Last night I realized that I can’t really enjoy space, rocketry, and all that much anymore. At least, not right now. Over the past year and a half, I’ve begun to notice that things are just terrible in that scene, and they shouldn’t be, and it’s really started to take its toll on me. I’ve …
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Category:Science
Finishing Off The Year: A Love / Hate Relationship With Space
It’s the evening of December 21st, 2017 as I type this. We have effectively 9 days left of 2018, and I still have quite a bit to write about before the year is out. I’ve mentioned before about the massive backlog of things I’ve been wanting to cover. Old subjects that are lost, things that …
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SpaceX Shows The First Photos Of The Falcon Heavy
Today SpaceX showed off the assembled Falcon Heavy in a set of 3 photos, showing it from above (on it’s side, really) on down to the engines themselves – our first look at the actual rocket, rather than a mockup. Of course, all it is is 3 Falcon 9 1st stages strapped together, but it’s …
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I Used To Love SpaceX… And Then Things Changed. (Part 2)
Click here for Part 1. On September 27th, 2016, SpaceX uploaded a video showing what their upcoming super-heavy launch vehicle plans were – the Interplanetary Transport System. This massive booster was going to launch a Mars bound vehicle into Earth orbit. The actual Mars bound ship would insert itself into orbit, with the ITS booster …
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I Used To Love SpaceX… And Then Things Changed. (Part 1)
Something I noticed the other day when scouring older articles of mine about SpaceX is that I used to love the company, and what they do. No, seriously, I used to seriously talk just like the very fans I deride now, right down to even some of the same phrasings about how watching them land …
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Soyuz MS-07 Successfully Launches Towards The International Space Station
A few days ago, Soyuz MS-05 made a safe landing back on Earth, freeing up space on the station for the Expedition 54-55 crew of Anton Shkaplerov, Scott Tingle, and Norishige Kanai. This was an early morning launch here in the US, but it was mid-day at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan – the perfect time …
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I Really Need To Finish Up That SpaceX Article Series
So a little update since we’re about halfway through my “Cult of SpaceX” article series. Right now, I’m still slightly behind where I want to be. Ideally, I want to have everything I need to say regarding SpaceX and its fanbase done before January, so I never have to address it again. Now, you certainly …
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CRS-13 Is Successfully Launched To The International Space Station
After several delays, the final CRS flight of 2017, CRS-13, launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 40 for a standard cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. This mission was a somewhat critical one – after the delay of the mysterious Zuma payload, SpaceX basically hasn’t …
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Why “Flight Proven” Means Nothing To Me
The primary focus that SpaceX has in its endeavours is in re-usability of launch vehicles. The Falcon 9, in current form, is a launch vehicle in which the first stage is capable of making a controlled landing back at the launch site, or on a drone ship in the ocean (as launch needs permit) and …
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The Great Red Spot Plunge
Today NASA released a nice little video simulation of what it would be like to enter Jupiter’s Great Red Spot – a massive storm, larger than the Earth, that has been raging on the planet for at least 300 years! Incidentally, Jupiter is probably my favorite planet in the solar system – As a kid …
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SpaceX Successfully Static-Fires A Falcon 9 At Launch Complex 40
I wouldn’t normally cover a test firing of a Falcon 9 stage, but this one is kind of important – it marks the first use of Launch Complex 40 since the September 2016 explosion of a Falcon 9 booster destroyed the launch facility. Going back to that explosion, it happened during the same kind of …
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45 Years Ago, The Launch Of Apollo 17
Early in the morning of December 7th, 1972, the final Apollo mission to the Moon, Apollo 17, launched from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center carrying Gene Cernan, Ron Evans, Harrison Schmitt to the Taurus–Littrow lunar valley. Apollo 17’s landing location and planned launch time dictated the first night launch of any manned American …
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SpaceX Scheduling Madness
This is going to be interesting – a two-fold article. On one half, I have a bit more to say about what upcoming SpaceX content I have coming, and on the other half, I feel it worth discussing the actual current scheduling that SpaceX is launching on in the upcoming months. On my end, as …
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What I Mean When Discuss The “Cult Of SpaceX”
Here we go, the beginning of the articles I’ve been dreading writing for probably a year now. These are things I feel need to be said and no, I don’t think I’m wrong in what I say – opinions can neither be right nor wrong, after all, but I do feel the concept presented – …
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Voyager 1 Fires Thrusters That Haven’t Been Used In 37 Years!
In a bit of space news that nearly made me tear up, it looks like NASA JPL has been able to successfully fire a thruster system on Voyager 1 that hasn’t been used since 1980! These small rocket motors, designed to fire in long-duration burns for course correction, will be used in upcoming years to …
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