Here we have quite the interesting little bit of space history – the pilot of a series which was intended to follow every Apollo mission, but was cut short due to the perception of a “conflict of interests” between sponsors of the program itself and the television studio behinc it, KCET out of Los Angeles. […]
Haven’t we been down this road before? Didn’t I already do a 60th Birthday post for NASA earlier this year? Yes, yes I did. However, that post was for the July 29th, 1958 formation of NASA as an agency, the signing of the National Aeronautics and Space Act. In the 2 months following that date in 1958, […]
Well, the past few days have shown activity on this site that hasn’t been seen in quite a while – at least, not since the 45th anniversary of the launch and first crewed mission of Skylab, and before that it had been late last year when Xadara had been this active. After taking yet another […]
Some of you might have noticed that I had to basically re-publish my article earlier on the NASA film “Skylab – The First 40 Days.” This was due to WordPress, the blogging software used on Xadara, being a bit of a pain in the ass due to me having to edit a few things around. […]
May 2018 proved to be quite a productive month for me and my blogging – 29 articles, more than I’ve done since January. I guess I’m getting back into the swing of things. Of course, the 45th anniversary of the launch of Skylab helped with that, giving me a set of articles to write about […]
The past week, before its demise in the atmosphere over the South Pacific Ocean, Tiangong-1 was, naturally, the subject of quite a bit of news coverage. Of course, that meant commentary from the peanut gallery, as they say – everyone decided to toss out a comment, or a question. While some were intelligent, many just […]
Something I like about the Internet is how quickly people will update you when information is out of date or incorrect. In this case, I have been following what sources I could on Tiangong-1 when someone on twitter alerted me that it had already been confirmed to have re-entered, in this case, at 5:16PM Pacific […]
Forgive me for the title – I needed something that wasn’t the same “Tiangong-1 Will Crash Into Earth” article title that every other place covering this seems to be using. The statement is true, though. For whatever reason, contact and control of Tiangong-1 was lost in early 2016, and over the past year and a […]
2017 marks 50 years since the first flight of the Saturn V rocket, the booster which not only helped put humans on the Moon (6 times) but also put America’s first (and only) space station, Skylab, into orbit. In use for only 6 years, the Saturn V launched a total of 13 times, performing it’s […]
February 21st, 1967 was the original planned launch day for the Apollo 1 mission. Of course, we all know the fire on January 27th put a grinding halt on the Apollo program until the problems that caused the death of the crew could be isolated and solved An American wouldn’t fly in space again until […]
As mentioned in the previous article, the Gemini Project, NASA’s 2nd manned space program, ended on November 15th, 1966. The 10 manned missions over 2 years proved that humans could do everything needed in space to make a successful flight to the Moon. All that would be left would be to prove out the Apollo […]
A few days ago China launched a crewed mission to it’s newest space station, Tiangong 2. The crew has since successfully docked and are, as far as reports indicate, having a perfectly normal mission on board the orbital laboratory. Obviously in reading this you know that they are space stations, sure, but just what are […]
48 Years ago today, Apollo 7 launched on the first manned flight of the Apollo Program, and the first manned flight on a Saturn 1B rocket. This mission, a planned 2 week stay in orbit testing the Apollo Command / Service Module system with a crew, was the mission originally planned for Apollo 1. 18 […]
On October 11th, 1971, the worlds first Space Station, Salyut 1, burned up on reentry over the Pacific ocean after just 175 days in orbit, and 2 crewed missions to the station. It was the first in a long series of Salyut Stations, a design heritage that would span all the way to the Mir […]
If you’re going to the moon, you’re going to need a rocket. A big one. Actually, scratch that, you’re going to need several rockets of varying types, uses, and fuels. This film, produced during the late stages of the design and testing of the rocket systems of the Saturn V and the Apollo Command, Service, […]