Getting spacey

No pretty picture of a star, galaxy, planet or moon but a wonkish look at the state of the art in rocketry. The next leap forward, IMHO, will be significant.

Propulsion Technology Mostly Unchanged After 50 Years
Although it's been a half century since America entered the space age, the basic propulsion concepts used to push Explorer I into space will be the same type of propulsion that the nation will use to begin the next half century of space exploration. It was January 31, 1958 when a Redstone-Jupiter C rocket developed in Huntsville, Ala., lifted the 30-pound artificial satellite into space.

Clark Hawk, director of the Propulsion Research Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAHuntsville) has seen most of the advances that have taken place in rocket propulsion. He has spent 50 years conducting research in the field.

"Chemical propulsion will be with us for the foreseeable future as the means to escape the Earth's gravity," said Dr. Hawk, who worked with the Air Force Propulsion Laboratory at Edwards Air Force base, before joining UAHuntsville nearly 20 years ago.

"Large forces are required for periods of several minutes to accomplish this and chemical systems do this well and relatively cheaply," he said.

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