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Category: space travel

Inspiration4 is getting its own documentary. Netflix said Tuesday it would be releasing a five-part series on the mission, its first documentary to cover an event “in near real-time,” in five parts in September.

“Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space” will follow the first all-civilian Inspiration4 crew as they prepare for and undergo a three-day flight to low Earth orbit. The private flight is being funded by — surprise! — a billionaire: Jared Isaacman, the CEO and founder of payment processor Shift4 Payments. He will be joined by Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and a pediatric bone cancer survivor; Christopher Sembroski, a Lockheed Martin engineer and Air Force veteran; and professor of geoscience Sian Proctor.

Isaacman has committed to donating $100 million to St. Jude’s out of his own funds, in addition to the public donation drive that was used to select Sian Proctor’s seat. As of March, the donation drive raised an additional $13 million for the children’s hospital.

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Nanoracks has hired a former NASA official most recently involved with planning for Artemis to lead its efforts to develop commercial space stations.

WASHINGTON — Commercial space services company Nanoracks has hired a former NASA official most recently involved with planning for the Artemis program to lead its efforts to develop commercial space stations.

Nanoracks announced Aug. 2 it hired Marshall Smith to be its senior vice president of commercial space stations. Smith retired from NASA at the end of July after more than 35 years at the agency, most recently as deputy associate administrator for systems engineering and integration in the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.

In his new role, Smith will oversee the company’s Outpost program, which seeks to convert upper stages of launch vehicles into modules that can be used for in-space manufacturing or habitats, as well as plans to develop free-flyer commercial space stations. Smith will run the company’s new office in Huntsville, Alabama.

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What do you think?

The idea of using spaceships to travel from one point on the Earth’s surface to another has been around since at least the 1960s, but the cost and complexity of the idea have meant it’s been little more than a pipe dream.

In principle, the approach isn’t that different from the one used by intercontinental ballistic missiles. A rocket is used to blast the payload, be it a nuclear weapon or a passenger spaceship, on a big looping trajectory into space before re-entering the atmosphere on the other side of the planet.

The approach could make it possible to travel between continents in under an hour, and now Japan has outlined its vision for how to make the idea a reality. In a roadmap unveiled at an expert panel earlier this month, its science ministry put forward a two-phase plan it predicts could support a 5 trillion yen ($46 billion) market for spaceships departing from and arriving in Japan.

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It’s no secret that SpaceX’s Starship Super Heavy Booster will be an absolute beast. The rocket stage, meant to launch the also-huge Starship spacecraft into orbit, will be sporting an outrageous number of individual rocket engines — 29 to be exact — making it one of the biggest rocket boosters in history.

A photo shared by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk today on Twitter shows the sheer scale of the operation — and how far the space company has come in building the first flight-and orbit-worthy prototype.

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First of all the title is highly misleading and directly contradicted by the article itself and the actual letter. (He’s not ‘offering’ NASA money he’s voluntarily forgoing payment equal to the SpaceX award for the contract. Now considering the initial pricing was closer to 10 billion that would essentially mean that NASA would be on the hook for about 8 billion but considering the total SpaceX contract is also about 10 billion that still fits into the new Congressional budget, if barely) Secondly considering that Blue Origin is only one of the companies that are cooperating to this bid if the other companies do no agree they he actually WILL be paying those companies to participate. Thirdly while the overall concept was rejected it pays to keep in mind it was ONLY rejected for the price and some questions on the proposed engine development budget so this goes a long way to show they are putting more ‘skin’ in the game than SpaceX. So interesting but highly disappointing ‘take’ on the offer by VT.

Jeff Bezos has offered NASA $2 billion in exchange for a moon contract that will allow Blue Origin to land astronauts in space. The Amazon founder, 57, made history when he went to space last week, and now in an open letter to administrator Bill Nelson on July 26, he…

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But does it want to be the “Tesla of boats?”

A new startup called Arc wants to revolutionize the boating world with a battery-powered craft made for watersports. The small startup, which employs a handful of former SpaceX employees, has designed a sharp but pricey boat with a big battery and an aluminum hull.

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