The NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis is nearing the end of the shuttle program’s final flight, and the United States is betting the next generation of American space flight will come from private commercial enterprises. Although efforts are already underway for private sub-orbital passenger service via Virgin Galactic, Elon Musks’ SpaceX is going in an entirely different direction: the firm has just broken ground at Vandenberg Air Force Base for a launch facility for its Falcon Heavy rocket.
When it’s completed, the Falcon Heavy will be the world’s most powerful rocket since the Saturn V vehicles that took Apollo astronauts to the moon, generating some 3.8 million pounds of thrust from 27 engines. The Falcon Heavy should also be the first vehicle to break the $1,000-per-pound pricing barrier for getting material to orbit—that’s about a tenth the cost of hoisting materials into orbit with the Space Shuttle—and the vehicle itself costs just a third of the price of the Boeing/Lockheed Delta IV Heavy, currently the workhorse of the commercial satellite and Department of Defense launches.
SpaceX hopes the Falcon Heavy—alongside the medium-lift Falcon 9—will be the go-to next-generation launch vehicles for everyone from the U.S. Air Force to NASA to the Department of Defense to commercial satellite operations.
“These are difficult fiscal times for our federal government and the Falcon vehicles can save the Department of Defense almost $2 billion per year in launch costs, while increasing reliability and capability,” said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, in a statement. “This presents a great opportunity for the DoD to avoid canceling other programs and minimize reductions in personnel as budgets contract.”
The first Falcon Heavy is expected to get to Vandenberg by the end of 2012, with its inaugural flight to follow shortly thereafter.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.