July 23, 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.
- Chinese pseudo-company Space Pioneer touts completion of its launchpad at Jiuquan spaceport
It is hard to tell how much of the video are 3D graphics and how much is real. The pad is for its Tianlong-3 rocket, essentially a copy of the Falcon 9. This is also the same company that has a first stage launch itself during a static fire test in 2024. It had said it would do its first launch this summer, but it is not clear when that will happen.
- Axiom touts its ownership of the Rafaello multi-purpose logistics module that flew to ISS four times
The company acquired it in 2023. It is not clear how they will use it, since they no longer have the shuttle to put it into orbit.
- Amateur astronomer posts his own pictures of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas
Expect a lot more of these in the coming months.
- Russia’s next Bion returnable capsule arrives in Baikonur for launch in August
It will fly for 30 days, then use its Vostok landing capsule to bring back its “biomedical experiments.”
- On this day in 1962 Telstar-1 relayed the first live transatlantic television broadcast from across the U.S. and Europe.
Ah, what could have been! Privately designed, privately financed, and privately launched, this AT&T satellite was created to demonstrate that company’s plans for commercial satellite operations, for profit, plans that got banned when Congress and President Kennedy passed a communications bill that created the failed government corporation COMSAT.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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.
- Chinese pseudo-company Space Pioneer touts completion of its launchpad at Jiuquan spaceport
It is hard to tell how much of the video are 3D graphics and how much is real. The pad is for its Tianlong-3 rocket, essentially a copy of the Falcon 9. This is also the same company that has a first stage launch itself during a static fire test in 2024. It had said it would do its first launch this summer, but it is not clear when that will happen.
- Axiom touts its ownership of the Rafaello multi-purpose logistics module that flew to ISS four times
The company acquired it in 2023. It is not clear how they will use it, since they no longer have the shuttle to put it into orbit.
- Amateur astronomer posts his own pictures of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas
Expect a lot more of these in the coming months.
- Russia’s next Bion returnable capsule arrives in Baikonur for launch in August
It will fly for 30 days, then use its Vostok landing capsule to bring back its “biomedical experiments.”
- On this day in 1962 Telstar-1 relayed the first live transatlantic television broadcast from across the U.S. and Europe.
Ah, what could have been! Privately designed, privately financed, and privately launched, this AT&T satellite was created to demonstrate that company’s plans for commercial satellite operations, for profit, plans that got banned when Congress and President Kennedy passed a communications bill that created the failed government corporation COMSAT.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
Telstar: First Live Broadcast
https://youtu.be/-JTjB35zUxU
(36:27)
Great period-piece, very dramatic!
“Behind the Scenes with Telstar”
Bell System promo-film (1962)
https://youtu.be/MVI41ZfVSaM
37:15
What Mr. Z failed to mention was that this comsat was launched atop an early USAF Thor IRBM derivative….the first Deltas.
Starfish Prime also interfered with this.
Thank you Wayne for the videos and all the other historical footage that you manage to find on space subjects.
Hilarious but sad; in the “Live broadcast” film above, numerous Bell Company executives & Politicians are completely gushing over this “triumph of free enterprise,” as-if the Bell system wasn’t a monopoly, and as-if they would be allowed to keep control of it.
Jay–
Thank you!
Big fan of these “made-up” industrial films. (Or to be fancy about it, “ephemeral.”) And I must say, more of it appears to be showing up on YouTube compared to even 5 years ago. You can assume certain material exists, finding it however becomes problematic.
(The Internet Archive has huge amounts, but I find it hard to search.)
They all have a definite Agenda, whether they are tech-history-related or not, but great material in context.
I’m going to shill for this one– “the height of pre-war utopian futuristic thinking;”
“Welcome to the Wonder-World of 1960…”
“To New Horizons”(1940)
GM Futurama Exhibit at the Highways & Horizons Pavillion
New York World’s Fair 1939-1940
https://youtu.be/aIu6DTbYnog
(23:00)
(Full-color kicks in at the 8:00 mark)
“A World with a future in which all of us are tremendously interested, because that is where we are going to spend the rest of our lives.”
I’m slipping….
The Tornados
“Telstar”
https://youtu.be/wBm2CN0HvtI?list=RDwBm2CN0HvtI
3:14
Colorized & upscaled.