Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: space travel – Page 352

After committing to having a first crewed launch of its rocket ship in 2019, Blue Origin, the rocket manufacturer and launch services company backed by Jeff Bezos, is likely going to have to push that timeline back to 2020.

Speaking onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, Blue Origin chief executive Bob Smith said that the window for getting the crewed flight done within the 2019 time frame was narrowing. “We’re not going to be date-driven,” Smith said.

But as commercial launches come to market, customers can expect to pay “hundreds of thousands of dollars” for a ticket on the New Shepard suborbital flight.

Read more | >

Other approaches to space involve moving some or all the engineering activities out of government into the private sector, in the hopes that the private sector will be able to produce otherwise unavailable efficiencies. This sounds good in practice, but we must recognize that shifting some management responsibilities does not alleviate the government responsibility to regulate and look out after the public good.

But imprudent regulation impairs private sector efforts, simply because they may have a harder time getting relief from government rules than, let’s say, the DoD might. Unnecessarily stringent rules, requirements, and regulations discourage success. The precautionary principle has its appeal, but when the underlying activity itself is relatively new and uncertain, precautionary restrictions quickly turn into outright prohibition. Any arbitrary prohibition limits the diversity of our national spaceflight portfolio.

It may seem that this or that actor might benefit from favoritism, permissive oversight, or other unfair advantages. But while everybody trying to do something new in space benefits from distinct benefits and advantages, they also face unique obstacles and difficulties.

Read more | >

Musk revealed the stainless steel monstrosity during a presentation at SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas testing site on Saturday. The hope is that it’ll one day allow up to 100 passengers to travel to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

The record-breaking rocket will eventually be 160 feet tall and twice as powerful, according to Musk, as NASA’s retired Saturn V rocket that took American astronauts to the Moon during the Apollo missions.

Read more | >

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has unveiled the latest iteration of his space company’s newly assembled Starship, outlining a speedy development timeline for the centerpiece vehicle of SpaceX’s quest to launch humans to the moon and Mars.

Musk showed a crowd of space enthusiasts and reporters at SpaceX’s rocket development site late on Saturday in the remote village of Boca Chica, Texas, animations of Starship landing on the moon and Mars and predicted that the rocket’s first orbital flight could come in the next six months, followed by missions to space with humans aboard the next year.

“This is basically the holy grail of space,” Musk said, standing between a towering, newly assembled Starship rocket and Falcon 1 — the company’s first vehicle whose debut orbital mission was celebrated by SpaceX 11 years ago.

Read more | >

During Saturday evening’s hour-long, particularly windy press conference, Musk announced that the next test would take place in “about one to two months” before detailing how Starship would control its landing.

“This is quite a new approach to controlling a rocket,” Musk said. “Much more akin to a skydiver than a plane.”

Musk laughed as he showed the crowd in Boca Chica how the craft would control the fall, with his hands acting as the ship. Getting into the specifics a little more, Musk explained the importance of a steel heat shield that would only cost a fraction of a carbon fiber heat shield. “I’m in love with steel,” Musk said.

Read more | >