colonization Archive

Nextbigfuture wrote about the designs for an improved nuclear thermal rocket by John Bucknell. John has worked as a senior engineer on the Spacex Raptor rocket. John provides high quality qualified work to his rocket designs and to his proposed …

John Bucknell presented at the Starship Congress 2017 his Nuclear Thermal Turbo Rocket and applied for a single stage to orbit mission of placing a space habitat. John Bucknell worked on the Spacex Raptor rocket as a senior engineer so …

Laboratory analyses of lunar samples provide a direct means to identify indigenous volatiles and have been used to argue for the presence of Earth-like water content in the lunar interior. Some volatile elements, however, have been interpreted as evidence for …

Elon Musk said “To really get the public real fired up, I think we’ve got to have a base on the moon.” “Having some permanent presence on another heavenly body, which would be the kind of moon base, and then …

An analysis by John Bucknell (x-Spacex senior engineer) describes an 11 meter diameter robotic vehicle with a 6,000-megawatt nuclear thermal rocket in a NTTR arrangement. The rocket would be single stage to orbit and would be immediately be able to …

Once propulsion challenges are overcome, allowing humans to travel great distances quickly without incurring significant radiation damage, Saturn’s moon Titan is the optimal location in the solar system for an off-Earth human settlement. It has Earth-like qualities and a thick …

The cheapest advertised price to launch people to LEO is a bit over $26 million/seat on a Falcon 9/Dragon which includes a stay at a Bigelow space station , also in development. Current estimates are that space colonists would need …