by Duncan Lunan When I gave Part 1, last week, as a talk in 1963 or 64 to the Scientific Society at my old school, repeated to the Ayr squadron of the […]
Rocket Aircraft, Part 2 – Wings into Space
Space Notes 28 – Rocket Aircraft, Part 1
by Duncan Lunan After sending in ‘Launcher Development’ last week, I realised that I had finally created a print version of one of my first ever talks. After I left in 1963 […]
Rockets : Launcher Development
by Duncan Lunan Recently I came across a one-volume collection of the late James Blish’s ‘Cities in Flight’ tetralogy of novels (Gollancz, 2002, Fig. 1). It reprints them in order of the […]
Rockets 2: Launch Costs Per Vehicle
by Duncan Lunan Jonathan Cowie, editor of the online journal Concatenation, commissioned me to write the first version of last week’s article in the Autumn of 2022, with the option of delaying […]
Rockets, for November 5th
by Duncan Lunan (First published in different form as ‘Launch Costs in the New Era’, Concatenation, 17th April, 2023.) For many years, critics of space exploration have routinely exaggerated its cost by […]
The Miles M.52 and the Douglas Skyrocket
‘The aircraft was to be powered by a new jet engine specially developed for it by Frank Whittle. Eric Brown was chosen to be M.52 test pilot, “because I was the smallest man in the room”, he said ‘
A History of Spaceflight
“With the formation of NASA in 1958, Project Mercury was started as a crash programme to put American astronauts into space in one-man capsules “
VISITOR AT UIST: (Or What I Did in the Summer Holidays – 1959)
” this is how the British Army came to launch a tactical missile just for me to watch, at age 13 ¾, and built a grandstand specially for me to see it from.”
Earth from Space #OnThisDay
On 24th of October 1946 the first photo from Space was taken.
Luna 2 #OnThisDay
On 12th of September 1959 the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), launched Luna 2. It was to be the first spacecraft to impact on the moon.
