Space  

In a surprise announcement, commercial space company, Blue Origin launched a test flight of its suborbital New Shepard spaceship and successfully demonstrated the space capsule. They were not able to land and recover its reusable rocket booster however.

Jeff Bezos' rocket company, Blue Origin has successfully tested its rocket, New Shepard in a sub-orbital flight in Texas.

"Our 110,000-lbf thrust liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen BE-3 engine worked flawlessly, powering New Shepard through Mach 3 to its planned test altitude of 307,000 feet."

"Our 110,000-lbf thrust liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen BE-3 engine worked flawlessly, powering New Shepard through Mach 3 to its planned test altitude of 307,000 feet," proclaimed Bezos in a press statement.

The highly secretive company, founded and run by the Amazon.com founder undertook the launch in a virtual media-blackout, and only announced that the launch occurred Wednesday, May 29th in West Texas, without giving any more details so far. The company did post videos and images of the launch on their website.

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Blue Origin with the impressive launch is now officially a commercial space race player. The company developed its own BE-3 rocket engine which uses at the cutting-edge of 21st century rocket engine technology.

The New Shepard launched with the capsule on top. The company also tried to retrieve the rocket, but that effort failed. "Unfortunately we didn’t get to recover the propulsion module because we lost pressure in our hydraulic system on descent. Fortunately, we’ve already been in work for some time on an improved hydraulic system," they report.

Blue Origin has also have developed an astronaut capsule. The New Shepard spacecraft is designed to launch at least three people on round trips to suborbital space.

"We continue to be big fans of the vertical takeoff, vertical landing architecture," states Bezos. "We chose VTVL because it’s scalable to very large size. We’re already designing New Shepard’s sibling, her Very Big Brother – an orbital launch vehicle that is many times New Shepard’s size and is powered by our 550,000-lbf thrust liquefied natural gas, liquid oxygen BE-4 engine."

The VTVL has also been recently attempted on multiple occasions by SpaceX, with their


SOURCE  Blue Origin

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 Space  

YouTuber ColdfusTion, looks at how certain billionaires' efforts to continue development of the space industry in a new video.  The piece examines Eric Anderson, Denis Tito,  Richard Branson and Elon Musk.

It is easy to be jealous of the world's billionaires, with their extravagant, luxury-filled lifestyles free of want and worry, but this image does not reflect the drive behind many of them, and their continued effort to push humanity forward.

The United States. hasn’t had manned spaceflight capability since it ended the Space Shuttle program in 2011.

In a new video from YouTuber ColdfusTion, the work of four billionaires continuing the race into space is examined.  The piece looks at Eric Anderson and Denis Tito, but presents more information on Richard Branson and Elon Musk.

Anderson serves as Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Planetary Resources, a company that plans to revolutionize current space exploration and help ensure humanity's prosperity for generations to come.

Planetary Resources' first experimental satellite is presumed destroyed in the explosion of the Orbital Sciences Antares rocket earlier this week, says its long-term development schedule won’t be thwarted by the incident.

Branson's Virgin Galactic has moved back the estimated launch dates for suborbital space flights from New Mexico so many times that company executives hesitate to offer new timelines, however Branson’s latest speculation is early 2015.

The company envisions a fleet of five rockets and two motherships, although the number depends on flight demand. To date, Virgin has taken deposits from more than 700 people to reserve seats, which cost $200,000 each.

SpaceX founder, Musk unveiled the commercial space venture’s second-generation space capsule earlier this year. The Dragon V2 space capsule will give NASA the ability to put up to up to seven astronauts into space for roughly $20 million a ride. That’s a fraction of the $71 million charged by Russia to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station.

Related articles Fox Plans Billionaire Space Race TV Drama  Planetary Resource's Arkyd Almost Ready For Space Prospecting  The Overview Effect

Other billionaires involved heavily in space are Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace and Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

Bigelow created Bigelow Aerospace with the express purpose of revolutionizing space commerce via the development of affordable, reliable, and robust expandable space habitats. Bigelow Aerospace's habitat will be flown to the International Space Station on a SpaceX rocket in 2015 for testing.

The more secretive Blue Origin, founded by Bezos, is developing technologies to enable human access to space at dramatically lower cost and increased reliability. "This is a long-term effort, which we’re pursuing incrementally, step by step," states the company. Blue Origin is focused on developing reusable launch vehicles utilizing rocket-powered Vertical Take-off and Vertical Landing (VTVL) technology.

SOURCE  ColdfusTion

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 Virgin Galactic  

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic has agreed to televise the space tourism company's first commercial passenger flight next August. Aboard the VSS Enterprise, will be Sir Richard, age 63, and his children, Holly, 31, and Sam, 28. The other passengers and crew have not yet been named.

Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and NBC have announced an exclusive multi-platform partnership to televise the inaugural commercial space flight of SpaceShipTwo. Next year, Branson and his children, Holly and Sam, will be the first private passengers to travel into space on SpaceShipTwo from Virgin Galactic’s terminal at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

NBC News' Peacock Productions will chronicle the journey across a myriad of NBCUniversal brands and platforms including MSNBC, CNBC, SYFY, The Weather Channel and NBCNews.com, culminating in a primetime special airing on NBC the night before launch, and a 3-hour live event on “TODAY,” hosted by Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie.

“Without a doubt, Sir Richard and his children taking the first commercial flight into space will go down in history as one of the most memorable events on television,” said Sharon Scott, President and General Manager, Peacock Productions.

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“Virgin Galactic is thrilled that NBCUniversal will join us on our exciting first journey to space,” said Branson. “In this first chapter of commercial space travel, we will help make space accessible and inspire countless more people to join us in the pursuit of space exploration and science innovation.”

Virgin Galactic is on track to be the world’s first commercial spaceline. To date, the company has accepted nearly $80 million in deposits from approximately 640 individuals, which is approximately 10% more than the total number of people who have ever gone to space. The new spaceship (SpaceShipTwo, VSS Enterprise) and carrier craft (WhiteKnightTwo, VMS Eve) have both been developed for Virgin Galactic’s vehicle fleet by Mojave-based Scaled Composites.

Founded by Burt Rutan, Scaled developed SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 claimed the $10 million Ansari X Prize as the world’s first privately developed manned spacecraft. Virgin Galactic’s new vehicles, which will be manufactured by The Spaceship Company in Mojave, Calif., share much of the same basic design, but are being built to carry six customers, or the equivalent scientific research payload, on suborbital space flights.

The vehicles will allow an out-of-the-seat, zero-gravity experience with astounding views of the planet from the black sky of space for tourist astronauts and a unique microgravity platform for researchers. The VSS Enterprise and VMS Eve test flight program is well under way, leading to Virgin Galactic commercial operations, which will be based at Spaceport America in New Mexico.


SOURCE  Virgin Galactic

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 Planetary Resources

Planetary Resources has recently shared their progress on the Arkyd space telescope they are developing to search for suitable asteroid mining targets. Presented by Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer, you can see one of the full scale Arkyd-100 mechanical prototypes.

Planetary Resources, the new company that plans on mining asteroids, has recently shared their progress on the Arkyd space telescope they are developing to search for suitable targets.

In the video below presented by Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer, you can see one of the full scale Arkyd-100 mechanical prototypes. The Arkyd-100 is to be used as Planetary Resource's space telescope and technology demonstrator for the Arkyd Series prospecting missions.

Much of the telescope has been designed and built in-house by the team at Planetary Resources. This is much the same way that Elon Musk and SpaceX have vertically integrated to drive innovation, control reliability, and keep costs down. This mindset and capability will allow the company to mass produce spacecraft at extremely low cost.

The Arkyd-100 is extremely small, and this will potentially cut the cost of deep space missions below anything the public has become accustomed to.

Planetary Resources put an incredible amount into 11 kg, from deployable solar arrays, to the integrated avionics bay, and an instrument and sensor package at the back of the comparatively large optical assembly, that dominates the volume of the spacecraft.  There has also been a lot of work put into the software driving all of these components.

According to Lewicki, the Arkyd-100 is the most advanced spacecraft per kilogram that exists today. "We’re drawing on our experience from traditional and private space exploration and combining it with exponential technology developments of the past few years and those to come in the next few years. With all of this we’re raising the bar on spacecraft design above anything that’s been done before."

The video also includes a tour of the Planetary Resources manufacturing facility, where they are building additional configuration prototypes. Using computer-controlled machining to create single piece parts that serve as major structural elements of the Arkyd-100 series, the engineers are driving simplicity and tight integration into the vehicle. The company's goal is evolve a process that allows just a few staff to deliver a finished spacecraft in a very short period of time.

Planetary Resources plans to share more information as they get closer to launching the first of their spacecraft.  More information is available from their media site.

What excites you most about the progress towards creating the Arkyd-100 series, the first commercial spacecraft capable of venturing into deep space?



SOURCE  Planetary Resources

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 Planetary Resources

Recently, Eric Anderson, co-founder of  Planetary Resources spoke at the NewSpace conference about the promising future of the company and what asteroid mining will mean to the global economy.

Since it was announced in April, Planetary Resources has been busy setting up the operation to mine asteroids in space.

According to the company, there are near-limitless numbers of asteroids and more being discovered every year. More than 1,500 are as easy to reach as the Moon and are in similar orbits as Earth. Asteroids are filled with precious resources, everything from water to platinum. Harnessing valuable minerals from a practically infinite source will provide stability on Earth, increase humanity’s prosperity, and help establish and maintain human presence in space.

The first lunch talk of NewSpace 2012 conference, company co-founder Eric Anderson talks about Planetary Resources and their plans for the future. —

Anderson serves as the CEO of Intentional Software Corporation, where he and his business partner, Dr. Charles Simonyi, Ph.D., have developed the “Intentional Knowledge Workbench” technology whose unique capabilities include drastically reducing the cost of encoding, processing, and utilizing knowledge. The Intentional Knowledge Workbench reduces costs & error incidences, accelerates innovation, and saves time in the development of software applications and other digital work products.

Anderson also serves as Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Planetary Resources, a company that plans to revolutionize current space exploration and help ensure humanity's prosperity for generations to come. Planetary Resources is bringing the natural resources of space within humanity’s economic sphere of influence.

Mr. Anderson is also a co-founder of Planetary Power Inc., a renewable energy company created to help satisfy the ever-increasing energy needs of our world in the 21st century. Planetary Power’s unique technology enables highly-reliable, low-cost access to the Earth’s most plentiful source of energy -- the Sun. As Chairman of Planetary Power, Mr. Anderson hopes to assist in bringing access to affordable, reliable and clean energy to the global population.

Mr. Anderson’s philanthropic efforts are focused on the Planetary Security Foundation, an organization dedicated to informing and educating the public about nuclear weapons, the greatest risk facing humanity’s future, and developing strategies for how that risk can be eliminated.

SOURCE  SpaceVidCast

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 SpaceX

It has already been two months since SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft completed its historic test flight to the International Space Station. Now the company has released a highlight video for fans and supporters.

On May 25, 2012 SpaceX made history when the Dragon spacecraft became the first privately developed vehicle in history to successfully attach to the International Space Station.

Previously only four governments -- the United States, Russia, Japan and the European Space Agency -- had achieved this feat. In celebration of this milestone for commercial space flight,  SpaceX has released an inspiring video featuring key milestones from the mission.

The highlights include:

May 22: Launch Day: SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launched the Dragon spacecraft into orbit from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

May 23: Dragon orbited Earth as it traveled toward the International Space Station.

May 24: Dragon's sensors and flight systems were subjected to a series of tests to determine if the vehicle was ready to attach to the space station.

May 25: NASA gave Dragon the GO to attempt berthing with the station. Dragon approached. It was successfully captured by the station's robotic arm.

May 26: US astronaut Don Pettit opened Dragon's hatch and the astronauts entered.

May 31: After six days at the International Space Station, Dragon departed for its return to Earth, carrying a load of cargo for NASA. SpaceX completed its historic mission when Dragon splashed down safely in the Pacific.







SOURCE  SpaceX Channel

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Elon Musk and SpaceX will be featured in a segment on the CBS 60 Minutes program on Sunday, March 18th.

“He’s already the first private citizen to launch a spaceship into orbit and bring it back to Earth, so it’s no surprise Elon Musk believes he will be the first entrepreneur to put a man into space, too,” says 60 Minutes‘ Scott Pelley.

Musk tells Scott Pelley the criticism of the commercialization of space travel from the very astronauts who inspired his quest is difficult to take. In an extensive interview, Musk talks to Pelley and allows cameras into his SpaceX factory for a 60 Minutes story to be broadcast Sunday, March 18 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

With the Space Shuttle program now retired, NASA does not have a vehicle to put Americans into space. The Obama administration has decided to farm out the next manned spacecraft to the private sector. Musk, the Internet billionaire who co-founded PayPal, has invested $100 million into his company, known as SpaceX, to compete for the contract. "I think we are at the dawn of a new era," he tells Pelley, about the government handoff of the manned orbital space program to the private sector. Does he believe his rocket will be the next American craft to put an astronaut into space? "I believe that is the most likely outcome," says Musk.