Only a few weeks after being removed from its long-term perch in the now closed Astroland in Coney Island, the rocket is reported to be on it’s way back!
A symbol of hope for the future, and installed back in the difficult yet naively hopeful year of 1962…well, can anyone argue that we don’t need it now?
It seems like the shuttle became a lot more fragile in recent years. In the first 25 years or so, the shuttle seemed pretty robust. Now, on almost every launch, foam crashes into the vehicle, possibly causing critical damage. The first job of most shuttle flights, after liftoff, is to inspect itself to see if [...]
During the Mercury space program, the astronuts didn’t like having their spaceflights delayed while chimps got to fly first. And, they really resented the notion that their missions could have been completed by chimps. Nonetheless, Mercury veteran Scott Carpenter (one of only two surviving Mercury astronauts) and Bob Crippen—who flew on the first shuttle mission—visited [...]
When Elon Musk isn’t busy making millions on the internet (as he did with PayPal) or developing electric sports cars (as he is doing with Tesla Motors), he’s working on making spaceflight cheaper. Cheaper, dependable spaceflight seems to be the mission of SpaceX, Mr. Musk’s venture that is developing the Falcon launch vehicle. But spaceflight [...]
