Earth Operations Central: Space

Organizations

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
They sent Men to the Moon.

Artemis Project
A private effort to establish a permanent, self-sustaining colony on Luna. It's about time. A project of the Lunar Resources Company .
Canadian Space Agency.
Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES).
The French National Center for Space Studies. Very informative if you read French. Oddly enough, the French seem to be taking space-access much more seriously than anyone else that I can find. They're apparently avoiding grandiose visions, preferring to simply go ahead and do things. Crank up your translator and take a look at the Mission Cassiopee.
Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory.
European Space Agency (ESA).
Their headquarters.
Their European Space Operations Centre is a nice little window into their operations as well.
LunaCorp.
This for-profit organization intends to engage in lunar exploration, starting with a lunar rover financed by a corporate consortium including television networks, etc.
Some non-NASA Space Agencies.
Space Biosciences Department of Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
Primarily concerned with microgravity tissue loss experiments - be sure to check out their Space Bioscience Links Page.
Space Frontier Foundation.
This is an all-volunteer organization which is (as is Earth Operations Central) dedicated to cheap access to space, and an expansion of mankind into space. Please see their Space Activism Links Page.
Space Science and Visualization Center.
University of Wisconsin - Madison. This page has some truly great links of interest to scientists and space engineers. If you have a fast line or don't mind waiting, they have some wonderful real-time images of Earth.
Johns Hopkins University - Applied Physics Lab.
Their famous Space Department.
Naval Space Science Division.
Lots of neat stuff and loads of great links. They might be the guys who eventually build a starship like the one depicted above.
Naval Research Laboratories Stennis Space Center.
Primarily research into novel propulsion systems, general oceanographic studies, etc.
Marshall Space Flight Center.
General Information Page. Always worth a look. A good source for generic space background.
United States Naval Observatory.
Space Environment Center (NOAA).
Real-time monitoring of solar and geophysical events. With Today's Space Weather!

Space!

You know, space is great. Not much fun to live in at this point in time, unless you really like sharing a two-room apartment with a dozen people for months at a stretch. You can't even go outside and get a breath of fresh air. There isn't any.

Remember, though, humanity continues through watersheds. At one time, more people lived by hunting than by farming. Once, more farmed than lived in cities. Once, more information was stored in people's minds than in books or information-retrieval systems. Human society continues to evolve at a dizzying pace, though our physique and instincts remain largely unchanged. One day, more of us will live off Earth than live on it, assuming that we have the sense to keep our options open.

This page is dedicated to the people, places and projects that are keeping our options open. Another such links-page, and a most excellent one, is maintained by LaunchSpace.

Probes and Missions

Space Transportation Programs Office.

Please see the Rotary Rocket Page for more inormation on a fairly-unique design concept, the Roton. It takes off like a rocket, and lands like a helicopter.

Mars Pathfinder Military launch vehicles.

Clementine.
The Clementine HomePage.
John F. Kennedy Space Center.
Live: Hubble Space Telescope!
Galileo.
Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) Mission.
Mars Global Surveyor.
Mars Pathfinder.
Cassini Orbiter and Huygens Probe to Titan.
Marshall Space Flight Center (NASA) Missions Page.
This is a huge page, and it is awesomely linked.
Ground-Based Electro-Optical Deep-Space Surveillance program.
There are literally tens-of-thousands solid bodies in space whose orbits regularly cross Earth-orbit. Someone has to try to see them coming before we end up like the dinosaurs.
Delta Clipper Experimental (DCX, X-33).
This is a nice page of commentary and also has some excellent links on it.
Delta Clipper Experimental Archive.

Commercial and Spin-Off.

The Aerospace Corporation.
They do all sorts of things, from supporting the military in space-access to promoting peaceful industrial and scientific uses of space and space-access technology.
Alliant TechSystems Aerospace Systems
Solid-fuel propellant systems and composite systems. They produce the motors for the Delta series of launch vehicles. They are also into state-of-the-art munitions propellants.
AlliedSignal Aerospace.
Turbofans, lifesupport, engine control systems. A leader in cabin-pressurization.
Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.
This division of the food-container industry-giant has a remarkable level of involvement in various space-mission systems, particularly in sensors and imaging.
Computational Physics.
Advanced R & D and technology development in atmospheric and space physics.
Center for Microgravity Automation Technology (CMAT).
A subdivision of the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, CMAT seeks to advance the potential of space-based industrial processes.
Harris Electronic Systems Aerospace.
Systems integration, remote sensing, telemetry. they're primarily into communications as far as aerospace goes.
Hamilton-Standard.
"[A] division of United Technologies Corporation, .... designs and manufactures four core aerospace product lines: engine control systems, environmental control systems, propeller systems and flight systems. Its products serve the commercial, military, regional, general aviation and space markets."
Omitron.
Specializing in ground-support equipment, primarily satellite-ground data communications equipment.
Orbital Science Corporation.
Orbital is probably the closest thing to a commercial space-access company. I like their Taurus vehicle. It's versatile, road-transportable, and can reliably place 3,000 pounds in low-earth orbit. Orbital also builds, and can launch, custom-designed satellites up to the two-ton range. Orbital also just got the contract for the development and testing of the X-34 vehicle, which vehicular type will undoubtedly be the successor to the aging STS shuttle fleet, a very reusable fast-turnaround smallscale workhorse for ground-orbit-ground transfer of materiel and personnel.
Rockwell Aerospace.
They built the engines for the Saturn V, among other things.
Sundstrand Aerospace
Electric power systems, mechanical and fluid systems, power systems, environmental control systems. They also make small-turbine power systems.
TGV Rockets.
Bethesda, Maryland. Low-cost and reusable launch vehicles, scalable modular design.
United Space Alliance.
A joint venture between Rockwell and Lockheed-Martin.
Whittaker Aerospace.
Control systems, etc.

Space-Based Industry Technologies

Eventually, we at EarthOps hope that the vast majority of industry can be moved off-planet, not only permitting the ecology to regenerate, but also permitting us to develop to full advantage technologies which can be used only in microgravity environments. Here are some interesting technologies enabling space manufacture.

The Modular Electromagnetic Levitator
"[P]rovides principal investigators with a high-efficiency containerless melting facility in space. The laboratory is designed to levitate, melt, and cool metal samples, which may be rotated or magnetically damped within the electromagnetic field."