Category Archives: astronaut

Underwater VR Offers Zero Gravity on a Budget

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Someday Elon Musk might manage to pack enough of us lowly serfs into one of his super rockets that we can actually afford a ticket to space, but until then our options for experiencing weightlessness are pretty limited. Even if you’ll settle for a ride on one of the so-called “Vomit Comet” reduced-gravity planes, you’ll have to surrender a decent chunk of change, and as the name implies, potentially your lunch as well. Is there no recourse for the hacker that wants to get a taste of the astronaut experience without a NASA-sized budget?

Well, if you’re willing to get …read more

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The Flight of the Seagull: Valentina Tereshkova, Cosmonaut

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That the Cold War was a tense and perilous time in history cannot be denied, and is perhaps a bit of an understatement. The world stood on the edge of Armageddon for most of it, occasionally stepping slightly over the line, and thankfully stepping back before any damage was done.

As nerve-wracking as the Cold War was, it had one redeeming quality: it turned us into a spacefaring species. Propelled by national pride and the need to appear to be the biggest kid on the block, the United States and the Soviet Union consistently ratcheted up their programs, trying to …read more

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I Ate a Canadian Tasting Menu for Astronauts and It Was More Swanson Than ‘Jetsons’

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The menu for astronaut David Saint-Jacques’s mission into space included maple leaf cookies and a whole lot of fish. Continue reading I Ate a Canadian Tasting Menu for Astronauts and It Was More Swanson Than ‘Jetsons’→

The Teenager Who Sent An Experiment to Space and Dreams of Visiting Mars

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Alia Almansoori won a competition to have her experiment sent to the International Space Station, but she’s not capping her ambitions at low Earth orbit. Continue reading The Teenager Who Sent An Experiment to Space and Dreams of Visiting Mars→

Peggy Whitson, Space Scientist

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When astronaut Dr. Peggy Whitson returned from space earlier this year, it was a triumphant conclusion to a lifelong career as a scientist, explorer, and leader. Whitson is a biochemist who became one of the most experienced and distinguished astronauts ever to serve. She’s got more time logged in space than any other American. There’s a reason that she’s been called the Space Ninja.

Education and Early Life

Some people find their vocation late in life, but Peggy Whitson figured it out in her senior year of high school. It was 1979 and NASA had just accepted its first class …read more

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Hacking On Mars In “The Martian”

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It’s been 6 years since the hacker’s treat of a book, “The Martian” by Andy Weir, was self-published, and 2 years since the movie came out. We’ve talked about it briefly before, but enough time has passed that we can now write-up the book’s juicier hacks while being careful to not give away any plot spoilers. The book has more hacks than the movie so we’re using the book as the source.

For anyone unfamiliar with the story, Mark Watney is an astronaut who’s left for dead, by himself, on Mars. To survive, he has a habitat designed for six, …read more

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