NASA Night Shuttle Launch

The Space Shuttle Endeavour launched early this morning from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The six-member crew is embarking on its 13-day mission to deliver a new room and observation deck for the Int'l Space Station. The launch is the last nighttime liftoff of the shuttle, and only four more flights remain before the program comes to a close later this year.
Washington, DC 


Endevor lift off the last night time launch

 

 

By KENNETH CHANG

Published: February 8, 2010

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — The space shuttle Endeavour thundered into orbit before dawn Monday morning, briefly turning darkness into daylight.

It was the second effort to get the Endeavour off the ground, 24 hours after clouds over the launching pad scrubbed Sunday’s attempt.

Clouds again encroached, but there were enough holes to allow the Endeavour to lift off on schedule at 4:14 a.m., a bright streak rising to the northeast along the East Coast. It was the 130th launching of a shuttle and probably the last night launching as the program winds down and ends after four more flights.

“What a beautiful launch we had this morning,” William H. Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said in a news conference.

The Endeavour is carrying the last major piece of the International Space Station. Two of Endeavour’s crew members, Nicholas J. M. Patrick and Lt. Col. Robert L. Behnken of the Air Force, will conduct three spacewalks to install a 23-foot-long, 15-foot-wide Tranquility module.

The module includes a seven-windowed dome, or cupola, that will offer panoramic views of Earth and space. The viewing area, large enough for two astronauts, will be used for controlling the station’s 60-foot-long robotic arm and to observe other activities outside the station.

The Endeavour is also delivering space parts for the station’s water system that recycles urine and sweat into clean water.

A camera on the shuttle’s external tank detected a strip of insulating foam falling off about two minutes into the flight. Mr. Gerstenmaier estimated it at a quarter-inch thick and a foot long.

“It didn’t appear to impact the orbiter,” Mr. Gerstenmaier said, “and we see no damage to the orbiter.”

As with all shuttle missions since the loss of the Columbia in 2003, engineers will spend several days examining the foam loss to ensure there was no damage to the Endeavour’s heat shield.

The commander of the 13-day mission is Col. George D. Zamka of the Marines, and the pilot is Col. Terry W. Virts Jr. of the Air Force. The other crew members are Stephen K. Robinson and Capt. Kathryn P. Hire of the United States Navy Reserve.

While the Endeavour mission was off to a smooth start, Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr., the NASA administrator, admitted he had not done a good job of laying out a clear picture of the agency’s future.
At a news conference on Saturday, he accepted blame for the rocky reception that has greeted President Obama’s plans to revamp NASA’s human spaceflight program.

The plans, revealed in Mr. Obama’s budget request for 2011, call for the cancellation of Constellation, the program that was to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020. Under the new budget proposal, money that went to the Constellation would instead be used to develop new space technologies like fueling stations in orbit, and the task of developing rockets for carrying astronauts to the International Space Station would be turned over to commercial companies.

General Bolden said some of the work in the Constellation program might yet be preserved. “I don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water, if you will,” he said.

General Bolden also offered some conciliatory words as he acknowledged that the proposal for NASA would probably change as it winds through the budget process. “I do have to negotiate with my partners in Congress,” he said.

He said NASA would still work on a heavy-lift rocket even as the budget proposal seeks to cancel the Ares V, the behemoth rocket that would have carried the cargo for a lunar mission.

General Bolden said, however, that he did not expect the heavy-lift rocket to be ready until after 2020.

Obama Plans Bipartisan Summit on Health Care

 

By JEFF ZELENY

Published: February 7, 2010

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Sunday that he would convene a half-day bipartisan health care session at the White House to be televised live this month, a high-profile gambit that will allow Americans to watch as Democrats and Republicans try to break their political impasse.

Mr. Obama made the announcement in an interview on CBS during the Super Bowl pre-game show, capitalizing on a vast television audience. He set out a plan that would put Republicans on the spot to offer their own ideas on health care and show whether both sides are willing to work together.
“I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward,” Mr. Obama said in the interview from the White House Library.
Mr. Obama challenged Republicans to attend the meeting with their plans for lowering the cost of health insurance and expanding coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Republican leaders said they welcomed the opportunity and called on Democrats to start the debate from scratch, which the president said he would not do.
The move by Mr. Obama comes after weeks in which the administration has appeared uncertain about how to proceed on his top domestic priority since Republicans captured the Senate seat previously held by Senator Edward M. Kennedy. House and Senate Democrats had been increasingly at odds over what the bill should say, how to move ahead tactically and, in some cases, whether to continue at all.
The idea for the bipartisan meeting, set for Feb. 25, was reached in recent weeks, aides said, as part of the White House strategy to intensify its push to engage Congressional Republicans in policy negotiations, share the burden of governing and put more scrutiny on Republican initiatives.
Mr. Obama’s announcement came after he surprised his rivals in late January by requesting that a session with House Republicans be open to cameras. That meeting produced a spirited 90-minute question-and-answer session with the president that many in the White House viewed as a critical success for Mr. Obama.
In making the gesture on Sunday, Mr. Obama is in effect calling the hand of Republicans who had chastised him for not honoring a campaign pledge to hold health care deliberations in the open, broadcast by C-Span, and for not allowing Republicans at the bargaining table.
Nancy-Ann DeParle, the director of the White House Office for Health Reform, briefed Democratic Congressional staff members in a conference call ahead of the interview, with Katie Couric.
Separately, some Congressional staff members expressed concern that Mr. Obama’s meeting would simply prolong an already tortuous process. And Democrats still face steep challenges in reconciling the differences between the House and Senate bills.
Some House Democrats are firmly opposed to a proposed tax on high-cost employer-sponsored insurance policies, which they think will hit some middle-class workers and violate Mr. Obama’s campaign promise not to raise taxes on Americans earning less than $250,000 a year.
The president offered a number of questions that his party would have for the Republicans.
“How do you guys want to lower costs? How do you guys intend to reform the insurance market so that people with pre-existing conditions, for example, can get health care?” he said. “How do you want to make sure that the 30 million people who don’t have health insurance can get it? What are your ideas specifically?”
The question for Mr. Obama is how much — if at all — he is willing to give on some of the concepts Democrats have already agreed on, or if he is using the meeting to lay the groundwork for another effort by Democrats to push the legislation through without Republican votes.
Mr. Obama did not indicate what he was willing to give up in the negotiations, nor did he chart a specific legislative strategy for moving a bill through Congress. Democrats in the House and Senate were hoping to resolve their differences in the bill, aides said, and present a unified health care plan in time for the meeting.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said in a statement that he welcomed the bipartisan meeting on health care and called on the president to begin the dialogue “by shelving the current health spending bill.”
“The fact is Senate Republicans held hundreds of town halls and met with their constituents across the country last year on the need for health care reform, outlining ideas for the step-by-step approach that Americans have asked for,” Mr. McConnell said. “And we know there are a number of issues with bipartisan support that we can start with when the 2,700-page bill is put on the shelf.”
When asked by Ms. Couric if he would agree to discard the bill and start over, the president said he would not. The starting point, aides said, would be with the proposals that passed the House and Senate.
It remained an open question whether the meeting could lead to real consensus on health care, or whether it would serve only to allow Democrats to frame a political argument against the Republicans going into the midterm campaign.
Republicans were involved in the health care discussions for months last year in the Senate Finance Committee, but differences with Democrats were never resolved.
The bipartisan meeting on health care could give Mr. Obama an opportunity to display the command on health care issues he showed at the meeting with Republicans. The administration believes that the public is supportive of many of the provisions in the bill — particularly taking away the insurance bans for pre-existing conditions — but that the debate was overshadowed by a messy legislative process.
Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, said he was looking forward to the bipartisan discussion. But he joined Mr. McConnell in calling for a fresh start to the health care debate.
“The problem with the Democrats’ health care bills is not that the American people don’t understand them — the American people do understand them, and they don’t like them,” Mr. Boehner said in a statement. “The best way to start on real, bipartisan reform would be to scrap those bills and focus on the kind of step-by-step improvements that will lower health care costs and expand access.”
In the interview on Sunday, Mr. Obama said he did not regret pursuing health care in the first year of his presidency, even though he intends to place a higher priority on job creation this year.
“It was the right thing to do then,” Mr. Obama. “It continues to be the right thing.”

David Herszenhorn contributed reporting.

Palin at the Tea Party Conference in Tennessee

TheVoicesofAmerica.org


These are a few videos about the TEA PARTY MOVEMENT and their Convention held in Tennessee this past weekend. with the main speaker being Sara Palin.





Where the Tea Party Movement Goes from Here
Precinct Organizing Best Practices and the Abigail Adams Project
Homemakers of America
The web site for the Abigail Adams project is still under construction so you will find information on Homemakers of America. There are also on the ning site Abigail Adams Project main site you can then go to your individual state site and sign up to join with your ning login.
I find it interesting that they do not put labels with the candidates, no Dem. or Republican, but they offer information that you might not know about the candidates that you might vote on because of party lines. For those that are Independent voters this site might be something you will be interested in,.

The White House answers (more of) your questions on Youtube