If you ever wanted to see and hear a complete space flight, YouTube user LunarModule5 has you covered: One of his hobbies is to compile together actual audio and video of missions, combined with simulator produced visuals and some minor editing into complete, comprehensive overviews of entire flights. Mercury-Atlas 6 is one such mission. The […]
What launch anniversary would be complete without the requisite NASA film from the era about the mission. In this case, this hour long video on Mercury-Atlas 6, John Glenn’s historic first Earth orbit by an American in the Friendship 7 spacecraft. 55 Years Ago: The Flight Of Friendship 7 As I said, this is an […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
On the tail end of January each year, NASA does its “Day of Remembrance” where they honor the astronauts who have died not just in active missions but also in training accidents, tests, or other situations. Of course, the heavy focus is spent on 3 particular missions: Apollo 1, STS-51L, and STS-107. Apollo 1, as […]
This video, which was shared in my post last year about Challenger, details the events of the disaster. It explains the root causes of the disaster and takes an extremely detailed look at the 73 second flight of Challenger, the development of the fire plume in the right SRB, and the eventual disintegration of the […]
News spread rather quickly following the fire of Apollo 1. This was back when news really focused on telling the story, rather than on what ratings it will bring in – certainly a different time in media. In any case, many news reports, or snippets from such, are available online. Here are a few more […]
Ad Astra Per Aspera “A rough road leads to the stars” 6:31 PM Eastern Time, January 27th, 1967 This post was shared at 5:31 PM on January 27th, 2017, exactly 50 years to the instant from when the fire happened. It was originally set to share via social media, but didn’t for some reason.
This is a day I’ve been thinking about for many years now, as I rekindled my love of space flight and its history – The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, and event which nearly killed the Apollo program, but at the same time caused such improvements to the spacecraft that it may have […]
January 27th, 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, an event I’ve written about more than any other single event on this site. For the past 50 years, since the disaster, NASA has pretty much buried it. Unlike Challenger and Columbia, which occurred in 1986 and 2003 respectively, the 1967 deaths of […]
NASA pushed out quite a few videos following the death of John Glenn. The other day I shared some video of the launch of STS-95, Glenn’s 1998 return to space. There was one video I found during the planning of that article, though, that I didn’t share due to its length, and thought more worthwhile […]
Normally, following an event like the death of John Glenn, a blogger like me would share video of his Mercury flight. It is, of course, what he was most famous for, being the first American to orbit the Earth back in 1962. My personal experience with John Glenn, however, is a bit more unique – […]