Seat belts, air bags even ejector seats in planes, we take these type of safety devices for granted and they have saved thousands of lives. Virtually anything that carries people these days from cars to planes to spacecraft have been tested using sophisticated test dummies but it hasn’t always the …
Could We Launch Spacecraft with a Giant Space Gun?
When we talk about blasting something in to space, most of the time you would think that they would be using a rocket but what about using a giant gun.. sounds crazy but back in the 60’s a joint project between the US and Canada used just such a giant …
How Dangerous are Jet Contrails & Rocket Exhaust ?
The sight of contrails above us in the skies is a common one, especially in the developed world since the advent of the jet engine and at around same time we have had a much less prevalent but equally potent kind of exhaust from rocket engines but just how dangerous …
How Will We Save the Apollo & Other Lunar Landing Sites?
With the 50th anniversary of the first manned moon landing coming up and the prospect of having new lunar explorers both state-sponsored and private companies, how do you protect what are arguably some of the most important scientific and culturally historic sites in human history? You would think that the …
Why Can’t we Remake the Rocketdyne F1 Engine?
As we advance our technology ever forward you would think that re-making a 50-year-old design should be easy but things are not quite as simple as they seem. When the Space Launch System or SLS was in development, NASA ran the advanced Booster competition to find a new booster system …
Vertical Landing Rockets Before SpaceX
You may well be forgiven for thinking that rockets which take off vertically and then land again vertically were a recent development by the likes of Blue Origin and SpaceX but a quick look back the history of rocketry and you’ll see that this technique is far from new and …
How The Real Soviet Rocketmen Changed the World
Its said that around 400,000 people worked on the Apollo project to land a man on the moon and apart from the astronauts themselves, how many people spring to mind when you think about the who designed and oversaw its construction and operation, With the exception of Werner Von Braun, …
Aerospike Engines – Why Aren’t We Using them Now?
Ever since the earliest rockets, we’ve seen them working with a bell-shaped nozzle from the First German V2 rockets right up to the SpaceX falcon heavy but their ubiquity doesn’t mean that they are the best way to do things, in fact, they have a major drawback which is one …
Why is NASA so Slow ?
Each generation reinvents space as the cosmic frontier: in the age of Gagarin and Shepard, test pilots grinned at the TV cameras to prove they were made from ‘The Right Stuff’. And in 2018 orbital space is becoming a playground for billionaire entrepreneurs, turning their childhood dreams into reality. In …
LIVE – The end of the Universe – with Ethan Siegel – REPLAY
In today’s live stream, we will be looking at the end of the universe with theoretical astrophysicist and science writer Ethan Siegel. Along the way we see how the knowledge that we have built up to come up with our best theory about the start of the universe could show …