While the Apollo 10 lunar mission in May 1969 is often overlooked, it was the dress rehearsal for the main lunar landing. It involved hazardous rendez-vous docking and undocking operations, and lunar module descent and ascent engine firing tests in lunar orbit. The...
Just before their re-entry, a very relieved Apollo 13 astronaut Jack Swigert, (not Fred Haise as portrayed in the Apollo 13 movie), summed up the feelings that the Apollo 13 crew had about heir lunar module-turned-lifeboat Aquarius, whose engines and power systems had...
There is an amusing scene in one the comedy film follow-ons to the BBC Steptoe and Son comedy television series in which the two rag and bone characters find an abandoned baby at Christmas time. As they do so they look up to see a Bethlehem-like star in the sky, and...
Most wise humans know that while we should take our roles seriously as workers, parents, carers and the like, we should not take ourselves too seriously. Nothing saps the spirit like having a po-faced professional colleague whose humourless attitude tends to get...
While some men have accused the #MeToo campaign for partly emasculating them, actually there are more serious threats to their virility – chemical ones. There has long been concern that the difficult-to-filter female hormone oestrogen in the water supply...
We joked a month or two ago that some would be wondering what Elon Musk had been smoking when they found out that the latest BFS (now called Starship) design had been deliberately changed to make it look more like Tintin’s rocket ship. Now NASA is apparently doing the...
