Roger Handberg has a useful history of NASA and its budgets for those who still fantasize that we can (or should) resurrect Apollo.
Category Archives: Space History
Made It To Vegas
…but a lot later than we wanted, due to hellacious traffic getting out of LA. Things didn’t really start to move until we got halfway up the Cajon Pass. So, later dinner at Mandalay Bay, and then on to Colorado in the morning. But Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. I’ll leave you with a video from another Christmas eve, forty-one years ago.
I had a piece on this story last year, on the fortieth anniversary. Hard to believe it’s been a year since I wrote that.
Happy Eleventh Birthday
ISS. Depending on how you count, of course.
The Case For Pluto
Alan Boyle is going to be at The Grove in LA tomorrow night for a book signing. I may try to make it.
[Update a few minutes later]
Speaking of Alan, he has a roundup of the latest prospects for fusion — cold, medium and hot — over at Cosmic Log.
Fifty Years
…of space travel. The vast majority of it unmanned.
[Via Geek Press]
Remembering A Rocket Engineer
Not a rocket “scientist.” A eulogy to his late father-in-law, from John Bossard.
The Other Fortieth Anniversary
Bob Werb remembers Gerry O’Neill, and the birth of the alternate space movement.
Two Anniversaries
My piece on Sputnik and the X-Prize is up at PJM.
[Early afternoon update]
Related thoughts from Jeff Foust, over at The Space Review. I agree with him that, despite the five-year gap, we are now close to seeing the industry develop with some rapidity.
[Update a while later]
More thoughts from Matt Isakowitz at the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.
Space Anniversaries
Today, October 4th, is the fifty-second and fifth anniversaries of Sputnik I, and SpaceShipOne’s winning of the Ansari X-prize, respectively. I’ll probably have more thoughts up later today or tomorrow, at Popular Mechanics or Pajamas media.
[Update a few minutes later]
Some thoughts from Michael Belfiore on the X-Prize anniversary.
Five Years Later
It’s hard to believe that it’s been half a decade since the first X-Prize flight. I remember it well because I had moved to Florida only a month before, was still recovering from being hit by two hurricanes within two weeks (Frances and Jeanne), and watching on television, frustrated that I could no longer just get in the car and drive up to Mojave to see it.
Now I’m back in California, and hope I’ll have more opportunities to go up and see the other exciting activities that it spawned. Things haven’t moved along as fast as people hoped, either for Virgin Galactic (due to some poor technical and contracting decisions on their part, in my opinion), or the field in general, but things are starting to pick up. As Arthur Clarke noted, we are often overoptimistic about schedules in the short run, but overpessimistic in the long run. It’s starting to be a longer run from 2004.