Spec Tech: The Habitable Zone

Recent astronomy news gave us word of a planet around a double star system. This is the first ever planet around a binary star that has been positively identified (outside of tataouine – but that was in a galaxy far, far away). This is encouraging both because it looks like a habitable location, but also……

Spec Tech: Weird Places in the Universe

Fictional universes can be strange places, but to my endless fascination the real universe — the one you and I actually live in — is a pretty strange place too. Over countless years of looking up astronomers have discovered some very, very strange things in the sky. Here are some odd places that really exist.……

Spec Tech: Spacecraft Subsystems

Sometimes it helps just to know the right words when you are looking for more information on a topic. If I had only known to search for “Vortex shedding induced roll” last spring I would have saved myself many months of work. But I digress. Today’s spacecraft like the space shuttle have millions of parts.……

Spec Tech: Heavy Lift

There was an interesting bit of space news that came out the other day. The US rocket company SpaceX announced that they were going to push forward with their plans for a heavy lift rocket. As a rocket scientist and a big space fan this pretty big news. Not so much because the rocket—Falcon Heavy—was……

Spec Tech: Finding Your Way Through Space

Let’s say you are blindfolded and taken across the universe. You wake up in your sophisticated spaceship in some unknown corner of the cosmos…where are you? Is there any way to tell? Perhaps more realistically, if you are navigating your craft through the galaxy, how don’t you get lost? Bearings The first thing to do……