drew@drewexmachina.com
As 1960 unfolded, the United States and Soviet Union were racing to develop their own crewed spacecraft to loft the first human into space. One of […]
When I was growing up in the 1970s, I was already an avid space enthusiast who tried to keep abreast of all the latest space missions. […]
For almost as long as I have had a serious interest in the Soviet space program, I have been enjoying Soviet space art. In addition to […]
At the same time American agencies like NACA and the USAF were studying manned spaceflight through the 1950s (see “The Origins of NASA’s Mercury Program”), comparable […]
Launch is one of the more dangerous phases of any crewed space mission. Sitting on top of a high-performance rocket filled with hundreds of metric tons […]
With over 140 crewed missions flown over the last half a century, the Russian Soyuz is the longest-serving and most-flown crewed spacecraft design of the Space […]
Rendezvous and docking of spacecraft followed by the transfer of crews are among the basic skills required for the maintenance of orbiting facilities such as today’s […]
Early 1967 proved to be a disastrous time for both the American and Soviet manned space programs with the loss of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White […]
During my first business trip to Moscow in 1996 for the RAMOS program (see “RAMOS: The Russian-American Observation Satellites”), many of my colleagues and I made […]
According to the FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale) which maintains records for aeronautical activities, the “official” threshold of space is at an altitude of 100 kilometers which […]
The impact of the first human to fly into space can hardly be appreciated today in this age of a continuous human presence in Earth orbit. […]
Many of us have stories about how we have met famous people in unexpected places and I am no different. Probably one of my more memorable […]
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