space age

Just heard another starman has passed beyond the reach of mortal earth. Reaching for the stars in perpetuity. RIP, Sir.

Following discussion in the late 1980s whether the National Aero-Space Plane (NASP) program should go for a traditional award to one airframe and propulsion manufacturer to build the actual X-30 test aircraft, or form a team among the remaining companies (McDonnell Douglas, General Dynamics...

The First Cape Launch View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jco8WtwxRo4

My friend Alejandro Irausquin tagged me today on a Facebook publication emanating from a page entitled Jets 'n' Props. I don't follow aviation pages as a rule, in great part because of all the moronic comments you find there, but I would readily assume that someone with an incentive to create...

Hazegrey Art just released another CGI video this time covering a McDD competitor to the Titan 'Barbarian'... View: https://youtu.be/RvO31_Odpyg

Illustration for Isaac Asimov's novel Man in Space by Robert McCall, 1974 (king size) :

Years ago, when NASA started sharing its archives online, I spent a lot of time indexing the photos of the various models tested in wind tunnels. I only saved a few of them, thinking that the images were online to stay... only to discover later on that none of the links I had saved to the...

I didn’t realise Mel Brooks was 98. Announcement trailer: View: https://youtu.be/WsK-KPi_w3w?si=rKW5QGsoIEeFOF7d More details including returning cast members. https://www.ign.com/articles/spaceballs-2-plots-a-course-for-2027-with-mel-brooks-in-first-teaser-trailer

This deserves its own thread, the Znamya program was a Russian attempt to repurpose solar sail research into a space mirror. It consisted of: Znamya 1, tech demonstrator, remained on Earth for its testing Znamya 2, subscale prototype, successfully flown on a Progress mission in 1993 Znamya 2.5...

https://www.russianspaceweb.com/dals.html I am curious if any hardware for the DALS, the planned N1/L3 missions scientific equipment was produced or tested. I am also unaware of any scientific equipment that was specific to the fourth unlaunched Lunokhod (Lunokhod 3).

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/science/space/ed-smylie-dead.html More at the link.

A Venera space-probe was launched in the early 1970s shortly after Venera 8 was launched and if it had successfully been injected into a heliocentric orbit it would've been Venera 9 but instead failed to leave orbit with the Soviets renaming it Cosmos 482 in an effort to sae face. It's orbit has...

This was unexpected. Probably also what the guy who found the can said. The article is not behind a paywall at the moment, but let me know if it becomes inaccessible. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/nyregion/willy-ley-rocket-ashes.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London%27s_third_airport Ever since I was a little boy and saw pictures and books about London Airport grown-ups have been trying to find a replacement. In the TV show Thunderbirds it is called London International Airport. By September 1966 the emergence of...

Unboxings and reviews of past model kits you may never see anywhere else! https://www.youtube.com/@CelebratingVintageModelKits/videos View: https://youtu.be/kqcAvj-J2Fc View: https://youtu.be/1n_G_2rrq98 View: https://youtu.be/sMzlB7dcyUk

"Restored USAF documentary from 1962 about future space exploration as imagined in the early 1960s. Cargo transport to space stations and lunar bases is shown using animation. Rockets (Saturn inspired), spaceplanes and cargo vehicles (Agena inspired) are depicted. "

Hello everyone, new here, created an account to post this since I don't see many other places discussing the 2707. I was at the local thrift store(Cleveland, OH, USA) the other day and came across this pretty cool wall art. It's about 5 feet wide and features a blueprint of the 2707 along with a...

The Source at Flickr label it as: Expulsive Nuclear-Electric Manned Astroliner (ENEMA) launch. Convair/General Dynamic artist’s concept. (1960-1962) View: https://www.flickr.com/photos/apollo4ever/54280085188/in/photolist-2qGxCeJ got someone more info about this ?

Vereinigte Flugtechnische Werke, The company was formed by the 1964 merger of two German aerospace firms, Focke-Wulf and Weser Flugzeugbau GmbH (Weserflug). The formation of VFW was a natural outcome, as the two companies had been collaborating, along with Hamburger Flugzeugbau (HFB), in the...

The political and financial answers to this question were dealt with here . https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/space-1975-could-von-brauns-vision-have-worked.32299/page-2 What I really wanted to know and still do, was could it have been done technically? or was it just too complex? For...