Category: space travel – Page 290
Lifeboat Foundation congratulates SpaceX on its successful SN8 Launch!
Lifeboat Foundation congratulates Guardian Award Winner Elon Musk and SpaceX on their latest accomplishment with the Starship, the world’s first reusable space vehicle. The Starship will transform our world, starting with making Starlink the first non-bankrupt LEO constellation, later bringing us to the Moon and then hopefully Mars.
We recommend that NASA redirect their funds from the dead-end SLS system towards Starship. Even if NASA continues to waste tens of billions of dollars on SLS, it is unlikely that it will ever do more than a handful of launches as the low-cost Starship program makes it obsolete.
Also, here’s an appeal to Guardian Award Winner Elon Musk:
Somewhat as a voice in the wilderness, we would like to pass on a few thoughts on matters that have been of deep concern to us over recent months. 1) A Great Filter stands in the path of Human Civilization 2) The lack of a fast Nuclear Thermal Engine will stop us from building a self-sustaining civilization on Mars for the foreseeable future.
Since no one is putting a lot of resources into completing a Nuclear Thermal Engine and you are now a huge success with a lot of resources, it is time for SpaceX to build such an engine and get us past this Great Filter. SpaceX could easily handle any financial challenges or legal challenges that stand in the way. Do we want to get a self-sustaining civilization on Mars or not?
Read our press release.
SpaceX’s Starship crashes in huge fireball explosion
Elon Musk hopes to send first humans to Mars aboard a Starship craft within the next four years.
Watch SpaceX fly a prototype of its Starship rocket to its highest altitude yet
On December 8th, SpaceX plans to conduct its most ambitious test flight yet of its Starship prototype, sending the vehicle to an altitude of 12.5 kilometers, or nearly 8 miles high.
The Rocket Motor of the Future Breathes Air Like a Jet Engine
This theoretical engine could drastically reduce the cost of getting to space. Now two companies are trying to make it real.
Reaching for the Stars: The Case for Interstellar Travel
For now, it looks like our best bet for going interstellar is to rely on robotic spacecraft that are optimized for speed.
For countless generations, the idea of traveling to an extrasolar planet has been the stuff of dreams. In the current era of renewed space exploration, interest in interstellar travel has understandably been rekindled. However, beyond the realm of science fiction, interstellar space travel remains a largely theoretical matter.
Between the sheer expense involved, the need for technological developments to happen first, and the nature of spacetime itself, sending people to another star system is something that is not likely to happen for a long time – if ever. But in spite of the challenges, the hope remains.
So will humanity ever go interstellar? Let’s break it down categorically and see how hard it might be. First up, there are the laws of physics, which aren’t too accomodating on this front.
SpaceX’s 1st upgraded Dragon cargo ship docks itself at space station with science, goodies and new airlock
Its SpaceX’s first-ever autonomous Dragon docking.
A SpaceX Dragon cargo ship arrived at the International Space Station today (Dec. 7) to deliver vital supplies for NASA and try something brand-new: park itself without the help of astronauts.
The private spaceflight company used a Falcon 9 rocket to launch CRS-21, the first flight to use the upgraded version of its Dragon cargo spacecraft, to the space station Sunday (Dec. 6) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The vehicle autonomously docked with the orbiting laboratory today at 1:40 p.m. EST (1840 GMT), parking at the zenith, or space-facing, side of the station’s Harmony module.
US Space Force and NASA Looking to Privatize Nuclear Spacecraft Production
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / December 7, 2020 / US Nuclear (OTCQB: UCLE) is the prime contractor to build MIFTI’s fusion generators, which could be used in the relatively near future to power the propulsion systems for space travel and provide plentiful, low-cost, clean energy for the earth and other planetary bases once our astronauts get to their destination, be it the moon, Mars, Saturn or beyond. Chemical powered rockets opened the door to space travel, but are still far too slow and heavy even to travel to distant planets within our solar system, let alone travel to other stars. Accordingly, NASA is now looking to nuclear powered rockets that can propel a space vessel at speeds close to the speed of light and thermonuclear power plants on the moon and Mars, as these are the next steps towards space exploration and colonization.
The US Energy Secretary, Dan Brouillette, recently said, “If we want to engage in outer space, or deep space as we call it, we have to rely upon nuclear fuels to get us there… that will allow us to get to Mars and back on ‘one tank of gas’.” This is made possible by the large energy density ratio which makes the fuel weight for chemical fuels ten million times higher than the fuel that powers the fusion drive. NASA is now relying on private companies to build spaceships: big companies like Boeing, but more and more on high-tech startups such as Elon Musk’s Space-X, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic.
While nuclear fission has been considered as a basis for the next generation of rocket engines, the fuel used for fission is enriched uranium, which is scarce, costly, unstable, and hazardous. On the other hand, thermonuclear fusion uses a clean, low-cost isotope of hydrogen from ordinary seawater, and one gallon of this seawater extraction yields about the same amount of energy as 300 gallons of gasoline.