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Category: space travel

Blue Origin just launched and landed its suborbital rocket New Shepard — the same vehicle the company flew and then landed in November. The booster reached a maximum altitude of 333,582 feet, or 63 miles, above the Earth’s surface, before landing gently back at Blue Origin’s test facility in Texas. That makes it the first commercial vertical rocket to launch into space a second time.

It also means Blue Origin has seemingly beaten rival SpaceX yet again in the race to reuse rockets. SpaceX successfully landed one of its Falcon 9 rockets post-launch back in December for the first time, just a month after Blue Origin did. However, CEO Elon Musk said that particular rocket will never be launched again, as the company considers it too special to reuse. SpaceX tried to land another rocket last week, but the vehicle ultimately fell over and exploded, making it impossible to fly again.

SpaceX and Blue Origin may be working toward the same goal, but the companies do have two very different vehicles. Blue Origin’s New Shepard is designed to take future passengers into suborbital space, where they will experience four minutes of weightlessness before falling back to Earth. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is made to launch payloads and cargo into orbit and beyond; the rocket goes much faster and to a much higher altitude before returning to the ground.

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“Though humble in appearance, this object is the product of great ambitions. Dubbed a “Lunar Rake,” it was designed and manufactured in the late 1960s in partnership with NASA. A facsimile of the implement that astronauts would theoretically use to scrape up dust on the moon, this model was used only during training.”

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European Space Agency building a space colony by 2030.

The European Space Agency unveiled plans on Friday to build a “lunar village” by 2030 as a stepping stone to Mars.

ESA chief Jan Woerner said the lunar “village” would be a series of structures made by robots and 3D printers that use moon dust as building material.

“I looked into the requirements I see for a project after ISS. As of today, I see the moon village as the ideal successor of the International Space Station for [space] exploration,” Woerner said at a news briefing in Paris on Friday.

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Anyone offended by the prospect of drinking fine whiskey inside sealed space packs with straws after Suntory sent its finest variety to the ISS for testing? Don’t worry: Ballantine’s got your back. The liquor company has commissioned Open Space Agency’s James Parr — who also created a Lumia-powered 3D-printed telescope in the past — to design a high-tech whiskey glass especially for zero-G environments. He tested a number of designs before settling on a rounded glass with a spiral convex stainless steel base plated in rose gold that can create the surface tension necessary to hold the liquor down. The liquid then passes through channels on the sides of the glass all the way up to the golden mouthpiece.

The “glass” part itself is actually 3D-printed medical-grade PLA plastic, the same kind used for heart valves. Since everything tends to float in microgravity, the base hides a 22-pound magnet that can be used to stick the glass on magnetic surfaces. Plus, it has a one way valve where a customized whiskey bottle nozzle can be inserted to pour out a shot. Parr and Ballantine published more details about the design process on Medium, if you’d like to read more about how the “space glass” was created. Sure, it could be nothing but a marketing stunt, but it’s amazing how much thought went into designing a whiskey glass. It’s unfortunate that most of us might never get to use it in its intended environment; good thing the final product at least looks fancy enough to display.

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NASA recently announced that they test fired a research rocket engine. Nothing special about that—other than the fact said engine was 75 percent 3D printed parts.

As industrial 3D printing has moved from prototyping to actually manufacturing finished products, the aerospace industry has become an avid early adopter. Although in many industries mass production techniques still make economic sense—for the ultra-precise, almost bespoke parts in rockets? 3D printing is a great fit.

Last year, GE showed off a scaled down 3D printed jet engine firing at 33,000 RPM. SpaceX’s recent recovery of a Falcon 9 rocket was not only spectacular, but the rocket has long used 3D printed parts too. And NASA’s latest trial shows 3D printing is set to become an even bigger part of rocket engine manufacturing.

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While development is happening everywhere, these companies are the next big things to shoot past the stratosphere.

While a lot of end-of-the-year, turn-of-the-calendar roundups try to focus on the year that was or the year ahead, the space industry is very different. Developments are planned further in advance, so some of the qualifying news that gets companies on this list isn’t scheduled to happen until 2017. The industry is small compared to cloud computing or cybersecurity, for example, but the rate of growth is tremendous. There seems to be a cultural solidarity with spacetech on account of its tightly-knit history of cooperation and the still limited number of private companies that can facilitate space flight.

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