SpaceX founder Elon Musk took to the stage at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico on Tuesday to finally unveil to the public his company’s vision of a Mars transportation architecture capable of ultimately transporting hundreds of thousands of colonists to the Red Planet. Through the course of the presentation which began with a […]
During the course of a wide ranging interview on stage at the Code Conference 2016 in Broomfield, Colorado, SpaceX founder and CTO Elon Musk gave a bit of preview regarding his Mars colonization plans which will be revealed in September at the International Astronautical Congress in Monterrey, Mexico. While he was reluctant to give any […]
Opinionated Analysis The ping pong match between the House and the Senate over ULA’s request for more RD-180 engines for the Atlas V was in the hands of the latter yesterday, where the Senate Armed Services Committee once again insisted that the number be limited to 9 engines beyond tbose already ordered as part of […]
NASA and SpaceX are eagerly counting down to the launch of the CRS-8 resupply mission to the International Space Station later today. Liftoff, which must take place in an instantaneous window, is scheduled for 4:43 pm EDT from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40. The CRS-8 mission will mark the third flight of the upgraded […]
A pair of Elon Musk appearances conducted on opposite sides of the planet over the last few days have provided quite a bit of insight to the SpaceX founder’s short and long term plans, both for the company as well as for himself. As is so often the case, the long term vision is enthralling, […]
Update 1: After two aborts earlier during the day on Friday, SpaceX has completed a test firing of the Falcon 9 booster intended to launch the Orbcomm OG2 mission. According to Elon Musk, who provided occasional updates via Twitter, the first abort was caused by an upper stage throttle valve, while the second triggered by […]
Although the conclusions are still preliminary, SpaceX engineers believe they have tracked down the cause of last month’s spectacular failure of a Falcon 9 rocket in the skies over Cape Canaveral. The accident was apparently caused by the failure of a 2 foot long steel strut which was supporting a high pressure helium bottle. The bottle, which is located inside the […]
On Friday, October 24th, SpaceX founder and CTO Elon Musk sat down for a one on one interview as part of MIT’s AeroAstro Centenial Symposium celebrating 100 years of that institution’s contribution to aero and astronautics. The entire wide ranging interview (here) covers SpaceX, Tesla, Hyperloop and even electric supersonic aircraft, as well as Elon’s […]
Russia’s long awaited Angara booster lifted off today on a suborbital test flight which carried with it the hopes of a revival in the Russian launch industry after years decades of reliance on Soviet era boosters. The Angara 1.2PP or ML (Maiden Launch) Integrated Launch Vehicle (ILV) lifted off from the far northern Plesetsk cosmodrome […]
Note: This marks a substantial order for SpaceX, and a strong vote of confidence by one of the blue blood players in the ComSat industry. Thus far, and despite the ground breaking potential of the Falcon Heavy, commercial orders have been somewhat slow in coming. If today’s order ultimately results in three Falcon Heavy missions, […]
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