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Ballistic Missile Guidance on your Cell Phone?
If you don’t already own one, you’ve no doubt seen advertisements for them on television. I am referring to so-called “smartphones,” which can change the orientation of their display, from Portrait to...
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Robert Goddard and the Smithsonian
Former Secretary of the Smithsonian, Charles Greeley Abbot helped get the Space Age under way. In late September 1916, he received a letter from Robert Hutchings Goddard, a professor of physics at...
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Remembering Wernher von Braun on his 100th Birthday
Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Wernher von Braun (March 23, 1912-June 16, 1977), one of the most famous rocketeers and advocates of spaceflight that ever lived. Accordingly, it is an...
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Hypersonic Flight
The day is Thursday, February 24, 1949; the pens on the automatic plotting boards at South Station are busy tracking the altitude and course of a rocket, which just moments before had been launched...
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The First Fireworks: Origins of the Rocket
Modern launch vehicles, including the recently retired space shuttle and the earlier Saturn V that took the first humans to the Moon, are among the most complex feats of engineering in human history....
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“Buzz Bomb”: 70th Anniversary of the V-1 Campaign
On June 13, 1944, exactly one week after the Allied landings in Normandy, Britain came under attack from a strange new Nazi weapon, a flying bomb. The English called it the “buzz bomb” or “doodlebug,”...
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“Vengeance Weapon 2”: 70th Anniversary of the V-2 Campaign
Shortly after 11:00 am on September 8, 1944, there was an explosion on the southeastern outskirts of newly liberated Paris. It killed six people and injured 36 more at Charentonneau à Maison-Alfort....
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Orion Test Flight: Back to the Future
If weather permits and no last-minute technical issues arise, NASA’s next-generation crew exploration vehicle launches into space for the first time on December 4*, 2014. The engineering test flight...
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Remembering Milton W. Rosen
Milton W. Rosen Pioneering Rocket Engineer 1915–2014 Portrait of Milton W. Rosen. NASM-2B23356 Milton Rosen was a pioneer of American rocketry development. He helped put America in space as a leading...
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Obscure Objects: WWI U.S. Army Protective Helmet Used by American Rocket Society
What does a piece of World War I Army surplus have to do with early rocketry? Well, a helmet from the war, painted white for easier visibility, provided protection for American Rocket Society members...
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