Space-vehicle design firm Andrews Space focuses on smaller products
Puget Sound Business Journal
A small Seattle designer of innovative outer space vehicles is staying competitive by thinking smaller, and by adapting itself to the increased emphasis on science research brought in by the Obama administration.
India and Russia complete design of new lunar probe
RIA Novosti
India and Russia have finished the design of a second unmanned lunar orbiter to be sent to the Moon in 2011-2012, the Indian Express newspaper said on Monday.
LOCKHEED MARTIN PRESS RELEASE
Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) announced that Pam Melroy has joined the Exploration and Science team as Director and Deputy Program Manager of the Space Exploration Initiatives (SEI) Program Office.
Melroy is a veteran Space Shuttle Commander and Air Force test pilot. She has flown three Space Shuttle Missions, served as the Deputy Project Manager for the Columbia crew survival investigation and the Reconstruction Lead on the Columbia Crew Module. She served as a lead test pilot for development of the C-17 aircraft and most recently has been working as the Branch Chief for the Astronaut office working on the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle.
Over at the Commercial Space Gateway, Richard Mains recounts an unusual presentation during last month’s NewSpace 2009 Conference that threw a bit of ice water on the idea of homesteading the moon:
The clearer view was represented by James S. Logan, MD, currently an Aerospace & Occupational Medical Officer, at NASA JSC. Reality emerged with his frank assessment of the accumulated biomedical evidence associated with the health risks of long-duration human exposure to spaceflight the space environment on other planets, but his focus was the Moon.
S. Korea’s first rocket set up on launch pad
Yonhap News
S. Korea’s first space rocket has been safely put onto its launch pad ahead of its historic launch scheduled for this week, the state-run aerospace institute said Monday.
The cramped Russian Soyuz is a far cry from the sleek Pan Am shuttle imagined in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
SPACE FLIGHT: Business of space fails to blast off as expected
The Washington Post
“It’s 2009, and we thought we’d be going to the moon on PanAm by now,” said John Pike, an analyst who follows the industry at the think tank GlobalSecurity.org. “We thought the number of rockets that would be launched each year would be more and more and it would get cheaper and cheaper, but it didn’t happen that way.”
The Space Review looks at military policy, human missions on Mars, Britain’s future direction in space, and more.
David Livingston’s guests on The Space Show this week include Bob Dickman, Bob Wilson, John Brandenburg, D.K. Sachdev and Paul Hardersen.
Artists conception of WhiteKnightTwo and the SpaceShipTwo space tourism vehicle. (Credit: Virgin Galactic)
Check written in boom times bought ticket for space flight
Anticipation of adventure helped developer through market’s plunge
Las Vegas Sun
The Monday morning after he saw the spaceship on television, [Ken] Baxter had his secretary call Virgin Airways and get Branson on the phone. She left a message. Branson called back.
The next year, Baxter wrote a large check and became Virgin Galactic’s first ticketed passenger.
Danger of Britain being left behind in space race
The Telegraph
Despite years of under-investment and the lack of a national space programme, the country has captured about 7pc of the space industry market.
But Andy Green, the chief executive of Logica, has warned this could be undermined as countries such as the US, India and China position their industries to benefit from the expected surge in international spending on new satellite communications technologies and software applications over the next 10 years.
NASA PRESS RELEASE
Inflatable aircraft are not a new idea. Hot air balloons have been around for more than two centuries and blimps are a common sight over many sports stadiums. But it’s hard to imagine an inflatable spacecraft.
Researchers from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., are working to develop a new kind of lightweight inflatable spacecraft outer shell to slow and protect reentry vehicles as they blaze through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.
Space Elevator: Science Fiction or Global Warming Cure?
PC World
Researchers gathered at the Space Elevator Conference on Thursday said that an elevator could make transportation to space so much more inexpensive than it is now, that companies could build large solar-power farms in space to provide energy for people on Earth. That could eliminate the need to burn fossil fuels and thus reduce global warming.
