The June 12 launch of the Transporter-8 rideshare mission marked a significant milestone for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, and the company captured it on video.
Kairan Quazi announced the news in an impressive LinkedIn post, during which he explained how he’d begun his software engineering career at an early age.
While he kept post pretty professional, Quazi couldn’t help but gush about working for the ‘coolest company on the planet’.
Kairan Quazi is only in his teens, but has already graduated with a computer science degree before accepting a job with SpaceX.
Continue reading “Child prodigy accepts job offer from SpaceX after graduating at just 14” »
Airbnb investors are flocking to South Texas, where they see a chance to capitalize on relatively cheap homes and proximity to Musk’s SpaceX.
Traveling to space may be the stuff of dreams for most folks, but sending your name instead is a distinct possibility.
It’s not quite the same as donning a spacesuit and being blasted to orbit, though it could be a fun way to associate yourself with an upcoming and highly ambitious mission heading toward Jupiter next year.
A discussion of the fascinating concept of space folding as it is presented in the Dune legendarium. In order to fill the needs of the vast interstellar empire of Frank Herbert’s universe the mechanism of space-folding is heavily relied upon. This form of faster-than-light travel enables spaceships to traverse astronomical distances instantaneously, and has proven crucial in shaping its social, economic, and political dynamics. Spoiler warning if you are unfamiliar with Frank Herbert’s Dune.
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Continue reading “Space Folding Explained | Spacing Guild Navigation | Dune Lore” »
NASA is worried that SpaceX’s giant new Starship vehicle won’t be ready to carry astronauts to the surface of the moon in late 2025, as currently planned.
In 2021, the agency selected Starship — the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built — to be the first crewed lunar lander for its Artemis program of moon exploration.
A California-based startup called JetZero has a different idea: changing the shape of commercial planes and the material they’re made of. The company unveiled its designs for the midsize commercial and military tanker-transport markets this spring, and has big plans to upend the way air travel looks and feels—as well as how much it costs and how much carbon it emits. Tony Fadell, founder of venture capital firm Build Collective and a JetZero investor and strategic advisor, thinks the company could be the “SpaceX of aviation” due to its potential to disrupt the existing business model.
JetZero’s planes, which are still in the concept/prototype phase, have a blended wing body design. That means the wings merge with the main body of the aircraft, rather than being attached to a hollow tube like the planes we travel in today. Picture the body of a manta ray: wide and flat, it tapers off to a narrower fin at each side, with a head and a tail. A blended wing body aircraft isn’t terribly different, though on JetZero’s models the body isn’t quite as wide.
Besides providing a lot more space, this design is more aerodynamic than tube-and-wing planes. JetZero plans to fly its planes at higher altitudes than today’s norm (40 to 45,000 feet rather than 30 to 35,000), and says its airframe will cut fuel burn and emissions in half. It plans to make its planes out of carbon fiber and kevlar (a strong lightweight fiber used for things like body armor, bulletproof vests, car brakes, boats, and aircraft). The company says its planes’ lighter weight and improved aerodynamics would be able to fly at the same speed and range as existing midbody jetliners, but burn half as much fuel in the process.
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A new kind of starship.
The huge distances between Earth and the nearest star make it necessary for us to conceive of extremely high-velocity starships if interstellar travel is to be possible with durations less than a human lifetime. In practise this means accelerating the starship to some percent of lightspeed. The problem with doing this, of course, is that truly phenomenal amounts of power are required to boost a ship to such velocities.[1]
Various propulsion schemes have been proposed, from nuclear fusion to antimatter to laser sails. Until recently, laser sailing seemed like the most economical and easiest way, even though it still requires that we build lasers that draw more power than all of human civilization is now capable of producing. [Author’s note: since I first wrote this a method has been proposed that could amplify a laser launcher’s power by factors of tens of thousands. So I guess laser launch is back on the table.].
You’re invited to #SendYourName to Jupiter’s moon Europa by signing a poem by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón that will travel aboard NASA’s @EuropaClipper spacecraft.
