Category Archives: Space Travel

The Artemis 1 mission will soon let human voice bellow from the lunar surface.

2022 marks half a century since the Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan left the last footprints on the moon in 1972 and a lot has changed since then.

That year the first scientific hand-held calculator was released; today we carry more computing power in our pocket than that which safely guided the Apollo astronauts to the moon and back.

Related: Every mission to the moon

Now, at long last, humanity is about to leave Low Earth Orbit (LEO) again. Only two dozen astronauts have achieved that feat so far, all of them white men. Soon the first female astronaut and astronaut of color will join the lauded lists of moonwalkers. It's all thanks to the Artemis program NASA's plan to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before.By 2025 we could see astronauts walk in the lunar dust once more, with the upgrade from grainy black and white video footage that half a century of technological progress will bring. A whole new generation could see themselves as budding space travelers, inspired to dream big.

But pulling this off requires an entirely new launch system and a bit of practice first.

March 2022 will see the launch of Artemis 1 an uncrewed test flight. It will be the maiden use of NASA'sSpace Launch System(SLS). It's a rocket that will send the new Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle(MPCV) on a 236,000-mile-long (380,000-kilometre-long) journey to the moon. If all goes to plan then it will be followed by a crewed mission Artemis 2 in 2024. It will test everything out in Earth orbit, then it's full steam ahead for the history-making Artemis-3 crew to land on the lunar south pole and spend a week there in 2025.

Even without a crew, Artemis 1 will be a record-breaker. According to NASA, "Orion will stay in space longer than any ship for astronauts has done without docking to a space station and return home faster and hotter than ever before." But first it has to leave the Earth.

Two huge boosters and a core stage filled with 733,000 gallons (3,332 liters) of propellant will power the rocket through Earth's atmosphere. Once in space, the boosters will be jettisoned and the core stage will separate from the Orion spacecraft atop it. Orion will then orbit the planet while it deploys its solar panels. Finally, the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) will fire to eject Orion from orbit and send it on its way towards the moon.

Stacking the rocket

Before it can launch, the parts of the rocket and spacecraft are joined together.

Once the ICPS has been discarded it has another job: to deploy a series of tiny satellites that have hitch-hiked along for the ride. They include BioSentinel, a mission that will carry yeast samples beyond LEO. The idea is to study radiation levels and their effect on living organisms, which will provide key insights in keeping astronauts safe when they fly on Artemis 3.

After separation with the ICPS, Orion will be propelled and powered by the European Service Module built by the European Space Agency. "The Service Module will also provide consumables for future crew, including water and oxygen," says Phillippe Berthe, ESA's Project Coordination Manager for the module.

Artemis 1 may not have a human crew on board, but the Commander's seat will be occupied by a mannequin dressed in the Orion Crew Survival System a special suit designed to help protect against radiation. Two radiation sensors will monitor radiation levels.

The mannequin will be strapped in, but the weightless environment also needs testing. So NASA is flying a "zero gravity indicator" in the form of a Snoopy cuddly toy dressed in an iconic orange NASA jumpsuit. The comic strip character has a long association with lunar exploration the crew of Apollo 10 used it as nickname for their lunar module.

So how does the new Service Module compare to the lunar modules that sent Apollo astronauts to the moon? "The propulsion is largely the same, it is very comparable to the Apollo era," says Berthe. Yet half a century of technological progress has brought other strides forward. There have been vast improvements in solar cells, Berthe says. So that's where the spacecraft will derive most of its power.

"Computing power is another major improvement," says Berthe. The Apollo astronauts famously flew to the moon with less computing power than found in an iPhone. That meant a lot of manual tasks for the crew. This time around, the spacecraft's powerful computers can do most of the heavy lifting. "We can program much more complex operations now. The crew don't need to intervene directly in every nitty-gritty detail," Berthe says.

Artemis 1 will be gone for between 26 and 42 days. It'll take 1-2 weeks to get to the moon, where it will swoop down close to the lunar surface and use the gravitational kick it receives to enter a so-called "distant retrograde orbit". Retrograde means that it will orbit the moon in the opposite direction to that in which the moon spins. It will stay in that orbit for between 6 and 19 days. Then it will swing back down towards the moon for another kick to help power its 9 to 19 day journey back to the Earth.

Artemis 1 will be gone for between 26 and 42 days. It'll take 1-2 weeks to get to the moon, where it will swoop down close to the lunar surface and use the gravitational kick it receives to enter a so-called "distant retrograde orbit". Retrograde means that it will orbit the Moon in the opposite direction to that in which the moon spins. It will stay in that orbit for between 6 and 19 days. Then it will swing back down towards the Moon for another kick to help power its 9 to 19 day journey back to the Earth.

This project has been a labor of love for Berthe, who has been involved with it for nearly two decades and has seen many obstacles come and go. "One of the biggest challenges has been maintaining support across four administrations," he says. Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden have all wanted to put their spin on it and whether they wanted to go to the moon or Mars. The timeline has also moved around, from a landing in 2028, then 2024 and now 2025. "The mission has changed a lot of times," Berthe says.

On top of the politics came the coronavirus pandemic, although Berthe says it didn't have as big an impact as he feared. "It was difficult for people to cross international borders," he says. For a huge multi-agency project like this that somewhat slowed us down.

There are also plenty of nay-sayers those who argue that sending humans back to the moon is a waste of time, money and resources. We've already done it, why go back? Especially as we've already sent an armada of robotic spacecraft to both scan the moon from orbit and drive across the lunar surface. "An astronaut will do in a 6 hour [moonwalk] what a robot can do in 6 months, Berthe says. It is more expensive, but it is more efficient."

We ultimately also want more than just fleeting visits. "We want to stay permanently and build something sustainable for the long run," Berthe says. To this end, an orbital outpost called Gateway is a big part of the Artemis programme. Think of it like an International Space Station, but in orbit around the moon. A home considerably-further-away from home. It could be ready as soon as November 2024 and it is intended to last for 15 years.

The hope is that it will be ready in time for the crew of Artemis-3 to dock with. While aboard Gateway, astronauts will stay in the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO). There are also additional docking ports for cargo ships to come and go with supplies. Astronauts would then transfer to the Starship Human Landing System (HLS), a lunar lander based on SpaceX's existing Starship. However, if Gateway isn't ready then the crew will transfer directly to the HLS for landing at Artemis Base Camp.

Initially stays will be short and largely inside the lander, but ultimately NASA wants astronauts living on the lunar surface for at least a month at a time in purpose built accommodation. In September 2021 the Agency put out a call for companies to submit their proposals for the next generation of spacesuits that Artemis astronauts will wear during their history-making moonwalks.

Eventually the space between the Earth and the moon could be swarming with spacecraft ferrying goods and astronauts back and forth. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and CEO of space travel company Blue Origin, has suggested that the moon could be a place to put our heavy industry. The idea being that it would free up living space on Earth and move our atmosphere-polluting infrastructure somewhere where there isn't even an atmosphere.

The moon is also an ideal staging post for deeper solar system exploration. The size and scale of the Space Launch System(SLS) shows just how hard we have to work to escape from Earth's gravitational clutches. The moon's gravity, which is six times weaker than ours, is considerably easier to flee from. There are also huge amounts of water on the moon. As water is H2O, that means an abundant supply of oxygen. In fact, the moon's top layer alone has enough oxygen to sustain 8 billion people for 100,000 years. Liquid oxygen is also rocket propellant.

Related: How rockets work: A complete guide

That's why Artemis Base Camp will be at the moon's South Pole. We already know that there's plenty of water there. Lunar Flashlight, one of the small spacecraft hitching a ride on Artemis-1, will orbit the Moon and shine infrared lasers into permanently shadowed craters near the lunar poles to further reveal the quantity and quality of water ice there.

The sunlight at the South Pole is also favorable it is illuminated approximately ninety per cent of the time, compared to two weeks of daylight followed by two weeks of darkness on the rest of the moon. That's good news for a colony powered by solar panels. The combination of these two factors water and sunlight - may lead to a time when rocket ships routinely fuel up close to Artemis Base Camp and blast off for more distant climes such as Mars and the Asteroid Belt.

Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine certainly sees lunar exploration as a key step on our journey towards becoming an inter-planetary species. He has said that "we need several years in orbit and on the surface of the moon to build operational confidence for conducting long-term work and supporting life away from Earth before we can embark on the first multi-year human mission to Mars."

It's all part of returning to where we came from. The iron in your blood and the calcium in your bones was forged inside stars that blasted them across the universe when they died. Eventually those atoms found themselves inside sentient creatures who dreamed of sailing between the stars and built cathedral-sized rocket ships to take them there. The Artemis-1 launch later this year may only be a small step, but it's an important one. Future historians could look back on it as the moment humanity took a giant leap in its return to the moon, this time for good.

For more information about the Artemis 1 mission and to receive live updates, check out NASAs Artemis 1 webpage. The European Space Agency (ESA) have also put together this animation to visualize the mission.Andrew Doan et al. End-to-End

Assessment of Artemis-1 Development Flight Instrumentation, Sensors and Instrumentation, Aircraft/Aerospace, Energy Harvesting & Dynamic Environments Testing, Volume 7, September 2020,https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47713-4_4

V. Angelopoulos. The ARTEMIS Mission. Springer (2010)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9554-3_2

Marshall Smith et at, "The Artemis Program: An Overview of NASA's Activities to Return Humans to the Moon,"IEEE Aerospace Conference, pp. 1-10, March 2020,https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO47225.2020.917232

John Honeycutt. NASA's Space Launch System: Progress Toward Launch, Session: On-Earth Spaceports and Launch Systems, November 2020,https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2020-4037

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Artemis 1: Going back to the moon - Space.com

Traveling into space is a dangerous endeavor. Humans have evolved to live on the surface of our planet and venturing outside of our atmosphere brings all manner of complications. There are the obvious things, like the lack of food, water, and oxygen. Not to mention the deadly vacuum of space or the potentially toxic environments of other worlds. Then there are less obvious problems, things which might not be immediately deadly but could become a problem in an emergency.

Here on Earth, if you become injured you have access to a worlds worth of infrastructure including over the counter medications and healthcare systems. In space, if you get a flesh wound, your crewmates might hear you scream but theyll have limited ways to help. An experiment by German Space Agency (DLR) is hoping to solve this problem with bioprinted bandages made from an astronauts own cells.

SpaceXs 24th commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station, which launched in late 2021, carried with it a handheld device known as the Bioprint FirstAid Handheld Bioprinter, or Bioprint FirstAid for short.

The device is designed to hold cells from astronauts or Earth-bound patients, infused inside a bio-ink. In the event of an injury, the Bioprint FirstAid would be used to apply a bandage to the injury site in near real-time. The bio-ink mixes with two fast setting gels and will create a covering similar to plaster.

Previously existing technologies for creating similar structures involved bulky machinery and required additional time for the patches to mature. The Bioprint FirstAid has the benefit of being small enough to hold in the hand and it is totally manual, requiring no batteries or other outside power source to use.

For the tests on the ISS, the device wont have any live cells inside. Instead, its carrying fluorescent microparticles which take the place of cells for later observation. The primary objective of these experiments is to test the print capability of the device in microgravity and compare it to performance in Earth gravity.

Taking this technology into space allows researchers to understand the way tissue layers work together in microgravity, which might be fundamentally different to the way they operate here at home.

The findings will not only inform the future of this technology in space but will also provide insight which might be useful on the ground. While the allure of bioprinting technology for space-based missions is immense, this technology will likely do most of its work here on Earth.

Using bioprinted skin patches for wound healing offers a decreased risk of rejection, because the patch itself will contain cells from the target patient. A handheld device like the Bioprint FirstAid also opens up treatment into additional scenarios. Doctors and emergency response personnel could take the device to where the patients are, without necessarily needing them in a hospital setting.

The benefit to space travel shouldnt be understated, however. Astronauts in space heal differently than they do on Earth. Low gravity is known to increase the time needed for healing injuries, scientists are hoping bioprinting might help bridge the gap in the event of injury during long-duration space missions when traditional medical intervention isnt readily available.

NASA has made no secret of their intent to return humans to the Moon and complete longer duration missions to Mars and elsewhere. Other organizations including the ESA, DLR, and SpaceX will likely also have their hands in exploring the solar system; developing systems for more readily treating injuries in space will likely become critical as our time spent in space increases.

If theres one thing weve learned from our space exploration efforts, its that things go wrong. It takes a thick skin to be an astronaut, it cant hurt to make it a little thicker.

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Astronauts are testing a 3D printer that would make bandages made of their own skin - Syfy

The final frontier figures highly on Jake Paul's list of priorities this year after the boxing sensation flagged his desire to travel to space in 2022.

The Paul brand went global in 2021 after brothers Jake and Logan notched big wins over the likes of Tyron Woodley, Ben Askren and Floyd Mayweather, but the journey is far from over.

That's after the former took to Instagram and specified one of his five goals this year is to "Go to outer space with Jeff [Bezos], Richard [Branson], or Elon [Musk]."

While the comment may be tongue in cheek, it wouldn't be the first time in recent years that Paul has set out to accomplish the seemingly impossible.

Few would have expected the Ohio native to be quite so successful in the world of boxing, and yet he continues to surprise his doubters in the ring.

The 'Space Race' has been reborn in the private sector in recent years as billionaires like Amazon founder Bezos, Tesla titan Musk and Virgin supremo Branson compete for prominence among the stars.

Bezos bankrolls aerospace company Blue Origin, while Musk has long been at the helm of his own space transport giant, SpaceX, and Branson has a seat in the industry through Virgin Galactic.

Musk put his rivalry with Bezos to one side in October and offered his congratulations when the latter flew legendary Star Trek actor William Shatner to the stratosphere aboard one of his Blue Origin vessels.

Do you think Jake Paul will ever fight in the UFC? Let us know in the comments section.

And the younger Paul sibling seemingly wants to be among the next intake of space-flight passengers as he looks to expand his horizons once more in 2022.

The 25-year-old's other ambitions included getting "better every single day," "expose bully [UFC president] Dana [White]/help fighters" and to "help as many kids as possible through @boxingbullies."

Paul also highlighted his desire to "elevate Amanda Serrano and women's boxing," having signed the Puerto Rican boxing star to Most Valuable Promotionsa company he co-foundedin September.

The sky appears to be the limit for Paul after improving his professional boxing record to 5-0 in 2021, having knocked out Askren in April before notching back-to-back victories over Woodley.

The second of those wins against the former UFC welterweight champion came just last month, a sixth-round finish that won ESPN Ringside's Knockout of the Year award.

It remains uncertain as to what lies next for Paul in the boxing world, although a face-off with Tommy Fury no longer looks viable after Tyson Fury's half-brother withdrew from their December duel due to injury.

Instead, a 36million battle against former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson has been touted as a possibility.

Paul has also continued his war of words with UFC president White amid rumours he could transition into mixed martial arts, having recently started training for the cross over.

Any sporting ambition may be forced to fit in around a schedule that could comprise a voyage to the stars at some point, provided one of the three titans of space travel are willing to take Paul as a passenger.

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Jake Paul announces plans to travel to "outer space" with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos - Daily Star

Published onJanuary 18, 2022

CategoryNews

Combining funk, electro, disco, and sci-fi-inspired synths.

Maastricht-based band YN YN are releasing a new album, titled The Age of Aquarius, via Glitterbeat this March.

Formed by Kees Berkers and Yves Lennertz, YN YN also includes Robbert Verwijlen, Remy Scheren, and are sometimes joined by Jerome Cardynaals or Gino Bombrini.

The Age of Aquarius sees the group combining funk and disco sounds with electro and space travel atmospherics.

Continuing the interstellar theme, the record is described as the soundtrack to an entity that travels through space, encountering different planets, aliens, parties and galaxies along the way.

It follows YN YNs 2020 LP, The Rabbit That Hunts Tigers.

Pre-order The Age of Aquarius here in advance of its 4th March release, check out the artwork and tracklist below.

Tracklist:

1. Satya Yuga2. Chong Wang3. Shnzou V.4. Faiyadansu5. Declined by Universe6. Nautilus7. The Age of Aquarius8. Kali Yuga

Photo by: Ben Houdijk

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YN YN craft space travel atmospherics on new LP, The Age of Aquarius - The Vinyl Factory

A CEO is describing a balloon that glides through space for a few hours, cocktail bar included, before returning to earth with a gentle splash in the ocean as a yacht waits to pick up the passengers. This is met with nods all around, because this audience is used to imagining far-fetched possibilities. This is a gathering of techies with lots of ideas and the funds to execute themand many of their inventions already exist today, ready to be unrolled. Welcome to a look into the future.

Normally, the thought of trade shows instantly summons boredombut not CES. This annual tech convention offers a glimpse into a future dominated by electric vehicles, robots, and something strange and sinister called the metaverse.

After going all-digital (appropriately so, in more ways than one) due to the pandemic in 2021, the latest edition of the Consumer Electronics Show returned to Las Vegas the first week of January. The event was more toned down than usual (thanks, Omicron), but still offers a fascinating peek into the potentially dramatic changes for how you travel this year, in the next two to three years, or by the end of the 2020s. Take a look.

Ride in a car with wheels, wings why not?

Flying cars used to be something you only saw in James Bond movies, but they're fast becoming a reality for the consumer market. Aska is building a full-size prototype in Silicon Valley that may take flight as soon as this year. The four-seat vehicle has six propellers and is mostly electric with a small gas-driven generator to restore used battery power. It's designed to take off and land vertically, but also has wheels to be driven like a car. "When you land, everything folds up and tucks away less than eight feet (wide), so it's street legal," says David Hoover, who's in charge of manufacturing and production.

The speed tops out at 150 miles per hour with a distance of 250 milesperfect for traveling from the Bay Area to Lake Tahoe or the Hamptons to Manhattan in less than an hour. The company is targeting a $789,000 price tag, so start saving up those dollars now. Anyone behind the wheel would need to have a pilot's license and depart from an actual airport, just like any other private aircraft.

Travel and try on clothes from your couch, via the metaverse

You'll soon be able to take a vacation without leaving the comfort of your couch. The word that dominated CES this year was "metaverse"a catch-all phrase for 3D virtual worlds. Digging into the possibilities would take an entirely separate article, but CES proved that there's no shortage of businesses and products eager to jump into these uncharted digital waters.

Caliverse by South Korea's Lotte Data Communication is developing virtual experiences for attending concerts, watching movies, and shopping (in which your digital avatar can try on clothes before you buy) by donning a pair of googles. Headsets by Oculus were used for demonstration purposes at CES. "If your friend is living in France and you're in the US, you can meet and join the online concert whenever you want," says Manager David Yoon. If nothing else, it saves the price of a plane ticket.

E-bike through the snow

Your next winter ski vacation might not require skis at all. Check out Moonbikes, the first electric bike for zipping through the snow. No emissions or noise, which is especially important when considering the sensitivity of sound for potential avalanches. A Moonbike kinda looks like a motorcycle, but with tank-like track propulsion in the rear and a single ski or snowboard-style leg in front. The concept originated in the French Alps and is already being used at winter resorts. The bike is also useful for those who live in the mountains or plan to vacation in a remote lodge that isn't easy to reach by car.

Speed through the airport with face scans

Even the TSA will get better with technology as it meets security and public health needs. "The demand around seamless travel will lead to some exciting public-private sector collaborations in the near future," says Ha McNeill, former chief of staff for the Transportation Security Administration. She's now CEO of Pangiam, a company working with Google Cloud to improve aviation security for checked bags via AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning).

Biometrics scanning could come into play too. "One could envision an experience where the traveler uses their face to enable a curb-to-gate process from checking in bags, security checkpoints, lounge access, and boarding, [while] never having to take out an ID and boarding pass," adds McNeill.

Hover a flying taxi over the Grand Canyon

Skydrive is a Japanese company with a flying taxi prototype that already has a thousand hours of testing under its belt. It looks like a giant drone with two passenger seats. Eight individually controlled motors with eight propellers are powered by eight batteries. If one goes out, the others pick up the slack. "The reason why it's so small is we want to make sure it can land anywhere two cars can park," says Skydrive representative Nicolas Zart.

The flying taxi is also autonomousa safety feature since, you know, do you really want humans driving this thing? The company is targeting the tourism industry first, with an interest in using the taxis for sight-seeing near cruise ships, trade shows, or even popular destinations like the Eiffel Tower or Grand Canyon. Skydrive expects the flying taxis to be in service by 2025.

Never lose your luggage again

Targus recently introduced the Cyprus Hero eco-backpack. Made from recycled water bottles, it's the first baggage officially authorized to sync with the "Find My" technology by Apple that's commonly used to track down missing iPhones. If your bag is lost or stolen, you can determine its location in seconds using an app. Just pair it via Bluetooth. Unlike an AirTag, the tech is built inand can also work in reverse with a button inside the backpack to ping a lost phone.

The Cyprus Hero holds a 16-inch laptop and is available to buy this spring for $149.99. "This is geared toward anyone who needs to carry their laptop and protect itand also have that sense of security to know where your backpack is at all times," says Andrew Corkill, vice president of global marketing and e-commerce. Targus plans to use the tech in larger luggage in the future.

See everything through the eyes of a virtual tour guide

Kura earned a CES 2022 Innovation Award for its Gallium lightweight glasses that push the boundaries of what's possible in augmented reality. Imagine walking through a museum and receiving 8K-level graphics in your line of vision that identify a painting as a Monet or Picasso with detailed information. Imagine walking outdoors at Disneyland with virtual charactersthat only you can seeinteracting with real-world settings. The product includes a 150-degree field-of-view, 95-percent transparency, and unlimited depth-of-field. In other words, this technology is going to merge reality and the metaverse in ways you've never seen before.

Take a balloon ride to space

Who needs rockets? Space Perspective is taking a completely different approach to space tourism, making flights smooth and easy at a pace of 12 miles per hour. A balloon carries eight people and a pilot inside a pressurized capsule dubbed Spaceship Neptune to 100,000 feet above the Earth. There will be a bar and bathroom on board without any emissions, noise, or g-force to get in the way. You can even have a wedding ceremony up there.

The entire journey lasts six hours before the capsule splashes down to the ocean, where you and everyone on board can "get picked up by a beautiful yacht perhaps," says founder and Co-CEO Jane Pointer. "Think of it as a luxury space flight experience." Reservations are already sold out for 2024, but currently available for 2025.

Drive with augmented reality on your windshield

Expect road trips to look very different in the no-so-distant future, thanks to 3D Augmented Reality Head-Up Displays (or 3D AR-HUD) by CY Vision. The tech turns real life into a virtual world, thanks to hologram-like pop-ups on your windshield that interact with real-world situations. The effects range from lines in the road and turning cues that reflect GPS directions to pop-up graphics that signal when your car is passing a four-star restaurant or a hotel with vacancies available. It can also announce when you're passing notable landmarks.

In a world with enough distracted driving as it is, could this make things worse? "It's actually an improvement," argues Co-Founder Hakan Urey, adding that the technology prompts on-the-spot warnings for jaywalking pedestrians and potential car collisions. "These features enhance driving safety." CY Vision is working with BMV and other companies (including an "EV startup") with the technology expected in use by the end of 2023.

Test for COVID in seconds with a breathalyzer

ViraWarn by Opteev Technologies is ready to unleash Freedom on the world. It's a personal breathalyzer-like device that can detect if the user is carrying the coronavirus or flu within five seconds. It's not a stretch to think every tourist (especially those traveling internationally, on a cruise, or attending a crowded trade show like CES) might want to carry one of these portable units. So how accurate is it? "100 percent," according to CEO and Co-Founder Conrad Bessemer, citing a George Washington University study.

He says the device can make an accurate reading "whether there are 2,000 virus particles or 200," since it recognizes a tiny electrical charge that happens when a spike-protein virus interacts with a solid conductive polymer disc. Bessemer is hoping the FDA can approve Freedom via Emergency Use Authorization with a projected retail price of $199 to $259. The cartridge is good for up to 300 tests. Each replacement is $40. The company also has Liberty and Liberty Plus: in-room devices that can detect viruses in the air, which may come to a hotel near you in the future.

Traffic jams? What traffic jams?

Triggo has unveiled an electric car with a unique perk: the width can be modified at the touch of a button, bringing in the wheels and chassis for a slimmer frame to navigate between other vehicles and bypass traffic jams like a motorcycle. The thin mode operates at slower speeds, while the regular wider modification can handle highway speeds.

"You don't have to buy one. You might rent one," says CEO Rafal Budweil. The cars, produced in Poland, can be ordered on an app and delivered to your location via remote controlan appealing prospect for visitors in busy tourist destinations. Triggo vehicles are proving to be attractive for emergency use situations too. Police and fire services in Singapore have signed up to use the vehicles this year.

Take a space plane to a commercial space station

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson dominate the headlines, but space tourism doesn't begin and end with billionaire bro-culture. Sierra Space (a spin off company of the Sierra Nevada Corporation) is aiming to launch Orbital Reef by the end of the decade. Think of it as a business park and space station in one. "It's going to be the largest real estate development in space," says Chairwoman Eren Ozmen. Sierra Space is also the force behind Dream Chaser, a "space plane" designed to transport crew and cargo to lower orbit and return to any airport on Earth. If you're wondering if Sierra Space is the real deal, just know the company already has a $3 billion contract with NASA.

Transform your hotel room to your mood that day

Marriott took advantage of the hype surrounding CES week to announce a new design lab at its Maryland headquarters to test and explore new innovations with partners like Carrier and LG Electronics. One idea involves "transforming" hotel rooms with layouts altered at the touch of a button for evolving purposes. "A Murphy bed of the future," is one example cited by Marriott International President Stephanie Linnartz, "where you can have a bed that flips up and turns into a desk." You may also see kitchen features that appear and disappear or televisions and other entertainment components that drop from the ceiling. The concept is in the early stages, but could resonate in dense urban markets like New York, where every inch of real estate comes at a premium.

Take wifi with you on the go

Internet access can be a crapshoot when traveling, especially across borders. If you don't want to be at the whim of hotels and coffee shop passwords, Ukrainian-based Nect produces a portable modem that fits in the palm of your hand. The device provides high-speed 4G LTE connectivity in 113 countries on your laptop or another device with a sim card and USB port. "You can take it with you anywhere," says Head of Business Development Vlady Berezina. "When going through lines at an airport, nobody will ask you questions because it's so lightweight." The modem doesn't have a battery; it lasts as long as the charge in your device. There are no contracts, and the modem can work as a hotspot for up to 10 devices.

Order up a self-driving bus

South Korean company Ciel is developing a new concept that falls somewhere between ride-sharing and public transportationwith autonomous vehicles, of course. Users will request a ride from any location using a phone app. An artificial intelligence hub will then dispatch a self-driving car or bus (depending on real-time demand and conditions) with routes determined live on the spot. Ciel plans to debut the technology in Seoul before rolling it out in other cities.

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Flying Taxis and Balloon Rides to Space Will Change Travel in 2022 - Thrillist

The headline-making launch in late December of the James Webb Space Telescope is humankinds latest attempt to learn about the origins of our universe. Like the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) the James Webb was in the engineering pipeline for decades.

SKA is a much larger project, coming online in stages with precursor instruments. The latest of these, MeerKAT, has been in operation since early 2018 and producing award-winning science ever since.

James Webb, on the other hand, made its first (and only) public appearance in late December before being rocketed into space and onward to its eventual orbital resting place.

So why do we still need the SKA? This article aims to clear the cosmic air and give some context as to why newer isnt necessarily better just different.

One way to think of the difference between the James Webb and the SKA is to compare a new pair of reading glasses and the latest pair of headphones. Both enhance a particular sense to provide clarity. The reading glasses enhance your sight and dont really affect your hearing (if you wear them correctly). A pair of headphones acts exclusively on your hearing.

The SKA and the James Webb capture waves on the electromagnetic spectrum. The spectrum ranges from radio waves and microwaves to infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, and X-rays, to gamma-rays. Both telescopes operate outside the visible light range of the spectrum, SKA in the radio range and James Webb in the infrared range.

The SKA tunes in to the radio frequencies of cosmic objects that are emitted in its range of interest. Just as your car tunes into a local radio station using the aerial on its roof, the telescope captures radio waves from outer space via multiple receivers (or dishes) located in the Karoo. The SKAs bands of interest are much higher than the frequencies on which radios broadcast, so it cant listen in on your morning news, any more than the radio in your car can tune into the sound of an exploding star.

The James Webb, on the other hand, looks at waves near the infrared part of the spectrum. So although both are designed to capture as much incoming energy as possible, they are looking at entirely different types of waves: the James Webb at (near-)infrared and SKA at radio.

Of course, the two telescopes differ in a few other aspects. The James Webb is deployed in space, and very far away at that. The SKA is based on Earth, in our own back garden. The James Webb is complete in its construction, built as a one-of-one unit and will only ever be as powerful as it is now until a quantum leap in space travel makes running repairs easier. The SKA is a much longer-term project, spreading across southern Africa and Australia. In its current form, the SKA precursor MeerKAT might be the most powerful radio telescope to have been built, and SKA can only get more powerful as the number of receiving units grows to its full potential.

The goals of the James Webb and the SKA may overlap in some cases but, on the whole, are quite different.

James Webbs main scientific goal, one of many, is to seek the earliest light from our universe, where the first stars and galaxies were formed. Since that only takes up so many hours of the day, the telescope will also look at exoplanets in neighbouring galaxies, aiming to decipher their chemical makeup ultimately their similarity to Earth.

The SKA is significantly larger and more capable than similar instruments that came before it and the sheer size and range of the telescope allow it to cater to a range of scientific goals. Surveys of our own Milky Way have provided groundbreaking results, and collaborations with the SETI group aim to obtain equally astounding results from much further beyond.

The SKA aims to provide many scientific capabilities from imaging to pulsar timing. It is, by design, most suited to Hydrogen Intensity Mapping. This maps the intensity of hydrogen gas in outer space. Since hydrogen has been shown to be a core building block in cosmic evolution, this capacity is precious for those who explore beyond our solar system.

Then, of course, there are the special benefits which SKA brings to South Africa. The scientific discoveries already made by the MeerKAT precursor instrument have brought interested parties from far and wide to our shores.

Altogether, 16 partner countries are involved in the SKA. South Africa and Australia have been chosen as hosts for the physical instrument, and there has been significant buy-in from institutions across the globe. Partner institutions have provided engineering hours of development, and unofficial collaborators have recognised the value of collaborating in this radio astronomy space.

Adding to that, the vast majority of the engineering work and scientific discovery has been done by people here in South Africa. The mere existence of this instrument has inspired a generation and a half of new engineers and scientists (including me) to pursue careers in science.

Differences between the two telescopes

SKA

James Webb

Watch: Video explaining SKA and video explaining James Webb. DM

Amish Patel is a Digital Signal Process engineer with the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO).

First published by GroundUp.

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Why we need the James Webb Space Telescope AND the SKA - Daily Maverick

Video games are a great way for us to journey into the unknown of space, but how realistic is spaceflight in video games?

As one of humanity's greatest curiosities, video game developers have often explored the great unknown in their games. Whether it is initial attempts at single-line space graphics, such as Space Invaders or Asteroids, or the entirely immersive experience which some of the best space VR games have to offer, it has been the aim of many game studios to explore the unending boundaries of space. However, while numerous games let you explore the great unknown, they approach the subject of astrophysics with varying degrees of serious thought.

For some games like Mario Galaxy, Astrobot: Rescue Mission, and the majority of the best Star Wars games, the science of space travel is safely thrown out the window to make room for interesting visuals, engaging storylines and fun gameplay. Whereas others such as Elite Dangerous and No Man's Sky create narratives completely wrapped up in what they have researched as theoretically possible considering our current knowledge of all the differing physics of the universe.

So lets examine the wide spectrum of possibility for spaceflight in games; what we have tried and tested with the science available currently here in real life, and what we believe to be possible, to the downright absurd science fiction some games employ all in the name of entertainment. So if while playing your favorite astronomical shooter you have ever wondered if any of it was at all possible, read on to find out.

Our current efforts to get into space are constrained by issues of size. It takes a lot of energy to put stuff into space with rockets, so we need to keep things as light and streamlined as possible. Thats not the case once you actually make it into space though. With no stresses or forces acting on a spaceship, it can theoretically be any size or shape you want it to be.

Space is also pretty frosty, so you will need some of that warmth in the cabin to keep everyone happy. On the flip side though, spaceships with large power supplies also need a way to keep themselves cool. In space, the only way to lose heat is via radiation, a rather slow process. To prevent the crew of a high-power spaceship from being cooked, spaceships need advanced solutions. This comes up in Mass Effect series, where the SRV Normandy has an advanced cloaking device, but it cant use it indefinitely due to the heat build up. It has to shut it off and let the heat sinks cool down to avoid cooking the crew.

While people have questioned the shape of crafts like Star Wars' iconic Death Star, a perfect sphere is not as unrealistic as you would think. As space has near zero resistance to objects traveling through it, a sphere is as good as any other shape. In fact, it has positives over other ships such as Dead Space's USG Ishimura. While the skeletal structure looks amazing, all those bits hanging around are likely to cause issues when hit by the pretty much infinite debris floating around up there. Boosters and jets would be placed alongside any shaped craft to stop it spinning out and give your ship direction. While players may love entering the USS Enterprise in one of the best PSVR space games, those exposed engines are just asking to get owned.

While you may laugh at the blocky design of say Kingdom Hearts Gummi Ship, it is actually not as impossible as it seems. From an engineering standpoint right angles are not optimal for structural integrity, however, the small size and ability to place thrusters alongside your craft, definitely coincide with science. There is another thing which our humble Gummi Ship got right. It does not ever travel very far.

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When youre looking at powering your spacecraft, there are two things to consider: powering its flight in space, and actually getting the thing into space in the first place. At the moment we use rockets to put things into space, but this isnt an ideal solution for massive objects.

Rockets are huge, and yet they only carry a relatively small payload into space relative to their size. This is because of what NASA scientists call the "tyranny of the rocket equation" . In short, the more stuff you want to put into space, the more fuel you need. This means you need more fuel storage, which is more mass, which means you need more fuel. So, to increase the size of useful stuff you put into space, you have to dramatically increase the amount of your spacecraft that is dedicated to liftoff (That's why NASA's Saturn V moon rocket was so big.)

Now, you can solve this issue by just building your spaceship in space in the first place, so it never needs to get off the ground. Of course, you still need to get all the parts to build it up there, unless you use something like asteroid mining to build the core structure. We could also use a space elevator, like the one seen in Halo 3 and Halo ODST, to transport parts into orbit and construct the ship there.

When it comes to the fuel vs weight questions most games tend to ignore it. However, some games like the Pikmin series keep you within a very limited space. Pikmin even goes further to show you collecting resources from the local area to re-fuel. However, there are games which take the realities of short distance space travel even further.

Kerbal Space Program tries to recreate closely the realities of building a spaceship. You begin by simply orbiting your planet, and many ships explode in your first efforts. The Hohmann transfer orbit, the method of moving between two planets while preserving fuel by taking advantage of the proximity of the two planets orbits, is the method used by experts currently and the one used by the titular Kerbals.

If you want to keep physical realism in spaceflight you generally have to remain in your solar system. This is because figuring out how to keep people alive long distances, let alone how to get there in the ever expanding universe causes even more theoretical problems. Where is the fun in keeping to your solar system though? Lets see what games have come up with to transport life beyond the Milky Way.

Cryosleep, stasis, reanimation... whatever you like to call it, if you travel vast distances in your space game the likelihood is that you use one of these methods to prevent your crew from perishing. Not only does it stop their cells from aging over large periods of time, but it helps save vital resources like water, food and oxygen for other parts of the trip. The Halo games use it, and Alien Isolation is famous for its stasis pods but this is just a trope of science fiction is it not?

In the 1960s, scientists were actually working hard on the concept of cryonics freezing and reanimating live bodies. By injecting rodents simultaneously with a freezing agent and a form of aircraft anti-freeze, they managed to freeze them completely solid as if dead. Initially they used hot spatulas to awaken our frozen friends but they would often be badly burnt in the process. However, after a lot of research and failed attempts, scientists managed to reanimate hamsters almost 100% successfully via a microwave, with no health concerns even after several rounds of freezing. Our surviving furry friends were then allowed to retire.

Unfortunately for interstellar explorers, they were unable to replicate these experiments on larger bodies. Anything bigger than a hamster will die before the cells freeze. There is promise with medically induced comas, which greatly reduce the need for resources, however, the longer someone is in one the greater the effects to their health. Comatosing someone for more than a few days can lead to issues with speech and movement. So if you cannot freeze the person, you need to make the ship go fast.

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If you cant freeze them, speed them. With the universe expanding faster than the speed of light, you also need to travel faster than the speed of light in order to be moving forward at all, not just drifting further and further away. However, Einstein fans will know you cannot move through space faster than light.

Wormholes and the idea of folding space is popular but I wanted to focus on the spaceships rather than what space is doing. There are a couple of theories though, the most plausible seems the idea of moving space not the ship. This involves making less space in front of you and instead moving the space behind you. This theory is popular in the Mass Effect universe which uses fictional Element 0, a material with a negative mass in order to create this effect.

Despite the developers looking into theoretical physics for inspiration, this method is still just the stuff of science fiction in reality. Firstly, the problem of time dilation remains. The universe around them would still age even while the crew remain intact rendering many of their missions moot. Also we cannot be sure of the effect warping space would have on the objects in the wake of the movement, but it's safe to say that having the fabric of reality warped with you in it probably wouldn't be good for you.

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As for the worst representation of spaceflight in video games; that award must go to Pokmon Omega Ruby/ Alpha Sapphire where in the post game you summon a Mega-Rayquaza before riding it into space and smashing head first into an oncoming meteor. Lets ignore the fact that a 10-year-old has the ability to summon the most powerful Pokmon in existence and that the meteor which would crush your child's body. We will accept those as possible in the given universe.

However, the speed with which Rayquaza breaks through the Earths atmosphere would create so much atmospheric drag that there is no way your body would not be ripped from the monster. Even if there is some sort of harness device, which is not visible in the cut scene, your body would be dragged through all available holes. Even if you survived that, debris would likely rip through your spacesuit at those speeds exposing and killing you. It is wild that a game in which you enter a volcano without protection would fly in the face of realism like this. In summary, you're dead. Sorry.

While this is just a surface look at spaceflight in games, you can use the few ideas explored to examine the crafts in your favorite games and figure out if any of it is at all possible, probably ruining your immersion and experience.

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How realistic is spaceflight in video games? - Space.com

It may have started with Tang, but when it comes to advances developed for space travel having useful applications back on Earth, things have improved.

Case in point: New medical technology designed to help protect and treat astronauts may soon be ubiquitous down here.

"All of the constraints that you have in space really drive a lot of the innovation on Earth," said Emmanuel Urquieta Ordonez, MD, chief medical officer of NASA's Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH). "And it is a great place to test technologies that need to work in a resource-limited environment, like remote camps that are very far away or underserved regions that don't have access to internet."

Urquieta was scheduled to speak at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2022 Annual Meeting. He ran into terrestrial constraints when the COVID-19 surge resulted in flight cancellations forcing him to remotely interact with other CES participants as he described the new NASA technology for remote interactions.

One invention pioneered for use in space is a miniaturized ultrasound probe that connects to a cell phone, he says. "It's a single probe that has the capability to obtain images from different depths of your body." Results are interpreted by artificial intelligence (AI). "It's almost like having a radiologist in your pocket," he says.

TRISH is also researching how to monitor the health of astronauts unobtrusively, Urquieta says. Wiring them for electrocardiography or stopping them to put on blood pressure cuffs can interfere with their work. So TRISH is investigating the abilities of cameras and other contactless monitors. "Ideally, in the morning you wake up, you are brushing your teeth, getting ready for your day, and maybe having all the sensors embedded into a system that is in your mirror or somewhere like that," says Urquieta. "You can take all of the measurements without you even knowing."

But what do you do with all that information? Former NASA scientist Maarten Sierhuis, PhD, tackled that problem by automating the role of flight controller with software that exchanges medical data between Mission Control and the International Space Station.

"When there is a communication link available, this technology can also provide analytics and information to the biomedical engineers or the doctors or the support people in Mission Control," says Rachna Dhamija, PhD, who was also invited to speak at CES 2020. She joined Sierhuis in founding Ejenta, a San Francisco start-up that is commercializing some of this technology.

Healthcare centers are already using Ejenta software to monitor vital signs and give an early warning if a patient is in cardiovascular trouble, she says. "Other conditions include hypertension, high-risk pregnancy, diabetes, so you name it. Any condition where we can monitor somebody's metrics and provide clinicians with the early signs that somebody needs help is suitable for this technology."

Ejenta is also working on AI programs to automate the data analysis that physicians face as more and more diagnostic and monitoring devices come into play.

"But it's especially useful when there is that communications delay, and you want real-time support," Dhamija says.

The core technology developed by Ejenta is "intelligent agents," AI programs with sensors that take in data from their environment and make autonomous decisions based on this data.

For example, if you ask an intelligent agent how many steps you have taken today, it would understand your speech and consult the accelerometer or pedometer in your phone, make a calculation, and give you an answer. If that sounds a lot like Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa, that's no coincidence. Both are examples of intelligent agents. And Ejenta has received support from Alexa's maker, Amazon, through an Amazon Web Services accelerator program for healthcare companies.

One of the intelligent agents Sierhuis developed monitors an astronauts' metabolic rates while they are on space walks, advising them about when to rest or get something to eat.

A radio signal can take as long as 20 minutes to get to Mars, making it difficult for earthbound doctors to advise astronauts in the event of a medical emergency, such as a heart attack or broken leg. So Ejenta is designing an intelligent agent that can provide useful guidance for astronauts to use in treating themselves or each other without consulting human physicians or even connecting to the internet. It can answer verbal questions and display images on a screen.

"There is anticipated to be somebody with medical training on board," Dhamija says. "But what happens if that person is injured and the other astronauts have to assist? They may not have the training that they received on Earth top of mind. So an intelligent agent can potentially help."

Dhamija is an employee of Ejenta. Urquieta is an employee of TRISH.

Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2022 Annual Meeting.

Laird Harrison writes about science, health, and culture. His work has appeared in magazines, newspapers, on public radio, and on websites. He is at work on a novel about alternate realities in physics. Harrison teaches writing at the Writers Grotto. Visit him at lairdharrison.com or follow him on Twitter: @LairdH.

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'Space Medicine' Returns to Earth - Medscape

MCGREGOR, TX IN THE BEGINNING:

Texas has always been big in the space program, but its getting bigger.

almost every company that takes off into that wild blue yonder has a presence here and many,

including SpaceX in Central Texas, will expand their footprint.

Space, the final frontierits what brought Hefzi-Ba Ramirez to hear a NASA scientist speak at TSTC.

"I am actually planning to use my avionics degree, my associates degree to go into the Air Force," she said.

After World War Twos win, America and its allies took a victory lap while behind the Iron Curtain the biggest axis power of them all, the Soviet Union, saw its future in the stars.

The Soviets surprised the world with the first man-made satellite. There wasnt much to it, just a radio beeper inside a ball with antennas, but everyone on earth, it seemed, heard those beeps, and to some, they sounded like a warning. The Soviets then followed with a dog in space and finally Yuri Gagarin makes one small pass around the earth becoming the first man in space.

"American Democracy competing with the Soviet Union with communism in there if you look at the first years in space it looks like the soviets are in the forefront of technology and success," said NASA Historian Brian Odom.

So President Kennedy doubles down on the space program, and he places his bet in a Texas town that would later become synonymous with space travel.

"in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three," said John F. Kennedy.

At Houstons Rice University, Kennedy challenges the U.S. to put a man on the moon by end of the decade.

For years, the military had charge of whatever space program America had. The challenge to the moon would put that work into a civilian agency.. one created during the years of Dwight Eisenhower, a wartime general who envisioned the exploration of space as a peaceful venture.

"President Kennedy has a huge question. He's hot that interested in space but he understands the propaganda value and knows how those discoveries will change our lives," said Odom.

President Kennedy outlined the nations space program, saying the concept of a free nation must extend out into space and anywhere else a free people might

benefit. "For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond," he said.

The enthusiasm Jack Kennedy created for space still endures today, especially in the heart of youngTexans like Ramirez . "I wanna be an astronaut," she said.

TEXAS MAKES ITS MOVE

In the beginning of the space program, Texas was a bystander.. yet our leaders at the time saw opportunity, not only to get Texas moving into the future, but also putting Texas on the world stage.

When NASA Comes to TSTC. Students turn out by the hundreds. students, many of whom say, theyve dreamed of the stars all their lives.

As president Kennedy arrived in Texas for a Rice University speech on September 12th 1962, hat he says changes America and Texas, forever. In fact, it would establish Texas as an important part, perhaps THE most important part of the emerging national space program.

"We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people," said President Kennedy.

Because the US had failen behind as the then Soviet Union, launched the first Satellite, the first man, the woman and even the first dog into space.

At the same time the US had very public failures, and Kennedy pointed out, the Soviets surely did too.

"We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public. To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead." he said.

And we did as NASA moves it operation center to Texas. Originally designed for Marylands Goddard Space Flight Center, it would come to Houstons swampy Clear Lake area where Rice had donated land and politicians had urged the move.

"They definitely wanted something that had mild weather. They wanted an Air Force base nearby. So we had Ellington Air Force base that was close by we had a mild climate which they wanted. They also wanted an area where there was a lot of cultural activities for their employees. So that was a big draw for NASA. They wanted local universities nearby because of course, they were going to have these engineers and scientists that needed potentially more training and they wanted to draw also from that workforce that we had here in Houston as well," said Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, Historian at NASA's, Johnson Space Center.

Houston had everything plus some very important politicians, steering the exploration of the stars, to the lone star state. Brazos Valley, (then Houston) Congressman Albert Thomas became the driving force behind NASAs arrival in Houston.

"I think really, Albert Thomas deserves most of the credit for bringing NASA down here. When they were building that center up in Maryland, the Goddard Space Flight Center, he actually had wanted NASA to build a center here. And he told the administrator at the time that he wasn't going to give them a red cent if they didn't move the facility," said Ross-Nazzal.

Houston would later become synonymous with space travel as it changed the way people looked at Texas forever.

"...and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.," said President Kennedy at his now-famous speech at Rice University.

And he couldnt have picked a better place than Texas, a place known for not just its boldness, but its intelligence and its hard-working people.

Instructors at Waco's TSTC believe they have more than a few future rocket scientists here, Including everyday Texans like Hefzi-Ba Ramirez who plans to take to the skies but a little closer to home, telling us she plans to use her avionics degree in the Air Force, and as she, NASA and others, fly off into that wild blue Yonder, theyll have the backing of an army of Texans who made it possible for their trip.

HOUSTON... WE HAVE NO PROBLEM....

Whether you live in McGregor.... or Manor you may have noticed increased activity when it comes to the nations space program.

And most of that action happened right here in Texas. Houston became synonymous with space travel in the Apollo Program.... could we strengthen our brand in the privatization of space?

As President John F. Kennedy prepared to roll out the nation's space program, he hitched his star, to the Lone Star State, as a symbol of progress.

"This city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--and so will space," said John F. Kennedy, the 35th U.S. President.

President Kennedy sealed the deal, making Houston the center of manned space flight for NASA, as Texas had already begun to emerge as a high-tech hub.

In the years that followed, we would hear the word "Houston" sprinkled thorough any conversation between astronauts and mission control.

And with each mission, NASA learned more about, not only space, it learned about earth itself....as Mr. Kennedy predicted.

"Science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school," he said.

You might say the space program outdid itself, exceeding even the president's crystal ball.

Consider these products we use every day, which came straight from the Space program:

The technology that puts cameras into cell phones, Memory Foam, Scratch-resistant sunglasses, the Dustbuster, GPS, and LED lighting,

NASA Historian Brian Odom says, They all got their earliest uses, in the early days of the space program, which centered on Texas.

"Going to the moon was an incredibly important thing, right? Because you're you're looking at how do we... move ourselves off of Earth and out into other places... and that's what we're doing from the Mercury program, Gemini and Apollo, up to about Apollo 14, but Apollo 15 is a little different. You really are diving into the geology of the moon. You're really beginning with a Lunar Roving Vehicle. You can really expand your science out really do some research, right? So you got Apollo 1516 and 17. After 17 you do come back in and you say okay, where do we go from here?" he said.

The obvious choice at the time...Mars. but with the Vietnam War still going, and some troubling economic trends at home, President Richard Nixon decides the needs at home are greater than the needs of outer space.

NASA stays closer to home...

" Skylab launching America's first station in space, sending three crews to do incredibly important research and learning about low Earth orbit. And the space shuttle will go on launch in April 1981. And we'll have this incredibly important suite of missions where we learn about low Earth orbit we learn about access to low Earth orbit, building a space station, launching the Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X Ray Observatory, and then servicing those missions," said Odom.

All run, from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Texas has a foothold in the door.

"What was once the furthest outpost of the old west, Houston will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space," said President John F. Kennedy.

But can it maintain that foothold in the face of a private enterprise free-for-all over space?

TO BOLDLY GO...

NASA ran the American space program as a solo act for the first 40 or so years of its existence. Now you can count more than a handful of successful companies all making money, or about to... off of space,

Most have major operations in Texas, but can Texas keep its hold on these companies?

TV's Captain Kirk explains the thin band of air around the earth, minutes after he steps off a Blue Origin capsule.

This time his beaming face has nothing to do with "Scotty", as actor William Shatner connects in a way he never expected, to the character he's played off and on, for a lifetime.

He returned from his first-ever trip into space, speaking almost in religious terms.

"Everybody in the world needs to see this....." he says in an almost reverent way.

Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos, may not run the nation's top private space company, but he sure knows how to get attention, having the actor whose 4 year mission in television space still plays in re-runs today.

Where's NASA in all this? The whole plan at Blue Origin, comes directly from NASA research, as the space agency started handing off little pieces of the space program to private companies, years ago.

"At what point does does NASA leave off and private can private enterprise takeover? Where's that? Where's that sweet spot? That's a great point. And I think, you know, it depends on exactly what you're looking at, right? Because if you're looking at something from the aeronautics portfolio, you know, the X vehicles, you're learning a lot of important things there. And it still is that r&d, right you're the government can invest money in solving questions. Private industry, for the most part can't do it's not in its you know, there's no market maybe yet for that for that ability. But, you know, NASA the government can can inject money into the into a problem, but some r&d behind it and then get that to the private industry as much as as quickly as it can," said NASA Historian Brian Odom.

And from a wide field at first, three private companies have become the most recognizable names in the game.

Of those... two located major operations in Texas.

Sir Richard Branson located in New Mexico, what you might call, "Texas lite".

Just as the railroad barons Cornelius Vanderbilt, James hill, Collis Huntington shaped modern travel. The space barons, Elon musk, Jeff bezos and Richard Branson almost through sheer force of will, aim for the stars, shaping our future travel.

Bezos has a base in West Texas out near El Paso, in Van Horn where he's spent untold millions on building the Blue Origin launch site, offices and necessary infrastructure for his 275 Employees and 50 contractors.

Outside of Texas, Blue Origin has its headquarters in Kent, Washington, 20 minutes south of Seattle. ... Cape Canaveral, FL. Home to its New Glenn manufacturing, orbital launch and support facilities. . other operations you'll find in Arlington, VA. ...Huntsville, AL. .. and Los Angeles.

Blue Origin's capsule takes off from the Van Horn site, the reusable main rocket lands here, and the capsule tumbles to earth, nearby.

Richard Branson and Burt Rutan joined forces to get Virgin Galactic off the ground. Their company takes a different approach to space launches, believing the cheapest and easiest way to get off the ground... hitch a ride on a specially built mother ship to take you to the edge of the atmosphere where you unlink, hit the afterburners and sail off into the darkness.

Even though Virign had a successful first flight, issues with the stability of the space plane forced virgin to push back the start of regular service sending its stock price in for a hard landing.

uncertainty about Virgin's future also raises questions about it's home base, Spaceport America. Virgin is the biggest tenant at the facility just outside Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Managers though say with other, new tenants moving in, Virgin's success becomes less important to Spaceport's survival.

Though privatization of the space program got off to a slow start by many accounts, Today, NASA refers with pride, to it's private partners, and one of it's early success stories, SpaceX, charting a path laid out with government research.

" From that you can get incredibly important things like the you know, the ability of SpaceX to get people to the International Space Station to kind of dominate transportation paradigm in low Earth orbit," said Odom.

"This experience is something unbelievable," said Shatner.

Because if TV's Captain Kirk has it right, we may all get to ride a rocket into space in the years ahead.

"What you have given me is the most profound experience i can imagine," Shatner told Jeff Bezos.

"I hope I never recover from this," he said.

SPACE WHO?

Space X moved in near McGregor about 20 years ago.

You might say McGregor's been booming for a long time.... most recently with SpaceX.

"They originally started off probably a couple 100 acres and now they occupied 4000 acres of our industrial park. What started as a couple of employees. Now they're in probably close to 1000 and it's still expanding," said Mc Grgor Mayor jim Hering.

What we now know as McGregor's SpaceX facility, began as a world war two era explosives factory called the "Bluebonnet Plant".

Phillips Petroleum moved in for a while with a test lab for different types of fuel.

Rockets arrived, when a small rocket company called Rocketdyne moved in to learn the secrets of the German V-2 rocket and put them to "American Use".

During that time, Rocketdyne's research helped lead to the creation of the v Saturn 5 rocket which sent men to the moon.

the turn of the century brought SpaceX here, and the site grew along with the company.

""This is the horizontal test stand. This is the very first place we fired a rocket was right here" said SpaceX Co-Founder Tom Mueller, in a SpaceX-prepared video.

Rocket genius Mueller designed, built and tested rockets from here for years, retiring in 2020.

His pre-produced tour of SpaceX McGregor shows us some of the highlights.

"The block house is an underground bunker control engine testing like the Merlin booster engine, we're setting up a test of the the daily duty cycle Falcon nine," Muller says.

The engine tests at McGregor roar loudly and shake the ground for miles... something neighbors know all too well by now.

Space X actually has three rocket testing stands, including it familiar-looking tall gantry.

When you hear how powerful these engines are made, all the shaking and roaring seems to make sense.

'" The Falcon nine first stage up here that we're getting ready to do the sort of historical the first folder burn up all nine engines so there's nine engines running 95,000 pounds each. That's a total of 860,000 pounds for about 170 seconds" says Mueller.

And the engines generate lots of heat.

"Right in there where that black type comes down and it goes into the exchangers because the exhaust of course coming out of that thruster is about 3000 degrees. " Mueller adds.

McGregor also tests the Space X capsules.

"Dragon capsule just started into qualification. This is the first fully flight Dragon capsule we built" Mueller says.

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In-Depth: Texas and the New Race for Space - KXXV News Channel 25

NASA needs to hire more astronauts and change the way ittrains them, according to a new report from the space agency's inspector general.

NASA's Astronaut Office currently focuses its efforts on ensuringenough astronauts are trained and ready to crew the International Space Station. And it has been doing so in a post-shuttle era when NASA could only send astronauts to space as passengers on Russian rockets.

But with moon missions looming and growing numbers of vehicles capable of launching humans to space, the agency needs to increase its number of astronauts, reconsider what skillsets those astronauts will need and change the ISS-centric focus of its current training regimen, the report says.

"NASAs Astronaut Office faces several challenges at this moment in time, including meeting the Agencys goal of deep space travel; maintaining and expanding a low Earth orbit presence, in particular on the International Space Station (ISS or Station); executing space flight missions on multiple vehicles; and aiding in the design and development of systems for Artemis missions to the Moon," the reports says.

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As of September, NASA had 44 "flight-ready" astronauts, down from a peak of 150 in 2000, the report said.

NASA assesses the size its astronaut corps every year. In recent years, that has meant having enough astronauts ready to fill available ISS seats for the next five years. It builds in a "safety margin" of 15% to account for attrition, crew skills mix and medical qualifications.

NASA forecasts that the number of astronauts will fall below its targeted size this year and next.

The process of recruiting, hiringand providing basic training for an astronaut takes about four years.

"In light of the expanding space flight opportunities anticipated for the Artemis missions, the corps might be at risk of being misaligned in the future, resulting in disruptive crew reorganizations or mission delays," the report reads.

NASA selected 10 new astronaut candidates in December. They begin training this month. It was the first new astronaut class since 2017.

It is not only the number of astronauts that NASA needs to worry about, the report says, but also the skill sets of each.

The earliest astronauts were all test pilots, but over the years NASA expanded the corps to include scientists, medical doctors, engineers and others with specialized skills. The agency is working now to identify the skill sets astronauts will need for theupcoming Artemis moon missions.

But the agency doesn't maintain a database of each astronaut's skills;instead, it leans on personal knowledge of those in charge of the astronaut office. But that might not be feasible as the corpsgrows, the report found.

Nor does NASA maintain detailed demographic information about astronauts, making it hard to assess whether the agency is meeting its diversity goals.

The report also said NASA needs to adapt its trainingregimen to prepare for the Artemis moon missions.

"As the Agency prepares for crewed Artemis missions, astronaut training needs will change. As with sizing, the current astronaut training framework is primarily aligned to ISS mission requirements," the report said."The Astronaut Office is in the process of developing a framework for Artemis training, but this framework has not been formally chartered nor have any Artemis crews been announced. As such, specific mission-focused training for the Artemis II missionthe first crewed Artemis flighthas not yet begun."

NASA estimates that training for Artemis missions will take two years.

Kathy Lueders, who leads NASA's Human Spaceflight Office, concurred with the report and said the agency is expected to fulfill all its recommendations this year.

A 25+ year veteran of FLORIDA TODAY, John McCarthy currently oversees the space team and special projects. Support quality local journalism bysubscribing toFLORIDA TODAY. You can contact McCarthy at 321-752-5018 or jmccarthy@floridatoday.com.

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NASA needs to hire more astronauts and train them differently, report says - Florida Today