Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas. There's another one in Huntsville Alabama also.

That's what she s... Nah, never mind...

Covers of a small exhaust port. Protons (and many others) use a small amount of hypergolic propellant's to kick start their turbo pumps.

You got that right!

I think he means the two little ones below and right of the OMS, which are part of the Reaction Control System. And roll pitch and yaw are their primary uses, along with translation for things like docking. Total of 33 little engines on the nose and the OMS pods. The smallest (Vernier engines) produce something like…

Just picking a bit, but Explorer I was America's first satellite, not just it's first scientific satellite.

Only the one they used for approach and landing tests (Aeroburan). Basically their version of our Enterprise, no 747 required. The flight Buran didn't use them.

It's called "2001: The Lost Science" by Adam Johnson. Not sure how widely it's published. Good stuff though.

Don't give up hope yet! We've just started working on an exhibition based on the materials and a recent related book. We're hoping it will be ready in about two years. It'll be a traveling exhibit, so it might come near you, and/or we might get new copyright permissions!

U.S. Space & Rocket Center, in Huntsville, AL. Can't put pics online because of copyright issues. Sorry!

U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL. Unfortunately, I can't post them on online because of copyright restrictions. :-(

The museum collection I curate has the honor of housing the collection of Frederick I. Ordway III, one of the technical consultants on the film. Part of his collection is his "2001" material. My favorite piece in the set is a pencil drawing of a control panel with all the buttons with hand written labels... so…

Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center, Baku, Azerbaijan.

My wife would disagree. She hates snorkeling for the exact reasons above. She's a bit panicky about water in the snorkel as well as being a bit of a claustrophobe, which the pinched nose really aggravates. However, we like tropical vacations. I love to snorkel and most of the time she just hangs out on the beach. I…

hank you for posting this, so I didn't have to! Moya for the win!

Actually, it's a bit of a fallacy to use the moon as a jumping off point. If you are going to Mars, or anywhere else for that matter, the energy to go there is the same as required to go to the moon (reaching escape velocity). In either case, you have to leave Earth first so it doesn't make sense to slow down and stop…

Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother. ."Put your hand in the box."

You sir, win.

I think I get where you were going with the space station/shuttle combo. You're referring to being glad they didn't have the functional combination of the two. However, it reads a bit like they never existed. Of course, Mir was as permanent a space station as we've seen so far. And while with it's issues, overall…

Here's the actual audio: Apollo 13 "problem" audio clip