challenger
We Need a New Vocabulary to Talk About the Human Future in Space
If humans want to expand beyond Earth in an optimal way, we’ll need novel language to keep pace with novel technologies.
An Afternoon With the World’s Most Powerful Rocket Booster
This week, in middle-of-nowhere Utah, a NASA contractor tested the rocket booster that will get future astronauts to deep space. I went.
"Just Ask Anybody": Searching for Match-Fixing in Minor League Tennis
If you want to understand why professional tennis is vulnerable to corruption and match-fixing, spend some time with the sport's underpaid minor leaguers.
Does Tragedy Prove That Space Exploration Is Worth It?
If history is any guide — and it may very well not be — NASA is on track to have its next major accident in five years or so. But that may be proof the space agency is on the right track.
How the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster Changed America's Romance With Space
Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger and the death of teacher Christa McAuliffe along with six crewmembers, which struck a major blow to the average guy's dreams of venturing into outer space.
GIF Six-Pack: Letters That Move (You)
Adam Osgood, Chris Piascik, Sanfok, and others design the dropcaps of the future.
You Can Sample Sounds from NASA's Soundcloud Now (Just Don't Pull a Beyoncé)
Welcome to the space jam.
How Challenger Exploded, and Other Mistakes Were Made
Torrents of big data can't stop mistakes—sometimes they make them more likely. The tragedy of Challenger, as with G.M. and others, was that some people had tried to stop it.
Hollywood's Unreality: Challenger And The Unfortunate Timing of 'Space Camp'
Pity Hollywood. When art imitates life -- like in the September 12th-and-every-day-after film _Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close_ -- everyone misinterprets it as exploitative and manipulative and "demands":http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan...
The Bright Yellow Asterisk: A Recollection of the Challenger Disaster
January, 1987. I stood alone 167 feet above the launch pad’s surface. I was staring into the open, small, white room. At the other end was an open doorway and beyond it was the blue expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Between me and that 167 foot drop, the...
Was Space Shuttle Challenger a Casualty of Bad Data Visualization?
The U.S. is no stranger to the collapse of complex systems. But two decades before the break-up of Space Shuttle Columbia, the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and Fukashima Daiichi, America witnessed the Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986, and saw...