The Soviet Union launched Sputnik and gave the United States a run for its money in the Space Race. But after the U.S.S.R. went under, all of its brilliant Space Age facilities were left to crumble. Looking at the ruins is like gazing at a fallen space empire.

The earliest practical precursor to the human space flight program was Project Albert. It was a horrific failure, with nearly all its pilots unable to survive the ordeal. Of course, these pilots were monkeys. Still, their story — full of confiscated rockets, drugs, and desert skies raining body parts — is one of the…

Today, SpaceX recovered its Dragon spacecraft after a successful journey to the International Space Station — thus proving that a private company can transport supplies, or maybe even crew, to the ISS. Everybody's saying this is the real beginning of the era of private space travel.

The era of "Googie" design and architecture is half a century ago — but in many ways, it feels fresher than anything that's come along since. The optimism and brightness that comes out of these buildings and their facades still shines out like a sign of what humans are capable of when we believe. To see these Space Age…

On October 29, 1933, the London Sunday Referee published a report from Rugen, an island in the Baltic Sea, just off the coast of Germany. Someone named Otto Fischer had flown inside a 24-foot steel rocket, to an altitude of six miles. Were the Germans really testing out a rocket that could carry people, nearly three…

Here's a fiery portrait of India's second failed launch of 2010. The GSAT-5P, launching a new geosynchronous communications satellite, broke up in the first stage and exploded. How did this happen?

Floridians have eleven more days to see the space shuttle Discovery on a launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center. On November 1, Discovery will blast off for the last time.

Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney just paid a pretty penny for the new space race screenplay from Bruckheimer's usual writers. Which means we're due for a epic space film that may not be groundbreaking, but by god it will be entertaining.

Over at Berg London, Megan Prelinger has an amazing essay about the design of advertisements for defense industry companies during the mid-twentieth century space race. Interestingly, socialist-inspired designs were used to advertise anti-commie missile systems.