Last night I realized that I can’t really enjoy space, rocketry, and all that much anymore. At least, not right now. Over the past year and a half, I’ve begun to notice that things are just terrible in that scene, and they shouldn’t be, and it’s really started to take its toll on me. I’ve […]
It’s the evening of December 21st, 2017 as I type this. We have effectively 9 days left of 2018, and I still have quite a bit to write about before the year is out. I’ve mentioned before about the massive backlog of things I’ve been wanting to cover. Old subjects that are lost, things that […]
Click here for Part 1. On September 27th, 2016, SpaceX uploaded a video showing what their upcoming super-heavy launch vehicle plans were – the Interplanetary Transport System. This massive booster was going to launch a Mars bound vehicle into Earth orbit. The actual Mars bound ship would insert itself into orbit, with the ITS booster […]
A few days ago, Soyuz MS-05 made a safe landing back on Earth, freeing up space on the station for the Expedition 54-55 crew of Anton Shkaplerov, Scott Tingle, and Norishige Kanai. This was an early morning launch here in the US, but it was mid-day at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan – the perfect time […]
So a little update since we’re about halfway through my “Cult of SpaceX” article series. Right now, I’m still slightly behind where I want to be. Ideally, I want to have everything I need to say regarding SpaceX and its fanbase done before January, so I never have to address it again. Now, you certainly […]
After several delays, the final CRS flight of 2017, CRS-13, launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 40 for a standard cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. This mission was a somewhat critical one – after the delay of the mysterious Zuma payload, SpaceX basically hasn’t […]
Today NASA released a nice little video simulation of what it would be like to enter Jupiter’s Great Red Spot – a massive storm, larger than the Earth, that has been raging on the planet for at least 300 years! Incidentally, Jupiter is probably my favorite planet in the solar system – As a kid […]
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 […]
In a bit of space news that nearly made me tear up, it looks like NASA JPL has been able to successfully fire a thruster system on Voyager 1 that hasn’t been used since 1980! These small rocket motors, designed to fire in long-duration burns for course correction, will be used in upcoming years to […]