Military powered exo-skeleton to create future SuperAstronauts?

A quick note today on emergent technology. Right now, aerospace and defense mega-contractor Lockheed Martin is working with the military to develop the HULC exoskeleton. (That’s “Human Universal Load Carrier.”) The exoskeleton, which is moving into human beta-testing now, improves the endurance and load-carrying capacity of a given person nearly an order of magnitude. My […]

New Boeing spacecraft announced!

Boeing has jumped into the lineup of new spacecraft vying to fill the Space Shuttle retirement gap with the recent announcement of the Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 spacecraft. Similar in design to SpaceX‘s Dragon spacecraft, larger than NASA‘s Apollo Command Module spacecraft, but smaller than NASA’s canceled Orion spacecraft, (which may or may not end […]

Optical illusions to keep Astronauts sane?

DUS Architects, a public architecture firm out of Amsterdam, have recently premiered a public art piece called, “Unlimited Urban Woods.” It’s essentially a forest-in-a-box. With strategically-placed mirrors, the effect of “true” space – of standing in a vast, ordered orchard of trees – is apparently uncanny. While intended to provide residents of dense urban areas […]

Meet Philae, the Comet Hitchhiker

It is an exciting time for space exploration. The Cassini spacecraft continues to dazzle us from Saturn. The legendary Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity continue to prove their Herculean endurance on the desert planet. The MESSENGER spacecraft is en route to Mercury, and New Horizons is on its way to Pluto. -And, to my point […]

Space Race Ads, Society, and a Book Alert

This one hits close to home for me. I’ve been collecting space advertisements from the 1950s and 1960s for some time now, and I even have a few gems under glass hanging on my office walls. Why? Because they’re meant to inspire. Truly inspire. And not just through the now-dated imagery of flashy ships and […]

Astrowright Academy, t-minus 30 days

Well, it’s official. I’m accepted, registered, and signed up to begin the University of North Dakota’s Master’s of Science in Space Studies program this fall. The program is the first of its kind in the country, starting in the 1980s with state-of-the-art facilities, simulators, and a breadth of interdisciplinary course offerings, from orbital dynamics to […]

Orbital Skydive = Spacecraft Escape

It looks as though something of a duel is afoot between two ventures vying to be the first to break the sky dive altitude record set by military high-altitude-balloon-jumper Colonel Joe Kittinger in 1960. The magic number? -A staggering altitude of 102,800 feet above the Earth’s surface. Whoever is the first to do it will […]

Book Alert: Spacesuits (from Smithsonian)

A note on a a recently released book – entitled Spacesuits – by Amanda Young with photos by Mark Avino. Released by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the book includes never-before-seen images, plain language history, and gripping tales of the clothing that stood between our first off-world explorers and certain death. A must-have […]

(Declaration of) Space Independence

Well, being that we recently celebrated Independence Day here in the United States, I’d like to lob a few ideas into the fray regarding the political future of our own activities in space. Namely, I’d like to talk about the idea of space sovereignty. “Commercial space” is ramping up, and when thinking seriously about the political […]

The art of emergency response

I spent this past weekend on a training exercise with the Nevada-1 Disaster Medical Assistance Team, or NV-1 DMAT. On a part-time, voluntary basis, I serve as a Logistics Officer for the federal emergency response team (currently under NDMS instead of FEMA), which involves monthly meetings and periodic training in preparation for deployment to the […]