Lifeboat Foundation

Chinese engineers rolled out a Long March 7 rocket to a seaside launch complex on Hainan Island in the South China Sea on Monday, aiming to fire a robotic refueling freighter into orbit as soon as Thursday to test technology for China’s future space station.

The Tianzhou 1 spacecraft mounted on top of the 174-foot-tall (53-meter) Long March 7 launcher will dock with the Tiangong 2 space lab around two days after liftoff, the first of three linkups planned during the cargo carrier’s mission.

Continue reading “China’s first robotic resupply freighter transferred to launch pad” »

In order to boldly go where no man has gone before we first need to sort out a few things — achieving near-relativistic speeds is certainly one of it. Space travel would allow humanity to explore all the new worlds, visit other galaxies and more so, seek out new life.

Right now NASA scientists are weighing in on that subject again, claiming that the cutting-edge technologies needed to making this pipe dream a reality are getting closer by the day.

Imagine getting to Mars in just 3 days… or putting points beyond our solar system within our reach. New propulsion technologies could one day take us to these cosmic destinations making space travel truly interstellar! — Philip Lubin

Continue reading “From Here To Eternity: NASA Believes Humanity Will Travel Interstellar” »

When we think about our species’ future in space, we often imagine a network of large space stations, on-orbit factories producing large transport vessels, and giant imaging systems gazing deep into the universe’s history. That future is achievable, but it requires we think about more than just lowering the cost of launching to space. The International Space Station, the largest structure humans have put in space thus far, took more than a decade, billions of dollars, and dozens of launches and spacewalks to complete. Despite an incredible result, this construction approach won’t scale to meet future demand. A future in space that includes residences, industrial facilities, and transport stations needs platforms that allow us to manufacture and assemble large space systems in space.

Theoretical physics often lifts the sanctions we set on our own imaginations. Whether it’s exploring the possibility of warp drives or understanding the rate of the universe’s expansion, we are quick to explore the unknown on our chalkboards until our tech is ready for our ideas.

In a similar deep-dive into the theoretical, a Norwegian professor argues in the journal Acta Astronautica for the of possibility of photon rockets that can reach 99.999 percent of the speed of light (300,000 km/s [186,000 mph]); asserting that, while humanity can’t do it anytime soon, we could potentially build a spacecraft that falls just short of the ultimate speed limit sometime in the future when the necessary technology is feasible.

Continue reading “We May Be Able to Build a Rocket That Can Go 99.999% the Speed of Light” »

NASA is funding Mach effect propulsion in the latest round of advanced concept projects.

Nextbigfuture has covered Woodwards Mach effect propulsion in dozens of articles.

They propose to study the implementation of an innovative thrust producing technology for use in NASA missions involving in space main propulsion. Mach Effect Thruster (MET) propulsion is based on peer-reviewed, technically credible physics. Mach effects are transient variations in the rest masses of objects that simultaneously experience accelerations and internal energy changes. They are predicted by standard physics where Mach’s principle applies – as discussed in peer-reviewed papers spanning 20 years and a recent book, Making Starships and Stargates: the Science of Interstellar Transport and Absurdly Benign Wormholes published recently by Springer-Verlag. These effects have the revolutionary capability to produce thrust without the irreversible ejection of propellant, eliminating the need to carry propellant as required with most other propulsion systems.

Continue reading “Mach Effects for In Space Propulsion: Interstellar Mission” »

New Horizons has made observations it was never tasked with making; serendipity of the sort that may lead to new and better astronomical missions to observe the distant cosmos from the outer fringes of the solar system, where it’s darkest and astronomers would have the clearest, dust-free view of our own galaxy and the optical light from the universe as a whole.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has unexpectedly made observations of optical light from beyond our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers are ecstatic and hoping for more.

April 11 (UPI) — Scientists have struggled to define the upper limit of the cosmic optical background, the total amount of light produced by all of the galaxies in the universe. But new observations from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft have allowed astronomers to place a ceiling on the measurement.

“Determining how much light comes from all the galaxies beyond our own Milky Way galaxy has been a stubborn challenge in observational astrophysics,” Michael Zemcov, an assistant professor of astrophysics at the Rochester Institute of Technology, said in a news release.

The reflection of the sunlight off interplanetary space dust makes the task of measuring the cosmic optical background from Earth quite difficult.

Continue reading “NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft helps scientists measure brightness of the universe” »

NASA will present new discoveries about the ocean worlds in our solar system on Thursday, the agency announced. Learning more about ocean worlds could help in the agency’s quest for life beyond Earth.

The findings were gathered by researchers through the Hubble Space Telescope and Cassini spacecraft. Cassini has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, and the mission ends this year.

“During its time at Saturn, Cassini has made numerous dramatic discoveries, including a global ocean that showed indications of hydrothermal activity within the icy moon Enceladus, and liquid methane seas on its moon Titan,” NASA said in a release.

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The first 3D printer from Made In Space was installed aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in November 2014. The idea sounds cool, but many ordinary earthlings have yet to feel its impact.

The start-up, based at NASA Ames Research Center in California, has since installed a second 3D printer on the ISS. The Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF) is the first commercial 3D printer in space. Brought to the ISS in 2016, the AMF is already printing orders for commercial customers, including the first 3D-printed advertisement in space, a crowdsourced sculpture and projects for educational programs, such as Enterprise In Space.

With the AMF, the implications are starting to become clear. 3D printing in space isn’t just meant to be a novelty, but a technology that enables humanity’s proliferation throughout the cosmos. Now, it’s possible for customers with a small wad of cash to 3D print plastic objects on the ISS, but, if Made In Space’s plans pan out, we may see a future in which those customers can head to space themselves.

Continue reading “The Future of NewSpace” »