Musk has scored bragging rights in the battle of billionaires in space after his SpaceX rockets beat competition from Bezos’s Blue Origin to launch National Security payloads for the U.S. Air Force.
For a few months in 2018, as NASA’s Dawn spacecraft used up its last drops of fuel, it gave scientists an incredibly detailed look at one of the strangest places in the solar system: Occator Crater.
Tesla is going to work with spaceships too. Enhanced partnership with SpaceX.
This is revealed by a new job position, for future designers who will range from electric cars to spaceships for Mars.
A couple of days ago SpaceX tested a prototype of the future Starship, the spacecraft that will be flying to the Moon and Mars. It was a rather raw reproduction, just slightly reminiscent of the style used in the digital rendering presentation. Today we discover that, as demonstrated by a new job place, Tesla’s may be called into the final design.
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WASHINGTON — The Air Force made the call to stick with SpaceX and United Launch Alliance as its launch providers for the next five years. Now it has to decide if and how to continue working with the companies that lost the National Security Space Launch Phase 2 competition — Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman.
An issue at hand is the termination of the Launch Service Agreement contracts that the Air Force awarded in October 2018 to Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman, as well as to ULA.
The purpose of the agreements was to help Phase 2 competitors pay for launch vehicle development and infrastructure. Blue Origin received $500 million; Northrop Grumman $792 million and ULA $967 million. The funds were to be spread out through 2024, and the Air Force from the beginning said the LSAs would be terminated with those companies that did not win a Phase 2 procurement contract.
Featured Image Source: ΔV Photos @DeltavPhotos via Twitter.
The United States reemerged as a space power with human spaceflight capabilities when SpaceX launched NASA Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) in May. The mission, referred to as Demo-2, was the first time the agency launched astronauts from American soil since the Space Shuttle fleet was grounded in 2011. A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, igniting a new era in human spaceflight. After a two-month-long stay at the orbiting laboratory, the brave pair returned aboard the Crew Dragon they called ‘Endeavour.’
Dragon Endeavour undocked from the space station’s Harmony module on August 1st. Astronauts Behnken and Hurley conducted a 19-hour return voyage. On August 2nd, Dragon reentered Earth’s fiery atmosphere at a speed of around 17,500 miles per hour with the astronauts aboard. The spacecraft experienced high temperatures over 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, it deployed its sets of parachutes to slow down and conduct a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. It was the first splashdown of an American spacecraft carrying crew in 45 years. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine shared his excitement -“We have Splashdown! Welcome home Behnken and Hurley!” he said. It is the first time the company returns humans from space. NASA and SpaceX recovery teams arrived to the spacecraft aboard the ‘Go Navigator’ ship to pick up the astronauts and Dragon. The vessel features a medical room and a helicopter landing pad.
It would be fun to die in Mars.
Imagine living in Texas a few decades from now and suddenly being possessed with the desire to visit the moon. Traditionally, the only way such a dream could become reality would be for you to go through the arduous process of becoming a NASA astronaut and then hoping that Congress would fund a back-to-the-moon program.
If SpaceX’s Elon Musk has his way, a new road will be devised to go to the moon — and Mars and beyond. The scrappy, entrepreneurial space launch company is planning to build an offshore spaceport to launch its Starship spacecraft. The rocket ship would not only fly to far distant destinations in space, but to similar offshore spaceports around the world. Travel to Europe and Asia would be cut from many hours to tens of minutes.
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As a child, Elon Musk would read comic books and sci-fi novels and dream of fantastical worlds. Now the tech entrepreneur is on the verge of visiting one.
Musk’s focus narrowed some 20 years ago while poking around NASA’s website. He noticed that there was no timetable for a manned mission to Mars. He later called the lack of vision “shocking.”
Musk, then already a millionaire from the sale of a software company, ditched Silicon Valley for Los Angeles, in order to be closer to the aerospace industry, and set his sights on the stars.
The U.S. Air Force on Friday awarded rocket builders United Launch Alliance and SpaceX contracts worth billions to launch national security missions for five years starting in 2022.
The awards represent the second phase of the military’s National Security Space Launch program, which is organized by the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles, California. Four companies — Elon Musk’s SpaceX, ULA, Northrop Grumman and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin — bid for the contracts, with the military set to spend about $1 billion per year on launches.
The NSSL awards represent nearly three dozen launches, scheduled between 2022 and 2026. ULA won 60% of the launches, and SpaceX won the remaining 40%.
The Starship, SpaceX’s under-construction ship destined for the moon and Mars, has taken its first flight.
