Hitching a ride: The Russians last night launched a new crew to ISS.
Next up: the launch of Falcon 9/Dragon on Saturday.
Another Obama tech wonder company dies: LightSquared has filed for bankruptcy.
From the beginning engineers were saying that LightSquared’s system would interfere with GPS. The only reason the company lasted as long as it did was because it had the political backing of the Obama administration. And the reason it had that backing is because the company’s CEO was a big supporter of Obama.
Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida) on Monday attacked the House version of NASA’s budget that required the agency to make a quick decision on its commercial manned launch company.
Nelson faces a difficult election campaign from the right. Thus, I suspect he has realized that he is better off promoting free enterprise than local pork. It is unfortunate that the Republicans in the House haven’t yet realized this.
Competition wins again: Faced with high prices and a near monopoly by China, the mining of rare Earth metals is once again rising worldwide.
How the predictions for the year 2000 changed throughout the 20th century.
Not surprisingly, Arthur Clarke’s predictions were generally the best.
If you build it they will come: An engineer has proposed using the USS Enterprise from Star Trek as a model for building an interplanetary spaceship for exploring the solar system.
Though similar in scale and appearance to the USS Enterprise (“it ends up that this ship configuration is quite functional,” Dan writes), the “Gen1 Enterprise” would be functionally very different. Firstly, the main nuclear-powered ion engine (boasting 1.5 GW of power) would strictly limit the Enterprise to intra-solar system missions, being incapable of anything approaching faster-than-light speeds. However, Dan claims that the Gen1 would be capable of reaching Mars from Earth within ninety days, and reaching the Moon in three.
The website is Build the Enterprise.
The competition heats up: The assembly of the first test vehicle of XCOR Aerospace’s Lynx suborbital craft has begun.
I will admit to great deal of skepticism about this particular space company. Somehow XCOR always manages to get a great deal of coverage in the space community press, despite what I see as lack of any actual space-related results.
I could be wrong however, and if so, I will be the first to celebrate. This article suggests they might finally start test flights by the end of this year.
SpaceShipTwo to resume flight tests in June after a nine month hiatus.
The long pause in flight tests, as well as the apparent delays in flying the ship with its rocket engine, suggest that there have been engineering issues with the ship and engine that Scaled Composites hasn’t revealed. Hopefully the resumption of testing is an indication that these issues have been overcome.
From the Dawn science team: The battered failed planet Vesta.
The results confirm Vesta as the source of a specific family of asteroids, but more interestingly also identify the actual impact that peeled these asteroids from Vesta’s surface.
Read the whole thing, Dawn has found a lot of interesting stuff.
The competition heats up: Bigelow and SpaceX announced today that they are teaming up to offer manned flights to space.
Republican space socialism update.
Simberg summarizes well the foolishness coming from Congress when it comes to budgeting NASA and commercial space.
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada outlines its test flight plans for Dream Chaser, its reusable manned mini-shuttle.
Winter on Mars has finally ended, and Opportunity is on the move again.
The competition continues to heat up: ATK today announced that it is building its own manned capsule for its Liberty launch system.
The capsule’s first two flights are scheduled in 2014, both abort tests, followed in 2015 by an orbital flight and, finally, a crewed orbital flight. The spacecraft is designed for ten flights each, and ATK plans to build a minimum of four capsules. All flights will be launched by the Liberty launcher, and ATK is not actively exploring adapting the capsule for other [launch vehicles].
Liberty is based on the upgraded shuttle solid rocket boosters that were developed for the Ares rocket, now cancelled.
Curiosity takes a picture of itself on its way to Mars.
It just keeps going and going: Air Force officials declare the on-going X-37B mission, now over 400 days long, “a spectacular success.”
The twenty-five coolest garages in the world.
Any society that can still afford this is not yet completely doomed.
The commercial space industry continues to heat up: A space tug to bring secondary commercial payloads to different orbits.
The SpaceX test launch of Dragon to ISS has now been rescheduled for May 19.
The competition heating up: Aerojet successfully completed a hot-fire test yesterday of its AJ26 engine, to be used in Orbital Sciences Antares rocket.
Using the Moon as a mirror.
Boeing’s CST-100 commercial manned capsule successfully completed its second parachute drop test from 14,000 feet on Wednesday.
Europe has decided to build a probe to study Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, Jupiter’s big icy moons.
Known as JUICE, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, the probe will enter orbit around the gas giant planet in 2030 for a series of flybys of Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. JUICE will brake into orbit around Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, in 2032 for at least one year of close-up research.
The battle to simplify and ease the United State”s international trade laws heats up.
Want to find something different? Use a search engine that intentionally skips the top million results.
The competition continues to heat up: Europe considers building its own reusable suborbital space plane.
The test flight of Falcon 9/Dragon to ISS will almost certainly not launch on May 7.
It appears they need more time to assess the results of the static engine test on Monday.
