drew@drewexmachina.com
The past decade or so has seen a marked increase in interest to reach the Moon for exploration as well as the potential exploitation of its […]
While it has been a few months since I have published a new post on the Drew Ex Machina website, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t […]
With so many spacecraft operating in orbit and on the surface of Mars today, providing a record-setting torrent of scientific data from our neighbor, it seems […]
As 1960 unfolded, the United States and Soviet Union were racing to develop their own crewed spacecraft to loft the first human into space. One of […]
At the same time American agencies like NACA and the USAF were studying manned spaceflight through the 1950s (see “The Origins of NASA’s Mercury Program”), comparable […]
During the opening years of the Space Age, the Soviet Union took an early lead with an impressive series of space firsts: the first satellite, the […]
The mention of the “dark side of the Moon” as a synonym for the lunar “far side” on any online forum inevitably leads to a torrent […]
This is the second part of a series on the First Race to the Moon. The first part, covering events up to November 1958, is “The […]
By the beginning of 1963 as the crippled Mars 1 was making its way towards the Red Planet, Chief Designer Sergei Korolev and his team at […]
Ask any space enthusiast about “The Moon Race” (especially those of a particular age like myself) and the competition between the United States and the old […]
Early 1967 proved to be a disastrous time for both the American and Soviet manned space programs with the loss of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White […]
During the six months following the launch of the Soviet Union’s second satellite, Sputnik 2 (see “Sputnik 2: The First Animal in Orbit”), public attention was […]