I’d like to attend this event. Maybe we’ll be through bathroom-renovation hell by then.
Category Archives: Space
SpaceX Progress
Falcon Heavy is getting ready for its hot-fire test in Texas, and LC-40 is getting back in business after the boo boo last fall.
Mimicking An Early Impact In Earth’s Atmosphere
…results in the creation of all four DNA bases. This seems much more significant than Miller-Urey.
The Space Symposium
If, like me, you couldn’t make it to Colorado Springs last week, Calla Cofield has highlights.
[Noon update]
Valerie Insinna has the story on Tory’s choice in engines. Aerojet Rocketdyne has to have fingers crossed in the hope that BE-4 testing doesn’t go well.
Recovering Falcon Second Stages
Dick Eagleson has some interesting speculation.
Meanwhile, is the small-sat launch industry going to be Amazoned?
The Storms Of Jove
Bob Zimmerman has some thoughts on the gas giant.
Space Corps
Coyote is really pushing this concept. Now he’s got an op-ed at Aviation Week.
The Long Space Age
This looks like an interesting new book by Alex McDonald. Kindle version seems kind of spendy, though, same as hardcover.
The Farce Awakens
Bad lip reading of the movie. Some of the dialogue is better, really.
More Blue Origin News
They’re working on a lunar lander:
Blue Origin would be willing to invest in development of the Blue Moon system as part of a partnership with NASA, Meyerson said, envisioning regular delivery of resources and supplies to a potential lunar colony to augment NASA missions launched by the agency’s own Space Launch System.
“The more NASA flies SLS, the more they will need commercial logistics delivery services,” he said. “New Glenn and Blue Origin and Blue Moon compliment SLS and Orion, enabling NASA’s return to the moon, and this time to stay.”
NASA’s current human spaceflight plans do not include human missions to the lunar surface. Instead, NASA has outlined an an architecture that calls for the development of a human-tended facility in cislunar space, called the Deep Space Gateway, by the mid-2020s intended to support testing of technologies needed for human missions to Mars in the 2030s.
Congress doesn’t really want NASA to do anything except build a giant rocket that hardly ever flies, but Meyerson is being politically correct.
[Update a while later]
ULA has a nice video of their vision for the future.
[Update Friday morning]
Eric Berger talked to Rob Meyerson about Blue Origin’s plans. They’ll be flying again this summer. Passengers next year.