"unblemished track record of failure"

aledlewis:

Sky Rockets in Flight

Here’s a look at what I did for SPACE! A Gallery Show at Gallery 1988, opening 21st June, organised and curated by my bud Mike Mitchell.

Look closely! It’s an isometric pixel drawing of iconic space rockets and their occupants. I was careful to do it to scale to give you an impression of how big each one would have been. I love space!

(via astrotastic)

sagansense:

ikenbot:

Just the saw the International Space Station swoosh over New York at 9:27p (just as a NASA txt indicated - estimated time was 9:51p) looked like a bolide (fireball), this is the second time I see this in person but it never ceases to be awesome. Keep looking up guys :D

even if we’re shrouded in constant light pollution

Provided pics for visual reference: Mojave desert fireball by Wally Pacholka / Bolide! by Bon Van Guick

Head’s Up: NASA’s Spot The Station program provides email or text updates which alert you when and where the ISS will appear overhead in your local night skies! My little guy has already spotted it, as have I. It’s quite a humbling (albeit brief) experience. Most overhead passes last around 1-5 minutes. Stay curious.

jtotheizzoe:

Dreams of Space

A design and space science grand slam, behold these 1965 Looking Into Science textbook supplements. Originating in California, they are a memory of a time perhaps more creative and ambitious, in science and in art.

But as any reader of this or the many other blogs who feature science art knows, the talent evident in today’s works signal that there’s a wave of change coming. Sometimes, the best way to inspire the mind is to inspire the soul, for they never truly act alone.

If you love these, then immerse yourself in Dreams of Space, a blog dedicated solely to nonfiction children’s space flight books from 1945-1975. Especially be sure to check out this Czech pop-up book.

(via geniusbee)

sagansense:

Jeff Bezos Recovers Apollo Rocket Engines From Deep Ocean

After lying on the ocean floor for more than 40 years, two Apollo rocket engines that helped deliver astronauts to the moon are once again seeing the light of day.

A team organized by Jeff Bezos spent three weeks fishing at sea to recover the corroded F-1 engines, which sat more than 4 kilometers below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Bezos does not yet know precisely which Apollo mission the engines flew on as the original serial numbers on the objects are missing. He is hoping they are the Apollo 11 engines that brought the first men to the moon. On Mar. 20, his team’s ship was heading back to Cape Canaveral in Florida with the aged pieces to restore them and perhaps determine which mission they came from.

“We’ve seen an underwater wonderland – an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program,” Bezos wrote in a blog post. “We photographed many beautiful objects in situ and have now recovered many prime pieces. Each piece we bring on deck conjures for me the thousands of engineers who worked together back then to do what for all time had been thought surely impossible.”

Billionaire Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, announced his intentions to pull the Space Age relics up from the depths almost exactly one year ago. Little has been heard about the endeavor since then but that’s often how Bezos works. His private rocket company, Blue Origin, is probably the most secretive new corporation getting into the commercial launch business.

Pulling the F-1 engines up was a tremendous engineering challenge. The team used remotely operated vehicles tethered with fiber optic cables to work in the black depths at the bottom of the Atlantic. After restoring the engines and stabilizing them to prevent further corrosion, Bezos hopes to display them at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, though the ultimate decision for where to put them will probably involve NASA.

“This is a historic find and I congratulate the team for its determination and perseverance in the recovery of these important artifacts of our first efforts to send humans beyond Earth orbit,” wrote NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a statement about the recovery. ”We look forward to the restoration of these engines by the Bezos team and applaud Jeff’s desire to make these historic artifacts available for public display.”

The F-1 engines flew on the gigantic Saturn V, still the largest and most powerful rocket ever built in the U.S. Each engine is nearly 6 meters tall and 4 meters wide and weighs more than 8,000 kg. They produced 7.7 million pounds of thrust and brought the Saturn V to nearly 58 km above the Earth at a top speed of and to a speed of almost 10,000 km/hr.

Watch: Jeff Bezos Recovers Apollo Engines

for-all-mankind:

Say you want to fly on board a rocket, or that you have a $100-million satellite to put into orbit. Which one should you use?

Since the dawn of the Space Age, some 5,038 rockets have been launched, mainly by six countries: Russia, United States, Europe, China, Japan, and India. There are 47 families of launchers, 26 of which have flown at least ten times. (See Table 11.)

Of those 26 launchers, the most successful is the Saturn family; it recorded 28 successes in 28 launches. It is followed by the Space Shuttle, with 128 launch success in 129 flights. (The loss of Columbia is not counted since it occurred at reentry.) Even so, you couldn’t fly on board those government rockets.

Of the commercially available launchers, the Russian Semyorka (aka Soyuz) is number one in many ways. First, it is by far the most used: 1,698 Semyorka have been launched in 52 years—one every 11 days! It is also the most successful. In the last 18 years (since the demise of the Soviet Union), 252 Semyorka were launched with only 4 failures, for a success rate of 98%. Compare this to:

Delta: 347 launches with a 96% success rate,
Ariane: 193 launches with a 95% success rate,
Proton: 351 launches with a 89% success rate, and
Atlas: 347 launches with a 88% success rate.

 Another way to compare space launchers is to consider all the ones launched by each country. Russian launched 60.5% of the 5,038 rockets, the United States 30%, and the rest of the world less than 10%. As for the overall success rate, Russian launchers scored 93%, United States 90%, Europe 92%, China 89%, Japan 84% ,and India 71%. 

Of all the 5,038 rockets launched to date, some 4,621 accomplished their mission, with a success rate of 92%. This means that if ever you have to fly anyone of them, you have 11 chances in 12 of getting into space. And your best hopes are on board a Russian rocket: 15 chances in 16.

(via placeofpluto)

sosuperawesome:

NASA on Tumblr, http://n-a-s-a.tumblr.com/

(via kilayi)