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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Tag:NASA
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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48 Years Ago: The Launch Of Apollo 11
July 16th, 1969, the day 48 years ago that a Saturn V rocket launched carrying Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin into Earth orbit, and then beyond it towards the first attempted landing on the Moon. That landing of course would be successful on July 20th, 1969. Give that it’s a Sunday and an …
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Project Mercury Overview – 1960 NASA Film
Project Mercury was the United States first manned space flight program. This film gives a good overview of the Mercurty Spacecraft, it’s launch into orbit on an Atlas Missile, and the training of the Mercury 7 Astronauts for the stresses and demanding requirements of space flight. As it would happen, Project Mercury would have 6 …
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What I Like About SpaceX
With me about to go into detail on the phenomena I call “The Cult of SpaceX” I thought it would serve well to express upfront just what I do actually like about SpaceX, which is quite a bit. In fact, if I didn’t like something about SpaceX the more hostile elements of its fanbase wouldn’t …
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The Launch Of STS-135
6 Years ago today, the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched on STS-135, the final mission of the Space Shuttle program. I wrote an entry last year, but incidentally, for whatever reason, didn’t include launch video. No idea why, but I’m rectifying that now. The Final Liftoff of Atlantis The Space Shuttle is the most-flown American manned …
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Here’s Some Random Rocket Launches – Have A Great 4th Of July!
It’s the 4th of July tomorrow and, being quite honest, I had nothing quite planned to write today or tomorrow. However, to keep up with the spirit of Xadara, my love of space, and in a classic “Happy Birthday America” bit of patriotism, I’ve decided to just flood you with some random rocket launches in …
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SpaceX Successfully Launches BulgariaSat-1 And Re-flies Another Falcon 9 1st Stage
Same stuff, different day at SpaceX today with yet another launch from Pad 39A, this time of Bulgaria’s 1st satellite, BulgariaSat 1, to geosynchronous orbit. Yep, another communications satellite, but as mentioned, this is the 1st satellite made by Bulgaria, so that’s special: I hope it works out well for them and their needs! The …
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Expedition 51 Returns From The International Space Station
While I’m quite apt to cover launches of missions to the International Space Station, I often times don’t address the fact that 6 months later the Space Station crews return home in the Soyuz craft that took them up there to begin with. Today, the crew of Expedition 51, Peggy Whitson, Oleg Novitskiy and Thomas …
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48 Years Ago: The Launch of Apollo 10
On May 18th, 1969, John Young, Tom Stafford, and Gene Cernan began an 8 day mission that would act as a “dress rehearsal” for the planned manned landing on the Moon of Apollo 11. This flight was the 2nd of 4 that would be launched in 1969, and would serve to test the Lunar Module …
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SpaceX Launches Its Heaviest Payload Yet – Inmarsat-5
Yesterday evening SpaceX launched Inmarsat-5 F4, the heaviest payload yet flown on a Falcon 9. Inmarsat-5 is yet another communications satellite, this one intended to provide increased network connectivity over Europe (to put it extremely simply). The vehicle was a Falcon 9 full thrust, and due to the record weight of the payload (for Falcon …
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