Questions tagged [space-flight]
43 questions
141
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Did Yuri Gagarin end up in critical condition after coming back to Earth due to the missing magnetic field?
My friend's mother is about to undergo some treatment in magnetic field therapy for osteoarthritis and he is trying to verify if this is useful as claimed, or if this has any harmful effects. The website of their institution claims that:
In Yuri…
PermanentGuest
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Was Opportunity's last message to Earth "My battery is low and it's getting dark"?
On February 13 2019, NASA announced that Opportunity - a Mars rover launched in 2003 with an intended longevity of three months - was likely to be dead.
In the wake of this event, and the outpouring of emotion it triggered, I've seen the following…
Prometheus
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Did Buzz Aldrin take communion of bread and wine on his first landing on the moon?
According to this BBC article of 2017-02-17
the first liquid to be drunk on the surface of the moon was wine
It cites as source this The Guardian article of 2012-07-13, describing Buzz Aldrin organizing a Christian communion:
Before Armstrong and…
fgrieu
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Is this a photo of Margaret Hamilton standing next to Apollo Project code that she wrote?
The image below is widely circulated on Facebook:
The caption says:
Margaret Hamilton, lead software engineer of the Apollo Project, stands next to the code she wrote by hand and that was used to take humanity to the moon. [1969]
Is it true…
JonathanReez
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Did astronauts or cosmonauts have sex in space?
The Guardian:
US and Russian astronauts have had sex in space for separate research programmes on how human beings might survive years in orbit, according to a book published yesterday.
Pierre Kohler, a respected French scientific writer, says in…
Carlo Alterego
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Neil Armstrong: “One small step for man” or “one small step for a man”?
Today on Facebook the Science Museum (London) posted:
#OTD in 1930 American astronaut and aeronautical engineer Neil Armstrong was born.
In July 1969, Armstrong and Apollo 11 pilot Buzz Aldrin performed the first manned Moon landing. When he…
A E
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Was the mileage of the Apollo spaceships 7 inches to the gallon for their moon flights?
According to this Facebook post apparently by Buzz Aldrin, "[Apollo]'s mileage to the moon was 7 inches to the gallon."
If the moon is 250,000 miles away, that seems to come out to 2.2 * 10^9 gallons of fuel (And that's just in one direction!)…
Larry OBrien
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41
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Did NASA director Charles Bolden claim that an alien invasion will happen soon?
Russian news site "Federal News Agency" (FAN) today published "Директор NASA заявил, что до вторжения инопланетян осталось несколько месяцев":
Директора NASA Чарльза Болдена отправили в отпуск по болезни, после того, как он публично заявил, что…
user5341
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Were the Space Shuttle's computers incapable of handling end-of-year roll-overs?
There is a claim circulating on Facebook that space shuttles couldn't fly near the end of the year because its onboard computers could not handle a year turnover.
Searching for the claim, I found Y2K-like fears create shuttle scheduling crunch,…
Calmarius
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Did a group of U.S. women propose to send black kids instead of dogs to space?
In his 1964 book "The third side of the dollar", Lithuanian journalist Albertas Laurinčiukas writes:
After Laika's flight, a group of women from Mississippi, U.S., sent a letter to the United Nations. They demanded to condemn USSR's inhumane…
Quassnoi
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Was NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter lost because engineering teams used different measuring units?
I read in a book that NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter was lost on September 23, 1999, at a cost of $125 million, because one engineering team used metric units, while another one used inches for a key spacecraft operation.
Was it really a conversion…
splattne
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Has "the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger... been linked to insufficient sleep"?
According to Daylight Savings Time and Traffic Accidents N Engl J Med 1996; 334:924-925
Major disasters, including the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger, have been linked…
DavePhD
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Is NASA working on warp drive?
I am cynical about a report on Gizmodo that NASA is developing Warp Drive. This was trending on Google Plus tonight and gathering a bit of attention.
http://gizmodo.com/5942634/nasa-starts-development-of-real-life-star-trek-warp-drive
Working at…
Paul
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Does SpaceX charge the US government more than European customers?
In an interview with the magazine "Der Spiegel" the CEO of the Ariane group Alain Charmeau makes the following statement:
Entschuldigung, aber das stimmt nicht. Man sollte sich fragen, warum SpaceX der US-Regierung pro Start 100 Millionen Dollar in…
Mad Scientist
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Did a 19 year old Egyptian student invent a new space propulsion system?
I've seen reports that a 19 year old Egyptian student has invented a new space propulsion system.
For example, The Daily Mail:
Two mirrors used to generate power using weird quantum physics
Leapfrogs Nasa research into same subject
19-year-old…
gerrit
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