The $2.9 billion NASA funding for the SpaceX Lunar Starship means that a Starship will get man-rated for four astronauts. This means getting the chance of loss of crew less than one in 500 for a lunar landing. SpaceX Lunar Starship will only initially support four astronauts because the launch will be performed by SLS …
Unlocking water and resources on the moon and asteroids will be a huge breakthrough for space development. It will give us water, building materials, and propellants. Water is the most critical component in the near-term and is therefore the focus of many studies. However, being able to mine other resources with the same system will …
Lunar Resources, Inc has a NASA NIAC grant to perform an end-to-end system-level study of how to build a very large low frequency (5-40 MHz) radio observatory. Lunar Resources’ novel lunar resource extraction and space manufacturing technologies are enabling more than 95% of the observatory’s mass to be extracted and then manufactured on the moon. …
NASA has selected SpaceX to continue development of the first commercial human lander that will safely carry the next two American astronauts to the lunar surface. NASA is still going to use the overpriced Space Launch System rocket to launch four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft for their multi-day journey to lunar orbit. There, two …
Space Telescope Design That Will Be 400 Times Better at Finding Asteroids
3 Mile Wide Lunar Crater Radio Telescope for the Far Side of the Moon
Limitless Space Institute gave out nine interstellar space-related grants for about $1 million to 2 million each. Phil Lubin’s direct laser propulsion group received a grant and they will use to prove out their directed laser propulsion system at the 10-20 watt level. They are also working on components at the kilowatt to tens of …
Could space tourism enable lunar and orbital colonization to reach critical mass? I view colonization critical mass to be over 300k people. Around 1745, the American colonies passed a population of 1 million. This population had doubled twice from 250,000 people in 1700 and nearly tripled by 1780 to 2.7 million. SpaceX Super Heavy Starship …
Elon Musk spoke with Joe Rogan about getting Mars colonization to the point where it would be self-sustaining without additional supplies or support from Earth. The entire point for Elon is to sustain the species indefinitely. Joe Rogan also asked Elon about aliens. Elon answered that there either many aliens or no aliens. Nextbigfuture believes …
Researchers from the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) report contactless H2 production via water electrolysis mediated by the microwave-triggered redox activation of solid-state ionic materials at low temperatures (less than 250 °C). This will simplify and significantly cheapen the process for hydrogen production. Water was reduced via reaction with non-equilibrium …
A new study finds 40,000 square kilometers of the lunar surface has the capacity to hold water, which is about double previous estimates. 0.15% of the lunar surface is permanently shadowed, with ~10% of this area distributed in patches smaller than 100 m, that is at scales smaller than previously mapped by LOLA topography-based illumination models. …
