December 17, 2024 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.
- Airbus wins contract to build 100 OneWeb satellites
These 2nd generation satellites are to maintain the constellation presently in orbit.
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.
- Airbus wins contract to build 100 OneWeb satellites
These 2nd generation satellites are to maintain the constellation presently in orbit.
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
It might not be too inaccurate to say that “On this day, the Wright brothers invented the aircraft propeller.”
If you compare the propeller designs attempted before this time and theirs, you will see a fundamental difference. They understood that the propeller was most effectively designed as a thin, rapidly rotating wing, developing thrust in a forward direction, rather than a derivation of a ship’s propeller, a rather fat surface screwing through the air.
Their use of a wind tunnel showed them the best propeller design, as it did that of the wing. Everyone else basically just guessed, driven by an intuition that since air was less dense than water, an air propeller must be much larger and fatter than a ship’s, in the form of a rotating sail!
What we celebrate is the first powered, *controlled* flight of a heavier than air apparatus.
Bleriot invented the airplane
Engine/weight up front–tail in the back.
The Wright Fliers are both at once more primitive, yet more advanced that what we have now.
Bleriot and others just used hinged flaps–where the Wrights used wing warping—something drone enthusiasts are just now toying with.