April 15, 2025 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft completes suborbital all-female tourist flight
The press is giving this flight lots of coverage because of the nature of the crew, but in terms of the future of space, this suborbital flight is less than trivial in importance.
- Australian rocket startup Gilmour touts its satellite platform for satellite companies
Meanwhile, the company’s first launch on March 15, 2025 never happened, and the company remains very tight-lipped about the situation.
- On this day in 1970 the Apollo 13 crew improvised a system for using the carbon dioxide filters from its crippled command module in its lunar module lifeboat
The fix involved “bags, a flight plan card, some hoses, and a lot of duct tape.”
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft completes suborbital all-female tourist flight
The press is giving this flight lots of coverage because of the nature of the crew, but in terms of the future of space, this suborbital flight is less than trivial in importance.
- Australian rocket startup Gilmour touts its satellite platform for satellite companies
Meanwhile, the company’s first launch on March 15, 2025 never happened, and the company remains very tight-lipped about the situation.
- On this day in 1970 the Apollo 13 crew improvised a system for using the carbon dioxide filters from its crippled command module in its lunar module lifeboat
The fix involved “bags, a flight plan card, some hoses, and a lot of duct tape.”
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Blue Origin’s New Sheppard flight (4/14) was both amusing and touching. Maybe the one thing we can get out of it was a rather pure reaction of a team representing half of humanity, possibly untrained and genuine. Though the crew were mostly in showbiz and that has its own severe biases.
I think the chatter and screams in the background throughout the flight shared with the viewer a certain thrill of their brief adventure. Can’t say much about the post-flight. I tuned out.
I thought the New Shepard flight was quite inspiring. Did it move the engineering forward? No. Did it inspire a lot of people to consider space as an option? Certainly. If we really want to open space to everyone, then everyone must go – no matter the order it happens in. The janitor, the teacher, the singer, the engineer, the artist, and the dreamer all have a place in this puzzle. So far 721 people have touched space. For 60 plus years, that is pathetic. We need to send that many (or more) in a month. It will take time but we’ll get there. Unless the space community’s vitriol scares them off (Twitter/X/Threads/Blue Sky have been horrible).
My biggest surprise was that Katy Perry was only the third-best-looking woman on the flight – didn’t see that coming.