It was the first orbital flight around the Earth by an American. Glenn made three orbits over the course of nearly five hours, before safely splashing down in the Atlantic.
Just think: it was only seven and a half years after Glenn's flight that we were walking on the moon.
How come we can't do cool stuff like that anymore? I mean, we use to make it look so easy...
I met John Glenn on Halloween Night in 1988. He came to my high school to campaign for the incumbent congressman from our district. Wish I'd gotten a photo of he and I together, but I do still have his autograph.
Anyway, here's wishing John Glenn a very happy anniversary of his pioneering flight! And hey, he's still looking in good shape at 90! I bet he'd be up for a trip to the International Space Station (if his lovely wife of 70 years will let him :-)
It's been two years since the last time I shared this YouTube video. And since this is the week of Thanksgiving (yes I've already begun preparing to deep-fry a bunch of turkey) and there are perhaps still a lot of people who've never enjoyed this before, I thought it was well worth posting again :-)
It's the short film Thanksgiving With The Kranzes. Produced a few years ago by aviation students, it's a dead-on hilarious parody of Ron Howard's movie Apollo 13.
It is Thanksgiving 1970. This year it's Gene Kranz's turn to host the traditional dinner for his NASA colleagues. The heroic crew of the Apollo 13 mission has been given the command of the kitchen. But then... something happens.
"Take-out is NOT an option!"
Watch now the film that the real-life Gene Kranz has taken to watching with his family every Thanksgiving!
The orbiter Atlantis landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida this morning, at 5:57 a.m.
And so, after 135 missions that began on April 12th 1981, the Space Shuttle program - a system that began to be engineered in the late Sixties - has come to an end. So too apparently has the United States' manned space endeavors: NASA has no crew-capable vehicles anywhere close to near-future use (the Orion system has been scrapped because of budgetary cutbacks). For now the International Space Station is going to have to be serviced by Soviet-era Soyuz craft: a design that has been flying into space since our own Apollo program.
Well, at least private enterprise is beginning to seriously engage in spaceflight. That is where there's going to be a future in manned space exploration. There is still a passion for space: it just needs to be matched with equal zeal and funding capability... and government can't do that anymore like it could in the days of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.
But today, I don't wish to lament what many others have already done so and with greater eloquence. The Atlantis has come home. The Space Shuttle has accomplished its mission.
And that is worth honoring no matter how one looks at it.
Here's footage of the launch...
I remember watching that! 'Twas knee-high to a grasshopper as they say. It was supposed to have lifted off a day or two before, but the launch was scrubbed 'cuz of technical problems. And I was about to leave for school that morning and really hoping that it would take off without any more delay and then... WHOOOOOSH!!! It was the first manned spaceflight that I ever got to watch live on television.
In case anyone's wondering why the external tank is white in this clip, the tank was painted on the first three flights of the space shuttle, but after that it was left its normal fiberglass-y orange: not painting the tank saved a lot of weight (and subsequently, fuel).
And unfortunately as everyone knows, Columbia was lost in that tragic re-entry accident over Texas in 2003.
But on this day, this blogger honors its maiden flight, and the inauguration of the Space Shuttle system.
High FlightOh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.-- John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941
In memory of the crew of Mission STS 51-L of the Space Shuttle Challenger, who perished on this day a quarter century ago, January 28th, 1986.
Not really trees, but an optical illusion captured by NASA's HiRISE camera in orbit around the red planet. What appears to be a scattering of pine trees is actually several trails of debris near Mars's north pole, left behind as the ice cap goes on its seasonal retreat.
Mash down here for more about the "trees" of Mars!
Here is that brilliant, spot-on and hilarious spoof of Ron Howard's Apollo 13 that Gene Kranz himself has taken to watching with his family as a holiday tradition.
Behold: Thanksgiving With The Kranzes...
Scientists working for NASA have created a device which uses magnetic fields to levitate small animals (in this case, a three-week old mouse) in an effort to simulate and study various amounts of gravity.
(And before anybody gives me grief over it, in the past few years audio analysis has determined that Armstrong did indeed say "step for a man" :-)
Forty years ago today, on July 20th, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin, with the assistance of a few hundred thousand of their good friends back on Earth, fulfilled an ages-old dream when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. Armstrong was the first man to stretch his legs on the lunar surface, while Aldrin has the distinction of being the first person to "drain the main vein" on another world.
I didn't know until this past year that before they began their "extra-vehicular activity" (in layman's terms: they went outside the spaceship), that Aldrin also took communion on the Moon. At the time he was an elder of Webster Presbyterian Church and asked that a communion kit be prepared for his mission. The chalice he used on the lunar surface is now kept by the church.
Now, wanna see something really cool? Just in time for the fortieth anniversary, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken this image of the Apollo 11 landing site! You can clearly see the Eagle lunar module's descent stage, just as Armstrong and Aldrin left it forty years ago. The LRO has found four more Apollo landing sites thus far. Future photos will be even more detailed.
Forty years ago today came the greatest technological triumph of human history. It did not come cheap, and it was not without sacrifice. And it seems that somewhere along the way, we've lost that same spirit which once upon a time, did put a man on the moon.
But I like to believe that it's there still... and can be found again.
Here's a toast to the people of Apollo 11. May what they accomplished ever serve to inspire us all.
A now-retired aerospace engineer discovered forty years ago that he was being overpaid by 2 cents an hour. He suggested a way to fix the discrepancy, but it got lost in bureaucratic bungling.
And now, four full decades later later, the government has lost BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, literally pennies at a time, because it failed to address what is being called a "simple" error that would have only required very minor changes in accounting software.
Read MSNBC's article "Did Pentagon lose billions, pennies at a time?" for the full story on aeronautical engineer Walter T. Davey... and how the United States government could have saved a buttload of money if it had listened to him.
When the Space Shuttle Discovery blasted into orbit two days ago, it might have taken this bat along for the ride. NASA technicians spotted the flying rodent clawed up against the vehicle's external tank during inspections. And it was thought that it would eventually take fly off on its own.But as Discovery roared from the launch pad, a tiny black speck was spotted clinging to the side of the tank. Sure enough, it was the bat.
Nobody has seen the bat since Discovery cleared the tower, but it was last seen still holding on to the vehicle.
Remember kiddies: hitchhiking can be dangerous....
Twenty years ago yesterday the Buran (shown landing at left), the Soviet Union's answer to the American-made NASA space shuttle system, launched from Kazakhstan for its first test flight. It wound up being its only mission to date. A few years later the fall of communism left the program in limbo. The only flight-worthy Buran was destroyed during a roof collapse at the Baikonur facility in 2002, although a number of others were already in production and one is currently on display in a museum in Germany.But with the space shuttle fleet due to be retired in less than two years, Russia Today is reporting that interest is being rekindled in the Buran system for use as a service vehicle for the International Space Station and perhaps other purposes as well. Despite its visual similarity to the American space shuttle, the Buran was in many ways the superior vehicle (the feature that its designers were most proud of is that it can be launched and landed un-manned). And the Energia booster system that was developed parallel to the Buran is an absolute beast of a launch vehicle: it's said to be powerful enough to send a payload to Mars. Click here for more comparisons between the American shuttle and the Russian Buran.
I would love to see the Buran finally get some serious use... and achieve the appreciation that I've long thought was due her and her creators. I've been a devout student of the Russian space effort for well over a decade, ever since I made it the topic of my senior history thesis while at Elon (and I ended up presenting my research about it at a national conference in Rochester, New York). In spite of how screwy and completely wrong the the Soviet government was, the scientists and engineers who were forced to live under that regime still had a total passion for technical achievement (often in defiance of how much the Soviet bureaucrats got in their way: do some research on how Kruschev screwed-up a lot of Sergei Korolev's projects). Buran is a terrific vehicle and now at last she has a chance to soar and shine.
...saw the new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace (it kicks seriously crazy cool boo-tay!!!)
...filmed a lot of footage for a commercial that I'm making for a new client.
...played Classic Battletech and had my derriere handed to me (especially after the legs were shot off my BattleMech).
...was told during rehearsal for the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of Oliver Twist that I had a great British accent and that I was channeling the perfect persona for my role as Mr. Sowerberry.
...got to meet Cecil L. Cline, the project manager for the Saturn V rocket program (he also worked on the Polaris and Poseidon missiles and the C-5A Galaxy transport plane in addition to many other engineering marvels) and received an autographed copy of his book A Soldier's Odyssey.
Not too bad a way to fill up a Saturday, eh? :-)
