The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has announced that it has successfully demonstrated the operation of a rocket engine technology for the first time in space. This experiment proved the efficiency of a rotating detonation engine (RDE) which converted the shock waves generated when a mixture of fuel and oxygen reacts explosively into thrust.
Inspiration4 is preparing for liftoff.
The all-civilian mission is not only the first of its kind in history. It also marks a milestone for Musk’s company, which hopes to one day help humans live across the galaxy.
This is a huge, fairly sci-fi goal, but the trailblazing Inspiration4 crew could help the general public believe in it. And a Netflix documentary certainly doesn’t hurt.
SPACE STATION CREW MEMBER DISCUSSES LIFE IN SPACE WITH MEN’S HEALTH MAGAZINE
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 65 Flight Engineer Shane Kimbrough of NASA discussed life and research aboard the space station during an in-flight interview August 18 with Men’s Health Magazine. Kimbrough launched in April on a SpaceX Crew Dragon as part of a planned six-month mission.
First 200 to join through the link get 20% off the annual Premium subscription! https://brilliant.org/WhatAboutIt/
Today we’ll talk Starship and Super Heavy timeline! How long until SpaceX lights the candle again? Heatshield, tank farm, prototype testing. What’s left to do, and can we make an educated guess as to how many more weeks? Yes, we can! Let’s find out!
Continue reading “SpaceX Starship & Super Heavy Orbital Timeline Update!” »
NASA has confirmed that SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 launch is now scheduled to occur no earlier than 3:37 am EDT (07:37 UTC) on Saturday, August 28th.
Known as CRS-23, the cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is noteworthy for two major reasons. Most importantly, CRS-23 will mark SpaceX’s first-ever reuse of an upgraded Cargo Dragon 2 spacecraft. Simultaneously, that reuse milestone will coincide with another when SpaceX smashes its internal record for orbital spacecraft turnaround later this month.
Second, much to the surprise of virtually everyone watching from the sidelines, SpaceX’s last launch occurred on June 30th – in the first half of 2021. One step removed from the mission’s technical specifics, CRS-23 will, in other words, also be SpaceX’s first launch in almost two months – a gap not seen in two years.
The 23rd SpaceX
Commonly known as SpaceX, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is a private American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company that was founded by Elon Musk in 2002. Headquartered in Hawthorne, California, the company designs, manufactures, and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft.
Protests and meme campaigns weren’t enough, so now Jeff Bezos’ company is turning to lawsuits.
Following an unsuccessful GAO protest and meme campaigns, Jeff Bezos’s space company is suing NASA over a lunar lander contract for the Human Landing System.
SpaceX wants to put an advertising billboard in space. The company will have to follow legal frameworks for doing so, experts explain.
Artificial gravity for spaceflight is a concept older than spaceflight itself, but we’ve only ever seen one small scale test ever flown in space. However decades of research have been performed to show that the human body can adapt to the conditions required for rotating artificial gravity. This shows that it’s an engineering problem that likely solvable for interested parties who want to spend the time, effort and money creating the classic rotating space stations from Science Fiction.
Here’s a couple of papers which were heavily referenced in researching this.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19720019454/downloads/19720019454.pdf.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19730003384/downloads/19730003384.pdf.
Continue reading “Can The Human Body Handle Rotating Artificial Gravity?” »
Interesting ArsTechnica article on the delay of the BE-4 engine from Blue Origin. It brings up a point many outside the actual industry miss in that Blue Origin has to meet more stringent and complicated regulatory and certification standards that SpaceX does since they are actually producing engines for sale rather than company use. Since SpaceX only provides ‘services’ rather than ‘products’ (they have no plans for every selling Merlin’s, Raptor’s or any other item they produce including the “mini-Raptor” the Air Force actually paid them to produce) they don’t have to meet or even consider most of the requirements that Blue Origin has had to in order to produce the BE-4.
After these tests, a fully assembled flight engine no. 1 will be shipped to Texas to undergo a fairly brief round of tests, known as acceptance testing. If this engine passes, as expected, it will be shipped to ULA. Then a virtually identical BE-4 engine will be sent from Kent to Texas. This “qual” engine will undergo a much more rigorous series of tests, known as qualification testing. The idea is to push the engine through its paces to find any flaws. Then a similar process will follow with flight engine no. 2 followed by a second “qual” engine.
The risk is that ULA will receive the flight engines before the full qualification testing is complete. This qualification work on Blue Origin’s test stands will be occurring even as ULA integrates the engines with its first Vulcan rocket for testing and ultimately a launch during the second half of 2022. So if Blue Origin finds a last-minute issue with the BE-4 engine, ULA may have to unwind its work on final Vulcan development.
Continue reading “Blue Origin’s powerful BE-4 engine is more than four years late—here’s why” »
