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Category: space travel – Page 445

Centauri Dreams returns with an essay by long-time contributor Alex Tolley. If we need to grow a much bigger economy to make starships possible one day, the best way to proceed should be through building an infrastructure starting in the inner Solar System and working outward. Alex digs into the issues here, starting with earlier conceptions of how it might be done, and the present understanding that artificial intelligence is moving at such a clip that it will affect all of our ventures as we transform into a truly space-faring species. Under the microscope here is a company called SpaceFab, as Alex explains below, and the potential of ISRU — in situ resource utilization. Emerging out of all this is a new model for expansion.

by Alex Tolley

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Based in Los Angeles, Relativity Space is developing a new 3D printer for, “scaling and sustaining an interplanetary society”.

Since founding in 2015, Relativity Space has received $10 million in funding – with backers including Mark Cuban and Y Combinator.

The company promises that 3D printing will allow them to go, “from raw material to flight in less than 60 days” and claims their Stargate 3D printer is, “the largest metal 3D printer in the world.”

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Google Maps launched itself into space once again with new opportunities to explore parts of the galaxy.

Google announced this week that it added a dozen new places including Pluto, Venus and several moons to its galactic exploration feature. There are now 17 different planetary maps to look through.

The feature allows users to explore planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, along with some dwarf planets, like Pluto. For Earth, zooming in offers 3D Google Maps showing borders, cities, countries and terrain. When looking at Google Maps in the terrain view, you can also zoom out until it shows Earth in space. Clicking on specific places will also provide some basic information.

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Elon Musk is racing to land SpaceX on Mars in five years, a vision he unveiled late last month at the 2017 International Astronautical Congress.

One man not among Musk’s critics is Scott Kelly, a retired astronaut who set the record in 2015 for total accumulated days in space, during the single longest mission by an American.

“When Elon Musk said he was going to launch his rocket and then land the first stage on a barge, I thought he was crazy,” Kelly told “Squawk Box” on Tuesday. “And then he did it. I’m not going to ever doubt what he says, ever again.”

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Las Vegas, NV and Centennial, Colo. (Oct. 17, 2017) – Bigelow Aerospace and United Launch Alliance (ULA) are working together to launch a B330 expandable module on ULA’s Vulcan launch vehicle. The launch would place a B330 outfitted module in Low Lunar Orbit by the end of 2022 to serve as a lunar depot.

“We are excited to work with ULA on this lunar depot project,” said Robert Bigelow, president of Bigelow Aerospace. “Our lunar depot plan is a strong complement to other plans intended to eventually put people on Mars. It will provide NASA and America with an exciting and financially practical success opportunity that can be accomplished in the short term. This lunar depot could be deployed easily by 2022 to support the nation’s re-energized plans for returning to the Moon.

”This commercial lunar depot would provide anchorage for significant lunar business development in addition to offering NASA and other governments the Moon as a new exciting location to conduct long-term exploration and astronaut training.”

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A 100 meter to 150 meter solar array that is attuned to the lithium ion will be about 70% efficient.

JPL is working on the gridded lithium ion arrays to achieve 60,000 ISP.

There is work on 60 meter deployable solar arrays.

This system will achieve a speed of about 260 kilometers per second (almost 0.01% of light speed) and enable the fast 10–12 year mission to 500 AU gravitational lens and manned missions to Jupiter in 1 year travel time.

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A thruster that’s being developed for a future NASA mission to Mars broke several records during recent tests, suggesting that the technology is on track to take humans to the Red Planet within the next 20 years, project team members said.

The X3 thruster, which was designed by researchers at the University of Michigan in cooperation with NASA and the U.S. Air Force, is a Hall thruster — a system that propels spacecraft by accelerating a stream of electrically charged atoms, known as ions. In the recent demonstration conducted at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio, the X3 broke records for the maximum power output, thrust and operating current achieved by a Hall thruster to date, according to the research team at the University of Michigan and representatives from NASA.

“We have shown that X3 can operate at over 100 kW of power,” said Alec Gallimore, who is leading the project, in an interview with Space.com. “It operated at a huge range of power from 5 kW to 102 kW, with electrical current of up to 260 amperes. It generated 5.4 Newtons of thrust, which is the highest level of thrust achieved by any plasma thruster to date,” added Gallimore, who is dean of engineering at the University of Michigan. The previous record was 3.3 Newtons, according to the school.

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As the U.S. government continues to pursue plans for a crewed mission to Mars, NASA has contracted with BWXT Nuclear Energy Inc. of Lynchburg, Virginia, to advance concepts in Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP), which could drastically reduce travel times to Mars.

This is part of NASA’s Game Changing Development Program, which takes ideas from academia and industry as well as NASA and other government programs, to advance new approaches to space technologies to accommodate the changing needs of U.S. space efforts.

NTP is not a new concept, but it was abandoned in 1972 when plans for a Mars mission were shelved. NASA conducted ground tests since 1955 to determine the viability of NTP and has occasionally been revisited as a conceptual part of Mars mission feasibility studies.

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