Monday, February 20, 2012 marks 50 Year Anniversary of Astronaut John Glenn’s flight aboard Friendship 7 that made him the first American to orbit earth

Astronaut John Glenn climbs aboard the Mercury Capsule he dubbed Friendship 7 that sat atop an Atlas Rocket just before the flight that made history and made him the first American ever to orbit earth.

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The Atlas Rocket carrying John Glenn and his Mercury Capsule lifts off from Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

- Read the story behind the photos HERE

And even more HERE

Above file photos by NASA - February 20^th, 1962

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This video courtesy of NASA

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I watched every one of those first flights into space as a kid and LOVED every minute of it! Now what do our children have to look forward too?

AubreyJ………

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New Giant Plane Operating System for Space to Launch People, Cargo into Orbit

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Image Credit: Stratolaunch Systems

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Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan have teamed up on a new winged rocket that would be carried aloft by a gargantuan twin-fuselage mothership and then dropped from 30,000 feet for the climb to orbit, they announced today… The new rocket will be funded by Allen through a new company known as Stratolaunch Systems and built by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, of Hawthorne, California…

Read the full report at link below…

Rocket system could lower cost of access to space, Allen says

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Stratolaunch Systems -- a Paul G. Allen Project

Stratolaunch Systems is pioneering innovative solutions to revolutionize space transportation

- Click out the official Stratolaunch Systems website HERE

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Space just might become fun and cool again, over the next 10 years or so.

AubreyJ………

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Lockheed Martin: Possible Manned Mission to the Dark Side of the Moon by 2016?

Image Credit: Lockheed Martin

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* POPSCI.com The Obama administration may have axed NASA’s ambitious manned moon exploration plans for even an even more ambitious deep space exploration agenda, but for those developing the technologies that will one day take us to deep space the moon is just too ripe a testing ground to ignore. Lockheed Martin is pitching NASA what’s being called an L2-Farside Mission that would launch a manned Orion spacecraft into a stationary halo orbit on the other side of the moon... brings us the following report that starts off like this...
Read the full report at link below...
Lockheed Martin Proposes Manned Mission to the Dark Side of the Moon
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* Read LockheedMartin.com PDF file HERE

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COOL Stuff -- Now will it fly!!!?

AubreyJ.........