Fifty years ago today, a small, two-man vessel landed on the surface of the Moon. The great effort behind this feat began as a political stunt by the United States to outshine its perceived rival, the Soviet Union. The end result was one of the truly transcendent moments in human history. Nothing like it had happened before.
And for fifty years, ( Read more... )

Forty-seven years ago on this day mankind set foot upon another world for the first time in history. A feat not repeated in the last 44 years, since the landing of Apollo 17.

Sigh. I know probes are safer, and can provide much the same data, and are much less expensive, but still...

Because making james_nicoll cry is a hobby.

Poll And if you believe any of these I've got a crystal tower on the Moon to sell.

Okay, follow along with me.

The Problem: Mars is a crappy planet to try and land on. The atmosphere is too thin to aerobrake during re-entry, you need huge parachute, but there's just enough air to burn anything coming down to crisp if they don't have a heat shield. At one ton the Curiosity rover is the biggest thing we've been able to land. ( Read more... )

A not terribly complete list ( Read more... )

One of james_nicoll's favorite spaceflight canards, right after He3 mining. Enjoy a review of a book advocating loosening NASA safety standards, complete with the book's author arguing with detractors in the comments.

For Hellhound: "Too many farts"

* * *

05/23/15
TO: Mission Control, Houston
FROM: Mission Commander, ISS
CC: Mission Control, Star City
SUBJECT: Modification to scheduled Progress supply flight ( Read more... )

1. I wonder if there's any way to get jimhines to do his take on the Captive of the Red Vixen cover. Likely as possible as james-nicoll reviewing it, but it's worth requesting for the next charity shoot he does ( Read more... )

Sir Arthur C. Clarke's original article that defined the modern communications satellite.

Here's the problem. No one is going to argue that the Apollo 11 landing site is probably one of the most historic locations in human history. Which means to preserve those historic footprints the United States is going to have exercise some kind of authority over the site in order to curate and preserve it. Unfortunately, that's projecting national ( Read more... )