Lifeboat Foundation

SpaceX COO and President Gwynne Shotwell says that the company now expects Starbase to be ready for Starship’s first orbital launch attempt as early as June or July, pushing the schedule back another month or two.

To accomplish that feat, SpaceX will need to more or less ace a wide range of challenging and unproven tests and pass a series of exhaustive bureaucratic reviews, significantly increasing the odds that Starship’s orbital launch debut is actually closer to 3–6 months away. While SpaceX could technically pull off a miracle or even attempt to launch hardware that has only been partially tested, even the most optimistic of hypothetical scenarios are still contingent upon things largely outside of the company’s control.

Both revolve around the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which – in SpaceX’s case – is responsible for completing a ‘programmatic environmental assessment’ (PEA) of orbital Starship launches out of Boca Chica, Texas and issuing a launch license for the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. In some ways, both tasks are unprecedented, but the bureaucratic processes involved are still largely the same as those SpaceX has successfully navigated over the last two decades.

Continue reading “SpaceX President updates schedule for Starship’s orbital launch debut” »

The freighter will help get China’s Tianhe core module ready for a new crewed mission.

China has launched a new cargo mission to its space station module in preparation for the arrival of a new crew in June.

A Long March 7 rocket carrying the robotic Tianzhou 4 spacecraft lifted off from Wenchang Satellite Launch Center in southern China’s Hainan Province today (May 9) at 1:56 p.m. EDT (1756 GMT; 1:56 a.m. local time on May 10).

Continue reading “China launches Tianzhou 4 cargo craft to new Tiangong space station” »

Are Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell right? Is Mars that important? Why must we become a multiplanetary civilization?
#space #nasa #spacex #elonmusk.

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Continue reading “Gwynne Shotwell says SpaceX will reach Mars by 2030! But why must we become multiplanetary?” »

Watch the moment when the capsule hit the water.

After six months on board the International Space Station, four astronauts tumbled back to Earth on board SpaceX’s third Crew Dragon mission.

This is terrific!!

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Continue reading “Webb in Full Focus — Mirrors are Aligned!” »

Performed by Moxie — the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment — the strategy definitely incited hope for extraterrestrial survival. Future human missions could take versions of Moxie to Mars instead of carrying oxygen from Earth to sustain them.

But, Moxie is powered by a nuclear battery onboard.

“In the near future, we will see the crewed spaceflight industry developing rapidly,” said Yingfang Yao, a material scientist at Nanjing University.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon will streak through Earth’s atmosphere

“Teams from @NASA & @SpaceX now are targeting #Crew3 undocking at 1:05 am Thurs, May 5 from @Space_Station. Splashdown off of Florida’s coast is planned about 12:37 am Fri, May 6. The new undocking time allows for shorter phasing & more time to review the latest forecast info,” said Lueders, in the Wednesday tweet.

Continue reading “SpaceX’s Crew-3 mission is returning with 4 astronauts after 6 months on the ISS” »

Is this what a future Canadian Starport Network will look like when rockets deliver people and cargo almost anywhere in from 10 minutes to no more than one hour?

A space gold rush is underway as the technology to get to space goes commercial with plans to introduce global rocket travel.