Tag: engineering

Research on ISS has found that prolonged spaceflight causes vision problems and might even damage the human eye.

8:38 am

Research on ISS has found that prolonged spaceflight causes vision problems and might even damage the human eye.

There had been hints of this discovery in an earlier report, but today’s paper is the first published science on the subject.

The results are not only important for finding out the medical challenges of weightlessness. They illustrate once again the need to do long extended flights on ISS. Without that research we are never going to be able to fly humans to other planets.

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The spaceship companies in Mohave are hiring

7:44 am

Want a job building spaceships? The spaceship companies in Mohave are hiring.

There are several hundred open positions in Mojave as companies such as the Spaceship Company, XCOR and Scaled Composites begin to ramp up operations. “It’s ironic that we’re having a recruitment problem in Mojave,” said Stu Witt, CEO and general manager of the Mojave Air and Space Port. He added that this is a good problem to have.

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Robotic refueling demo begins today on ISS

1:06 pm

A robotic refueling demo. designed and built by the same people who ran the Hubble Space Telescope repair missions, begins today on ISS, using Dextre.

This demo is designed to prove that a robot, operated from the ground, can refuel a satellite not designed for refueling. The demo satellite on ISS was built to match the design of several climate satellites already in orbit that will end up defunct in a few years if they can’t be refueled.

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The cracks that have been found on the wings of the new Airbus A380 jumbo jet have now been traced to a company in the United Kingdom.

8:04 pm

The cracks that have been found on the wings of the new Airbus A380 jumbo jet have now been traced to work done by a company in the United Kingdom.

A senior industry expert told The Times: ‘The issue is around the type of aluminum being used and the fitting which, as a result of the assembly, creates the crack’, with a source close to the problem adding, ‘It is a design and process engineering failure’.

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The March 9 launch of Europe’s cargo freighter to ISS has been delayed two weeks so that engineers can climb inside and tighted two straps holding two cargo containers in place.

7:48 pm

The March 9 launch of Europe’s next cargo freighter to ISS has been delayed two weeks so that engineers can climb inside and tighten two straps holding two cargo containers in place.

I suspect the reasons behind this problem are quite embarrassing, which is probably why the press releases are so vague about why the straps were loose and how the Europeans discovered the problem.

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Using its Space Launch System and Orion capsule, NASA is aiming for an unmanned test flight around the Moon in December 2017.

8:56 pm

Using its Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion capsule, NASA is aiming for an unmanned test flight around the Moon in December 2017.

Two important tidbits revealed by this article: First, the first test flight of Orion will use a Delta 4 Heavy rocket. Two, NASA hopes to have its heavy lift SLS rocket ready for the 2017 mission.

Forgive me for being cynical, but I will believe the second tidbit only when it happens.

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