Browsing: Vehicles

A Brief History On July 20, 1997, the famous American warship, the USS Constitution, better known as “Old Ironsides,” celebrated 200 years of service by embarking on a cruise under her own sails for the first time in 116 years! Digging Deeper The now restored heavy frigate was launched in 1797 to serve the fledgling US Navy, enforcing freedom with her armament of 30 24 pounder cannons and 20 32 pounder cannons.  With a crew of 450, the wooden sailing ship counted 30 “boys” among her crew. Highly successful in battle during the War of 1812, Old Ironsides earned her…

A Brief History On July 15, 1975, the United States and the USSR simultaneously launched manned spacecraft, an American Apollo capsule and a Soviet Soyuz capsule, bound for a rendezvous in space, the first ever international space effort. Digging Deeper The mission was part of an ongoing diplomatic effort to ease Cold War tensions between the superpowers, with the 3 man Apollo capsule docking with the 2 man Soyuz capsule via an intermediate docking section. Aside from the feat of a successful space docking between spacecraft from separate nations, the crews performed joint space experiments and their first ever in…

A Brief History On July 11, 1979, America’s first space station, Skylab, reentered Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated over the Indian Ocean and Australia. Digging Deeper Launched in 1973, to great public excitement, Skylab is the only space station to be operated only by the US.  Children were invited by NASA to submit ideas for experiments to be conducted on Skylab, and the author of this article submitted an experiment with welding in space.  The experiment was not accepted, but a participation letter was issued. Skylab was only occupied for 171 of the over 2200 days it spent in orbit, its…

A Brief History On July 10, 1985, the Rainbow Warrior, a ship owned and operated by Greenpeace, an environmental activist organization, was sunk by bombs placed by French government operatives while in Auckland, New Zealand harbor, resulting in a single death. Digging Deeper The French intelligence agency Directorate-General for External Security, or DGSE, was responsible for state sanctioned attack, code named Opération Satanique.  Obviously, France initially denied any government involvement with the terroristic act, but captured French operatives proved the involvement of the French government. Rainbow Warrior, was a small ship of 418 tons and a length of just over…

A Brief History On June 29, 1971, the first human space travelers to die while in space perished when their Soyuz 11 space capsule depressurized after leaving the Soviet space station, Salyut 1. Digging Deeper Salyut 1 was the first space station launched into orbit around the Earth in April of 1971, and despite its then groundbreaking technology, only lasted less than 6 months, of which humans occupied it for a total of 24 days. Soviet cosmonauts Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev had become the first ever spacemen to occupy a space station, from June 7th to June…