Image Credit: Founders Fund An interesting article from WSJ.com from Elon Musk friend and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel challenging the notion that open and widespread competition is an ideal to be pursued. “Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on […]
A general roundup of SpaceX news as the latest launch week begins. Tweets from Aviation Week coming from a conference in Paris relay that SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told an audience that the company had signed 9 new launch orders including possibly “2 to 3 Heavies” Once confirmed, it would would be solid counter to […]
Artists’ Concept of a Third Generation Chinese Station. Image Credit Xinhuan.net Following the success of Tiangong 1, China announced last year that after another round of development with the follow on Tiangong 2 station, that it is planning to open up its considerably more advanced third generation station to international astronauts. Unfortunately, an ongoing ban on […]
Last Minute Loading Prior to CRS-2. Image Credit: Stewart Money For weeks, NASA’s official launch calendar has listed the date of the next SpaceX mission to the International Space Station, CRS-4, as NET (No Earlier Than) September 19. The CRS-4 mission marks the fourth in what was planned as a rapid fire series of launches […]
Image Credit: Arianespace Industry leader Arianespace reached a historic milestone yesterday, conducting the 75th launch of the Ariane V rocket. It was also the 61st consecutive successful flight for booster, which lifted off in its traditional duel payload configuration, carrying two satellites, MEASAT-3b and Optus 10. In typical fashion, Arianespace was not shy about touting […]
Image Credit Virgin Galactic Confirming a schedule slip which comes as no surprise, Virgin Galactic is now estimating that the first passenger flight (with founder Richard Branson aboard) will not take place until February or March of 2015. 2015. The comments from the flamboyant businessman and adventurer came during an appearance with David Letterman on […]
Long time Russian space observer James Oberg has penned a very interesting article at NBCnews.com which suggests that Russia is subtly attempting to get the U.S. government to acknowledge its absorption of the Crimea by shifting some mandatory cosmonaut training to that region. From the article: “Shifting the survival training to Russian-occupied Crimea will require […]
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ A true color image taken on August 15 NASA is looking back at the Curiosity Rover’s path across Mars today. Meanwhile, perhaps stung by publicity from a Senior Panel Review which questioned the scientific return of the mission, the space agency has scheduled a teleconference for 1:00 pm EDT […]
Image Credit: NASA/Rad Sinyak NASA.gov has the following “story” regarding the Orion spacecraft. It is difficult to decide what to make of the headline, just as it is for the entire SLS/Orion program as a whole. Depending on your perspective, the claim that “Orion’s First Crew Module Complete” could be considered to be perfectly accurate […]
Innerspace.net Commentary With the passing of the first week in September, NASA is presumably within a few weeks of announcing the winner or winners in the next phase of its Commercial Crew program. That phase, labeled Commercial Crew Transportation Capability or CCtCap, will see the selection of which firm is going to provide crew transport […]
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