July 22, 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.
- Lunar Outpost touts driving tests of its manned lunar rover prototype
The company dubs this test rover “Eagle”, and tries very hard to make exciting a video of what is simply an off road vehicle driving in the desert.
- Chinese government orders all pseudo-companies to increase quality control while forcing them to push their first test flights forward to the fourth quarter of 2025
Clear proof once again that these are not real private companies, but subdivisions within the Chinese government that have been allowed to operate somewhat like private companies. I wonder if this top-down order to hurry things is going to cause more problems.
- Iran completes a suborbital rocket launch
The flight is “claimed as a tech development test for future orbital missions.”
- On this day in 1994 Comet Shoemaker-Levy collided with Jupiter
Fortunately, Hubble’s out-of-focus optics had been fixed six months earlier, allowing numerous high resolutions images to be taken of the multiple impacts.
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.
- Lunar Outpost touts driving tests of its manned lunar rover prototype
The company dubs this test rover “Eagle”, and tries very hard to make exciting a video of what is simply an off road vehicle driving in the desert.
- Chinese government orders all pseudo-companies to increase quality control while forcing them to push their first test flights forward to the fourth quarter of 2025
Clear proof once again that these are not real private companies, but subdivisions within the Chinese government that have been allowed to operate somewhat like private companies. I wonder if this top-down order to hurry things is going to cause more problems.
- Iran completes a suborbital rocket launch
The flight is “claimed as a tech development test for future orbital missions.”
- On this day in 1994 Comet Shoemaker-Levy collided with Jupiter
Fortunately, Hubble’s out-of-focus optics had been fixed six months earlier, allowing numerous high resolutions images to be taken of the multiple impacts.
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
Top down doesn’t always cause problems.
Where ESA is just a big, stagnant committee–top down/arsenal method worked fine for Falcon.