Recent content by WDD

Aldrin stepped on the lunar surface, or he set foot on the lunar surface; he did not "step foot" on it. (What are they teaching in high school nowadays?)

I notice in the past decade or so that whenever a revival or remake of some classic piece of entertainment is done, the current moviemakers have to one-up the originators and introduce some gratuitous "risqué" detail that never would have been in the original. It might be "Alfalfa" from "The...

It seems on the surface that everybody is thrilled that the rocket exploded, and that it is odd. But this isn't a tragedy; the developers expect things to go wrong. They study what went right and what went wrong, and try again, with adjustments. Any good entrepreneur or inventor does the...

I wonder... it may be awkward to determine the shape of the heliosphere from our vantage point on Earth, but if we had the right kinds of instruments, we could see the heliospheres ("astrospheres"?) of other star systems accurately, as we're far enough away to be able to see each star and its...

You're speaking in terms of mass (which has constant inertia); I'm speaking in terms of gravity, e.g., 100 pounds on Earth weighs 264 pounds on Jupiter.

I notice the weight of a given object is given in numerous articles, but I wonder what that really means. If Mike Wall, in his article on the Chinese Mars orbiter and rover, https://www.space.com/china-tianwen-1-mars-mission-launch.html for example, gives the weight of the rover as 530 pounds...