Last Typewriter Factory in the World Shuts Its Doors
Technology marches on: The last typewriter factory in the world has shut down.
Technology marches on: The last typewriter factory in the world has shut down.
Technology marches on: The last typewriter factory in the world has shut down.
And Obama wonders why oil prices are high? Shell has abandoned its oil drilling plans in Alaska after an EPA regulatory board denied it permits. This after the oil company had spent $4 billion over five years developing those plans. To me, the quote below reveals much about the political agenda behind the EPA’s decision:
The Environmental Appeals Board has four members: Edward Reich, Charles Sheehan, Kathie Stein and Anna Wolgast. All are registered Democrats and Kathie Stein was an activist attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund.
In picking the winners for its commercial manned space subsidizes, NASA gave more priority to the spacecraft — either capsules or spaceplane — above the rockets needed to launch it.
I believe him when he says he’ll launch his first manned mission in three years. However, I think he seriously underestimates the challenges of a mission to Mars, based on our present engineering abilities to build interplanetary spaceships.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo makes its longest test flight yet.
India has successfully launched three satellites using its low-Earth-orbit rocket.
The launch could not have come at a more apt time than now. The old reliable workhorse vehicle was last used in a July 2010 launch. ISRO’s next two launches of the indigenous higher-powered GSLV failed.
NASA has awarded the next set of commercial crew development agreements, giving contracts worth from $22 to $92 million to four companies, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, SpaceX, and Boeing. More here and here.
The amounts that NASA is giving these companies is minuscule, compared the monies spent on the program-formerly-called-Constellation. Yet I bet they all get their rockets/capsules launched and in operation, supplying cargos and crews to low Earth orbit, before NASA even test fires its heavy-lift rocket.
Competition! China finds SpaceX’s launch prices low — and a challenge to meet.
Declining to speak for attribution, the Chinese officials say they find the published prices on the SpaceX website very low for the services offered, and concede they could not match them with the Long March series of launch vehicles even if it were possible for them to launch satellites with U.S. components in them.
Who says there aren’t customers for the new rocket companies? The Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office have inked a deal with SpaceX, preliminary to using the company’s rockets to launch military satellites.
Reality bites: NASA faces awkward, unfortunate spaceflight gap.
Boeing moves forward on its commercial manned capsule.
Virgin Galactic is now hiring for spaceship pilots.
Two Americas: public vs. private. The graph illustrates our nation’s problems quite clearly.
The future is here: Spaceship lands at San Francisco airport. And yes, that is an accurate headline!
SpaceX unveils its plan for the Falcon 9 Heavy, what would be the world’s most powerful private rocket.
The new rocket will be able to carry about 117,000 pounds (53,000 kilograms) of cargo to orbit – about twice the payload-carrying capability of the space shuttle. The Falcon Heavy would launch more than twice as much weight as the Delta 4 heavy, currently the most powerful rocket in operation. Only NASA’s Saturn 5 moon rocket, which last launched in 1973, could carry more cargo to orbit, SpaceX officials said.
Musk said the rocket should lower the launch cost of cargo to about $1,000 per pound, about one-tenth the cost per pound on NASA shuttle launches.
Russia is accelerating its space program.
“It is the first time that the government has allocated decent financing to us,” Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said in a phone interview on April 2. The agency’s $3.5 billion budget for 2011 has almost tripled since 2007, reaching the highest since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. “We can now advance on all themes a bit,” Perminov said.
Unlike 50 years ago, when beating the U.S. into space marked a geopolitical victory in the Cold War, Russia is focusing on the commercial, technological and scientific aspects of space travel. President Dmitry Medvedev has named aerospace one of five industries the government plans to nurture to help diversify the economy of the world’s largest energy supplier away from resource extraction.
Software engineers to the Moon!
Crazy? Absolutely! Impossible? Probably not! There are a growing number of people who believe that with federal funding for our space program getting scarce, the future lies in private-public partnerships. Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s third job (after leading electric car company Tesla and acting as the Chairman of solar installer SolarCity) is heading up SpaceX, which was the first private company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a rocketship. Virgin’s Richard Branson has a similar private space venture.
Yow! Southwest cancels 300 flights to inspect its planes after the fuselage cracks open on a Sacramento-bound flight.
After seven years of work, the Soyuz launch site in French Guiana is finally ready for its first launch.
Dreamliner: a nightmare for Boeing.
An critique of NASA: No vision equals no innovation.
That NASA (and our government) lacks vision is not necessarily a bad thing. For the first time in decades, this is leaving room for new and independent companies to move in and fill the vacuum left by NASA. In the end, I think we will be far better off.
The spaceport at Wallops Island, Maryland has unveiled its rocket assembly building to be used by Orbital Sciences in launching cargo to ISS.
Mining and jobs versus radio astronomy.
Boeing’s biggest-ever plane makes its maiden flight.
Subsidies to the Ariane 5 rocket to keep it afloat.
Something is seriously wrong with any operation (like Ariane) that dominates the market and still loses money the past two years.
Sour grapes: Satellite builders express contempt for MDA’s refueling plans for Intelsat orbiting satellites.
No surprise here. If Intelsat can extend the life of its satellites, than it won’t have to buy them as often from these builders, something the builders clearly don’t want.
Intelsat signs MDA to perform in-space refueling of its communications satellites.
The concept of refueling geosynchronous satellites has been lurking about the aerospace industry for years. According to this deal, we should see an actual mission in about five years.
Those private companies better get cracking! The Russians have raised their ticket price again, from $56 to $63 million per astronaut ride on a Soyuz.
More competition! SpaceX has inked a deal to launch its first geosynchronous communications satellite.