Lifeboat Foundation

SpaceX’s announcement that they will launch two tourists on a trip around the moon has captured imaginations with renewed speculation about the future of space travel and accessibility to the beyond.

“We are excited to announce that SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year. They have already paid a significant deposit to do a moon mission,” Musk wrote in their announcement. “Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind, driven by the universal human spirit of exploration.”

Continue reading “Forget SpaceX: 10 companies that will change space travel in 2017 & 2018” »

Learn all about the beginning of the private space race in the book.
How To Make A Spaceship

Book: https://goo.gl/7rF2al

Peter H. diamandis / XPRIZE julian guthrie / penguin press stephen hawking richard branson / virgin galactic

In Brief

• Yesterday, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said that his private spaceflight company would have a notable announcement today at 4pm EST (1pm GMT).
• It seems that humans are going back to the Moon. Here’s what you need to know about this new revelation and what it means in relation to humanity’s journey into the cosmos.

Rocket science isn’t easy. Ask any engineer. Rocket science isn’t cheap. Just ask NASA. Fortunately, in recent years, a number of commercial spaceflight companies have stepped up to the plate in order to help national space agencies extend their reach into the final frontier.

Continue reading “BREAKING: Elon Musk And SpaceX Are Sending Humans to the Moon” »

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has found a signal at the center of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy that could indicate the presence of the mysterious stuff known as dark matter. The gamma-ray signal is similar to one seen by Fermi at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy.

Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light, produced by the universe’s most energetic phenomena. They’re common in galaxies like the Milky Way because cosmic rays, particles moving near the speed of light, produce gamma rays when they interact with interstellar gas clouds and starlight.

Surprisingly, the latest Fermi data shows the gamma rays in Andromeda—also known as M31—are confined to the galaxy’s center instead of spread throughout. To explain this unusual distribution, scientists are proposing that the emission may come from several undetermined sources. One of them could be dark matter, an unknown substance that makes up most of the universe.

Well I for one would be in the 6%.

A new survey has found that only 6% of respondents would be happy to live in a proposed Equatorial Low Earth Orbit (ELEO) settlement, where humans live in a small cruise ship-like space station at a similar orbit to the ISS.

Four conditions were set for respondents to assess and while at least 30% said they agree with at least one of them, the number shrank significantly when it came to those who could accept all the conditions.

Continue reading “Only 6% of space enthusiasts would like to live in the first low-Earth orbit settlements” »

By Kelsey Tollefson | Executive Editor John Lenker

Space suits are iconic—a visual metaphor for the excitement of the original Space Race and mankind’s first forays off our planet. While many still associate space travel with the puffy white suits worn by astronauts in the 1960s, a proliferation of sci-fi movies in the intervening decades has opened our imaginations to a wider array of possibilities. Far from being fantastical, these new spacesuits reflect an evolved understanding of the considerations involved in protecting the human body from harsh environments outside Earth’s atmosphere.

Related: Under pressure: the past, present, and future spacesuit market.

Continue reading “Next-Gen Spacesuits and the Commercial Space Industry” »

Feb. 15 (UPI) — The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Wednesday indicated that President Donald Trump may want the United States to resurrect its pioneering spirit in outer space — much the same way another American leader did five decades ago.

Acting NASA Administrator Robert M. Lightfoot, Jr., sent a memo to employees Wednesday saying he had instructed the agency to work up a feasibility report on adding astronauts to its planned EM-1 flight late next year.

The mission, which is currently unmanned, will launch NASA’s new Space Launch System rocket with an Orion capsule. The spacecraft would orbit the moon and return to Earth. The agency’s EM-2 mission, scheduled for years later, was supposed to be the spaceflight to carry humans.

Continue reading “Trump may get Kennedy-esque with earlier return to moon” »

A little more than 40 years ago, Dubai was a tiny pearl-fishing village lined with dirt roads. Now it’s the largest and most futuristic city in the world, the jewel of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). From manmade, palm tree-shaped archipelagos to jetpack-wearing firefighters and the world’s tallest building, the city has a reputation for taking on insanely ambitious projects and executing them with swiftness and expertise. Now, the UAE has a vision to build an even crazier city—on Mars.

On Tuesday, hot on the heels of the World Government Summit in Dubai, the vice president and prime minister of the UAE and Emir of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, announced the country’s goal of building a “mini-city and community on Mars” with international cooperation.

“We aspire to great things, so my brother Mohammed bin Zayed [the first president of the UAE and crown prince of Abu Dhabi] and I today decided the UAE will join the global effort to send humans to Mars,” Al Maktoum announced, as if going to Mars were as easy as deciding what to have for dinner.

Continue reading “The United Arab Emirates wants to build a city on Mars” »

NASA has awarded $2 million to two companies for the development of technology that will help astronauts breathe safely in space for longer periods, potentially furthering long distance space exploration.