DailyDirt: Moving To Outer Space (Temporarily)

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The number of ways to get people into space is at a record low right now, but some projects on the horizon are planning to get more people living in space in the not too distant future. Commercial space ventures are going to be shuttling (or capsule-ing, as the case may be) people to low earth orbit, and some other projects are aiming for more distant journeys. Here are just a few space exploration plans to keep an eye on if you still want to be an astronaut someday. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
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Filed Under: beam, colony, delta iv, iss, leo, manned missions, mars, mars one, orion, space, space exploration
Companies: bigelow, boeing, mit, nasa, spacex


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  1. icon
    Mason Wheeler (profile), 20 Oct 2014 @ 5:35pm

    Wasn't the record low about 100 years ago, when the number was 0?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    Mason Wheeler (profile), 20 Oct 2014 @ 5:38pm

    Also, from the Mars One criticism article:
    The lead author, Sydney Do, a Ph.D. candidate in aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, said via email that in his view “the Mars One Concept is unsustainable” because of the current state of technology and its “aggressive expansion approach” of quickly adding more and more people rather than keeping the settlement at a fixed size for a period of time.

    So even with well under a thousand planned colonists on the entire planet, people are warning about overpopulation issues? :P

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 20 Oct 2014 @ 6:42pm

    Could We Do A Space Elevator In Low-Earth Orbit?

    Just wondering about the practicalities of a shorter cable (say 150km) that isn’t anchored to the ground, but passes through the atmosphere at, say, stratosphere level. Something that can be reached by craft requiring less power than full orbital rockets.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    Roger Strong (profile), 20 Oct 2014 @ 7:15pm

    Re: Could We Do A Space Elevator In Low-Earth Orbit?

    Because a Space Elevator has its center of gravity out at geosynchronous orbit, it stays at one spot on the equator. A 150km cable would be in very low earth orbit, travelling VERY fast over the ground. The wind drag would rotate around.

    But that's OK. That's where a Rotovator - a type of Momentum Exchange Tether - comes in:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum_exchange_tether

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. icon
    Roger Strong (profile), 20 Oct 2014 @ 7:19pm

    Mars One's 2025 timeline has always been pure fantasy. Their economics for a manned trip are pure fantasy.

    That doesn't mean nothing good will come of it. They're planning an unmanned lander - paying Lockheed Martin to build a duplicate of their Phoenix Lander.

    http://www.mars-one.com/en/mars-one-news/press-releases/11-news/517-lockheed-martin-and-sstl- selected-for-mars-one-s-first-unmanned-mission-to-mars

    They've raised $544,026 collecting application fees. Now they just need to raise the other 99.9985% of the $350 million needed to build the lander. If they do that soon, perhaps LockMart can have it built by their 2018 launch date.

    And assuming they can con a second similar round of would-be astronauts to raise the same amount, then they just need to raise the remaining 96% of the $56.5 million Falcon 9 launch cost.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 20 Oct 2014 @ 7:31pm

    Re: Could We Do A Space Elevator In Low-Earth Orbit?

    Ah, “Rotovator” ... that sounds like what I was thinking of.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Nilsson, 21 Oct 2014 @ 5:02am

    I wanted to be a spaceman
    That's what I wanted to be
    But now that I am a spaceman
    Nobody cares about me

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Rekrul, 21 Oct 2014 @ 9:44am

    Inflatable modules?

    I don't know about anyone else, but if I were going to be spending time in an airless vacuum, I'd want nice, thick metal around me, not an inflatable bag. Yes, I know space suits are basically an inflatable bag, but they're also much smaller and you spend a lot less time in them. If a suit gets punctured, one person might end up dead. If an inflatable pod gets punctured, everyone in it might end up dead.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. icon
    John Fenderson (profile), 21 Oct 2014 @ 10:17am

    Re: Inflatable modules?

    This doesn't bother me at all -- mostly because in terms of protection from impacts, there's not much difference between one of these inflatable systems and having a hard shell. The things that can hit you in space are going very, very fast and have a lot of kinetic energy. They slice through the hull of a metal spacecraft as easily as an inflatable one.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. icon
    Roger Strong (profile), 21 Oct 2014 @ 12:22pm

    Re: Inflatable modules?

    Bigelow's inflatable modules use several layers of vectran, twice as strong as Kevlar. You'd be safer than in standard ISS modules.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Oct 2014 @ 3:52pm

    Re: Could We Do A Space Elevator In Low-Earth Orbit?

    link to this | view in thread ]


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