Zarya, the first component of the International Space Station, launches flawlessly at 1:40 a.m. EST on November 20, 1998, from Kazahkstan (Credit: NASA)

Russian funding for the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is likely to be cut significantly in the years ahead as Roscosmos shifts its focus toward the new Vostochny spaceport in the Russian Far East:

“In the earlier versions of the Draft Budget 2016, subsidies for Baikonur maintenance were at around $70.4 million,” CEO of the Center for Operation of Space Ground-Based Infrastructure Sergey Lazarev said, “These funds were supposed to be spent on salaries and maintenance of the cosmodrome’s facilities. We asked for more. But when our representative in the Ministry of Finance was shown the final draft, the subsidies made zero. In fact, this could mean that Baikonur will be left without any funding whatsoever.”

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Dream Chaser shuttle. (Credit: NASA)

SPARKS, Nev., Aug. 4, 2014 – Sierra Nevada Corporation’s (SNC) Space Systems is pleased to announce it is expanding its relationship with the University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder) through the signing of a letter of cooperation with CU-Boulder’s BioServe Space Technologies (BioServe). Through the cooperation, SNC and BioServe will jointly explore ways the Dream Chaser^® Space Utility Vehicle (SUV) can serve as an orbital platform for scientific experiments in microgravity and space life science research.

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Space News reports that International Launch Services is laying off a quarter of its workers due to various issues affecting the Russian Proton launch vehicles the company commercial markets. Officials cited three unrelated issues for the staff reduction: recent failures of the Proton, which have grounded the vehicle for months at a time and made it difficult to market; rising tensions between Russia and Western nations over Ukraine, which has […]

Artist’s conception of the proposed SpaceX commercial launch facility near Brownsville, Texas.

AUSTIN, Texas (Rick Perry PR) — Gov. Rick Perry has announced the state is offering $2.3 million from the Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) to bring SpaceX’s commercial rocket launch facility to Cameron County.

Contingent upon final approval of local agreements and receipt of additional required permits, this facility will create 300 jobs and pump $85 million in capital investment into the local economy.

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Hope we’re not just the biological boot loader for digital superintelligence. Unfortunately, that is increasingly probable

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 3, 2014

By Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

Sunday is traditionally a day of rest. However, for some it is given over to pondering where our rapidly advancing technology is taking us as we barrel at exponential speeds through a series of disruptive game-changing pivots on our way to Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity, where we will all happily merge with our super intelligent machines.

Or something. You can probably tell I’ve recently been in Silicon Valley.

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This week on The Space Show with David Livingston: 1. Monday, August 4, 2014: 2-3:30 PM PDT (5-6:30 PM EDT, 4-5:30 PM CDT): NO SHOW AS I AM AT AIAA SPACE 2014 CONFERENCE. 2. Tuesday, August 5, 2014:,7-8:30 PM PDT (10-11:30 PM EDT, 9-10:30 PM CDT): NO SHOW AS I AM AT AIAA SPACE 2014 CONFERENCE. 3. Friday, August 8, 2014, 9:30 -11 AM PDT (12;30-2 PM EDT; 11:30-1 PM […]

In this concept image, the robotic vehicle deploys an inflatable bag to envelop a free-flying small asteroid before redirecting it to a distant retrograde lunar orbit. (Credit: NASA)

It’s been four years since President Barack Obama announced that NASA would send astronauts to an asteroid sometime in the mid-2020’s. And more than a year has passed since the space agency unveiled a plan to retrieve said asteroid and return it to the vicinity of Earth so the astronauts wouldn’t have to travel so far.

And yet, NASA still faces an uphill battle to sell the mission to skeptics in Congress and the scientific community. Opposition to the plan surfaced again last week from multiple quarters, raising questions about whether the mission will survive after Obama leaves office in January 2017.

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Some news out of Midland, Texas, where concern over the impacts of Lynx rocket flights on the lesser prairie chicken have been a concern in Midland International Airport’s spaceport license: The Midland International Airport sent a statement to NewsWest 9 saying the Department of Airports and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services agree there could be some effect on the birds. So both agencies will be monitoring the first five […]

Martian moon Phobos

If at first (second, third and fourth) you don’t succeed, the fifth time’s the charm.

That’s at least what Russia’s Space Research Institute is hoping. The institute is once again planning an ambitious mission to the Martian satellite Phobos despite repeated setbacks in exploring the potato-shaped moon over the past 25 years that are part of a half century of failure at the Red Planet.

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LOS ANGELES AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (ORS PR) — The Space and Missile Systems Center’s (SMC) Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) Office, in partnership with SMC’s Space Superiority Systems Directorate and Advanced Systems and Development Directorate, is developing a new mission to answer a United States Strategic Command need for Space Situational Awareness of the geosynchronous earth orbit belt. The Defense Space Council and ORS Executive Committee approved this mission for SMC’s ORS Office located at Kirtland AFB, N.M.
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