The Carnival of Space 393 is up at Universe Today
Meet Three People Who Intend to Die on Mars at Universe Today
More than 200,000 people have applied to the Mars One Project, and 663 candidates have been put on the shortlist. Eventually just 4 people will be packed into a spacecraft and blasted off to the Red Planet in 2018. Once they get there, they’ll need to survive with what they brought with them, and what they can scrounge from the surface of the planet. And then they’ll be joined every 2 years later by another crew of potential colonists.
Dina from Iraq/USA one of severalon the Mars One shortlist of Mars candidates
Achieving anywhere close to becoming a trillionaire who enables reusable rockets and some level of human colonization on Mars would put Elon Musk to the level a hero in a Robert Heinlein classic science fiction story.
Heinlein’s protagonists are typically geniuses, often with perfect memory and a love for mathematics.
Waves were to high for the drone ship, but the first stage successfully soft landed vertically into the ocean 10 meters from its target.
Ultimately, DSCOVR will be positioned at the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian point, 1,500,000 kilometers (930,000 mi) from Earth, more than four times farther than the Moon. SpaceX delivered DSCOVR to a parking orbit just under 200km, and the satellite will reach its final orbit 110 days after launch.
While extreme weather prevented SpaceX from attempting to recover the first stage, data shows the first stage successfully soft landed in the Atlantic Ocean within 10 meters of its target. The vehicle was nicely vertical and the data captured during this test suggests a high probability of being able to land the stage on the drone ship in better weather.
Two things are the most exciting for near term transformation of space capability
Spiderfab and Spacex reusable rockets.
Here is the Spiderfab update.
Improving and testing reliability and a lot of engineering would be needed to get to 100 kilometer structures.
Nextbigfuture focused on the second half with the talk by Young Bae.
Young Bae, Y.K. Bae Corporation – Propellant-less Spacecraft Formation-Flying and Maneuvering with Photonic Laser Thrusters
Young Bae used a diamond thin disk laser and increased the power to achieve 1.03 millinewtons of force with a laser photonic thruster.
It bounces lasers between mirrors. The bouncing amplification was 100-200 times.
He believes they can get bouncing amplification to 1000 times.
The mirrors can handle 50 megawatts per square centimeter and they are at 500 kilowatts per square centimeter.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.