The European SpaceLiner concept looks hopelessly expensive and impractical for point-to-point travel but something like it might work for transport to space once there are large habitats in orbit: Planners for hypersonic SpaceLiner craft propose a 50 year timeline – PhysOrg
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Bob Zimmerman on John Batchelor Show – Jan. 22, 24, 2013
Bob Zimmerman reports on the latest space news during regular weekly slots (usually Tuesday and Thursdays) on the John Batchelor radio program. See the iTunes free Podcast for links to the latest shows. Here are links and summaries for his most recent appearances on the show:
Tuesday, 01/22/13 – Batchelor Fourth Hour | John Batchelor Show:
[…] robotic mission to ISS, private space enterprise to mine asteroids. The plans and proposed launch schedule of the new asteroid mining company, Deep Space Industries. They aim to do their work using cubesats, which will keep everything cheap and simple, with the first launches by 2015, and the first sample return missions by 2016. Their new manufacturing technology appears to be a variation of 3D printing, though the descriptions so far released remain vague on details.
[…] deep worry for Kepler: Even as the Kepler mission struggles to survive, the science team has released its entire database of exoplanet candidates to the public.
Thursday 01/24/13 Batchelor Fourth Hour | John Batchelor Show:
[…] Science: 1. A research plane has crashed in Antarctica, three missing. New balloon record in Antarctica. Balto 1925: the Anti-Balto, 2013: The polio virus has spread from Pakistan to Egypt.
[…] manned space: Opportunity celebrates its 9th anniversary. 1. Structural braces are being added to the first Orion capsule because of the cracks found. 2. Chinese space program gets speeded up? 3. Russia is threatening to abandon Baikonur because of demands made by Kazakhstan.
A week of remembering
This week marks anniversaries for three tragedies for NASA and the United States:
- Apollo 1 – January 27, 1967 – a fire in their capsule during a test on the pad kills three Apollo astronauts:
- Challenger STS 51-L – January 28, 1986 – leak in a seal between segments of a solid fuel rocket booster led to the failure of the vehicle during launch and the deaths of the crew members:
- Columbia STS-107 – February 1, 2003 – damage from falling ice, which had built up on the top of the external tank, to a thermal protection panel on the wing led to failure of the wing during re-entry and the deaths of the crew members:
Here is a sampling of articles and commentary about these events (I will be adding more as the week goes by):
Asteroid 2012-DA14 to pass earth closer than GEO-sats
NASA’s ScienceCast program reports on the upcoming close fly-by of asteroid 2012-DA14:
On Feb. 15th an asteroid about half the size of a football field will fly past Earth closer than many man-made satellites. Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, astronomers have never seen an object so big come so close to our planet.
Open Source Aerospace Wiki
Andrew Edwards, founder of the Open Source Aerospace Wiki sends this announcement:
Aerospace Technology is Open for All
For the 41st anniversary of the first moon landing, the private space industry is making one huge leap by opening the Open Source Aerospace Project at www.openspace.wikia.com. This new project is an attempt to make the aerospace industry less expensive and open for all. The OSA project is an open wiki and online forum full of technology, science, and ideas in the private space industry so they may be built upon and further developed by industry professionals. This project helps small companies by making research less expensive since technology can be criticized and get input from all industry professionals, and will also push the entire industry forward by making new technologies and ideas open to all.
The Open Source Aerospace Project hopes to partner with other organizations such as eSpace and MIT to help move along the idea and the industry in general, and has already contacted or added input from both. The project hopes to get more than just engineering advice from MIT, since it also hopes to include all aspects of aerospace. The goal of this project is not just to develop and open technology, but air movement, astronomy, theories and anything that can change the industry.
If all goes well, this could be a major move for private spaceflight. From programming a site in a small apartment to launching humans into the heavens above, we see history repeated from the recent computer industry. In years to come it will be the large companies, and the small providers working together with these open ideas that will make this industry work. It is only up to us to see what the next big step is until we reach higher and higher to space.