Three months later, for my birthday, my parents' gift was a lizard – a bearded dragon. My parents had even gotten a terrarium with a layer of store-bought gravel, and my dragon looked happy to be sunning on the gray rock under the heat lamp. In a fit of giddy irony, I named her Clyde.
You may have heard people refer to the “edge of space” – 100km – as the Kármán line. But what does that mean, and what’s so significant about it?
Simply put, the Kármán line is loosely defined as the altitude at which a fixed-wing aircraft would need to travel faster than orbital velocities to produce enough lift. This is a bit of a complex concept to understand, so I’ll break it down.
Read more(3 min)
In the decades since the first rockets flew, the only launch vehicle capable of any kind of reuse was the Space Shuttle, which required in-depth inspection and refurbishment after each flight. Meanwhile, SpaceX and Blue Origin, among others, are revolutionizing the space launch industry and building rockets that can – and have – been reused. What's changed, and why is reusability coming back?