I Got A Vintage 70’s Calculator, And Then It Blew Up!

Not the typical article here on Xadara, but these types of posts will become more common as time passes. I love random gadgets of yesteryear – be it old adding machines and typewriters, to slightly more modern things like computers and other consumer devices of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, there is a charm to …
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Only In Memphis – The “Vegan Cafe Baby Butthole” Story

I seriously wish I was joking about this one. I really do. Yes, this is a serious article, and one that has been delayed by something like 3 weeks now, mostly thanks to the MLGW Hoax earlier in the month; I never did write about this while it was fresh, and by the time I …
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First Landing On The Moon – ABC Apollo 11 Footage Compilation

48 years ago today on July 24th, 1969, Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific ocean after successfully landing on the Moon. This completed the nations commitment to “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth” before the end of the decade, and showed to the world that our combined …
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The Problem With Trendy Science

Yesterday I did my best at trying to explain the concept I call “Trendy Science” – that is, the idea of proposals which sound amazing and pick up interest from the media and the populace, but when examined in detail the proposal just doesn’t hold up. Rather than researching something and figuring out practical applications …
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NASA Saturn S-IV-5 Rocket Testing & Launch – 1964 NASA Informational Film

Here we have a film from the earlier days of Apollo. More correctly, early 1964, after Mercury but before Gemini, we had this historic test of a Saturn 1 vehicle with the first live upper stage. To put this in perspective, when this rocket system, SA-105, was launched and successfully orbited, the S-IV upper stage …
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What Is “Trendy Science”?

The news right now is filled with reports of different companies, in all kinds of fields, announcing new technical marvels that will change the way we live! Hyperloops, Solar Roadways, self filling water bottles and more get thrown in our faces in much the same way that the next big weight loss cure is pushed …
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Elon Musk Says The SpaceX Falcon Heavy May Fail On Its First Flight

The SpaceX Falcon Heavy is a rocked system designed along the same lines as the Falcon 9 booster – in effect, 3 Falcon 9 1st stages strapped together. Of course in practice it’s much more complex than that, but that helps you visualize the idea of the booster – 3 times the initial power to …
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The SpaceX Dragon V2 Crew Vehicle To No Longer Use Propulsive Landing

File this one under “things not going as planned”, SpaceX announced at a recent conference that the planned Crewed Dragon vehicle (also known as Dragon V2) which will be used for SpaceX launched manned missions to the International Space Station and also as part of their planned Mars missions will no longer use propulsive landings …
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Neil Armstrong Narrates The Apollo 11 Moon Landing

This footage, taken from the interview shared in the previous article, is a combination of modern Lunar imagery of the Apollo 11 landing site matched up with the footage from the camera onboard the Apollo 11 Lunar Module. I had previously found the combined videos, but I had not seen until yesterday this version with …
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A 2011 Interview With Neil Armstrong

UPDATE: I’m aware the video is no longer available. I will be looking for an alternateive source. If I do not find one, this article will stay in this state until such a time as I do. 48 Years ago today, on July 20th, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon as …
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Project Apollo Guidance and Navigation – 1968 NASA Apollo Digest

This film is a quick, 6 minute look at the navigation and guidance systems of the Apollo spacecraft. Something I noticed is that the film is dated to 1966, but uses footage from what is clearly the Apollo 6 mission, an unmanned Saturn V launch in April of 1968 – my best guess is this …
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An American Rocket Using Russian Rocket Engines – What’s It Matter?

Let’s deviate away from SpaceX for a moment – let’s talk about United Launch Alliance. United Launch Alliance, or ULA, is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Boeing Defense, Space & Security. Lockheed and Boeing have been involved in rocketry since the the 1950’s, having combined between them over a century of …
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One Alternative To Photobucket – Postimage.org

Nearly a month after Photobucket somewhat wrecked a pretty substantial chunk of the internet by locking hotlinking of images behind a very pricey paywall, users are still searching for alternatives, both common ones you would think of, and obscure ones that may be more fitting of niche uses. I, for one, am going to give postimage.org …
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The Lead Role In Doctor Who Being Played By A Woman?

News circled around the internet pretty quickly yesterday when the BBC announced that the next person to play the titular character of “The Doctor” on the long-running science fiction series “Doctor Who” is *gasp* a woman! In this case, the woman in question is Jodie Whittaker, an actress who, thanks to my lack of caring …
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