On February 20th, 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in his Mercury capsule, Friendship 7. It was a short, 3 orbit mission, but regardless, an American had orbited the Earth and returned safely, which was a key goal of Project Mercury from the get-go. Of course, Glenn wasn’t the first …
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Author:Chris
Coming Soon: Even Better Site Organization
Right now on Xadara, if you want to find a particular article, or find what, if anything, I have written about something there are a few ways to do so which are common to all blogs – you can look through the categories, covering broad types of posts, you can check tags to see what …
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SpaceX CRS-10 Launch Webcasts
As always for any SpaceX launch, here are both the technical and hosted webcasts. For this launch I mainly watched the actual NASA feed, as it felt more fitting for the launch from pad 39. I should have stuck with the SpaceX feed though as it had better video and the added telemetry data that …
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CRS-10 Launch Scrubbed Due To Thrust Vector Control Issues – What That Means
Todays launch of the Falcon 9 carrying the Dragon spacecraft for the CRS-10 mission was scrubbed until tomorrow, February 19th. The reason? An issue with Thrust Vector Control (VTC for short) on the 2nd stage. Reports are early, so I don’t have details, but this seems to have been the key issue for the scrub, …
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A Good Example Of Why Sears Is Failing
Ah Sears. For most Americans, when you think of home appliances or tools, Sears invariably comes to mind. The over century old company used to be the ultimate in providing everything you would need, and then some. Today, it’s nothing more than a shell of its former self, amazingly owned by K-Mart of all companies, …
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Coming Soon – Angry Video Game Nerd Episode Reviews
So, in my drive to constantly provide my opinion (for what it’s worth) on everything I like (or don’t like, in some cases) I’ve had the crazy idea to review every single Angry Video Game Nerd episode. That’s right, every single one. Why? Well, why not? Why not detail the evolution of the show, and …
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SpaceX CRS-10 – The First Launch From LC-39 In 5 Years
Saturday, February 18th, 2017, will mark the first launch in 5 years from Kennedy Space Center LC-39. Pad 39A last saw usage for the final launch of the Space Shuttle Program, STS-135, in 2011, and since then has been only slightly modified from its shuttle configuration to accommodate the future SpaceX Commercial Crew Missions to …
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Tortoise vs Hare Live Race – The Results May Surprise You
Now for something completely different and rather amusing, I bring you something quite random I found out about only towards the tail end of it happening: The Facebook page Super Deluxe had a live race between a Tortoise and a Hare, as per the classic story. https://www.facebook.com/superdeluxevideo/videos/417564681921421/ It looks like all the two had to …
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India Launches 104 Satellites In One Record-Breaking Launch
Yesterday, Feburary 15th 2017 (In India, still the 14th here in the States), The Indian Space Research Agency (ISRO) successfully launched 104 satellites using one booster as part of their PSLV-C37 mission. The mission was launched into a polar orbit, with the primary payload being the CartoSat-2D Earth observation satellite. 103 micro-satellites, 3 of which …
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Upcoming Pokemon Go Update Adds New Features And 80 Pokemon From Gold And Silver
Ah, Pokemon Go – the game that took over last summer and then, oddly enough, quickly faded away. At the time, I was on a Windows Phone device, so I didn’t get the chance to experience it. Recently, I had to get a new phone and decided to give Android another try. This allowed me …
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Rumor: NES Classic Edition Production Ending?
Here we go again! Popping up today was a rumor that Nintendo is ending production on the NES Classic Edition in the upcoming months. Now, back in early January or so, I had said that the NES Classic was a holiday only item, information that was given to me by a reliable source – this …
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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 …
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The Computer Chronicles – Intel 386 – The Fast Lane (1987)
Back in 1987, computer processors were going through somewhat of a major evolution. While software was still stuck in the land of 16-bit, the Intel x86 series processors were reaching 32bit performance. In the case of the Intel 386, there wasn’t even any software for it – the raw speed alone was enough for people …
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Fixing The Alignment On My Gaming TV
I’m somewhat of a purist when it comes to classic gaming. In particular, when you get to older, pre-HDMI game consoles like the Super Nintendo, the Sega Genesis, or even the Playstation 2 and Wii, I connect those consoles only to an old CRT TV. You know, the big heavy TV’s most everyone above the …
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GameStop “Circle of Life” Horror Stories
Back on the subject of everyone’s favourite video game store, GameStop, and their insane Circle of Life program, Rich of Review Tech USA put up a video the other day where he shares a few stories from current and former GameStop employess (at least, self reputed employees but there is no reason not to trust …
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