“We have your satellite. If you want it back send 20 billion in Martian money. No funny business or you will never see it again.”
– A joke reportedly written on a wall in a hall at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, California, after losing contact with the Mars Polar Lander in December 1999.
At the end of the 20th century, the United States government was already set to developing a reusable space plane to replace the aging Space Shuttle program. The resulting launch vehicle would be able to launch satellites into orbit as 1/10th of the cost, while also having the ability to carry passengers up. Funded by … Read More “VentureStar, aka X-33 (Cancelled in 2001)” »
“It is conceivable that some great unexpected mass of matter should presently rush upon us out of space, whirl sun and planets aside like dead leaves before the breeze, and collide with and utterly destroy every spark of life upon this earth… It is conceivable, too, that some pestilence may presently appear, some new disease, … Read More “Quote by H. G. Wells” »
About a month ago, we covered Mars One, the organisation founded by Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp that is planning to have people settle on Mars. Interestingly, their main source of income for this enterprise will be a reality-TV program about those colonists… fast forward to this week, and here we have it: Virgin Galactic is … Read More “Virgin Galactic Teams Up With TV Show” »
The 4th of October saw two notable events happening in close succession. On that Friday in 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite, and by many considered to be the start of the space race between the two super powers at the time, the Soviet Union and the United States. … Read More “Today In History – October 4” »
Today 55 years ago, NASA formally opened for business on Oct. 1, 1958. You can read more about it here. Congratulations!
Following from Hubble’s story in part two, the year is 1995 and in June of that year space shuttle Atlantis lifts off. It’s mission: to dock with MIR, the Russian space station that by some is seen as the predecessor to the International Space Station. This event led to what was at the time the … Read More “The Space Shuttle (1981 – 2011) – Part 3” »
“There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”
– Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1952 – 2001)
With Bob Geldof just having announced that he too signed up to travel into space as a passenger on a commercial space flight, let’s have a look at a small portion of this eclectic mix of celebrities, scientists, and entrepeneurs who have taken the same leap of faith already and dug deep into their pockets for … Read More “Celebrities Becoming Astronauts” »
