A Journey Backwards; Soyuz TMA-22

This Top Photo is of a Russian Space Launch to the Space-Station 2011; new Russian Technology, should be retired!

How do they get down? Drop and float again?

This is top Technology of the time, Apollo 15, The mission began on July 26, 1971: old technology, retired!

Apollo 15 Liftoff, A Journey Backwards?!

In 1971, The world was my oyster, as my dear friend Bob Briggs use to say and as a treat before going onward, my neighbor, Rich Samanski, a Universal News Team Reporter & Photographer, invited me as his guest to enjoy our worlds future from Houston Control to the Lift off of Apollo 15. It didn't end there as, I too who was keen into photography, was invited by a special pass for the splash down, also. I still have visions, as well, 12 X 16 inch black & White photos, I got to shoot way back when. To my amazement, President Obama killed our space program and again put just how many out of work in the progress of trickle down economics?

NASA takes a back seat to the Russians now! Had anyone suggested such back then; they would have been drummed out of town. This NEW technology of Russian ingenuity reminds me of Apollo technology. The Soyuz TMA-22 is a journey backwards in time of thirty years, at a cost of the lose of an industry and an additional million dollars plus a ride on a rocket tip. At least, with Endeavor, you flew home in style. Now while we thumb a ride with the Russians our space program is a circus for all to see at a museum. If President Obama was to scrap a program, why not the ones who use best guess technology; NOAA! NASA offered the moon and beyond, NOAA just sinks ships and ruins lives through the use of "Best Available Science." It is a good thing that when NASA was in service they were not using this best available science or we would have still been stuck here on earth, pitching rockets up, only to come down in failure. Why would we go backwards to get to the space station? Obama's share the wealth just reminds me of a little to close to communism and that is a direction we will not go.

NASA needs to be reinstated and cut NOAA as the President would get more in jobs to additional lost technology. I remember the Space Race and to say we are hitching rides on thirty year old rockets, tells me the Russians really did win the space race; as it now continues with China and we go to the space museum!

What would you rather be on, the Top of the Rocket (Top Photo) or

Riding in Style?

APOLLO 15 to Space For Sale; Did the Russians Win?

Reminiscing back to when I first started in Global hopping, this time as an assistant photographer with Universal Press News! Enjoy the Collage, as I remember the preparation, lift-off and splash down of APOLLO 15, as I was involved in media coverage. 

The Constellation Project, the next program designed to usher in the next stage of human spaceflight and exploration, cost taxpayers $11 billion and was five years behind schedule when President Obama decided to pull the plug last year but instead pointed those dollars towards NOAA in its Catch Share Program which with its “best available science” and no schedule in sight, cost the tax payers both the monies funneled into it, plus the loose of hundreds more in jobs and a trickle down economics effect in the fisheries industry to equal none. Now we have the loose of two industries based on the best guess in science and no real future, as the Russians excel with our technology into the unknown with conquests to be theirs to divvy out, if at all. Ronald Reagan once said, “While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.” and we have until President Obama put up Space For Sale and names like APOLLO drift away on the winds of time.

America’s next launch vehicle, known as the Space Launch System (SLS) could be our salvation in putting Americans back to work. Imagine, if you will, as I still remember when everything was built here, a SLS built in America, by Americans with American made parts! Now we have industry again and are back into the Space Race with little to no government interference. No more special interests in manipulating the political process or Congressional favoritism, as now there ought to be enough dollars out there, with the thought of new ores to space travel, to round up the monies needed to complete a program; even if it is on a smaller scale. We should be thanking Obama and the greed of Senators to Representatives who believe more in a barrel of fish as the space program may take off and reach higher heights without them anyway; it may just take a little longer but be stronger. Like the days of the beginning; outside sources brought us to the exploration of where we are today, with names like Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun, a German rocket scientist, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and in the United States.