Editorial Team

Space War Editorial Team

Editorial Team

The Space War Editorial Team produces Space War's coverage of military space and defense technology. We report on missile defense and space-based systems, nuclear weapons and arms control, drones and directed-energy weapons, and the great-power competition shaping security beyond Earth. Articles reflect our team's collective editorial process, source verification, drafting, technical review, and editing, rather than a single writer's work. Space War takes editorial responsibility for content under this byline. For more on how we work, see our editorial policy.

Nukewars

The SR-71 Blackbird cruised at Mach 3.2 above 25,000 metres, and its titanium skin ran so hot in flight that the fuselage grew about 10 centimetres longer, which is why the fuel tanks were designed to leak on the ground and only seal once the plane heated up in the air

The SR-71 Blackbird's titanium airframe grew several inches longer at Mach 3.2 as skin temperatures passed 300°C, which is why Lockheed engineers designed the fuel tanks to leak on the ground and seal only in flight.

Aug 9, 2026

Nukewars

Friedrich Miescher spent the winter of 1869 rinsing pus off surgical bandages collected from a Tübingen clinic to isolate what he called nuclein, a phosphorus-rich substance from white blood cell nuclei that the world would take another 75 years to recognise as DNA

Working in a converted castle kitchen in Tübingen in 1869, the Swiss chemist Friedrich Miescher isolated a phosphorus-rich substance from the nuclei of white blood cells scraped off surgical bandages. He called it nuclein. It would take roughly seventy-five years for the world to recognise it as DNA.

Aug 9, 2026

Farm News

What happened when a Great Plains dust storm in 1935 blackened the sky over Washington DC on the very day a soil scientist was testifying to Congress about erosion?

On April 14, 1935, Black Sunday lifted a third of a million tonnes of Great Plains topsoil into the sky. Two days later, that dust darkened the Capitol just as Hugh Bennett testified — and Congress passed the Soil Conservation Act within ten days.

Aug 7, 2026

Space Travel

In July 1962, a missing overbar in Mariner 1’s guidance equation helped send the Venus probe off course 293 seconds after launch, forcing range safety to destroy NASA’s $18.5 million mission

On July 22, 1962, a missing overbar in guidance code combined with a radar failure to send Mariner 1 off course. The range safety officer destroyed the Venus-bound probe 293 seconds after launch, at a cost of $18.5 million.

Aug 6, 2026

Nukewars

Why does roughly 27 million tonnes of desert dust cross an ocean each year to fertilise a rainforest on the other side of the planet?

A barren desert thousands of miles away holds the secret to keeping the world's lungs alive, through an invisible annual transfer of nutrients that rivals industrial fertilizer in scale.

Aug 5, 2026

Nukewars

How did a Southeast Asian city-state with no large natural rivers or usable groundwater engineer enough recycled water to meet roughly 40 percent of its total demand?

Singapore has no rivers and no aquifer, yet meets 40 percent of its water demand by recycling sewage through membrane bioreactors, reverse osmosis and ultraviolet light — a closed loop that feeds reservoirs, semiconductor fabs and the country's strategic independence.

Aug 4, 2026

Nukewars

How did a windswept North Atlantic island once almost entirely stripped of its birch forests by Viking settlers push tree cover from less than 1 percent back toward 2 percent, tree by stubborn tree?

Iceland lost nearly all its birch forests after Viking settlement, and forest cover fell below 1 percent. A century of state planting, imported conifers, and sheep-fenced hillsides has pushed it back toward 2 percent — one stubborn seedling at a time.

Aug 3, 2026

Nukewars

In 1665, Robert Hooke pressed a sliver of cork under one of the first compound microscopes in London and saw thousands of tiny empty chambers that reminded him of monks’ rooms, which is why every living thing on Earth is now measured in units he called cells

A seventeenth-century glimpse through glass gave us the vocabulary to understand every living thing.

Aug 3, 2026

Nukewars

Why does concrete poured into harbour walls two thousand years ago keep growing reinforcing minerals in seawater, while modern reinforced piers can suffer corrosion damage within decades?

A July 2026 study of concrete beneath a 1,900-year-old latrine at Hadrian's Villa shows why Roman harbour walls grow stronger with age while modern reinforced piers fail within fifty years. The answer is a slow mineral reaction — and a steel skeleton that turns the same reaction into a countdown.

Jul 31, 2026

Nukewars

In 1952, Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase put radioactive virus-infected bacteria through a kitchen blender, and the tubes helped settle that DNA, not protein, carried genetic information

In September 1952, Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase used a Waring blender, radioactive phosphorus and sulphur, and a bacterial virus to prove that DNA — not protein — carries the instructions for life. Seven months later, Watson and Crick had the double helix.

Jul 30, 2026

Nukewars

How does a single family of dam-building rodents, reintroduced to a drought-cracked valley, raise the water table by close to a metre and store more carbon in the resulting wetland than an equivalent area of forest?

A single family of beavers reintroduced to a Devon valley raised the water table by more than a metre within a decade and locked carbon into pond sediments faster per hectare than the surrounding oak woods. The mechanism is stepped dams, saturated floodplains, and anoxic mud.

Jul 30, 2026

Nukewars

The GPS satellites orbiting 20,200 kilometres overhead must correct their atomic clocks by 38 microseconds per day, because Einstein’s relativity predicts time itself runs faster up there where Earth’s gravity is weaker

GPS satellites at 20,200 kilometres altitude gain 38 microseconds per day because Earth's weaker gravity makes their atomic clocks tick faster — a relativistic correction engineered in before launch that keeps satellite navigation from drifting 10 kilometres off course every 24 hours.

Jul 30, 2026

Nukewars

In 1961, a Soviet test over Novaya Zemlya detonated a 50-megaton hydrogen bomb called Tsar Bomba whose mushroom cloud reached 64 kilometres into the sky and whose flash was visible from roughly 1,000 kilometres away, still the largest explosion humans have ever produced

On 30 October 1961, the Soviet Union detonated a 50-megaton hydrogen bomb over Novaya Zemlya — a mushroom cloud that climbed 64 kilometres and a flash visible 1,000 kilometres away. More than six decades later, Tsar Bomba is still the largest explosion humans have ever produced.

Jul 28, 2026

Nukewars

A tiny jellyfish called Turritopsis dohrnii can revert its adult cells back to a juvenile polyp when injured or starving, effectively restarting its life cycle and making it one of the only known animals with no fixed lifespan

The tiny Mediterranean jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii can reverse its own life cycle — dissolving its adult body and reassembling as a juvenile polyp when injured or starving. A look at the biology of the only known animal that can, in principle, live forever.

Jul 28, 2026

Nukewars

Why did a wealthy delta nation deliberately breach its own dykes and pay farmers to let the rivers flood their fields, after four centuries of building the walls ever higher?

After the near-miss floods of 1993 and 1995, the Netherlands spent €2.3 billion on Room for the River — deliberately widening channels, relocating dykes, and paying farmers to accept seasonal flooding on 30 sites, reversing four centuries of hydraulic doctrine.

Jul 28, 2026

Nukewars

The USS Nautilus became the first submarine to cross beneath the North Pole in August 1958, travelling 2,945 kilometres under the Arctic ice cap on a single reactor core without surfacing

On August 3, 1958, the USS Nautilus became the first vessel to reach the North Pole by water, sliding beneath the polar ice cap on nuclear power and proving that submarines no longer needed the surface at all.

Jul 28, 2026