Copenhagen Suborbitals is expanding to a bigger facility to handle the growing size of their projects: Copenhagen Suborbitals Facility Expansion – Interior Layout Sketches – Wired Science.
You can open an on line 3D interactive sketch of the HEAT2X rocket and TDS80 capsule that will be launched next summer:
A NASA JPL aerial view of the path that Curiosity will take in the coming year as it winds its way to Mount Sharp:
John Grotzinger, Curiosity’s principal investigator, narrates an aerial tour of the rover’s past, present and future traverses on the Red Planet.
Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society
reveals the hidden features of this spectacular photo mosaic of the planet Saturn, as seen by NASA’s Cassini mission in 2013.
A NASA video of the gigantic Haiyan storm that hit the Philippines:
On Friday Nov. 8, external cameras on the International Space Station captured views of Super-Typhoon Haiyan which struck the central Philippines municipality of Guiuan at the southern tip of the province of Eastern Samar with a force equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane.
The incoherence of NASA policy is on full display this week. On Tuesday morning and apparently on an distant planet, NASA and reps of its biggest contractors held a choir meeting to sing the praises of the $3B per year SLS/Orion program*: Contractors Pitch SLS as Everybody’s Rocket – SpaceNews.com.
On Tuesday afternoon and back on earth, NASA and Robert Bigelow held a briefing to announce the findings of a study by Bigelow Aerospace into the potential for commercial firms to contribute to NASA’s deep space activities. The report (not yet released publicly) finds that NASA must rely on commercial partners if it is to accomplish anything in deep space because of the agency’s falling budget: Bigelow to press US government on lunar property rights – Space Politics
Today NASA and its Commercial Cargo programs held a news conference to hail the successful creation and operation of two rocket and spacecraft systems for less than half the cost of a single shuttle mission. The event included appeals to Congress to fully fund the Commercial Crew program.
So NASA is draining its smaller and smaller budget away on Orion and SLS (for which it cannot afford to build any payloads) and simultaneously it is supporting programs that create tremendous capabilities for a fraction of standard NASA costs. Truly a 21st Century Schizoid Agency.
Stephen C. Smith also notes the contradictions on display: One Way or the Other – Space KSC
More space policy/politics related items:
[ Update:
Here’s a video in which Robert Bigelow talks about the space property rights issue: Hotel tycoon Bigelow wants to establish private property rights on the moon – CNBC –
]
* Among a number of absurd statements made at the event, John Elbon of Boeing claimed that the SLS would offer similar per kilogram to orbit costs as Falcon Heavy and other commercial launchers. This, of course, is nonsense. It no doubt comes from using NASA’s notoriously nonsensical marginal cost numbers that don’t include development costs nor annual program costs but only the incremental materials and services costs to make the rocket.