The Ad Astra Rocket Company has opened a Kickstarter crowdfunding effort to fund a high quality animation of their VASIMR plasma propulsion system: Animating VASIMR®: The Future of Spaceflight by Ad Astra Rocket Company – Kickstarter:
Category Archives: Rockets
Intro to hybrid rocket propulsion
Following up on the earlier post Rocket propulsion intro, here is an overview of hybrid rocket motors like that which will be used on the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo space tourism vehicle: Hybrid Rocket Overview, Part 2 – Space Safety Magazine.
Lowering costs for ESA manned space & for NASA Moon missions
Bob Clark points me to a couple of recent posts on his Polymath blog regarding manned space vehicle policies at NASA and ESA:
- On the lasting importance of the SpaceX accomplishment, Page 5: a letter to the European space industry – He “argues that Europe by emulating NASA’s commercial space program can produce a manned spaceflight capability and produce a launcher of comparable low cost to the Falcon 9”
- Budget Moon Flights: letter to NASA – Here he “argues that by following a combination of the commercial space and other cost-cutting approaches, the cost of a Moon mission can be cut perhaps by three orders of magnitude”
Rocket propulsion intro
A two part series on hybrid rockets starts with a nice introduction to the four main types of rocket propulsion systems: Hybrid Rockets: An Overview – Space Safety Magazine.
Morpheus Lander active today [Update 2]
Project Morpheus plans a tethered flight test today – Twitter / MorpheusLander:
Rise & shine friends! It’s a great day 4 a tether test
@NASA_Johnson Follow along to be astounded. Aiming for 1-2pm CT [2-3pm ET] .#rocketengine#ALHAT
You can follow developments via the posts at Morpheus Lander (MorpheusLander) on Twitter.
Update: Watch the test on line – Twitter / MorpheusLander:
We are planning a LIVE stream of the test! Tune in & watch between 1-2pm CT! http://morpheuslander.jsc.nasa.gov/live/ We’ll stream appx 30 mins before test!
Update 2: Here’s a video of the test: