| June Challenge: Droneship |
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| Series | Monthly Challenge |
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| Status | Finished |
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| Starts | 2016-06-01 00:00 CCT |
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| Closes | 2016-07-31 23:59 CCT |
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| Collect | |
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| Details | Info |
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June 5, 1783 - The first sustained flight occurred as a hot-air balloon was launched at Annonay, France, by brothers Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier. Their 33-foot-diameter globe aerostatique ascended about 6,000 feet. In September, they repeated the experiment for King Louis XVI, using a sheep, rooster and duck as the balloon's passengers.
SpaceX was founded in June 2002 by Elon Musk; his vision was to build a simple and relatively inexpensive reusable rocket that would go into space multiple times; similar to the turn around time capabilities that commercial airliners currently exhibit.
On April 8, 2016, Falcon 9 launched Dragon on a cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station for NASA and, for the first time, landed the first-stage of the Falcon 9 back on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean.
And so we shall see if balloons can once again break barriers. Beginning more than two centuries ago, humans used hot air balloons to throw off their Earth-bound shackles for the first time. Today, Bigelow is betting that it is once again balloon-like technology will enable us to defy Earth's gravity - this time escaping it entirely into deep space.
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