Everything You Wanted to Know About BEAM but Were Afraid to Ask

Humanity’s first human-habitable inflatable spaceship, (or as those in the industry prefer to call it, “expandable” spacecraft), is soon to launch off-world. Tucked inside a Dragon cargo transport‘s “trunk” and perched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, this momentous departure targets the International Space Station (ISS) and is slated to occur today. The precious expandable […]

Red-Letter Day: NASA Astronauts wanted; NSRC spaceflight giveaway

Today has been quite a big day for aspiring astronauts: NASA Seeks New Wave of Astronauts On one hand, NASA finally opened another selection announcement for the next class of astronauts. Until the end of January 2012, anyone with the grit, drive, and the moxie to put their hat in the ring will be stacked up against the best of […]

Excalibur back in British Isles!

…commercial spacecraft manufacturer/provider Excalibur Almaz (EA), that is. And they ferried two partially-constructed commercial space stations with them. A primary competitor to Bigelow Aerospace on the commercial space station frontier, EA has leveraged 20th-Century Russian military space technology in a bid to accelerate a fully-functioning private spaceflight program to orbit. Because it is based on […]

Bigelow Aerospace preps new digs

It appears, in the interest of furnishing the new space digs (read: inflatable orbital space modules) they’re poised to launch, Bigelow Aerospace has secured a partially exclusive license from NASA. The license is for the cryptically entitled, “Apparatus For Integrating A Rigid Structure Into A Flexible Wall Of An Inflatable Structure,” – or as I […]

Liberating Ares in commercial rocket fray

The NewSpace rocket environment is growing from a band of determined forerunners to a healthy platoon. Salvaging what they could from NASA’s cancelled Ares I rocket, industry giant ATK (responsible for building Space Shuttle’s solid rocket boosters, a critical component in the Ares rocket design,) has teamed up with Eurpoean company Astrium (of Ariane 5 fame) […]

Bigelow Aerospace accelerates station plans

Recently, two companies have arisen to challenge Bigelow Aerospace’s domination of the commercial space station market. Now, quietly, Bigelow has fired back where it hurts most: Timeframe. It seems that the first to get a station to orbit will be in a position to pluck the ripest government and corporate space station user contracts. In […]

A Radioactive Astronaut-Hopeful (Space update)

By education and trade, I’m a geologist, having worked now in the professional world for more than six years getting my boots dirty performing hydrogeology, water resources, drilling, geomorphology research, and environmental contaminant transport and remediation work in some of the most remote territory this country has to offer. However, in my push toward becoming […]

In Space, Life Imitates Art

When the now-famous image above, possibly the most romantic space exploration image ever taken, hit the net a few days ago, a similarity immediately struck me. One of my favorite modern “romantic realist” artists, Bryan Larsen, painted a nearly identical, visionary image seven years ago, entitled, “How Far We’ve Come“: Not only is the similarity […]

China’s space lab rising

As arguably the third most powerful space agency in the world, the China National Space Administration, which already has successful manned launches and a confirmed spacewalk under its belt, continues its determined drive starward. In early October, the CNSA signed a cooperative space plan with Russia for the 2010-2012 timeframe, the contents of which are […]

NewSpace Station-Race begins

This week has been pretty big for private space, (including astronomy / exoplanetology and development of space-related commercial products – more to come in future posts). In something of a surprise announcement, Russian NewSpace startup Orbital Technologies announced a volley of corporate agreements and a proposed private, commercial space station to launch by the year 2015. With […]