National Geographic Articles on Flight and the Hubble Space Telescope

The December 2003 National Geographic contains two excellent articles
pertinent to these newsgroups.  The first article takes a retrospective look
at the first one hundred years of flight and then looks forward to the
possibilities looming in the next one hundred years.  An abbreviated
version, sans most of the hard copy published photographs can be found here:

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0312/feature1/index.html

The above article mentions the Columbia accident in regard to hypersonic
travel and the future of commercial flights taking tourists to the edge of
space at speeds of Mach 7 to 10.

The second article features some stunning Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
photographs and details the saga of the HST servicing missions quite well.
It also forecasts the possible future of HST as well.

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0312/feature3/index.html

This month's magazine is worth picking up if you do not subscribe.
Personally I think the HST is the Space Shuttle's greatest success story to
date.  Without the Space Shuttle servicing missions the HST would have been
one more out of focus NASA flop.

-- 

Daniel
http://www.challengerdisaster.info
Mount Charleston, not Charleston, SC