From NASA's first manned spaceflight program, known as Project Mercury, to the retirement of the shuttle program, there have been many firsts and lasts in the history of spaceflight. Some of the major events include the launch of the first man-made object to orbit the Earth on October 4, 1957, the first man in space on May 5, 1961, the first man on the Moon on July 20, 1969, the first shuttle launch on April 12, 1981, and the last shuttle landing on July 21, 2011. Over the course of the past 55 years, governmental and commercial agencies have revolutionized space travel.
NASA is researching ways to design and build aircraft that are safer, more fuel-efficient, quieter, and more safe for the environment. NASA is also working to create traffic management systems that are safer, more efficient and more flexible. They are developing technologies that improve routing during flights and enable aircraft to climb to and descend from their cruising altitude without a disturbance.
NASA believes it is possible to build an aircraft that uses less fuel, gives off fewer fumes, and is quieter, and is working on the technologies to create that aircraft. NASA is also part of the government team that is working to develop the Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen, to be in place by the year 2025. NASA will continue to create new, complex aircraft and air traffic control systems to ensure the safety measures are taken with high standards.
NASA is researching and creating plans to send people to the solar system, while the future goal is to land humans on Mars. The Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle or MPCV will be based on the design for the Orion model. The Orion craft will be able to hold four astronauts on a 21-day mission.
This capsule is for traveling past low Earth orbit (LEO). This design will not only carry the crew to space, but provide emergency abort capability , maintain the crew during travel, and provide safer measures during the re-entry process from deep space. This spacecraft will serve as the main vehicle for missions beyond low earth orbit. It will always be capable of conducting regular operations and deliver payloads by the Space Launch System.
The Spacecraft Juno launched from Earth in 2011 where it will travel to Jupiter and arrive in 2016. The purpose of the mission is the study the planet from orbit . Juno will concur a series of dives between Jupiter and Its belts of charged particle radiation. Its closest approach will be only 3,000 miles away from the cloud tops.
The main goal in sending Juno to Jupiter is to understand the origin and creation of the planet. Juno will spend a year orbiting the planet to study the deep atmosphere and inside structure. By learning about the history of Jupiter, we can understand the history and development of our Solar System.
By learning about the history of Jupiter, NASA can better understand the history and development of the Solar System.
The Dawn spacecraft started its 1.7 billion mile voyage to study a pair of asteroids on September 27, 2007. Dawn will travel back by going through the asteroid belt. The mission includes the asteroid Vesta and Dwarf planet Ceres in 2015. The instrumentation aboard Dawn will measure minerals, shape, and surface diameter. It will also measure the bodies' masses and gravity fields.
SpaceX, Bigelow Aerospace, and many other companies have designed a wide variety of spacecrafts. In the future, SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace plan to revolutionize NASA's manned space travel programs. They also expect to increase the efficiency of the International Space Station through their more cost-effective capsules, which are described below.
Dragon is a free-flying, reusable spacecraft being developed by SpaceX under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. The Dragon spacecraft is made up of a pressurized capsule and unpressurized trunk used for Earth to transport pressurized cargo, unpressurized cargo, and crew members. The Dragon spacecraft is made up of 3 main parts: the Nosecone,the Spacecraft, the RCS system, parachutes, and the Trunk.
In December 2008, NASA announced the selection of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station when the Space Shuttle retires. The $1.6 billion contract included a minimum of 12 flights It is designed to include cargo and crew requirements for the ISS. SpaceX is currently operating fully commercial, non-ISS Dragon flights under the name “DragonLab".
The BA 330 can operate as an independant station, or many of these crafts can be connected together in a fashion to create a larger more convenient space complex.
The maximum number of astronauts aboard is up to six on a long-term basis. It has radiation and ballistic protection equal to the International Space Station. BA 330 has the electrical power made with solar arrays and a series of batteries. The BA 330 will have incredibly clean environment control and life support systems. This is a travel capsule for the future.
NASA has very high expectations for the future. Lori Garver, NASA’s Deputy Administrator, said, “NASA’s best days are certainly in front of us, as are America’s best days.” According to www.nasa.gov, the International Space Station will be maintained throughout the year for the foreseeable future. Unmanned spacecrafts will be launched with the purpose of exploring and researching planets, stars, etc. such as Saturn, Jupiter, and Ceres. Plans have also been made for transporting humans to asteroids, the Moon, and other planets, such as Mars. Although these plans could revolutionize space travel and humans’ understanding of space, some may not be realized.
Over the past 20 years, NASA’s yearly budget has consistently shrunk. According to www.nasa.gov, it is expected to represent less than .5% of the yearly Federal Budget in 2012. In constant dollars, it is less than ⅔ of what it was in the mid-1960s. This restricts NASA’s financial capabilities immensely. Although recent laws, including the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, support funding for the growth of NASA’s commitment to space travel and research, it may not be enough to fund the array of future projects.
Although NASA has retired the shuttle program, which according to NASA's most recent budget request, took up almost a tenth of its total budget in 2011, there are many new programs in the works. "By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth." said President Barack Obama in a speech regarding NASA. Because of the cost of these new programs, NASA will have to begin requesting larger budgets. If NASA is to achieve its goals, those requests must be approved through the legislative process. If not, U.S. dominance in space exploration may come to a premature end.
If NASA actually does obtain more funding from Congress and the President, plans to land humans on Mars may actually become feasible. Advances in technology could allow NASA to reach further than ever before. There have been budget cuts recently, but NASA still believes in the possibility of continuing current plans. According to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, "For 50 years, American astronauts have led the exploration of our solar system. Today we are getting a glimpse of why that will remain true for the next half-century. Make no mistake about it, human space flight is alive and well at NASA."
Our first order of business was to decide on a target audience. This audience includes technical course students, teachers, parents of students, people in the community, and anyone else wanting to know about Polk County High School's TSA, the technical department of PCHS, or the future of manned and unmanned space travel.
We then divided the content involved with this competition among three sites, and we established what design to use on each site. Similar yet different designs were used for each site, because we wanted the Design Brief, the PCHS TSA website, and the PCHS Technology Department website to be distinguishable from each other .The similarities reside in the basic design of each such as the menus and page layout, but the content remains very different.
The roles of each member on our team were also decided upon at this time. The high school technology department's website and the high school TSA chapter's website were each assigned to one person while the design brief, being the largest of the three sites, was assigned to the remaining two web developers on our team. We had a graphic designer to create the banners and edit any images needed. Next, we created a timeline for our websites. We needed to have certain parts of our project completed at various times. This ensured that we would stay on track and accomplish all of our goals. Our team collaborated using Google Docs, because we are all in different classes. Information and updates among our team were shared using Google Docs, and ideas were communicated through the use of Google Docs.
Before a computer was touched, blueprints for each site were drawn. To decide on what pages to have and what content to include on each page, we made a plan of what we wanted our site to cover. On the Design Brief, we included the past capabilities of space travel using a clean, easy-to-use timeline. We also decided on which current and future governmental space missions to go over (International Space Station, Orion MPCV, Juno, Dawn, and Curiosity) and which current and future commercial space missions to go over. We also stated a solution pertaining to the future of space flight. For the TSA and Technology Department sites, we decided to include all pertinent information, such as the clubs, instructors, courses, and upcoming events in our technology department, and the advisors, officers, a brief description, and the past awards won for the chapter TSA site. Lastly, a contact us page was included on the TSA and Technology Department sites to give users an easy way to get in touch with us, and a copyright page was included on all three sites to explain the web development process, show where we obtained pictures/information and which programs would be used in the development of our site. After this was done, we brainstormed on designs for our websites. We wanted our sites to match, so they could easily be distinguished as part of a group, and we wanted the sites to look professional and clean. We eventually decided on a gradient with a different color and a fading design in the top left for the TSA and Technology Department sites. On the Design Brief, we chose a sleek looking starry background with a blue galaxy coming out of the bottom of the page. All the sites used a 'floating' menu system and rounded corners on each section of the site to look modern and professional.
After the blueprints were drawn and a design decided upon, research was conducted. Knowledge of past space missions and current and future governmental missions was obtained through the use of NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Then, research had to be done pertaining to current and future commercial missions. This information came from SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace We also got information about TSA from the National TSA site, and we got information about SkillsUSA and FBLA from their respective national sites.
The site was then created from scratch using Adobe Dreamweaver CS5. We created the the first page according to our blueprints, and we created the rest of the pages of our website from that page. Each of our sites, PCHS TSA, PCHS Tech. Dept., and the Design Brief, have links to each other. We created spry tabbed panels within most of our pages to include the content without causing a page with excessive length. The content was made using Microsoft Word 2007 and then inserted into the pages of the site. Also, the images in the site were either obtained from iClipart, NASA, TSA, and the instructors at our school or taken as a screenshot during development. All of the images were then edited using Adobe Photoshop CS5. JS Lightbox was incorporated to show our screenshots at a larger scale in an easy-to-use way. We considered using one of the online services to generate our timeline for us, but instead, in order to add customization and appeal, we used Adobe Edge Preview 4 to create our interactive timeline and moving header. It uses pure HTML 5, CSS3, and Javascript. This enables it to be viewed on a larger variety of platforms, including iPhones and iPads.
Because of the Edge banner, we also made a separate version of our Design Brief in the event that users have Internet Explorer 8 or earlier, because Adobe Edge Preview 4, which was used to make the banner on each page, is not compatible with versions earlier than IE9. When a user goes to our website with an earlier version of IE, they will automatically be redirected to the compatible site, which uses regular images for the banner instead. To expand platform compatibility, we created mobile versions of all three sites using jQuery in Dreamweaver. If a user goes to one of our websites using a smartphone or tablet, they will automatically be redirected to a mobile version of our site that is much easier to view and use on mobile devices. WOW Slider was incorporated on our home pages to show pictures of activities relating to the specific page that each slide is linked to and to provide another easy way to find the other sites in the Webmaster competition along with the mobile versions of each site. WOW Slider put the pictures into an interactive banner which links each picture to the corresponding page or site. Lastly, Google Calendar was used to show the upcoming events on the technology department and TSA sites and the upcoming launches on the Design Brief.
Lastly, testing was done. We tested our websites on many of the latest browsers manually, which showed us excellent compatibility firsthand, but we also used Adobe BrowserLab to test our websites on a PC, Mac, and several mobile devices.
We found that our websites are compatible on Windows with Chrome 8+, on Windows and Mac with Firefox 3+, on Windows with Internet Explorer 8+, and on Mac with Safari 3+. Our site is also mostly compatible on many earlier browsers, including IE8, because we used a separate version of our site specifically for earlier versions of IE. When viewing on a mobile or touch device, users will automatically see the mobile version of our site. It works on all popular devices/platforms.
Notice: The following programs were used in the development of this Technology Department website.
Notice: The following sites were used in the research development of our sites. All summaries were in our own words. Any images not obtained from the websites listed here were either photos or screenshots taken by us.
Research information was obtained from:
Bigelow Aerospace. Web. 29 Jan 2011. <http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/>.
Information about the BA330 spacecraft was obtained from this website.
NASA. Web. 13 Jan 2011. <http://www.nasa.gov/>.
Information about the future of NASA mannned and unmanned spaceflight was obtained from this website.
National FBLA. Web. 20 Jan 2011. <http://www.fbla-pbl.org/>.
Information about the FBLA organization was obtained from this site.
National SkillsUSA. Web. 20 Jan 2011. <http://www.skillsusa.org/>.
Information about the SkillsUSA organization was obtained from this site.
National TSA. Web. 20 Jan 2011. <http://www.tsaweb.org/>.
Information about the TSA organization was obtained from this site.
SpaceX. Web. 5 Feb 2011. <http://www.spacex.com/>.
Information about the Dragon spacecraft was obtained from this site.
Images and Videos were obtained from:
Bigelow Aerospace. Web. 29 Jan 2011. <http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/>. (With Permission)
An image of the BA330 spacecraft was obtained from this site.
iClipart. Web. 8 Feb 2012. <http://www.iclipart.com/>. (Free to use with a subscription, which we have)
Several images were used from this site for backgrounds and headers.
NASA. Web. 13 Jan 2011. <http://www.nasa.gov/>. (Free to use for everyone)
Videos about and images of various NASA spacecrafts and spaceflight programs were obtained from this site.
National TSA. Web. 20 Jan 2011. <http://www.tsaweb.org/>. (Free to use for TSA Members)
An image of the TSA logo was obtained from this site.
SpaceX. Web. 5 Feb 2011. <http://www.spacex.com/>. (With Permission)
A video about the Dragon spacecraft was obtained from this site.
