Blue Origin launched an uncrewed test flight of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle on April 14, 2021 from their West Texas facility. The capsule and rocket both landed several minutes after launch. The private spaceflight company complete an ‘astronaut rehearsal’ prior to the flight with future crew members boarding the capsule temporarily. Full Story: https://www.space.com/blue-origin-new-shepard-ns-15-launch-landing-success.
Credit: Blue Origin
Elon Musk’s SpaceX added more money to its February equity raise, with the amended total reaching nearly $1.2 billion.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX added more money to its most recent equity raise, according to a securities filing on Wednesday.
SpaceX held a second close of about $314 million, adding to the $850 million that CNBC reported the company raised in February. The amendment brings the round’s new total equity raised to $1.16 billion, which the company raised at a valuation of about $74 billion.
Strong demand for the company’s shares centers around its ambitious Starship and Starlink projects.
On April 13, 2021, Astrobotic announced that the Falcon Heavy rocket will launch the Griffin lander carrying NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) to the moon.
Credit: Space.com | footage & animations: SpaceX & Astrobotic | produced & edited by Steve Spaleta (http://www.twitter.com/stevespaleta)
Circa 2013 o.o
We may still have a long way to go before we get a warp drive, but we may not have to wait much longer for our very own Star Trek-style phasers.
Scientists at NTT Basic Research Laboratories in Japan have managed to build the world’s first phaser, which is essentially a laser-like emission that works with sound instead of light. Like a laser, but not a laser. Aka a phonon laser. Basically: a phaser.
The technology essentially is able to emit a force via sound waves without the use of a laser, which is a major scientific feat. Scientists working on the project say the leap will make it “much easier to integrate into other applications and devices.”
Permanent magnetic motors circa 2014.
The AZ-PM thruster is the latest in a range of Rolls-Royce propulsion products using its permanent magnet technology. This technology is based on electric drive where the motor is in the form of a ring round the propeller. The moving part of the ring is a rim around the propeller blades which carries a series of strong permanent magnets. The rotor, fitted within a series of magnets, turns within an outer ring which form the stator.
When current is supplied to the motor from the variable frequency power supply the electromagnets are excited in a particular sequence and the resulting magnetic fields interact with the field from the rotor magnets creating a torque that turns the rotor and its propeller blades.
At the centre of the thruster the propeller blades are joined to a hub, which has two functions; to carry the bearings taking propeller thrust and provide radial location of the rotor, and to improve the hydro-dynamic efficiency of the thruster. Loads are transferred to the stator through struts. Both rotor and stator are sealed against water ingress and operate fully submerged.
Rolls-Royce PM technology is flexible, and is currently applied in this integrated propeller drive form to tunnel thrusters (TT-PM) and azimuth thrusters (AZ-PM). Other versions in which the PM rotor is arranged to turn an output shaft provide a high torque, low speed, drive for winches.
Several hundred people have already booked their tickets and begun training for a spectacular voyage: a few minutes, or perhaps days, in the weightlessness of space.
The mainly wealthy first-time space travellers are getting ready to take part in one of several private missions which are preparing to launch.
The era of space tourism is on the horizon 60 years after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space.
Writer-director Neil Burger is well known for his provocative cinematic projects, most notably 2006’s period-set magician movie “The Illusionist,” 2011’s psychological thriller “Limitless,” and a trio of “Divergent” films adapted from author Veronica Roth’s young adult sci-fi novels.
Now Burger has his eyes fixed on the stars with his new science fiction adventure flick, “Voyagers,” which revolves around the perils inside a generation spaceship carrying 30 home-grown candidates on a one-way mission to settle an exoplanet 86 years from Earth.
I found your rocket … Kyle Foreman, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, told GeekWire that the property owner left a message reporting the debris. “The sheriff’s office checked it out on Monday, and SpaceX staff came over on Tuesday and retrieved it,” Foreman said. SpaceX has yet to detail precisely what went wrong with the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage, such that it failed to de-orbit in a controlled manner over the ocean. Fortunately, no one on the ground was injured. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Brazilian launch site stirs controversy. The Brazilian government is committed to further developing the Alc ntara Launch Center on the country’s north Atlantic coast, near the equator. However, the region is also home to Afro-Brazilian residents of settlements first established by escaped slaves. These settlements are known as Quilombola communities. The Washington Post recently did a deep dive into the controversy, examining how eviction of these communities would affect local residents. The newspaper found that the spaceport expansion could displace nearly 2100 people from Quilombola communities.
Brazil’s polarizing dilemma … Marcos Pontes, head of the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, said there are no plans to relocate families “right now.” And if the time comes to remove people, he predicted, they will go willingly. “They are going to see development coming in, real development,” he said. “All of the resistance, that is going to be gradually disappearing.” This seems unlikely. The clash is the distillation of one of Brazil’s most urgent and polarizing dramas, the publication says. What is more important: developing a vast country with unrealized potential and a lagging economy? Or protecting some of its most vulnerable communities?