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Archive for the ‘space travel’ category: Page 316

Sep 28, 2019

Elon Musk Unveils SpaceX’s New Starship Plans for Private Trips to the Moon, Mars and Beyond

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel

This latest design has held to the present day; SpaceX is still shooting for a 387-foot-tall Starship-Super Heavy stack, with six Raptors on the spacecraft. The number of engines on Super Heavy could vary from flight to flight; Musk said the rocket has space for up to 37 Raptors, and each mission will probably require at least 24.

With the design nailed down, SpaceX plans to move fast. The company wants to reach Earth orbit with a Starship prototype in about six months. And people could start flying aboard the vehicle in the next year or so if the test program continues to go well, Musk said.

While Musk and SpaceX have been lauded by their ambitious push for a Starship capable of deep-space travel, the road has not always been smooth.

Sep 27, 2019

How Light Propulsion Will Work

Posted by in category: space travel

Like many new technologies, light propulsion was originally conceived as a tool of war and national defense. But the “Star Wars” missile defense system may eventually send rockets, rather than missile-destroying lasers, into space.

Sep 27, 2019

SpaceX Starship now has three monster Raptor engines installed

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel

Elon Musk shares more progress on the Starship prototype ahead of Saturday’s update.

Sep 27, 2019

Elon Musk Just Dropped More Tantalizing Details About SpaceX’s Starship Prototype

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel

Elon Musk is doling out more and more details about SpaceX’s next Starship prototype ahead of his big presentation this weekend.

On Saturday (Sept. 28), Musk will reveal the latest design of Starship and Super Heavy, the reusable spaceship and rocket that SpaceX is developing to take people to the moon, Mars and other distant destinations.

Sep 26, 2019

Why Planet Earth Needs A Starfleet Academy

Posted by in category: space travel

The case for a present-day ‘Starfleet Academy’ as a global, non-governmental hothouse incubator for space exploration.

Sep 25, 2019

Space travel across the universe could be faster than speed of light with Warp Drive

Posted by in category: space travel

SPACE agencies such as NASA and the ESA could theoretically one day travel the universe faster than the speed of light after one expert revealed that warp drive technology could be possible.

Sep 25, 2019

Scientists Are Starting to Take Warp Drives Seriously, Especially One Specific Concept

Posted by in categories: physics, space travel

It’s hard living in a relativistic Universe, where even the nearest stars are so far away and the speed of light is absolute. It is little wonder then why science fiction franchises routinely employ FTL (Faster-than-Light) as a plot device.

Push a button, press a petal, and that fancy drive system – whose workings no one can explain – will send us to another location in space-time.

However, in recent years, the scientific community has become understandably excited and skeptical about claims that a particular concept – the Alcubierre Warp Drive – might actually be feasible.

Sep 25, 2019

New hypersonic engine poised to cut London-Sydney flight times to just four hours

Posted by in category: space travel

Tourists could fly from Britain to Australia in just four hours by the 2030s with a new hypersonic engine being developed by UK scientists, the head of the UK Space Agency has said.

Reaction Engines, who are based in Oxfordshire, are in the process of building a hybrid hydrogen air-breathing rocket that will allow a plane to fly at Mach 5.4 — more than twice the speed of Concorde — then speed up to to Mach 25 in space.

Not only would the new ‘Sabre’ engine allow speedier journeys — with a flight between London and New York slashed to just over an hour — but the hydrogen/oxygen engine would be far greener and cheaper than current air travel.

Sep 25, 2019

Into the deep

Posted by in category: space travel

There is never a dull day for participants of the CAVES campaign, ESA’s field training adventure that hones the communication, problem solving and teamwork skills an international crew will need to explore the tough, uncharted terrain of the Moon and Mars.

This week six astronauts turned ‘cavenauts’ from five space agencies headed underground in Slovenia, where they are currently living and working for the week. To keep the element of exploration, astronauts themselves do not know the exact location.

The goal is to run scientific experiments while managing the psychological toll of being in an extreme environment with a multinational crew.

Sep 23, 2019

Return to the Moon? 3D Printing with Moondust Could Be the Key to Future Lunar Living

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, space travel

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

The entire Apollo 11 mission to the moon took just eight days. If we ever want to build permanent bases on the moon, or perhaps even Mars or beyond, then future astronauts will have to spend many more days, months and maybe even years in space without a constant lifeline to Earth. The question is how would they get hold of everything they needed. Using rockets to send all the equipment and supplies for building and maintaining long-term settlements on the moon would be hugely expensive.

This is where 3D printing could come in, allowing astronauts to construct whatever their lunar colony needed from raw materials. Much of the excitement around 3D printing in space has focused on using it to construct buildings from lunar rock. But my research suggests it may actually be more practical to use this moondust to supply lunar manufacturing labs turning out replacement components for all sorts of equipment.