Ah, the Delta IV Heavy. The most powerful active launch vehicle in the world. While other launch vehicles have surpassed its capacity, few of those actually had successful flights, and regardless of their successes, or lack thereof, none of these top tier boosters are in production anymore. In December 2014, a Delta IV Heavy booster […]
UK based YouTube Channel “Xbox On” uploaded a short video I found relatively interesting; at least, interesting enough to write about here, where they list 36 facts about the Xbox 360 game console. Now, honestly, this number is an exaggeration. There are maybe 10 main facts, if even that many, with various ancillary facts related […]
Here in the United States, over the past 15 years, we have had varying television programs dedicated to music. American Idol, The X-Factor, The Voice, and other shows captivated the average American TV consumer. While that’s great for the average person, I never quite cared for them. Difference in music taste in conjunction with just […]
Before there was the internet, there were Bulletin Board Systems (BBS for short). These systems were basic, at their core, but could grow quite complex. The way they worked was simple: a user dialed the phone number of the BBS they wanted to access and, presuming the line wasn’t busy, they would connect directly to […]
Let’s go back. Way back. over 15 years into the past, to high school computer labs in late 2000 and early 2001. At this time, I didn’t have a computer at home (amazing, I know!) so my only real access to PC’s, or the internet, was at school. This was fine by me – I […]
May 5th, 1961. 3 Weeks after the successful Soviet flight of Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1, the United States was ready to send it’s first human into space, United States Naval Officer Alan Bartlett Shepard. His flight, designated Mercury-Redstone 3, was intended to prove that a person can survive the stresses associated with the launch […]
In this video, we take a look at a talk Jason Scott gave at Marist College in New York on the subject of the History of the Internet. Jason Scott, if you don’t recognize the name, is a somewhat odd gentlemen, obsessed with preserving computer history, including that of the early BBS systems and Internet […]
On the morning of Saturday, April 26th, 1986, at 1:23 AM local time just outside the city of Pripyat, Ukraine, reactor #4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station exploded, releasing several tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere, covering both the area immediately around the power station but also depositing dangerous amounts of material in […]
The Russian Space Station Mir orbited the Earth from 1986 until 2001. Over that time, it served as ever-expanding space laboratory where research on a wide variety of subjects was conducted. The legacy of the Salyut space station series before it, Mir was designed with multiple berthing ports for expansion modules, allowing for more specialized […]
A decade ago, on November 22nd, 2005, Microsoft released its second console, the Xbox 360, onto the world. Featuring an enhanced version of the growing Xbox Live online service, and far surpassing the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Gamecube of the previous generation, the system was met with massive demand and popularity, this continuing strongly for […]
In 2011, for the 50th Anniversary of Yuri Gagarins flight in Vostok 1, a film, titled First Orbit, was released which told the story of the flight in an incredibly unique way: from the perspective of Gagarin himself. The International Space Station, having a core of Russion components, orbits in the same inclination as Vostok […]
On April 12th, 1981, 20 years to the day from Yuri Gagarin’s history making Vostok 1 flight came the first flight of the Space Transportation System, more commonly known as the Space Shuttle. It was pure coincidence, as the Shuttle was originally scheduled to fly in 1979, but delay after delay, even up to the […]
The year was 1961. The Cold war was at it’s peak intensity, and both the Soviet Union and the United States were rushing to prove their technological superiority by putting a human into space. It was 3 years since Sputnik, since Explorer 1, and in that time both United States and Soviet booster, life support, […]
The 1980’s looked to be a new era for NASA, and space travel on a whole. After the close of the Apollo program, the United States focused its resources towards a new, reusable spacecraft, to act as a space truck to launch satellites, to carry on scientific research and to eventually build a new space […]
Let’s go back in time 50 years, to January, 1966. It was the middle of the space race, and the United States was halfway through it’s record-setting Gemini Program. After trailing behind the Russians for 8 years, since the launch of Sputnik in 1957, all the way to first Extra-Vehicular Activity on Voskhod 2, in […]