In this episode, I talk with Ex IBM and NASA contractor Kenneth Roberts who worked on the Saturn V, Skylab, Spacelab, the space shuttle and also helped train the crews and astronauts to understand and use the custom made flight and operational computer systems. This was a result of the …
Secret Soviet Lunar Rovers and Extra Terrestrial Cars
For the last 50 years or so we have been using wheeled robots and vehicles to explore other worlds from secret Soviet lunar rovers to the first lunar car to the latest Mars Rovers, we owe a lot to our extra-terrestrial wheeled helpers. NASA recently released new concept art for …
Robonauts or Men – Which Will Step Foot on Mars First ?
Mars will probably be the next giant leap for mankind – but it’s not certain that the feet that step onto it will belong to a man or woman. The development of the robonaut, humanoid robots to go to Mars in our place, is well underway. Some experts say they’re …
Salyut 7 – The forgotten rescue of a dead space station
In 1985 one of the most audacious space rescue missions was launched by the Soviets to recover a space station that had been dead for months due to an unknown fault. A feat that was unparalleled in space exploration and rewrote the books on what was thought possible: and yet, …
Did Reagan’s Real Star Wars Bankrupt the Soviet Union ?
In the 1980’s science fact and science fiction looked as if they might become one when the American President Ronald Reagan announced the ‘Strategic Defence Initiative’ or ‘Star Wars’ missile defence system. The program was designed to break the nuclear deadlock between the US and Soviets and move beyond the …
Will space junk end our modern way of life ? – The Kessler Syndrome
Space aint what it used to be, mainly because just like here on the earth, we are slowly filling the most important part just above us, with junk. After sixty years of space travel, flight debris, or space junk, has accumulated around the Earth, to the point that it’s becoming …
How can you stop a Nuclear Missile ?
When I was growing up in England in the 1970’s and though the 1980’s in particular, there was an almost palpable fear that a nuclear exchange could break out between the superpowers at almost any time. It caused me and many others around at the time to wonder was there …
What Happened on the Moon Before Apollo ?
The Apollo landings from 1969 to 1972 marked a high point in lunar exploration but Apollo didn’t just rock up on to the moon out of the blue, it took many, many missions by probes and landers over the preceding years to establish if we could send men to the …
XB-70 Valkyrie – The Worlds Fastest Bomber
“That’s not a plane, it’s a 3 plane formation” that’s what General Curtis LeMay said of the plans for the WS-110 supersonic replacement for the B-52 back in 1954. Back in the early 1950s, the B-52 was USAF’s main nuclear delivery platform but with the increasing sophistication of the Soviet …
X-15 The Ultimate Flying Machine
“It was the ultimate flying machine, No aeroplane can live up to what the X-15 did.” That’s what retired test pilot and astronaut Joe Engle said of the first real space plane and 50 years after its record-breaking flight of 3rd October 1967 when USAF test pilot William J. Knight …