Critical challenges and technology development for colonizing and developing the moon are being performed. This includes getting oxygen, water, and metals like Aluminum from the lunar soil. There is In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) related to water-ice and other materials in lunar Permanent Shadowed Regions (PSRs) and extracting O2 and metals (or metalloids) from regolith in …
Matloff and Joseph Meany conceptualize a large solar sail made of aerographite which would only use the Sun to power a long term interstellar mission. It is based on an inflatable, hollow-body sail. This is updating concepts that goes back at least to the 1980s. Matloff and Meany set up an aerographite-graphene variant using a …
The NY Times discussed the NASA funding of Icon to send 3D printers to the moon for the construction of buildings. NASA scientists are currently working to perfect a replica of lunar concrete. In the first half of 2024, NASA plans to test ICON’s printers. “If you can survive our [vacuum] chambers, then you’re very …
China is planning dozens of missions to the moon to first build a research base and then convert it into a multifunctional international moonbase. They plan to employ 3D printing and production of bricks from the lunar regolith. More than 100 researchers from domestic universities, research institutes and space contractors took part in the Extraterrestrial …
There is some debate on how many people could fit inside SpaceX Starships that are converted into Space Stations. We can get a better maximum estimate by looking at the Apollo mission and German and American submarines. Apollo’s Command Module had a diameter of 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) and a height of 11.4 feet (3.47 …
There was a lot of designs for Space stations created in the 1980s when space enthusiasts hoped to carry the Shuttles External fuel tanks into space. There were issues about making the large volumes habitable. A crewed SpaceX Starship will start off as a human habitable building block. The old shuttle ET (external tank) designs …
There are videos with renderings of SpaceX Starships connected into larger space stations with simulated gravity. This will be more and more important as NASA has announced they are working with SpaceX to make space stations using SpaceX Starships. I believe that the SpaceX Starship with seven $250,000 engines and steel construction can come down …
NASA announced they were working with SpaceX to make SpaceX Starships into Space Stations. The SpaceX Starship has more volume than the International Space Station. Ercx Space and Smallstars have used computer rendering and design to make detailed interiors of SpaceX Starship. SpaceX has said that in the future each SpaceX Starship could hold up …
NASA will partner with SpaceX to make Starship space stations. This is part of NASA partnering with seven U.S. companies to make advanced space capabilities. SpaceX is collaborating with NASA on an integrated low Earth orbit architecture to provide a growing portfolio of technology with near-term Dragon evolution and concurrent Starship development. This architecture includes …
By 2025, Space Startup Vast plans to launch its first space station module. Vast, a pioneer in space habitation technologies, plans to launch the world’s first commercial space station, called Haven-1. It is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to low-Earth orbit no earlier than August 2025, Haven-1 will initially act as …
There is a new meme called “Cozy Futurism” which is pretending that there a choice between colonizing Mars and fixing Earth-based poverty, inequality and homelessness. I think they are basing this on the historical example of the European countries that did not colonize the Americas from 1500-1800 and solved inequality, poverty and homelessness. Oh that’s …