NASA has set its sights on sending human crews back to the moon and establishing a permanent base on the lunar surface. The agency wants to return to the moon, build a lunar outpost, and eventually send humans to Mars. But these missions come with risks and challenges.

As humans venture deeper into space and explore other worlds, they face daunting challenges.

How will they survive the harsh and unpredictable environments they encounter? What if meteorites, radiation, or other hazards damage their habitats? Delegating routine tasks to machines could save them time and resources, but how will they make sure these machines are reliable? These are just some pressing questions that must be answered to travel safely and sustainably beyond Earth’s orbit.

Starlab Space has chosen SpaceX to launch the private space station, Starlab, into low-Earth orbit (LEO) in just one flight.

Starlab Space is a transatlantic collaboration between Voyager Space and Airbus.

The announcement reveals that SpaceX’s Starship vehicle would undertake a single mission to transport the entire Starlab before the International Space Station’s (ISS) retirement, scheduled for 2030. However, the company’s release did not specify the launch date of Starlab.

Departure is now scheduled for no earlier than Monday (Feb. 5)

The building is jam-packed with towering stainless-steel cylinders — Super Heavy vehicles, the first stage of SpaceX’s Starship megarocket — which rise nearly to the roof.

“Super Heavy boosters for the next three flights, with a fourth ready to stack, in the Starbase Megabay,” SpaceX wrote in the post.

A Delaware judge has voided Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s gargantuan $55 billion pay package following a lawsuit by shareholders claiming it was far too much wealth to award a single individual.

In a ruling this week, Delaware judge Kathaleen McCormick called the billionaire’s cushy compensation plan “an unfathomable sum,” arguing it was unfair to shareholders.

Uncontested, the decision could leave a massive gap in the net worth of the once richest man in the world, which could have a ripple effect on his other ventures, including SpaceX and his online echo chamber X-formerly-Twitter.

SpaceX signed a deal with Starlab, the private space station joint venture of Voyager and Airbus, to launch on Starship.

The mission, dubbed NG-20, marks the first of three planned flights of Cygnus aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff occurred at 12:07 p.m. EST (1707 UTC).

Barry-1 has 2 Quantum Drives: QD1 (Blue Arrow, internal) & QD1-TC (Green Arrow). Both are designed to produce thrust in the same direction (Red Arrow). QD1-TC is expected to produce about 2x the thrust of QD-1. CEO Richard Mansell said it has two drives a 0.25mN and a 0.65mN drive.

The DARPA funding (2018–2022 Quantized Inertia investigation) $1.3 million was for the researcher Mike McCulloch. But none of the DARPA funding has been or is yet for IVO is all privately funded. No VC or DARPA funds. The $17 Million DARPA Otter which appears intended for this type of work, but nothing has been allocated to my knowledge and definitely no DARPA funds have gone to IVO.

If they are fully successful, they will see both at once and see 3x thrust of QD-1. This would prove scaling via multiple devices. The devices are lightweight. If they have additive thrust, it will barely matter that the thrust is tiny. It means that arrays of thousands or millions of devices can be created. The devices might be one millinewton or less but then a million devices achieves constant one thousand newton thrust. The operation for a decade of multiple drives mean this would scale to full up interstellar drives. The best lab result is one watt for 52 millinewtons. The devices flown to orbit have far less thrust and each has different thrust so that it is clear whether zero, one or two devices are working.

Astronauts content themselves with freeze-dried gruel, but plans for crewed missions to Mars mean scientists need to create more delicious, nutritious menus by James Shackell.

Docking and berthing are not just about connecting two spacecraft; they are vital for crew transfer, resupply missions, and the assembly and maintenance of the ISS.

As of December 22, 2023, the ISS hosted four spacecraft: the SpaceX Dragon Endurance crew spacecraft, the Soyuz MS-24 crew ship, and the Progress 85 and 86 resupply ships. In January, the Axiom-3 crew arrived in another Dragon spacecraft.

The future of space exploration relies on these intricate docking procedures, which will continue to evolve with new technologies and spacecraft.