Artemis 1: NASA SLS megarocket hits another milestone.
NASA’s SLS rocket that will carry Orion to the Moon for the Artemis I mission is shaping up. With the core stage in place, here’s a look at NASA’s megarocket.
Category: space travel – Page 232
Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight firm has yet to fly a single human, but one lucky auction winner has just bought the firm’s first seat for sale.
Tesla’s NEW Giga Press Is a BIG Game Changer Tesla and big things are inseparable. Be it ambition, idea, or more tangible items, Tesla would rather go big. Perhaps that is due to the many successes the company has racked up in the short time it has existed or just the personality of the CEO, Elon Musk. Whatever the case, Tesla tends to come along and fundamentally change how things are done, just like with its Giga Press. What is a Giga Press and how does it work? Why is it a game changer in the auto making business? Welcome to Tech Archives.
What is a Giga Press?
They are giant machines made by IDRA Group based out in Italy. The name was actually coined by IDRA, not Tesla. Their purpose is die casting large parts in a single piece. If you have a head for figures, Giga Presses produce a clamping forces of between 55000 kilonewtons and 61000 kilonewtons. Giga Presses are the biggest casting machines to ever exist. To get a sense of how massive these machines are, they weigh 410 to 430 tonnes. That is the equivalent of five Space Shuttles. They are the sizes of houses, at 20 meters by 7.5 meters by 6 meters and require dozens of flatbed trucks for transportation. And to get a sense of what a Giga Press does, think of a small plastic toy car. You would notice the chassis is made from a single piece. That is what a Tesla Giga Press tries to achieve. Instead of a chassis that uses up to 70 bolted and welded parts as it is done by all other car makers, the new Tesla chassis will be one solid piece of engineering feat. Tesla’s NEW Giga Press Is a BIGI Game Changer Buckle up because on this channel we will go through all things Tesla, ev, and Elon Musk. Stay tuned for the latest Tesla news and Tesla updates. Click here to subscribe: https://bit.ly/3fjwstS
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has recently commissioned three private companies, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and General Atomics, to develop nuclear fission thermal rockets for use in lunar orbit.
Such a development, if flown, could usher in a new era of spaceflight. That said, it is only one of several exciting avenues in rocket propulsion. Here are some others.
The standard means of propulsion for spacecraft uses chemical rockets. There are two main types: solid-fueled (such as the solid rocket boosters on the Space Shuttle), and liquid-fueled (such as the Saturn V).
With launch just five years away, the Gateway Exploration Robotics System — better known as Canadarm3 — has arrived at a critical point where its artificial intelligence system must be properly calibrated to meet the rigorous autonomous demands the Lunar Gateway project will impose upon it.
The AI solutions sought for Canadarm3’s vision by MDA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) largely relate to obstacle avoidance to prevent the arm from bumping into other structures on the lunar outpost and how to work with issues like prolonged communications blackouts and less-than-optimal lighting conditions — both of which must be overcome for the Gateway.
Speaking at a recent industry day event, Chris Langley, AI Lead at MDA for Canadarm3, related some of the challenges posed to the project by the Gateway operations plan, including only one month per year of crewed occupation initially and as little as only 8 hours of communication each week.
The three billionaires are locked in a race to reach space — but some future visions look more promising than others.
Shenzhou-12 manned spacecraft and Long March 2F Y12 carrier rocket were rolled out to the launch pad on Wednesday, the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) said. Pre-launch preparations for the mission are underway.
The three astronauts who will take the Shenzhou-12 manned spacecraft to China’s Tianhe space station core cabin in June are now under Level-2 quarantine, with all related work having entered a final sprint stage, Yang Liwei, director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office and the country’s first astronaut revealed.
Yang, who went into space in the Shenzhou-5 craft on October 15, 2003, made the remarks during an interview with state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) on Saturday, following the successful launch of the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft earlier in the day.
According to Yang, the three astronauts of the Shenzhou-12 mission, who were selected from China’s first and second batch of astronauts, will stay in space for three months, during which they will conduct tasks including repair and maintenance, appliance switch and scientific operation of payloads.
A lesson in fluid dynamics.
Could astronauts surf to Mars assisted by a hypersonic shockwave? A new paper in the Journal of Fluid Dynamics suggests it’s a more likely scenario than we think, combining traditional propulsion with a shockwave method for mixing fuel ratios to reach their full explosive potential.
In the new paper, researchers from the University of Southern California investigate the way applying a shockwave helps or hinders how the “scalars,” or different fluids, can mix effectively. Take a leisurely swirl of oxygen and fuel and you might only reach regular supersonic speeds. But add the Nutribullet impact of a shockwave and the oxygen-fuel smoothie could carry you at five times or more the speed of sound, reaching the hypersonic range.
🛰 Space is a trip. Let’s explore it together.
Relativity Space, a California-based aerospace manufacturer, has revealed a new rocket that is both 3D printed and fully reusable. The Terran R could serve as a competitor to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and is planned for launch in 2024.