Rockets, Solar Sci-Fi, Space books

The Rocket Company: Chapters 17-20

In the continuing serialization of the updated version of the book The Rocket Company by Patrick J. G. Stiennon and David M. Hoerr, with illustrations by Doug Birkholz.  This week you can obtain the following chapters of the book:

Download these within the next week or so. Only four chapters will be available at any one time.

See also the electronic version of the updated book is available at  The Rocket Company eBook by Patrick Stiennon, David Hoerr, Peter Diamandis, Doug Birkhol: Kindle Store/Amazon.com.

Activism, Events, Future space

SpaceUp unconference schedule + Finding Starship Congress talks on video

There are several SpaceUp “unconferences ” coming up this fall.  See if one is near you:

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I’ve enjoyed watching many of the talks at the recent Icarus Interstellar  Starship Congress event in Dallas (see earlier post here. The videos are up to 12 hours long so it took some searching to find a particular talk. Now, however, the program schedule has links directly from each talk to the position on the video where it starts: Schedule | Icarus Interstellar

Uncategorized

The Skylab story

Space historian Roger Launius writes about the sad fate of Skylab, America’s first space station: Was NASA Serious about Trying to Rescue Skylab? – Roger Launius’s Blog.

Jim Oberg points to his earlier article on Skylab: Skylab’s Untimely Fate: James Oberg tells the sad story of how the United States abandoned the largest space station ever built and spent a quarter century trying to regain the capability – Air & Space, February/March 1992, pp. 73-79.

Rockets, Space Systems

NASA MSFC Mighty Eagle to fly today + Morpheus Lander video of latest test

NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center’s Mighty Eagle vertical takeoff and landing vehicle will try a tethered flight test today. See updates at Mighty Eagle (NASAMightyEagle) on Twitter.

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And here is a video of yesterday’s tethered flight test of the NASA JSC Project Morpheus lander:

Caption:

The Morpheus team successfully completed Tether Test 30 with the Bravo vehicle at Johnson Space Center on Thursday, August 29, 2013. All test objectives were met within the ~63 second flight including ignition, an ascent of 5 meters with 15 seconds of hover at the apex, a 3 meter backwards lateral translation, another 15 seconds of hover, and a forward slant descent to “landing” (at the end of the crane tether) using free flight guidance. The Morpheus team plans to travel to KSC in early October to begin our free flight test campaign!

DIY space, Space Systems

Copenhagen Suborbitals: Video – Testing Suited up Egress Procedures in Tycho Deep Space II

Here’s a new video from Copenhagen Suborbitals about the space suit tests:

While donned a DIY space suit – a range of egress tests where performed with Tycho Deep Space II to learn about the next steps of the interior capsule design, hatch and seating.

Everyone can participate in space