A turkey dinner and presents arrived in time for the holidays.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A SpaceX Dragon capsule arrived at the International Space Station early Wednesday (Dec. 22), carrying with it a holiday haul of science gear and Christmas treats for the astronauts living on the orbital outpost.
The autonomous Dragon resupply ship docked itself at the orbital outpost at 3:41 a.m. EST (0841 GMT), ahead of its planned 4:30 a.m. docking time. It parked itself at the space-facing port on the station’s Harmony module, with NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn monitoring the docking from inside the station.
What is required to get us to other planets? A lot of things but mainly energy. Our current rockets simply can’t produce enough energy to get us that far.
American aerospace engineer, author, and advocate for human exploration of Mars Robert Zubrin has one idea for getting us to space and it’s a rather interesting one. It’s called Nuclear Salt Water Rocket (NSWR) and it replaces traditional chemical propellant with salts of plutonium or 20 p… See more.
He has done his math. The questions seem to be: How to put together viable payloads to make use of Stsrship launches? How to build new markets in space?
This again?! Game Over? Busted? We’re doing Starship again so soon because I’m an unoriginal hack. There’s also been new developments in Starship and I think it’s a perfect time to revisit the launch system. Get as mad as you wish.
Will Starship live up to expectations? Will it really revolutionize space travel? Is Mars and beyond finally within grasp? Why are Musk’s fans so strangely devoted to him? Will I stop asking dumb questions?
Corrections, Clarifications, and Notes.
1. Jesus Christ I forgot about Dear Moon again. It’s clear that Starship probably won’t be human-rated by NASA by 2023. The FAA, if I remember correctly, doesn’t regulate commercial crew vehicles (like airplanes) yet. You could always do a Crew Dragon to Starship for that or something along those lines. I’d anticipate Dear Moon being pushed or somehow incorporated into an HLS demonstration.
2. I’m not bringing up the early test program this time around. SpaceX has clearly gotten better at building tanks (though I suspect Starhopper was mostly a publicity stunt).
3. I didn’t include government launch contracts because those end up more expensive than commercial payloads due to more stringent requirements and specialized missions.
4. I didn’t talk about SpaceX finances since they’re private information. The Morgan Stanley valuation was made by people who I’d argue don’t know anything about the launch market. Their assessment is nonsensical. Also, I doubt SpaceX is making much money as a commercial launch provider—the launch side of the space industry is small; if it weren’t for Starship and Starlink, they might. It also appears that SpaceX is adept at burning cash, considering all the fundraising they do. It’s hard to say without industrial espionage.
Thanks to the failure of Blue Origin’s NASA Human Landing System (HLS) lawsuit, SpaceX and the space agency were finally able to get back to work last month.
Taking advantage of that, NASA astronauts and Artemis Program leaders recently took a tour of SpaceX’s South Texas Starship factory and launch pads – a massive hub of activity that the company has deemed Starbase. In doing so, save for updates from SpaceX and even members of the public over the last 6–9 months, NASA officials were finally able to get up close and personal with the progress SpaceX has made while the space agency was temporarily forced to halt all work on HLS.
While some aspects of SpaceX’s progress towards orbital Starship test flights were hampered by asymmetry between different programs, namely the readiness of Super Heavy and Starbase’s orbital launch site, SpaceX has still made some impressive progress in less than a year. At the start of 2021, Starbase’s lone orbital launch site was effectively a dirt lot and a fraction of the launch mount – the latter constructed well in advance of the rest of the pad. Less than a year later, that orbital launch site – including a skyscraper-sized launch tower, three massive arms, perhaps the most complex launch mount in spaceflight history, and the largest cryogenic tank farm ever built for a rocket – is on the verge of completion.
You are on the PRO Robots channel and in this video we invite you to find out what is new with Elon Musk, what has been done and what is yet to come. What are the difficulties with the Starlink project and why the problems with the launch of Starship may lead to the bankruptcy of SpaceX, what is new with Tesla, what new products will please the company next year — and this is not just about electric cars! All this and much more in this issue of news from Elon Musk!
0:00 In this video. 0:22 The reason SpaceX may go bankrupt. 1:39 Starship test. 2:07 24 hours of Starbase SpaceX in Texas. 2:33 SpaceX completes work on orbital launch pad. 3:30 Company outlook. 3:59 Starlink deadline pushed back. 5:00 Blue Origin lost a lawsuit against NASA 5:39 Tesla to begin production in Berlin. 6:15 Cybertruck. 7:01 Starlink terminals. 7:24 SolarCity. 7:47 Tesla Smartphones. 8:28 Tesla Dojo supercomputer.
SpaceX launches, more lawsuits for Tesla, Elon Musk will pay his taxes.
SpaceX completes two Falcon 9 missions in 15 hours, Tesla is hit with lawsuits from former employees and shareholders, Elon Musk is prepared to pay his taxes.
NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos are finalizing an agreement to launch the first cosmonaut on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, agency officials confirmed on Monday (Dec. 20).
China is making significant strides in the field of space technology, which has been traditionally dominated by the United States and Russia. It seeks to match and outpace the American hegemony in space that has become evident with the communist country launching its own space station and carrying out “unprecedented” tests. MUST-READ: Taiwan ‘Exposes Chinese […].
In science fiction stories about contact with extraterrestrial civilisations, there is a problem: What kind of propulsion system could make it possible to bridge the enormous distances between the stars? It cannot be done with ordinary rockets like those used to travel to the moon or Mars. Many more or less speculative ideas about this have been put forward—one of them is the “Bussard collector” or “Ramjet propulsion”. It involves capturing protons in interstellar space and then using them for a nuclear fusion reactor.
Peter Schattschneider, physicist and science fiction author, has now analyzed this concept in more detail together with his colleague Albert Jackson from the USA. The result is unfortunately disappointing for fans of interstellar travel: it cannot work the way Robert Bussard, the inventor of this propulsion system, thought it up in 1960. The analysis has now been published in the scientific journal Acta Astronautica.
