The first manned landing on the Moon occurred in 1969. The first hand-held calculator didn’t come on the market until 1972. So we got men to the Moon using pencil and paper and a slide rule. Really!
I think this is pretty cool. A company with plans to mine asteroid, Planetary Resources, Inc., has just announced that they’re putting a telescope in space and they’re inviting the public to crowdfund it AND […]
In 1968, NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center in Clear Lake City, Texas was a hot and humid place, built three years earlier on a thousand acres of undeveloped cow pasture 25 miles southeast of downtown Houston, in the middle of nowhere.
So like a lot of people, I saw Star Trek Into Darkness last week. I liked the casting, the acting, many of the effects. I had problems with the storyline and a number of plot […]
This post has been removed because its content may be incorporated into a forthcoming book by the author. To find more articles by Jack Clemons, go here. Information about Jack’s new book will be […]
This is not fiction. Your mission, should you accept it, is to go to Mars and die there. I get a bit cynical about this sort of thing,
Welcome internet traveler. I will be stockpiling neatly organized bits into a collective known as a blog along this portion of your journey. Do not fear for your personal safety, as I will take great […]
Ignorance is never better than knowledge. – Enrico Fermi When I was just a little tyke, driving to Logan Airport in Boston meant, as today, enduring the unavoidable traffic jam. Conversing in the family car […]
Why don’t American kids dream of being astronauts anymore? In Japan, interest in space is at a historically high level. I get slightly snarky about AKB48.
Today we begin a new bi-weekly feature that introduces the art and history of the members of the International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA), a group of artists who have as their collective forte the […]
I was watching the TV commercial featuring the Space Shuttle Endeavor the other night – you know, the one where a truck tows the Shuttle through the streets of Los Angeles to its permanent exhibit […]
Without belaboring the concept, let’s do it. 1. Star Wars. The force is magic, as are most other elements. Just because something has robots, spaceships, ray guns doesn’t make it science fiction. 2. Inception. Entering […]
Today’s manhunt in Boston for the alleged Marathon bomber has pretty much buried yesterday’s story that NASA’s Kepler telescope has discovered three exoplanets that contain water and support life. The discovery is interesting, of course, […]
Author’s Note: Last week I wrote about one of my favorite Star Wars characters, Admiral Motti played by Richard LeParmentier. It is with disappointment and sadness that I learned of his death this week. (04/16/13) […]
A recent report in Astrobiology raised the possibility of new places to look for extraterrestrial life: on the moons of distant planets. Astronomers have now discovered evidence of well over 3000 extra-solar planets (that is, […]
I’m an astronomer, but I also have a background in engineering, and when I was six, dinosaurs rivaled space for my primary interest. I’m grown-up now, but must admit I still love toys. The bigger […]
There are a number of science fiction tropes that might come true at some point, but not necessarily within our lifetimes or near future. They’re extremely common, however, and challenging them can elicit strong emotions […]
Welcome to the Amazing Stories BLOG HORDE INTERVIEWS! The ASM Blog Horde is a diverse and wonderful species. I have the privilege of talking with all of them, and I get to share those chats with […]
When I walked out to my back patio, I unexpectedly met resistance. My throbbing forehead had crashed against an unseen force. I stepped back to look more closely and noticed a barrier standing between me […]
Our own Michael Brotherton (sky seer!) has been conducting the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for a number of years now. The program recently lost its funding from NASA (thank you sequestration) and is looking into […]
This post has been removed because its content may be incorporated into a forthcoming book by the author. To find more articles by Jack Clemons, go here. Information about Jack’s new book will be forthcoming.
I was watching an episode of Fringe today and got to see Walter Bishop actually puttering around his lab and whipping up antidotes with seconds to spare. If only science were so exciting on a […]
Welcome internet traveler. I will be stockpiling neatly organized bits into a collective known as a blog along this portion of your journey. Do not fear for your personal safety, as I will take great […]
I’m on the editorial board, and an acquiring editor for, a new series by the European academic publisher Springer. I’m busy but agreed to participate because I love the intersection of science and fiction and […]
INTRODUCTION This is a blog about rockets and science and rocket scientists. I’ve spent my career in this field, working among the people who make some very, very cool things happen there. I’ll discuss cutting […]
I have some news about the workshop, but first, in case you don’t know what it is… Launch Pad is a week-long workshop held every summer since 2007 at the University of Wyoming. I founded […]
Welcome internet traveler. I will be stockpiling neatly organized bits into a collective known as a blog along this portion of your journey. Do not fear for your personal safety, as I will take great […]
I’ve always thought that US TV shows have the ground covered when it comes to science fiction TV shows (although the UK has the longest running show Doctor Who to brag about). But occasionally the […]
The blogosphere has been abuzz with Google Glass. In case you haven’t seen what this is, check out Google’s page on it here. Looks cool/nerdy, right? The idea is that you can constantly monitor a […]
A few weeks ago, I posted an explanation of why it’s highly unlikely that that anybody will anytime soon replicate the human brain on a digital computer. In that post, I explained that a single […]
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