astrovan has been used to transport crews to launch pads at KSC since the days of the Apollo Moon programme.

We’re back on the buses in a few minutes and head along the same route back towards the press centre area. But, bizarrely, after a mile or so, we see blue flashing lights coming in the opposite direction - closely followed by a speeding Astrovan.

It could mean only one thing - the launch had been aborted and the crew were on their way back to their quarters. In the next few seconds word came through via Twitter and text message confirming a postponement.

The Shuttle has three Auxiliary Power Units (APUs) that provide hydraulic power to steer the vehicle during ascent and entry. NASA’s launch commit criteria and flight rules require all three APUs to be fully operational for launch.

Endeavour's orange external fuel tank had to be drained of more than 500,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen - a process taking about 24 hours - before engineers could access the area and evaluate the issue with APU 1. The only option was to postpone the launch for at least 72 hours.

A bird's eye view

2011-04-29T14:26:00.005+01:00

Happy wedding day! A truly wonderful occasion as I watched on CNN over breakfast here in Florida. Even the majesty of a Space Shuttle launch won’t be able to match this for a once in a lifetime event!

It’s an overcast morning with a few spots of rain as I arrived at KSC about 8.30 am. They are predicting the weather fronts will clear in time for this afternoon’s launch.

Already the roads down to the coast were nose to tail with traffic streaming in to get a viewing point. Many have been camping out overnight to get prime spots.

Here are a few photos taken as I arrived to show you the scene so far. The osprey family really have a bird's eye view of everything going on but I think they would prefer to be left in peace!

Back on track

2011-04-28T23:55:00.006+01:00

What with wildfires and electrical storms, nature seems to be throwing the lot at Endeavour this time around. The storm was truly spectacular and lasted for several hours - but thankfully it was nothing like the deadly tornado that devestated Alabama the night before.

The lengthy lightning alert at Kennedy Space Center halted the countdown activities at pad 39A for several hours - the all-clear was eventually sounded at 1130 pm local time and teams got back to work on readying Endeavour for its launch tomorrow at 3:47 pm in the afternoon.

As you can see from the picture above it didn't look so good for most of the evening - though it was spectacular to watch! By the way, the pic below it is me taking one of the fire pictures yesterday afternoon. I spotted it on the nasaspaceflight.com website.

Meanwhile, the weather forecast for launch day continues to be quite favourable, though the chances for a weather violation at launch time have increased slightly to 30 from 20 percent yeseterday.

The primary concerns are a low-cloud ceiling and a crosswind ‘violation’ at the Shuttle Landing Facility, the runway that would be used if Endeavour needed to return in an emergency straight after launch.

Waiting for storm to pass

2011-04-28T21:00:00.001+01:00

It’s just before 9 pm and we’re in the KSC press centre to see if the launch pad retraction will still go ahead tonight following lightening and thunder in an early evening storm.

The latest it can be to maintain tomorrow’s launch is around 1030 pm - technicians are out at the pad now checking to see if there has been any lightening or storm damage.

They are also reviewing the weather forecast for the night to see if it will be safe to proceed and then to start fuelling the giant external tank.

If things can’t start by late this evening then tomorrow’s launch could be postponed.

Praying for clear skies

2011-04-28T19:32:00.003+01:00

Arrived KSC just before nine. About a 30 minute drive from where I’m staying on Cocoa Beach. The car temperature gauge was reading 82F as I pulled into the car park at press centre.

Had dinner last evening wth Ken Kremer and some Dutch writers, and a journalist with Scientific American magazine. One of the Dutch guys, Jacob Kuiper, works for the weather service in Holland.

Very interesting guy who certainly knows his altostratus from his cumulonimbus - and a lot more besides, including volcanic ash clouds and the spread of radiation in the atmosphere from the Japanese nuclear reactors.

Back to the Shuttle, he told me that if the skies over the UK are clear tomorrow evening then the Space Shuttle ground-track will bring it across England.

So, given the right conditions, the Shuttle (and the separated external tank) should be visible in the sky between 18 and 20 minutes (9.05 pm BST) after launch.

Watch the launch live on NASA TV, have a cuppa and then pop outside to see Endeavour passing overhead with its crew of six. How cool would that be?

Wildfire brings drama

2011-04-27T22:00:00.003+01:00

NASA weather girl Kathy Winters (officially known as the Shuttle weather officer) is relied upon to get the forecast spot on in the days before a Space Shuttle launch.

At the pre-launch press conference this morning her main worry was a cold front moving through Thursday evening, which would mix with the warm and humid air and set off lightening storms.

This is at the crucial time when the launch pad’s so-called rotating service structure is pulled back from protecting the orbiter so the loading of fuel can begin.

Needless to say, any kind of lightening strike in the locality at such a volatile time would not be desirable.

But what Kathy (pictured above) could not know as she was speaking and the relaxed press conference was drawing to a close was that outside over the southern flank of KSC a bush fire was raging out of control.

At first it had seemed rather innocuous as a pall of dark smoke billowed into the blue sky. On the ground it was spreading like wildfire, fanned into life by a strong southerly breeze.

Some six hours later it was still raging out of control, with a helicopter dumping water to try and halt its march. Its progress had been frighteningly quick and far.

The launch pad was sufficiently far away not to come into the equation if it had been launch day - but it would have certainly marred the view for the press and others watching from KSC.

Bush fires and lightening storms aside, Friday’s launch day weather forecast remained positive, with the only possible violation coming in at just a 20 percent chance of high altitude winds making it unsafe for liftoff.

With Mike Moses reporting nothing out of the ordinary in terms of the Shuttle’s processing on the pad things are going smoothly.

And, just for the record, the temperatures in this part of Florida have been in the mid-80s this week, with humid air and strong winds. They say this is more typical of July than April - haven’t I heard that somewhere else recently?

Visitors flood in

2011-04-27T18:55:00.001+01:00

NASA managers have an extra problem to deal with for this last launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour - and it’s a presidential-shaped one.

At the pre-launch press briefing this morning Mike Moses (processing manager) and Mike Leinbach (launch director) were at pains to say that President’s Obama’s presence for the launch would not compromise in any way mission operations.

Air Force One will touch down on the Shuttle landing runway and will have to be moved aside just in case the runway is needed for a return to launch site abort.

The President and his family have been given a number of options as to where they can view the launch from but these will not be disclosed in advance. "I can’t tell you where it will be but I can tell you where it won’t," said Mike Leinbach, referring to his own launch director’s seat.

The Obama’s won’t be the only American’s homing in on the area for a chance to witness one of the final majestic Shuttle launches.

This part of Florida is expecting up to three-quarters of a million visitors, almost double the number who turned out to watch the final launch of Discovery in February.

The crowd estimate means that roads surrounding the centre will be blocked for hours after the launch - a major problem for those KSC workers just wanting to get home after a busy day at the office!

Media badging up

2011-04-27T15:28:00.001+01:00

There are going to be around 1500 media at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for the STS-134 launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

Whilst not a record, it is a 70 precent increase on those present for the last Shuttle launch, that of Discovery at the end of February.

The accreditation process for bona fide media representatives can be a complex affair. First off, foreign media need a visa before NASA will accept an electronic application.

Outside of KSC itself there are two badging stations - a news media access badge and a mission badge. Both require photos, fingerprinting and, if you are to drive through security under your own steam, an FBI check.

All went smoothly this morning, so I’m badged up and good to go. There are security check points on all the roads into KSC, mostly a couple of miles outside of the main area.

As the mission gets closer security levels will be increasingly raised, all adding to the excitement and anticipation.

This morning there is a smattering of the regular ‘space’ journalists here already. In 45 minutes’ time there if a pre-launch news conference.

Most likely, one of the main topics will be the weather forecast and the storm clouds amassing on the horizon.

The prediction at present is for good launch day weather but with thunder storms the night before - which is not such good news for the overnight fuelling operations on the pad.

The great and the good

2011-04-27T02:22:00.003+01:00

Perhaps it has finally dawned on America that the age of its ‘remarkable flying machine’ is rapidly drawing to a conclusion.

If all goes to plan, this week’s launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour will be the penultimate in all time history - and it will be a bittersweet occasion for many.

For the thousands of Americans who have worked on the Shuttle programme for three decades or more it brings home the stark reality that, from this summer, many will find themselves out of work.

The layoffs by NASA and its contractors have already bitten deep. The spaceport city of Titusville, a stone’s throw from Kennedy Space Center itself, was a boomtown founded on American’s human spaceflight endeavours.

But its glory days have gone. Workers have already left in their droves and the once thriving restaurants and businesses are heading for lean times.

This week, as the great and the good gather at Kennedy Space Center to witness a final launch for themselves, human interest stories abound.

It was good to see at the weekend that doctors have allowed Gabrielle Giffords, the US congress-woman who was shot in the head, to travel to Florida to see her astronaut husband’s Space Shuttle launch.

The trip will be the first for Ms Gifford since she was flown from Tuscon, Arizona, to Houston more than three months ago to recover after being shot in the head at a community event in her home state of Arizona.

Husband Mark Kelly proudly told US television that Ms Giffords will be able to witness the launch of Endeavour, scheduled for Friday afternoon, in person.

Ms Giffords has not been seen publicly since the shooting and will likely watch it from a private family viewing area.

Her shooting at a community outreach event back in January could have put in jeopardy the Shuttle mission. Kelly is commander and had he needed to spend longer at his wife’s bedside the flight would likely have been postponed.

Replacing the commander so close to a launch would have been unprecedented and, as there are no backup crews in training for such complex missions, a tricky dilemma for NASA.

President Barack Obama and his family are also planning to watch the launch, though it is unclear whether they will be alongside Ms Giffords or at a different location.

Even on the most routine of occasions, a Space Shuttle launch is an emotionally charged and tense affair.

The fact that this will be the last ever countdown for Endeavour and the penultimate flight of the near 30 year programme makes it all the more poignant.

Flying across the Atlantic

2011-04-26T15:00:00.005+01:00

Gatwick airport, 0745 am. To my chagrin the airport shopping experience is already in full swing as a I burst into departures after just about the most rapid check-in and security process ever. I beat a hasty retreat to the bustling Café Rouge with its panoramic view of the runway as a backdrop for breakfast.

I’m almost on my way. Infact, as I retrospectively write this onboard the plane, the inflight information screen shows we are heading well out over the mid-Atlantic en route to Florida. Another seven or eight hours to go before the 747 touches down in Orlando.

Most of the 316 passengers will be heading off to theme park land - a few of us will be travelling in the opposite direction towards Kennedy Space Center on the east coast where putting people into space is, for the moment at least, still for real.

This Friday afternoon (in the evening UK time) the Space Shuttle Endeavour is set to blast off on its final flight - a 16 day mission to the orbiting International Space Station.

I’ll be attending the launch as Editor of Spaceflight magazine. This is the eleventh year I’ve been in the (part-time) post but it’s just my fourth trip to cover a Shuttle launch.

Of the others, I’ve actually only witnessed one live Shuttle launch - albeit a spectacular middle of the night one. The others got postponed for various reasons, so it is by no means a guaranteed event.

I’ll be meeting up with friends and fellow journalists and photographers who do regular stuff for Spaceflight, including Ken Kremer and Dwayne Day from the States, Joel Powell from Canada, and Gerard van de Haar and Rudolf van Beest from the Netherlands. We should have it covered between us!

My nine hour flight between London and the east coast of America is about as good as it gets at present for those of us confined to travelling the globe at heights of 35,000 feet in modern jet liners.

But when the engines of Endeavour ignite on the launch pad at 3.47 pm on Friday afternoon (8.47 pm UK time) the six men onboard will be catapulted into orbit inside just nine minutes.

In that first orbit they may very well fly across the southern part of the UK and, if that coincides with a clear sky, the orbiter can be seen with the naked eye tracking through the heavens as a bright swiftly moving ‘star’, with the just-separated external fuel tank trailing behind.

In that case, the Atlantic crossing for Endeavour will have taken a mere 20 minutes - which kind of puts my own trans-Atlantic journey into a little more perspective.

Work, rest and play

2011-04-25T18:00:00.001+01:00

It is as if the planets were aligned – a late Easter coincided with a Royal wedding and the May Day bank holiday to give British workers a rare run of days off combined with three and four-day weeks. And to cap it all the brilliant spell of spring weather continued unabated.

It’s not so long ago that such four-day weeks were envisaged as the future. In the 1950s Winston Churchill saw a time when accelerating technological advancement would enable us to "give the working man what he's never had – four days' work and then three days' fun".

This did not seem as improbable then as it sounds now. After all, the weekend was a comparatively recent and expanding invention.

So where did it all go wrong? Not only has the concept of a three-day weekend pretty much evaporated but, for many, the two-day weekend is in jeopardy.

According to Ian Price, author of The Activity Illusion: Why we Live to Work in the 21st Century and How to Work to Live Instead, this crowding out of leisure time is due to something of a ‘perfect storm’ - hurtling advances in communications technology colliding with changes in attitude to activity.

In the headlong rush to embrace modernity, we have stripped ourselves and our work places of many of the old indicators of hierarchy, such as PAs and corner offices. Instead, we have conflated activity with status - how busy we are has become an indicator of importance.

Simply owning a BlackBerry, or similar device, drives a new kind of compulsive checking behaviour. The little vibrating object, with its flashing light, stimulates our brain's dopamine system in much the same way as the flashing lights of a fruit machine ensnare a gambling addict.

It might feel as if email and BlackBerry have crept into our lives gradually but, in the context of the 5,000 year history of written communication, their arrival has been sudden and disruptive. Hand-writing an internal memo to be typed up by a secretary was still the norm in the 1980s - and tended to make you more selective in its use.

Now that such barriers have been removed, so have the filters that weeded out messages that were either too urgent, or too trivial, to be committed to writing.

One unintended result of our busy way of working, straddling evenings and weekends, is that we have crowded out ‘deep thinking’. How often have we stumbled upon the answer to a problem when doing something else altogether such as showering, gardening or taking the dog for a walk?

It has long been recognised among occupational psychologists and physicians that proper rest and recovery is important, not just for long-term health and happiness but also for resilience at work, productivity and performance.

In all this busyness we may also neglect at our peril the spiritual element to life, of which Easter serves as a poignant annual reminder.

Easter Sunday’s celebration at Peterborough’s KingsGate church was certainly among the highlights of my own weekend. Quite wondrous! For the spiritually challenged it is definitely worth a visit... perhaps on one of those weekend’s off you’ve now promised yourself.

One way or another, I hope you had a restful Easter break. And, if not, the planets may still hold some favour - for there’s a Royal wedding and May bank holiday weekend coming right up.

As for my own plans on Royal wedding day. Sorry William and Kate, I’m afraid ‘The Lighthouse Keeper’ is attending something else on the other side of the pond - of which there will be much more in the coming days.