This week on The Space Show with Dr. David Livingston: Tuesday, August 24 — 7 PM PDT (9 PM CST; 10 PM EDT): We welcome STEPHANIE THOMAS of Princeton Satellite and to discuss nuclear fusion. Wednesday, August 25 — Hotel Mars pre-recorded. See the Upcoming Show Menu at www.thespaceshow.com for details. Thursday, August 26 — 7PM PDT (9PM CDT, 10 PM EDT): We welcome JEFF SHESOL re his new book, […]
V-2 and Sputnik
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
The first successful launch of Germany’s A-4 ballistic missile and the orbiting of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik-1, took place 15 years and one day apart. The two achievements are related in more ways than their proximity on the calendar.
On Oct. 3, 1942, an A-4 developed by Wernher von Braun and his German Army team reached an altitude of 85 to 90 km (52.8 to 55.9 miles) after launch from Peenemunde on the Baltic Coast.
(more…)
UPDATED for the 50th Anniversary July 2019
2009 Michael Collins Interviews Michael Collins
Statement from Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins
The following is a series of questions and answers prepared by Michael Collins, command module pilot for Apollo 11.
These are questions I am most frequently asked plus a few others I have added. For more information, please consult my book, the 50th anniversary edition of CARRYING THE FIRE, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys. All of the following sections in quotation marks are from that reference.
Q. Circling the lonely moon by yourself, the loneliest person in the universe, weren’t you lonely?
A. No.
(more…)
No. 6 with two old model Cylons.
“The Cylons were created by man. They evolved. They rebelled. There are many copies. And they have a plan.”
— Battlestar Galactic
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
Watching the re-imagined “Battlestar Galactic,” I was never quite sure exactly what the Cylons’ plan was beyond the whole exterminate all humans with nukes thing. In an apparent nod to this lack of clarity, the producers created a two-hour TV movie called, “Battlestar Galactic: The Plan,” to explain it all.
NASA has suffered from a similar lack of clarity over the past week. At a National Space Council meeting last Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence announced it was the Trump Administration’s policy to land astronauts on the south pole of the moon by the presidential election year of 2024 — four years ahead of the current schedule.
Credit: U.S. Mint
WASHINGTON (U.S. Mint PR) – The United States Mint (Mint) opened sales for the 2019 Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Program on January 24 at noon EST.
This unique four-coin program includes the Mint’s first reeded five-ounce proof silver dollar, a $5 gold coin, a silver dollar, and a half dollar. All coins are curved. This year, the Mint increased the silver content of its commemorative standard silver dollars to 99.9 percent silver. In the past, these coins were 90/10 silver—90 percent silver and 10 percent copper.
Credit: U.S. Mint
The world eagerly watched on July 20, 1969, as Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” E. Aldrin, Jr. took mankind’s first steps on the Moon. This unprecedented engineering, scientific, and political achievement was the culmination of the efforts of an estimated 400,000 Americans and secured our Nation’s leadership in space for generations to come. The Apollo 11 crew—Armstrong, Aldrin, and Michael Collins—safely returned to Earth on July 24, 1969, fulfilling the national goal set in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. Nearly half a century later, the United States is the only country ever to have attempted and succeeded in landing humans on a celestial body other than Earth and safely returning them home.
In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the first manned landing on the Moon, Public Law 114-282 authorizes a four-coin program: a curved $5 gold coin, a curved $1 silver coin, a curved half-dollar clad coin, and a curved 5 ounce $1 silver proof coin.
(more…)
U.S. President John. F. Kennedy spoke at Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas on September 12, 1962, detailing the technological challenges ahead for putting a human on the Moon. (Credit: NASA)
This is part two in a technology series celebrating NASA’s 60th anniversary, featuring excerpts from past and present agency leaders. Read part one — a look back on technologies that enabled early space exploration.
WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — NASA was only a few years old when U.S. President John F. Kennedy spoke at Rice University’s stadium in Houston on Sept. 12, 1962, underscoring the technological hurdles of placing a human on the Moon and assuring safe passage of that person back to Earth.
America’s space effort, while still in its infancy, was already paying dividends in new jobs, new companies and sharpening the skills of the nation’s technological workforce, Kennedy noted. Still, the challenge ahead was daunting.
WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — From 2018 through 2022, NASA is marking a series of important milestones – the 60th anniversary of the agency’s founding by Congress in 1958, and the 50th anniversary of the Apollo missions that put a dozen Americans on the Moon between July 1969 and December 1972.
Celebrations already are under way. Some are complete, some are scheduled in the coming months, and some are still being planned.
July 29 will mark 60 years since President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA as a U.S. government agency by signing Public Law 58-568, the National Aeronautics and Space Act. The act consolidated several federal and military research organizations, including the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, under one agency.
Yeah, I don’t think so…. OK, let me clarify that. I’ve seen no real signs so far that Trump wants to do anything really bold in space. That could change; never say never. But, it’s been five months, and he hasn’t even gotten around to nominating a NASA administrator yet. His FY 2018 budget proposal doesn’t include anything novel. “Mr. Trump’s charisma, vision, and style are reminiscent of JFK…” Mmmmm…..no. […]
Apollo 11 astronauts trained on Earth to take individual photographs in succession in order to create a series of frames that could be assembled into panoramic images. This frame from Aldrin’s panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site is the only good picture of mission commander Neil Armstrong on the lunar surface. (Credit: NASA)
BOSTON (PBS PR) — American Experience today announced Chasing the Moon, a four-hour documentary series about the space race, from its earliest beginnings to the monumental achievement of the first lunar landing in 1969 and beyond. Premiering on PBS in 2019 during the 50th anniversary year of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the series is executive produced by Mark Samels and produced and directed by Robert Stone. Chasing the Moon is Stone’s eighth project for American Experience. Distribution outside the U.S. will be handled by PBS International. Ballantine Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, will publish the book Chasing the Moon, by Stone and writer/researcher Alan Andres, to coincide with the PBS premiere. The book will include and expand on the stories shared in the documentary.
(more…)
