drew@drewexmachina.com
The launching of the first two Sputniks was a terrible blow to America’s self-image of technical preeminence that had developed in the years following World War […]
For long-time space enthusiasts like myself, the US Army’s Redstone missile figures prominently in the early history of the Space Age (see “Redstone: The Missile That […]
As the old saying goes, “the third time’s the charm”. This is likely an American variation of the British phrase “third time lucky” (which itself is […]
The launching of Sputnik on the night of October 4, 1957 was virtually a total success (see “Sputnik: The Launch of the Space Age”). The only […]
As anyone with even a passing knowledge of spaceflight can tell you, space is an unforgiving place. While the majority of space missions launched today are […]
The Venera program was undoubtedly the most successful and best known series of Soviet planetary missions. During the 1970s and early 1980s, a succession of spacecraft […]
The world’s unexpected reaction to the launching of Sputnik on October 4, 1957 proved to be of immense propaganda value to the Soviet Union (see “Sputnik: […]
Born just over four years into the Space Age, I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s enthralled with the succession of space missions which ultimately […]
Today it seems that whenever one of NASA’s missions to worlds beyond our own encounters a potentially mission ending problem, teams of talented engineers and scientists […]
A half of a century after the fact, it is difficult to imagine the excitement during 1967 as NASA continued to work through its backlog of […]
While the tragic fire which killed the crew of Apollo 1 on January 27, 1967 effectively put the brakes on the Apollo program (see “The Future […]
In recent years it seems that Mars has dominated NASA’s planetary exploration program while proposals to study our twin-planet-gone-bad, Venus, are being repeatedly rejected. Something similar […]
