Currently browsing tag

space

I wonder who the first human will be to die in space, never to return to eir mother planet?

While space travelers have died, to this point all have returned their atoms to the world that bore them. Eventually a spaceship will be lost, a star voyager will float away, a suit will no longer sustain, or a lander on some foreign body will fail to ascend. At that point, we will have crossed the Rubicon and proved our commitment to the exploration of the Universe.

Mudskipper: A Mars Colony Ship

To boldly go beyond Earth’s orbital neighborhood is the next level of courageous, crewed exploration. To make it to that step, we’ll need a spaceship purpose-built with the idea that that crew will be gone for protracted amounts of time and will likely set up camp somewhere else.

Read more...

Space Shuttle Discovery’s First and Last Landings

OV-103. The space shuttle Discovery. Twenty-seven years of service. Thirty-nine times it lifted off and thirty-nine times it landed safely. All told it spend a year in space and traveled over 238 million km (148 million miles). That sort of use leaves its mark after a while.

Read more...

Protect Our Helium

We are running out of helium. That light gas that floats kids balloons and raises the pitch of voices to heights of great hilarity is a limited natural resource on Earth. While it’s difficult to be certain, estimates has the US running out of helium by as soon as 2025 … just thirteen years from now, the worldwide supply a couple decades after that. We need to do something, quickly.

Read more...

Government, Spaceflight, Spinoffs, and People

To the outside observer, it seems like the U.S. Government treats the funding of NASA with the same care and understanding as they do the United States Postal Service. The outside observer would be wrong; it’s not handled nearly as well. And the USPS is going bankrupt…so that sort of gives you an idea of how bad the problem is.

Read more...

Those Sexy Rockets

I’m a bit of a life-long space nerd. (I know!) Obviously, over the years, different launch vehicles have caught my eye. Much like worthy media celebrities, these rocket stars are more than just a pretty face…but the pretty face helps.

Read more...

An Idea For Naming Planets, Stars, and Galaxies

I agree with the idea that we need a new way to name celestial bodies that helps the public feel a bit more in touch with the cosmos. We have two major problems with that now: the vast number of objects, and the limited number of thematic names we’ve traditionally used.

Read more...

Let’s Speed-up Spacecraft Development Without Rushing

Following the failure and crash of a Russian Progress M-12M cargo vehicle, there has been a lot of alarmist rhetoric about the future of the ISS as well as American spaceflight capability. Let’s take a step back to look at the situation without a “sky is falling” mentality.

Read more...