Link tags: spacecraft

Why Not Mars (Idle Words)

I’ve come to believe the best way to look at our Mars program is as a faith-based initiative. There is a small cohort of people who really believe in going to Mars, the way some people believe in ghosts or cryptocurrency, and this group has an outsize effect on our space program.

Maciej lays out the case against a crewed mission to Mars.

Like George Lucas preparing to release another awful prequel, NASA is hoping that cool spaceships and nostalgia will be enough to keep everyone from noticing that their story makes no sense. But you can’t lie your way to Mars, no matter how sincerely you believe in what you’re doing.

And don’t skip the footnotes:

Fourth graders writing to Santa make a stronger case for an X-Box than NASA has been able to put together for a Mars landing.

So your grandmother is a starship now: a quick guide for the bewildered

Useful FAQs.

Your grandmother is not just a starship, she’s a highly individual starship with her own goals and needs!

BBC World Service - 13 Minutes to the Moon, Season 2: The Apollo 13 story

The best podcast of last year is back for another season, this time on the Apollo 13 mission.

Hack the Moon

The history of Apollo’s hardware and software—the technology, the missions, and the people; people like Elaine Denniston and Margaret Hamilton.

(The site is made by Draper, the company founded by Doc Draper, father of inertial navigation.)

How to land on the Moon

Take a tour of the Lunar Module.

The LM (or “LEM”, as it’s pronounced) has the appearance of an aeronautical joke, with not a trace of streamlining. Instead, it’s an insect-like asymmetrical collection of legs, angles, bulges, and surfaces that’s very hard to visualize. Frankly, it looks like it was thrown together on a Friday afternoon by someone in a hurry to go fishing.

Apollo Presskit Directory

Ah, what a wonderful treasure trove this is! PDF scans of Apollo era press kits from a range of American companies.

Categories include:

• Official NASA
• Earth
• Launch
• Lunar Module
• Moon
• Astronauts
• Reveal

There’s something so fascinating about the mundane details of Isolation/Quarantine Foods for Apollo 11 Astronauts from Stouffer’s.

The First Women Trained To Conquer Space - Supercluster

The cosmonaut counterparts of the Mercury women astronauts: Zhanna Yorkina, Irina Solovyova, Tatyana Kuznetsova, Valentina Ponomareva, and Valentina Tereshkova.

Ponomareva recalled there being no envy between the women in the squad. According to her, it was a healthy spirit of competition. Everyone did their best to be number one, but also supported each other’s efforts.

One of those cosmonauts went to space: none of the women training for the Mercury missions did. There would be a shockingly gap of twenty years between the launch of Valentina Tereshkova and the launch of Sally Ride.

Hyperlight

Another great sci-fi short film from Dust.

Jupiter Perijove 09 | Flickr

Gorgeous images from Juno’s closest approach to Jupiter.

Smithsonian 3D Apollo 11 Command Module

This is so wonderful! A 3D fly-through of the Apollo 11 command module, right in your browser. It might get your fan whirring, but it’s worth it.

Click through for lots of great details on the interface controls, like which kinds of buttons and switches were chosen for which tasks.

And there’s this lovely note scrawled near the sextant by Michael Collins (the coolest of all the astronauts):

Spacecraft 107, alias Apollo 11, alias ‘Columbia.’ The Best Ship to Come Down the Line. God Bless Her.

NASA – Past and Present Dreams of the Future | Benedict Redgrove

A selection from an ongoing photography project—seven years and counting—leading up to the launch of the Orion project.

The Improbable, Bold History of Space Concept Art – How We Get To Next

A brief history of space concept art—Norman Rockwell, Chesney Bonestell, Robert McCall, Pat Rawlings, David Meltzer …all the classics.

A Complete History of the Millennium Falcon — Kitbashed

Everything you never knew you wanted to know about the Millennium Falcon, wrapped up in one unsurprisingly insanely detailed essay from Michael.

Apollo 17 in Real-time

This is rather nice—a Spacelog-like timeline of Apollo 17, timeshifted by exactly 43 years.

Gene and the crew are on their way to the moon …the last humans to ever make the journey.

Culture Ship Randomizer · A gravitas free zone.

For when you just have to name something after a Culture General Systems Vehicle …or maybe a General Contact Unit.

Someone tell Elon.

spaceprobe.es Data From Space

A fantastic new site from Ariel and Lisa: a collection of probes that are out in space right now, with oodles of facts for each mission and links through to more resources. SCIENCE!

How We Could Actually Build a Space Colony - Popular Mechanics

This is basically porn for me.

Bernal spheres, Stanford tori, and O’Neill cylinders, oh my!

SKYLON Users’ Manual (PDF)

Tech specs for a spacecraft that doesn’t exist (yet).

Kosmograd: The death of Kosmograd

The Ballardian beauty of a dying Baikonour.

Sci-Fi Airshow :: Home

I want to go to there!

This is what Photoshop is for. Be sure to watch the slideshow.