It was called “the most valuable cargo ever brought to the US shores” and in many ways brought about many technological aspects of the world we live in today and yet this device had a chequered beginning and appears to have been independently invented several times in different countries. A …
If Oppenheimer Didn’t Invent the Atomic Bomb, Who Did?
Did Oppenheimer invent the atomic bomb?. I was listening to the radio the other day to an interview with Cillian Murphy, the actor who plays Robert Oppenheimer in the new film of the same name and the interviewer started by saying, “what’s it like to play the man who invented …
What are the odds of a safe rocket launch?
After watching the SpaceX Starship explode, the space industry could be seen as high risk but which are you more likely to be killed in, a car journey or a rocket going into orbit? Well, if you are in the UK which is ranked 7th in the world for the …
How many Apollo artifacts should we save?
Back in January 2021, NASA announced that MLP-2, one of the three Mobile launch platforms that carried over fifty Apollo and shuttle missions was being demolished despite its historical importance because NASA quite simply had nowhere to put it. Roll on to May 2023 and NASA announced that MLP-3 which …
NASA Film Footage Update & Artemis Launch
Well, I was wrong about that. In the last video I was looking at why although we now have modern sophisticated digital video cameras, we don’t see close-up launch footage from the likes of Artemis and SpaceX that matched the quality of the old Apollo and Shuttle film footage and …
Why is Older NASA Launch Film Footage Still the Best?
Even as a non American, the close up shot of the massive U..S..A.. on the side of the Saturn as it lifted slowly from the pad is, to me still one of the most impressive and iconic pieces of space-related footage ever shot and even now still fills me with …
Why SpaceX Needs New Launch Pads for Starship, and Soon
The first launch of the Starship super heavy was both a success and a failure, the success was the rocket itself which did much more than Elon wanted and cleared the tower easily without blowing up but in the process, it virtually destroyed the launch pad, which maybe was what …
How Do You Move a Skyscraper Sized Rocket?
Building a rocket is one thing and launching it is another but what about the bit in between, moving it to the lauchpad? Rockets like the Saturn 5 and the new SLS for the Artemis program were and are massive. The SLS is about the same height as a 30 …
Proving the Big Bang and beyond with Planck
Ever since we came up with the theory of the big bang, we been looking for evidence to back it up. Put simply, The big bang theory is the leading explanation of how the universe came to be, from an infinitely small but equally high density and temperature point that …
ESA’s million-year time machine
This is not a photo of the Milkyway or an artist’s impression, this a map made up of approximately 1.8 billion data points collected by the Gaia satellite, each one not just representing a star but also comets, asteroids and other astronomical objects in the Milkyway and beyond. But its …