Space Programs

Mounds of titanium and steel glinted in the afternoon sun, valves and pipes protruding in all directions like half-formed metal organisms. In one corner of the warehouse was a twin of the Apollo command module engine that brought Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong back from the surface of the moon nearly 40 years ago. Nearby was the second-stage motor for a Saturn V, the most powerful rocket ever used in the U.S. space program.

South Korea's successful satellite launch this week served as the latest act of one-upmanship in an accelerating space race gripping Northeast Asia. Membership in the elite global space club is being pursued by wealthy countries that can afford it as well as economic basket cases that cannot, a quest for political stature driven more by emotion and nationalism than economic promise. What nations get out of creating their own space programs is a heady cocktail of national pride, technological muscle-flexing and the power to project military menace as a reminder to neighbors that they won't back down from the region's mounting territorial disputes.

Adolf Thiel, an Austrian-born scientist who helped the United States guide some of its earliest rockets into space, died June 2 in Los Angeles. He was 86. During his three decades with TRW Inc.'s space division in Redondo Beach, Thiel directed the development of the Thor ballistic missile, still the basis for the rockets used today to launch NASA and commercial satellites into space.

MOSCOW - More than 200 years ago, the renowned Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin summed up the situation in his country in two words: "They steal. " They still do, and the news in Russia lately has been dominated by one high-profile corruption scandal after another. Allegations of wrongdoing have reached high into the defense and agriculture ministries and the Russian space program, among other institutions. Nearly nine in 10 Russians say corruption is the nation's biggest problem.

In his native South Africa, science whiz Elon Musk struck his first business deal when he made $500 selling the code for a "Space Invaders"-style video game he invented. He was 12. It took only another decade or so for him to make some real money: By age 23 Musk had his first significant company in Web software maker Zip2. He banked $22 million when he sold it in 1999 to Compaq Computer. And last year, he pocketed about $150 million in EBay Inc.

Allen F. Donovan, 80, nationally lauded engineering consultant on the U.S. space program. A native of Onondaga, N.Y., he earned his degrees in aeronautical engineering at the University of Michigan. Donovan worked for the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo from its inception in 1960 until his retirement as senior vice president in 1978. The organization provides engineering support for the Air Force and U.S. space programs.

Cal State Northridge has been awarded a $2-million NASA grant that will give minority students an opportunity to study how to prevent failures in electronic equipment used in space programs, officials said Friday. The four-year research grant is one of the most important awarded to the school in recent years, said Bezad Bavarian, a professor in the university's department of manufacturing systems, engineering and management and the project's principal investigator.

After a 17-year hiatus between lunar missions, Japan launched an unmanned orbiter today that carries the hopes of a nation looking to claim its place as a serious space power. Taking advantage of a lull in rainy weather, the Kaguya orbiter lifted off from Tanegashima island in southern Japan, propelled by a domestically built H-2A solid-fuel rocket.

The character of space exploration is changing dramatically as nations with major programs grapple with rising costs and shrinking budgets. And it seems likely that some past alliances will fall apart and the military will play an expanding role in the use of space, experts from around the world said here this week. For example, the Soviet Union has severely curtailed its space program, and Europeans are growing increasingly uneasy with their cooperative ventures with the United States.

Despite the Columbia disaster, NASA officials are forging ahead with plans to upgrade the shuttle fleet to keep it flying until at least 2015 and possibly several years longer, a senior space agency official said Monday. Michael C.

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. - As soon as Paul Ryan was picked as Mitt Romney's running mate, speculation spiked about whether the Wisconsin congressman's controversial proposal to reform Medicare would harm the GOP ticket's prospects among seniors, notably in this battleground state. On Monday, as Romney stumped on Florida's Gold Coast, he addressed the matter head-on, arguing that Ryan and Republicans seek to protect the healthcare program for the elderly, whereas President Obama has gutted it. Paul has “come up with ideas that are very different from the president's.

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, the rocket engine manufacturing business in the San Fernando Valley that helped pioneer space exploration in the 1960s, is officially up for sale by its parent company. With headquarters in Canoga Park, Rocketdyne builds rocket engines at a sprawling 47-acre facility near the Westfield Topanga shopping mall. The company is perhaps best known as the maker of the space shuttles' main rocket engines. But it also develops engines for military rockets and missiles.

Kaushik began shoplifting gum balls at age 7 and eventually graduated to carbonated beverages, books, expensive name-brand deodorant and hair gel, usually from high-end malls. He didn't need to swipe the merchandise; his family was comfortably middle class. But Kaushik, now 28, relished the adrenaline rush and his ability to look calm as his heart raced. "It's totally the thrill, the sense of power of hoodwinking the security," said the New Delhi media employee, who would give only his first name, adding that he had quit stealing six years ago. "I had no moral dilemma, only concern over the legal ramifications if I got caught.

As NASA retreats from an ambitious human spaceflight program for the foreseeable future, foreign countries are moving ahead with their own multibillion-dollar plans to go to the moon, build space stations and even take the long voyage to Mars. Although most of the world still lags far behind the United States in space technology and engineering know-how, other nations are engaging in a new space race and building their own space research centers, rockets, satellites and lunar rovers.

L.A.'s water visionary Re "Mulholland's Los Angeles," Editorial, July 10 Though he was a poor geologist (the St. Francis Dam disaster), William Mulholland's environmental legacy is remarkably positive. His 220-mile-long aqueduct is an engineering masterpiece, entirely gravity-fed. It produces hydroelectric power. Contrast this with the California State Water Project of the1970s, which expends more energy than any single operation in California to pump water over the Tehachapi Mountains.

I began covering the space shuttle project in 1972, soon after President Nixon authorized it. I had recently joined this newspaper as a science writer. And the country was enthusiastic about the idea of a reusable spacecraft, which was expected to be sturdy, economical and reliable. The shuttle turned out to be neither economical nor sturdy, and its reliability has been wobbly. But as I watched the shuttle Atlantis blast off into space on what will be the 135th and final space shuttle mission, I found myself feeling a bit nostalgic.

Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a rare visit Wednesday to the command center of China's secretive space program amid signs that U.S.-Chinese relations have thawed, even as the two nations begin a rivalry in space. Myers' visit was aimed largely at advancing cooperation on Taiwan, which China views as a renegade province, and moving forward with six-party talks on containing North Korea's nuclear threat.

Nearly four decades after astronaut Neil Armstrong planted his boot on the surface of the moon, the U.S. is about to take the first small step toward colonizing Earth's tag-along satellite. On Wednesday, NASA is scheduled to launch a robotic mission aimed at finding the best site for Earth's first off-world colony, the centuries-old dream of science fiction writers and utopians.

Reporting from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Atlantis lifted off Friday morning, shooting straight into a brightening sky on a 12-day mission that marks the end of the nation's three-decade space shuttle program. There was a brief hold in the countdown at 31 seconds because of a glitch seemingly involving a piece of retractable equipment. As millions of onlookers on the ground and via television held their breaths, officials checked and reported that the equipment had, indeed, been moved.

Bob Kahl slips in through a side door of the vast, abandoned hangar and looks at what's left of the assembly plant where he worked for nearly 40 years. He remembers the hum of power tools, the biting aroma of cutting oil, swarms of workers plugging away on a labyrinth of yellow scaffolding. All that's left is a few piles of broken concrete and a sea of colorless dust that coats a Palmdale factory floor the size of two football fields. "Welcome to the birthplace of America's space shuttle fleet," said Kahl, 60, smiling.