It’s news to me that NASA is planning annual missions to the moon.
Lockheed Martin is and will continue to actively produce three Orion spacecraft simultaneously for upcoming lunar missions. The goal is to eventually deliver one spacecraft each year for Artemis missions. This will establish a near consistent presence on the lunar surface by both US and international astronauts.
It will be interesting to see how NASA and SpaceX differ in their approaches and successes. As ambitious and inspiring as Artemis is, SpaceX’s plans for Mars are even more so. However it remains to be seen what will transpire in actuality.
In the end, the profit motive and a culture of fast progress in startups seems to always prevail over the institutional nature of government agencies.
Huge fan of NASA and always rooting for them. Although there is a problem because the Artemis missions will have to be basically perfect. They went to the moon more than 50 years ago and the public and congress would never accept a failure.
Just to think what they did 50 years ago. This video is a favorite. Some really smart people restored and rebooted an Apollo mission computer that was found in a scrap heap.
When Elon Musk turned off Starlink over the Black Sea in order to deliberately undermine Ukraine’s war effort, he did NASA a huge favor.
NASA is in zero danger of being defunded, even if Artemis has significant problems. The simple reason is that the US government needs a presence in space that it can completely control. Private space companies will not always act in US interests alone, as we have seen.
Having a permanent presence on the moon, populated by US and other “friendly” astronauts is a wonderful thing. However we should not be naive and think it is only in the name of science and progress for all of humanity.
In this respect you are absolutely right. I wonder when humanity will cross the line and install the first space-based weapons. Hopefully it will never happen, but it is probably inevitable. The first country to do it will hawk their right to defend themselves.
This has got to be one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long while. It is called SpinLaunch.
It is a device built in the New Mexico desert that contains an arm that spins very quickly, like a clock hand. It spins in a vacuum and a small rocket with a payload is attached to the end of the arm. When the rocket reaches 5,000 mph, the arm releases it and the rocket goes flying upward into space.
Fuel is required only for the very last stage of entering orbit, allowing the rockets to be much smaller and carry much less fuel.
Not to be a downer, but Spinlaunch, despite being an impressive concept, has enormous technical challenges ahead.
The energy requirements to get the centrifuge up to speed could make it less efficient than simply taking the rocket to high altitude on an airplane.
When the projectile is launched out of the vacuum, it will hit a wall of enormous atmospheric drag. This, again, could require more energy to overcome than a high-altitude aircraft launch.
The forces placed upon the launch system to generate the required speed of the projectile will be immense. Basically, it is dangerous. Not to mention the stress it will put upon the payload. Hard to imagine sensitive electronics surviving the forces of the launch.
To be adopted, the overall concept will have to be significantly cheaper, and more environmentally sound than launching from an aircraft.
Hope all this is wrong. Great visionaries are always met with skeptics. I will be rooting for them.
I thought I would create a thread dedicated to all things that fly. It is a place for discussion and information on new technologies, regulation, as well as the aerospace and aviation industries. Please feel free to post; and thanks for stopping by!
CFM Rise, if successful, will be the largest single leap forward in engine design in more than a generation. It will reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by 20% over current conventional engines.
I just wonder if the engine would be unbearably loud? So much work has gone into noise reduction, it seems like a step back in that regard.
That being said, there are a number of innovations in the design:
It has an open-fan architecture (unducted) that increases efficiency and lowers carbon emissions by maintaining traditional turbofan speeds and performance without the need for a casing around the fan.
The lightweight carbon-fiber fan blades are variable-pitch, allowing for higher bypass ratios.
The engine core incorporates Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMCs) that are also lightweight and withstand extremely high temps. 3D-printed additive parts are also incorporated.
Recuperators recover the energy wasted by the exhaust heat.
The video below goes into greater detail. But one still wonders how loud would it be?
Another example of why space science is worth the cost, even with seemingly more pressing issues here on Earth.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe recently flew through a massive solar outburst known as a coronal mass ejection (CME). It was on the far side of the sun, and lasted nearly two days starting on September 5, 2022. The spacecraft, located just 5.7 million miles from the sun’s surface at the time, managed to survive.
If this CME hit Earth instead, it could have caused continent-wide blackouts. This has actually happened before, the most famous incident known as the Carrington Event in 1859 - which caused sparking and fires at some telegraph stations.
The charged particles in the solar wind attain speeds of 3 million mph; and the probe aims to understand how that velocity is attained. They are also seeking to understand why sun’s corona is much hotter than its surface. This knowledge can help predict and prepare for future massive solar outbursts that reach Earth.
The Boeing 777X will begin deliveries in 2025, directly competing with the Airbus A350 in the lucrative long-haul wide-body aircraft market. Both aircraft are designed to serve similar routes, however they cater differently to airlines’ needs.
Price: Advantage Airbus - $317m to $366m while the Boeing is $410m to $442m
Capacity: Advantage Boeing - 384 to 426 out sizing Airbus at 315 - 369
Range: Advantage Airbus - 16,112 km over Boeing’s 13,500
Comfort: Tie - both offer passenger features like intelligent pressurization & mood lighting
Fuel Efficiency: Advantage Airbus - the A350’s RR Trent XWB engines in addition to lightweight composite materials, and advanced aerodynamics give the edge the Airbus
