Lost in the noise of all the preparations to launch the SpaceX Falcon 9 a week or so ago, I’m not sure anyone in the space community really noticed it, but on one day, Thursday, May 17, here’s what happened… After launching from Kazakhstan late on Monday the 15th, on Thursday the 17th at 12:36[…]
If all goes well, early this coming Saturday morning, well before sunrise, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon spacecraft on top will launch from complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on what could be an historic cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station. If all goes well with an extensive[…]
Friday’s Atlas 5 launch was clearly the top space news story of the day here on Florida’s Space Coast, but another important space-related event happened that may have gotten lost in the noise. Sierra Nevada – not the mountain range, college or brewing company but one of the new commercial space companies competing with others[…]
Once again a space shuttle orbiter was on the move this past week as Enterprise was flown to New York City, and thousands of people waved, cheered and generally went crazy with excitement. And – like they did when Discovery was flown to the nation’s capital – news reporters, columnists, bloggers and tweeters bemoaned the[…]
This past week the Space Shuttle Discovery departed the Kennedy Space Center for good, flown to our nation’s capital atop a NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. Bittersweet, was the word most commonly used here on the Space Coast as people described their feelings about the day. And I must say there truly is no better[…]
And a shout out to my friend, Mark DeCotis Two weeks ago the CBS News television program 60 Minutes broadcast a piece about Brevard County entitled “Hard Landing.” The segment focused on several Space Coast workers and local business owners who were directly affected by the decision in 2004 to end the Space Shuttle program.[…]
It is April Fool’s day today so for this week’s edition of Orbital Inclinations I thought I would lighten things up a bit and share with you a version of one of my favorite space-related jokes, inspired by one I once heard during a previous century at a Space Congress in Cocoa Beach – and[…]
This past Friday would have been Wernher von Braun’s 100th birthday. The famous German rocket scientist was born on March 23, 1912 and passed away in 1977 at the all-too-young age of 65. While the heroic task of landing men on the Moon during Project Apollo was most certainly a team effort, involving literally hundreds[…]
March madness is in full swing on the college basketball courts, and spring training is in full bloom on baseball fields here in Florida and in Arizona. Both of which can mean only one thing to me: we are in the offseason for NFL football. But just because my Minnesota Vikings aren’t playing each week[…]
This week I don’t really have an opinion to share, so much as I have some good news and some bad news to tell you. First, the good news: If you listened to the March 4, 2012 edition of Space Talk on NASA’s Kepler mission to find planets around other stars in the galaxy, you[…]
April 6, 2013 This week President Obama will officially present his administration’s request to Congress for a budget to run the government during the fiscal year that begins this October 1st. (We’ll just ignore that he was required by law to have done this by the first Monday in February, and that both the House[…]
March 16, 2013 A half century ago, a charismatic young president stood before the nation and threw down the challenge of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth, and to do it before the decade of the 1960s was out. At that time, in May of 1961, there was[…]
Feb. 23, 2013 There was another report in the news on Friday of a fireball in the sky over Southern California. The glowing green object was caught on camera as it burned up, with the spectacle lasting just a few seconds. When I read of the incident I smiled to myself, not really because of[…]
Feb. 9, 2012 A couple of weeks ago, or so, I had the rare privilege of being on TV for about five seconds. My brief, far-short-of-15-minutes-of-fame appearance was part of a WFTV channel 9 news report by Vanessa Welch about NASA and its foray into the world of computer apps and gaming. Now I should[…]
Feb. 2, 2003 Friday was the official Day of Remembrance this year for NASA and the entire space community. At events around the country, in our nation’s capital, around the world in places like Israel, and certainly here in Florida, people took time to reflect on the losses we experienced related to the Apollo 1[…]
Jan. 19, 2013 To paraphrase Will Rogers, I never met a Russian that I didn’t like. Like others in my general age bracket, I grew up at a time when the Cold War was just a term I heard on TV. I wasn’t old enough to comprehend the potential horror of nuclear war, or understand[…]
Jan. 12, 2013 Having survived the end of 2012 with our planet and civilization intact — such as it is and despite supposed predictions by ancient Mayan calendar makers — if you were one of those who were truly worried about the end of everything then you may take great comfort to know that it[…]
Dec. 8, 2012 Forty years ago on Dec. , 1972, at 12:33 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, Florida’s Space Coast and indeed the entire southeast of the United States lit up in a way never seen before, and not seen since, as Apollo 17 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center to begin our nation’s final[…]
Dec. 1, 2012 Scientists this past week announced that NASA’s Messenger probe, launched from Cape Canaveral and now in orbit around Mercury, has confirmed the presence of ice on a planet whose daytime highs can reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit. The ice is located at Mercury’s north pole within deep craters that are forever in shadow,[…]
As we gain more distance from the election and watch as our elected leaders continue to posture along party lines, assuring continued gridlock with Congress that may indeed drive us over the fiscal cliff everyone is talking about, we also are seeing subtle signs of change within the Obama Administration. Possibly as an example of[…]
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