Image courtesy of Jackie Burns. https://bsky.app/profile/artistburns.bsky.social “He called us all into space.” Neil Armstrong on Yuri Gagarin   What did it mean to be the first? Not to walk on the Moon, that wouldn’t come for another eight years, but to fly in space? And was such a thing even possible? Such thoughts seemed entirely reasonable back then, with the metronome of Sputnik 1 still ticking in the collective consciousness of a world dazed by the audacity of the Russi

"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....

by Mark Stewart Still from The Company of Wolves Courtesy of The Cannon Group “One beast and one beast only howls in the woods by night.” The Bloody Chamber Angela Carter   By way of preamble: The windblown pamphlet finds its way to the punters feet as he walks down Exhibition Row, with no particular destination in mind. He bends to retrieve the piece of  literary driftwood, if such it is, his curiosity piqued. He knows the world to be a random place and he