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.
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.
It’s not quite warp drive, but researchers are hot on the trail of building nuclear fusion impulse engines, complete with real-life dilithium crystals.
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.
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.
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.
In 2021, NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to build a modified version of Starship as a lunar lander for its upcoming Artemis III mission.
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!
The new CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk, has authorized 50 employees from his other companies, such as Tesla, SpaceX, and the Boring Company, to help him handle matters at the social media company, according to a report by CNBC
In addition to the employees, Musk has friends and advisors who are looking into the affairs at Twitter, such as the head of his family office Jared Birchall, venture capitalist and founding member of the PayPal team David Sacks, and angel investor Jason Calacanis.
After completing his Twitter acquisition, Musk fired the Board of Directors and the top brass at the social media site. This leaves him as the sole director of the company, taking up the position of the CEO at Twitter, although his Twitter bio describes him as Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator as of now.
A type 1 civilization on the Kardashev scale manages to take advantage of 100% of the energy produced by its planet, control the climate, move continents and even change its planet’s rotation. In this sense, how long does the human race lack to become a type 1 civilization? Are we close to achieving it, or are we still far away? Ready, let’s start! “Introduction“ The level of technological development of any civilization can be measured mainly by the amount of energy they need. But, it also encompasses the management of that energy and how they use it to develop and grow on their home planet. Following Kardashev’s definition, a Type I civilization is capable of storing and using all the energy available on its planet; this includes all known electricity generation methods, as well as those that depend on the elements available on the planet, nuclear fusion and fission, geothermal energy, as well as that which they can collect from their star without leaving the planet. The human race has not yet reached this level of development, but will we ever reach it? And if so, when will we achieve it? Previously we already made a series of 3 videos in which we address the three types of civilizations that exist according to the Kardashev scale. “Enter here images of the series on the scale of Kardashev.“ But today, we will focus on analyzing why the human race has not yet managed to become a type 1 civilization and how far we need to become one. The Great Filter.
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