DailyDirt: Who Wants To Go To Space?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Reusable rocket technology has been a 'holy grail' of sorts for space exploration. Building reusable components is supposed to make space travel more affordable, but the Space Shuttle is the prime example of how that's not necessarily true, as it cost over an order of magnitude more than originally planned. Still, it should be possible to make reusable rockets that are cheaper to operate, and some private companies are figuring out how to do it. SpaceX hasn't quite gotten reusable rockets perfected yet (though, it has done it more than a few times with its Grasshopper vehicle). And depending on how you define a "rocket" -- Virgin Galactic & Scaled Composites have also developed reusable space vehicles.

• Blue Origin has successfully landed a rocket after it launched to a suborbital altitude. Elon Musk rightly points out that this isn't exactly the first time a suborbital rocket has landed in reusable condition, but it's still nice to see rocket technology improving and getting cheaper to operate. [url]
• Jeff Bezos is moving his space company to Florida to build and launch its rockets near NASA's government facilities -- the Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Blue Origin will be making its rocket engines in the good ol' USA, and its BE-3 engine is the one that will be reusable. (note: The BE-3 isn't as powerful as Blue Origin's BE-4 engine which is more comparable to SpaceX's reusable rocket.) [url]
• Lots of people credit Jules Verne for inspiring spaceflight, but the first proposal of rocket-based spaceflight actually comes from Canadian William Leitch in 1861. Leitch's paper was written 4 years before Verne's book "From the Earth to the Moon" -- and decades before plausible rocket-powered space plans from Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and American Robert Goddard were written. But does it matter who thought of something first, or who actually executes it? [url]

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Filed Under: elon musk, grasshopper, jeff bezos, jules verne, kennedy space center, konstantin tsiolkovsky, new shepard, re-usable rockets, robert goddard, rockets, space, space exploration, suborbital, william leitch
Companies: blue origin, nasa, spacex

DailyDirt: Plenty Of Spaceships... Sorta

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The number of ways to get a person into space is pretty limited at the moment. Only Russia and China have operational launch systems that can escape the Earth's gravity (with people as passengers). There are a bunch more spaceships in development, though, so if you really want to get into space without a Soyuz or Shenzhou, you'll have to be patient. There have been a few recent accidents, but it looks like engineers have figured out some of the problems.

• Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo crash was evidently caused by human error. Co-pilot Michael Alsbury prematurely unlocked the ship's braking system which deployed and led to a catastrophic structural failure. This spacecraft was designed with minimal automated systems to reduce complexity, but Virgin Galactic has added a safety feature to prevent this from happening again -- and the design philosophy that favors manual systems may need additional tweaking. [url]
• EmDrive is a theoretically impossible propulsion system that produces "anomalous thrust" which has been observed by at least two independent labs now. It's still not clear what is going on, but if this technology actually works, it would completely change the timetables for space travel. An EmDrive-powered vehicle could reach Pluto in 18 months -- instead of the years that it took New Horizons to do so. [url]
• If you want to just see the edge of space, there are more and more helium-balloon-like ways to get there. Stratospheric ballooning for space tourism might be a bit safer than a rocket to LEO, and maybe a little bit cheaper. (Who's counting pennies c-notes when we're talking about traveling to the edge of space?) [url]
• Blue Origin has tested its New Shepard suborbital system successfully, but it didn't recover its reusable booster stage. Ultimately, the New Shepard spaceship will hold 3 passengers and reach an altitude of 62 miles, but further unmanned testing will be done before passengers are allowed onboard. [url]

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Filed Under: emdrive, leo, new shepard, propulsion, shenzhou, soyuz, space tourism, spacecraft, spaceships, spaceshiptwo, stratospheric ballooning
Companies: blue origin, virgin galactic

DailyDirt: It *IS* Rocket Science, Actually...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Getting stuff into space is difficult. There are a bunch of different rockets that have been used over the last few decades, but the odds of a launch failure isn't quite zero yet. A few companies are making cheaper launch systems, but a perfect track record is hard to maintain over more than a handful of launches. Perhaps that's why sentient robots in the movies never think about leaving the Earth behind.

• SpaceX's recent Falcon 9 failure is a huge setback for SpaceX -- because the exact problem hasn't been identified yet. This incident will delay future launches until the cause of the explosion can be reasonably explained. [url]
• NASA's development of its Space Launch System (SLS) is going through its own delays, as reviewing committees are concerned that NASA is wasting $150 million on an interim rocket stage that will not be used again -- instead of putting that money towards a more powerful Exploration Upper Stage (EUS). Building an unmanned rocket stage that will need to be replaced someday by a stage that is rated for a crew doesn't seem to be a great use of limited NASA funding, but lacking the full funding to directly build an astronaut-friendly, Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO) vehicle forces NASA to create interim test stages. Our tax dollars at work.... [url]
• Three failed resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS) have occurred over the last 8 months. Orbital Sciences is shifting away from using 1960s-era Soviet rocket engines that were probably the cause of its launch failure last October. In May, a Russian re-supply mission put its cargo in the wrong orbit. And SpaceX's investigations are ongoing for its recent Falcon 9 explosion. There are actually a few other options for getting supplies to the ISS, and Orbital Sciences will be employing alternative launch systems to fulfill its contract while it works on its replacement engines. [url]
• The idea of using reusable rockets isn't unique to SpaceX. Blue Origin's New Shepard is being tested for its re-usability. The United Launch Alliance (ULA) has plans for a reusable Vulcan rocket that is recovered by helicopter. Airbus has also unveiled its reusable Adeline design which could start test launches in 2025. [url]

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Filed Under: adeline, beo, eus, falcon 9, iss, new shepard, re-usable rockets, rocket technology, rockets, sls, space, space exploration, vulcan
Companies: airbus, blue origins, nasa, orbital sciences, spacex, ula