Q 01/05

Which creatures became the first animals in space, riding a captured German rocket from New Mexico in 1947?

A) Rhesus monkeys

B) Fruit flies

C) White mice

D) Stray dogs

Answer · why

B) Fruit flies

Fruit flies rode 109 km up so scientists could study radiation at high altitude, and were recovered alive. Monkeys followed two years later, and the f...

Q 02/05

Which rocket-launch ritual first appeared in Fritz Lang's 1929 silent film 'Woman in the Moon'?

A) The countdown

B) The mission patch

C) The crew walkout

D) The go/no-go poll

Answer · why

A) The countdown

The countdown appeared as title cards ticking from six down to 'now'. Rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth advised on the film, whose spaceship is also rolle...

Q 03/05

NASA floods its launch pads with water at liftoff mainly to protect a rocket from what?

A) Lightning strikes

B) Static electricity

C) Salt corrosion

D) Its own noise

Answer · why

D) Its own noise

Its own noise is the danger: exhaust shockwaves approach 200 decibels. After the first Shuttle launch lost 16 heat tiles, NASA upgraded pads fed by a ...

Q 04/05

Which newspaper printed a correction in July 1969, 49 years late, admitting that rockets can work in a vacuum?

A) The Washington Post

B) The Boston Globe

C) The New York Times

D) The Wall Street Journal

Answer · why

C) The New York Times

The New York Times had sneered in 1920 that a rocket pioneer lacked 'the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools'. Its correction ran the day after...

Q 05/05

Which American anti-tank rocket launcher of World War II was nicknamed after a comedian's musical instrument?

A) Stinger

B) Javelin

C) Tomahawk

D) Bazooka

Answer · why

D) Bazooka

Bazooka was the name of a horn invented by 1930s comedian Bob Burns, and the weapon's plain tube looked vaguely like it. Soldiers also called the laun...