A United Launch Alliance Atlas V lifted off yesterday from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying the 4th Geostationary Satellite in the Space-Based Infrared System, a collection of specialty satellites operated by the United States Air Force designed to assist the United States military in situational awareness in the battlefield, especially […]
So, today was the first full day of the fallout from YouTube’s announced changes to their Partner Program – the first day to really see what the internet had to say about it, and honestly, it’s about exactly what I expected. Many people behind relatively small channels of all types are of course objecting to […]
Here we have the launch highlights video for the United Launch Alliance Delta IV launch of NROL-47. As is standard for these launch highlights videos, it covers the usual pre-launch preparations, and contains many views of the vehicle which were not shown during the actual launch live stream. It includes some quite beautiful views of […]
I never did get a chance to write about the “Adpocalypse” of 2017. Super long story cut short, varying incidents with high profile YouTube content creators resulted in many advertisers pulling their advertising from the platform entirely, due to not wanting to be associated with objectionable content creators. It got worse recently when a high […]
15 years ago today the Space Shuttle Columbia lifted off on what was to become its last mission, STS-107. This flight carried a crew of 7 not to the International Space Station – Columbia was far too heavy for the orbital inclination the Space Station orbits at – but a simple Earth Orbit mission for […]
As I’m sure a regular reader will be able to tell, the past year has been quite an interesting one for Xadara. Not only did it mark the first full year of nearly daily writing, which I’m almost certain resulted in nearly 400 articles (in and of itself quite the achievement, I think) but it […]
Yesterday proved to be a bit interesting for me on Twitter. I was giving my own comments on the Delta IV launch yesterday, one of which was my typical congratulations tweet to United Launch Alliance, the operators of Delta IV, and the CEO of the company, Tory Bruno. At the end, though, I left a […]
After several delays, a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base carrying the NROL-47 satellite into a polar orbit. Just what is NROL-47? No one outside of the National Reconnaissance Office really knows for sure. Of course, we know it was inserted into a polar orbit of some type, given […]
Okay, a few days ago I wrote one of my usual articles regarding more interesting things with space new, this time covering the apparent loss of the mysterious Zuma satellite. I wrote about it based on what was “known” at that time, as well as what was speculated, but from a somewhat reserved standpoint – […]
Here’s one I should have gotten to back in December but couldn’t get to for, well, reasons. This is a launch highlights compilation for year 2017 produced by United Launch Alliance, showing of the past years launches of 1 Delta IV booster, 6 Atlas V boosters, and the second to last Delta II launch ever. […]
I’m not going to do a full commentary on the Nintendo Direct today:I didn’t watch it and since I don’t have a Nintendo Switch, not much said there has any real direct impact on me. I do however pay attention to what is announced, in general anyway and I, like everyone else, noticed one very […]
Ah, now we’re getting into one of the more interesting nuances of the 80’s computer scene – graphics! While today our systems simply use software to create everything we see on screen, with hardware doing the raw math to make it all happen, back in those days, you didn’t have processing power, memory, or, well, […]
Yesterday was, needles to say, a rather rough day for me. I woke up quite late, as usual, to the news that Astronaut John Young had died the previous day, January 5th. John Young was an absolute legend among astronauts, up there as high as Alan Shepard, John Glenn or Neil Armstrong. John Young flew […]
If you look back over the site for the past month or so, you will notice that at the very tail end of December, things just stopped. Completely. I made a few posts stating pretty clearly what I was feeling at the time, and still am honestly, but what I didn’t go into was detail […]