Titan IVA-20 Accident Investigation Board Summary

Even the best rockets fail from time to time.

http://fas.org/spp/military/program/launch/titan_iv-20_sum.htm

Failure of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo resulting in at least 1 fatality

SS 2 as she was just hours ago.

Frame grabs from tracking video.

Recovery of casualties.

 

Debris after explosion and crash landing.

The loss of a rocket is never a happy moment, but at least with an unmanned mission (and one that was not critical or extremely expensive) it is easy to recover and rebuild. This, on the other hand, is both fairly typical of an exotic experimental aircraft, and also far more devastating. There is no way to recover the loss of life and the harm caused to this program could be significant.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/31/us/spaceshiptwo-incident/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

New Rosetta Comet Images - 7km above surface

ISS Resupply Mission Antares Rocket Explodes on Liftoff

And of course, I missed this by 7 minutes and got to the live feed while the pad was still burning...

Comet Siding Spring passes next to Mars

135,000 foot parachute jump

"In the early hours of October 24, 2014, Alan Eustice, the 57-year-old Vice President of Google Search, made a record-breaking skydive from 135,890 feet, falling faster than the speed of sound and breaking the world altitude record set just two years ago by Felix Baumgartner.

At dawn he was lifted from an abandoned runway at Roswell airport by a balloon filled with 35,000 cubic feet of helium. For a little over two hours, the balloon ascended to an altitude of more than 25 miles. Mr. Eustace dangled underneath in a specially designed spacesuit with an elaborate life-support system. He returned to earth just 15 minutes after starting his fall."

Historic Robotic Spacecraft Posters

www.kickstarter.com/

ISS illuminated by powerful laser and filmed

"This extraordinary video clip was recorded at ESA's Optical Ground Station (OGS) at about 19:05 UTC on 8 October 2014 as the station illuminated the ISS with a 3.6-Watt 532-nm green laser, used for testing next-gen optical communication technologies. The video clearly shows the ISS bathed in green light as it is tracked by the OGS through the 4-minute pass at an altitude of about 420 km."

ESA

Coke furnace

Saturn

Operation Crossroads Shot Able Target Ship

Painted orange for visibility. Shot was significantly off target and ship survived until the next shot.

The audible range of Krakatoa

NERVA nuclear thermal rocket test