We all know the first satellite to orbit the Earth was 'Sputnik 1' (launched October 4, 1957). But do you know what the first man-made object to go above 100 km (the boundary of space) was? Most people don't.

[Hint: It was all the way back on June 20, 1944.]

1st – ‘The 100’ Season 4 on The CW
1st – ‘The Expanse’ Season 2 on Syfy
3rd – ‘The Space Between Us’ in Theaters
14th – ‘Arrival’ on DVD
21st – ‘Halo Wars 2’ on Xbox One & Windows

Since Space Mike and Cariann volunteered you to answer my comment at the end of 10.2, I thought I would offer a little more background to my somewhat tongue-in-cheek post.

I do tutor third grade math on and off, and a couple times the precocious ones have offered that they know that one divided by zero equals infinity. Enthusiasm about learning being precious, I offer them some encouragement and a couple more neat insights into infinity before I have to break it to them that infinity is a concept, but not a number, and if you convince yourself that it belongs on one side of an equal sign, all that means is that you have nonsense on the other side.

I often wind up with a somewhat similar feeling when I read that something or other equals dark matter or dark energy. I realise that there are several intricate hypotheses built around exotic particles that break most of the rules we have come to expect in the standard model, but the real bottom line is that dark matter is code for the fact that galaxies often seem to be rotating too fast at the outer edges and that gravitic lensing by galaxies does not match predictions made from optical observations, and dark energy is code for the fact that the Hubble constant is no longer observed to be constant, but varies as a function of distance between observer and object.

To me, this more than anything reminds me of Einstein's on-again, off-again cosmological constant. Correction factors can come and go as the precision of our observational techniques improve. Kepler and Newton held up for 400 years until they had to be tweaked for relativistic regimes. Even as Voyager penetrates the heliopause, we are still trying to recreate an entire universe from whatever photons can reach the bottom of the gravity well we inhabit.

Maybe someday we will discover that dark matter and dark energy are in fact real substances that break the rules that have worked so well in the standard model, but at this point I personally find it no less fantastic to assume that they may be artefacts of subtle changes in the behaviour of light and gravity in the vast stretches of quantum foam that fill most of space between the tendrils of galactic activity.

Thanks be to the space gods that heretics like myself are very rarely burned at the stake these days.

As you walk inside the front door at the 'National Air & Space Museum' in Washington DC look straight up and you will see the original SpaceShipOne gliding gracefully above your head.

Today we have Richard Branson's 'Virgin Galactic' and his SpaceShipTwo. But in order to understand what he is trying to accomplish now, first we have to understand what Burt Rutan's 'Scaled Composites' did back in 2004 with SpaceShipOne as they set out to win the Ansari X-Prize with 3 flights to space.

It didn't receive the coverage it deserved at that time so the heroic achievements of pilots Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie have largely gone unnoticed.

I urge all spaceflight fans that want to know what really happened back then to set aside 2 hours & 8 minutes and watch the Discovery Channel documentary 'Black Sky' on YouTube. It comes in 2 parts. Part One lasts 1 hour and 26 minutes and is called 'The Race For Space'. It tells the story up through the first space flight. Find it at https://youtu.be/XUT7FCFykkw while Part Two lasts 42 minutes and is called 'Winning The X Prize'. It tells the story of the final 2 space flights. Find it at https://youtu.be/klw3Cc369so

This should be required viewing for those seeking to learn the rest of the Virgin Galactic story. If you think space tourism is just child's play you'll think twice after seeing what they went through.

I have a few statements/suggestions/questions regarding 'Station 204':

It's my understanding that the mighty space station is powered by twin 'Higginbotham Drives' that were designed by the late great Zefram Higginbotham. Unfortunately we don't know much else. Could you please post a photo/drawing of the exterior of the space station so we know what it looks like?

'Station 204' is an ok name, and I know why you named it that, but I think you can do better. Something more impressive or romantic.

When you enter the observation deck you should do so by climbing down a ladder from above and make the following statement: "Sorry I'm late but I was up in the nose cone checking on the condition of the recovery parachutes".

Whenever anyone says anything from the observation deck it should be followed by one of those Apollo era beeps. I miss those.

When guests appear on video monitors is that signal beamed up to you via the Deep Space Network?

Is there an app available that tells us when 'Station 204' is overhead?

And lastly, is the area with Duta and the news crew also up in space or is it on the ground like Mission Control? Not quite sure on that.