Lifeboat Foundation

Today’s advances in materials, testing capabilities, and reactor development are providing impetus for NASA to appraise Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) as an attractive 21^st century option to propel human exploration missions to Mars and other deep space destinations.

Utilizing nuclear technology as an ingredient of NASA’s exploration prowess is not new. NTP research is part of the space agency’s storied history. In 1961, NASA and the former Atomic Energy Commission jointly embarked on the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (NERVA) program – an effort that over several years led to the design, building, and testing of reactors and rocket engines.

Those programmatic high points spurred then-NASA Marshall Space Flight Center director and rocket pioneer, Wernher von Braun, to advocate for a proposed mission, dispatching a dozen crew members to Mars aboard two rockets. Each rocket would be propelled by three NERVA engines. As detailed by von Braun, that expeditionary crew would launch to the Red Planet in November 1981 and land on that distant world in August 1982. In presenting his visionary plan in August 1969 to a Space Task Group, von Braun explained that “although the undertaking of this mission will be a great national challenge, it represents no greater challenge than the commitment made in 1961 to land a man on the moon.”

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Product endorsements and spaceships with corporate brands just might be part of a trend toward further commercialization of America’s space effort.

Many countries including China, Russia, South Korea, India, Japan, and Europe Nations have all outlined significant lunar plans. To mention a few, the Moon Village concept got an endorsement from the Secretary General of the China National Space Administration, Yulong Tian. He outlined plans for a series of robotic missions to the moon, including China’s first sample return mission, Chang-e. The Director General of the Russian state space corporation, Roscosmos, talked about participating in any Moon Village effort. Smaller space agencies, such as Ukraine, share a similar desire to carry out lunar missions. President Trump signed the Space Policy Directive-1 in December 2017 and NASA has big plans for the Moon, with the recent Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G) initiative. Space activities are not limited to government initiatives; many of them are being pursued in partnership with civil society and the private sector. Several private missions to the Moon are planned in Japan with ispace, India with Team Indus, Israel with SpaceIL, United States with companies such as OffWorld and Moon Express, Germany with PT Scientists, and Luxembourg with CisLunar Industries.

Private industry is developing business plans to profit by creating new services and products that eventually will become the Moon Market. There is already good cooperation between private and government industries in each country; however, there is no global platform allowing cooperation between industry and government around the world. There is also a need to engage non-space industries by communicating the potential of the Moon Market. The Moon Village Association (MVA), a non-governmental organization (NGO) created in 2017 and based in Vienna, is dedicated to this mission:

“It provides a forum for the development of the Moon Village for industry, government, space agencies, international organizations, NGOs and the public at large.”

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Check out the spacecraft in a 360-degree video.

An increasingly likely catastrophe can cause major disruptions in space flight and our daily lives.

It might be a little cramped.

SpaceX is preparing to make its first demo launches for NASA’s commercial crew mission program, which aims to bring back the capability for U.S. spacecraft to fly astronauts to space.

The rocket company plans to use Tesla Model X vehicles to bring the first astronauts flying in the Crew Dragon spacecraft to the launch pad.

It appears to be the latest example of some synergy between Elon Musk’s two main companies.

Continue reading “Tesla Model X will carry first astronauts flying in SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to launch pad” »

Black women, especially, played a crucial role in the pool, providing mathematical data for NASA’s first successful space missions, including Alan Shepherd’s 1961 mission and John Glenn’s pioneering orbital spaceflight.