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Video of Jeff Bezos describes his space plans

Blue Origin’s New Shepard Team is the winner of Aviation Week’s 60th Annual Space Laureate. New Shepard is only the first step in fulfilling Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos’ vision of using ever larger reusable rockets to send an entire economy into Earth orbit and beyond. Following the Laureate Award presentations held at Washington’s National Building Museum on March 2, Bezos talked to Aviation Week and Space Technology Editor-in-Chief Joe Anselmo and the audience at the awards dinner about the importance of expanding into the solar system.

* we need to expand into the solar system. The choice is between stasis on earth or expansion and dynamism in space.

* Cost of space is too high so that thousands of companies can get into space and do interesting things, this will unleash creativity and experimentation that we see on the internet.

Mars astronaut radiation shield set for moon mission trial: Developer

HAIFA, Israel A vest designed to shield astronauts from deadly solar particles in deep space is set for trials on a lunar mission ready for deployment on any manned mission to Mars, its Israeli developers said.

The AstroRad Radiation Shield has been devised by Tel Aviv-based StemRad, which has already produced and marketed a belt to protect rescue workers from harmful gamma ray radiation emitted in nuclear disasters, such as Chernobyl and Fukushima.

The vest will protect vital human tissue, particularly stem cells, which could be devastated by solar radiation in deep space or on Mars, whose sparse atmosphere offers no protection, StemRad’s CEO Oren Milstein said.

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Look inside the SpaceX capsule that will take two beyond the moon

SpaceX has shared scant details about its newly announced plan to send private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year.

The company hasn’t disclosed the space tourists’ identities or said how much they’ll pay for the chance to buzz the moon and go far beyond before returning to Earth. Nor did SpaceX say exactly what training the tourists will undergo or how they will occupy themselves during the week or so between lift-off from Kennedy Space Center’s near Cape Canaveral, Florida and their return to Earth.

Growing tissue grafts on humanoid robots: A future strategy in regenerative medicine?

Humanoid robots may enhance growth of musculoskeletal tissue grafts for tissue transplant applications.

Over the past decade, exciting progress has been made in the development of humanoid robots. The significant potential future value of humanoids includes applications ranging from personal assistance to medicine and space exploration. In particular, musculoskeletal humanoids (such as Kenshiro and Eccerobot) were developed to interact with humans in a safer and more natural way (1, 2). They aim to closely replicate the detailed anatomy of the human musculoskeletal system including muscles, tendons, and bones.

With their structures activated by artificial muscles, musculoskeletal humanoids have the ability to mimic more accurately the multiple degrees of freedom and the normal range of forces observed in human joints. As a result, it is not surprising that they offer new opportunities in science and medicine. Here, we suggest that musculoskeletal robots may assist in the growth of musculoskeletal tissue grafts for tissue transplant applications.

Forget SpaceX: 10 companies that will change space travel in 2017 & 2018

SpaceX’s announcement that they will launch two tourists on a trip around the moon has captured imaginations with renewed speculation about the future of space travel and accessibility to the beyond.

“We are excited to announce that SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year. They have already paid a significant deposit to do a moon mission,” Musk wrote in their announcement. “Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind, driven by the universal human spirit of exploration.”

However, it really is not fair to a number of other companies that are revolutionizing space travel all the same but don’t have the substantial resources or notoriety of Elon Musk’s gargantuan company. Musk’s celebrity status makes his every tweet a news story (not totally unlike, but in many ways extremely unlike, the newest US president). With that sort of figure, it is hard to capture people’s attention if you are running one of SpaceX’s “pretenders” and competitors. The Hawthorne, Cali company not only operates its own mission services using rockets it built itself, but also sells those rockets to other launch providers.

BREAKING: Elon Musk And SpaceX Are Sending Humans to the Moon

In Brief

  • Yesterday, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said that his private spaceflight company would have a notable announcement today at 4pm EST (1pm GMT).
  • It seems that humans are going back to the Moon. Here’s what you need to know about this new revelation and what it means in relation to humanity’s journey into the cosmos.

Rocket science isn’t easy. Ask any engineer. Rocket science isn’t cheap. Just ask NASA. Fortunately, in recent years, a number of commercial spaceflight companies have stepped up to the plate in order to help national space agencies extend their reach into the final frontier.

Innovative companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have accelerated the development of reusable rockets exponentially. In so doing, they have dramatically reduced the cost of leaving our pale blue dot, improving both our ability to explore the cosmos and scientists’ capacity to conduct research beyond Earth.

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