Monthly Archives: June 2021

Issued on: 28/06/2021 - 14:28

Ever thought about going on vacation in space? Your dream may come true in just a couple of months, as dozens of space travel ventures are launching. However, whether it's aboard a spacecraft or a balloon, they all come at a hefty price.

2021 looks to be the first year that commercial tourists will travel to space. It's a childhood dream come true for some,a scientific and commercial miracle for others.In any case, it's a lucrative business asthe space travel industry is expected to reach $8 billion by 2030.

We tell you about the latest space travel ventures by Blue Origin, Space X andVirgin Galactic.

We also talk toNicolas Gaume, the co-founder and executive chairman of Orbite. The French-born, US-incorporated company is preparing people for these spatial expeditions.

But first, a video game in Iraq has an entire generation hooked.The mobile version of the game PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds or PUBG has become so popular in Iraq that the country's youth has been dubbed the "PUBG generation". Iraqis across the country are spending hours every day on the game's virtual battleground, socialising via its live chat, playing competitively or even falling in love. We tell you more.

And in Test 24, weshowcasea French startup from Grenoble called BeFC or Bioenzymatic Fuel Cells. These have the potential to be revolutionarybecause they generate electricity using simply paper and enzymes.

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Tech 24 - Heading to space on vacation? - FRANCE 24

To infinity and beyond! The world's first tourism agency that wants to send you to space now has a terrestrial settlement - and it's in the United Kingdom.

Launched by London-based RocketBreaks, the agency has a full service to offer to prospective travellers, including coordinating flights, accommodation, meals and dedicated training programmes to be in space.

The package also includes day trips into space, weightlessness experiences and the chance to board on the Aurora Station.

Fed up with 5 star hotels? What if you could enjoy a room with a view... of over a million stars? That's the aim of the Aurora Station, the first luxury hotel currently being built for the sole purpose of space accommodation.

The California-based aerospace company Orion Span is behind the idea, with Aurora Station scheduled to open in 2022. The luxury space hotel has been developed to orbit the Earth, and will be able to accommodate four guests and two crew for a 12-day holiday.

There, you will be able to witness the sunrise 16 times a day, and see land and oceans from a whole new perspective.

Astronauts commonly talk about the overview effect, which offers the world on a silver plate and allows people to see the Earth as a whole.

Travelling to space will undoubtedly change your perspective.

But Aurora Station is not the only possible destination. Companies such as SpaceX are also developing opportunities for Mars travel.

First, you will need to join one of the training centres in partnership with RocketBreaks, in order to enhance your body to optimal conditions for space travel.

Future space tourists can join RocketBreaks' waitlist to be one of the first to contact when reservations open.

Without a doubt, space is the future of the travel industry, RocketBreaks' founder David Doughty says.

We have seen a gap in the market, and by entering early, we aim to make RocketBreaks one of the most respected agencies in the space travel world, " he adds.

"We know for sure that there is enough excitement and demand for space travel, whether on a day trip, to experience the absence of gravity, to see the world from a completely new way, or to stay in space."

Virgin Galactic, founded by Sir Richard Branson, is expected to enter commercial service in 2022, with its founder planning to make the first flight at the end of 2021.

The company recently announced the development of more spacecraft, in addition to them.

As for the COVID-19 pass, nothing has been specified so far.

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The UK's first space tourism travel agency has opened - and it's a world first - Euronews

BEIJING, June 24 (Reuters) - China aims to send its first crewed mission to Mars in 2033, with regular follow-up flights to follow, under a long-term plan to build a permanently inhabited base on the Red Planet and extract its resources.

The ambitious plan, which will intensify a race with the United States to plant humans on Mars, was disclosed in detail for the first time after China landed a robotic rover on Mars in mid-May in its inaugural mission to the planet.

Crewed launches to Mars are planned for 2033, 2035, 2037, 2041 and beyond, the head of China's main rocket maker, Wang Xiaojun, told a space exploration conference in Russia recently by video link.

Before the crewed missions begin, China will send robots to Mars to study possible sites for the base and to build systems to extract resources there, the official China Space News reported on Wednesday, citing Wang, who is head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology.

For human inhabitation on Mars, crews would have to be able to use the planet's resources, such as extracting any water beneath its surface, generating oxygen on-site and producing electricity.

China must also develop technology to fly astronauts back to Earth.

An uncrewed round-trip mission to acquire soil samples from the planet is expected by the end of 2030. read more

The U.S. space agency NASA has been developing technology to get a crew to Mars and back sometime in the 2030s.

China's Mars plan envisages fleets of spacecraft shuttling between Earth and Mars and major development of its resources, Wang said.

To shorten the travel time, spacecraft would have to tap energy released from nuclear reactions in the form of heat and electricity, in addition to traditional chemical propellants, Wang said.

China would have to accomplish round trips with a total flight time of "a few hundred days", he said.

China is also planning to set up a base in the south pole of the Moon and is deploying robotic expeditions to asteroids and Jupiter around 2030.

Last week, China sent three astronauts to an unfinished space station in its first crewed mission since 2016, expanding its growing near-Earth presence and challenging U.S. leadership in orbital space. read more

Reporting by Ryan Woo and Liangping GaoEditing by Robert Birsel

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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China plans its first crewed mission to Mars in 2033 - Reuters

The brainchild of space travel experts Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum, Space Perspective wants more people to experience the life-changing views from space that to date have only been accessible to astronauts making it possible by applying flight technology used extensively by NASA for many years.

This transformative opportunity, taking reservations now for flights as soon as late 2024, extends the possibility of exploring space to a wider audience than has historically been possible. The space curious who would have considered it too risky or expensive can now experience the exhilaration of traveling to space with a safe and gentle ascent. The ground-breaking pressurized Spaceship Neptune gently lifts passengers to space to be immersed in breath-taking views of the curvature of Earth.

History-making Space Explorerswill ascend in Spaceship Neptune from a launch pad at the iconic Kennedy Space Center. Eight guests, accompanied by a pilot, will soar above 99% of Earth's atmosphere and then glide for two hours to uniquely enjoy our planet's biosphere from the comfortable capsule's vast viewingwindows.

Unlike grueling, expensive space rockets, Spaceship Neptune rewrites the engineering playbook: it doesn't use rocket propulsion nor engender g-force acceleration. Exhilarating in its own right, this experience invites a profoundly different perspective through atmospheric layers, framed by the thin blue line below and the blackness of space above. This visceral reminder of how interconnected we are with all living organism is - according to most astronauts who have experienced it - profoundly life-changing; boundaries and differences disappear.

Each flight will be personally curated with end-to-end bespoke experiences, from meeting Hall of Fame astronauts to taking nuptials to new heights.

Space Perspective is the first space launch operator to fly from Space Coast Air and Spaceport, located adjacent to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Their Neptune One inaugural Test Flight kicks off an extensive testing program that makes Spaceship Neptune an extremely safe way to go to space. Space Perspective ensures safety by applying flight technology used for decades by NASA and global government entities, supported by a world class, hand-picked crew integral to all human spaceballoon flights for the last 50 years.

Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum, the husband-and-wife team behind Space Perspective, are on a mission to invite more people- including scientists and artists-to ride the wave of space history and be transformed by seeing our beautiful Earth from space.

The couple has been responsible for some of the most remarkable breakthroughs in space innovation and exploration in the last 20 years: perfecting technologies seen on the International Space Station, acting as technical advisors in human spaceflight to Elon Musk pre-SpaceX, and Google executive Alan Eustace's world record for human spaceflight- 136,000 ft propelled by a spaceballoon in 2014.

Traveling where few have gone before in an entirely accessible format, Space Perspective sets a new bar in out-of-this-world luxury experiences. Please visit http://www.spaceperspective.com to reserve your seat.

Instagram @thespaceperspective Twitter @SpacePerspectiv Facebook @TheSpacePerspective

Space Perspective

Space Perspective is the world's first luxury spaceflight experience. It invites more people than has historically been possible to experience a thrillingly new and visceral perspective that expands the human consciousness the incredibly exhilarating panoramas and scale of Earth in space. Our atmosphere stretches for hundreds of miles into space, Spaceship Neptune flies above 99% of it.

Setting a new bar in out-of-this-world thrilling experiences, as soon as late 2024 Space Perspective will escort Space Explorers gently to space inside Spaceship Neptune's pressurized capsule propelled by a high-performance spaceballoon that doesn't use rocket fuel and Explorers see the world anew through its vast windows. The ultra-comfortable, accessible, and six-hour journey redefines what space and wonder travel means for the modern traveler.

Based out of Kennedy Space Center, Space Perspective is led by industry luminaries Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum, and their expert crew who have been integral to all human spaceballoon flights in the last 50 years. Poynter and MacCallum have been dubbed "masters of the stratosphere" by Bloomberg Businessweek, and MacCallum served as Chairman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1538674/Space_Perspective.jpgLogo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1538675/Space_Perspective_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Space Perspective

https://www.spaceperspective.com

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The world's first luxury spaceflight experience from pioneering Space Perspective reimagines the thrill of space exploration - PRNewswire

Illustration: Benjamin Currie/Gizmodo

As a tourist destination, the Moon doesnt have a lot to offer: no beaches, no museums, no oxygen. On the other hand, it does have the virtue of being the Moon. The fucking Moon! Thats reason enough, really, to justify a trip, but try booking a flight and youll quickly run into obstacles. Youll be told that NASA more or less dismantled its sending-people-to-the-Moon capacities decades ago and is only now building them back up. Youll be told that even if, somehow, Moon tourism were made possible, it would be affordable only to the super-rich. Which raises the question: When will us common folk get to make the trip? For this weeks Giz Asks, we queried the experts to find out.

Associate Professor, Strategy and Security Studies, U.S. Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies

The first thing to understand about predictions for future events in space is that theyre never right and usually far too optimistic! Questions like this were being asked in the 1950s, with some claiming that regular lunar visits were just around the corner and would certainly be happening by the end of the centurythe 20th century. Unfortunately, and to reference a commonly heard refrain, space is hard. And expensive.

First, for the good news: trips to the moon can be done. The technology, the capability to go to the moon, was proven by the Apollo program. It doesnt require any new inventions, or a radical new technology. What it does require is money and commitment. While large, developed states have the money, they have lacked the commitment since the 1960s. On the other hand, private industry has generally lacked the money. Todays developments in the commercial space industry are starting to upend this, however.

One of the most significant factors in cost is launch. It costs a lot of money to launch whatever spacecraft you want to take to the moon. Fortunately, the cost of launch is coming down because of the development of reusable launch vehicles. As is often pointed out, flying on an airplane would also be expensive if you had to throw away the plane every time you used it. Understanding this, companies like SpaceX have been working towards reusable launch vehicles that can be reflown in a short period of time. The space shuttle was only partially reusable and required significant amounts of time between flights to get it ready for the next one. SpaceXs Falcon 9, on the other hand, is showing that a launcher can be mostly reusable and refurbished very quickly, sometimes in as little as 40 days. This drastically reduces the costs of getting to orbit, putting things like trips to the moon more firmly in the realm of the possible for a private company.

So, for the bad news: even with launch costs coming down, its still really expensive and really dangerous. For the foreseeable future, the only people who will be going to the moon will be state-backed astronauts or wealthy tourists who have the millions of dollars its likely to still cost. Theoretically, these types of trips would not only demonstrate the safety and reliability of transportation to and from the lunar surface, but give companies and countries a reason to more fully develop lunar bases. It would probably be only after these bases were developed and regular trips between the Earth and the moon were occurring that regular people would be able to hop a ride without taking out a second mortgage.

So when might this be? If we continue at our current rate of progress, it might be the end of the 21st century at the earliest. This is a mighty big if, though. While there is pressure for countries to undertake lunar programs right now, theres no guarantee it will be sustained. This is exactly what happened after the Apollo program. Once America got there, support, which had already been dropping, fell even more precipitously. This could happen again. Or countries and companies might find no reason to stay on the moon, especially if they could go to Mars instead. On the other hand, if valuable resources are found on the moon (for instance, He3 [helium-3]) or other compelling rationales are found to sustain lunar exploration, the timeline might be sped up. A lot of this progress depends on public opinion and/or commercial demand, both forces which are historically finicky.

Bottom line: while I would jump at the first opportunity to do so, I dont think Ill be going to the Moon in my lifetime. It might be in the realm of the possible for my nieces and nephews, but most likely it will be the generation after that if all goes well.

[All the views expressed are the authors own and not representative of the Department of Defense or any of its affiliates.]

Professor of Drama and Performance Studies at the University of Washington and author of Performing Flight: From the Barnstormers to Space Tourism

Im not holding my breath. Its true that weve had the basic science and technology to bring ordinary people to the moon and back since the late 60s. The lunar missions of the Apollo program were a tremendous scientific and technological achievement, but the public excitement and taxpayer will were not enough to sustain that program, and it was retired even before it had completed all it had planned for its first phases, much less make good on the futuristic dreams of moon bases and regular traffic back and forth.

Now that much of the space industry has been largely taken over by private companies, and because weve seen a handful of wealthy individuals pay their own way to visit the International Space Station, the promise of space tourism for regular folks once again seems within reach. The ambitious goals of Virgin Galactic bringing paying customers into near earth orbit, or SpaceX sending private citizens for a lunar flyby trip, however, have been deferred for years now, and public buy-in has been dampened by setbacks and tragedies like that of Virgin Galactics SpaceShipTwo in 2014.

And in many ways we seem farther away from the vision of Moon tourism than we were even a decade ago. Because private spaceflight is now ostensibly in the hands of a very small number of celebrity billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sir Richard Branson, the whole tenuous enterprise hinges on their continued success. We would do well to be mindful, then, of their vulnerability, and not only financially: Weve seen that the fate of a charismatic public figure can turn on a dime with the exposure of a scandal or even a poorly considered tweet. And the space industry has come under scrutiny for potentially disastrous environmental impacts on Earth, like the amount of black carbon emissions that would be dumped into the atmosphere by the kind of increased launch activity necessary for regular space travel.

But most sobering are the recent findings that sustained exposure to radiation and long periods of reduced-gravity, which are persistent elements of spaceflight, do far more damage to the human body than wed been thinking. As studies of astronaut Scott Kelly after a year in space have shown, our bodies essentially begin to fall apart once we leave the protection of our planets atmosphere and gravitational pull. Cognitive impairment, muscle and bone deterioration, and atrophy to the heart are just a few of the negative mental and physiological impacts brought on by time spent in space. I imagine that, for many, these dangers would be worth the risk, but what about the flight crews and other space staff whod endure lengthier exposure? And who knows what kind of obstacles this will present to the Department of Transportation and the FAA or whatever organization will be approving and regulating space travel in the future. The idea of ordinary people walking on the Moons surface one day continues to be dazzling, but I fully expect this last point will be one of the biggest hurdles were going to have to get over for that to happen, and I dont know that well get it figured out in our lifetime.

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Professor, Earth & Space Exploration, University of Arizona and author of The Ultimate Interplanetary Travel Guide, who is is heavily involved in NASA solar system exploration missions

In my book The Ultimate Interplanetary Travel Guide, I imagine a future around 200 years from now when interplanetary travel and tourism for regular people is as common across our solar system as travel and tourism is across our own planet today. By then, I claim, advances in propulsion and other technologies will have cut down todays travel times dramatically, and the build-up of infrastructure and services at off-planet destinations will support space tourism as a viable business model.

OK, but what about those of us who wont be around 200 years from now? If current plans by NASA and other space agencies pan out, trained astronauts will be returning to explore the Moon for short visits sometime within the next decade. It is reasonable to assume that if current trends in advances in commercial and governmental space systems continue, the technologies for modern interplanetary human-capable launchers, orbiters, landers, and rovers will get proven out on the Moon in the 2020s and 2030s as well as on Mars in the 2030s and 2040s. While no specific lunar base or settlement plans are currently being developed (beyond high-level studies), lower-cost and higher-reliability access to deep space could very well fuel a significant burst in the deep space economyincluding the first opportunities for space tourism for regular peoplein the second half of the 21st century.

So, eat well, exercise, and aim for longevity, and maybe by your golden years that weekend on the Moon will really be possible.

Professor Emeritus, History, Duke University, who studies military history and the history of technology

We can say with confidence that it will not be within the next fifty years. Beyond that time horizon reside too many unknowns. Within it, no foreseeable technology will be able to overcome the obstacles of physics, politics, economics, and human physiology that now preclude routine human spaceflight. Two distinct realities suggest the challenges facing enthusiasts of Moon tourism.

First, the technology of spaceflight currently favors machines over people. Anything useful we might want to do in spaceincluding explorationcosts ten times as much if we send people to do it. This was true during the space race to the Moon in the 1960s, and it is even more true today. Thanks to the microelectronics and AI revolutions of the last half century, automated and remotely controlled spacecraft can do anything in space that humans might do, and they can do it better, at less risk and lower cost. Placing people aboard a spacecraft immediately converts it from whatever mission it might have had to a life-support and life-saving mission of bringing the people back alive. Aboard the aging space station, astronauts mostly serve as human subjects of scientific study, measuring the baleful impact of weightlessness, isolation, and radiation.

The second obstacle to a colony on the Moon is investment. What human collectivenation, corporation, or communitywill pay the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to plant people on the Moon? And what return on investment might they expect? Nothing on the Moon would repay the cost of sending people to get it. Using the Moon as a way station to Mars raises the ante without answering the question of return on investment. Colonizing extraterrestrial bodies with current technology mimics colonialism on Earth, without the lure of getting rich. Better investments beckon. Only a handful of humans live in Earths polar regions. None live at the bottom of our oceans. Both realms are much easier and less expensive to reach, simpler and safer to inhabit, and more useful to explore and exploit. Multi-millionaires or billionaires might pay for the cachet of being early tourists on the Moon, but no regular people in any foreseeable future will have the disposable wealth to pay even a fraction of the fare.

Rather than ask when regular people will be able to go to the Moon, it might be more revealing to ask if anyone will go to the Moon in the next fifty years. Who? Why?

Adjunct Professor, Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University, who served as NASAs first Mars program director

The stated schedule is landing the first woman and next man in 2024. Based on my own experience and a recent audit by the GAO (Government Accountability Office), the chances of that happening on schedule are low. Once NASA and the Artemis partners do land, it will likely be some years before a paying customer could do the same. I will note that the pace of purely commercial human flights does seem to be accelerating. SpaceX and Axiom are planning one relatively soon.

Professor of Law and Director of the Global Space Center at Cleveland State University

The historical evolution of the astronaut suggests that it will be sooner rather than later. I expect the first tourists to set foot on the Moon within the next ten years, given NASAs ambitious plans under the Artemis program coupled with the fierce entrepreneurial energy that is driving the revolution in space travel.

In the beginning of the Space Age, only military test pilots with the right stuff could be astronauts. Scientists and other payload specialists were eventually added to the astronaut corps as duties of the crew expanded beyond mere piloting. In 1986, a schoolteacher, Christa McAuliffe was added to the shuttle crew to bring the dream of space travel to the common citizen. In 2001, the USSR started flying tourists to the ISS, when Dennis Tito spent eight days in orbit.

Ordinary people will soon fly (briefly) into suborbital space with Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin for a mere $250,000. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, along with eight of his friends, is scheduled to circumnavigate the Moon on SpaceXs Starship in 2023, and the first astronauts are (with some degree of optimism) expected to land on the surface of Moon the following year on the same spacecraft. Once the Starship proves safe after multiple crewed and uncrewed missions to the Moon under Artemis, tourists will be close behind. Perhaps as early as 2027. How ordinary these tourists are will depend on the ticket price, but that will come down in time. By 2031, I expect that lines will be forming to take a trip to the Moonand the Starship has been designed to meet this demand with the capacity to deliver 100 people in a single flight. That said, many believed that the first suborbital tourists would fly soon after the Ansari X-Prize was won in 2004 by the company that designed the progenitor of Virgin Galactics SpaceShip III. We are still waiting for the maiden flight of paying passengers in 2021.

Professor of Biology and Adjunct Professor of Astronomy at Washington University

I dont think well ever get there. At least, I wont.

The birth rate, right now, is dropping everywhere. Combined with really good medicines, that means an aging population, which means that ever-increasing parts of gross national product will have to go towards dealing with old farts like me. Every decade going forward, well be reducing the amount of expendable money produced by humans on Earth. Things like putting money into the ability to engineer common rockets to the Moon will be increasingly untenablethe whole space program is going to be eaten up by this, unless we can find some way to generate a profit from space. And the only place to do that is the asteroid belttheres nothing on the moon to make money from.

Also: what is a regular person? There are really wealthy peoplepeople in San Francisco, say, making $300,000 or $400,000 a yearwho could never afford one of these versions of intergalactic space flight, which are going to charge around $200,000 just for ten minutes in lower space. If we could somehow get the price for a moon trip to $5 millionI mean, how many people can pay that much?

Never say never, but I dont see it happening this century.

Space tourism expert and adjunct assistant professor at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide

My short answer is: Between 10 and 100 years.

In my Textbook of Space Tourism, I divided current and future space tourism activities into ten stages of complexity, starting with stage 1natural attractions and othersand finishing with stage 10: beyond flights. I defined moon flights as stage 8: Compared to a simple suborbital or orbital flight, the complexity of the moon flight scenario increases significantly In the context of space tourism, moon trips are unlikely in the short term unless tourists just orbit the moon and do not land on it. In 1968, Apollo 8s astronauts orbited the Moon and saw the same view from the spacecraft that tourists might see Once mass space tourism to Earth orbit becomes an everyday occurrence, wealthy tourists will want to travel to and even land on the Moon.

Keeping this in mind and assuming that there is a safe moon rocket in place, I could imagine an optimistic scenario where sporadic regular people, for example, win a ticket for a moon flight in the near-term. A pessimistic scenario might be that even in the long term, no regular people are able to visit the Moon due to still-unsolved safety, environmental, and financial issues. A realistic scenario is somewhere in the middle, and history will teach us in retrospect.

American engineer and former NASA astronaut

It might be sooner than you think. Both NASA and other national space programs are planning on sending humans to the Moon on behalf of their respective governments in the near future, but private citizens are setting their sights on the Moon as well. In fact, one private citizen, Yusaku Maezawa, has already reached an agreement with SpaceX for a circumlunar voyage. Other opportunities will follow, since in the new commercial paradigm, NASA is contracting for transportation services with private companies like SpaceXbut the private company owns and operates the vehicles, which allows them to use their capabilities for non-NASA customers. Now, admittedly, these customers are not regular peoplethey are extremely rich people. But over time costs will come down and accessibility will go up. So when will non-billionaires be able to buy a ticket and visit the Moon? No one really knows, but it took about 60 years for airline travel to become affordable with deregulation in 1978, and I hope we can do better in space and achieve affordability within the next 50 years.

Associate Scientist at the Florida Space Institute

It depends a bit on what you mean by regular people: just non-astronauts, i.e. very rich space tourists for example, or really regular people like you and me.

Space tourists, who must be very rich, could probably visit the Moon long before regular people will, just like they did the Space Station. Private companies like Blue Origin will most likely offer rides there just like they offer suborbital flights now.

In any case, I think the sequence will go: first astronauts, then technicians/workers who will build infrastructure, then a few pioneers who will be willing to settle there, then maybe more people from the population.

The key will be a regular build up of the economical use of the cis-lunar space. If there is a financial incentive for settling activities on the Moon, regular people visiting could eventually just be a side effect. Just like cities grew along rail tracks back when trains became used for transport.

Do you have a burning question for Giz Asks? Email us at tipbox@gizmodo.com.

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When Will Regular People Be Able to Visit the Moon? - Gizmodo

When the aliens came for Sun Ra, they explained that he had been selected for his perfect discipline. Not every human was fit for space travel, but he, with his expert control over his mind and body, could survive the journey. According to Ra, this encounter happened in the nineteen-thirties, when he was enrolled in a teachers-training course at a college in Huntsville, Alabama. The aliens, who had little antennas growing above their eyes and on their ears, recognized in Ra a kindred spirit. They beamed him to Saturn and told him that a more meaningful path than teaching awaited him. They shared knowledge with him that freed him from the limits of the human imagination. They instructed him to wait until life on Earth seemed most hopeless; then he could finally speak, imparting to the world the equations for transcending human reality.

This instruction guided Ra for the rest of his life as a musician and a thinker. By the fifties, the signs of hopelessness were everywhere: racism, the threat of nuclear war, social movements that sought political freedom but not cosmic enlightenment. In response, during the next four decadesuntil his death, in 1993Ra released more than a hundred albums of visionary jazz. Some consisted of anarchic, noisy space music. Others featured lush, whimsical takes on Gershwin or Disney classics. All were intended as dance music, even if few people knew the steps.

Ra was born Herman Poole Blount in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1914, to a supportive, religious family. He was named after Black Herman, a magician who claimed to be from the dark jungles of Africa and who infused his death-defying escape acts with hoodoo mysticism. Early on, Ra showed a prodigious talent for piano playing and music composition. After his purported alien visitation, he left college and eventually moved to Chicago, where he played in strip clubs, accompanied local blues singers, and found a place in a big band.

During Ras childhood, archeologists had discovered the intact tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun. The news inspired many African Americans to draw pride from the Egyptian roots of human civilization. Chicago exposed Ra to new interpretations of Scripture by Black Muslims and Black Israelites, as well as to suppressed histories of Black struggle and works of science fiction. These influences soon permeated his playing. In 1952, he changed his name to Le Sonyr RaSun Ra for shortafter the Egyptian god of the sun. On Chicagos South Side, he circulated mimeographed broadsheets with titles like THE BIBLE WAS NOT WRITTEN FOR NEGROES!!!!!!!

Ra formed a band, later known as the Arkestra, which featured the saxophonists Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, and Pat Patrick. Rather than employing tight swings and ostentatious solos, they played in a ragged, exploratory style, with squiggles of electronic keyboard and off-kilter horns. In the early sixties, Ra and his bandmates moved to New York, and became known for wearing elaborate, colorful costumes that felt both ancient and futuristic.

In his album notes and interviews, Ra began sketching out an Astro-Black mythology, a way of aligning the history of ancient Egypt with a vision of a future human exodus beyond the stars. The specifics of Ras vision remained hazy, but he seemed to believe that the traumas of historymost notably of American slaveryhad made life on Earth untenable. Humanity needed to break from it and travel to a technological paradise light-years away. Its after the end of the world / Dont you know that yet? the singer June Tyson asks in the 1974 film Space Is the Place. Ra referred to his teachings as mythsthey were stories about the future, meant to guide us.

The impossible attracts me, he later explained, because everything possible has been done and the world didnt change. He gave instruments new names, like the space-dimension mellophone, the cosmic tone organ, and the sunharp. One band member remembered that, if you played something wrong, everyone else had to follow along, incorporating the mistake into the song. For Ra, the Arkestra werent musicians at all; they were tone scientists. A 1967 album is titled Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy.

In 1968, Sun Ra and his bandmates moved into a house in Philadelphia. The groups communal ethos is a focus of Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise, a 1980 film by Robert Mugge. For all his seeming eccentricity, Ra wasnt a free spirit in his personal life. He had an ascetic vision, supposedly abstaining from alcohol, drugs, sex, even sleep. He demanded that his band be available for practice at any hour of the day. Yet his mischievous sidehe once referred to himself as Earths jesteralso comes across in the film. At one point, he offers a riddle about his true identity: Some call me Mr. Ra. Others call me Mr. Re. You can call me Mr. Mystery. In one practice session, Tyson sings a sputtering, raucous song called Astro Black, and the band members, who look as if theyre dressed for at least three different outer-space movies, smile at the racket.

The British record label Strut recently reissued Lanquidity, an album originally released in 1978. It is one of the best albums that the group recorded during its Philadelphia years, when it had settled into a style that toggled between enchanted, ethereal visions of deep space and woozy, demented takes on the jazz of the thirties and forties. The bandmates shielded themselves from the whims of the day, but the track Where Pathways Meet rests on a surprisingly sturdy funk groove, a disco crossover flecked with the occasional blast of free-jazz soloing. The new edition of Lanquidity includes the original mix of the album, copies of which were available only at the groups live performances. The minor differences between the versions are most obvious on the quieter numbers. Ra earned his stripes playing the blues, but, in the seventies and eighties, his recordings took on a more pensive quality. The track There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of) drags along, carried by chants and a funereal bass line. Ras synthesizer sounds as if he were trying to evoke a shiver. Listen closely and you hear whispers: There are other worlds they havent told you about repeated by different voices, as though passing a secret. And then: They wish to speak to you.

In 1969, Esquire canvassed a range of celebrities, including Muhammad Ali, Ayn Rand, and Leonard Nimoy, for suggestions about what Neil Armstrong should say as he set foot on the moon. Most people provided grave warnings or made jokes. Sun Ra contributed a poem: Reality has touched against myth / Humanity can move to achieve the impossible / Because when youve achieved one impossible others / Come together to be with their brother, the first impossible / Borrowed from the rim of the myth / Happy Space Age to you... Space exploration inspired Ra; it seemed to be proof that humanity was destined to harness its technological potential.

Ra was far from obscure: in the late sixties, he graced the cover of Rolling Stone. In the seventies, he taught at Berkeley, performed on Saturday Night Live, and toured around the world. But by the time Lanquidity was released Ra was becoming less optimistic about how much listeners had learned from his work. He was often treated as an eccentric, and his theatrical dress frequently overshadowed his prowess as a composer. In a lecture that he delivered in New York, he reiterated his lack of interest in making music about Earth things. He riffed on Iran, the threat of nuclear warfare, the fact that young people seemed uninterested in cosmic salvation. For a long time, the world has dwelt on faith, beliefs, possibly dreams, and the truth. And the kind of world youve got today is based on those particular things. How do you like it?

We are always rediscovering Sun Rathough he would probably prefer that we spend our time musing on the future rather than on the past. In 2020, Strut released a compilation called Egypt 1971 that explored the music Ra recorded while touring there. Last spring, Duke University republished John Szweds definitive 1997 biography, Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra. Last December, the first in a series of Sun Ra Research films was released. It was the culmination of decades of work by two obsessive fans, Peter and John Hinds, who self-published a Ra-centric zine in the nineties. The film is an absorbing collage of Arkestra performances interspersed with long, meandering interviews, and footage of Ra doing mundane things like answering the phone or checking into a hotel. The Arkestra, which is now led by Ras protg Marshall Allen, who is ninety-seven, still goes on tour. Last year, the group released a set of new recordings of Arkestra classics, titled Swirling. During the pandemic, Allen and the Arkestra streamed a benefit concert hosted by Total Luxury Spa, a Black-owned streetwear brand in Los Angeles, which has been influenced by Ras ideas and iconography.

Each time Ra is rediscovered, his reception reflects what his listeners crave. When I was first introduced to Ra, in the early nineties, he was presented as an oddball with a good backstorya precursor to the alternative music of the day. Today, in the midst of overlapping global crises, Ra asks us to believe in the impossible. This spring, the Chicago gallery and publisher Corbett vs. Dempsey reproduced a series of Sun Ra poetry booklets: Jazz by Sun Ra, Jazz in Silhouette, and The Immeasurable Equation. As with his fifties broadsheets, these writings capture a rawness and directness distinct from his experimental music. In one poem, he implores Black youth to never feel unloved: I am your unknown friend. He is always there, in the past and in the future, ready to be found by his listeners. In another booklet, originally published in 1957, he explains that his music is, at root, about happiness. Maybe people dont recognize these new forms of joy quite yet. But, he writes, eventually I will succeed.

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How Sun Ra Taught Us to Believe in the Impossible - The New Yorker

If two black holes collide in the vacuum of space, do they make a sound?

Sound waves cant travel in the almost perfect vacuum of space no one can hear you scream, as the tagline from Alien goes. But electromagnetic and gravitational waves can, and a new album has turned these signals from space into musical tracks.

The album, Celestial Incantations, incorporates cosmic sounds from within and beyond our solar system, such as the oscillations of a comet, radiation from a galactic pulsar and the merger of two black holes.

The album is a collaboration between Kim Cunio, an associate professor and convenor of musicology at the Australian National University, UK artist Diana Scarborough and Dr Nigel Meredith from the British Antarctic Survey.

Cunio said the trio selected the sounds together which he used alongside acoustic instruments to compose each track.

Weve had things like theramins and ondes martenot that have made the science-fictiony sound for nearly 100 years now, he said. [I thought] wouldnt it be great if we could acoustically accompany something that is naturally occurring, rather than making it synthetic?

The first few tracks begin on Earth and include the sound of compressed air bubbles escaping from a Stone Age ice core collected from Antarctica, and the pops and pings generated by lightning activity.

The track Cataclysm incorporates a chirp of gravitational waves ripples in spacetime emitted by the merger of two black holes, which took place 1.3 billion light years away and was detected for the first time in 2016.

This is so much grander than even what I can conceive as a person, said Cunio.

We cant actually even see what has created the ripple, we can only just feel the ripple. Its almost impossible to come to terms with, and I thought it needed something that is more than I or any other pianist I know could actually play.

Cunio set up a virtual piano with a switch to trigger a note doubler, causing each note to be played twice as the piece progresses.

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Other tracks incorporate sounds from space exploration, such as Nasas Voyager 1 space probe leaving our solar system, and the first acoustic recording of the atmosphere of Mars, recorded at the Jezero crater in February.

Theres a role for art to really support science and to show what science can achieve for all of us all the things we take for granted, said Cunio. Art can make the meaning of this incredible legwork that scientists do.

Celestial Incantations is free to stream and download.

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Chirps in space: new album captures the sound of black holes colliding - The Guardian

Posted: Jun 24, 2021 / 01:15 PM EDT / Updated: Jun 24, 2021 / 01:18 PM EDT

WBRE 28/WYOU 22 EYEWITNESS NEWS A spectacular sight in the night sky stopping people in their tracks. The Strawberry Moon was visible Wednesday night and Thursday morning to many across the region.

I did notice the moon last night as we rolled in at about 11:00 p.m. Very beautiful, very nice, said Johnny Moore of Montoursville.

Privatized space travel has been in the news recently as companies are sending people and supplies into outer space.

Before they go to Mars they want to go back to the moon again. Theyre planning on it, said Bob Turner of Carbondale.

I can remember as a kid when we went to the moon and watching it on TV and landing on the moon for the first time. It was exciting. Its space. Its another dimension of the world we live in and the atmosphere and whats around us, recalled David Board of Monroe, New York.

Some wonder if the resurgence in activity in the aerospace industry could spark a new space race.

I would say we should be the leader, but my concern is China. Their technology is so far advanced, what else can they do?, asked Moore.

Also in the news recently, questions about UAVs, UFOs and alien life as many waited for the U.S. government report on unidentified objects spotted by the military.

Theres probably life somewhere else. We cant, in this whole big universe, we cant be the only ones. Its a big universe, said Board.

Some said if affordable, they would be willing to take the trip to the great beyond.

Oh yeah, of course I would, of course I would, said Turner.

Others, not so much.

No. No. I have no desire to go to outer space. I like my feet on the ground, where Im standing, and it is safe that way, explained Board.

The Strawberry Moon is considered the first full moon after the summer solstice.

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Strawberry Moon: We asked stargazers their thoughts on outer space and traveling to the Great Beyond - PAHomePage.com

Well, they finally did it. In F9, members of the Fast family go to space. Specifically, Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej (Ludacris) enter orbit in a souped-up Pontiac Fiero with some help from the dudes from Tokyo Drift as part of a plan to disable a satellite that will give the villainous Otto (Thue Ersted Rasmussen) world domination capabilities. The sequence is just as intended: ridiculous and hilarious. But, as Roman flails around nervouslyhe was apparently eating candy in the spacecraftwhile Tej negs him and tries to maintain his cool as they zoom out of Earth's atmosphere, we had to ask ourselves: Could you really catapult a car into outer space?

Director Justin Lin has been insisting that he did his due diligence, explaining in aninterview with Vulture that he consulted with NASA scientists when he was figuring out the details of the excursion. Knowing absolutely nothing about space travel myself, I decided to get on the phone with some actual physicists to unpack just what it would take to get a junky '80s sports car into the sky.

Is Roman and Tej's trip at all plausible? The short answer: Yes, with some caveats, according to Helen Johnston, who is currently pursuing a master's in aerospace engineering. Johnston has not seen the film yet, but examining a photo of the Fiero, she believes the engine strapped to the top of the vehicle would get them into orbit.

"The payload of the car, even accounting for the weight of the engine, is still a lot less than the thrust of one rocket engine," she explains. For example, the Fiero is only about 31 Kilonewtonsequal to 6,969 lbscompared to the 854 Kilonewtons of the Merlin SpaceX rocket.

Axel Schmidt, an assistant professor at George Washington University specializing in nuclear physics, is concerned that Roman and Tej would not have had enough fuel to get into orbit. (Schmidt also hasn't seen the film yet, as it wasn't released when we spoke. Both he and Johnston are excited to watch it based on everything I told them about the space scenes.)

"To get a rocket to put the Pontiac into orbit would have to be really big," he says. "I was trying to run some numbers. It's something like 7,000 meters per second of orbital velocity that you have to get up to. There's a reason these orbital rockets are multistage, multiple story rockets." He imagines that you might need to strap the rockets to the bottom of the Fiero.

But Johnston isn't too worried about that considering how the guys get into space. Sean (Lucas Black), the hero of the third Fast and Furious installment, pilots the Pontiac into the sky via a plane. "They are starting off high enough and they are trying to use some of the gravity and their velocity from their plane already, which gives themselves a little bit of a head start in terms of getting into orbit," she says. "To get into orbit, you only have to be going 17,000 miles per hour, which seems pretty high, but when you think about the fact that you are already flying at 50,000 feet, there's going to be a lot less air resistance because you are losing atmosphere, the oxygen is going, everything in the atmosphere is basically disappearing."

F9 establishes that Sean, Earl (Virgil Hu), and Twinkie (Bow Wow) have been working on rockets in Cologne, Germany, and Johnston is, frankly, impressed with the work they do outfitting the Fiero for space travel. "I love what they've done with this Fiero here in terms of all the riveting," which is what bolts the outer plating together, she says. "I worked in aerospace for seven years and there are a lot of considerations when you are going even from the ground into cruising altitude and then taking that next step into space. The first one is, you are going through the atmosphere so there's going to be a lot more rattling around. So I love all these rivets: You can really see how they've souped up the car. The worst thing you could have is a single point failure. As soon as you put multiple rivets, each rivet is doing less and less work, you have a higher margin of safety in terms of the potential failure mode for any of those rivets."

The work the Tokyo Drift pals have done outfitting the car means that Roman and Tej could survive the grand finale where they end up having to crash into the satellite to disable it instead of doing so via big, powerful magnets, which was their earlier plan. "If they've ruggedized their car at the beginning of their process to sustain a reentry, then I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that a smallish explosion of the satellite would have forces and pressures against their car that exceed the ratings of the design," Johnston says.

But one area that tests our open-minded scientists' suspension of disbelief is the fact that Roman and Tej wear deep sea diving suits rather than space suits. "That's the opposite of what you want," Schmidt says. "You need to hold air at pressure to breathe it against space which has zero pressure, and a submarine diving suit is designed to hold an enormous amount of water pressure out and a low pressure of air in." Johnston agrees, but suggested a potential workaround: "They could maybe switch two wires around, and all of a sudden they are negative pressure suits and they work in space."

Ultimately, both Schmidt and Johnston wanted to note that once you're in orbit, the basic rules of driving that have sustained the Fast franchise for so long go out the window. You can't just point a rocket ship Pontiac Fiero at your target and stomp on the gas.In space, no one can hear your NOS.

"You'll get in this big weird elliptical orbit," Schmidt says. "You don't point your nose where you want to go." They are going fast, but not very furious. In fact, you can cut the engines once you reach orbit, Johnston explains. "Most of these satellites that are in low orbit are going 17,000 miles per hour," she says. In theFastfam'sarsenal of earthbound sports cars, "they are usually going 120 miles per hour. So [in orbit], that's, like, 14, 15 times faster. But no engines. I guess it's not so furious if you don't have the engine roaring."

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Could the 'F9' Family Really Take a Car to Space? - Thrillist

TITUSVILLE, Fla., June 24, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --Michael Baker International, a global leader in engineering, planning and consulting services, and the Titusville-Cocoa Airport Authority join Space Perspective, the world's first luxury spaceflight experience company, in celebrating the first space launch from the Space Coast Air and Spaceport, located in Titusville, Florida. On June 18, 2021, Space Perspective's Neptune One spaceship test vehicle successfully flew to its target altitude and traversed the Florida peninsula before splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico and being recovered.

Michael Baker has served as the Airport's Engineer and General Consultant since 2008. In 2020, the firm partnered with the Titusville-Cocoa Airport Authority to achieve a Spaceport Launch Site Operators License, allowing the Authority to conduct launches from the Space Coast Air and Spaceport. This marked only the 12th Licensed Spaceport Launch Site approved in the United States.

"Florida has long established itself as the center of space travel," said Aaron McDaniel, South Florida Operations Manager at Michael Baker. "We are excited for this milestone in our partnership with the Titusville-Cocoa Airport Authority and look forward to continuing the development of new and innovative infrastructure to keep pace with the ever-evolving needs of the space industry. "

"With this launch, we have confirmed the capability and functionality of the Space Coast Air and Spaceport to serve as a center of space flight. We congratulate Space Perspective on this historic day as they kicked off an extensive test flight campaign with the ultimate goal of flying customers to space for an unrivaled experience and perspective of our world," said Justin Hopman, Interim Executive Director at the Titusville-Cocoa Airport Authority. "Our entire Space Coast Air and Spaceport team is dedicated to growing our area's burgeoning space businesses by offering the ideal location for these operations to take place. We anticipate that the launch will be the first of many exciting developments in the space industry to take place at this location."

To support the Spaceport's activities, the Titusville-Cocoa Airport Authority is planning several large-scale construction projects, including a 4,000-square-foot hangar to produce and develop horizontal spacecraft and storage for rocket-grade kerosene and oxidizers, a 4,000-square-foot apron between the hangar and taxiway and a 350,000 square-foot parking lot. The area also offers more than 700 acres of developable access to SR 407, making it an ideal location for space businesses.

About Michael Baker InternationalMichael Baker International is a leading provider of engineering and consulting services. The firm'sPracticesencompass all facets of infrastructure, including design, civil engineering, planning, architecture, environmental, construction and program management. For more than 80 years, the company has been a trusted partner, providing comprehensive services and solutions to commercial clients and all branches of the military, as well as federal, state and municipal governments. Embracing emerging technologies and the latest innovations likeintelligent transportationanddesign-buildproject delivery Michael Baker is an industry leader that delivers expertise and quality. The firm's more than 3,000 employees across nearly 100 locations are committed to Making a Difference for clients and communities through a culture of innovation, collaboration and technological advancement. To learn more, visithttps://mbakerintl.com/.

About Space PerspectiveSpace Perspective is the world's first luxury spaceflight experience company. It invites more people than has historically been possible to experience a thrillingly new and visceral perspective that expands the human consciousness the incredibly exhilarating panoramas and scale of Earth in space. Our atmosphere stretches for 100s of miles into space, Spaceship Neptune flies above 99% of it.

Setting a new bar in out-of-this-world thrilling experiences, as soon as late 2024 Space Perspective will escort Space Explorers gently to space inside Spaceship Neptune's pressurized capsule propelled by a high-performance spaceballoon that doesn't use rocket fuel, where Explorers see the world anew through its vast windows. The ultra-comfortable, accessible and gentle six-hour journey redefines what space and wonder travel means for the modern traveler.

Based out of Kennedy Space Center, Space Perspective is led by industry luminaries Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum, and their expert crew who have been integral to all human spaceballoon flights in the last 50 years. Poynter and MacCallum have been dubbed 'Masters of the stratosphere,' by Bloomberg Business Week, and MacCallum served as Chairman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. For more information, visit SpacePerspective.com. Follow Space Perspective on social media for updates, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

Contact: Julia Covelli[emailprotected] (866) 293-4609

SOURCE Michael Baker International

http://www.mbakerintl.com

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Michael Baker International and Titusville-Cocoa Airport Authority Partner with Space Perspective for First Space Launch to Fly from Space Coast Air...