Lifeboat Foundation

The SpiderFab manufacturing system would build huge structures in space using arachnid-like robots.

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The idea of an international “Moon village” promoted by the head of ESA has support from a U.S. government official who sees a commercial opportunity.

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NASA is a fan of making announcements about its forthcoming announcements, but so far it hasn’t failed to live up to its hype. First there was the discovery of the most Earth-like exoplanet to date, and just last month researchers shared evidence of salty, flowing water (!!) on the Red Planet.

So suffice it to say that when the US space agency says it’s got something big to share with the world, we’re going to pay attention, and this Thursday at 2pm EST it’s promising to announce “key science findings” about what happened to Mars’ now-thin atmosphere. We’ll be live reporting the announcement as it happens, and you can watch along with us from the comfort of your home or office below via NASA TV.

The question we’re all asking, naturally, is what the hell NASA might have in store for us. So far, we don’t have a whole lot to go on, but what we do know is that the research comes fom the MAVEN (Mars, Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) spacecraft, which has been orbiting Mars since 2014 and studying its upper atmosphere. These will be the first findings announced from the mission.

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This is the best news you will read all day: Star Trek is coming back. The franchise will get a brand new series in January 2017, one year after it turns 50.

CBS made an announcement today, stating that Alex Kurtzman, who co-wrote the two latest Star Trek films will be the executive producer for the new series, which will be streamed over CBS’ on-demand online service, CBS All Access. You can watch the premiere on TV, but after that you’ll have to subscribe to the $5.99/month service in order to see more episodes. It’s a clever ploy to bring in subscribers, because, really, who doesn’t want to see the next Star Trek series?

A Star Trek television show hasn’t graced the airwaves since Enterprise ended its four season run in 2005. This news is likely utterly thrilling to fans of the series that have contented themselves with movies and binge-watching episodes from the original Star Trek series, The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, and Voyager.

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The U.S. government is getting more serious about dealing with the dangers posed by powerful sun storms.

On Thursday (Oct. 29), the White House released two documents that together lay out the nation’s official plan for mitigating the negative impacts of solar flares and other types of “space weather,” which have the potential to wreak havoc on power grids and other key infrastructure here on Earth.

The new “National Space Weather Strategy” outlines the basic framework the federal government will pursue to better understand, predict and recover from space-weather events, while the “National Space Weather Action Plan” details specific activities intended to help achieve this broad goal. [The Sun’s Wrath: Worst Solar Storms in History].

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“Should astronomers be allowed to build the TMT on Mauna Kea? This question raises concerns that we, as practising astronomers, see as a reoccurring issue within the scientific community.”

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There are some very inexpensive ways of testing human effects of spinning motions and artificial gravity in space. We could probably do our first tethre based experiments, and our first short arm centrifuge experiments in space as well, within a year or two of deciding that this is a priority project.

But as for building such a module — it would be expensive to do the module — depending how it works. But not impossibly so. They actually had an idea to do this, the Nautilus X ISS demo, costed as between $83 million and $143 million at the time (2011) and requiring three years to develop, so if they had started then, it would be in space by now:

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To critics, it’s flat-out junk science, not even worth thinking about. But its inventor, Roger Shawyer, has doggedly continued his work. As Danger Room reported last year, Chinese scientists claimed to validate his math and were building their own version.

Shawyer gave a presentation earlier this week on the Emdrive’s progress at the CEAS 2009 European Air & Space Conference. It answered few questions, but hinted at how the Emdrive might transform spaceflight — and warfare. If the technology works, that is.

The heart of the Emdrive is a resonant, tapered cavity filled with microwaves. According to Shawyer, a relativistic effect generates a net thrust, an effect confirmed by various Emdrives he has built as demonstrations. Critics say that any thrust from the drive must come from another source. Shawyer is adamant that the measured thrust is not caused by other factors.

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