Discovery set for final flight tomorrow ...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA has given a unanimous "go" for Thursday's planned launch of space shuttle Discovery.

It will be the final flight for Discovery, the world's most traveled rocketship.
Shuttle managers met Wednesday and agreed to proceed with the flight after a four-month delay caused by fuel tank cracks. Liftoff is scheduled for 4:50 p.m. ET Thursday. There's an 80 percent chance of good weather.

Six astronauts will ride Discovery up to the International Space Station. They will deliver and install a closet full of space station supplies, and drop off a humanoid robot. Robonaut will become the first humanoid in space.
Discovery has already logged nearly 143 million miles, more than any other reusable spacecraft.

Libyan pilots crash fighter jets instead of attacking their own people

UPDATE CNN: An opposition figure told CNN the pilot had been ordered to bomb oil fields southwest of Benghazi but refused and instead ejected from the plane.
The Libyan newspaper Quryna reported that two people were on board, and that both -- the pilot and co-pilot -- parachuted out, allowing the plane to crash into an uninhabited area west of Ajdabiya, 160 kilometers (100 miles) southwest of Benghazi. The newspaper cited military sources.

By Douglas Stanglin, USA TODAY

Two Libyan air force pilots bailed out of their fighter jet and let it crash today rather than obey orders to attack opposition-held Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, the website for the Libyan newspaper Quryna reports.

The website quotes an unidentified colonel in the air force control room near Benghazi as reporting that Capt. Attia Abdel Salem al Abdali and his second in command Ali Omar Gaddafi parachuted from their Russian-made Sukhoi-22 plane, which had taken off from an air base in Tripoli.

Quryna, which is based in Benghazi, is Libya's most reliable news outlet, Reuters reports. Although owned by a media group linked to Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam, it has begun to report openly on events now that Tripoli has lot control of Benghazi, the new agency says.

The plane crashed near Ajdabiya, 100 miles southwest of Benghazi, the newspaper says.

One of the pilots was from Gadhafi's tribe, the Gadhadhfa, says Farag al-Maghrabi, a local resident who saw the pilots and the wreckage of the jet, the AP reports.

Getting out of Libya ...

(CNN) -- Governments around the world are making a run to get their citizens out of volatile Libya. Here is a country-by-country breakdown:

TURKEY
Two ferry boats carrying more than 3,000 Turks left the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi early Wednesday morning, the foreign ministry in Turkey said. Two more ferry boats -- each capable of carrying 1,200 people -- are headed to the North African nation. The boats will carry food and medical supplies for Libyans as demanded by the Turkish prime minister, the foreign ministry said. The ministry added that in addition to the daily scheduled flights by Turkish Airlines to Tripoli, seven more planes are on standby in case it is permitted to fly to Benghazi airport or make additional flights to Tripoli. Since Saturday, Turkey has evacuated 2,100 citizens from Libya, the ministry said.

BRITAIN
The British Foreign Office said a charter flight is leaving Gatwick Airport early Wednesday afternoon for Tripoli, and will be carrying supplies of food and water for British nationals at the airport in the Libyan capital. A second flight will leave the U.K. as soon as possible, the Foreign Office said. A consular team from the British Embassy is already on the ground at Tripoli's airport and is in place to assist British nationals. That team will be reinforced by two specialist consular teams, one of which has already arrived in Libya. The other is on the charter flight from Gatwick, the Foreign Office said.
The British Embassy is in contact with about 300 British nationals in and around Tripoli and was giving them instructions on how to catch the charter flights, the office explained.
Britain said its citizens who don't have "a pressing need to remain in the country should leave by commercial means if it is safe to do so." The government was advising Britons who want to leave Libya but can't buy tickets online "to travel to the airport carrying sufficient cash to buy tickets."
British Airways and BMI canceled its flights to and from Tripoli for Wednesday, and was reviewing flights scheduled to depart later in the week.

FRANCE
The foreign ministry in France said that it had sent three planes to Libya to help repatriate French citizens and that its embassy in Tripoli was helping to get citizens to the airport.

SAUDI ARABIA
Saudi Arabia said it is sending a special passenger plane to Tripoli Wednesday morning.

SYRIA
Syria said it will send two flights Wednesday morning and had sent two others Tuesday to run between Damascus and Tripoli. The Syrian Arab News Agency said the country is ready to launch an "unlimited number of flights if necessary." It added that Syria may also send a ship to the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi to help evacuate Syrians.

THE NETHERLANDS
The government in the Netherlands said a military plane and a Dutch frigate would help evacuate its nationals in Libya.

THE UNITED STATES
The United States State Department was not able to land charter planes in Tripoli to fly out U.S. citizens because Libyan authorities did not give permission for those aircraft to land, a senior administration official said Tuesday. So, the State Department was chartering a ferry to take travelers from central Tripoli's As-shahab port to Valletta, Malta, on Wednesday.
The American embassy in Libya confirmed that the ferry was anchored near the harbor of the As-shahab Port in central Tripoli. The processing of U.S. citizens had begun and seats were still available. Travelers should have all proper travel documents and may bring one suitcase and one carry-on item, the embassy said. Pets are allowed, but must meet stringent EU requirements once they reach Malta. The passengers will be required to reimburse the U.S. government later. U.S. military forces have not been requested to assist in the evacuation of American citizens from Libya, Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said.

OIL COMPANIES
Oil companies, such as Total, BP, OMV and BP, said they would or planned to evacuate people some staff and families.

EXODUS
The U.N. refugee agency is urging neighboring countries not to turn away asylum-seekers and refugees should they flee the upheaval. A spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said reports she has received have been worrying. "A journalist has passed information to us from Somalis in Tripoli who say they are being hunted on suspicion of being mercenaries. He says they feel trapped and are frightened to go out, even though there is little or no food at home," Melissa Fleming said.

Meanwhile, about12,000 people have crossed into Egypt from Libya, officials say, in an effort to flee the violence engulfing the North Africa nation. "There is no security over there," said Esat Abubakr, an Egyptian living in Benghazi said Tuesday after he arrived in Sollum, Egypt. He described widespread violence and a climate of fear with no security. He said people drove to the border and then walked across. "Every Egyptian I know is trying to come back to Egypt," he said.

B-3 bomber shoots lasers - bust bunkers - mothership for a swarm of drones?

WIRED:

The Air Force’s new stealth bomber might do more than just drop bombs, top generals said in recent days. The so-called “Long-Range Strike” plane — likely to be designated B-3 — could also carry bunker-busting, rocket-boosted munitions, high-powered lasers for self-defense and datalinks, and consoles for controlling radar-evading drones.

These add-ons, described by Air Force generals Philip Breedlove, William Fraser and David Scott, are meant to make the new bomber more lethal and harder to shoot down, even in the face of rapidly-modernizing air defenses such as China’s. “The purpose of this aircraft is to survive in an Anti-Access Area Denial environment,”Scott said, using the latest Pentagon term for defended airspace.

To that end, the bomber’s lasers might zap incoming missiles and fighters; the drones could fly ahead to scout and disable air-defense radars; the bunker-busters should ensure the bomber can actually destroy the enemy’s facilities once it breaks through the defenses.


With just $3.7 billion budgeted over the next five years to develop the bomber, lasers, bunker-busters, and drone-controls might seem unaffordable. And risky, considering the Air Force has said it must stick with “proven” technologies to keep the new bomber on-budget.

n fact, the bomber and its enhancements could be surprisingly far along the development process. The airframe itself might already be flying in prototype form, according to an investigation by ace reporter Bill Sweetman. Each of the add-on capabilities already exists, too, though not all in the same aircraft.

For years, the Air Force has been working on a chemical laser installed in the fuselage of a 747 freighter and fired from a turret mounted to the airliner’s nose. The Airborne Laser was originally meant for a combat role intercepting ballistic missiles, but in 2009 Secretary of Defense Robert Gates downgraded it to a strictly test asset, citing its high cost, short firing range and vulnerability. Future military lasers will dispense with the chemicals in favor of solid crystals, potentially making them much smaller, safer and more reliable. That’s the kind of laser we can expect to see on the new bomber.

Bunker-busting bombs have been around since World War II. In their modern form, they date back to the 1991 Gulf War. Today’s 5,000-pound GBU-28 bunker-buster can be carried by the F-15E and by bombers. For more deeply-buried targets, the Pentagon is working on the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which is so big only the B-2 and B-52 can haul it.


To save on cost, the new bomber will be smaller and therefore carry less ordnance than the B-2. MOP probably won’t fit. Noting that penetrating-capability is a function of mass and velocity, the Air Force Research Laboratories is working on a rocket-boosted bunker-buster that would be a fraction of the MOP’s size while being just as lethal against underground targets.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY AT WIRED

Gaddafi orders sabotage of Libya's oil facilities.

Reuters) - Time Magazine's intelligence columnist reported on Tuesday that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has ordered his security forces to sabotage the country's oil facilities, citing a source close to the government.

In a column posted on Time's website, Robert Baer said the sabotage would begin by blowing up pipelines to the Mediterranean. However he added that the same source had also told him two weeks ago that unrest in neighboring countries would never spread to Libya -- an assertion that has turned out to be wrong.

"Among other things, Gaddafi has ordered security services to start sabotaging oil facilities," Baer wrote. "The sabotage, according to the insider, is meant to serve as a message to Libya's rebellious tribes: It's either me or chaos."

The growing violence in Libya has forced a number of oil companies to shut in production in Africa's third-largest oil producer and disrupted flows from the country's export terminals.

Security forces have cracked down fiercely on demonstrators across the country, with fighting spreading to Tripoli after erupting in Libya's oil-producing east last week. As the fighting has intensified some supporters have abandoned Gaddafi.

Baer, a former Middle East CIA officer, said the source told him that as of Monday Gaddafi had the loyalty of only about 5,000 of the country's 45,000-strong regular army.

Paraphrasing the source, he said that Gaddafi had also ordered the release from prison of the country's Islamist militant prisoners in hopes they would act on their own to sow chaos.

(Reporting by Jonathan Leff; Editing by Frances Kerry)