Jack "Marvel" Whiteside Parsons was the right hand man to Aleister Crowley, a founder of modern US rocket science, and early partner to L Ron Hubbard. Celebrate July 4th by investigating this major character in the birth of our age.
posted on Jul 4, 2008 - View this thread

Before developing exotic space propulsion systems like the ion engines on deep space probes, he developed guidance systems for Nazi Germany's ballistic missile, the V2. As Dr. Werner von Braun's Chief Scientist, he was one of the brilliant minds that founded the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and sent astronauts to the moon atop MSFC's Saturn V rocket. Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, one of the last surviving rocket scientists extracted from Nazi Germany in Operation Paperclip, died today at 94.
posted on May 27, 2008 - View this thread

Once upon a time in the postwar, before the advent of EPA and OSHA and the Consumer Products Safety Commission and weenies in bike helmets and multilingual warning stickers on stepladders, crazy people walked this earth. Good, fun-loving Americans who knew that "instructions" were something you threw in the trash along with the empty Falstaff bottles. A halcyon era filled with manly men who savored the wholesome virtues of a rugged game of un-seatbelted automotive chicken. One of these men was Gene Middlebrooks, who founded Turbonique.
posted on Apr 23, 2008 - View this thread

A video has been posted showing the shooting down of satellite USA193 high over the Pacific!
posted on Feb 21, 2008 - View this thread

Light Reflection: a brilliant fan of cryogenics venting from a relief valve on STS-122 Atlantis' ET (external tank) post-separation. Also see this handheld video of the ET, with money shots at 2:15 and 3:55.
posted on Feb 21, 2008 - View this thread

HobbySpace hosts an exhaustive collection of information and links about space-related hobbies, including amateur astronomy, satellite design, and rocketry for both beginners and experts.
posted on Dec 2, 2007 - View this thread

The Soviet Union’s answer to Saturn V, the massive, complex, and top-secret N1 rocket, failed win the moon race after four disastrous launch explosions between 1969 and 1972. In 2004, Polecat Aerospace had much better luck launching their 1/16 N1 scale model.
posted on Jun 13, 2007 - View this thread

Go faster, shoot tankers (flash)
posted on Apr 6, 2007 - View this thread

The Nedelin disaster remains the most fatal catastrophe in the history of rocketry. On October 26, 1960 an R-16 ICBM designed by Mikhail Yangel accidentally ignited killing over 100 within moments. The incident remained in strict secrecy for thirty years until it was unearthed by James Oberg. The true casualty rate remains a mystery and Kazakhstan still sees more than its fair share of rocket mishaps.
posted on Aug 31, 2006 - View this thread

Recent Shuttle Launch from Unusual Angles
+ Right forward Solid Rocket Booster camera (Windows media)
+ Right aft Solid Rocket Booster camera (Windows media)
+ Left aft Solid Rocket Booster camera (13.7 Mb Quicktime movie)
+ Left forward Solid Rocket Booster camera (13.6 Mb Quicktime movie)
+ Separation composite view (10 Mb Quicktime movie)
posted on Jul 9, 2006 - View this thread

A fairly comprehensive tour of what's left of the historic Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
posted on Jul 2, 2006 - View this thread

Baron Mango:
Functional Art Lover
[via]
posted on May 30, 2005 - View this thread

X-43A Flight. "The unpiloted 12-foot-long X-43A vehicle, part aircraft and part spacecraft, will be dropped from the wing of a B-52 aircraft, lofted to nearly 100,000 feet by a booster rocket and released over the Pacific Ocean to briefly fly under its own power at seven times the speed of sound." Watch (RealPlayer) it live.
posted on Mar 27, 2004 - View this thread

You too can build thunderous and exciting matchstick rockets!
posted on Jul 3, 2003 - View this thread

Video of Nasa's Delta II rocket launch (RealVideo) The camera was mounted on the rocket facing down towards earth and the resulting footage is amazing. There's a Windows Media version at MSNBC.
posted on Jun 11, 2003 - View this thread

UK rocket builder Steve Bennett is working on the worlds first private maned spaceship built by his company Starchaser with the Nova II announced Thursday. The new rocket will be shipped to the United States and dropped unmanned over the Red Lake Drop Zone in Arizona from 14,000 feet to test its landing systems. If successful, a manned test will take place before the summer, making it Britain's first ever manned rocket capsule. The tests will allow the team to move on to building their ultimate rocket, Thunderbird. Starchaser is confident that Thunderbird will blast off into the history books in 2005, netting the company $10 million from the X-Prize. Others say it's suicide.
posted on Apr 3, 2003 - View this thread

Vroooom...fun with all manner of engines. Steam, Pistons, Gas Turbines, and last but by no means least Rockets.
posted on Apr 1, 2003 - View this thread

Hobbyist records video from the POV of a model rocket via microwave downlink. The videos may be getting slammed with traffic right now, but the essential geeky construction photos are here. via macintouch
posted on Jan 29, 2003 - View this thread

the names all sound like superheroes skystreak. thunderchief. super sabre. firebee. darkstar. and they fly, some of them faster than the speed of sound, but these "vigilantes" weren't born on the four-color pages of a marvel comic book.

they are nasa research vehicles and this way cool photo gallery stretches back to the days of chuck yeager and the x-1 transonic rocket plane. just a little bit of the right stuff for your thursday morning.
posted on Jul 11, 2002 - View this thread

The engine canna take any more, captain! So, we're going to ground the fleet. I guess our friends in the space station are just going to have to wait until NASA is done checking under the hood.
posted on Jun 25, 2002 - View this thread

Start saving! US Airways announces that for just 10 million frequent flyer miles, you can get a free trip to space! "There's just one catch: The rocket and the launch pad don't exist. So don't ask for time off quite yet."
posted on Mar 13, 2002 - View this thread