Space Archives

Aerospace & Defense

Failure Is No Option: The US Space Force Has 10,600 Personnel and Manages GPS for 6 Billion Users

Space Force Matters: Four squadrons carry missions with no acceptable failure rate: the GPS constellation, worldwide ballistic missile warning, every military satellite link, and...

Mike Jernigan1 day ago

An artist's conception of the X-43A Hypersonic Experimental Vehicle, or "Hyper-X" in flight. The X-43A was developed to flight test a dual-mode ramjet/scramjet propulsion system at speeds from Mach 7 up to Mach 10 (7 to 10 times the speed of sound, which varies with temperature and altitude).

Aerospace & Defense

Mach 3 SR-71 Blackbird Was Slow Compared to This: NASA Had a Mach 9.6 X-43A Hypersonic Gas Hydrogen-fed Scramjet That Was Canceled

NASA’s X-43A, a 12-foot unmanned lifting body with a hydrogen scramjet and no moving parts, flew three times: the first was blown up in...

Sean SpoontsOctober 12, 2026

Aerospace & Defense

Mach 25, It Made No Military History, and Was Faster Than the SR-71 Blackbird: NASA’s Space Shuttle Was the Fastest Machine Humans Ever Flew and Made Aviation and Space History

Pitched to Congress in 1972 as a $20-million-a-flight space truck, the Space Shuttle flew 135 missions over 30 years at about $1.5 billion each,...

Harry J. KazianisOctober 11, 2026

Aerospace & Defense

Getting to Mercury Is Harder Than Getting to the Outer Planets. Earth Is Already Moving 67,000 Miles an Hour Sideways and a Spacecraft Has to Shed Most of That to Fall Inward. Mariner 10 Solved It by Flying 3,600 Miles Over Venus and Letting the Planet Slow It Down.

A spacecraft weighing about 1,100 pounds, built for roughly $100 million in 1970s money, made three passes at Mercury in 1974 and 1975 and...

Harrison KassOctober 7, 2026

Mars Probe Photo. Image Credit: Banana Nano.

Aerospace & Defense

Mars Climate Orbiter ran on pound-force seconds while NASA’s software expected newtons and over nine months that 4.45-to-one error put it 35 miles above Mars instead of 85 so on 23 September 1999 the $125 million spacecraft vanished and never called home

Lockheed sent pound-force. JPL expected newtons. Mars Climate Orbiter flew 35 miles above Mars instead of 85 and vanished on 23 September 1999.

Harrison KassSeptember 21, 2026

Aerospace & Defense

People think Earth dies when the Sun becomes a red giant in five billion years — the more likely end is a billion years from now, when a star already 30 percent brighter than at birth pushes CO₂ too low for C3 plants, then a moist greenhouse strips the oceans of hydrogen and leaves a sterile Venus

The popular ending is fire. The actual ending is a slow loss of air that plants can breathe, then of water that can come...

Harrison KassSeptember 20, 2026

Venera 13 Venus Probe Creative Commons Photo

Aerospace & Defense

Venus Takes 243 Earth Days to Turn Once on Its Axis and 224.7 Earth Days to Circle the Sun. Its Equator Creeps Along at About 4 Miles per Hour — Slower Than a Person Walks — While the Planet Itself Races Through Space at 78,000 Miles per Hour.

Venus is the closest thing to a twin Earth has, and almost nothing about how it moves makes sense. It turns once every 243...

Harrison KassSeptember 16, 2026

Aerospace & Defense

Russia Landed Venera 12 on Venus on December 21, 1978 and Venera 11 on December 25. Both Survived 870 Degrees Fahrenheit and Roughly 90 Atmospheres of Pressure. Neither Returned a Single Photograph, Because the Lens Caps Failed to Eject on Both.

The descent through Venus's atmosphere would have wrecked exposed optics — sulfuric acid clouds, carbon dioxide, and enormous swings in pressure and temperature —...

Harrison KassSeptember 14, 2026

Aerospace & Defense

The Soviet Union Soft-Landed 8 Venera Spacecraft on the Surface of Venus Between 1970 and 1982, in 870 Degrees Fahrenheit and 92 Times Earth’s Atmospheric Pressure. The United States Has Never Landed on Venus Once.

Ninety-two bars is roughly what you feel 3,000 feet underwater. Soviet engineers answered it by building what were effectively robotic deep-sea vessels aimed at...

Harrison KassSeptember 12, 2026

Venera 14 Probe Image Creative Commons Photo

Aerospace & Defense

On March 5, 1982, the Soviet Venera 14 Lander Survived 870 Degrees Fahrenheit and 92 Times Earth’s Atmospheric Pressure to Reach the Surface of Venus. Its Soil Instrument Deployed Exactly as Designed and Measured the Camera Lens Cap the Spacecraft Had Just Ejected.

Perseverance and Curiosity have spent years on Mars choosing targets and repositioning instruments. Venera 14 had under an hour before Venus destroyed it. Every...

Harrison KassSeptember 11, 2026

19FortyFive

All posts tagged "Space"

Aerospace & Defense

Failure Is No Option: The US Space Force Has 10,600 Personnel and Manages GPS for 6 Billion Users

Aerospace & Defense

Mach 3 SR-71 Blackbird Was Slow Compared to This: NASA Had a Mach 9.6 X-43A Hypersonic Gas Hydrogen-fed Scramjet That Was Canceled

Aerospace & Defense

Mach 25, It Made No Military History, and Was Faster Than the SR-71 Blackbird: NASA’s Space Shuttle Was the Fastest Machine Humans Ever Flew and Made Aviation and Space History

Aerospace & Defense

Getting to Mercury Is Harder Than Getting to the Outer Planets. Earth Is Already Moving 67,000 Miles an Hour Sideways and a Spacecraft Has to Shed Most of That to Fall Inward. Mariner 10 Solved It by Flying 3,600 Miles Over Venus and Letting the Planet Slow It Down.

Aerospace & Defense

Mars Climate Orbiter ran on pound-force seconds while NASA’s software expected newtons and over nine months that 4.45-to-one error put it 35 miles above Mars instead of 85 so on 23 September 1999 the $125 million spacecraft vanished and never called home

Aerospace & Defense

Aerospace & Defense

Venus Takes 243 Earth Days to Turn Once on Its Axis and 224.7 Earth Days to Circle the Sun. Its Equator Creeps Along at About 4 Miles per Hour — Slower Than a Person Walks — While the Planet Itself Races Through Space at 78,000 Miles per Hour.

Aerospace & Defense

Russia Landed Venera 12 on Venus on December 21, 1978 and Venera 11 on December 25. Both Survived 870 Degrees Fahrenheit and Roughly 90 Atmospheres of Pressure. Neither Returned a Single Photograph, Because the Lens Caps Failed to Eject on Both.

Aerospace & Defense

The Soviet Union Soft-Landed 8 Venera Spacecraft on the Surface of Venus Between 1970 and 1982, in 870 Degrees Fahrenheit and 92 Times Earth’s Atmospheric Pressure. The United States Has Never Landed on Venus Once.

Aerospace & Defense

On March 5, 1982, the Soviet Venera 14 Lander Survived 870 Degrees Fahrenheit and 92 Times Earth’s Atmospheric Pressure to Reach the Surface of Venus. Its Soil Instrument Deployed Exactly as Designed and Measured the Camera Lens Cap the Spacecraft Had Just Ejected.

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