Space Forum / Space History / April 2006

Why don't the shuttle have ejections seats? They already have their space
suits on when they take off. If they had parachutes in the seats it
wouldn't matter what altitude they were at. A bubble thing could surround
the seat at ejection time to prevent high speed air blast damage. ...

When was the first time the shuttle launched
with three crewmembers on the middeck?
Wasn't it STS-9, Spacelab-1?

I'm trying to count up the number of times the shuttle
has launched with a single crewman on the middeck.
Is there any handy-dandy on-line database that could make
this easy to answer?

I was just listening to ABC (US) radio news, and they read this story. I checked
their website, and here it is. Having vultures circling a launch complex can't be
a good thing :)
NASA: Removing Roadkill Aids Astronauts

The History Channel International is re-broadcasting the
"Secrets of Soviet Space Disasters"
Thu, April 27 8-9pm PDT & EDT
Fri, April 28  12-1am PDT & EDT

Good God!  Iran won't be happy until they've started
something with the US. This is the result of a leader
that believes in catastropic methods to effect religious
change.  

Does anyone else recall an artist's concept, ca. 1970, showing the
first J-series mission (identified as Apollo 16 with Young, Mattingly
and Duke) executing their Trans-Earth EVA with the LM ascent stage
still attached?  I have searched my clipping files and Googled, to no

Anyone happen to know why the Ruskies decided not to go with an
aerospike, by tapping off some of the oxygen from the ring of engines
and dumping it into the base region or something.
I would have expected that they would have got good performance gains

This topic came up in an earlier discussion, so here is a
section of my book, 'Star-Crossed Orbits', that tries
to put it into perspective:
As the Soviet Union racked up one "space first" after another in the 1960s,

Here is proof that some people have too much time on their hands.
Someone has taken articles from the Wikipedia Encyclopedia and
translated them into Ebonics, Red Neck and Valley Girl.
Here is a sample.

March 29, 2006
New Horizons Payload Gets High Marks on Early Tests
In-flight checks of the New Horizons science payload are going well, as six
of the seven instruments on board have completed tests proving they survived

"The Lost Spacecraft: Liberty Bell 7 Recovered"
at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex
Last Stop for Special Exhibit Opens May 26, 2006
http://hospitality-1st.com/PressNews/DNC-KSC-042506.html

Not quite spam, as I ain't selling anything:
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php
There are some good resources there on  unbuilt aircraft projects.
Mostly American, but a surprising number of Russian projects discussed

If I read the items on Encyclopedia Astronautica right, only Apollos 15
and 16 deployed satellites around the Moon.  A-16's PFS was deployed a
little off and did not last long in lunar orbit, but how long did the
Apollo 15 PFS last?