William Sikander

[williamsikander]

S-IVB, Saturn V third stage (also second stage of Saturn I-B). Built by Douglas Aircraft Corporation in Santa Monica, CA and test-fired in Sacramento.

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S-II, the second stage of the Saturn V moon rocket. Built by North American Aviation in Seal Beach, California. Propellant: LH2 (liquid hydrogen) and LOX (liquid oxygen). Thrust: 1 million lb.

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S-IC, the first stage of the Saturn V moon rocket. Propellant: RP-1 (rocket-grade kerosene) and LOX (liquid oxygen). Thrust: 7.5 million lbs. Boeing built these stages at a NASA-owned factory in New Orleans.

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Test Stand 1-D at Edwards Air Force Base, California. Originally built to test the F-1 engine for the Saturn V moon rocket in the 1960s.

For more information, see: https://www.willylogan.com/?p=2543

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Mission Santa Cruz, California. Est. 1791. Destroyed 1857. Rebuilt 1931.

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Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 Mercury capsule, which he flew into space on a suborbital trajectory 60 years ago today, Friday, May 5, 1961. With this fifteen-minute flight, Alan Shepard became the first American and the second human to fly into space. He went on to fly to the moon in 1971 on Apollo 14. He died in 1998.

For more on Shepard and his legacy, see http://www.willylogan.com/?p=2389

Freedom 7 is owned by the National Air and Space Museum, and it has been on loan to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.

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The 3KA-2 or Vostok 3A-2 capsule, which flew into space on March 25, 1961. This mission, called Korabl-Sputnik 5 by the Soviet press, carried a mannequin and a variety of biological payloads, including a dog named Zvezdochka. It was the last unmanned flight of Vostok before Yuri Gagarin's flight on April 12.

This capsule was at the Omniplex museum in Oklahoma in 2004 when I saw it. In 2011, it was sold at an auction in New York City for $2.9 million. It is now back in Russia.

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0.36-scale wind tunnel model of the Space Shuttle Orbiter, tested at NASA Ames and now on display inside the front gate of Moffett Field, California.

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Space Shuttle Endeavour and Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center at the time of STS-118, August 2007. Based on a photo I took in 2007, with a scale model as reference for the shuttle.

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The space shuttle Full Fuselage Trainer, as seen on the Johnson Space Center tram tour in 2003. Built in 1973 and used throughout the space shuttle program, the FFT is now at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

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RL-10, America’s first liquid hydrogen rocket engine. It first flew in 1962 and is still in regular use. NASA’s new SLS rocket will use the RL-10 in its upper stage. (Drawn from an RL-10 engine on display at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL.)

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Miniature stupa at Borobodur temple in southern Java, Indonesia. Borobudur is the world’s largest Buddhist temple. Built in the 9th century and abandoned in the 14th century, it was restored in the early 20th century. This picture originally drawn as a hand-sketch in 2015, then colored in The GIMP in 2021.

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Drawing of a space shuttle launch, based on a photo of a full-scale shuttle display at US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama and drawn with an XP-Pen drawing tablet.

The space shuttle flew 135 times between 1981 and 2011. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the first shuttle flight and the 10th anniversary of the last. The space shuttle had some serious shortcomings (particularly in terms of economics and safety), but it was nevertheless a remarkable machine and I, for one, miss it.

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Capilla de la Inmaculada Concepción in Salto del Agua, Mexico City. Built in the 18th century.

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Religious iconography from South and Southeast Asia, seen at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco in the Before Time (although the museum is open again with restrictions).

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Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco City and County and Marin County, California.

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Courtyard and nave of Basilica di Sant’ Ambrogio, a Romanesque masterpiece in Milan.