Congratulations to SpaceX on a spectacular launch of the Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon capsule for the COTS-2/3 cargo delivery demonstration mission. Dragon is safely in orbit, its solar array wings are deployed, and, right this minute there is a Dragon flying around the world, headed toward a rendezvous … Continue reading
Category Archives: Civil Space Programs
Rocket Plumbing
SpaceX have inspected the engine that gave the anomalous chamber pressure reading, and have found a faulty valve. They plan to have it replaced in time for the next launch attempt on Tuesday at 3:44 am.
Not This Time
Well, the Falcon 9 countdown went down to zero, the engine ignition sequence started, but was aborted by the computer controlling the launch because of a sensor reading that the chamber pressure on number five engine was abnormally high. The Falcon launch sequence is designed to hold the rocket on … Continue reading
T Minus 10 Minutes to the SpaceX COTS 2/3 Dragon Launch
Rob here – been a loooong time since I have posted at Out of the Cradle – but today I couldn’t stay away. In the very early days of OotC I live-blogged several of the first launch attempts of Space Exploration Technologies’ Falcon One rocket. SpaceX have come a long … Continue reading
Space Shuttle Launch #NASATweetUps, Past and Present
Space Shuttle Atlantis is poised to launch to the International Space Station, and NASA is hosting a Twitter meet-up, or tweet-up, at the launch. If you’re one of the 150 lucky invitees attending the shuttle launch as guests of NASA, I can tell you from personal experience that you are … Continue reading
Carnival of the Egg Moon
Howdy everyone! Thing’s are certainly perking up for Spring, even with regards to our Moon, so I decided to throw together another Carnival of the Moon. Recently, The Moon Society sent out a request to its members eliciting support for a book donation project to create a Lunar Resource Library … Continue reading
The Dawn of a New American Enterprise
The space program announcement on Monday was, in my view, status quo shattering. It engages a lot of risk, but if you look carefully at what it says (as opposed to what the mass media says it says), you will see that it unlocks an enormous realm of opportunity. In … Continue reading
Tweeting the STS-129 Launch
Hey there folks, Rob the many-Moons-ago OotC founder here. (Sorry, Ken, Lunar Library pun very definitely intended ::vbg::) I still check in on the place regularly, and I have to say I’ve been really impressed with what Ken’s been doing. Someone at NASA must have been as well: Recently, we … Continue reading
Scholarships for Space Studies
Ah, your Lunar Librarian can well recall his student years, hitting the books and starving more often than not in the pursuit of knowledge. Ramen noodles, rice & beans, ravioli. I seemed to have a very R-rich diet. So that you won’t have to suffer as I did in my … Continue reading
LPSC Round-Up
Howdy everyone! I’m fresh back from the latest Lunar & Planetary Science Conference (affectionately referred to as the LPSC), and what a time it was. I ran into a lot of old friends, met some new ones, and wallowed in copious amounts of Moon stuff. The proceedings are found here … Continue reading
NASA Academy 2009 Accepting Applications
The NASA Academy is a phenomenal program created by Dr. Gerald Soffen in 1993 to emulate the ISU model and help train promising up-and-coming scientists for future leadership at NASA. Participants work in the labs side-by-side with NASA PIs on all kinds of wild projects. At Goddard these were usually … Continue reading
A Challenging but Rewarding Lunar Project
“Lunar Challenge“, published by EdNovations in 2004, it weighs in at several pounds of resources. I’ve got to admit, this is probably the most challenging review I’ve done to date, as there was a lot to cover. “Lunar Challenge” was developed in response to the President’s Vision for Space Exploration … Continue reading
Best of the Moon 2007
Howdy everyone, and welcome to the Best of the Moon 2007! Each year we stop and take a look at the best additions to the Lunar Library over the course of the year. 2007 has been an unusual one for the Lunar Library, not least because your friendly Librarian was … Continue reading
Carnival of Space #31
Howdy Everyone! Welcome back to The Carnival of Space, which stops again here at Out of the Cradle with an all new show, its 31st ever! [Update: Thanks to Alan Boyle at Cosmic Log for the heads-up on the broken links. They should all work now] I’m Ken Murphy, the … Continue reading
Carnival of Space #30 is Up…
Over at Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog. Out of the Cradle will be hosting an upcoming Carnival, so stay tuned! Update: That would be this Thursday, November 29. Be sure to submit your entries early and often to: info@universetoday.com
Senate votes more money for NASA
50 years to the day after the space race began, the US Senate has voted to commit an extra billion dollars to NASA’s budget.
The Moon gets a visitor
There’s lots of talk at the moment about various different nations sending unmanned spacecraft to the Moon. In the meantime, Japan has gone ahead and done it: Japan’s Kaguya probe slid into lunar orbit late Wednesday after a circuitous 20-day trek from Earth to begin more than a dozen science … Continue reading
Happy anniversary, Sputnik!
50 years ago today, the space age began when the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite. That little silver ball started something quite amazing – literally the beginning of the transformation of humanity into a space-faring society. But, looking back over the last 50 years, we have to … Continue reading
Putting the ‘spin’ in spin-offs
I don’t much like the spin-offs argument for why we should have a space program. Here’s a good example of why. It’s a weak justification. If you can damn with a faint praise, the spin-off argument is damning with a weak justification. You don’t justify something like the space program … Continue reading
Coming up on 50 years
No, Out of the Cradle is not that old. But on October the fourth, the Space Age will be. Thursday this coming week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik-1, the world’s first artificial satellite. Just a small silver ball with four long antennae and a pair of … Continue reading
Carnival of Space #18
Image by R.A. Smith from “The Exploration of the Moon” Hear ye! Hear ye! Step right up ladies and gentlemen and prepare to be shocked and amazed at the wonders of the universe that await you here at the Carnival of Space. I’m Ken Murphy, custodian of the Lunar Library … Continue reading
In space, no-one can hear you sing in the shower
…because there isn’t a shower. “Sweat doesn’t fall of you. The water just accumulates until it gets too big and agitated and falls off like a sphere of water. It then floats around until it hits something. It takes a lot of water to fall off.” Imagine huge water balls … Continue reading
Atlantis leaves ISS with a new solar array wing
Good to see that construction on the ISS is continuing, although not without some hiccups. There was a problem with the command and control computers in the Russian segment – all six crashed simultaneously, a failure that must have really gotten the attention of everybody on board, and everybody in … Continue reading
ISDC News Wrap-up
Howdy everyone! I’m almost done convalescing after co-chairing the ISDC, and have done a little scouting around the web to see the news that came out of it. Much of which I only got to see bits and pieces of whilst patrolling the conference making sure that everything was going … Continue reading
International Space Development Conference – Online Registration Closes Soon!
Howdy everyone! Regular visitors to the Lunar Library know that yours truly is one of the co-chairs for the International Space Development Conference coming up over the Memorial Day weekend here in Dallas. This is the largest citizen space conference in the world, and gathers together leaders in industry, academia, … Continue reading