Although we dream colonising the moon, travelling around the solar system and one day beyond to the stars, space is a dangerous place and not least because of the radiation from our sun and galactic cosmic rays. We only found out about the bands of trapped ionising radiation that surround …
How does Coronavirus (Covid-19) compare to Spanish flu?
There is a saying that goes along the lines of, “the man that looks to the past and future is blind in one eye but the man that looks the future only is blind in both”. Although this is something which we should heed at all times, in the case …
Nuking the moon – The Secret USAF Project A119
Probably one of the most inspirational moments in human history was the landing on the moon by Apollo 11 and Niel Armstrong’s first steps on the surface but maybe if project A119 had gone ahead almost 10 years earlier, things might not have looked quite so rosy knowing that the …
Hypernovas & Magnetars – The Most Powerful Objects in the Universe
As we scurry around the surface of our planet doing all the things that we think are so important, we rarely think how lucky we are to living not only in a fairly benign and stable point in the earth’s lifetime but also in the life of our nearest star, …
What Happened to the Numbers Stations? – Spying by Numbers
This is the sound of E03, also known as the “Lincolnshire Poacher” because of the use of a short piece of the aforementioned folk tune that introduced it. This is one of the best-known examples of a numbers station, something which reached its peak in the cold war but since …
Air Refuelling – The Hidden Force Multiplier
From Vietnam to the Falklands and from the cold war to the middle east, air to air refuelling or tanking is the unseen force enabler allowing those countries which have this capability, to project their airpower around the world and allowing their aircraft to stay in the air for as …
Could We Live Without GPS?
Could we live without GPS? , Now this sounds like a bit of a daft question, I mean what is the worst that could happen, maybe we would all have to learn to use a map again. But seriously, the GPS service which was launched in 1978 for the US …
Project Suntan – The Lockheed CL-400
The SR-71 was a groundbreaking aircraft designed to take the place of the U2 spy plane but in the time between the U2 and before the SR-71, another aircraft was proposed and designed by the same man Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, this would be so radical that it had the classification …
Is hydrogen the future of flight?
The first time we used hydrogen for civil aviation, it all ended rather badly, since then when you ever mention hydrogen-powered flight the first thing many people think of is the Hindenburg, but the times they are a-changing and with the pressure to find new non-fossil fuels for aircraft, will …
What Happened to the Soviet Supersonic Jump Jets?
When you think of vertical take of and landing aircraft other than helicopters, probably the first ones that spring to mind is the now-retired Harrier Jump jet and the much more recent Lockheed F-35B and this might make you wonder why there haven’t been more of them around. Well, what’s …