Nuclear thermal rocket engines could help get astronauts to Mars more quickly than by chemical propulsion methods. NASA and DARPA are working on nuclear thermal propulsion tech that they hope to test as soon as 2027.
The space tech startup, AstroForge, hopes to complete two proof-of-concept missions this year using SpaceX rockets.
In what might be a groundbreaking moment in space industry history, a new startup plans to launch not one but two space missions this year. This might not sound like a big deal, but the company wants to go into space to find and use minerals from asteroids and other deep-space objects.
Continue reading “Asteroid mining: SpaceX will help a startup launch operations in 2023” »
José Cordeiro, PhD, talking about his international bestseller “The Death of Death” during the coming DLD Tel Aviv Innovation Festival in Israel. Top news at i24 news discussing about aging as the “mother” of all chronic diseases!
José Cordeiro is an international fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, vicechair of HumanityPlus, director of The Millennium Project, founding faculty at Singularity University in NASA Research Park, Silicon Valley, and former director of the Club of Rome (Venezuela Chapter), the World Transhumanist Association and the Extropy Institute.
We might all have been in a situation where we had to put our trust in our work to hold up and do what it needed to do, but Margaret Hamilton’s work was particularly important — it was responsible for putting Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in July 1969.
When warning lights started going off in the middle of the Eagle module’s descent toward the lunar surface, NASA faced a tough decision: continue with the landing or abort.
Continue reading “Margaret Hamilton: Pioneering Software Engineer Who Saved the Moon Landing” »
SpaceX is poised to conduct a wet dress rehearsal of the Starship launch system from its Starbase site in southeastern Texas, a major milestone in CEO Elon Musk’s quest to turn long-haul interplanetary transportation from science fiction to reality.
It’s the strongest signal yet that Starship’s first orbital flight test could well and truly be imminent. The wet dress is a critical series of prelaunch tests that includes propellant loading of both the upper stage and booster, and a run-through of countdown to around T-10 seconds, or just before engine ignition. If no major issues crop up during the testing, the next step would be “de-stacking,” or the separation of the Starship second stage and Super Heavy booster. That would be followed by a full static fire test, where engineers would light up all 33 of the booster’s Raptor 2 engines. The launch system would then be re-stacked before the first orbital flight test.
This could all take place in a matter of weeks — March is not off the table for the orbital flight test — but that’s assuming that everything goes well and no major mishaps take place (they’re not unheard of). It also assumes that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, the body that regulates commercial launches, issues SpaceX the all-important launch license fairly soon. The FAA has been basically mum about the status of its evaluation of SpaceX’s plans, though it’s been conducting extensive assessments of the Starship launch program for some time.
Elon Musk said the private space firm has “a real shot at late February” for the orbital launch of Starship.
We might finally see SpaceX’s Starship soar to orbit next month. SpaceX’s orbital launch of its fully reusable Starship rocket is arguably the most exciting upcoming space mission of the year. And we may not have to wait very long to see it take to the skies.
Starship could fly to orbit for the first time as soon as late February, though March is more likely, according to an update from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk via Twitter.
Papers:
Black Hole Energy.
Penrose process for a charged black hole in a uniform.
magnetic field https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.15010.pdf.
A SpaceX Dragon capsule is being modified on orbit to carry an extra astronaut home to Earth if need be.
On Wednesday (Jan. 18), NASA plans to start moving agency astronaut Frank Rubio’s seat liner from a Russian Soyuz spacecraft over to Endurance, the Dragon spacecraft that’s flying SpaceX’s ongoing Crew-5 mission for NASA.
The new modification was made following a coolant leak in a Russian Soyuz rocket attached to the International Space Station.
NASA modified the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance capsule, which is currently attached to the International Space Station (ISS).
The crew capsule now features another seat and can carry one more NASA astronaut than was originally intended, a NASA blog post reveals.
