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Category: space travel

Written By: — Singualrity Hub

Mars_One_Astronaut (1)

First, the private organization announced they would colonize the Red Planet by 2023 and fund the mission, in part, by making a television show about their space adventures. Then they took some 200,000 applications from would-be astronauts (with no required qualifications) for a one-way ticket to Mars.

If you’re disappointed that human beings haven’t flown beyond the Moon—then all this bold Mars talk is inspiring. But talk is cheap. Now, comes the costly part.

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NIGEL JAQUISS — Willamette Week

Cameron Smith, archaeologist and anthropology professor at Portland State University

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By day, Cameron Smith teaches anthropology at Portland State University—digging fossils in Africa, launching solo voyages in the Arctic or sailing primitive vessels in the open ocean. By night, Smith, 46, is feverishly building a DIY space suit. Working in concert with a Danish nonprofit aerospace organization called Copenhagen Suborbitals, Smith wants to democratize space travel. He has turned his Pearl District apartment into a workshop where a homemade space suit nearly five years in the making lies on a folding table. Next year, he plans to balloon up to 63,000 feet to test the suit. The year after that, the Danes will send it up to 63 miles. And after that?

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Computerworld - China’s lunar probe, and the moon rover it carried, landed successfully Saturday night, marking a major accomplishment for the country’s space efforts.

This is the first time a spacecraft from China has landed on an extraterrestrial body. China becomes the third country, after the United States and Russia, to land a spacecraft on the moon.

China’s Chang’e-3 craft lifted off early on Dec. 2 on top of an enhanced Long March-3B rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China.

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warp drive

Well, maybe Star Trek isn’t really that far away. An announcement a few months ago from physicist Harold White surprised many in the space community. White claimed that he and a NASA team were working on developing faster than light warp drive.

White spoke to website io9 last month to explain the project, which combines Einstein’s theory of relativity, the latest in science and a touch of science fiction.

The idea came out of a 1994 paper White wrote regarding an equation proposed by physicist Miguel Alcubierre. Alcubierre suggested that space-time could be warped both in front of and behind a spacecraft.

“Remember, nothing locally exceeds the speed of light, but space can expand and contract at any speed,” White says to io9. “However, space-time is really stiff, so to create the expansion and contraction effect in a useful manner in order for us to reach interstellar destinations in reasonable time periods would require a lot of energy.”

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