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The Space Race

September 22, 2014 by Leave a Comment

I have to thank my friend and relation Chris Benson for putting this unique package of videos together. I just quote from what he sent me:

“I just watched a 2005 BBC documentary on the Space Race. I thought it was superb – I thought I knew all of that stuff, but I didn’t – such as a Soviet probe at the same time as the Apollo 11 moon landing. Even the bits I did know were incomplete, like the simultaneity of Alan Shepherd’s and Yuri Gagarin’s training.

Here they are in four one-hour episodes on YouTube:

Space Race: Episode 1: Race for Rockets (1944-1949)

Space Race: Episode 2: Race for Satellites (1953-1958)

Space Race: Episode 3: Race for Survival (1959-1961)

Space Race: Episode 4: Race for the Moon (1964-1969)

The series was made in cooperation with an American and a Russian television company. But if you are asking “What about Blue Streak?” or “What about Woomera?”, then you need this 2004 BBC documentary:

The British Space Race Part 1

The British Space Race Part 2

”

So many thanks indeed to Chris. Keep up the good work!

Filed Under: Launches, Missiles, Satellites, Space Programmes

7 MINUTES OF TERROR

June 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Seven minutes of terror when the Mars Curiosity (MSL) rover undertakes its planned descent to the Martian surface …

Team members at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory share the challenges of the Curiosity Mars rover’s final minutes to landing on the surface of Mars

Now that’s what I call systems engineering!

Filed Under: Deep Space Comms, Solar System, Space Programmes

First and Last Launches of the Space Shuttle

July 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Well spotted. The internal photo isn’t a picture of the Space Shuttle. It’s one of the European Space Agency‘s (ESA) first astronauts, Wubbo Ockels, inside the ESA Spacelab D1 in the Shuttle’s cargo bay (both pictures are courtesy of and copyright ©NASA).

ESA’s first astronaught was Ulf Merbold flying in Spacelab on STS-9.

I’m writing this piece now because today is to be the very last flight of a space shuttle. As I type, the launch is scheduled for about 5 hours’ time, weather at Cocoa Beach permitting.

Spacelab was developed in parallel and in conjunction with NASA’s space shuttle to be the orbiting laboratory in the Shuttle’s cargo bay, as a follow-on for Skylab and prior to the ISS (International Space Station).

The Spacelab programme was run from ESA’s ESTEC facility (European Space Technology Centre) in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. I worked at ESTEC all through the 1970s – not on Spacelab but on different communications satellites. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Apollo, Astronauts, Countries, Launches, Organisations, Space Shuttle, Spacelab