A Fire in Space Exploration
President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s was well on scheduled until January 27, 1967. On that day the project was put on hold. A fire in the command module sitting atop a Saturn IB rocket, just weeks before the first manned Apollo mission [...]
Established: 1972
One may think that Email is a fairly new form of communications however it is credited to have been invented in 1972 by Ray Tomlinson who worked for Bolt Beranek and Newman as an ARPANET contractor. By chance he picked the @ symbol to denote sending messages from one computer to another, name-of-the-user@name-of-the-computer. The Hewlett-Packard [...]
Two Geminis Become One
On its third attempt Gemini Mission 6A, with Command Pilot Walter M. (Wally) Schirra and Pilot Thomas (Tom) P. Stafford launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on December 15, 1965. On its fourth orbit Gemini 6A meet Gemini 7, with Command Pilot Frank F. Borman II and Pilot James A. Lowell Jr., which was already in [...]
Challenger’s Firsts
Many may remember the Space Shuttle Challenger as being the first shuttle to be destroyed, when it exploded 1 minute 13 seconds into its flight on January 28, 1986. Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Commander, Michael J. Smith, pilot, mission specialist Judith A. Resnik, Ellison S. Onizuka and Ronald McNair, payload specialist Gregory B. Jarvis and [...]
The Moons of Jupiter
In a letter dated January 7th, Galileo Galilei wrote about a discovery of his of what he thought were three fixed stars near Jupiter. Soon he found that there were four and they weren’t stars but bodies that were in orbit around the planet. Even though these four moon are bright, they would not have [...]
Pan Am Flight 214 – Update
A little over 2 years ago on the 45th Anniversary of the crash of Pan Am Flight 214 outside of the small Maryland community of Elkton, 6 Things to Considered published 6 paragraphs about the accident. There has been a number of comments on the post, a few by people who were directly impacted by [...]
Men on the Moon
On May 25, 1961 in a speech to the joint Congress, John F. Kennedy uttered these words, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” At the time that he spoke these [...]
Creatures in Space – Space Dogs and Monkeys
The Russian Sputnik space program began the Space Race between the two world powers, the United States and the Soviet Union. On August 19, 1960 with the launch of Sputnik 5 and its return the next day, the first creatures, two dogs, 40 mice, 2 rats and several plants becoming the first Earth-born creatures to [...]
A Slow Race
The race had already been delayed, it was originally scheduled for November 2nd, and was rescheduled to be run on Thanksgiving day, November 28th. Of the 83 cars that had agreed to run the race only 6 made it to the starting line. Of these 6, two were powered by electric, the other four were [...]
It’s a Blue Moon
It’s commonly thought that a Blue Moon occurs when there are two full moons in the same month. This hasn’t always been the meaning of a ‘Blue Moon’. In 1946 an article by James Hugh Pruett appeared in Sky & Telescope March edition mistakenly referring to a Blue Moon as being the second full moon [...]
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