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Aeronautics

Wright Brothers X 2

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
December 17, 2018

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

13 responses to “Wright Brothers X 2”

  1. Tritium3H says:
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    If that chart/image isn’t a downright embarrassing indictment to the loss of National Will by our Government, the American culture, and NASA, for the human spaceflight and exploration enterprise. Shameful.

    Back during the Apollo program, it was predicted (with honest sincerity and confidence) that we would have Americans on Mars by the 1980s.
    Now, 45+ years after Apollo…we can’t even land Americans back on the Moon — no official program, and certainly no lander and supporting infrastructure.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      A loss of will by the Government and NASA I will agree with. But SpaceX, Blue Origin and others show that the America culture of entrepreneurs and innovators stepping in when the government fails is alive and well.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Sure. Only took 50 years for the heroic Private Entrepreneurs to jump in! And then only after huge amounts of basic research had been performed by the gubermint…and made available.

    • Bob Mahoney says:
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      We the People…

    • fcrary says:
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      The time has come to see what free men can do.

      (Not original, and the use of “men” could be considered offensive. But I’ll stick to the original words, and anyone who objects can sue me.)

  2. TheBrett says:
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    It really is incredible. Charles Lindbergh was alive through the entire Apollo Program. Orville Wright – of the Orville Brothers – lived long enough to see the first supersonic flight by Chuck Yeager (who is still alive today, and on Twitter too).

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      Yes, the last flight that Orville Wright took in 1947 was in a Constellation airliner flown by Howard Hughes. A teenage Neil Armstrong had already earned his pilot wings the year before. It was only 66 years between Kitty Hawk and Apollo 11, which means many kids who saw the Wrights fly in the period 1903-1912 also saw the Moon landing. And in terms of another metric, the South Pole was reached on December 14, 1911, just 57 1/2 years before Apollo 11 reached the Moon.

      Progress in transportation and aerospace was much faster then. Let’s hope that SpaceX and Blue Origin get it moving again. It about time for another surge forward.

      • fcrary says:
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        Those 66 years between Kitty Hawk and Apollo 11 were actually a long time. My grandfather was a five year old child when the Wrights made their first flight. He was the retired editor emeritus of his local newspaper when he wrote an article about the Apollo 11 landing. And, after Amundsen reached to South Pole, no one went there again for another 46 years. So, by comparison, lunar exploration is “only” running a few years behind Antarctic exploration.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          Unless you count flying over it in 1929 and 1947. But the Antarctic was not abandoned during that period, numerous expeditions explored other sections of it and it was mapped from the air. The Germans even hunted Norwegian whaling vessels there in the early days of WW II.

          Yes, it is a long stretch of time, but not long in terms of technology. In 1952 there was television, telephones, and commercial air flights around the world. The B-52 had already made it first flight.

  3. Ben Russell-Gough says:
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    A relatively small thing but I understand that five orbital-class vehicles are either flying operationally or having a test flight today. It isn’t walking on Mars but I would suggest it shows how flight as far out as far as GSO has now become a routine and commercial endeavour.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      Blue Origin is having a test flight today, but the New Shepard is suborbital. The Dragon2 is scheduled to make a test flight next month and it’s first crewed flight a bit later.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      SpaceX GPS III-2 launch scrubbed. 24 hour reset. Reportedly an “out of family reading on first stage sensors” (from a SpaceXNow app notification).

    • fcrary says:
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      Define “today.” The Falcon 9/GPS3 and Delta IV Heavy/NROL-71 launches had holds on the 18th but may launch on the 19th. The same is true of the New Shepard-10 suborbital test flight. A Soyuz out of Kourou is scheduled for the evening of the 18th, a few hours after I’m typing this, but the weather isn’t good. I believe the odds of a one delay are estimated at 80%. And India has a PSLV on the pad in Sriharikota for a planned launch on the 19th. But the 18th may be a record for the most scrubs in a single day.