The Port of Pensacola has a 600-foot visitor that will soon be a landing platform for rockets, but questions remain as to why it is there and for how long it will remain.
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Category: space travel – Page 403
A Future Made of Mars
Posted in computing, food, space travel
Towards this goal, I have founded the company, Made of Mars, to develop the technology we need to build beyond Earth. Made of Mars is working to transform the materials and minerals that we know are on the Moon, Mars and asteroids throughout our solar system into products that we can use today. This innovation will be used to build the space civilization of tomorrow.
Made of Mars will begin by learning to build with volcanic basalt. Basalt is the same lava rock that forms Hawaii, Iceland and countless volcanoes around Earth. Basalt is the most common material on Mars and is widespread throughout Earth and much of the solar system. Starting with these rocks, basalt is mined, re-melted, and pulled into thin threads which are then woven into fabrics. Made of Mars is transforming these basalt fabrics into products you can use today. The first basalt product line has been launched on Kickstarter where these volcanic rocks will be highlighted through a series of wallets and computer cases. These simple products will showcase the material and process. Made of Mars aims to encourage development of this material, setting the stage for space necessities to eventually be built from basalt, from suits to spaceships.
Building for a future beyond Earth does not mean abandoning our planet. We have always been a species of explorers and migrants, but remain nostalgic for our roots. Learning to build with basalt will both be key for a future beyond Earth and our future on it. Our technological advancements have improved the lives of billions while putting a terrible strain on the resources and environments of Earth. Basalt may be a solution toward sustaining our home planet. It is one of the most abundant and widespread resources on Earth. Basalt is continuously erupting on the surface and requires no chemicals to process. Unlike cotton, it does not compete with food production. Unlike synthetics, it does not come from fossil fuels. After it is used, basalt can be remelted and reused. Discarded basalt would naturally weather and recycle back to new volcanoes, as is the natural cycle of basalt.
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SRI Newsletter #06 2018 Great success both for the public and for the speakers, despite the enrollment fees definitely out of budget for many: more than 6300 registered participants, of which almost 50% very young, more than 2000 papers presented in the various symposia. The title of the Congress was very interesting: “Involving everyone”. This gave the impression that there was plenty of space at the Congress for the themes of civil development in space. The attention to the impetuous development of the NewSpace sector is now felt everywhere, and the most important global space congress could not avoid being impacted. After all, it is thanks to the growth of the NewSpace sector if the IAF Congress has recorded this remarkable success. But which were the predominant themes of the Congress? Has the promise announced in the title been kept? In part, yes, but a lot of work remains to be done. And the main NewSpace entrepreneurs didn’t come to Bremen. Read the whole article.
The 69th Congress of the International Astronautical Federation took place in the halls of the Bremen exhibition center from 1 to 5 October.
Great success both for the public and for the speakers, despite the enrollment fees definitely out of budget for many: more than 6300 registered participants, of which almost 50% very young, more than 2000 papers presented in the various symposia. The title of the Congress was very interesting: “Involving everyone”. This gave the impression that there was plenty of space at the Congress for the themes of civil development in space. The attention to the impetuous development of the NewSpace sector is now felt everywhere, and the most important global space congress could not avoid being impacted. After all, it is thanks to the growth of the NewSpace sector if the IAF Congress has recorded this remarkable success. But which were the predominant themes of the Congress? Has the promise announced in the title been kept? In part, yes, but a lot of work remains to be done.
One aim was to “include everyone”, for example, in the exploration of the Moon. And we have seen some concrete cases of inclusion. The company Part Time Scientists, earlier in the context of the Lunar X-Prize, and then with the development of subsequent innovative projects, has put in place a lunar exploration project, in which some industries not belonging to the aerospace sector are involved as technological partners, as well as sponsors, such as Audi, Nokia, Vodafone. Of course, so far we are talking about exploration, mainly robotics, and not about industrial settlements on the Moon. The Moon Village Association thinks about that and presented their initiatives in a context that is becoming more and more receptive and interesting for many.
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Original Story: This evening, SpaceX is set to launch a used Falcon 9 rocket from California, a flight that will be followed by one of the company’s signature rocket landings. But this time around, SpaceX will attempt to land the vehicle on a concrete landing pad near the launch site — not a drone ship in the ocean. If successful, it’ll be the first time that the company does a ground landing on the West Coast.
Up until now, all of SpaceX’s ground landings have occurred out of Cape Canaveral, Florida, the company’s busiest launch site. SpaceX has two landing pads there, and has managed to touch down 11 Falcon 9 rockets on them. And each time the company has attempted to land on land, it’s been a success.
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60 years of NASA has brought us the first moon landing, the Voyagers, a progression of Mars rovers, Hubble, Cassini, TESS…and the next six decades are going to see it venturing even further into uncharted territory, but this time, the space agency will not be alone on the voyage.
NASA couldn’t even start fantasizing about private spaceflight—or collaborating with the private sector—when it first took off in 1958. Now companies like SpaceX, Boeing and Blue Origin will bring dreams that originally lived between the pages of science fiction books into reality. Dreams like space travel for anyone.
Private companies could potentially lower the cost of suborbital flights from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands. That still might sound astronomical to the average Earthling, but to NASA, it could mean more opportunities than ever. NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is a collab with Boeing and SpaceX to fly astronauts to and from the ISS (which is not going to end up as space junk after all). SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner will start making crewed flights into low-Earth orbit as soon as next year.
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Blue Origin believes in a future where millions of people are living and working in space. Why? Because we believe that in order to preserve Earth, our home, for our grandchildren’s grandchildren, we must go to space to tap its unlimited resources and energy. If we can lower the cost of access to space with reusable launch vehicles, we can enable this dynamic future for humanity.
It’s a hopeful vision.
Blue Origin is committed to building a road to space so our children can build a future. www.blueorigin.com
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The upper atmosphere of Venus is the most Earth-like location in the solar system.
Popular science fiction of the early 20th century depicted Venus as some kind of wonderland of pleasantly warm temperatures, forests, swamps, and even dinosaurs.
In 1950, the Hayden Planetarium at the American Natural History Museum were soliciting reservations for the first space tourism mission, well before the modern era of Blue Origins, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic. All you had to do was supply your address and tick the box for your preferred destination, which included Venus.
Today, Venus is unlikely to be a dream destination for aspiring space tourists. As revealed by numerous missions in the last few decades, rather than being a paradise, the planet is a hellish world of infernal temperatures, a corrosive toxic atmosphere, and crushing pressures at the surface.
A 4K video tour of the Earth’s moon has been released by NASA, showing off the surface in an extraordinary detail. The footage explores the features of the moon and it is stunning… collected by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft over a period of nine years, the footage is dubbed as “virtual tour of the moon” in a fascinating 4K detail.
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United Launch Alliance, Northrup Grumman and Blue Origin, a company owned by Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, were awarded major Air Force contracts Wednesday totaling more than $2 billion to develop next-generation rockets capable of boosting high-value national security payloads into orbit.
Two of the new rockets will be selected in a second competition, providing assured access to space through the next decade and beyond. In a surprise to some observers, SpaceX, the ambitious rocket company founded by Elon Musk, was not among the latest winners in the Pentagon’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program.
The Launch Service Agreements “will facilitate the development of three domestic launch system prototypes and enable the future competitive selection of two National Security Space launch service providers for future procurements, planned for no earlier than fiscal year 2020,” the Air Force said in a statement.
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