Lifeboat Foundation

Fusion-driven rockets, remote control systems for space robots, and satellites that build themselves up in orbit are among the made-in-Washington projects getting a share of $49.9 million in NASA grants.

Seven businesses in Washington state will benefit from NASA’s latest round of Small Business Innovation Research grants and Small Business Technology Transfer grants, announced today.

In aerospace, parts are complicated, and manufacturing them can be very expensive and time consuming. When rocket engine parts can take up to a year to make, it is very difficult to start a new rocket company and for aerospace companies to be cost effective, innovative and nimble.

These barriers to entry are why you don’t see many start-up space companies and why the industry has relied on the same basic engine designs as those built during the Apollo program.

3D printing is changing all that. At Virgin Orbit, we are building a rocket system that will send small satellites into orbit. We aim to open access to space for small satellites to improve life on earth through services such as internet connectivity to the under connected and data for planning, production, disaster mitigation etc.

Continue reading “How 3D printing is changing the future of the space industry” »

For people in that area, and it may be worth while to try reaching out to them for funding for anti aging stuff.

Why is RAND opening a Bay Area office?

The San Francisco Bay Area is really at the center of technology and transformation. That’s also been a focus at RAND since our very first report, Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship, in 1946, which foretold the creation of satellites more than a decade before Sputnik.

Continue reading “Innovation in the Bay Area: Q&A with Nidhi Kalra” »

After more than two years of landing its rockets after launch, SpaceX finally sent one of its used Falcon 9s back into space. The rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this evening, sending a communications satellite into orbit, and then landed on one of SpaceX’s drone ships floating in the Atlantic Ocean. It was round two for this particular rocket, which already launched and landed during a mission in April of last year. But the Falcon 9’s relaunch marks the first time an orbital rocket has launched to space for a second time.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk appeared on the company’s live stream shortly after the landing and spoke about the accomplishment. “It means you can fly and refly an orbital class booster, which is the most expensive part of the rocket. This is going to be, ultimately, a huge revolution in spaceflight,” he said.

Since the beginning of the Space Age, scientists have relied on multi-stage rockets in order to put spacecraft and payloads into orbit. The same technology has allowed for missions farther into space, sending robotic spacecraft to every planet in the Solar System, and astronauts to the Moon. But looking to the future, it is clear that new ideas will be needed in order to cut costs and expand launch services.

Hence why the ARCA Space Corporation has developed a concept for a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) rocket. It’s known as the Haas 2CA, the latest in a series of rockets being developed by the New Mexico-based aerospace company. If all goes as planned, this rocket will be the first SSTO rocket in history, meaning it will be able to place payloads and crew into Earth’s orbit relying on only one stage with one engine.

Continue reading “ARCA Unveils the World’s first Single-Stage-to-Orbit Rocket” »

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will deliver SES-10, a commercial communications satellite for SES, to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO). SES is a world-leading satellite operator, providing reliable and secure satellite communications solutions across the globe.

The SES-10 mission will mark a historic milestone on the road to full and rapid reusability as the world’s first reflight of an orbital class rocket. Falcon 9’s first stage for the SES-10 mission previously supported the successful CRS-8 mission in April 2016.

Continue reading “Ses-10 Mission” »

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A new propulsion engine with dime-size thrusters could be used to propel a host of spacecraft, from small satellites to crewed ships designed for interplanetary exploration.

The new propulsion engine, called Tile, could serve as an efficient and lightweight way to keep constellations of small satellites in orbit. Spaceflight companies — including OneWeb, Boeing and SpaceX — want to launch hundreds of thousands of these small satellites to provide broadband internet to everyone around the globe. And because several Tiles can be connected to produce more power, the engine has the potential to propel astronauts to Mars, according to Accion Systems, the company that designed Tile.

“Our technology starts on a nanometer scale, and then we can array that and scale that up to serve satellites,” said Natalya Bailey, CEO of Accion Systems. Bailey described the propulsion engine to an audience here at the New Space Age Conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Sloan School of Management on March 11. [Superfast Spacecraft Propulsion Concepts (Images)].

Continue reading “Dime-Size Thrusters Could Propel Satellites, Spacecraft” »

Estonia will receive a 100th birthday gift next year that will be truly out of this world – as part of the country’s centenary celebrations in 2018, ESTCube will unveil its second satellite while its team embarks on a mission across Estonia to educate young people about opportunities within the space industry.

ESTCube-2 will be three times larger and far more complex than its predecessor, ESTCube-1, which turned Estonia into an unlikely space nation when it entered orbit in 2013.

ESTCube-2 is planned to blast off in 2019 and will operate at approximately 680 kilometres (423 miles) above Earth, which is almost twice as high as the International Space Station. However, the satellite is being designed to boldly go much further.

Continue reading “Estonia’s mission to the moon could revolutionise space travel” »

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