Month: September 2021

Representing one of cinematic history’s greatest “What If” stories, cyberpunk godfather William Gibson (“Burning Chrome,” “Neuromancer”) once penned a provocative draft for “Alien 3” that was never used by the studio. 20th Century Fox eventually went with a stitched together script using ideas from David Twohy and Vincent Ward & John Fasano for director David Fincher (“Se7en,” “Zodiac”) that resulted in a polarizing 1992 entry in the storied “Alien” sci-fi franchise. However, Gibson’s action-oriented unproduced version is being given fresh life with Titan Books’ “Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay by…

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Supriya Chakrabarti, Professor of Physics, University of Massachusetts Lowell It seems like every week, another rocket is launched into space carrying rovers to Mars, tourists or, most commonly, satellites. The idea that “space is getting crowded” has been around for a few years now, but just how crowded is it? And how crowded is it going to get? I am a professor of physics and director of the Center for Space Science and Technology at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Many…

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Christopher R. Moore, Archaeologist and Special Projects Director at the Savannah River Archaeological Research Program and South Carolina Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina As the inhabitants of an ancient Middle Eastern city now called Tall el-Hammam went about their daily business one day about 3,600 years ago, they had no idea an unseen icy space rock was speeding toward them at about 38,000 mph (61,000 kph). Flashing through the…

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — NASA Administrator Bill Nelson is confident the agency’s human spaceflight future is bright, despite the inherent difficulty of the endeavor and some challenging international issues.  “NASA is an agency of overcomers,” Nelson told Space.com at the 36th annual Space Symposium, which took place here last month. The space agency is on the precipice of returning humans to the moon with its Artemis program while continuing to navigate tricky international relationships and looking to the future of low Earth orbit, including the ultimate retirement of the International…

[embedded content] Human eyes have been firmly fixed on the heavens these days, with SpaceX’s Inspiration 4 mission taking private citizens for a three-day spin around planet Earth, Richard Branson and his Virgin Galactic rocket plane blasting to the edge of space, followed by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin  aboard the New Shepard rocket for an 11-minute suborbital excursion. For those of us with necks still craned toward the cosmos, Disney Plus is celebrating the adventurous times we live in and their myriad achievements with “Among The Stars,” a lofty new…