The North American X-15 Rocket Plane, which turns 50 this year, flew faster and higher than any manned rocket powered aircraft in history excepting the space shuttle. [more inside]
posted by iamabot on Jul 14, 2009 - 47 comments

Images from The Complete Book of Space Travel illustrated by Virgil Finlay, including an analysis of the space-crew candidate.
posted by Artw on May 7, 2009 - 30 comments

"I said to myself, 'we are going to die.'" Space Shuttle commander Hoot Gibson on his reaction as he saw pictures from the Shuttle's robot arm of gouged and missing tiles along its underbelly. Shades of Columbia - but this was mission STS-27, over fourteen years earlier. Yet mission control discounted the reports from orbit, perhaps misled by the poor quality of the downlinked images that resulted from encryption demanded by the mission's secretive military profile. In the end, Atlantis made it back, but with visible damage along her right flank. But like most classified DoD missions of the time, little was reported, and NASA was arguably wary of drawing attention to the near-loss of only the second flight since the Challenger disaster. But if this near-miss had been better known, might NASA have been more concerned about indications of debris damage during the launch of STS-107?
posted by Major Clanger on Mar 28, 2009 - 28 comments

Video of the destructive reentry into the atmosphere of the Automated Transfer Vehicle back from its trip to the ISS.
posted by Catfry on Sep 30, 2008 - 53 comments

Google wants to send you to the moon.
posted by Roman Graves on Sep 13, 2007 - 34 comments

Do you want to fly? Really fly? Not at the controls of a cockpit simulation, but just you ... flying ... your motion through space controlled by the gentlest of nudges of your mouse. Tranquility. Not a game; but an environment in which to 'travel'. View a short QT video clip of a typical Tranquility level. Download the 'game browser' (versions for all common computers) in which the game operates, work through the short training levels, and prepare to lose yourself in flight. (Don't be put off by the 'Buy the Game' links on the website; Tranquility is perfectly functional in demo mode, with the demo landscape changing daily. I've been playing it that way for more than five years.)
posted by woodblock100 on Jun 15, 2007 - 29 comments

Project Nova: on the 9th of September three Cambridge engineering students launched a balloon equipped with a camera and tracking devices. It reached a height of 32km and took 857 photographs during its three hour flight, some showing the curvature of the earth. You can also download a KML file to follow the balloon's flight path in Google Earth.
posted by jack_mo on Sep 23, 2006 - 24 comments

Is there any purpose to the kind of manned space flights we seem to be concentrating on?
posted by pantsrobot on Aug 4, 2005 - 48 comments

OK, OK, we've all heard by now about Virgin Galactic, and their plan to offer customers a markedly suborbital ride and a few underwhelming minutes of zero-G. But some of us know that the future of commercial spaceflight still and always belongs to Pan Am, whose proud (though marred) building still stands in Midtown like a sign pointing to a better, more glamorous future - a future we'd almost stopped beliving in. What a shame that the legendary airline's current, much-reduced incarnation has such humble ambitions: seems to me we need to dream like this, now more than ever.
posted by adamgreenfield on Oct 2, 2004 - 16 comments

We may have avoided a trade war, but it looks like a space race is on.
posted by kliuless on Dec 3, 2003 - 52 comments

17 years ago today, the space shuttle Challenger exploded, killing all seven aboard. I share this primarily as I recall this being the first where-were-you-when of my childhood. So where were you?
posted by xmutex on Jan 28, 2003 - 161 comments

Baby, Bye, Bye, Bye! NSYNC = NSPACE. Not anymore! Looks like Lance doesn't have the money, and the Russians got tired of waiting.
posted by wsfinkel on Sep 3, 2002 - 27 comments

Conspiracy or not? Convinced to sit and watch FOX's show on whether we landed on the moon, I found myself wondering why there was no evidence against the hoax presented. Is this is clearly another feed on the conspiracy theories surrounding JFK's administration? Or was it just another "When cars attack?" (If so, I didn't find this as funny)
posted by samsara on Mar 26, 2001 - 24 comments