Interstellar Spacecraft
Vehicles that travel between stars
NASA Art Returns to Washington
Since 1963, hundreds of artists (and musicians, poets—even one fashion designer) have interpreted NASA’s aeronautic and space projects. The artists were given carte blanche to create what they wanted, in any medium, on any subject. In celebration of NASA’s 50th anniversary in 2008, more than 70 diverse artworks from the program began touring the country [...]
May 27, 2011 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Water Bears and Star(c)hips
A few random thoughts on Day 11 of Endeavour‘s last flight: Tomorrow STS-134 astronaut Mike Fincke will become the U.S. record holder for time spent in space, eclipsing chief astronaut Peggy Whitson’s 377-day mark. Not bad for a guy who once washed out of Air Force fighter pilot training. “My arms weren’t golden enough to [...]
May 26, 2011 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Department of Flying Saucers
Hello? UFO Desk? I'm calling to report a ...
September 2010 |
By Craig Mellow
He May Be a Smart Physicist, But...
Here's Stephen Hawking, commenting on humanity’s future:
...Our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million. Our only c...
August 11, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Japan Sets Sail for Venus
While the U.S. space program is mired in political arguments over how to reach Earth orbit (something we've known how to do for 50 years), Japan's space agency JAXA, with far less money, is about to take a small but noteworthy step into the future.An HII-A launcher is scheduled to lift off from the...
May 14, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Voyager 2 Skips a Beat
Flight directors at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California are troubleshooting a glitch with the distant Voyager 2 spacecraft, which is still sending back signals from the outer solar system 33 years after it was launched. According to a JPL release, ground controllers haven't received inte...
May 10, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Inching Closer to Clarke's Prediction
In the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, written as Stanley Kubrick was adapting it to a screenplay for his 1968 film, author Arthur C. Clarke philosophizes deeply on the convergence of man and machine. While the human astronauts Frank Poole and David Bowman affect an almost robot-like discipline and de...
December 28, 2009 |
By Mike Klesius
Light Sails and Laser Beams
The history of solar sailing is basically the story of Charlie Brown and the football. It remains a great concept, a technology that could theoretically take us to the stars. But for all their promise, actual solar sail missions tend to end in failure, usually before they even begin, and often thro...
November 13, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
