Category Archives: Adventure

Triple EVA

John F. Lindner February 16, 2023 11:15 PM

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 … Continue reading →

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GRAVITY and Gravity

John F. Lindner June 23, 2022 9:34 AM

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 … Continue reading →

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Shackleton’s Valiant Voyage

John F. Lindner March 9, 2022 2:53 PM

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 … Continue reading →

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Punch it, SpaceX

John F. Lindner September 17, 2021 9:32 PM

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 … Continue reading →

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Dragon Eye

John F. Lindner November 19, 2020 3:06 PM

“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 … Continue reading →

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Flying Silo

John F. Lindner August 5, 2020 8:44 PM

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 … Continue reading →

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Stainless Steel Starship

John F. Lindner September 29, 2019 11:28 AM

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 … Continue reading →

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After the Moonwalk

John F. Lindner August 31, 2019 6:45 PM

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 … Continue reading →

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“Contact Light”

John F. Lindner July 20, 2019 8:05 AM

Our TV is broken, so Aunt Nora invites us to her apartment. (Aunt Nora isn’t really our aunt, but she introduced our parents to each other, so that’s what we call her.) My brother Jim and I lie on the … Continue reading →

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March Meeting — Guest Blog by Katie Shideler ’21

Susan Lehman March 8, 2019 5:17 PM

Having never been to a physics conference, or even to the city of Boston, attending the annual American Physical Society’s March Meeting was all around a new and incredible experience. Being able to present my research to physicists from across … Continue reading →

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