Lifeboat Foundation

Mars mission with plasma rockets concept. NASA

Continue reading “Traveling to Mars with Immortal Plasma Rockets” »

Russian development of a nuclear rocket engine for deep space exploration to the moon and Mars received a funding boost of about $60 for 2016–2018.

The next president needs to invest the damn money that’s needed to get this entire thing going. No more deferring. No more dithering. If this turns out to be an impossibility, then we should just privatize the entire production and design process, get rid of the red tape, and just get it DONE before we get delay after delay and then, when we finally DO get there, we find the Chinese have already built a damned settlement.

Scientific Method —

A new, independent review of the Orion spacecraft is pretty damning.

Continue reading “A new, independent review of the Orion spacecraft is pretty damning” »

WASHINGTON — NASA estimates that SpaceX is spending on the order of $300 million on its Red Dragon Mars lander mission, a down payment on the company’s long-term ambitions for human Mars missions.

At a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s technology committee in Cleveland July 26, Jim Reuter, deputy associate administrator for programs in NASA’s space technology mission directorate, provided an overview of NASA’s agreement with SpaceX, announced in April, to support that company’s plans for an uncrewed Mars landing mission that could launch as soon as May 2018.

That agreement, in the form of an unfunded Space Act Agreement, does not include any exchange of funds between NASA and SpaceX. Reuter said NASA estimates it will spend approximately $32 million over four years, primarily in the form of NASA personnel providing technical support for SpaceX. About $6 million of that will be spent this fiscal year, he added.

Continue reading “SpaceX spending about $300 million on Red Dragon mission” »

When it happens, it will be a game-changer for space travel as we know it.

Ever really wanted to know what folks truly are thinking about?

A new experiment advances the idea that brain scans can teach us something about how the human mind works.

By Nathan Collins

Continue reading “Can a Brain Scan Tell What You’re Thinking? — Pacific Standard” »

We’ve had starchitects. Now we’ve got space architects. Oliver Wainwright meets the people measuring up the red planet for inflatable homes and farms made of moondust concrete.

I wonder, if NASA and/or SpaceX goes to Mars in the 2030’s as planned, by the time the 2050’s roll around a manned attempt to Ceres or Jupiter trojans might be attempted or perhaps an unmanned vehicle made on Mars beats this sail.

Japan’s space agency has its sights on unexplored asteroids as far away as Jupiter, a project that at one level draws on centuries of sail science.

Continue reading “Huge sail will power JAXA mission to Trojan asteroids and back” »

It was 47 years ago that NASA won the space race against the Soviet Union, and Apollo 11 astronauts first walked on the Moon.

And now American companies have pitched a series of new plans that would see the country finally return to the lunar surface… this time, alongside the Russians.

The collaboration between the two countries isn’t entirely surprising — Russia and America have been working together in space since their association on the International Space Station (ISS) first began in 1993.

Continue reading “The US and Russia are making plans to return to the Moon together” »