SEA LION PRESS

By Tom Anderson. Waiting to go at Launch Pad 39B, 17th Ja 2026. Picture public domain by NASA, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. The 2000s Star Trek prequel series Enterprise had a controversial opening sequence; not so much for the imagery used (which shows technological progress in exploration from wooden sailing ships to aeroplanes to spacecraft) but for the poppy theme song ‘Faith of the Heart’, very different from the approach taken in previous series. Despite being poorly re

By Matthew Kresal. On the Sea Lion Press Forums , we run a monthly Vignette Challenge. Contributors are invited to write short stories on a specific theme (changed monthly). The theme for the 46th contest was Elephant . ***** "They did what?" The president's scientific advisor, Jerome Wiesner, spat out the words in surprise. Before he could receive a reply, he reached toward his dark-rimmed glasses, adjusted them on his nose, and sat back in his chair. "It's true, Dr. Wiesner

By Allen W. McDonnell and Jeff Provine This article was originally posted on Today in Alternate History ( twitter ) and the original article can be found there . Please check that blog for more like this. Original design of fully-reusable shuttle of North American Rockwell (1969) as drawn by NASA The Space Shuttle is an iconic vehicle but one not particularly popular among space enthusiasts on the basis that it was a machine with a tortured design process ( as covered in anot

By Matthew Kresal Artemis 8 using Dragon. Picture courtesy The Mars Society. Artemis 8 At Christmas 1968, NASA engaged in one of the boldest missions that the American space agency has ever engaged in. By launching Apollo 8 with astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders to the Moon, NASA sought to finally lay the ghost of the Apollo 1 fire nearly two years before aside. By proving the worth of the Apollo command module, the Saturn V, and the various aspects of the

By Matthew Kresal On the Sea Lion Press Forums , we run a monthly Vignette Challenge. Contributors are invited to write short stories on a specific theme (changed monthly). The theme for the 59th contest was We're on Strike . Edward came out of the communications room with a dreadful look. For a moment, he hesitated to look around the gray mess interior at two others gathered at the table. A table where they'd eaten so many happy meals now had the air of a funeral. They're

By Matthew Kresal F-1 engines of Apollo/Saturn V first stage leave trail of flame after liftoff The eyes of many interested in space exploration have spent recent weeks focused once more upon NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At Launch Complex 39B sits Artemis I atop the Space Launch System (SLS). The mission is intended as an uncrewed test flight to prove the flight worthiness of spacecraft and rocket alike before taking the first human beings to the Moon in over half

By Alex Richards On the Sea Lion Press Forums , we run a monthly Vignette Challenge. Contributors are invited to write short stories on a specific theme (changed monthly). The theme for the 15th contest was stories beginning with "It was a dark and stormy night ...." . It was a dark and stormy night. This was not unusual considering that even the days on Neptune are not particularly bright and the storms last for years at a time. Nonetheless, this particular night was, by G

By Bob Mumby On the Sea Lion Press Forums , we run a monthly Vignette Challenge. Contributors are invited to write short stories on a specific theme (changed monthly). The theme for the 3rd contest was Utopia . Alice had to admit, she couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed. She had been drawn to the stars by the stories which had leaped out at her from those colourful magazines her father had bought her when she was only a little girl. She remembered his conspiratorial wi

By Matthew Kresal The planet Venus, viewed in true color from Mariner 10 Halloween 1973. A Saturn V rocket sits on Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On top of it, three astronauts await lift-off. The journey they will soon be embarking upon will take them even farther out into space than their comrades on the Apollo moon landings. They will spend thirteen months away from Earth, arriving back home in time for Christmas 1974. Their destination is not the R

By Andy Cooke In my last article , I’d covered Gemini up to Gemini 9 – Gene Cernan’s hellish spacewalk, which uncovered that EVA was a damn sight more difficult than they’d previously expected from Ed White’s gentle float on Gemini 4. This article looks at the rest of the Gemini series. Gemini 10 Gemini X launch. Image credit: NASA This was not to be just a rerun of Gemini 9. As well as docking with its own Agena target vehicle, John Young and Mike Collins would fire the Ag

By Andy Cooke Last time, I got up to the marathon trip of Gemini 7 – where Frank Borman and Jim Lovell (who would later be part of the first Apollo crew to circle the Moon in Apollo 8) spent a marathon fortnight in a spacecraft which had a similar amount of living space to an average sportscar. As it happens, though, I missed out one potential PoD. When the flight plan for Gemini 6 was changed to a rendezvous with Gemini 7 following the loss of the original Agena target vehic

By Andy Cooke Following the successful completion of the Mercury programme (and NASA managing to sidestep a series of potential disasters), the next step was Gemini. Originally known as “Mercury Mark II”. Mercury proved that NASA could send astronauts into space and keep them alive, do simple manoeuvres, and get them back fairly reliably. That was it. Given that JFK had signed them up to get a man all the way to the Moon and safely back in (checks watch) another six and a hal

By Francis Castanos The story of the Space Shuttle is a complicated and tortured one. So have a drink or, better yet, a shot of dark brown coffee and fasten your seat belts. It all started with the orbiter. The original Shuttle (from the summer of 1968 to the summer of 1971) was fully reusable. The first stage was the size of a 747 and somewhat like a hybrid of the (Boeing) S-IC, X-15, and Jumbo Jet. The second stage was the size of a 707. Incidentally, F-1s were considered

By Andy Cooke When you’re pushing the limits of human knowledge – and doing so in a race, to boot – you’re going to be raking some risks. Such was the situation with the Mercury Project. Remember – by the time this started, no-one had ever sent a human into space. The entire endeavour was an exercise in learning-by-doing. Monkeys and then chimpanzees were sent into space and recovered without serious ill-effects (apart from a very grumpy monkey when an abort on a trial flight

By Francis Castanos Let us start with this interesting link to the NASA 1959 long range plan. With perfect hindsight this basically reads as Mercury > Block I Apollo > Skylab > Block II Apollo > Apollo 8 Well... this is not exactly how it happened in our timeline, is it ? And where on Earth (or should I say, where on the Moon, lame pun fully intended) are Apollo 11 ? Or Gemini? … First let's take a look at the Saturn family of rockets. As shown at Astronautix . Back t

By Andy Cooke The Moon Race was a close-run thing. Oh, not that the Soviets were close to winning. Even before Korolyev died on the operating table , they were well behind; afterwards, they had no chance. The real race was with the deadline that JFK issued: "Before this decade is out" There were a bunch of decisions and incidents that increased or reduced the chances of success - at least one accident actually made it more likely (in retrospect), while another accident that

By Andy Cooke What Could Have Happened... February 1997 Mir Space Station: Base Block, Kvant-1, and Kvant-2. Image: NASA The ageing Mir space station could support three people routinely. At the moment, six are on-board. This was not exceptionally unusual - there is a two week handover period between crews. Valeri Korzun and Aleksandr Kaleri are handing over to Vasily Tsibiliyev and Aleksandr Lazutkin. German astronaut Rheinhold Ewald has come up with the latter for the t

By Andy Cooke The Space Exploration Initiative On July 20th, 1989, President George H W Bush announced the Space Exploration Initiative. After decades of aimlessness, NASA finally had a clear purpose and a clear route forward. As a space-mad sixteen-year-old who had been born too late to experience the thrills of Apollo, I was ecstatic. NASA was to complete Space Station Freedom (well, start it first, then complete it), and then return to the Moon – this time to stay. But

By Andy Cooke The Soviets were worried. Ronald Reagan's rhetoric on his "Strategic Defence Initiative" was vivid, although was it remotely feasible? Technically, economically, politically... there were many obstacles to it being more than just a pipe dream, but could they afford to assume that it wouldn't soon exist? They had to do something about it. Although the 1967 OOuter Space Treaty and 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty banned the weaponisation of space, they did a

By Andy Cooke On Christmas Day, 1968, Apollo 8 entered lunar orbit smoothly - the first manned spacecraft to reach the Moon. It was the moment that NASA truly recovered from the Fire, and the point where the Space Race was all-but-won. The first true deep-space mission, which blazed the trail to the Moon, proved that people could travel from the Earth to the Moon, returned the famous "Earthrise" photo, and, in the words of an anonymous correspondent, "saved 1968." And it cou