America sent monkeys into space before men. But Apollo sent men, not monkeys, to the moon.
According to a report late last year, Russia plans to send a monkey on a 520 day round trip flight to Mars. The Russians believe that the radiation would make such a trip by a human currently inadvisable.
The monkey would [...]
I don’t know for sure if this much is true…but there’s a report that the band Spandau Ballet will perform on a Virgin Galactic flight in 2012. My sources are blogs…and I don’t know what their sources are…so this is possible, but uncertain.
In any case, one lucky passenger should be able to see the band [...]
I had a correspondence with H. D. McDaniel, a man who worked at the Cape in the early sixties and beyond. He worked in “Launch Sequencing” which is monitoring preparations and activities up to (and including) the launch of a space vehicle.
This is a pretty obscure area. Even as a space buff, I really pay [...]
As any space buff knows, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth in February 1962, when he piloted the Friendship 7 spacecraft on a 3 -orbit mission.
Fifty years later, a group called “Americans in Orbit – 50 Years” plans to celebrate with a repeat of that historic flight. They intend to build [...]
In the late 1950s and 1960s, the Soviet Union performed one incredible feat after another in space. But they had a serious problem with Venus.
From February 1961 through November 1965, the Soviet Union tried a dozen times to get a probe to send data from Venus. Only three got there; they were called Venera 1, [...]
Right now, it’s only a study. And, considering the cost—and the difficulty these days of coming up with big money—it may never be built.
But Europe is looking at developing its own manned spaceflight capabilities. Currently, European astronauts can only get into space by hitching a ride on American or Russian spacecraft. (The Chinese fly their [...]
The biggest share of stimulus money awarded by NASA for a private spacecraft went to Sierra Nevada Corporation…which is developing Dream Chaser to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.
The craft doesn’t exist yet (except as a full-scale mockup, pictured above), but the company claims it will be ready to go in 2014.
The $20 million [...]
The Saints are currently trailing in the Super Bowl. But they won the coin toss. And the coin, last November, was orbiting the earth aboard the shuttle Atlantis.
Jeff Williams, one of the astronauts pictured flipping the coin, is currently aboard the International Space Station. I guess Williams won the toss…
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NASA and GM are developing Robonauts, robot astronauts that can work alongside their human counterparts in space. The latest version, Robonaut2 (or R2) is faster and more dexterous than his predecessor.
In addition to NASA and GM, Oceaneering Space Systems of Houston participated in developing the advanced space robot. Oceaneering has previously won the contract to [...]
Iran launched a spacecraft today that put a rat, two turtles and some worms into space. Piecing together coverage from several sources, it seems that the craft went into sub-orbital space and then returned to earth. The animalnauts, we are told, are fine.
Of course, coverage of any Iranian space mission is understandably overshadowed by the [...]
Now that the United States has abandoned manned space flight, and will scrap its Constellation program, the new race for the moon has two players: China and India.
China—with a bigger budget and a few manned flights under its belt—has to be considered the favorite. That said, India has good engineers and seems determined to plow [...]
The first president Bush offered a vision for Americans to returnto the moon. (And this was a guy who said he wasn’t good at “the vision thing”.)
The second president Bush offered a similar vision twenty years (or so) later.
Both Bushes offered minimal budget to keep their visions alive.
Now, that will end. America will abandon plans [...]
As NASA’s next manned spacecraft seems destined to be mothballed, SpaceX—a private space company—prepares to ready its Falcon 9 rocket for a first flight.
If the United States decides to privatize manned spaceflight—and that seems to be the Obama administration’s plan—then post-Shuttle astronauts may ride aboard a Falcon 9.
All the pieces of the Falcon 9 have [...]
According to the New York Times, the Obama administration’s new budget and plan for NASA outsources manned spaceflight to private companies.
The guys who brought us Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the space shuttle are done designing rockets and spacecraft.
It somehow seems appropriate for this news to come out this last week of January. Because this time [...]
Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in the Apollo 1 fire 43 years ago today. I can’t help but think that Gus, in particular, would be very unhappy with the state of America’s space program today.
A new committee to plan “the future” of the space program is starting. Previously, another committee put us [...]
I just added myself to the nearly 23,000 followers of T.J. Creamer, an astronaut currently aboard the International Space Station. This morning, Creamer became the first person to live “tweet” from space. His historic tweet said “Hello Twitterverse!”
I’m also following two of his crew mates.
Some years back, I received (forwarded to me) an email from [...]
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