From German Tunnels to Space, Part 2–Peenemuende

In the first post to this series, I established my impressions of the German countryside and the Germans themselves: pretty, green country full of great, hospitable people (some are still friends). My family lived at the edge of the Ardennes in an area of hills and forests full of bunkers, pillboxes, etc. All of these […]

From German Tunnels to Space, Part 1

Stay with me here, this will eventually lead to space-related topics. When I was much younger, I was privileged to live overseas twice. Both times my Dad moved us to the Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland Pfalz for German speakers)/Eifel region of Germany. It was very pretty—forested and hilly with networks of small, curvy roads. The first time […]

Explorer 1, the First US Satellite

January 31st, 1958. 56 years ago, and the United States had finally succeeded in launching its own satellite, the Explorer 1. According to this Yahoo! Travel post, the launch of Explorer 1 was linked to the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The big deal about that, as explained in this wiki entry, is the IGY marked the beginning […]

First a Chinese moon, now Russian, um, space weapons?

This December 6 article from the website “Russian Beyond the Headlines” is a little confusing. And I’m not sure if it’s confusing because the translators got it wrong or because there’s not much knowledge with how space assets work–or maybe even the Russians aren’t sure what they want. The article finally gets to its point […]

The Soviet moon probe activities

The Chinese moon rover has prompted a few people to write about the Soviet lunar probe program. If you’re interested, then check out my article here.