When China Attacks?

It must have been a slow news week last week, because this story gained traction: Space warfare with Russia and China? Pentagon urged to prepare for it. In the story, an unlikely scenario unfolds where China attacks U.S. navigation satellites, the U.S. suddenly becomes helpless, and is at the mercy of the “Red Menace.” My response: […]

Baikonur Cosmodrome

I found this 2001 Air & Space article during my research about Sputnik-1, the world’s first artificial satellite. It’s a very good first person account of a visit out to the Baikonur Cosmodrome and some of the run-ups and rituals for launching from there. The writer was there for a launch of the first permanent International Space […]

Losing Proposition: Cutting USAF Space Operations

The United States Air Force (USAF) looks to be on the verge of admitting it can’t spend the money on its own people to operate its own satellites. They are considering some piecemeal options for moving contractors into what were military positions. This SpaceNews post describes four studies the USAF will be contracting out to figure out if […]

China Sends Up Another ‘Practice’ Satellite

On Sept 28, China, unsurprisingly, launched another satellite in their weird passive/aggressive way. At least it seems passive/aggressive with China advertising it’s a practice satellite but then keeps its mission secret. On the other hand, the US does the same thing with its military and intelligence satellites as well. The newest Chinese satellite is called the […]

Russia to China, Over the Moon

Because it’s been a year, I’m taking a little break. So you’re currently looking at some of the Clearancejobs.com articles about space I’ve written. I’ll be interspersing these throughout for a little bit (not long). This particular article was posted on Clearancejobs.com on 6 December, 2013. Interested in a little aerospace history? With all of […]