Modeling manned and unmanned space exploration
On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard sat in a glorified garbage can atop a converted ballistic missile and was lofted 263 miles from Cape Canaveral, FL to the North Atlantic just off the Bahamas. He sat in the cramped capsule for 4 hours before [...]
I saw this model in a friend's stash and waxed a bit nostalgic, and he let me buy it off him. I had built this model in grade school, but lacked the skills, and I believe it ended up packed with fire crackers in the backyard. Fun kit, [...]
NASA's Mariner program had the goal of studying the inner planets: Mercury, Venus, and Mars, through a series of robotic space probes. Between 1962 and 1973, ten Mariner missions were attempted: though three failed, the others performed [...]
The Atlas V is the last of the Atlas family of launch vehicles, produced by the Lockheed Martin-Boeing collaboration United Launch Alliance (ULA). After 99 successful launches out of 99 attempts, it is slated for replacement by ULA's [...]
NASA's namesakes loved (and love) to be mythological and classical: an overview of the space flight programmes and spaceship names buzzes with gods and goddesses from classical Greek mythology. One god's name in particular stands out from [...]
How do you write about a model that is a weapon of mass destruction? The Convair SM-65 Atlas was the first intercontinental ballistic missile available to the Strategic Air Command (SAC) of the US Air Force from 1959. Both the partly [...]
The NASA Apollo Program led to the successful landing of a human being on the surface of the Moon. Early missions in the series developed tactics and techniques and rehearsed the operational segments that would culminate in 1969 with the [...]
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched to Earth’s elliptical low orbit by Soviet Union on 4 October 1957. This significant event marks the beginning of the space race between Soviet Union and USA, which [...]
Pictures tell stories. This also applies to prestigious high-end aerospace products. The iconic images of the Juno launch vehicle and its Explorer satellite can serve as a good example. I would therefore like to begin this article with a [...]
Thor-Able was a two-stage, expendable launch vehicle used in the late 50’s and early 60’s for NASA/USAF satellite launches and re-entry vehicle tests. The main stage made use of the Thor intermediate range ballistic missile (one of [...]
