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The Bush administration is seeking to develop a powerful ground-based laser weapon that would use beams of concentrated light to destroy enemy satellites in orbit.

Graphic: Sharpening a Laser Beam to Create a WeaponThe largely secret project, parts of which have been made public through Air Force budget documents submitted to Congress in February, is part of a wide-ranging effort to develop space weapons, both defensive and offensive. No treaty or law forbids such work.

The laser research was described by federal officials who would speak only on the condition of anonymity because of the topic’s political sensitivity. The White House has recently sought to play down the issue of space arms, fearing it could become an election-year liability.

Indeed, last week Republicans and Democrats on a House Armed Services subcommittee moved unanimously to cut research money for the project in the administration’s budget for the 2007 fiscal year. While Republicans on the panel would not discuss their reasons for the action, Congressional aides said it reflected a bipartisan consensus for moving cautiously on space weaponry, a potentially controversial issue that has yet to be much debated.

Continue reading ‘US Administration Researches Laser Weapon’ »

(1950s, 1966 - 1967)

The PEPP Aeroshell was created to test parachutes for the Voyager mars landing program. To simulate the thin Martian atmosphere the parachute needed to be used at an altitude more than 160,000 feet above the earth. A balloon launched from Roswell, N.M. was used to initially lift the aeroshell. The balloon drifted west to the missile range where the vehicle was dropped and the engines beneath the vehicle boosted it to the required altitude where the parachute was deployed. The tests were conducted in the summer of 1966. NASA.
The voyager program was cancelled, and replaced by the much smaller Viking project several years later.

Later, NASA used the Voyager name for the Voyager 1 and 2 probes to the outer planets–these had nothing to do with the Mars program called Voyager.

There is one PEPP Aeroshell left over, at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. Continue reading ‘NASA’s PEPP AEROSHELL’ »