At the beginning of 2018, I set up a second blog here on Xadara, as a direct side effect to me feeling conflicted, shall we say, about discussing my more serious and critical opinions on certain current aspects of space and rocketry. That was, at least, the idea, and I quickly decided I didn’t need […]
It happened again. Much like I discussed back in December and January, I had another situation where the urge to write about something current actually inhibited my ability to work on this site. However, this time, I was able to think through the situation more clearly and came up with the most obvious of things […]
I’m only a month behind on covering this one, but I thought it might be nice with the recent sharing of the rollout of Progress MS-09 to share the launch and docking of Soyuz MS-09, since I missed covering it on time last month. Soyuz MS-09 launched on June 6th, 2018, carrying Sergey Prokopyev, Alexander […]
I absolutely love the look of R-7 derived rockets – Soyuz, Molinya, Vostok, Voskhod, all of them look amazing to me. To think this is one of the oldest designs still in use – over 60 years old – and the core design is, quite literally, a converted nuclear missile, is something else. It’s a […]
The 1980’s was an amazing time for computer technology – this was the time frame the concept of the microcomputer came into its own, bringing the ability to own a fully functional computer system into the average home. Computers however are strange machines, compared to what we normally have around our houses. Everything else we […]
Dragons Lair was an amazing game for its day. At least, an impressive one, anyway, for appearances, if not for gameplay. It used a LaserDisc system to play video clips that the player would react to, making decisions to progress in the game. Think “Quick Time Events” in games like God of War, Shenmue, and […]
Yeah, I know it’s late when I’m writing this (9 P.M. my time) but I figured, hey, why not wish my readers a happy 4th. Right now I’m sure you’re partying in one way or another right now, that is, if you’re in the United States. Hope you’re all being safe! If you’re reading this […]
When you get to the basics of it, a blog is basically a public journal – depending on the subject matter and the author, it can be literally as mundane as a persons day to day life, to something as deep and serious as ones physical and mental health, to anything (and I mean anything) […]
June went by quicker than I thought it would. I also didn’t get as much gaming content out as I expected – I kind of touched on what I wanted to about E3 and then went on about my days. A part of me thinks I should avoid E3 all together next year but at […]
Well, it was a good couple of months, but it looks like Microsoft has gotten back to a less-than-stellar lineup of games for Games with Gold the past few months, and July looks to be no exception – or so it would seem at a glance, at least. Let’s take a look. Starting off on […]
Officially, all Toys-R-Us stores in the United States close Friday, June 29th, 2018. What seems like a large portion of them, though, shut down today, the 28th, if not earlier depending on how quickly their merchandise sold out. For me, personally, the end came today when the store I not only worked at for the […]
I woke up this morning hoping to get an article out before my day gets busy, since I had the time and nothing else planned. I figured I would get something simple up to fill the gaps between those multi-article days. I loaded up the website only to discover nothing. Well, nothing but a 500 […]
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. […]
Yesterday, June 22nd, marked the 45th anniversary of the end of the Skylab 2 mission, a 28 day stay on America’s first (and so far, only) space station. As I covered extensively in May, Skylab was heavily damaged during its launch, and the Skylab 2 mission had to be delayed for 10 days while a […]
Here we have a rather beautiful video the European Space Agency published today, showing a montage of the final images from the Rosetta mission, an orbiter – lander combination which operated on / around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for 12 years, from 2004 to 2016. These images are from the ending of the mission as Rosetta began […]