WASHINGTON — Sierra Space says it is making good progress on its first Dream Chaser spaceplane as the company looks ahead to versions of the vehicle that can carry crews and perform national security missions.
The company provided SpaceNews with images of the first Dream Chaser, named Tenacity, being assembled at its Colorado headquarters. The vehicle’s structure is now largely complete, but there is still more work to install its thermal protection system and other components.
“We have the wings on now. It really looks like a spaceplane,” said Janet Kavandi, president of Sierra Space, during a panel at the AIAA ASCENDx Texas conference in Houston April 28, where she played a video showing work building the vehicle.
Rocket Lab has been trying to actualize its mission called “There and Back Again.” The company tweeted on Friday that it was targeting May 1 or May 2 for the launch.
The Axiom-1 mission — the first fully private crew to visit the International Space Station — splashed down on Earth on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon on April 26. During that return journey, a camera meant to track meteors caught sight of the spacecraft, the ISS and a blazing fireball all at the same time. Wow.
The European Space Agency Operations Twitter account shared the video on Friday, writing, “An incredible sighting: a meteor strikes, burning up in Earth’s atmosphere, passing by four astronauts cocooned in the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft as it departed from the International Space Station on 26 April, bound for home.”
The meteor is pretty clear in the video. It’s the one dragging out like a fiery smudge heading downward. The ISS is the brightest moving dot, above and to the right of the meteor. Crew Dragon is the fainter dot above the streak of light.
Sending humans virtually anywhere in space beyond the Moon pushes logistics of health, food, and psychology to limits we’re only just beginning to grasp.
A staple solution to these problems in science fiction is to simply put the void-travelers to bed for a while. In a sleep-like state akin to hibernation or torpor, metabolism drops, and the mind is spared the boredom of waiting out endless empty hours.
Unlike faster-than-light travel and wormholes, the premise of putting astronauts into a form of hibernation feels like it’s within grasp. Enough so that even the European Space Agency is seriously looking into the science behind it.
Elon talks about x-risks and making us a multi-planetary species, amongst other things.
What’s on Elon Musk’s mind? In this exclusive conversation with head of TED Chris Anderson, Musk details how the radical new innovations he’s working on — Tesla’s intelligent humanoid robot Optimus, SpaceX’s otherworldly Starship and Neuralink’s brain-machine interfaces, among others — could help maximize the lifespan of humanity and create a world where goods and services are abundant and accessible for all. It’s a compelling vision of a future worth getting excited about. (Recorded at the Tesla Texas Gigafactory on April 6, 2022)
Just over a week after this interview was filmed, Elon Musk joined TED2022 for another (live) conversation, where he discussed his bid to purchase Twitter, the biggest regret of his career, how his brain works and more. Watch that conversation here: https://youtu.be/cdZZpaB2kDM
0:14 A future that’s worth getting excited about. 2:44 The sustainable energy economy, batteries and 300 terawatt hours of installed capacity. 7:06 “Humanity will solve sustainable energy.“ 8:47 Artificial intelligence and Tesla’s progress on full self-driving cars. 19:46 Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot. 21:46 “People have no idea, this is going to be bigger than the car.“ 23:14 Avoiding an AI dystopia. 26:39 The age of abundance. 28:20 Neuralink and brain-machine interfaces. 36:55 SpaceX’s Starship and the mission to build a city on Mars. 46:54 “It’s the people of Mars’ city.“ 50:14 What else can Starship do and help explore? 53:18 Possible synergies between Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company and Neuralink. 54:44 Intercontinental travel via Starship. 58:41 Being a billionaire. 1:02:31 Philanthropy as love of humanity. 1:03:39 Population collapse and birth rates as a threat to future of human civilization. 1:04:13 Elon’s drive. 1:06:06 “I think if you want the future to be good, you must make it so.”
If you love watching TED Talks like this one, become a TED Member to support our mission of spreading ideas: http://ted.com/membership.
Rocket Lab aims to catch a falling booster with a helicopter for the first time ever this week, and a new video shows us how the action is supposed to go down.
