What’s Old Is New Again

From childhood, I’ve had this weird fascination with dirigibles. Not blimps, but dirigibles. The kind of airships people associate with the words, “Oh, the humanity!!” In spite of the horrific Hindenburg episode, I always thought the zeppelins produced in Friedrichshafen, Germany, were always majestic in movement. It also looked like a relaxing and luxurious way […]

The Lonely ISEE-3 satellite

Just a fun XKCD.com link for you. The artist posted this strip on Monday. The cartoon is about the International Sun/Earth Explorer (ISEE) -3 satellite, which is real, and in a heliocentric orbit. I was only eight years old when it was launched in 1978. Some of the story is true, while the actual hacking, […]

“Frau Im Mond:” A SciFi Movie By Fritz Lang

This is a short movie review, but one concerning space. I happened upon this silent film as I was researching the Mittelwerk series. The English name of the film is “The Woman in the Moon.” It’s available in the US on Netflix streaming, so the wife and I watched it. The director’s last name, Lang, […]

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Rocket Gets Its Legs

“All four landing legs now mounted on Falcon 9…” Wait! What??! That was SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s tweet on 25 February, 2013. And there was a linked picture of it all, too. SpaceX is doing something NASA and the United States Air Force can’t do: adding legs to its Falcon 9 rocket. That’s right, the […]

Pocari Sweat, Protoss Carriers, and Space Junk

Singapore’s Astroscale may have a plan, and the tech, to clean up Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) space junk. At least, that’s what Astroscale’s founder, Nobu Okada, told the TechinAsia website in this post. If you want a visual of all the stuff out there in orbit for grabbing, just watch the video above. Astroscale is […]