Lifeboat Foundation

More than four years ago, I covered the issue of cislunar planning here (see “The cislunar gateway with no gate”, The Space Review, October 1, 2012). Now the same “gateless” base concept has returned, but this time, it is not the only concept on the table. Currently there seem to be a plethora of achievable cislunar and lunar concepts, but few people seem to understand what makes any of them practical and affordable. Multiple reusable launchers, in-space vehicles, and components are being developed or have recently been announced, including the New Glenn, the Blue Moon lunar lander, SpaceX’s gigantic Interplanetary Transport System with its still unnamed booster. In addition, there are various lunar orbit combination habitats and depots proposed by Bigelow and the previously announced vehicles and concepts such as the Falcon Heavy, the XEUS lander, and the Cryote depot concept.

Operational plans that only include cislunar bases are being proposed, as well as plans which call for only lunar surface bases to be supplied directly from the Earth, in addition to the more modern, cislunar resource-supported lunar base scenarios. These plans and designs are all like pieces of a very important jigsaw puzzle, but one that, due to the current circumstances, forces us to start with the individual pieces, instead of a whole original image. Our mission, if we can manage it (politically, fiscally and technically), is to try to create a functional whole—a cislunar transportation system —out of some or most of these pieces.

As the obvious and practical location for a gateway to the Moon, Mars, and the asteroids, a cislunar logistics base is the first component we need in place. I am not as concerned about which orbit any cislunar station is placed in compared to the base components, but it is still clear that the Earth Moon L1 point has an advantage since it is always in the same general area, and can be reached from any location on the moon in about 12 hours at any time without waiting for an orbital position to match. A station placed in the “near-rectilinear (lunar) halo orbit” (NRHO) proposed recently would actually be in a high, elliptical, lunar polar orbit (HELPO) that takes more propellant and time to reach from or to than most other options. The best orbits to support lunar operations have a short and relatively unchanging transit time from or to the lunar surface, a lower delta-V per trip, and which can be reached from most places on the surface at almost any time.

Ultimately, Hawking has long been an advocate of commercial spaceflight, and to this end, he notes that he greatly admires Virgin Galactic’s role in democratizing space, specifically, he clarified his “respect for enabling more of humanity to experience the true wonder of space.”

I have said in the past ‘Look up at the stars and not down at your feet’, but I believe that ‘looking up’ will no longer be a requirement to see the universe in all its glory.

Stephen Hawking is going to go to space.

The cosmologist and physicist will leave the Earth on board Richard Branson’s spaceship, he has said.

Professor Hawking told Good Morning Britain that he’d never dreamed he’d be able to head into space. But “Richard Branson has offered me a seat on Virgin Galactic, and I said yes immediately”, he said.

Continue reading “Stephen Hawking will travel to space on board Richard Branson’s ship, professor says” »

The Cosmologist and Physicist, Stephen Hawking said he will leave the Earth to travel to space onboard Richard Branson’s spaceship, The Independent reported.

Professor Hawking told Good Morning Britain that he’d never dreamed he’d be able to head into space. But “Richard Branson has offered me a seat on Virgin Galactic, and I said yes immediately”, he said.

Richard Branson’s spaceflight company, Virgin Galactic, hopes soon to carry people into space on commercial missions.

The U.S. Air Force’s X-37B space plane is just eight days away from setting a record on its current clandestine mission.

If the robotic vehicle stays aloft until March 25, it will break the X-37B mission-duration mark of 674 days, which was established back in October 2014.

It’s unclear whether that will actually happen, however; the Air Force is tight-lipped about most X-37B payloads and activities, including touchdown plans. [The X-37B’s Fourth Mystery Mission in Photos].

Continue reading “Air Force’s Mysterious X-37B Space Plane Nears Orbital Record” »

A critical component of future, human exploration to worlds unknown, will be the supply of edible food for crewmembers. To develop innovations in cultivating food in closed-loop systems becomes integral to future missions.

The goal of the EDEN ISS project is to advance controlled environment agriculture technologies beyond the state-of-the-art. It focuses on ground demonstration of plant cultivation technologies and their application in space. EDEN ISS develops safe food production for on-board the International Space Station (ISS) and for future human space exploration vehicles and planetary outposts.

Designing web and mobile apps good enough for space exploration poses a special set of UX challenges. NASA’s interaction designer reveals how he and his team take user experience into orbit.

How do you prototype software that can safely send astronauts into space? Over at NASA’s Ames Research Center, the HCI team members are engaged in answering that question, constantly designing, prototyping and iterating on web and mobile apps to support space missions from launchpad to deep space and back.

Justinmind was lucky enough to talk to NASA Interaction Designer Ron Kim, who told us about how NASA’s user experience team works, the challenges of designing software for the International Space Station, and how prototyping helps him sell UX to scientists.

Continue reading “Q&A with Interaction Designer Ron Kim” »

Massive and complete automation could enable industrializtion of the moon and space. By using some larger human colonies along with the robots then it would be more robust and less dependent on perfect automation.

Advances in robotics and additive manufacturing have become game-changing for the prospects of space industry. It has become feasible to bootstrap a self-sustaining, self-expanding industry at reasonably low cost. Simple modeling was developed to identify the main parameters of successful bootstrapping. This indicates that bootstrapping can be achieved with as little as 12 metric tons (MT) landed on the Moon during a period of about 20 years. The equipment will be teleoperated and then transitioned to full autonomy so the industry can spread to the asteroid belt and beyond. The strategy begins with a sub-replicating system and evolves it toward full self-sustainability (full closure) via an in situ technology spiral. The industry grows exponentially due to the free real estate, energy, and material resources of space. The mass of industrial assets at the end of bootstrapping will be 156 MT with 60 humanoid robots, or as high as 40,000MT with as many as 100,000 humanoid robots if faster manufacturing is supported by launching a total of 41 MT to the Moon. Within another few decades with no further investment, it can have millions of times the industrial capacity of the United States.

In 2018, two unnamed private investors plan to embark on a one-week mission past the moon, into deep space, and then back to Earth.