According to The Register, this is the tallest rocket NASA has built in three decades, and it has 700 sensors on board to understand how a rocket this tall can fly. Photos by AP/John Raoux.

Korea aborted the rocket launch seven minutes before lift-off, but officials wouldn't say why. The rocket was supposed to place a Russia satellite in orbit, and comes four months after North Korea's own rocket launch. North Korea had been harshly critical of the South Korean initiative.

Photos by AP/Yonhap

In this Monday Aug. 17, 2009 file photo, South Korea's first space rocket sits on its launch pad at the Naro Space Center in Goheung, South Korea. The Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 was planned to blast off from a launch pad Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009, officials said, in a landmark launch that could boost the country's ambition to become a regional space power but would trigger angry response from North Korea. (AP Photo/Yonhap, Bae Jae-man, File)

A South Korean flag at half-mast hangs near the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1, South Korea's first space rocket at the Naro Space Center in Goheung, south of Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009. Kim Dae-jung, who survived assassination attempts and a death sentence during his years as a dissident to become president of South Korea, and whose unflagging efforts to reconcile with communist North Korea earned him the Nobel Peace Prize _ died Tuesday, hospital officials said. (AP Photo/ Yonhap, Han Sang-kun)

In this photo released by Korea Aerospace Research Institute, the control center of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1, South Korea's first space rocket is seen at the Naro Space Center in Goheung, south of Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009

The Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1, South Korea's first space rocket, sits on its launch pad at the Naro Space Center in Goheung, South Korea, Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009. Space officials aborted South Korea's first rocket launch just minutes before liftoff Wednesday.

These suits and the exterior tiny space capsule drive home just how uncomfortable and claustrophobic the whole enterprise must have been — and those close-ups of the spacesuit crotch look worse than a Stormtrooper costume. And yet, the whole thing is so bathed in the lambency of heroism that our greatest space-faring achievement still feels only a day old.

Learn more via Popular Science.

Images by AP.

Over at Oobject, you can see an amazing collection of rocket sled images from the past century. Some of these rocket sleds can reach up to 6000 mph, and are used for everything from testing aircraft to researching how much G-force a human can withstand.

In fact it was one of those human tests that gave rise to Murphy's Law back in the late 1940s. An engineer named Edward Murphy was working on G-force tests at Edwards Air Force base. He'd devised a force measurement sensor that could be plugged into the rocket sled, called the Gee Whiz (below), which would give researchers an extremely accurate measurement of the amount of G-force their long-suffering test subject Lt. Col John Paul had endured.

Unfortunately, a technician hooked the sensors up incorrectly and got a zero result, meaning that Paul had suffered through potential broken bones and a concussion for nothing. Later, when test participants discussed the dud test with media, they referred to how they hadn't accounted for "Murphy's Law," in which anything that could go wrong would go wrong.

See more amazing rocket sleds via Oobject.

The first Proton was launched in 1965. It was originally designed as one huge freaking Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, with a massive range and terrifying nuclear payload. Since the East coast of the U.S. is not currently a smoking radioactive crater, you can be sure it was never actually used this way. Instead, it was put to work hauling satellites into orbit, as well as chunks of the Mir space station. Despite some recent mission failures, Protons are still regularly contracted out by international companies who need to get something heavy into space. In this case, British company Inmarsat hired a Proton to put their 6-ton Inmarsat-4 (I4-F3) telecommunications satellite into orbit. By the time you read this, we'll know if it was deployed successfully.

This photo by Flickr user alexpgp shows a Proton being lifted into launch position at Baikonur.
If you head over to his Baikonur Campaigns page, you can see a huge gallery of cool insider photos taken inside Baikonur as engineers prepare for various launch missions (apparently alexpgp is an engineer with one of the companies that hires Proton rockets). Top image by: BBC News.

Proton rocket in return to flight. [BBC News]