SAN BENITO — Willie Rosales Jr. grew up in San Benito, and he never imagined the Valley would become a hub for space travel.
Inspired by all the SpaceX rocket activity near Boca Chica Beach, along with Elon Musk’s vision for the area, Rosales decided to turn his home into a tribute.
“My intentions are for travelers to visit San Benito, and I wanted to pay homage to Elon Musk,” he said.
One of my favorite science fiction authors is/was Isaac Asimov (should we use the past tense since he is no longer with us, or the present tense because we still enjoy his writings?). In many ways Asimov was a futurist, but — like all who attempt to foretell what is to come — he occasionally managed to miss the mark.
Take his classic Foundation Trilogy, for example (before he added the two prequels and two sequels). On the one hand we have a Galactic Empire that spans the Milky Way with millions of inhabited worlds and quadrillions of people. Also, we have mighty space vessels equipped with hyperdrives that can convey people from one side of the galaxy to the other while they are still young enough to enjoy the experience.
On the other hand, in Foundation and Empire, when a message arrives at a spaceship via hyperwave for the attention of General Bel Riose, it’s transcribed onto a metal spool that’s placed in a message capsule that will open only to his thumbprint. Asimov simply never conceived of things like today’s wireless networks and tablet computers and suchlike.
For more:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-06-16/China-Russia-j…index.html.
A roadmap for the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) was jointly released by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and Russia’s space agency Roscosmos on Wednesday.
Titled “International Lunar Research Station Roadmap (V1.0),” the roadmap and the “Guide for Partnership (V1.0)” were presented by the two organizations at a forum of the Global Space Exploration Conference 2021 held in Russia from June 14 to 18. The two documents provide information about the concept, research field and cooperation opportunity of the ILRS.
Download our APP on Apple Store (iOS): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cctvnews-app/id922456579?l=zh&ls=1&mt=8
SpaceX is gearing up for the most ambitious test flight yet of its Starship Mars rocket.
For those not in the loop, the Kardashev Scale is a system of measurement invented by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964. It quantifies how advanced a civilization is according to how much energy they’re able to harness.
Type 1 civilizations have harnessed 100% of the accessible energy of their own planet. Type 2 has harnessed 100% of the accessible energy in their solar system. Type 3 has harnessed 100% of the accessible energy in their galaxy. There is no official Type 4 but it is conceivable that eventually a civilization could harness 100% of the accessible energy in the universe, and Type 5, which has harnessed all the accessible energy in the multiverse.
That’s some heavy stuff, well beyond the scope of this article. The public’s focus on near term manned spaceflight efforts these days belies a problem with our priorities. Grand, ambitious projects like settling the Moon and Mars grab our attention, while there’s still much left to be done on Earth.
The Crew-3 Dragon mission will now launch Oct. 31.
Heavy traffic at the International Space Station has pushed SpaceX’s next crewed launch to the orbiting lab for NASA back a week.
The Lunar Lantern, an intriguing concept for establishing a human presence on the Moon, is currently being featured at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition.
In October of 2024, NASA’s Artemis Program will return astronauts to the surface of the Moon for the first time since the Apollo Era. In the years and decades that follow, multiple space agencies and commercial partners plan to build the infrastructure that will allow for a long-term human presence on the Moon. An important part of these efforts involves building habitats that can ensure the astronauts’ health, safety, and comfort in the extreme lunar environment.
This challenge has inspired architects and designers from all over the world to create innovative and novel ideas for lunar living. One of these is the Lunar Lantern, a base concept developed by ICON (an advanced construction company based in Austin, Texas) as part of a NASA-supported project to build a sustainable outpost on the Moon. This proposal is currently being showcased as part of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition at the La Biennale di Venezia museum in Venice, Italy.
The Lunar Lantern emerged from Project Olympus, a research and development program made possible thanks to a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract and funding from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). Consistent with ICON’s commitment to developing advanced construction technologies, the purpose of Olympus was to create a space-based construction system that will support NASA and other future exploration efforts on the Moon.
The nation may launch its first crewed spaceflight in 2023.
So far, only the U.S., the Soviet Union/Russia and China have launched humans to Earth orbit. But India aims to join that exclusive club in the next year or two.
Doug Liman Opines On Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Rocket: “It’s Not Going Very High. I Really Think The Moon Or Beyond Is Space” — Tribeca Festival
Director Doug Liman likes that there’s so much buzz about space these days and takes a teensy part of the credit after news (broken by Deadline) last year that he plans to shoot a film up there with Tom Cruise in collaboration with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and NASA.
“It’s good. If we can inspire kids to study science. I grew up dreaming about going into space,” said Liman, who also directed Cruise on American Made and Edge of Tomorrow and has helmed hits from Mr. & Mrs. Smith and The Bourne Identity to Go and Swingers. He spoke Tuesday on a sunny roof deck at Spring Studios in downtown Manhattan during a Directors Talk Q&A at the Tribeca Festival.
After years of promises and some limited cooperation, Russia and China have begun to draw up ambitious plans for missions that would directly compete with those of the United States and its partners, ushering in a new era of space competition that could be as intense as the first.
The budding new partnership reflects the geopolitics of the world today.
China and Russia have grown increasingly close under their current leaders, Xi Jinping and Vladimir V. Putin, smoothing decades of mistrust between the countries and creating a potent, though unofficial, alliance against what they perceive as the hegemonic behavior of the United States. Space has become a natural extension of the two countries’ warming ties, given increasingly fraught relations with the United States.
Russian officials have already signaled they may pull out of the International Space Station once the current agreement with its partners ends in 2024. The launch last year of SpaceX’s crew capsule had already ended Russia’s exclusive role ferrying American astronauts into orbit.
