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Pat Duggins
Pat Duggins
Senior News Analyst
pduggins@wmfe.org


 

When “Star Trek” meets D.C. politics---

 

June 27, 2008—Astronaut Charlie Precourt and I had a brief chuckle at one time over the subject of anti-matter. That’s the stuff that makes the fictitious U.S.S Enterprise on Star Trek go where “no one has gone before.” In 1998 however, Precourt went to look for anti-matter, and now NASA is being pressured by Congress to do it again.

 

You’re going to hear a lot about the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, if you haven’t already. Congress wants NASA to stage one extra Space Shuttle mission to carry the fifteen thousand pound experiment to the International Space Station and the White House doesn’t. The AMS hardware is a follow-up to Astronaut Charlie Precourt’s final docking mission to the Russian Space Station Mir. One of his payloads was AMS-1, which was designed to look for anti-matter. Following a press briefing, I couldn’t help but ask Precourt if he had watched “Star Trek” as a kid. “Sure!” he responded. Congress wants an extra Shuttle mission to carry up AMS-2, whose mission patch is pictured here. It will take hundreds of millions of dollars, which have been approved by votes in the U.S. House and Senate. The Bush administration may oppose the idea because it would delay the 2010 end of the Shuttle program. We’ll see…

 

On another note, if you’re not doing anything on Saturday, July 19th, The Orange County Regional History Center has flattered me with an invitation to be the inaugural speaker at its “History Book Club”. I’ll talk about “Final Countdown” and sign books afterward. Here’s the link to the event, if you like…

 

http://www.thehistorycenter.org/events/?art=calendar

 

Thanks also for all the hits and comments on the UCF-TV “Expressions” program on the book. It wound up on YouTube, and here’s the link…

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv_lMXGFtFA

 

More to come…

 

 

Photo courtesy of NASA

 

 

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