July 15, 2026 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.
Note: X now requires log in to view videos with sound. You can get around this by clicking on the three dots at the top right to get the embed code. Ask for the code for an “embedded video.” The video will then be available for watching with sound.
- Image of Long March-10BB’s recovered first stage as it arrives at port
More images here. It appears clamp arms were used to transfer the stage onshore.
- Northrop Grumman presents video of the launch of Pegasus from its L-1011 Stargazer airplane
This was Pegasus’ last launch, placing Katalyst’s Link spacecraft in orbit to save the Gehrels-Swift space telescope.
- Film of the July 15, 1975 launch of Apollo 18 as part of the first joint U.S./Soviet space flight
The Apollo capsule brought an airlock to dock with the Soviet Soyuz 19 capsule. All told the two spacecraft flew linked for almost two days. No American would fly in space for six more years, until the first shuttle flight in 1981.
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
Actually, the “real” Apollo 18 flew in December, 1974. Nobody talked about what happened and, mysteriously, film footage about it emerged which explained why we haven’t landed on the moon since Apollo 17. (It was aliens, of course.)
OK, I’m pulling everyone’s leg with that. About 15 years ago, there was a low-budget, hokey movie named Apollo 18. It starred nobody I ever heard of and it was, from what I gathered, an American-Canadian production, filmed in Vancouver, B. C.
I’ve seen it and it’s pretty bad. Fortunately, it came and went and I don’t think too many people saw it.
Considering the quality of the movie (which, apparently, NASA hated and critics trashed), I wonder if it might not have been made as a deliberate tax-loss project. I can’t find any mention of its finances, leading me to believe that it likely didn’t make much money.
Those were the mean cousins of Rocky from HAIL MARY
Found footage type movie. I thought the plot was hokey (it was the moon rocks wot dun it) but considerable trouble was taken to depict the interior of the LM, later the Russian lander and the CSM. Better than what was done in For All Mankind.
As I remember, the LM ascent stage crashed into the CM in lunar orbit and everybody’s killed. Nobody’s apparently been back since 1974, so how did that film get found?
I have heard of Apollo 18 but have never watched it. In looking at its IMDb entry it might have been an entirely Canadian production. Most of the cast are Canadian and the rest are from various parts of the UK. Several have long histories in Hallmark Channel movies – which are all shot in Canada – including the lead, Warren Christie.
Christie, by the way, is among the Brit contingent and is one of those sneaky ones who can do pitch-perfect American accents. He’s had a long career in Canadian productions that get play in the U.S. Not long after he did Apollo 18 he was third-billed in a sci-fi series that ran for a single season called Alphas. It was a sort of low-rent X-Men about good guys with odd powers who worked for a government agency tasked with taking down bad guys with odd powers. Not great, but watchable, and with a good cast including Laura Mennell who was also his castmate on Apollo 18. Spooky little Summer Glau from Firefly, Serenity and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was in a few episodes. A few years later Christie had a frequent recurring role on a pretty decent police procedural called Motive that ran for a couple of years.
Found footage type movie. I thought the plot was hokey (it was the moon rocks wot dun it) but considerable trouble was taken to depict the interior of the LM, later the Russian lander and the CSM. Better than what was done in For All Mankind.
Why the double post? Is there still an issue with nested comments?
Anti-gravity?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XKRMbVpJ3Rc