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The Longest Flight
As a kid pouring over the Guinness Book of World Records, I was astonished by the record longest flight, which lasted not just a few hours – as I would have guessed – but more than two months! Today, nearly 65 years later, that amazing achievement remains one of aviation’s most enduring records. For over…
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We Are Going
After half a century confined to low-Earth orbit, and as soon as late next year, humans will once again leave Earth and voyage to Moon. The reality of this exciting adventure crystallized earlier this month when NASA announced the diverse and inspiring Artemis II crew: Clockwise from left in the photo below are Christina Koch,…
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Triple EVA
Since the mid 1960s, all space walks or extra-vehicular activities (EVAs) have involved just one or two astronauts — except once. In May 1992, on the STS-49 mission, the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour was attempting to rescue a stranded communications satellite, Intelsat 603. After repeated two-person EVAs failed to capture the satellite, NASA and the…
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GRAVITY and Gravity
In Alfonso Cuarón‘s Oscar-winning 2013 movie GRAVITY, actress Sandra Bullock‘s Dr. Ryan Stone makes an emergency entrance into an abruptly abandoned International Space Station. This month, European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti recreated this scene onboard the space station, as in the photograph below, with the movie playing on the ISS Viewscreen. In GRAVITY, “gravity” refers…
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Shackleton’s Valiant Voyage
Although a child of the Apollo program, I was gripped by Alfred Lansing‘s 1962 book Shackleton’s Valiant Voyage, a great tale of endurance, leadership, and survival and an inspiring true story from the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. In the 1910s, shortly after Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott separately reached the south pole, Ernest Shackleton organized an expedition…
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Punch it, SpaceX
She’s not looking up at the sky; she’s looking down at it. I am excitedly following the Inspiration4 spaceflight and its diverse all-private crew of Jared Isaacman, Sian Proctor, Christopher Sembroski, and Hayley Arceneaux. Orbiting higher than any humans this millennium and carrying the largest window ever flown in space, their Crew Dragon Resilience is providing unprecedented and…
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Dragon Eye
“Resilience rises! Not even gravity contains humanity when we explore as one for all.” My eyes were glued to NASA-TV last weekend as I followed the flight of the SpaceX Dragon “Resilience” to the International Space Station. Ferrying a diverse Crew 1 of Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, and Soichi Noguchi for a six-month…
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Flying Silo
Yesterday, SpaceX successfully flew a full-sized Starship tank-section prototype at its launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas. Standing thirty meters tall without its nosecone, weighing one to two hundred tons with methalox propellant, and made from stainless steel, Starship was powered by a single Raptor engine, the first full-flow staged-combustion engine to fly. Operational Starships…
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Stainless Steel Starship
Welders in a Texas swamp have built a starship. But don’t bet against SpaceX. Starship is a prototype upper stage for a next-generation, fully reusable, two-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle designed to enable the human exploration of the solar system and the colonization of Mars. It’s made from stainless steel. (A little carbon converts iron to hard steel;…
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After the Moonwalk
Iconic is Neil Armstrong’s photograph of Buzz Aldrin during the first moon walk, with Armstrong reflected in Aldrin’s visor. Much less well-known is this pair of photographs taken just after the moon walk. To my eyes, Armstrong seems exhausted but happy; Aldrin seems satisfied … and over his shoulder, almost casually, is a window, and…
Category: Adventure
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Nice post, John! Thanks for writing these. I always enjoy them.
David Smith’s ein stein is an awesome shape!
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Thanks, Mark! I enjoy reading your posts as well.