With Ares/Orion and NASA’s Constellation program apparently on the ropes, that raises a question. Who will be the next person to approach the moon? And when?
There are a number of possibilities. For example, China is methodically expanding it’s manned space flight capabilities. And they’ve announced plans to get people to the moon. But they’ve had [...]

The media have been describing it as raising serious questions about the reliability of the Soyuz spacecraft, but I consider today’s manual docking with the International Space Station to be a triumph.
There was, indeed, a problem. The automatic docking system failed, and an actual human being—a cosmonaut—performed a successful docking manually.
Man and machine
To me, that’s [...]

America’s second manned space program, the Gemini project, originally planned to descend onto land—not water. But the plan didn’t pan out.
Gemini was to be attached to a paraglider, giving a controlled landing. This would be a big improvement over the earlier Mercury project. There would be no need for aircraft carriers and helicopters to recover [...]

When the shuttle fails, astronauts are in big trouble. There’s no way to get away from a failing vehicle and safely return to the earth. The shuttle MUST not fail for astronauts to survive.
Earlier escape systems
Apollo was different. Apollo had an abort system that could carry astronauts away from an exploding Saturn rocket…albeit on a [...]

The first space walk—by Alexi Leonov in March 1965—and the first American space walk, by Ed White a few months later are pretty well-known. They’re firsts, and people were paying attention. But some amazing space walks are largely forgotten. Here are 3.
1. Al Worden takes a deep space walk. August 1971.
Well, since his crew mates [...]

Lawrence Mendler died on September 15, 2008. You’ve never heard of him.
He fought in World War II. Miraculously survived when a bullet was deflected by his helmet. The helmet was destroyed. Years later, Mr. Mendler worked for Seeburg, a company that made juke boxes.
But just before that, he worked for RCA…and on America’s early space [...]