Dateline April 18, 2006, Space News from the Internet

• The director of space initiatives at Center for Strategic and International Studies thinks we should embrace China as a partner in space exploration. Mark Whittingham thinks they need to examine some of their arguments.
• NASA successfully fired a methane/oxygen engine for 103 seconds. I think that is a good step for NASA.
• This is scary. Remember my essay on NASA building a house? Well here is an quote from the weekly Constellation program update:
  

  "A little perspective - and I apologize for repeating myself for those who have heard my little analogy before - on what we're attempting to do here. Imagine the Cx program is a 'house' we've set about building together, with the various rooms of the house representative of the separate elements of the architecture. Unfortunately, we don't have the funds to build the ENTIRE house all at once, instead we can only afford to build it a room or two at a time. Ok. But to be capable of building those first couple of rooms of the house, we must understand the entire 'blueprint', and how those rooms fit into the larger scheme. We must describe it sufficiently to pour the foundation, and to "frame" the house to the greatest extent possible. Doesn't mean we can't add a room in the future, but it will be more expensive." (emphasis mine -djs)

  Weird, isn't it? (hat tip to NASA Watch).

• An article about NASA's antimatter research.
• NASA's Centennial Challenges program is holding a workshop for the Astronaut Glove Competition on Monday, April 24th in Connecticut.
• Space Shuttle Flights are getting more and more useless.

Test Firing of a methane/LOX engine as MSFC