The Amazon CEO looks set to beat his SpaceX rival on an important milestone — being the first rocket billionaire to space aboard a Blue Origin capsule.
Jeff Bezos plans to travel to space next month as one of the first passengers carried by Blue Origin, the Amazon.com Inc. founder’s space company.
Mr. Bezos said in an Instagram post Monday that he will be one of the inaugural passengers on Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft, during its first crewed flight scheduled for launch from West Texas on July 20. Mr. Bezos said that his brother, Mark Bezos, will also be on board.
“I want to go on this flight because it’s a thing I’ve wanted to do all my life,” Mr. Bezos said in a video posted to Instagram. “It’s an adventure. It’s a big deal for me.”
## JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY • JUN 4, 2021.
# *A lovely single step bio-inspired process with some interesting complex benefits particularly for humans on Mars.*
*by holly ober, university of california — riverside*
Continue reading “A catalyst that destroys perchlorate in water could clean Martian soil” »
Article I just wrote about how going to Mars is actually good for protecting life on Earth, too.
People often lump going to Mars or the Moon into a this/that fight when it comes to bettering the life of the Earth and its inhabitants. But, it’s not that simple.
The technology we master in the pursuit of space colonization (starti n g at the Moon and Mars / space stations) will serve to advance that on Earth. The things we learn will help provide a guide for what to do on this future planet, and not just life beyond it. Sure, in-situ resource utilization/production will generate rocket fuel on extraterrestrial bodies. But, things like the NASA Kilopower nuclear reactor can lay the groundwork for alternative energies deployed on Earth at scale. I imagine thorium reactors will follow suit while we still try to deploy fusion at a consumer scale and not just a research basis.
The citizen astronauts flying to space with Inspiration4 this September are hard at work training for their mission at SpaceX HQ.
On Wednesday, the Houston-based firm organizing the mission announced it had reached an agreement with SpaceX to fly three additional private crew missions to the International Space Station. The missions will run through to 2023.
It’s an exciting chance for regular people to go to space. But beyond expanding space tourism, Axiom Space’s missions could serve another ambitious idea — to develop a successor to the International Space Station.
According to experts, the ISS would only need a tenth of the amount of fuel a year if it switched to ion drives.
SpaceX is going to be providing more rides to the International Space Station for private astronauts, on top of the previously announced mission set to take place as early as next January. All four of these flights will be for Axiom, a private commercial spaceflight and space station company, and they’re set to take place between early next year through 2023.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 spacecraft make up the first commercial launch system certified for transporting humans to the ISS, and they’ve already delivered three groups of NASA astronauts to the orbital lab, including one demo crew for its final qualification test, and two operational crews to live and work on the station. In May, Axiom and NASA revealed the details of their AX-1 mission, the first all-private launch to the ISS, which will carry four passengers to the station on a Crew Dragon to live and work in space for a duration of eight days in total.
NASA and SpaceX will be providing training to all four of the Axiom crews set to make the trip to the station. And while neither SpaceX nor Axiom has shared more details yet on what the other three missions will entail, or when they’re set to take place, four missions in two years technically absorbs all the existing capacity NASA has allocated for private astronaut missions, which is set at two per year, for 2022 and 2023.
Spoiler alert: some aren’t making it back alive.
The 22nd SpaceX cargo resupply mission will carry 5000 tardigrades and 128 symbiotic squid to the ISS to study the effect of space travel on the human body.
