Early in the morning of December 7th, 1972, the final Apollo mission to the Moon, Apollo 17, launched from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center carrying Gene Cernan, Ron Evans, Harrison Schmitt to the Taurus–Littrow lunar valley. Apollo 17’s landing location and planned launch time dictated the first night launch of any manned American […]
Let’s take a trip back. All the way back, in this case, to the original episode of “The Computer Chronicles” back in 1983. The idea behind the computer chronicles was to cover the then-new field of personal computers. Just what could you do with these little machines, and what was their future? These machines, some […]
Following behind my previous article about hype culture, I wanted to discuss another trend in how upcoming things are discussed. This is something that goes in well with hype culture but deserves its own little bit of discussion: that is, when someone says something is “the future.” You will hear this one all the time […]
40 years ago, the twin Voyager 1 and 2 space probes were just starting on their historic journeys to the outer solar system. Voyager 1 destined to visit Saturn and Jupiter, Voyager 2 destined to not only study those planets, but also to be the first, and still only probe to fly by Uranus and […]
Update 6-23-2018: The original upload channel has been deleted. This article has been replaced by a new one for the 45th anniversary of the Skylab 2 mission here: https://www.xadara.com/skylab-the-first-40-days/ Switching gears just a bit back to space, we have this nice little film from the mid 70’s regarding the first manned Skylab mission. Skylab was […]
One of the many more unique YouTube channels I follow is Oddity Archive – a channel devoted heavily to the more eccentric side of television, film, and home media of all types. Incidencally, the channels first subject was, of all things, the Max Headroom Incident. Now, Ben, the man behind Oddity Archive, kind of hates […]
In case it isn’t obvious, I have an interest in strange things, strange events, and the 1980’s. Well, it doesn’t get much stranger than this. On November 22nd, 1987, the last broadcast signal intrusion of the analog TV era happened in Chicago. Unlike the Captain Midnight incident, to this day we still have no idea […]
Time to go back to the early days of the Space Shuttle program. 1980, in this case, when the first flight was still in the middle of a variety of delays. The Space Shuttle was basically ready, but as luck would have it one thing after another kept the vehicle grounded until April 12th, 1981, […]
It’s been a while since we’ve last taken a look at the Game Players Game Tape series. In tape number 6 we have games from the publisher Ultra. Now, this is a funny one – the last tape was Konami games, and this one is Ultra games. Thing about that, for the few of you […]
I wrote earlier that today marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 4 – the first flight of the Saturn V rocket. This mission was designed to both test the entire Saturn V, but also the Apollo Command Module. Previous Article – 50 Years Ago, The Launch Of Apollo 4 – The First […]
At 7:00 AM Eastern Time on November 9th, 1967, 5 F-1 rocket engines, each one alone producing 1 and a half million lbs of thrust, roared to life, beginning the first flight of the most powerful machine ever built by humanity – the Saturn V rocket. The Saturn V was the machine that, if everything […]
Here’s a random treat for any fan of 80’s tech – raw footage of the 1985 Consumer Electronics Show. This footage was, for a majority, taken in the areas showing home media and devices – not much in the way of computers or game consoles here. Plenty of names in the video and audio industry […]
Today, November 3rd 2017 marks 60 years since the launch of Sputnik 2, the second satellite to orbit the Earth. Sputnik 2 was quite different from Sputnik 1, though, and not just in that it was much heavier – while Sputnik 1 just flew around and beeped, day in, day out, for about 3 week, […]
On October 15th, 1997, a Titan IV/B lifted off from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft into space for its eventual amazing mission to study the planet Saturn. This was one of the first launches of the Titan IV/B and the first flight of that particular Titan variation […]
Have you ever seen the movie “Office Space”? If you have, then you will certainly remember a certain antagonist in the film that wasn’t a human – it was a machine. In this case, the office Printer. They are funny things, really, the typical printer – it seems since their inception, people have had a […]