Category: Space
Posts about space travel, technology and colonization.
The Key to Getting to Mars: Balloons
Okay, not balloons, exactly, but the next closest thing: inflatable habitation modules. With existing technology, the planned travel time to Mars is about six months. That’s a lot of time cooped up in a small […]
Commercial Space Taxis
A number of milestones were reached recently along the path toward the commercialization of space travel. The most notable was NASA’s awarding Boeing with a second order for carrying astronauts to the space station aboard […]
Antimatter Power: Practical or Not?
Since the 1960s and the first Star Trek episodes, the concept of antimatter as a power source has been in the main stream. How many times did we hear a line including loss of […]
Asteroid Mining a Step Closer
Earlier this week, the reality of asteroid mining came a step closer when President Obama signed into law the Space Act of 2015, which includes in it provisions that allow U.S. companies to mine asteroids […]
Space Elevator: Is it Feasible?
In 1895, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian rocket scientist, proposed using a free standing tower that would be placed on Earth’s equator and rise to the height of 35,800 km, or geosynchronous orbit. Once the tower was […]
Routine Access to Space – Sooner Than We Thought?
In a previous post on launch and reentry, I referenced Reaction Engines and their revolutionary SABRE (Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine) technology. This engine represents the closest we’ve come to developing true reusable space access. This week, […]
Halloween Skull Comet – Close Call or Business As Usual
Don’t you just love cosmic coincidences? Today (Halloween), a comet with a very skull-like appearance is passing very close to the Earth – about 1.3 times the distance to the moon or just more than 300,000 […]
Aliens? Or Just Dust?
Last week a star about 1400 light years away made some headlines with its unusual characteristics. That it garnered attention from SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) and many in the astronomy community, is noteworthy. That […]
Millennium Falcon vs. The Stellarator
If you found your way to this site, then you probably know the Millennium Falcon, the iconic spaceship depicted in the Star Wars films. The Stellarator is likely just slightly less well known, though bears […]
Dangers of Space Travel: Launch and Reentry
Space travel is dangerous – mostly during launch and reentry. Of the four fatal accidents during space flight, one happened during launch (Challenger), and three happened during reentry (Soyuz 1, Soyuz 11 and Columbia). The two […]
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