The latest newsletter of the International Space Elevator Consortium is now available on line: ISEC Newsletter – Oct.2013.
===
Here’s a nice infographic for the Mars One project: Mission Mars One – Graph.net.
Copenhagen Suborbitals: Video report on the TDS-80 capsule
Kristian von Bengtson at Copenhagen Suborbitals reports on the development of the TDS-80 capsule that they intend to fly on their HEAT2X rocket next summer: Video of TDS-80 Space Capsule Structure Assembly – and Vodka – Wired Science
Caption:
A demonstration of the very first structure assembly of the HEAT2X payload, TDS-80. A scaled down capsule for launch summer 2014 for re-entry data.
10 day simulation of mission in inflatable planetary habitat underway at Univ. North Dakota
The 10 day Lunar/Mars mission simulation by the North Dakota UND Human Spaceflight Laboratory has been underway since Sunday. (See earlier post.)
Three graduate students are living
inside an Inflatable Planetary Module, using a Pressurized Rover and two NDX-2AT space suits. All these elements were developed at the UND Space Suit Laboratory www.human.space.edu under a 3-year NASA grant.
.JPG)
You can follow their activities on the NDX Space Suit Projects. Here are their reports so far:
- NDX Space Suit Projects: Crew Report. Day # 2
- NDX Space Suit Projects: Commander Report. Day #1
- NDX Space Suit Projects: Crew Post. Day #1
- NDX Space Suit Projects: Crew Enters into the Habitat for their 10-day mission!
- NDX Space Suit Projects: First Time Test of two NDX-2AT Suits Simultaneously.
- NDX Space Suit Projects: Mission I Crew Members
- NDX Space Suit Projects: Tomorrow, Sunday 10-27 starts Mission I!
And a local newspaper story: UND starts a ten day lunar habitat experiment – WDAY | Fargo, ND (includes video news report):
Space policy roundup – Oct.29.13 [Update]
Yet more space policy/politics related items:
- Sustainability is not an Option: Space Frontier Foundation Laments $1.2 Billion J-2X Dead End – Space Frontier Foundation
- Dordain: ESA Pact Doesn’t Rule Out Defense Work – SpaceNews.com
- United Nations Takes First Big Step in Defending Earth From Killer Asteroids – NationalJournal.com
- Yale astronomer decries politicizing of science after dispute with NASA – New Haven Register
- UK Space Agency a success, say MPs – BBCs
- Space security: possible options for India – The Space Review
Update:
- Mars Needs Plutonium! (And so do Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Points Beyond) – The Planetary Society
- European Space Agency, OHB Blamed for Galileo Delays; Financial Penalties Forthcoming – SpaceNews.com
- Another year of sequestration would delay NASA missions – USA Today
- India is going to Mars! But don’t call it a space race – Washington Post
International SunSat Competition – Over $40k in prizes to be awarded
An announcement from the National Space Society and the Space Journal at Ohio University:
Participate in the International SunSat Competition
Over $40,000 in Prizes Will Be Awarded!
The National Space Society in affiliation with Ohio University is pleased to announce that the International SunSat Design Competition is now registering competitive teams. This two-year project is designed to link global scientific communities with university-based (and other) digital media labs for the purposes of advancing knowledge of space-based solar power satellites (SunSats) and illustrating their many Earth-energy applications.
If you are a space scientist, engineer, academic, business or digital media professional with an idea for moving space solar power closer to implementation, consider forming a team to join in this effort. And please forward this message to others.
In the first cycle of this competition, two First Place prizes of $10,000 and three Second Place prizes of $5,000 are expected to be awarded at the May 2014 International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles. For registered teams successfully completing the Feb. 2014 “significant progress point,” an additional $1,000 incentive can be earned, and $1,000 travel assistance will be awarded to winners.
Winning entries of 2014 and 2015 will be published in the Space Journal as Issue No.18: Top SSP Designs.
To learn more, check the SunSat Visualization Guidebook [pdf] and look at the SunSat Design Competition website.To see where the idea of a SSP Design Competition came from, take a look at SpaceJournal Issue No.16: Solar Power Satellites.To see how Ohio University’s Game Research in Immersive Design (GRID) Lab, with the help of Georgia Institute of Technology, University of North Dakota and others in academia, has experimented with making the advanced science and technology concepts of SSP more accessible to the public, view SpaceJournal Issue No.17: Creative Visualization of Space Solar Power.This competition is managed by Ohio University, the host institution for the Online Journal of Space Communication, but guided and juried by members of the National Space Society and the Society of Satellite Professionals International.