Energize the Solar System.
Over the next 15 years, multiple space agencies like NASA and commercial partners like SpaceX intend to mount crewed missions to the Moon and Mars.
Category: space travel – Page 197
A team from the Limitless Space Institute (LSI), funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and led by Dr. Harold “Sonny” White, a former NASA specialist, pioneer in warp drive or warp drive, has reported that he has discovered a veritable warp bubble in the real world. The event marks a breakthrough for scientists trying to develop a spacecraft capable of going faster than light.
A UK company with lofty aspirations around sustainable space travel has test-fired a rocket engine powered in part by plastic waste. Pulsar Fusion’s hybrid rocket engine is part of an ambitious journey that also involves the development of nuclear fusion technology for high-speed propulsion, which could cut travel times to Mars in half.
The idea of incorporating recycled plastic waste into hybrid rocket fuels is something we have seen explored before. Virgin Galactic flirted with the idea back in 2014 through the use of a rocket powered by a fuel based on a class of thermoset plastics, though this was swiftly abandoned after a failed test flight. Scottish company Skyrora is another outfit working on such a technology, having successfully tested out its Ecosene fuel made from converted plastic waste.
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SpaceX has work to do, Tesla sells Cyberquad, Elon Musk gets a haircut.
SpaceX is granted three additional NASA missions, Tesla sells out a Cyberquad for kids, Cybertruck pending, and Elon Musk gets a heavily-memed haircut.
The same (former) NASA engineer who previously claimed to violate Newton’s laws is now claiming to have made a warp bubble. He didn’t.
In 2020, Houston-based company Axiom Space got a NASA contract of its own, worth up to $140 million, to deliver at least one habitable private module to the ISS. Axiom plans to launch its first element to the orbiting lab in late 2024, then send several more up over the next few years. Eventually, the connected Axiom modules will detach from the ISS, leaving their natal nest like a bird that has learned how to fly.
Axiom has other irons in the spaceflight fire as well. For instance, the company has booked four commercial crewed flights to the ISS with SpaceX, the first of which is scheduled to launch in February.
NASA is getting out LEO — and letting private companies take its place.
NASA recently announced conctracts for three new space stations, all of them designed and built by private space companies. NASA is getting out LEO.
Circa 2014
An artificial leaf converts water and light to oxygen, and that’s good news for road-tripping to places beyond Earth.
Extracting oxygen from regolith would also require substantial industrial equipment. We’d need to first convert solid metal oxide into liquid form, either by applying heat, or heat combined with solvents or electrolytes. We have the technology to do this on Earth, but moving this apparatus to the Moon – and generating enough energy to run it – will be a mighty challenge.
Earlier this year, Belgium-based startup Space Applications Services announced it was building three experimental reactors to improve the process of making oxygen via electrolysis. They expect to send the technology to the Moon by 2025 as part of the European Space Agency’s in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) mission.
SpaceX aims to launch the first orbital test of a full-stack Starship as soon as January. But instead of the Texas “Starbase” facility where prototypes of Starship’s upper stage have been made and tested, the orbital flight will launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, CEO Elon Musk said Friday.
“Construction of Starship orbital launch pad at the Cape has begun,” Musk tweeted. In later comments he confirmed that the launch pad is located at the historic Launch Complex 39A, the same pad used for SpaceX commercial crew flights to the International Space Station for NASA.
“39A is hallowed spaceflight ground—no place more deserving of a Starship launch pad!” Musk explained in a separate tweet. “Will have similar, but improved, ground systems and tower to Starbase.”