Recent content by p3orion

Quite right. For some five decades following the Roswell "crash" that inaugurated the UFO craze, eyewitness observations were largely hampered by the fact that it was often unlikely that there was any photographic evidence to back up the accounts. But in the last 20 years, the likelihood that...

Some? That's closer than every geostationary satellite, since there's only one altitude at which orbital velocity results in a one-day period: 22, 236 miles.

An argument could be made that, since SpaceX will be assisting in Artemis, the FAA is, o the federal government's behalf, exercising the due diligence of a contractor over a supplier. But that would seem to be a task better suited to NASA, while an agency tasked with overseeing public safety...

Stop beating the " Mercury 13" dead horse! Those women did NOT "participate in training" as you dishonestly state. They underwent SOME of the same physiological tests as the actual astronauts, but that's ALL. They never even met as a group until decades later! NONE were military test pilots...

This is hardly news: NOVA aired an episode that gave the same explanation two years ago. In any case, I'm not sure why this drew the attention of a website supposedly devoted to space science, unless it's a reflexive need to use the phrase "climate change."

Yeah, just the fact that landing on the moon is a great achievement... but one we achieved 54 years ago.

Good trailer. I went and watched the whole thing on Youtube while I was waiting for the TWO stinking ads to load on Space.com. Do better, guys!

The first stage's single BE-3PM engine suffered a "thermo-structural failure." Yeah, so did the Hindenberg. They're trying to hide "the engine bell blew up" in technobabble, but it's hard to talk your way around a smoking hole in the desert.

I suppose "Neil + 54" is out of the question?

Good article, but a bit out of date (even though it was released only this morning): the well-received crossover episode "Those Old Scientists" dropped almost a month ago. In the meantime, "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" has boldly gone somewhere else no Star Trek series had ever gone (and...

Contiinue reading the article; you stopped too soon.

Read the rest of the Wiki article (or some better source.) Karman was trying to determine the theoretical maximum height an aircraft could reach, based on atmospheric characteristics (and understandings of aerodynamics at the time) but the actual 100-kilometer line that has been agreed to (to...

Discussions of lift versus thrust or inertia are descriptive, but not really definitive of the Karman line; the same arguments hold true at the 50-mile line that the US Air Force used for decades. The Karman Line is 100 kilometers because 100 is a nice round number.

You're thinking of the Karman Line (the altitude where space "officially" begins.) "99% of the atmosphere" is well below that level, but any definition of where space begins that is based on atmospheric conditions is a bit of a rationalization anyway. The line is at about 62 miles because...

It may have been a bit ungainly on the ground, but it sure loves to fly! I was a Navy pilot in the late '80s, based at NAS Moffett Field, which shared its runways with NASA Ames Research Center. The ER-2 would start its takeoff roll as described above, but it didn't have to get up a lot of...