Lifeboat Foundation

The DARPA Launch Challenge has begun, with a once-stealthy startup called Astra Space aiming to launch two rockets from an Alaska spaceport within the next month and a half to win a $10 million grand prize.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency set up the challenge in 2018 to serve as an added incentive for private-sector development of a highly mobile launch system that the military could use.

At first, DARPA specified that two orbital launches would have to be executed over the course of two weeks from completely separate launch sites in order to win the top prize. However, program manager Todd Master said the plan was changed for logistical and regulatory reasons. Dealing with all the hassles associated with launches from widely separated sites “wasn’t really our goal in solving the challenge,” Master told reporters today during a teleconference.

The private spaceflight company is working with Space Adventures, which has helped manage trips to the International Space Station. The tourists will fly in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, but there’s no word on when the flight will happen or how much it will cost.

SpaceX will fly four privately-paying space tourists to orbit in its Crew Dragon capsule, the company unveiled on Tuesday.

“This historic mission will forge a path to making spaceflight possible for all people who dream of it, and we are pleased to work with the Space Adventures’ team on the mission,” SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement.

The customers will be brokered through Space Adventures, a company that’s flown private citizens to the International Space Station using Russian spacecraft. The firm said this Crew Dragon mission will allow four individuals to “see planet Earth the way no one has since the Gemini program” of the 1960s.

Steven Hawking: “I don’t think we will survive another thousand years without escaping beyond our fragile planet.”

Probably the most notable direct result of space exploration is satellites. Once we could position a ship in orbit and take telemetry, we knew we could place unmanned pieces of equipment there and just let it orbit, running on its own, while receiving orders from the ground. From those satellites, we have created a global communication system and the global positioning system (GPS) that powers most of our communications capabilities today. What can bring peace and harmony on the planet more than our ability to communicate with each other beyond geographic and political boundaries? These technologies have been enhancing and saving for years.

Continue reading “The Value of Space Exploration” »

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Blue Origin formally opened a factory Feb. 17 that the company plans to use to produce engines both for its vehicles and for United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony marked the completion of a 350,000-square-foot factory here that will produce BE-4 and BE-3U engines. The factory, built in a little more than a year, will host more than 300 employees and produce up to 42 engines a year.

“You can see we can get some things done really quickly,” said Bob Smith, chief executive of Blue Origin, in remarks at the ceremony. “Twelve months to actually build this kind of facility is an amazing accomplishment for our team.”

Emergent technologies have made our world more efficient, engaging, and accessible. We’ve witnessed how innovations like artificial intelligence (AI) have transformed from largely an insider trend of the leading edge of the tech industry into more commercially viable devices, such as Amazon Echo, Siri, and on-demand machine learning from AWS. There tools have democratized the way we interact with the world.

In addition to AI, other innovative technologies have helped democratize many markets across the globe. However, the sector with, perhaps, the most notable impact in democratizing technology lies in industries that go beyond our planet.

The NewSpace industry—now comprised of startups, developing countries, and universities—is leading a movement of tech innovations that are helping to pave the way for the new space explorers. This new era not only focuses on lowering the barriers of entry for investors and companies, but it’s also fostering more sustainable, consumer-friendly models that promote better access to the final frontier.

It seems like there’s nothing Elon Musk can’t do.

As CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, founder of The Boring Company, and cofounder of OpenAI and Neuralink, Musk seems to be everywhere all at once, pushing all kinds of futuristic technologies. He’s said he won’t be happy until we’ve escaped Earth and colonized Mars.

Between space rockets, electric cars, solar batteries, and the billions he’s made along the way, Musk is basically a real-life Tony Stark — which is why he served as an inspiration for Marvel’s 2008 “Iron Man” film.

A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule arrived on Florida’s Space Coast on Thursday (Feb. 13), completing a cross-country trek from the company’s California headquarters.

The space industry is in the midst of a widespread transformation, as the last decade has seen several young, private companies seek to profit in areas historically dominated by governmental interests. Among these areas is lunar mining, which represents a crucial step for the development of the space economy by enabling the utilization of lunar resources. Though significant opportunities exist for wealth creation and societal benefits, it will require sustained multibillion-dollar investment to develop a vibrant lunar mining industry.

Exploration is the essential first step for any mining endeavor, terrestrially or otherwise, but with the technical challenges of lunar mining largely solved, access to capital has become the prevailing constraint. While the uncertainty of operating in space is the commonly used explanation for capital constraints, in reality, terrestrial explorers have seen funding steadily decline for a decade, with investors favoring lower risk, passive exposure to the mining sector. For lunar mining firms seeking to attract capital for exploration, this essay details the incompatibility of traditional investment options, the financing strategies developed by the similarly cash-strapped terrestrial mining industry, and how prospective lunar miners should capitalize on emerging trends in project finance.