Lifeboat Foundation

China is working on a new way to launch its rockets.

A newly published patent from Made in Space describes several systems that could be used for 3D printing in space. These include, “a system and method for assembling a spacecraft such as a satellite in space.”

Michael Snyder, Chief Engineer and co-founder at Made in Space, is named as inventor on the patent.

SpaceX hopes to take paying passengers into deep space next year. Is this a real business or an ego trip?

An awfully big adventure

Elon Musk announced on Monday (27 February) that his space company SpaceX has been contracted by two private citizens to circumnavigate the moon and return to Earth late in 2018. The mission will not land on the Moon but the two privileged individuals will get close. And they have already paid a substantial deposit.

After six years of development, the first of Blue Origin’s new BE-4 rocket engines has finally been fully assembled. The company’s founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, debuted the images via a series of tweets.

The burgeoning space-transportation company owned by Amazon.com chairman Jeff Bezos this week is expected to announce some customers and new initiatives, the latest step toward its long-term goal of building rockets powerful enough to penetrate deep into the solar system, according to industry officials.

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The moves by the typically secretive Mr. Bezos, these officials said, are anticipated to disclose further details about Blue Origin LLC’s strategy to create a family of reusable rockets initially intended to take tourists on suborbital voyages, and then propel spacecraft into Earth’s orbit and eventually blast both manned and robotic missions to the Moon and various planets.

Continue reading “Amazon Chief Bezos Expected to Unveil Further Private Space Exploration Plans” »

A laser phased array directed energy system has been designed and simulated. Lubin and Hughes calculated the requirements and possibilities for DE-STAR systems of several sizes, ranging from a desktop device to one measuring 10 kilometers, or six miles, in diameter. Larger systems were also considered. The larger the system, the greater its capabilities.

For instance, DE-STAR 2 – at 100 meters in diameter, about the size of the International Space Station – “could start nudging comets or asteroids out of their orbits,” Hughes said. But DE-STAR 4 – at 10 kilometers in diameter, about 100 times the size of the ISS – could deliver 1.4 megatons of energy per day to its target, said Lubin, obliterating an asteroid 500 meters across in one year.

Continue reading “DESTAR phased array laser systems for defending against asteroids and for space exploration” »

Bigelow Aerospace founder Robert Bigelow‘s company makes in-space habitats. One (the BEAM adds 16 cubic meters of living area to the ISS) is now attached to the International Space Station and he and his company are developing permanent, stand-alone habitats to serve as private space stations in orbit around the Earth, ready to house private astronauts.

Bigelow has talked with United Launch Alliance Chief Executive Tory Bruno about using the company’s Atlas V 552 rocket, which has an extra-wide payload fairing, to deliver the B330 into orbit.

United Launch Alliance is developing an advanced upper-stage vehicle, ACES, to provide in-space propulsion.

Continue reading “Bigelow Aerospace offers plan for an expandable space station orbiting the moon by 2020” »

Blue Origin’s New Shepard Team is the winner of Aviation Week’s 60th Annual Space Laureate. New Shepard is only the first step in fulfilling Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos’ vision of using ever larger reusable rockets to send an entire economy into Earth orbit and beyond. Following the Laureate Award presentations held at Washington’s National Building Museum on March 2, Bezos talked to Aviation Week and Space Technology Editor-in-Chief Joe Anselmo and the audience at the awards dinner about the importance of expanding into the solar system.

* we need to expand into the solar system. The choice is between stasis on earth or expansion and dynamism in space.

Continue reading “Video of Jeff Bezos describes his space plans” »

HAIFA, Israel A vest designed to shield astronauts from deadly solar particles in deep space is set for trials on a lunar mission ready for deployment on any manned mission to Mars, its Israeli developers said.

The AstroRad Radiation Shield has been devised by Tel Aviv-based StemRad, which has already produced and marketed a belt to protect rescue workers from harmful gamma ray radiation emitted in nuclear disasters, such as Chernobyl and Fukushima.

The vest will protect vital human tissue, particularly stem cells, which could be devastated by solar radiation in deep space or on Mars, whose sparse atmosphere offers no protection, StemRad’s CEO Oren Milstein said.