Full Width [alt+shift+f] Shortcuts [alt+shift+k]
Sign Up [alt+shift+s] Log In [alt+shift+l]
47

The Largest Launch Vehicles in Service – 1957 to the Present

from Drew Ex Machina [alt+shift+b] in science

With the successful launch of NASA’s Artemis I test flight, we now have a new holder of the title “the largest launch vehicle in service”: the […]
16th Nov 2022

Stay updated

Get a weekly newsletter with the top 5 articles worth reading every week.

More from Drew Ex Machina

Critical Forecasts from Space: “Tech & Space Leaders Show” with Lisa Dreher

While my Gentle Readers are well aware of my decades of writing on space-related topics, I also have a day job as the Chief Scientist of […]

8th Aug 2026 • 1 votes
The Massachusetts Bolide: Witnessing a Once in a Generation Event

As a long time smoker who isn’t allowed to smoke in my home, I spend a fair amount of each day sitting on my front porch […]

1st Jun 2026 • 1 votes
The Soviet Zond 3 Lunar Flyby: Revealing the Rest of the Far Side

Naturally, the early history of space exploration is filled with firsts. Just six decades ago at this time, the world watched as NASA’s Mariner 4 spacecraft […]

18th Jul 2025 • 44 votes
The Hurricane Hunter Satellites: A Weather Nanosatellite Constellation

As part of ongoing outreach efforts by Tropical Weather Analytics (TWA) to the meteorological community, TWA’s Chief Scientist, Andrew LePage, attended the National Tropical Weather Conference […]

17th Apr 2025 • 57 votes
Apollo A-002: Testing the Limits of the Launch Escape System

One of the more dangerous parts of a space mission is launch which is why almost all crewed spacecraft have had launch abort options to cover […]

8th Dec 2024 • 111 votes

More in science

It took me seven months to get my baby an Australian passport

I’m an Australian father of four, living in the US. Something of a corner case. Nevertheless, getting my kids Australian citizenship by descent, and then Australian passports so we can fly home legally, has kicked off a carnival of errors with a very dark side. Australia is generally thought of as a developed western liberal country with relatively high state capacity. And I have generally found that at least state government services, now administered through centralized offices, have become more efficient over time. Passport applications for children living overseas, however, remain a time machine with a difficult security overhang. Australian …

8 hours ago • 1 votes
The Visible Human Project

Researchers created a dataset of photos of thousands of paper-thin slices of a male and female cadaver to create one of the most detailed datasets about the human body.

a week ago • 1 votes
Anne Heggli, Jonathon Keats, & Adam Csank: Art & Science at the Nevada Bristlecone Preserve

In a remote corner of the driest state in the country, Anne Heggli's team has been keeping watch over some of Earth’s oldest beings. Since 02012, Heggli’s NevCAN network has recorded conditions at the Nevada Bristlecone Preserve every eight minutes. The result is more than 120 million data points and a high-resolution portrait of how a bristlecone pine thrives. Paleoclimatologist Adam Csank showed how bristlecone microcores reveal the droughts and floods these trees survived long before us, a history that fine-tunes models of what's ahead. Artist and philosopher Jonathon Keats went further. “The most accurate clock,” he said, “is a tree.” His monumental artwork Centuries of the Bristlecone keeps bristlecone time, a clock calibrated to the trees' own growth over millennia. Together, Heggli, Keats and Csank made the case for long science: patient, continuous observation that will help us answer future urgent questions. “Data at this resolution,” Csank said, “is like a Rosetta Stone” for understanding nature’s resilience. At fourteen years young, the bristlecone record is just beginning, Heggli said, but it already holds the key to questions like these: How will bristlecones adapt? What happens when the droughts and floods they've weathered for millennia arrive faster and more frequently? “We can't answer the questions if we're not watching,” said Csank. “We are the stewards of this data,” Heggli concluded. “This is why we need long science.”

2 weeks ago • 1 votes
In praise of questions

Prende y se apaga sola, sale después de hora. CHARLY GARCÍA La máquina de ser feliz I’ve learned to tolerate them, and sometimes even like them, but Zoom meetings are weird. Even in familiar contexts: I have weekly check-ins with … Continue reading →

2 weeks ago • 1 votes
📚 BoredReading

You seem to be enjoying this.

Join free to unlock everything.

Create free account

Already have an account? Sign in