Author Topic: Spaceflight Magazine  (Read 204942 times)

Offline Blackstar

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Spaceflight Magazine
« on: 09/01/2008 04:11 pm »
The new issue of Spaceflight magazine has an interesting article by Asif Siddiqi titled "Lifting the Veil":

http://www.bis-spaceflight.com/sitesia.aspx/page/183/id/1836/l/en-us

The article is about how many Soviet space and rocketry leaders were known in the West during the 1950s and 1960s.  As Siddiqi notes, although many publications referred to Korolev as "the Chief Designer" and said that his name was unknown, there were a number of western publications during the 1960s that accurately reported his name and involvement in leading the Soviet space effort.  Some other key officials like Glushko and Yangle are also discussed.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #1 on: 01/11/2011 07:07 pm »
I write a lot for Spaceflight, the British Interplanetary Society's monthly magazine.  I didn't know that they had a dedicated website for the latest issue:

http://www.spaceflightmagazine.com/pages/latest-issue.html

That is much more slick than the standard BIS site.  Here is the main link:

http://www.spaceflightmagazine.com/

I don't have anything in the February issue, however.

Spaceflight is the best English-language magazine devoted to space issues.

Offline jacqmans

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #2 on: 01/13/2011 07:30 pm »
I do some work for Spaceflight Magazine also (not as much as I used to do..) But my photos do get published :)

ps

Not only humans read Spaceflight, robots do to...
Jacques :-)

Offline jacqmans

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #3 on: 02/04/2011 03:03 pm »
The latest issue of Spaceflight magazine is on sale from 10 February 2011 and contains a wealth of exciting features and news reports....


http://www.spaceflightmagazine.com/pages/latest-issue.html



« Last Edit: 02/04/2011 03:03 pm by jacqmans »
Jacques :-)

Offline rdale

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #4 on: 02/04/2011 03:22 pm »
Has anyone seen this in American bookstores? Seems a tad bit expensive to subscribe on this side of the pond.

Offline Jim

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #5 on: 02/04/2011 03:23 pm »
Has anyone seen this in American bookstores? Seems a tad bit expensive to subscribe on this side of the pond.

Barnes and Noble

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #6 on: 02/04/2011 06:00 pm »
You can find it in a big Barnes and Noble, surprisingly.  I've even seen it in the B&N on Maui...

I've got a short article in this issue.  It's about the ALHAT landing system test.



Offline rdale

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #7 on: 02/04/2011 06:29 pm »
Thanks - just got my Groupon deal of a $20 BN giftcard for $10, I'll drop by my BN once that clears through and see. And this revived my interest enough to pop on a Quest subscription while I was in the mood!

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #8 on: 02/04/2011 07:34 pm »
Eh... Quest has been hit or miss.  The print quality is consistently, well, crappy.  No color photos, and frequently lousy photo reproduction.  They have run some pretty good articles in the recent past, however, after a long slump.

You'll hear a lot of opinions about Spaceflight.  I give them credit for good photo selection and quality.  Layout is boring compared to mass market magazines.  As for the articles, it depends what you like.  I've heard a number of complaints about them running travelogues of ISS missions.  But they've had some interesting stuff in the recent past.  For instance, last year they had an article where somebody tracked down all the remaining Saturn F-1 engines.

Offline max isp

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #9 on: 02/04/2011 08:08 pm »
Glad you liked my articles on the whereabouts of the F-1 engines!

Coming up next an article about where all the Saturn rockets disappeared to in the 1970s before they went on show....

Offline edkyle99

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #10 on: 02/04/2011 09:08 pm »
Glad you liked my articles on the whereabouts of the F-1 engines!

Coming up next an article about where all the Saturn rockets disappeared to in the 1970s before they went on show....

Did you track this one?  :)
http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/sa214.html
http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/sa214.jpg

 - Ed Kyle
« Last Edit: 02/04/2011 09:09 pm by edkyle99 »

Offline max isp

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #11 on: 02/04/2011 10:27 pm »
Yes I have some nice colour photos of it in my Saturn I/IB book.

Offline JosephB

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #12 on: 02/05/2011 05:54 am »
Our B&N didn’t have it. The gal at the desk went on about demographic this and that.
Apparently we don’t rate.
Plenty of WWE rags to pick from though. It’d be a shame not to get the latest on CM Punk.

Thank God for our local library.

Offline Bubbinski

Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #13 on: 02/05/2011 06:04 am »
Is this magazine going to be published in an iPad or Kindle format?  If so I'd certainly go for it.
I'll even excitedly look forward to "flags and footprints" and suborbital missions. Just fly...somewhere.

Offline rdale

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #14 on: 02/05/2011 01:13 pm »
I can't believe it comes even close to the market needed to do in iPad format.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #15 on: 02/05/2011 02:34 pm »
Our B&N didn’t have it. The gal at the desk went on about demographic this and that.
Apparently we don’t rate.
Plenty of WWE rags to pick from though. It’d be a shame not to get the latest on CM Punk.

Thank God for our local library.


I hate to say this, but she's wrong and right.  My B&N usually gets 2-3 copies per month, and at the end of the month they remain unsold.  I think it's amazing that they continue to carry them at all since they're clearly not selling them.  But apparently that is the case for a lot of niche magazines.  So your store probably has the wrong demographic, but so does my store--which is in one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, with a high-tech population and a decent-sized NASA center.  Interest in spaceflight is a tiny niche.

A few months back I read an interesting blog post by a guy who used to work in a bookstore.  He mentioned how he once convinced the manager to stock specialty magazines near the books on that subject (he specifically referred to a magazine about fire fighting equipment called Fire Apparatus Journal).  Surprisingly, they sold out when previously the magazines never sold.  He thought it was proof that people who were looking for a specific subject usually went to that section of the bookstore and discovered the magazine, but never would have looked in the magazine section.  But soon the manager switched back, because corporate headquarters told him to.  "Magazines belong in the magazine section, books belong in the book racks," he was told.  "Individuality will not be tolerated, even if it increases sales."  He went back to throwing out the unsold magazines at the end of the month.

Alas, this prompted similar stories from other people who had worked in bookstores telling about dumb orders that came down from corporate headquarters, such as an order that all book shelves had to be the same distance apart, despite the fact that a particular store had columns that prevented this--so they moved the shelves to comply with corporate policy, AND they lost shelf space!

Not too surprising, though.  In any dying industry--and bookstores are certainly a dying industry (sniffle)--you will always find examples where the company pursued dumb policies that hurt their business rather than innovating in order to increase sales.

Offline Paul Adams

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #16 on: 02/05/2011 02:37 pm »
Try here in Las Vegas, we have plenty of books with hand drawn pictures (you know the ones I mean) but pretty light on anything else!

Our B&N didn’t have it. The gal at the desk went on about demographic this and that.
Apparently we don’t rate.
Plenty of WWE rags to pick from though. It’d be a shame not to get the latest on CM Punk.

Thank God for our local library.

It's all in the data.

Offline JosephB

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #17 on: 02/05/2011 11:40 pm »
Now doesn’t that just make too much sense, group & sell reading material by topic whether it’s a book or magazine. It doesn’t surprise me at all that they would sell more mags. Just speaking for myself, when browsing at B&N I almost always pass on the mag rack as the bulk of it is glossy butt wipe.

There used to be a local chain book store in another city that sold Spaceflight years ago. They sold newspapers, magazines, traded old comics & baseball cards & rounded the store off with a “squeaky door saloon” way in the back. Not sure if they still carry Spaceflight but it’s a long drive just for that (100 mi). Maybe I’ll hit our library up with a “request to buy” form. Next time I’m there I should see if they carry Novosti (for cool pics only) or Space News just for grins.
« Last Edit: 02/06/2011 12:07 am by JosephB »

Offline rdale

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #18 on: 02/05/2011 11:46 pm »
No mag at B&N's here...

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Spaceflight Magazine
« Reply #19 on: 02/06/2011 01:37 pm »
1-Now doesn’t that just make too much sense, group & sell reading material by topic whether it’s a book or magazine. It doesn’t surprise me at all that they would sell more mags.

2Not sure if they still carry Spaceflight but it’s a long drive just for that (100 mi). Maybe I’ll hit our library up with a “request to buy” form. Next time I’m there I should see if they carry Novosti (for cool pics only) or Space News just for grins.

1-Yeah, once you think about it, it makes a lot of sense, right?  Sure, you put the more general interest magazines in the magazine section, but the specialty stuff would be better placed with the books. And if you wanted to be super-logical, you'd base it upon inventory: figure out which specialty magazines are not selling on the magazine racks and then move those to the specialty book sections and see if they sell there.

A few months back I read an article about small businesses in India and how backward they are.  It noted that they often did not implement even the most basic good business practices (for instance, a fabric factory that did not inventory their supplies but threw the yarn into a big room in the back, making it tedious to find what was needed).   So much of that seemed like simple common sense.  But American companies, while in general more sophisticated, can still do really dumb things.  You'd think that their approach would be to figure out what is not selling and find a way to sell it.  But... nope.

2-I'd love to find a newsstand that stocked NK.  Although I don't read Russian, it's still an impressive magazine to look at.  Space News was briefly sold on newsstands in the late 1990s, I think.  The more popular (former sister newspaper) Defense News was also sold on newsstands.  I still say that Space News is the best source of information on that subject if you are in the business.  Yes, you can find a lot of it on the internet for free, but only after significant searching.  SN brings it all together and provides consistent quality.  If you work in the space business in just about any capacity, particularly if your work involves government space programs, then Space News is the best way to spend your money.  If you're more of an enthusiast, you're probably better off with the net and 1-2 other publications.

Speaking of that... (since I'm in a rambling mood right now), I just got the newest edition of Ad Astra.  Although I'm not nuts about AA, they do have a tendency to run great photos in high-gloss.  There's still something nice about being able to open a magazine and look at a high resolution photo compared to seeing it on a screen.
« Last Edit: 02/06/2011 01:38 pm by Blackstar »

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