Free Republic

The Army are planning to cut its number of front line tanks by up to a third, leaving Britain with fewer than Serbia, Russia and only a few more than Switzerland. As MailOnline reported earlier this month hundreds of Ajax mini-tanks are due to be supplied to the Army next year with the full order of 600 delivered to the Ministry of Defence by 2024 costing around £3.5billion. The Ajax armoured vehicles will travel at speeds of up to 40mph and have been touted as the first ever fully digital armoured fighting vehicle in UK military history. All you need...

Representative Steve King is among the leading Iowa Republicans basking in reflected glory from Ted Cruz’s big win in the caucuses. His endorsement in mid-November was a catalyst for Cruz’s rise in the Iowa polls. He ran interference when Cruz came under attack for his stands on the ethanol mandate and an amendment to a 2013 immigration bill. (SNIP) Donations from around the country would pour in if he faced a real threat in this year’s primary. (SNIP) Nevertheless, a primary with Ryan backing some challenger to King could become quite a spectacle. Plenty of wealthy establishment types loathe Cruz...

A Lone Morton Thiokol Engineer tried to convince NASA and Thiokol management that their booster rocket is flawed. Both NASA and Thiokol ignore his warnings.The next day The Space Shuttle Challenger explodes over Florida and the Rogers Commission is formed to find out what exactly happened.

I was working with NASA as a public information officer attached to the press site at Kennedy Space Center. My job that morning was to deliver pre-launch commentary at the communication console inside the Launch Control Center at the Cape. I began my shift at the microphone at about 3am, about the time the tanking operations got underway when millions of pounds of pressurized hypergolic fuels were being pumped into the behemoth at Launch Pad 39-B as the seven astronauts breakfasted before suiting up for the big event.

Images from Jan. 28, 1986, are seared into the memories of former schoolchildren, teachers, parents, and pretty much any American now older than 30 - the Challenger space shuttle, meant to carry school teacher Christa McAuliffe into orbit, reduced to a snaky tunnel of smoke in the sky near Cape Canaveral. In the years that followed, a lot would come out about a disaster watched in countless classrooms across the nation: about faulty O-rings, about dangerously cold temperatures, and about how five crewmen, an engineer and a New Hampshire teacher meant to represent NASA in its finest hour became the...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – As families of the lost Challenger astronauts gather with NASA to mark the space shuttle accident's 30th anniversary, there's a new voice to address the crowd. June Scobee Rodgers -- widow of Challenger commander Dick Scobee and longtime spokeswoman for the group -- is passing the torch to daughter Kathie Scobee Fulgham. [....] The event will honor the Columbia Seven as well, along with the three Apollo 1 astronauts killed during a launch pad test on Jan. 27, 1967. NASA also plans observances at Arlington National cemetery, Johnson Space Center in Houston and elsewhere.

January 28th marks 30 years since the Challenger Disaster. Seems so long ago, yet it is one of those days people never forget. School was out that day, probably because of bad weather, and I remember watching on television the news showing the explosion over and over. I will never forget. We didn’t give up on spaceflight that day, but I wish more would have seen the real promise of the Final Frontier. Instead, many in government still see it as another “get-elected-for-a-few-years” opportunity. The vision of government sees only through the next election cycle, not seven generations hence. There...

Amid ongoing changes to the British Army under the banner of austerity, the bemusing statistic of four legged firepower outweighing the heavy metal variety persists. Recently, the Conservative Defence Minister Lord Astor admitted: “The Army currently has 485 horses, serving in the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery, the Household Division and at the Defence Animal Centre." The last time horses were used in a combat role by the British Army was World War I, when a million were sent to the frontline and only about 62,000 survived. During World War II, General Orde Wingate and...

A wreath-laying ceremony was planned at Arlington National Cemetery, to be followed by remembrance events at several NASA locations, including the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The tributes also honor the three astronauts -- including the first American spacewalker, Ed White -- who were killed on Jan. 27, 1967, when a fire broke out in the Apollo 1 capsule during a pre-launch test, and those aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, which in 2003 broke apart upon reentry from space and streaked across the sky over Texas engulfed in flames. The seven members...

Muscle cars are all about the numbers, and Dodge has just issued a triple-digit warning to the rest of the ponycar herd. Packing 707 horsepower and 650 lb-ft of torque, the supercharged 6.2-liter Hemi V-8 “Hellcat” engine is the very stuff Saturday night legends are made of. But don’t take our word for it—watch Dodge brand boss Tim Kuniskis set the record straight in the exclusive video below. Installed in the 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat, this wild engine has the loftiest power figure of any V-8 engine in Chrysler history. To put it numerically, the Hellcat brings 45 more...

The Republican contest for the 2nd District House seat took a nasty turn Thursday as Rep. Lee Terry's opponent accused the eight-term congressman of lying on a campaign mailing. Terry's mailing, sent to voters earlier this week, displays a photo of GOP challenger Dan Frei between pictures of President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, both Democrats. “Dan Frei supports spending your tax dollars to provide free health care for 11 million illegal immigrants,” Terry's mailing says.

For some reason Gee Oh Pee 'leader' John Boehner decided to tell the truth to his the local (Cincinatti Enquirer) newspaper back home in his OH-8 district -in contrast to the tripe he usually feeds the rest of us.   And that truth is just as bad as any contstitutionally-aware patriot may have imagined: not only is he detached and arrogant -laughing off serious primary challenges from J.D. Winteregg and saying the floor vote for Speaker "won't even be close"- but came right out and told them he won't be putting any effort into repealing Obamacare. Rather, AMNESTY for illegal aliens is his top priority-  "get it...

Lifelong Ohioan Eric Gurr -a 48-y.o. student of history who's campaigning as a 'Conservative Republican'- was born and raised in Hamilton, Ohio. He attended the University of Cincinnati, has been registered as Republican his entire adult life, and is currently the CEO of Best and Brightest inc. a computer consulting firm based in West Chester, Ohio.   He's married and has three children and two grandchildren, who all reside in Liberty Township. Ohio. Amusingly, Eric is a second cousin to George Washington. (9x removed)... And check him out on the issues: he's pro-life, anti-Obamacare, and against unhelpful foreign entanglements like Libya...

Beyonce has landed herself in trouble with NASA after deciding to sample an audio clip taken from the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster on her new track ‘XO’. The song, which features on the singer’s eponymous new album, begins with a six-second clip taken from the accident, in which Steve Nesbitt – NASA’s public affairs officer at the time – states, “Flight controllers here are looking very carefully at the situation. Obviously a major malfunction.” The Challenger exploded shortly after lift off on its ’86 mission, killing all seven people on board. The Hollywood Reporter states that representatives from NASA...

Beyoncé has been labeled "insensitive" by some current and former NASA astronauts and their families for sampling audio from the space shuttle Challenger disaster for a love song off her newly released album. Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center Jan. 28, 1986. All seven crewmembers aboard were killed. "Flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation. Obviously a major malfunction," now-retired NASA public affairs officer Steve Nesbitt said as the nation watched wreckage fall toward the ocean on live television. Twenty-seven years later, Nesbitt's voice is heard at the beginning of the video for...

Making no attempt to defend his record, he talks of what he “would” do in a second term. In these last days of the race, Obama counts on the news of Sandy turning attention away from Romney’s October momentum, to photo-ops of himself in a monogrammed bomber jacket trying to look presidential. The more Benghazi creeps into the news, the stranger the silence from the Obama administration. But the real story is that almost all of the hope of 2008 has ended in the fear and loathing of 2012. Obama has made no real attempt to defend much of what...

A flag that was aboard the space shuttle Challenger when it exploded 25 years ago still flies in the Pikes Peak region, most recently Tuesday night at an Eagle Scout Courts of Honor.The flag belongs to Boy Scout Troop 514 of Monument, which loans it to troops and organizations for special events. The troop has also carried it in parades. Zach Anderson’s Eagle Scout ceremony Tuesday featured the flag, and he said he considered it another honor. The 17-year-old earned 43 merit badges in scouting — the highest number in Troop 777. His scouting career has brought him full circle,...

How an 1870s marine expedition changed oceanography and drove eight sailors insane When was the first voyage of the Challenger? No, not the Space Shuttle — the original Challenger, a sea ship that sailed in 1872. The HMS Challenger traversed the world's oceans for four years, drove some of its sailors completely insane, caused about a quarter of the crew to jump ship, and forever changed the face of ocean science. Is there a way to scroll past the nature channels without seeing one that describes the richness of the ocean and the life that teems in its depth? In...

The night before the 1986 explosion, Boisjoly and four others argued that joints in the shuttle's boosters couldn't withstand a cold-weather launch.

Link only to the L.A. Times obituary. Roger Boisjoly, a major figure in trying to halt the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger dies of cancer at age 73. http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-roger-boisjoly-20120207,0,2248999.story