A Place To Vent: Hostile Space, Version 2

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 …
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Going Back To My Roots, Positive Blogging, And More – An Update

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 …
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Soyuz MS-09 Launch And Docking With The International Space Station

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 …
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Beautiful Video Of The Progress MS-09 Soyuz Rollout

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 …
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Coming Soon: An American Look At The BBC Computer Literacy Project

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 …
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Angry Video Game Nerd Episode 37: Dragon’s Lair – Episode Review

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 …
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Happy 4th Of July – 2018 Rocket Launch Edition

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 …
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What’s Coming For July 2018 On Xadara

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 …
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July 2018 Xbox Live Games With Gold

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 …
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For Me, Toys-R-Us Died Today

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 …
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15 Hours Of Site Downtime – What The Hell Happened?

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 …
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WordPress Doesn’t Make It Easy Sometimes

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. …
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Skylab: The First 40 Days – 1973 NASA Film

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 …
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Rosetta’s Final Images From Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko – ESA Video

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 …
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