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Category: space travel

Doug Liman Opines On Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Rocket: “It’s Not Going Very High. I Really Think The Moon Or Beyond Is Space” — Tribeca Festival

Director Doug Liman likes that there’s so much buzz about space these days and takes a teensy part of the credit after news (broken by Deadline) last year that he plans to shoot a film up there with Tom Cruise in collaboration with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and NASA.

“It’s good. If we can inspire kids to study science. I grew up dreaming about going into space,” said Liman, who also directed Cruise on American Made and Edge of Tomorrow and has helmed hits from Mr. & Mrs. Smith and The Bourne Identity to Go and Swingers. He spoke Tuesday on a sunny roof deck at Spring Studios in downtown Manhattan during a Directors Talk Q&A at the Tribeca Festival.

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After years of promises and some limited cooperation, Russia and China have begun to draw up ambitious plans for missions that would directly compete with those of the United States and its partners, ushering in a new era of space competition that could be as intense as the first.

The budding new partnership reflects the geopolitics of the world today.

China and Russia have grown increasingly close under their current leaders, Xi Jinping and Vladimir V. Putin, smoothing decades of mistrust between the countries and creating a potent, though unofficial, alliance against what they perceive as the hegemonic behavior of the United States. Space has become a natural extension of the two countries’ warming ties, given increasingly fraught relations with the United States.

Russian officials have already signaled they may pull out of the International Space Station once the current agreement with its partners ends in 2024. The launch last year of SpaceX’s crew capsule had already ended Russia’s exclusive role ferrying American astronauts into orbit.

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Tesla’s NEW Giga Press Is a BIG Game Changer Tesla and big things are inseparable. Be it ambition, idea, or more tangible items, Tesla would rather go big. Perhaps that is due to the many successes the company has racked up in the short time it has existed or just the personality of the CEO, Elon Musk. Whatever the case, Tesla tends to come along and fundamentally change how things are done, just like with its Giga Press. What is a Giga Press and how does it work? Why is it a game changer in the auto making business? Welcome to Tech Archives.

What is a Giga Press?

They are giant machines made by IDRA Group based out in Italy. The name was actually coined by IDRA, not Tesla. Their purpose is die casting large parts in a single piece. If you have a head for figures, Giga Presses produce a clamping forces of between 55000 kilonewtons and 61000 kilonewtons. Giga Presses are the biggest casting machines to ever exist. To get a sense of how massive these machines are, they weigh 410 to 430 tonnes. That is the equivalent of five Space Shuttles. They are the sizes of houses, at 20 meters by 7.5 meters by 6 meters and require dozens of flatbed trucks for transportation. And to get a sense of what a Giga Press does, think of a small plastic toy car. You would notice the chassis is made from a single piece. That is what a Tesla Giga Press tries to achieve. Instead of a chassis that uses up to 70 bolted and welded parts as it is done by all other car makers, the new Tesla chassis will be one solid piece of engineering feat. Tesla’s NEW Giga Press Is a BIGI Game Changer Buckle up because on this channel we will go through all things Tesla, ev, and Elon Musk. Stay tuned for the latest Tesla news and Tesla updates. Click here to subscribe: https://bit.ly/3fjwstS

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The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has recently commissioned three private companies, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and General Atomics, to develop nuclear fission thermal rockets for use in lunar orbit.

Such a development, if flown, could usher in a new era of spaceflight. That said, it is only one of several exciting avenues in rocket propulsion. Here are some others.

The standard means of propulsion for spacecraft uses chemical rockets. There are two main types: solid-fueled (such as the solid rocket boosters on the Space Shuttle), and liquid-fueled (such as the Saturn V).

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With launch just five years away, the Gateway Exploration Robotics System — better known as Canadarm3 — has arrived at a critical point where its artificial intelligence system must be properly calibrated to meet the rigorous autonomous demands the Lunar Gateway project will impose upon it.

The AI solutions sought for Canadarm3’s vision by MDA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) largely relate to obstacle avoidance to prevent the arm from bumping into other structures on the lunar outpost and how to work with issues like prolonged communications blackouts and less-than-optimal lighting conditions — both of which must be overcome for the Gateway.

Speaking at a recent industry day event, Chris Langley, AI Lead at MDA for Canadarm3, related some of the challenges posed to the project by the Gateway operations plan, including only one month per year of crewed occupation initially and as little as only 8 hours of communication each week.

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Shenzhou-12 manned spacecraft and Long March 2F Y12 carrier rocket were rolled out to the launch pad on Wednesday, the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) said. Pre-launch preparations for the mission are underway.

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The three astronauts who will take the Shenzhou-12 manned spacecraft to China’s Tianhe space station core cabin in June are now under Level-2 quarantine, with all related work having entered a final sprint stage, Yang Liwei, director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office and the country’s first astronaut revealed.

Yang, who went into space in the Shenzhou-5 craft on October 15, 2003, made the remarks during an interview with state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) on Saturday, following the successful launch of the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft earlier in the day.

According to Yang, the three astronauts of the Shenzhou-12 mission, who were selected from China’s first and second batch of astronauts, will stay in space for three months, during which they will conduct tasks including repair and maintenance, appliance switch and scientific operation of payloads.

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