theLogBook.com is a chronicle of how we used to imagine the future – an ever-expanding
logbook of what our entertainment, our culture, and even our brightest minds thought would happen.
It’s nostalgia – and some real history – that gives factual context to the fiction, cultural
context to the factual, and always looks to the future.

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Published On: August 10, 2023

Galactic 02Virgin Galactic launches the Galactic 02 suborbital spaceflight aboard the SpaceShipTwo-class VSS Unity. The flight is piloted by CJ Sturckow and Kelly Latimer, with Birgin Galactic’s Beth Moses aboard as the astronaut instructor. The passengers are space tourists Jon Goodwin, Keisha Schahaff, and Anastatia Mayers. Goodwin is the first space traveler to fly after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.

Published On: August 10, 2002

Intellivision In Hi-FiIntellivision Productions (a collective of programmers and designers who created the games for the iconic ’80s video game console) releases the album Intellivision In Hi-Fi at Classic Gaming Expo 2002, containing recordings of some of the system’s signature musical moments, and new renditions of some of the games’ musical themes. Read more

Published On: August 10, 2001

Space ShuttleSpace Shuttle Discovery lifts off on the 106th shuttle flight, a mission to exchange crews aboard the International Space Station. The shuttle’s cargo bay carries a logistics module containing more equipment for the ISS laboratory module, as well as storage racks to be installed elsewhere in the station. Aboard Discovery for her 30th flight are Commander Scott Horowitz, Pilot Frederick Sturckow, missions specialists Daniel Barry and Patrick Forrester, and ISS Expedition 3 crewmembers Frank Culbertson, Mikhail Turin and Vladimir Dezhurov, who remain aboard the station. Returning to Earth via Discovery are ISS Expedition 2 crewmembers Yury Usachev, James Voss and Susan Helms.

Published On: August 10, 1972

Great 1972 FireballIn the broad daylight of mid-afternoon, an asteroid measuring somewhere between 10 and 50 feet in diameter plows through Earth’s atmosphere over North America, creating a long-tailed fireball across the sky. Undetected before its close pass – only 35 miles from Earth’s surface – asteroid US19720810 skips off of the atmosphere and back into space, having lost half of its mass to the frictional heating of plummeting through the atmosphere. The spectacle lasts only a couple of minutes, and US19720810 will make another pass by the Earth in 1997 (though not at such a close distance). Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast

Published On: August 10, 1966

Lunar OrbiterThe first of five Lunar Orbiter satellites is launched by NASA, on a mission to map the moon and scout out promising landing sites for the Apollo program. In addition, radiation and micrometeor collision detectors fly aboard each Lunar Orbiter to see if the design specs of the Apollo spacecraft will be adequate to protect astronauts. Lunar Orbiter 1 is the first spacecraft to send home an image of the Earth as seen from the moon. To keep it from being a navigational hazard to future spacecraft, each Lunar Orbiter deorbits and crashes into the moon after completing its survey.

Published On: August 10, 1951

Tales Of TomorrowThe second episode of ABC’s science fiction anthology series, Tales Of Tomorrow, air on ABC, with each episode’s opening titles proclaiming that the series is produced “in cooperation with the Science-Fiction League of America”, a collective of sci-fi writers including Isaac Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon among its members. This episode stars Robert Allen and Ann Loring.

This series is not yet chronicled in the LogBook. You could join theLogBook team and write this guide or support the webmaster’s efforts to expand the site.

Absolutely no generative AI was used in the creation of the content on this website.
It’s mostly just some guy named Earl.

EG