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Category: space travel – Page 130

Elon feels that Starship is moving too slow so he is now throwing a lot more resources at it.

While Elon Musk earns daily headlines over changes at Twitter, a significant reorganization is underway at his space company’s Texas launch facility.

SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell and vice president Mark Juncosa – two of the most influential executives at the company aside from Musk himself – are now overseeing the facility and operations of the company’s Starbase location, people familiar with the situation told CNBC.

Senior director of Starship operations Shyamal Patel is leaving the site to move to the company’s Cape Canaveral facilities, after spending more than two years working on the next-generation rocket in Texas, those people said. Patel was previously based at the Cape, before a promotion and move to Starbase.

Continue reading “SpaceX shakes up Starship leadership in Texas as push for the rocket’s next milestone intensifies” | >

The test has now validated the startup’s patented design and manufacturing methodology.

A space-tech startup headquartered in Chennai, India, successfully test-fired the world’s single-piece 3D-printed engine.

Elen11/iStock.

Agnikul Cosmos on Tuesday said that Agnilet was test-fired at the Vertical Test Facility, Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS), at Vikram Sarabhai Space Center (VSSC), Thiruvananthapuram. The test was supported by ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) and IN-SPACe, a nodal agency for promoting and regulating space players.

Continue reading “Indian space tech company successfully test-fires world’s first single-piece 3D-rocket engine” | >

China gave up on their SLS clone, deciding that building a giant rocket that blows up with every mission is a bad idea. Maybe Congress, who is forcing NASA to build the SLS, could learn from this.

When China started to get serious about sending its astronauts to the Moon in the middle of the last decade, the country’s senior rocket scientists began to plan a large booster to do the job.

In 2016 the country’s state-owned rocket developer, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, began designing the “Long March 9” rocket. It looked more or less like the large heavy lifter NASA was designing at the time, the Space Launch System. Like NASA’s large rocket, the Long March 9 had a core stage and boosters and was intended to be fully expendable.

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An in-depth survey of the various technologies for spaceship propulsion, both from those we can expect to see in a few years and those at the edge of theoretical science. We’ll break them down to basics and familiarize ourselves with the concepts.
Note: I made a rather large math error about the Force per Power the EmDrive exerts at 32:10, initial tentative results for thrust are a good deal higher than I calculated compared to a flashlight.

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Continue reading “The Spaceship Propulsion Compendium” | >

Virgin Galactic, while fighting delays in returning tourists to space, is building for the future.

The new class of space tourist ship for Virgin Galactic, called Delta, is coming together with a new deal to fly Axiom Space astronauts along with contracts to secure key suppliers, the company said in press releases this week. Delta may fly as frequently as once a week and is slated to enter service in 2026.

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NASA and China plan to mount crewed missions to Mars in the next decade. While this represents a tremendous leap in terms of space exploration, it also presents significant logistical and technological challenges.

For starters, missions can only launch for Mars every 26 months when our two planets are at the closest points in their orbit to each other (during an “Opposition”). Using current technology, it would take six to nine months to transit from Earth to Mars.

Even with nuclear-thermal or nuclear-electric propulsion (NTP/NEP), a one-way transit could take 100 days to reach Mars.

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SpaceX and NASA are gearing up towards the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972.

NASA deputy associate administrator Mark Kirasich spoke highly of SpaceX’s progress on Starship in a subcommittee meeting of NASA’s Advisory Council on Monday, October 31, as per an Ars Technica report.

Now, Kirasich has provided an update on SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship launch system, stating that the private space firm is building one of its next-generation Raptor engines every day.

SpaceX / Twitter.

Continue reading “SpaceX is building one next-gen Raptor engine every day ahead of Starship launch” | >

In the past 30 days, SpaceX has completed 8 orbital launches. If they kept this up for a year, they would be doing 8 12 = 96 which is about their goal for next year. To give you an idea of how fast SpaceX is growing, last year, SpaceX only did 31 launches which was a record for them.

Even more impressive, one of these launches was a Falcon Heavy which is basically 3 Falcon 9’s tied together. So SpaceX completed 10 orbital launches of Falcon 9s in the past 30 days which would be a rate of 120 Falcon 9 orbital launches per year!

A history of orbital rocket launches.

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