БЛОГ

Archive for the ‘space travel’ category: Page 309

Mar 6, 2020

Elon Musk Wants to Build a New Starship Every 72 Hours So He Can Colonize Mars

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel

Elon Musk is bulking up his rocket-building workforce—big time. Ars Technica visited the Texas home of SpaceX, where Musk was calling a meeting on a Sunday “morning” at 1 a.m. There’s a lot to unpack here.

To start, Musk is worried that our window of opportunity to make it to Mars is closing—so we better hurry up. After the 1 a.m. meeting, SpaceX added over 250 new employees in two days, representing a full doubling of the workforce.

Ars Technica visited the day after the major Starship prototype implosion that made news earlier this week. The SN1 prototype blew up as a direct result of weak welds. It sounds like everyone involved knew this prototype was faulty and told Musk so when he asked, and he insists it was never designed to fly for real anyway.

Mar 6, 2020

NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for the Psyche Mission

Posted by in category: space travel

NASA has selected SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for the agency’s Psyche mission. The Psyche mission currently is targeted to launch in July 2022 on a Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The total cost for NASA to launch Psyche and the secondary payloads is approximately $117 million, which includes the launch service and other mission related costs.

The Psyche mission will journey to a unique metal-rich asteroid, also named Psyche, which orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. The asteroid is considered unique, as it appears to largely be made of the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet – one of the building blocks of our solar system.

Mar 4, 2020

Podcast #42: Going to Mars, featuring Moriba Jah

Posted by in categories: biological, economics, Elon Musk, engineering, space travel

Elon Musk and the late Stephen Hawking are not alone in their calls for humanity to become a multi-planetary species. But they certainly are the most visible advocates for space colonization. And while the moon might be the most obvious jumping off point to the solar system and beyond, nothing stands out as a potential site for long term settlement more than Mars.

But just how realistic is sending astronauts to the Red Planet anytime soon–let alone colonizing it permanently? The obstacles are many, and aerospace engineering may well be the least of them. The human biological, psychological tolss and survival strategies–radiation, low gravity, isolation and the marshalling air, water, and food resources–all stand in the way. And then there is the economic cost and the political and public will. In this edition of Seeking Delphi,™ I talk to former NASA Mars mission navigator, Moriba Jah, about the many challenges of leaving of our home planet.

Mar 4, 2020

SpaceX celebrates Crew Dragon’s 1st launch anniversary with epic video

Posted by in category: space travel

One year ago today, SpaceX took a giant leap forward for private spaceflight with the launch of its first Crew Dragon to the International Space Station and the company is celebrating that feat with an epic new video.

The new video, which SpaceX shared on YouTube and Twitter, shows the company’s first Crew Dragon spacecraft launched on the Demo-1 mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission, an uncrewed test flight, launched a spacesuit-clad dummy named Ripley and an adorable Celestial Buddy Earth plush toy to the station.

Mar 3, 2020

Artificial intelligence and its ethics | DW Documentary

Posted by in categories: education, ethics, robotics/AI, space travel, surveillance

AI/Humans, our brave now world, happening now.


Are we facing a golden digital age or will robots soon run the world? We need to establish ethical standards in dealing with artificial intelligence — and to answer the question: What still makes us as human beings unique?

Continue reading “Artificial intelligence and its ethics | DW Documentary” »

Mar 3, 2020

Scientists Are Starting to Take Warp Drives Seriously, Especially This One Concept

Posted by in categories: physics, space travel

It’s hard living in a relativistic Universe, where even the nearest stars are so far away and the speed of light is absolute. It is little wonder then why science fiction franchises routinely employ FTL (Faster-than-Light) as a plot device.

Push a button, press a petal, and that fancy drive system – whose workings no one can explain – will send us to another location in space-time.

However, in recent years, the scientific community has become understandably excited and skeptical about claims that a particular concept – the Alcubierre Warp Drive – might actually be feasible.

Mar 2, 2020

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy is getting a giant cloak for key military missions

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, military, space travel

Elon Musk’s giant rocket is getting a bizarrely-shaped tower.

Mar 2, 2020

Elon Musk shows off the shiny SpaceX Starship

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel

The partial rocket named “SN1” literally buckled under pressure.

Mar 1, 2020

SpaceX to Launch NASA’s Psyche Mission to Metal Asteroid

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks, space travel

NASA has contracted SpaceX to carry out the launch for its upcoming Psyche mission to a strange metal asteroid in our solar system. The launch will use one of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rockets, for a cost of $117 million.

“The Psyche mission will journey to a unique metal-rich asteroid, also named Psyche, which orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter,” NASA explained in a statement. “The asteroid is considered unique, as it appears to largely be made of the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet — one of the building blocks of our solar system.” Astronomers believe that studying this unusual asteroid could help us to understand how planets develop, including planets like Earth.

“Deep within rocky, terrestrial planets, including Earth, scientists infer the presence of metallic cores, but these lie unreachably far below the planet’s rocky mantles and crusts,” NASA said. “Because we cannot see or measure Earth’s core directly, the mission to Psyche offers a unique window into the violent history of collisions and accretion that created terrestrial planets.”

Mar 1, 2020

NASA’s new ‘space home’ for tourists could cost as much as $35,000 to stay in— see inside

Posted by in category: space travel

Space travel company Axiom’s station will have the largest space observatory ever built, plus private modules with windows.