Falcon 9 built by SpaceX reached orbit on Friday. This commercial venture is hoped by NASA to replace the government rockets that are presently taking satellites etc into orbit. Commercialisation of space was put forward as a major aim by the United States when president Obama came into power. This is one of those small [...]
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A Robotic Japanese Lunar Base Is Planned for 2020
Japan (a government panel of Waseda University) has recently announced that it is going to send robots to the moon to create a moon base. This obviously has come after America announces that it is not going to bother with the moon just yet and I expect that Japan will take full advantage of the [...]
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Newton’s Apple Falls Upwards.
The tree that prompted the discovery of gravity is being taken into space aboard space shuttle Atlantis next week. Of course, this is the tree that the Apple dropped out of and gave Newton a rather large bruise on his head and of course his idea about gravity. It’s a pity, but they’re not taking [...]
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The Orion Capsule Takes One Extremely Small Baby Step
“One giant leap for mankind” doesn’t really come to mind after watching the Orion capsule launch. The Orion capsule is the leftover from the mission to the moon that Obama cancelled. Recently they tried out the escape mechanism from the Orion capsule which was to protect the astronauts just in case of fire or other [...]
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Best of the Week Podcast-Everything to Do with the Preparation and Launch of a Space Vehicle
This is all about the preparations for launch of a space vehicle. It is mainly about the space shuttle, but covers lots of questions that you may have about why they stop and start all the time and what actually goes on. Why do they say that and why do they do this, you will [...]
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Want To Go To The Stars? Hop On Board One Of These Spacecraft…
What is the best way to get to the stars? Catching a bus or the tube probably won’t make it but catching the space shuttle will. Unfortunately, there is a small problem in that it will take around 170,000 years. When you arrived there would be nothing there, as the star would have moved. You [...]
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Best Of The Week- The NASA Constellation Program Podcast
All about the constellation space programme. If you read my blog post recently then you will know quite a lot but it is always good to know more! By Astronomy cast // Join the forum discussion on this post – (1) Posts
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Midweek Special- Podcast On Interstellar Travel
Can a rocket reach the nearest star? Ion drives, solar sails and railguns are discussed. Could it be possible to use quantum mechanics to bend space and seem like your travelling faster than light? It got me dreaming although the reality of space kicks in at the end. Would you mind if a project was [...]
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Lets Get Into Space.
I have always thought that I would love to go into space. A low altitude orbit would be okay but there is no way to do it at the moment as it costs just that little bit too much. This means that I have watched Apollo 13 about 13 times and also watched films like [...]
