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Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
Deep Space Expedition Alpha (DSE-Alpha), is the name given to the mission proposed in 2005 to take the first space tourists to fly around the Moon. The mission is organized by Space Adventures Ltd., a commercial spaceflight company. The plans involve a modified Soyuz capsule docking with a booster rocket in Earth orbit which then sends the spacecraft on a free return circumlunar trajectory that circles around the Moon once. While the price was originally announced in August 2005 to cost US$100 million per seat, Space Adventures founder Eric Anderson announced in January 2011 that one of the two available seats had been sold for $150 million.[1][2]
Use of the Soyuz spacecraft was considered as the original Soyuz design of 1962 was specifically intended for circumlunar travel.[3] In the late 1960s a stripped down Soyuz variant, under the name Zond, made several attempts at circumlunar flight, with eventual success.
The DSE proposal is to launch the Soyuz with one crew member and two passengers aboard; a Zenit rocket booster will then be launched carrying a rocket stage weighing up to 14.5t, to dock with the Soyuz and propel it to circumlunar velocity. Two different flight profiles were originally proposed by Space Adventures. The direct-staged profile, lasting about 8–9 days, would involve docking to the booster stage intended to propel the craft and direct departure for the Moon. A proposed timeline for such a flight plan is as follows:[4]
The other profile, lasting about 9–21 days, would incorporate a several day visit to the International Space Station into the flight plan before rendezvousing with the booster stage and departing for the Moon.
The Soyuz spacecraft used for the mission would be modified from the orbital Soyuz, with a thicker and more durable heat shield and a Yamal satellite communications system. The Block DM booster would use an automatic docking system for the rendezvous with the Soyuz in low Earth orbit.[5]
On June 28, 2007 Space.com reported that two individuals had displayed interest in purchasing seats with contract negotiations expected to be concluded by the end of the year.[6] In January 2011, Space Adventures founder Eric Anderson announced that one of the two seats on the flight had been sold at a price of US$150 million, and negotiations for the second seat were under way.[1]
In 2011, Space Adventures projected the first mission could occur by 2015.[1] By 2014 this had slipped to 2018,[citation needed] and the company's website subsequently changed to indicate they expected their first mission to launch before the end of the decade then changed again to remove any suggested timeline.
Mark Wade, author of the Encyclopedia Astronautica, has argued that the Zenit rocket is not powerful enough for this mission and that the larger Proton rocket will in fact be needed. These same calculations have also shown that a fully fueled and outfitted Block DM would be beyond the capabilities of the Zenit rocket, and the DM would have to fire for a short time in order to stabilize its orbit.[4]
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Deep Space Expedition Alpha (DSE-Alpha), is the name given to the mission proposed in 2005 to take the first space tourists to fly around the Moon. The mission is organized by Space Adventures Ltd., a commercial spaceflight company. The plans involve a modified Soyuz capsule docking with a booster rocket in Earth orbit which then sends the spacecraft on a free return circumlunar trajectory that circles around the Moon once. While the price was originally announced in August 2005 to cost US$100 million per seat, Space Adventures founder Eric Anderson announced in January 2011 that one of the two available seats had been sold for $150 million.
Twenty-eight people have traveled to or around the Moon, including 12 who landed and walked on the surface, 10 who orbited without landing, and seven who flew by the Moon without orbiting or landing. These 28 are the only astronauts to have traveled beyond low Earth orbit. Between December 1968 and December 1972, the NASA Apollo program sent 24 astronauts on nine crewed lunar missions. Six of the missions landed two astronauts each on the lunar surface, while Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 orbited without landing. Apollo 13's planned lunar landing was aborted due to an oxygen tank explosion en route to the Moon; instead, the crew looped around the Moon 158 miles above its surface without entering orbit. Three astronauts reached the Moon twice: Jim Lovell orbited the Moon on Apollo 8 and later flew on Apollo 13; John Young and Eugene Cernan both orbited the Moon on Apollo 10 and landed on separate missions. In April 2026, NASA's Artemis II carried four astronauts on a circumlunar flyby, including the first woman, first Black man, and first Canadian. They passed by the Moon 6,545 km (4,067 miles) from the surface without entering orbit. The twelve people who landed on the Moon were all American men. The first were Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in July 1969, and the most recent were Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt in December 1972. All crewed lunar landings have been part of the Apollo program.
Apollo 13 (April 11–17, 1970) was the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space program and would have been the third Moon landing. The craft was launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970, but the landing was aborted after an oxygen tank in the service module (SM) exploded two days into the mission, disabling its electrical and life-support system. The crew, supported by backup systems on the Apollo Lunar Module, instead looped around the Moon in a circumlunar trajectory and returned safely to Earth on April 17. The mission was commanded by Jim Lovell, with Jack Swigert as command module (CM) pilot and Fred Haise as Lunar Module (LM) pilot. Swigert was a late replacement for Ken Mattingly, who was grounded after exposure to rubella. A routine stir of an oxygen tank ignited damaged wire insulation inside it, causing an explosion that vented the contents of both of the SM's oxygen tanks to space. Without oxygen, needed for breathing and for generating electrical power, the SM's propulsion and life support systems could not operate. The CM's systems had to be shut down to conserve its remaining resources for reentry, forcing the crew to transfer to the LM as a lifeboat. With the lunar landing canceled, mission controllers worked to bring the crew home alive. Although the LM was designed to support two men on the lunar surface for two days, Mission Control in Houston improvised new procedures so it could support three men for four days. The crew experienced great hardship, caused by limited power, a chilly and wet cabin and a shortage of drinking water. There was a critical need to adapt the CM's cartridges for the carbon dioxide scrubber system to work in the LM; the crew and mission controllers were successful in improvising a solution. The astronauts' peril briefly renewed public interest in the Apollo program; tens of millions watched the splashdown in the South Pacific Ocean on television. An investigative review board found fault with preflight testing of the oxygen tank and Teflon being placed inside it. The board recommended changes, including minimizing the use of potentially combustible items inside the tank; this was done for Apollo 14. The story of Apollo 13 has been dramatized several times, most notably in the 1995 film Apollo 13 (based on Lost Moon, the 1994 memoir co-authored by Lovell) and an episode of the 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon.
The Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) is a battery-powered four-wheeled rover used on the Moon in the last three missions of the American Apollo program (15, 16, and 17) during 1971 and 1972. It is popularly called the Moon buggy, a play on the term "dune buggy". Built by Boeing, each LRV has a mass of 462 pounds (210 kg) without payload. It could carry a maximum payload of 970 pounds (440 kg), including two astronauts, equipment, and cargo such as lunar samples, and was designed for a top speed of 6 miles per hour (10 km/h; 3 m/s), although it achieved a top speed of 11.2 miles per hour (18 km/h; 5 m/s) on its last mission, Apollo 17. Each LRV was carried to the Moon folded up in the Lunar Module's Quadrant 1 Bay. After being unpacked, each was driven an average of 20 miles (30 km), without major incident. These three LRVs remain on the Moon.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Shirley Chisholm, elected in 1968.