Space Shuttle
The Valley of Expectations
Human spaceflight may be dead, but the future's still death from above. Ever look up and notice how much the American Space Shuttle resembles some styles of drone? That happened when we weren’t looking.
Sally Ride's Astronaut Class Completely Changed NASA's Demographics
Though Sally Ride was the first woman in space, her astronaut cohort marked a number of important changes in NASA's astronaut selection.
Was Space Shuttle Challenger a Casualty of Bad Data Visualization?
The U.S. is no stranger to the collapse of complex systems. But two decades before the break-up of Space Shuttle Columbia, the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and Fukashima Daiichi, America witnessed the Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986, and saw...
What You Are Not Allowed to Do in Space
Before he returned to Earth on the Space Shuttle for the last time, Andrew Feustel got something stuck in his eye. On earth, a couple tears would have solved the problem--unlike Chuck Norris, astronauts can apparently shed tears--but the thing is, in...
How Should We Remember the Space Shuttle
h3. Also see Neil deGrasse Tyson explain "why we had a space shuttle":http://motherboard.tv/2011/7/8/shuttle-diplomacy-watch-neil-degrasse-tyson-explain-how-the-space-shuttle-was-never-really-about-science There are a lot of self-described shuttle...
Space Oddity: My Weird Year with NASA
bq. _“Everything in space obeys the laws of physics. If you know these laws and obey them, space will treat you kindly. And don’t tell me man doesn’t belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go.”_ --Wernher von Braun A few years ago, I...
Shuttle Diplomacy: Watch Neil deGrasse Tyson Explain How the Space Shuttle Was Never Really About Science
Among those gloating over the demise of the Space Shuttle are none other than scientists, who argue that the costly and overly complex program was sapping valuable resources from real space science and sending them up on "toilet repair missions":http...
Space Shuttle Parking Lot: Tailgating the Rocket Launch
Who needs a space shuttle? Three decades after it first launched, the experimental ship became so familiar to the American psyche that its trips to space were often registered by little more than a late segment on the evening news. Like a bizarre...
The Spectacle of the Space Shuttle
The launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis this Friday marks the end of a technological and national era. In the 30 years of NASA's space shuttle program, six orbiters were built, 135 launches occurred, 355 astronauts went for the ride, and 14 never came...
Meet Endeavor's Dark Matter-Hunting Payload
As if spacewalking and zero gravity pooping aren’t exciting enough, space shuttle _Endeavor_ blasted off last week with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer tucked into its cargo bay. The mission of the AMS is no less than snagging particles of antimatter...
Dreaming Infinity: Starscream's Soaring Space Anthems Will Get the Space Shuttle Endeavour Off The Ground
More than a week after it was scheduled to embark on its final mission, the Space Shuttle Endeavour remains silent on its launch pad, grounded due to increasingly perplexing complications with the shuttle's power supply. The new prospective date is May...
New York City Just Got a Space Shuttle That Has Never Been to Space
What are you, uh, going to do with those spaceships over there?