Located about 80km from Chennai on India’s east coast, Satish Dhawan Space centre is used by ISRO to launch all of its satellites including those to the Moon and Mars. Also known as Sriharikota, it was established during the late 1960s but today it has a vehicle assembly building, two launch pads and a state of the art mission control centre
Episode 68: Stephen H Smith – India’s forgotten rocketeer
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Contribution of Stephen H Smith to development of rocketry and the Anglo Indian community in India of which he is a member.
Episode 67 : Technik Museum Speyer
This episode is a preview of some of the space related exhibits in Europe’s largest aerospace museum – Speyer Technik Museum, in Germany. If you ever go and the following may entice you to do so, four space exhibits to look out for include the following: Soyuz TM19 – The landing capsule Soyuz TM-19 was […]
Episode 66: Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre
November 21st 2013 was the 50th anniversary of a rocket launched from India in to space. The launch itself was an all Indian affair but with lots of international support. The rocket was American, carried a French Sodium Vapour payload with assisted by a computer and a helicopter from the Soviet Union. From this meagre […]
Episode 65: ISRO – The early years
The Indian Space Research Organisation formally came in to being in 1972. By then, India had been developing its space program for almost a decade. The first launch to space from Indian soil was a two stage Nike-Apache rocket supplied by USA with a sodium payload from France. The rocket delivered a vertical trail of sodium […]
Episode 61: Reg Turnill on Wernher von Braun
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Like so many in the “space community” I was saddened to hear of the passing of Reg Turnill. He was the BBC’s aerospace correspondent but is best known for covering the American Space program throughout the 60s and 70s that he documents so well in his book Moonlandings: An eye witness account. He was the […]
The Red Rockets’ Glare – Book Review
Title: The Red Rockets’ Glare : Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857–1957 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Author: Asif A. Siddiqi ISBN: 9780521897600 Price: £58.00 [414 pages hardcover] This is probably the most meticulous analysis of the culture of an insecure, troubled and courageous people: the Soviets and those that preceded them, who collectively pulled off […]
Episode 54: 23 July 2012 – Manchester Interplanetary Society and Stanley Davis
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The August 2012 edition of Spaceflight, the monthly magazine from the British Interplanetary Society carried an article where I discuss the Northwest of England’s contribution in Rocketry during the 1930s. An extended version of that article is available for free download on Astrotalkuk.org – here. So on to today’ episode. In 1937, two teenagers Harry […]
Episode 53: 28th June 2012 – The Chinese Space program
Brian Harvey is a Dublin based writer, author, broadcaster and probably the most informed specialist on Chinese and Soviet/Russian space program in Ireland today. This conversation recorded during the Shenzhou-9 / Tiangong-1 mission orbiting the Earth with the three crew including the first Chinese female astronaut on-board. At the end of the interview Brian Harvey talks about the Space Cooperation Memorandum signed last week.
A public event to commemorate Manchester’s first rocket pioneers
Manchester has a world renowned international airport, and if had a group of rocket engineers had had their way, could Manchester have had a spaceport to launch rockets, too? A group of rocket engineers lead by Eric Burgess formed the Manchester Interplanetary Society in 1936. Working closely with the Sci Fi community, their headquarters were […]
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