Lifeboat Foundation

Orbital Reef is one of NASA’s in-development successors for the ISS.

Sierra Space, the company developing a new space station called Orbital Reef alongside Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, just blew up a small prototype for an inflatable astronaut habitat, a recent press statement (Dec .13) reveals.

The company conducted what it calls the “ultimate burst pressure test” (UBP) as part of the development of Orbital Reef, which is one of several privately-developed successors to the International Space Station that have been funded by NASA.

Continue reading “Watch a space habitat prototype for Orbital Reef explode into pieces in dramatic video” »

How could we one day travel between the stars with real physics? Perhaps the greatest challenge to interstellar flight is energetics — it takes vast amounts of energy to accelerate even small ships to 20% the speed of light. But what if we could steal that energy from where? Perhaps even a black hole. Enter the “halo drive”, a video by Prof David Kipping based on his new peer-reviewed research paper on the subject.

This video is based on research conducted at the Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia University, New York. You can now support our research program directly here: https://www.coolworldslab.com/support.

Continue reading “The Halo Drive” »

Researchers say they may have discovered the solution to a problem that has long hindered progress with a novel form of plasma propulsion that could one day carry humans to distant planets, and potentially launch a new era of space exploration.

The helicon double-layer thruster (HDLT) is a prototype plasma thruster propulsion system that works by injecting gas into an open-ended source tube, where radio frequency AC power produced by an antenna surrounding it electromagnetically ionizes the gas. Within this highly charged plasma, a low-frequency electromagnetic helicon wave is excited by the antenna’s electromagnetic field, further heating the plasma.

Such “magnetic nozzle” thrusters accelerate the plasma they produce to generate thrust for spacecraft, representing a form of electric propulsion with several potential applications in spacecraft design. However, while plasma flows that occur naturally within magnetic fields are often released or “detached”—like when coronal ejections erupt from the Sun—getting plasmas to behave in the same way in the laboratory is more challenging.

Backwards through time? We travel forwards every day, but traveling back could let us change our past, visit old friends, or manipulate the timeline to our benefit… Although our knowledge of space and time remains incomplete, we can still use what we know to consider possible time machines. But what kind of paradoxes would this entail and how can we resolve them? Join us today on a special journey through time.

An educational video written and presented by Professor David Kipping.

Continue reading “Traveling Back in Time” »

It could reduce fuel costs by a fifth and pollution.

Edinburgh-based Skyrora is a company aiming for many firsts. It wants to be the first company to accomplish an orbital launch from U.K. soil but is likely to end up being known as the first company that converts unrecyclable waste plastic into rocket fuel.

With the recent completion of the Artemis I mission, humanity is well on its way to setting up a settlement on the Moon and now has Mars in its sights. As our goals become more ambitious, we also need larger rockets that can take us to faraway destinations. However, rocket launches require tons of fuel and produce larger amounts of carbon emissions.

The private space firm has had another record-breaking year.

SpaceX has already had an astronomical year. And now, the private space company is offering to sell insider shares at a price that would raise its valuation to roughly $140 billion.

SpaceX’s new $140 billion valuation.

Continue reading “New SpaceX tender offer reportedly raises company’s valuation to $140 billion” »

It was supposed to be just another spacewalk, a simple routine inspection.

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Ispace Inc. is a private Japanese company developing robotic landers and rovers for missions to the Moon. It aims to compete for both transportation and exploration mission contracts from space agencies and private industry. If successful, these spacecraft and the accompanying vehicles could enable clients to discover, map, and use the natural resources on Earth’s nearest neighbour.

In addition to its headquarters in Tokyo, the company has offices in the United States and Luxembourg, employing around 200 people. Although founded in 2010, its team of engineers had earlier competed in the Google Lunar X Prize.

Following more than a decade of research and development, ispace yesterday launched Hakuto-R Mission 1 – delivered into space on a partially reusable Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket. The spacecraft will now perform orbital manoeuvres, taking it as far as 1.5 million km (932,000 miles) from Earth, before arriving at the Moon sometime in April 2023.

We have a Discord server! Come join us, I answer questions on my videos regularly! https://discord.gg/TNB4nSCKBt.

Happy Winter! I’m back with another upload, very different in style from my normal content. I’ve wanted to do a Mars colonization video for some time, but I wanted to get Far Future Uranus out and work on a couple other things not content-related beforehand. Making this video was pretty fun, surprisingly. I expected far more terrain buggyness than I actually encountered, and the Starships were really fun to fly. Getting good Starship / Super Heavy landing catch shots was a bit tedious, but it ended up looking good in the end. I’ll be back to more normal content (stuff like Far Future Uranus/Beyond Sol) next time. Also, the 1st part of this video (the part synced to Flight Hymn) is obviously inspired by @NessusKSP in his Far Future Saturn video, hats off to him for making some great content with it!

Continue reading “Colonizing MARS with SpaceX Starship in Kerbal Space Program” »