Increasingly, SpaceX is looking like the real world version of science fiction’s space entrepreneurs.
Tag Archives: space
The 50 Greatest Sci-Fi Films of All Time
You may not have heard of them all, and many will be before your time (though not necessarily before mine :)
Just for fun, run through the list and see how you agree with, how many you’ve seen, or how many you ought to see.
http://movies.msn.com/paralleluniverse/50-greatest-sci-fi-films/photo-gallery/feature/
One of my favorites not on the list: “The Forbin Project” (1970), with Eric Braedon, just after he was Hans Gudegast in “The Rat Patrol”, but before he was Victor Newman on “The Young and the Restless”. A great little film with a haunting score, and arguably a precursor to “The Terminator”’s Skynet, with inspiration from HAL9000.
International Space Station: Animated Assembly Graphic
US Air Force X-37B: Photos and Specifications
From Space.com. You can read the full article here.

CREDIT: USAF
Republicans Must Think That Knowledge Grows on Trees
I have long believed that America is a profoundly anti-intellectual country, in spite of the paradox of America’s belief in its technological and intellectual superiority over the rest of the world.
You hear the insults all the time, concurrent with an actual or understood sneer: Long hairs, eggheads, nerds, geeks, Ivory Tower academics, brainiacs, book worms, teacher’s pets, know-it-alls, rocket scientists.
(See this essay written by Dennis Wu, “Why Isn’t Science More Respected and Rewarding?”)
Modern conservatives seem to be the worst at this form of hypocrisy Continue reading
Got A Wanderlust? Think “Mars”!
Talk of Mars exploration has always revolved around how to get there and back. What if we eliminated the “and back” part of that equation?
The mission certainly gets cheaper, but what are the chances of crew survival? And would anybody want to go on a one-way trip to a lace more than 35 million miles from home? Sometimes a LOT more than 35 million miles! Continue reading
Revisited: To X-37B or not to X-37B? That is the question.
UPDATE (2011-MARCH-3): The USAF is planning on again launching the X-37B on a classified mission. An unanswered question is whether this is a re-launch of the same X-37B which flew last year, or a 2nd prototype? If it’s the former, that’s significant for turnaround time.
Prologue: This piece was written and submitted for publication on Dec. 6, 2010, and published on Dec. 15th. On that very same day, Orbital Sciences announced that they were submitting an official proposal to NASA to build an orbital space plane to take up to four people into an orbit capable of delivering them to the International Space Station. This article actually scooped the news by over a week. – Mike
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Posted on TGDaily.com, by Michael R. Honig | Wed 15th Dec 2010, 11:38 am
Back in May 2010, shortly after it was launched, I wrote a speculative piece about the military’s X-37B experimental unmanned craft.
To me, it obviously bore a more-than-passing resemblance to two of NASA’s mothballed experimental space planes: the X-33 and the X-34. This tweaked my memory and provoked some comparisons and guesses.
So far, I think I’m the only one who has ever made the connections expressed in that piece.
Now, an update. Continue reading