As part of the SLS archeology project, a group of NASA engineers have refurbished a gas-generator , essentially a separate rocket engine used to drive pumps for the main engine, used for the famous Saturn F-1 engines and fired it several times.
“Valentina Tereshkova orbited the Earth 48 times during
her three day spaceflight in Vostok 6 in 1963. First woman in space!”
“Jan Davis made her first of three spaceflights on Shuttle Endeavour’s STS-47
mission alongside Mae Jemison and, contrary to NASA policy, her husband
Mark Lee. Twentieth woman in space!”
Via the Rocketeers blog comes the video interview with Helen Sharman, one of the first genuine civilian space travelers and the first Briton to go to space.
(I’ll note that she was in no way the first space tourist, though she is sometimes referred to as that. She did not decide to go to space and then made it happen with her own resources. She was instead selected in a competition with thousands of other people and her scientific background strongly influenced that selection.)
The latest Planetary Society Hangout included asteroid hunter Gary Hug who
scans the skies every night looking for new near-Earth objects and refining orbital measurements for existing ones. He is also one of the Planetary Society‘s Gene Shoemaker Fellows, which is our program to provide highly-skilled amateur astronomers with the equipment and support needed to continue the search for potentially hazardous asteroids.
Join Casey Dreier and Dr. Bruce Betts, who manages the Shoemaker program, as they talk to Gary Hug about how he hunts the night skies, the new NEO he discovered in January, and what drives him.
![718979main_IMG_7022_cropped_800-600[1]](https://i0.wp.com/hobbyspace.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/718979main_IMG_7022_cropped_800-6001.jpg)
Engineers in the F-1 gas generator project take on the 1960s NASA look.
