On July 8th, 2011, 10:26:46 am Central Time, I watched the end of an era. Somehow, I had managed to miss out on the news that the Shuttle program was coming to an end. Maybe my mind had been other places at the time, but I made sure to watch this launch, because it would […]
Tag: space
NROL-37 Launch Highlights And Complete Livestream
Funny how things go, sometimes. The moment I published my previous article on the NROL-37 launch, United Launch Alliance uploaded 2 videos of their own – One being the complete livestream of the mission, and the other being a “Launch Highlights” compilation, capturing the feel of the pre-launch and early boost phases in a very […]
NROL-37 Successfully Launches On A Delta IV Heavy
Ah, the Delta IV Heavy. The most powerful active launch vehicle in the world. While other launch vehicles have surpassed its capacity, few of those actually had successful flights, and regardless of their successes, or lack thereof, none of these top tier boosters are in production anymore. In December 2014, a Delta IV Heavy booster […]
55 Years Ago, the Flight of Freedom 7
May 5th, 1961. 3 Weeks after the successful Soviet flight of Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1, the United States was ready to send it’s first human into space, United States Naval Officer Alan Bartlett Shepard. His flight, designated Mercury-Redstone 3, was intended to prove that a person can survive the stresses associated with the launch […]
First Orbit
In 2011, for the 50th Anniversary of Yuri Gagarins flight in Vostok 1, a film, titled First Orbit, was released which told the story of the flight in an incredibly unique way: from the perspective of Gagarin himself. The International Space Station, having a core of Russion components, orbits in the same inclination as Vostok […]
35 Years Ago, Columbia – The First Space Shuttle Flight
On April 12th, 1981, 20 years to the day from Yuri Gagarin’s history making Vostok 1 flight came the first flight of the Space Transportation System, more commonly known as the Space Shuttle. It was pure coincidence, as the Shuttle was originally scheduled to fly in 1979, but delay after delay, even up to the […]
Worth the Risk
Dawn of Orion
On November 9, 1967, the most powerful rocket in human history, the Saturn V, roared to life for the first time on a mission to not only test the massive launch vehicle, but to also put the Apollo spacecraft through stress tests simulating the effects of atmospheric entry at the high velocities a craft would […]