“Artemis” : Greek goddess of the Moon; protector of young women; twin sister of Apollo.   Ray Bradbury called it “The Loneliness.” The way everything shrinks down when you leave the Earth, yourself most of all, body and soul. Watching the planet dwindle, that impossible oasis of light in a vast universe of darkness. The surrounding dark matter like so much invisible pack ice. The globe contracting if not to a point then to something little larger than a small coin, easily obs

"The Moon is the first milestone on the road to the stars."   – Arthur C. Clarke Spaceflight has always been a roll of the dice. Despite all the safety checks and the dress rehearsals, space is still the harshest of environments for humans to live in. And just getting there is fraught with danger, not least of all the launch – all those combustible liquids coming together in a calibrated explosion. Like the blue touch paper and retire to a safe distance of about two miles, an

Remembering Jim Lovell (1928-2025) A personal reflection Jim in front of the Apollo 10  Command Module at the Science Museum, London....

A Metaphor Equation Micro-blog The first Briton in space, Helen Sharman. In Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterly 1972 film adaptation of Stanislaw...

by Mark Stewart Still from The Company of Wolves Courtesy of The Cannon Group “One beast and one beast only howls in...

A Metaphor Equation Micro-blog Zero-G On the way to the launch ...

Remembering Frederick Forsyth (1938 – 2025) A Metaphor Equation Micro-blog Picture credit: Big Issue “It is cold at six-forty in the...

A Metaphor Equation Micro-blog If George Orwell were alive today, would he feel compelled to write Nineteen Eighty-Four ? Probably not....

A Metaphor Equation Micro-blog   “One day you’ll drown in that much water, Doctor…”   “On the desk by the stern window was the limestone...