Category: History

The Troubles of a Merchant and How to Stop Them – 1917 N.C.R Promotional Film

YouTube is full of interesting historic films of all types. I’ve been on quite the binge of old 1950’s and earlier informational films (I have no idea why, I’ve just been watching a bunch of them) and one popped up in my feed from 1917 – A film produced by NCR, one of the worlds […]

The Launch Of Progress MS-05 And The Final Soyuz-U Booster

February 22nd, 2017 marked the end of an era: after 43 years, the final Soyuz-U vehicle launched from Pad 1/5, or “Gagarins Start” at Baikonour Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, sending the Progress 66 (Internally known as Progress MS-05) supply vehicle to the International Space Station. The Soyuz-U Booster variant is the most flown rocket configuration in history, […]

The Full Mission Of Friendship 7

If you ever wanted to see and hear a complete space flight, YouTube user LunarModule5 has you covered: One of his hobbies is to compile together actual audio and video of missions, combined with simulator produced visuals and some minor editing into complete, comprehensive overviews of entire flights. Mercury-Atlas 6 is one such mission. The […]

Nuclear Thermal Rockets: Nuclear Propulsion in Space – 1968 NASA / AEC Film

Nuclear Rockets. They still sound futuristic even today. Interestingly enough, they were under active research in the late 50’s and early 60’s as part of the then-planned natural progression of both manned and unmanned space flight. Nuclear rocketry doesn’t operate the way the common man would normally think; it doesn’t ignite its fuel, but instead […]

Television in the Soviet Union in 1986

Last week I was watching some videos  receiving far-away TV transmission when this video was recommended by YouTube – it’s a 1986 American public access show which covers Soviet state TV recorded over 1985 and 1986 – this includes comedy programs, news (including an early Chernobyl report), game shows,special reports on their space program, and […]

NASA Day Of Remembrance

On the tail end of January each year,  NASA does its “Day of Remembrance” where they honor the astronauts who have died not just in active missions but also in training accidents, tests, or other situations. Of course, the heavy focus is spent on 3 particular missions: Apollo 1, STS-51L, and STS-107. Apollo 1, as […]

Apollo 1 News Reports

News spread rather quickly following the fire of Apollo 1. This was back when news really focused on telling the story, rather than on what ratings it will bring in – certainly a different time in media. In any case, many news reports, or snippets from such, are available online. Here are a few more […]

Ad Astra Per Aspera

Ad Astra Per Aspera “A rough road leads to the stars” 6:31 PM Eastern Time, January 27th, 1967 This post was shared at 5:31 PM on January 27th, 2017, exactly 50 years to the instant from when the fire happened. It was originally set to share via social media, but didn’t for some reason.

Apollo 1, 50 Years Later

This is a day I’ve been thinking about for many years now, as I rekindled my love of space flight and its history – The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, and event which nearly killed the Apollo program, but at the same time caused such improvements to the spacecraft that it may have […]