Battle begins over Space Shuttles

WASHINGTON - With competition fierce to land a retired space shuttle orbiter, the cities and states vying to bring one home have gotten creative.

Lobbying strategies range from a humble lapel pin to a videotaped sales pitch by a former president. There are pledges of extravagant buildings and millions of visitors if chosen.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said he'll announce the winners on April 12, the 30th anniversary of the first shuttle flight. The announcement will end years of jockeying by dozens of competitors, but it's also likely to bring more disappointment than celebration.

After all, only three orbiters remain and Discovery is already committed to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.

That leaves Endeavour and Atlantis up for grabs, and 29 museums and institutions -- including Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex -- in the race to be a shuttle retirement home, each promoting their site with the energy of a carnival barker.

"That decision will be fair, sir," Bolden told a lawmaker at a recent congressional hearing.

The goal is to house the shuttles where they can be used as educational displays to promote human spaceflight and inspire interest in exploration.

Federal law says the shuttles should retire to places "with an historical relationship with either the launch, flight operations or processing" of the spacecraft.

That would seem to give the edge to KSC, which launched every shuttle mission and landed half of them, and Johnson Space Center in Texas, where mission control is located.

Bolden is expected to be at KSC on April 12 -- the same day he announces his decision -- to celebrate the anniversary of the first flight. He flew four shuttle flights, including one in 1986 with Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Orlando.

"One of the shuttles will have to go to KSC," Nelson said matter-of-factly.

The importance of making sure the shuttles are accessible to as many Americans as possible has come up again and again -- suggesting geographical diversity will play a role in Bolden's decision.

The chairman of the House space committee, Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, has joked with NASA officials that he thinks that's fine -- just so long as Texas gets one.

"It all started there," Hall said of his state. "There's a lot of heroes of this land that are based there or started out there."

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., pitched the Intrepid aircraft carrier docked at a Manhattan pier. He said the shuttle would join a Mercury space capsule and a supersonic Concorde jet there, and could bring in 1 million extra visitors a year.

Ohio wants to house the Atlantis shuttle at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. President Barack Obama's proposed fiscal 2012 budget includes $14 million for the idea.

"While the budget request is not the last word, it is encouraging that the administration agrees with us," said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.

At a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing last month, lawmakers interrupted each other to sell Bolden on their shuttle retirement proposals.

Consider the Museum of Flight in Seattle, which gets 450,000 annual visitors, suggested Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash.

Rep. Steve Austria, R-Ohio, offered Bolden a lapel pin saying, "Land the Shuttle in Ohio."

An Alabama Republican recommended a particularly easy approach to the anything-but-easy decision facing Bolden. Maybe the winning state should be chosen alphabetically, offered Rep. Jo Bonner, whose Alabama district recently lost a $35 billion Air Force contract to Boeing in Dicks' district.

Former astronauts also have jumped into the fray.

John Herrington, who commanded a shuttle flight, is leading the Tulsa Air and Space Museum's bid to "Land the Shuttle" in his native Oklahoma.

"I hope Chicago gets the shuttle, and if we do, I'll fly it here myself," said Jim Lovell, a retired astronaut who flew on Apollo 13 and serves on the board of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago -- another contender.

Dicks' push to send a shuttle to Seattle is backed by Bonnie Dunbar, a retired astronaut who flew aboard five shuttle missions and has worked for years supporting the Museum of Flight's bid.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland mentioned to Obama last June that his state was the home of Orville and Wilbur Wright as well as astronauts John Glenn, the first man to orbit the Earth, and Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.

"Ohio should be a site for one of the shuttles," Strickland said in an interview. "The Wright brothers are from Dayton. The shuttle should be in Dayton."

With three Texas locations vying for a shuttle, former President George H.W. Bush recorded a video supporting a new museum building at Texas A&M University near his presidential library.

"Howdy," Bush says in the video. "I invite you to participate in an exciting opportunity to obtain a retired space shuttle and display it in an expansion of the Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History."

Some sites, such as the KSC Visitor Complex, are touting new buildings as an added selling point. The complex plans a $100 million, 64,000-square-foot exhibit to house an orbiter for 1.5 million annual visitors. The shuttle would be displayed as if in flight, with its payload bay doors open.

March Field Air Museum in southern California designed a space-exploration building with retractable doors that could be opened at night so the shuttle would be visible from Interstate 215.

Chicago's Adler Planetarium plans a space pavilion that would frame an orbiter with views of Lake Michigan on one side and Chicago's skyline on the other.

Seattle's Museum of Flight, which already has the first jet version of Air Force One and a Concorde, broke ground last June on a space-gallery building that could house a shuttle.

"We have our fingers crossed," Dicks said.

US Navy wants to blind pirates with lasers!

The US Navy has fired a laser gun from one of its ships for the first time.

Researchers used the high-energy laser (HEL) to disable a boat by setting fire to its engines off the coast of California.

Similar systems had previously been tested on land, however moist sea air presented an extra challenge as it reduces a beam's power.

The navy said that ship-borne lasers could eventually be used to protect vessels from small attack boats.

The US military has been experimenting with laser weapons since the 1970s.

Early systems used large, chemical-based lasers which tended to produce dangerous waste gasses.

More recently, scientists have developed solid state lasers that combine large numbers of compact beam generators, similar to LEDs.

HELs fire

The US Navy system uses a Joint High Power Solid State Laser mounted on deck
Until now, much of the development of HELs has focused on shooting down missiles or hitting land-based targets.

The latest round of tests showed its wider possibilities, according to Peter Morrison from the Office of Naval Research.

"This test provides an important data point as we move toward putting directed energy on warships.

"There is still much work to do to make sure it's done safely and efficiently," he said.

While a weaponised system would likely be restricted to military vessels, merchant shipping has also expressed an interest in laser technogy

Bit of a "row" on Brit Submarine!

One Royal Navy personnel has been killed and another is in a life-threatening condition after a shooting on board nuclear submarine HMS Astute.

A third Royal Navy serviceman was arrested after police were called to Southampton docks where the vessel has been berthed since Wednesday.

The BBC's Jonathan Beale understands that a crew member shot two of his crew mates before being overpowered.

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A police spokeswoman said the incident was not linked to terrorism.

'Matter of urgency'
She said there was no public safety risk and the area was sealed off.

BBC News understands the arrested man was handed over to Hampshire police by Ministry of Defence police.

An MOD spokesman said: "Two Royal Navy personnel have been involved in a firearms incident at Southampton docks where HMS Astute is alongside.

"Sadly, one has now died as a result of his injuries. The Royal Navy is now attempting to inform their families as a matter of urgency.

"A third Royal Navy serviceman has been arrested by Hampshire Constabulary and is now in custody."

Defence Secretary Liam Fox said: "I am greatly saddened to hear of this incident and of the death of a Royal Navy service person in this tragic incident.

Largest submarine
"It is right and proper that a full police investigation is carried out and allowed to take its course. My thoughts and sympathies are with those who have been affected and their families."

A spokesman for Southampton City Council confirmed their Mayor Carol Cunio, chief executive Alistair Neill and leader Royston Smith were all on board at the time of the shooting but were not injured in the incident.

They were not available for comment.

Brian Cedar, who lives in Hythe marina, said: "I saw at least six people carry a stretcher off the gangway into a waiting ambulance.

"There were a couple of forensic people who have now left.

"If you can have a shooting like this on a nuclear submarine it is worrying."

A South Central Ambulance spokeswoman said the dead man has passed away at the scene.

All concerned family members are asked to call the MOD's Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre on 0845 7800 900.

New force of nature discovered? Is this the God Particle?

BBC NEWS

A particle accelerator in the US has shown compelling hints of a never-before-seen particle, researchers say.

The find must be more fully confirmed, but researchers at the Tevatron are racing to work through existing data.

If proved, it will be a completely new, unanticipated particle; researchers say it cannot be the much sought-after Higgs boson.

It could also signal a new fundamental force of nature, and the most radical change in physics for decades.

Researchers at the Tevatron formally announced the find on the collaboration's website, after posting an as-yet unreviewed account of the research on the Arxiv repository.

The team was analysing data from collisions between protons and their anti-matter counterparts antiprotons. In these collisions, particles known as W bosons are produced, along with a pair of "jets" of other particles.

It was in these jets that the unexpected "bump" in the team's data came to light, potentially representing a particle that the current understanding of the zoo of subatomic particles - the Standard Model - does not include.

"When you look at the data it's not some disagreement with the Standard Model, it's a nicely formed bump in the distribution that looks really like the kind of bump you'd get if a new particle was being exchanged in this process," said Dan Hooper, a theoretical physicist at Fermilab who was not involved in the research.

'Time will tell'
However, the result is at what is known as the "three-sigma" level of certainty; that means there is still about a tenth of a percent chance that the result is attributable to some statistical fluctuation in the data.

For a formal discovery, the level is traditionally taken to be five-sigma - or about a one-in-a-million chance that the "bump" is just a fluke. However, Dr Hooper said, the result comes from data taken at one of the Tevatron's two detectors, called CDF and DZero.


Results from the D0 detector should confirm or refute the find
"Even without running the machine one more day, they have roughly twice as much data at one of the two experiments, and if you include... DZero, then you have four times as much," he told BBC News.

That means that confirming the result more fully is simply a matter of working through the numbers the team already have to hand. Further, the coming experimental run at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) should provide even more data to confirm or refute the new particle - whatever it is.

All that is clear is that the bump definitely does not represent the unwitting star of high-energy physics, the Higgs boson - the hunt for which has popularly been pitched as a race between the Tevatron and the LHC.

"If it's a real effect, rather than a fluctuation or a mismodelling of the background, it would be much more exciting than a standard model Higgs - or any type of Higgs," said Tony Weidberg, a physicist from Oxford University who works on the LHC's Atlas instrument.

However, he told BBC News that he did not "find this evidence very convincing", though he reiterated that a more definitive answer would be soon in coming.

"I've been doing this for 30 years now, and every few years we get these three-sigma effects - they come and then they go. Time will tell."

Dr Hooper is more optimistic on the basis of the current result alone.

"There's a 0.1% chance that this is a statistical fluke," he said. "Other than that possibility that lingers, this is the most exciting new phyiscs we've learned about in my lifetime."

If it is in fact true, Dr Hooper believes that the mystery particle represents an undiscovered "fundamental force".

"We'd essentially be saying there's a new force of nature being communicated by the particle. We know that there's four forces: electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. This would be the fifth; every freshman physics class would have to change their textbooks."

RELATED GOD PARTICLE

Breaking : F-18 crashes in California- Crew- dead

(CNN) -- Two crew members on a routine training flight were killed Wednesday when an F/A-18F aircraft crashed near Naval Air Station Lemoore in central California, the U.S. Navy said.

Capt. James Knapp, commanding officer of the station, told reporters the plane, assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron 122, crashed at 12:08 p.m. PT (3:08 p.m. ET) in a private farm field about one half mile west of the property line.

The crash of the two-seat strike fighter, which occurred southwest of Fresno, is under investigation, Knapp said.

The names of the Super Hornet crew, a pilot and weapons system operator, were being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

"I ask that you have your thoughts and prayers for the families, friends and shipmates of these two fine Naval officers," Knapp said. "That you remember they represent the very best of this nation."
An active-duty mechanic not authorized to speak on behalf of the Navy told CNN he witnessed the incident.

He heard the jet flying and suddenly "it got really quiet," he said. The F/A-18F pilot apparently tried to bank left and pull up when the plane crashed into a field, he said. "We didn't see any seats punch out."

The F/A-18 Hornet, an all-weather aircraft, is used as an attack aircraft as well as a fighter, according to the Navy.

The U.S. Navy flew EA-18 Growlers, which are special versions of the F/A-18 fighter designed to jam enemy electronic signals, in the early phase of the no-fly-zone operation imposed upon the Libyan military of Col. Moammar Gadhafi, according to the Navy.