As of March 12, 2012, the Beyond Apollo space history blog has moved! It is now a WIRED Science Blog. Please go to the WIRED Science Blog homepage and follow the Beyond Apollo link.This is an excitin...
Ive set up a Twitter account to keep readers abreast of new Beyond Apollo articles at WIRED Science Blogs. My handle is @dsfportree. I expect that the account will remain quiescent until I begin post...
As part of the move to WIRED Science Blogs, I have deleted my Facebook pages. I apologize for the short notice; I tried to switch Admins using a new email address, but couldnt get it to take, and wou...
Beyond Apollo is about to become a WIRED Science Blog! The target date for the re-launch is March 12. Please stay tuned for more details.
Hermann Potočnik, an Austrian Army officer writing under the pseudonym Hermann Noordung, described the benefits of telescopes in space in his seminal 1929 book Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums...
NASA abandoned work toward piloted Mars and Venus flyby missions based on Apollo-Saturn and Apollo Applications Program hardware during the final months of the pivotal year 1967. Until August of that...
NASA started the 1970s afflicted by schizophrenia. On the one hand, the U.S. civilian space agency planned a 100-man Earth-orbiting space station; on the other, it terminated Skylab B, the second thr...
Not that I need to tell anyone, but today marks 50 years since John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. I was a month old when Glenn flew, so I dont remember the mission. I remember r...
In September 1964, the Douglas Aircraft Company began a nine-month study of a conjunction-class Mars mission on contract to NASA Headquarters. Wernher von Brauns 1950s Mars studies and Philip Bonos 1...
In July 1969, as Apollo 11 brought the Apollo Program to its culmination, Lockheed Missile and Space Company (LMSC), McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Company (MDAC), and North American Rockwell (NAR) b...
When one reads documents connected with the 1969-1971 Integrated Program Plan (IPP), it is often difficult to decide whether to laugh or to cry. The IPP, a product of George Muellers Office of Manned...
German astronomer Gustav Witt discovered the asteroid Eros on August 13, 1898. Eros is both the first asteroid found to orbit entirely outside of the Asteroid Belt and the first known planet-crosser;...
Even before Viking 1 landed on Mars (July 20, 1976), NASA and its contractors studied post-Viking robotic Mars missions. Prominent among these was Mars Sample Return (MSR), considered by many to be t...
Kosmos 133, the first in the long line of Soyuz ("Union") spacecraft, lifted off unmanned from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Central Asia on November 28, 1966. Its mission: to dock automatically wit...
When Thomas O. Paine became Acting Administrator of NASA following the October 1968 resignation of James Webb, he had seven months of Federal job experience. After Richard Nixon was sworn in as Presi...
In the past month and a half, I have been posting alternate history on Beyond Apollo (BA). This has made me a trifle uncomfortable, because I want BA to be seen as a serious space history blog, and a...
Artwork © Don Dixon/Cosmographica.com). Used by permission.S. Fred Singer predicted in 1956 that the Earths magnetic field would be found to capture radiation from the Sun. This anticipated the 1958 ...
The automated Lunar Orbiter II spacecraft (bottom image above) lifted off from Launch Complex 13 at Cape Kennedy, Florida, on November 6, 1966. The 385.6-kilogram spacecraft arrived in equatorial lun...
This is a new installment in my recent series of alternate history speculations. Beyond Apollo is mainly a space history blog; alternate history can, however, help us to understand history as it happ...
According to historians Andrew Dunar and Stephen Waring, writing in their 1999 book Power to Explore: A History of Marshall Space Flight Center, in the 1970s two lines of thought emerged within NASA ...
When Wernher von Braun turned 50 on March 23, 1962, he was director of Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), NASAs lead facility for rocket development. The German rocketeer could look back on a momen...
Planetary scientist Bruce Murray (middle image above) became director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in April 1976, just three months before Viking 1 was due to land on the northern plains of...
Addendum, 01/01/12: Happy New Year! Based on reader comments, I have modified the alternate history I posted below. I hope that you enjoy it.Below this post is an article I wrote a couple of years ag...
Walter Baade used the 48-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory to capture humankinds first image of asteroid 1566 Icarus on June 26, 1949. Icarus, it was soon found, is unusual because its elliptical...
On May 14, 1973, the last Saturn V to fly, designated SA-513, launched the Skylab Orbital Workshop (OWS) into a 435-kilometer-high orbit about the Earth. Flight controllers soon realized that the 100...
When I started posting this alternate history thread, I had no idea that it would generate as much comment as it has. In fact, I feared that some readers might find it a turn-off. Its a pleasant surp...
The Lunar Exploration Working Group (LEWG) was one of five groups NASA established in February 1966 "to examine the objectives and systems associated with a number of mission areas and document t...
This weekend I intend to write an article on an actual proposed space project that did not happen rather than another installment in my developing alternate history of U.S. human spaceflight. Before ...
All digital renderings in this post are © 2011 by Junior Miranda. Used by permission.On May 14, 1973, the five F-1 engines at the base of the last Saturn V rocket to fly ignited, engulfing Pad 39A at...
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