Aviation & Space Exploration
by William Eric McFadden

revision 20230428-1042

Table of Contents
Links to sites not related to aviation or space exploration can be found in my Bookmarks.

Read my disclaimer.


"To most people, the sky is the limit. To those who love aviation, the sky is home." — anonymous

"Somewhere, deep inside, we can all fly." — Chinese fortune cookie

"There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss... Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties." — Douglas Adams

Airshows (return to top)

September 17, 2017: Vinton County Airshow (always the third Sunday in September)

June 2-4, 2017: Mid-Atlantic Air Museum's World War II Weekend (Reading, PA)
June 1-3, 2018: Mid-Atlantic Air Museum's World War II Weekend (Reading, PA)
June 7-9, 2019: Mid-Atlantic Air Museum's World War II Weekend (Reading, PA)
June 5-7, 2020: Mid-Atlantic Air Museum's World War II Weekend (Reading, PA)

Aviation Museums (return to top)

The United States Air Force Museum, Dayton (new URL)

Air Mobility Command Museum, Dover, Delaware

EAA AirVenture Museum in OshKosh (and B-17 Aluminum Overcast, on tour)

Historical Aircraft Squadron, Lancaster, Ohio — sponsors of the annual "Wings of Victory Airshow" in August
Tri-State Warbird Museum, home of B-25J Axis Nightmare & P-51D Cincinnati Miss, Clermont County (Ohio) Airport
Ohio Valley Wing, Commemorative Air Force with OY-2 Carin' Belle, Bolton Field
Champaign Aviation Museum, Urbana, Ohio
Liberty Aviation Museum, home of B-25J Georgie's Gal, Port Clinton, Ohio
MAPS Air Museum, Akron-Canton Airport
Golden Age Air Museum, Bethel, PA

Virtual Aircraft Museum

Aviation History and Aircraft Photography by John A. Weeks III

Aviation Magazines (return to top)
Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine

Code One magazine

Aircraft Cockpits

The Vintage Aviation Echo on-line magazine.

Alert 5 Military Aviation e-zine

Aviation Stuff (return to top)
Sporty's Pilot Shop, Clermont County (Ohio) Airport
Touch And Go Pilot Supply
Marv Golden Pilot Supplies
Pilot Pete Supplies

David Clark — aviation headsets

Alpha Industries, makers of the Authentic USAF MA-1 flight jacket
U.S. Cavalry
Ace Jackets
U.S. Wings
Flying Tiger Surplus
Flight Line Design
IMS-PLUS Military Surplus
History Preservation Associates, retailer of high-quality jackets, uniforms, and watches
Historic Aviation

Thomas Name Tages — custom flightsuit nametags
William & Williams — custom flightsuit nametags and patches

Aircraft Records — "Only the Fumes are Missing"

MotoArt

Jerri B's Victory Girl — "World's Foremost Source of Original Aviation Nose Art"

Airships (return to top)

The Goodyear Blimps
American Blimp Corporation
Airship.org — VTOL Airships

Airship Resources

Zeppelin Eureka photo gallery by Bernard Lee

Miscellaneous (aviation) (return to top)

ADS-B Exchange and map

145th Air Refueling Squadron — A Proud Heritage of Flight, a video by the 121st ARW

VintageFlying.com — cross-county in a Cub

Zeno's Warbird Video Drive-in

The Gathering of Mustangs & Legends 2007 & P51 Store; source for the book Legends in the Air

Clarence E. "Bud" Anderson's P-51 Mustang "Old Crow"; Anderson is the author of To Fly and Fight.
Marshall Stelzriede's Wartime Story, the Experiences of a B-17 Navigator During World War II

Buy the B-17 Flying Legend DVD at Flight Line Design
Buy the Bush Pilots of Alaska DVD at StrangeBirds.com

The B-25 History Project — "To preserve and honor the history of the B-25 Mitchell bomber and the men and women who built, flew, and maintain them; past, present and future"

MaxAir2Air — aviation photography by Max Haynes
WarbirdImages.com — aviation photography by Moose Peterson
Joe Olivia Aviation Photography — "civilian artist in residence" for the Wisconsin ANG
Bernard Zee Photography, with warbird galleries
Jansma Design — photos and 360° cockpit tours (and way-cool not-listed B-52 cockpit)

United States Tanker by Boeing

Charlie Bauer Aviation / WePushTin.com, with monthly pin-up calendar (not well viewed in IE)

Civil Air Patrol / U.S. Air Force Auxiliary

"Man must rise above the Earth — to the top of the atmosphere and beyond — for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives." — Socrates

Space Travel: Civilian Programs (return to top)

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. — Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

The Planetary Society — "Empowering the world's citizens to advance space science and exploration"

LightSail (and Wikipedia article)

The Ansari X Prize
Google Lunar X Prize

Virgin Galactic — "Spaceline for Earth"
Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites & Tier One Private Manned Space Program
Article: Richard Branson and Burt Rutan Form Spacecraft Building Company at Space.com

Elon Musk's SpaceX (and Wikipedia article)

Planet Labs — "Using space to help life on Earth" (and CEO William Marshall TED talk)
NanoRacks — "The Operating System of Space"
Surrey Satellite Technology LTD (SSTL)

Mars One — "The Next Giant Leap for Mankind"

Alyssa Carson: NASA Blueberry — "In 20 years I'll be on Mars... I am the Mars Generation" (and TEDx talk)

From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams:

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen..."

Space Travel: Governmental Programs (return to top)

Apollo in Real Time — the whole missions of Apollo 11, 13, and 17 presented in real time

at NASA

Human Space Flight
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Voyager at JPL — celebrating 40 year anniversary in 2017
Basics of Space Flight at JPL — an online tutorial
NASA History Program Office (and index)

NASA Television
NASA ISS Livestream on YouTube

Insight Mission to Mars

Mars Exploration (and Send Your Name to Mars: Insight)

International Space Station (ISS):

Wikipedia: ISS

Project Mercury (1959-1963):

Wikipedia: Project Mercury
NASA History Program Office: Project Mercury Drawings and Technical Diagrams
Kennedy Space Center: Mercury

Project Gemini (1962-1966):

Wikipedia: Project Gemini
NASA History Program Office: Project Gemini Drawings and Technical Diagrams
Kennedy Space Center: Gemini
On the Shoulders of Titans: A History of Project Gemini by Barton C. Hacker and James M. Grimwood

Apollo Program (1961-1972):

Wikipedia: Apollo Program
NASA: Apollo Lunar Surface Journal — archived audio
NASA History Program Office: Project Apollo Drawings and Technical Diagrams
Kennedy Space Center: Apollo
Smithsonian Air & Space: Apollo
Apollo Project Library — "The Most Epic Journey in History"
Apollo Flight Controller 101: Every Console Explained

Hack the Moon — "With a fraction of today's technology, engineers found a way to guide us to the Moon and back. Here's how they did it."

USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) Project (1963-1969):

National Reconnaisance Office: Declassified Records: MOL / DORIAn Illustrations
National Reconnaisance Office: The DORIAN Files Revealed: A Compendium of the NRO's Manned Orbiting Laboratory Documents (PDF; 232-pages)
Wikipedia: Manned Orbiting Laboratory
National Museum of the US Air Force: Manned Orbiting Laboratory
Encyclopedia Astronica: MOL
Kennedy Space Center: Spacesuits Open Doors to MOL History
The Space Review: All Along the Watchtower
Deepcold - Secrets of the Cold War in Space 1959-1969: USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory
Defense Media Network: Air Force MOL Astronauts Would Have Conducted Surveillance and Scientific Research
The Moon Pages: The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (PDF)
False Steps - The Space Race As It Might Have Been: The Manned Orbiting Laboratory - A USAF Space Station
Aerospace: Our History — In Their Own Words: Dr. Ivan Getting
Aerospace: Our History — In Their Own Words: Joseph Wambolt
Titan III / MOL artwork
PBS Nova: Astrospies: streaming video & astronaut profiles
Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine: A Sudden Loss of Altitude
Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine: The MOL-Men Come into the Light

Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (1975):

Wikipedia: Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
NASA History Program Office: Apollo-Soyuz Technical Drawings and Technical Diagrams
Kennedy Space Center: The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project

Skylab (1973-1979):

Wikipedia: Skylab
NASA History Program Office: Skylab Drawings and Technical Diagrams
Kennedy Space Center: Skylab

Museums (space) (return to top)

Kennedy Space Center (NASA)
Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex (kennedyspacecenter.com)
Kennedy Space Space Center Tours (kennedyspacecentertours.net)

US Manned Spacecraft History and Photography by John A. Weeks III

Space Science (return to top)

As one heart we yearn
To know if life beyond ours
Dwells among the stars. — Robert Picardo

The SETI Institute
Breakthrough Initiatives — a program of scientific and technological exploration, probing the big questions of life in the Universe
Is There Anybody Out There? The Past, Present, and Future of SETI by Jason Davis at The Planetary Society
SETI@home

Green Bank Observatory
The Big Ear Radio Observatory

No Place Like Home — blogs by Nadia Drake
Planetary Society: Blogs

Neil deGrasse Tyson's Star Talk Radio
Deep Astronomy

The Space Race — "Dedicated to the exploration of outer space and humans' mission to explore the universe"

Amy Shira Teitel, spaceflight historian, author, YouTuber, speaker, host:

Vintage Space YouTube channel
Vintage Space at Discovery Magazine
AST at NASA
AST at Motherboard
AST at Popular Science
AST at Seeker
AST at Nerdist

Frasier Cain

Universe Today blog
Universe Today YouTube channel
Frasier Cain YouTube channel

Miscellaneous (space) (return to top)

The Human Adventures in Space Exploration by Tihomir Dimitrov

Space.com

Wanderers — a short film by Erik Wernquist, with narration by Carl Sagan

The Full Moon Atlas at Lunar Republic

US Naval Observatory

Lunar Eclipse Computer
Sun or Moon Rise/Set Table at the U.S. Naval Observatory


Disclaimer:

This is a collection of links that I have found useful or interesting, either professionally or personally. It is maintained for my own use, and is subject to change at any time. No claims are made to completeness, accuracy, or competence. No endorsement of any site, individual, product, or corporation is intended. With these caveats, anyone is welcome to browse these links or to use this page.

Attributions:

Piper Cub, F4 Phantom, DC-3, & XS1 paintings by Rob Bolster
Carin' Belle photo copyright Ohio Valley Wing of the Commemorative Air Force