Category Archives: Transhuman News

Boeings John Mulholland gives a briefing to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine during a visit to the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida in 2018. Hardware for Boeings CST-100 Starliner space taxi can be seen in the background. (NASA Photo / Kim Shiflett)

As a new commercial-centric era dawns for the International Space Station, Boeing is realigning its top managers for the space station program and for the program thats working to send Starliner capsules there and back.

Mark Mulqueen, who has served as Boeings space station program manager since 2015, will be retiring July 2. During his 35 years at Boeing, Mulqueen has served in a variety of management positions for example, as deputy program manager for the space station and deputy program manager for the commercial crew program.

Boeing has served as the prime contractor for the U.S. segment of the International Space Station since its inception. The orbital outpost will mark 20 years of continuous occupation this November.

Mark has made an immense contribution to Boeings human spaceflight programs, and his legacy will endure well beyond his departure, Jim Chilton, senior vice president of Boeing Space and Launch, said in an email to employees announcing todays management changes.

John Mulholland will take on the role of vice president and program manager for the International Space Station, effective June 26. Since 2011, Mulholland has led the design and development of the CST-100 Starliner space taxi, which is meant to ferry astronauts to and from the space station.

NASA awarded Boeing a $4.2 billion fixed-price contract in 2014 to develop the Starliner as part of a commercial space transport system in the wake of the space shuttle fleets retirement in 2011. SpaceX won a similar contract worth $2.6 billion for the development of its Crew Dragon capsule, which sent NASA astronauts to the station for the first time last month.

Starliner took on an uncrewed test flight to orbit last December, but a timing glitch foiled Boeings plan to go all the way to the space station and back. A joint NASA-Boeing independent review turned up dozens of fixes that had to be made. Another uncrewed trial is expected later this year and assuming that flight goes well, Starliners first crewed trip to the station would take place next year.

In a financial report issued in January, Boeing said it would take a $410 million pre-tax charge against earnings to cover the cost of a second uncrewed flight.

Before taking on his role with the Starliner program, Mulholland was vice president and program manager for Boeings part of the space shuttle program. (The prime contractor for the shuttle program was United Space Alliance, a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture.)

Effective June 26, John Vollmer will take on Mulhollands role as vice president and program manager for the CST-100 Starliner program.

Vollmer joined the Starliner program this year to support the implementation of recommendations from the independent review team. Vollmer previously served as chief engineer on the space station program.

His experience with the space station goes back 33 years, to Boeings first contract award for the program. He was a member of the station redesign team in 1993, when Space Station Freedom was reworked to accommodate Russian participation. Vollmer also served as the launch package stage manager for the stations first U.S. element, which was launched in 1998 and is now known as the Unity node.

Their leadership will help us rise to the challenges before us and the opportunities ahead as we advance Boeings 60-year legacy in human spaceflight, Chilton said.

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Boeing shifts its team leaders for space station and Starliner space programs - GeekWire

Later this year, if all goes well, the International Space Station will receive a very important delivery: a new and improved toilet system.

It has a fancier name, of course; officially, the commode is NASA's Universal Waste Management System (UWMS). The system is designed to bridge the gap between current lavatorial space technology and what humans will need to make extended visits to, say, Mars, in comfort. But there's nothing like a plumbing problem to make any trip seem much longer than it is, so before engineers take UWMS that far from the comforts of home, they want to test it in orbit.

The launch is targeted for no earlier than the fall, a NASA spokesperson confirmed to Space.com, although the agency is still determining what spacecraft will carry the new plumbing up.

Related: International Space Station at 20: A photo tour

In the long term, the new toilet is meant to prepare waste-management engineers for some of the challenges experts anticipate on future missions, Jim Broyan, a deputy program manager for Environmental Control and Life Support Technology and Crew Health and Performance at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said during a meeting of the Committee on Space Research, or COSPAR, on May 20.

The meeting focused on what human missions to Mars mean for planetary protection, the practice of looking to protect both Earth and the rest of the solar system from cross-contamination by living organisms. Waste collection and storage are ripe for such cross-contamination, of course, since human waste is full of microbes. So future Mars visitors won't necessarily be able to take the approach of Apollo astronauts on the moon, who simply left bags of human waste on the lunar surface.

For Mars missions, which by necessity will be much longer flights, volume is another challenge. Broyan said that current estimates suggest Mars missions would need to manage about 600 lbs. (270 kilograms) of solid waste, about 75% of which is water.

Those challenges mean that before humans head to Mars, waste-management experts have, well, a bucket list, Broyan said. "Our future goals are to stabilize and dry the metabolic waste to make it microbially inactive and possibly reuse that water, reduce the amount of consumables for the potty, because it does really accumulate on a long mission, and we're also looking at, Can we reuse some of the waste?"

And while the current standard practice of adding stench-dampening charcoal to fecal containers and storing those containers on the ship works now, for longer missions it is less appealing and may require too much mass.

The new station-bound toilet won't tackle all of those challenges single-handedly, but it will improve on previous NASA designs for the shuttle and space station and incorporate crew feedback about those systems. The UWMS is also crucial to support the larger population on the U.S. side of the space station that the coming rise in commercial crew missions will facilitate, according to NASA.

The toilet currently on offer on the U.S. side of the space station was designed in the 1990s and based on its shuttle counterpart, according to a detailed review of space toiletry. But the apparatus has its flaws. It can be clunky to use, particularly for women, and it is "sensitive to crew alignment on the seat," sometimes resulting in messes, according to that review.

So NASA has tried to keep the aspects that have gotten positive reviews while trimming mass and volume and making some design changes, like adjusting the shape of the seat and replacing the apparatus that compresses the waste.

Another change mimics a feature of the toilet on the Russian side of the space station, where astronauts simply hook their feet into toe bars, rather than the thigh bars used on the American equivalent to anchor the astronaut in the microgravity environment.

The UWMS will remain on the space station for the rest of the orbiting laboratory's lifetime, and a second toilet of the same model will fly on the Orion capsule that astronauts use to fly around the moon on the first crewed Artemis mission in NASA's ambitious lunar return plan, according to the agency.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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The International Space Station is getting a new toilet this year - Space.com

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was a pure flying machine compared to the space shuttle, according to the astronauts who rode it into space.

Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken piloted the first manned flight of the Falcon 9 on May 30. Each astronaut had previously been onon two space shuttle missions, and they spoke of their surprise at how comparatively smooth the SpaceX launch was.

From the time the engines lit, the first two-and-a-half minutes to staging was about like we expected, except you can never simulate the Gs, so as the Gs built you could certainly feel those, Hurley toldSpaceflight Now. What I thought was really neat was how sensitive we were to the throttling of the Merlin engines. That was really neat. You could definitely sense that as we broke Mach 1.

He added: We didnt even need to look at the speed. You could tell just by how the rocket felt, so its a very pure flying machine.

Remember, [the]shuttle had solid rocket boosters to start with, Hurley said. Those burned very rough for the first two-and-a-half minutes. The first stage with Falcon 9 were the nine Merlin engines. It was a much smoother ride, obviously, because it was a liquid engine ascent.

Liquid engine ascent is a reference to the mix of super-chilled kerosene and cryogenic liquid oxygen propellants consumed by the Merlin engines.

After the smooth launch, the astronauts said the second stage felt a bitrougher.

The biggest difference is just the dynamics that are involved, the vibration, the experiences that we felt actually riding a real rocket, Behnken said.

It will be interesting to walk with the SpaceX folks to find out why it was a little bit rougher ride on the second stage than it was for shuttle on those three main engines, Hurley added.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft was developed to largely function autonomously, handling all prep and docking with the International Space Station following the 19-hour flight.

NASA is also working with Boeing on itsmanned Starlinercapsule, which is expected to launch early next year.

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Astronauts: Falcon 9 rocket was totally different ride than the space shuttle - WITI FOX 6 Milwaukee

Astronauts and NASA have taken to social media to commemorate today's Juneteenth holiday from Earth and space.

Juneteenth, also known as African American Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, marks the date June 19, 1865 when tens of thousands of Africa-Americans in Texas were emancipated. While President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863 freed slaves in U.S., many of the Confederate states ignored it.

But, two years later, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, a Union Army general, issued orders to free the enslaved people in what was then the reclaimed confederate territory of Texas, which was one of the final acts of emancipation in the country.

NASA, former NASA astronauts Mae Jemison, Leland Melvin and current NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps are memorializing the day and their thoughts online.

Related:Charles Bolden, NASA's 1st Black administrator, speaks out on systemic racism

NASA shared an image of Texas from spaceof Galveston, Texas with a caption commemorating the holiday. "#Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, learned of their emancipation. In this view from space, Galveston is seen from the @Space_Station. Today we reflect on how far we've come and how much further we have to go," the agency wrote on Twitter.

More: NASA's SpaceX launch is not the cure for racial injustice on Earth

Melvin, who served as a mission specialist on two Space Shuttle missions STS-122 and STS-129, shared a beautiful tribute to the day that included not only a short history lesson but a snapshot with a number of people of color who have had a significant, lasting impact on the space sector and on the world.

Melvin wrote on Twitter: "Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when General Major Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas and read a federal order abolishing the institution of chattel slavery in the state."

He also shared a photo of himself standing with people including NASA astronaut Victor Glover, who is set to become the first black astronaut to join the International Space Station Crew when he launches with SpaceX's Crew-1 mission later this year; Epps; NASA astronaut Stephanie Wilson and even Nichelle Nichols, who famously played Nyota Uhura in the original "Star Trek" series.

Epps retweeted Melvin's sentiment and added "Happy Juneteenth! Its a very important day to celebrate."

Jemison also included important historical details in her tribute to the holiday. On Twitter she wrote: "#Juneteenth recognizes & celebrates Black peoples freedom and the end of slavery in the US! 19 Jun 1865 Union Army General issued orders to free enslaved people in the retaken confederate territory of Texas 2 years after Lincoln signed the #EmancipationProclamation 1 Jan 1863."

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Astronauts and NASA pay homage to Juneteenth - Space.com

FP TrendingJun 19, 2020 14:29:52 IST

Astronomers have identified a green glow in the Martian atmosphere,not unlike the glow observed by astronauts from the space station when they look towards the Earth.

According to a BBC report, the glow comes from oxygen atoms when they get excited by sunlight. While it has long been predicted to occur on other planets, the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), which is a joint European-Russian satellite at Mars, is the first to make the observation outside Earth.

"Youd never plan a mission to go look for this kind of thing. Today, we have to be very clear about the science were going to do before we get to Mars," Dr Manish Patel from UK's Open University said, speaking aboutthe finding."But having got there, we thought, well, lets have a look. And it worked."

Artist's impression of the TGO at Mars. The TGO detects the excited oxygen not with an imaging camera (hence no pretty pictures) but with its Nomad spectrometer package. This instrument sees the oxygen at very particular altitudes. Image: ESA

The study's results, published in the journalNature Astronomy,add that the emissions are a consequence of collisions between atmospheric molecules and charged particles that are racing away from the Sun. On Earth, these interactions are heavily influenced by theplanet's strong magnetic field, which pulls the particles down towards the two magnetic poles.

In a statement by the European Space Agency, lead author Jean-Claude Gerard of the Universite de Liege in Belgium said, One of the brightest emissions seen on Earth stems from night glow. More specifically, from oxygen atoms emitting a particular wavelength of light that has never been seen around another planet.

The statement also points out that this emission has been predicted to exist at Mars for around 40 years.

Astronauts aboard the ISS in 2011 saw a green band of oxygen glow is visible over Earths curve. On the surface, portions of northern Africa are visible, with evening lights shining along the Nile river and its delta. Image: NASA

Jean-Claude and the team were able to spot the emission using NOMAD (Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery) and including the ultraviolet and visible spectrometer (UVIS).

Co-author of the study Ann Carine Vandaele, Principal Investigator of NOMAD, said that the study's authors decided to point at the edge of Mars and found emission at an altitude of around 80 kilometres, which also depended on the changing distance between Mars and the Sun.

Understanding the properties of the Mars atmosphere is key towards operating missions to the planet, USA Todayreported.

According to theESA, studying the glow of the planetary atmospheres can provide a host of information about its composition and dynamics,even revealing how energy is deposited in it by both the suns light and solar wind.

Find latest and upcoming tech gadgets online on Tech2 Gadgets. Get technology news, gadgets reviews & ratings. Popular gadgets including laptop, tablet and mobile specifications, features, prices, comparison.

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Green glow seen in the atmosphere of Mars, similar to Earth's from space station - Firstpost

It's been two months since astronaut and Maine native Jessica Meir returned from space and now the Caribou native is speaking out about what it was like to be a member of the first all-female spacewalk.

Meir, who was first selected by NASA in 2013, had a childhood dream of going to space.

From 2019 to 2020, she got to serve as a flight engineer on the International Space Station for Expedition 61 and 62.

Over the past year, and particularly since the beginning of her time on the ISS in 2019, Meir said she found herself in a variety of situations she didn't necessarily expect.

Those moments have included giving tips on isolation for people stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, making appearances on late night talk shows and getting serenaded by one of her favorite bands, The National.

But it was the spacewalk that made a lot of national headlines, when she and fellow astronaut, Christina Koch, donned space suits and went outside the ISS to do maintenance and keep the orbiting lab functional.

During the time she and Koch were doing that work, Meir says the priority was just that. The work.

She had a job to do and, as she points out, the class of astronauts she was part of in 2013, was also the first to have 50% men and 50% women.

By the numbers, Meir says everyone should expect to see more women on more NASA missions and notes the agency has committed to putting a woman on the Moon.

Still, she'll also tell you that just because space can be a physical and emotional vacuum when you're working in it, with inches of a protective suit between you and death, there are moments of reflection after the hatch closes.

"It was a very proud and humbling moment," she said, during an interview with NECN and NBC10 Boston on Friday.

She explained that she and Koch, "were quite overwhelmed by the level of excitement for it on the ground" and that the experience wasn't necessarily something she had expected.

The credit for the achievement, however, Meir says, actually goes to all of the previous NASA astronauts whose shoulders, Meir feels she stands on.

"That spacewalk had really nothing to do with Christina and myself," she said. "That was really for all these women that came before us."

In the present and on Earth, Meir has continued contributing to efforts for future efforts, who Meir believes will be from many diverse backgrounds, as they prepare for more private-sector supported space travel along with missions to the Moon and Mars.

In particular, Meir is looking forward to the publication of a paper she worked on about an experiment in space to find different ways to combat muscular and skeletal atrophy.

She explained that the zero-gravity environment in space takes a heavy toll on an animal's muscles and bones, which, in turn, would make a long space flight to somewhere like Mars rather difficult since a spacecraft making that journey would likely be smaller and not have room for the exercise equipment Meir had access to stay healthy on the ISS.

A third of all humans currently in space are from the state of Maine. Last week, York native Chris Cassidy joined Caribou native Jessica Meir on the International Space Station who will be preparing to head back to Earth.

"There was one experiment using a mice model that has applications not only for long-term space flight but also to many disease states on the ground, conditions where people have problems with their muscular and skeletal systems," Meir said.

"That's actually yielded some incredibly interesting results and we've recently just submitted a paper to publish those results. You'll have to stay tuned just a little bit longer," she added.

Waiting a bit longer is something Meir quickly realized she too would be doing after landing in Kazakhstan in April.

Because of COVID-19, her mother was unable to fly to Houston to see her in person as planned and Meir hasn't been able to fly to Maine either.

"I still haven't seen my mom," she said. "Outside of [her] friends in the local area, I haven't seen any of my family or friends and that's been disappointing and difficult for me to deal with but it's something that everybody is having to deal with."

Meir says keeping her family and friends healthy by not traveling to them is more important right now.

While she stays grounded, Meir is also waiting to find out if she will be selected for any of NASA's upcoming missions to the Moon or beyond.

As she pointed out, the decision is not hers, but if possible she would get on a rocket tomorrow to return to space.

"To go to the Moon, that is really my next great dream and there's a chance that could happen," she said.

In the meantime, Meir says she's going to appreciate everything she missed while she was in orbit, a list that includes the friends she can see right now, fresh fruits and vegetables, yogurt at breakfast and salads.

She is also thinking about what she will do when she eventually returns to Maine and thinking of all the people she wants to thank in person.

"New England has always played such a special part of my life, I was living and working in Boston before I got this job and spent all of my first years in Maine and spent all of my first 18 years in Maine," she said.

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Astronaut and Maine Native Jessica Meir Talks About Experience in Space - NECN

That is only about one-third of the way to the 62-mile altitude that is often considered the boundary of outer space, but it is still high enough to see that our planet is indeed round. Ms. Poynter said the price for a ride would be more expensive than the $75,000 that World View had planned to charge, probably about $125,000.

The new design is simplified. Instead of trying to steer by finding winds blowing in the desired direction, Space Perspectives balloon will lift off and head in the direction of that days winds. By letting out some of the hydrogen that makes the balloon lighter than air, the craft slowly descends to a splashdown in either the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico.

The craft will have a parachute to allow a safe return if the balloon somehow deflated.

Ms. Poynter said Space Perspective has to obtain enough investment for its initial development work, including an uncrewed test flight in the first quarter of next year. If all goes according to plan, the first flights with passengers might take off around the beginning of 2025, nearly a decade after the target date the founders had set for World View.

In addition to World View, Ms. Poynter and Mr. MacCallum have attempted other ambitious space projects. They worked on the balloon and craft that lifted Alan Eustace, a Google executive, to near the top of the stratosphere for a successful record-setting parachute dive in 2014.

They also collaborated with Dennis Tito, an entrepreneur who is one of the few private citizens to visit the International Space Station, on Inspiration Mars, a private endeavor to launch two people on a flyby of the red planet. That proved out of reach because available rockets were not powerful enough.

We have done a lot of hard things in our day, Mr. MacCallum said, and some have worked out and some of them havent. And, some of them were, Wouldnt it be fantastic? Maybe low probability, but worth giving it a shot like Inspiration Mars.

Ms. Poynter said a marketing study that Space Perspective commissioned found that roughly 2 million people would be interested in their balloon trips, potentially a market worth a quarter of a trillion dollars.

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They Want to Sell Balloon Rides 19 Miles Up. Havent We Heard This Before? - The New York Times

Antietam Elementary School students talk with the International Space Station through a multipoint telebridge

Antietam Elementary School students talked with Commander Chris Cassidy through Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) in the first-ever virtual multipoint telebridge. Six students asked Cassidy questions during the short time frame that was allotted for the event.

Throughout the school year, ARISS assists with connecting schools to the crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Normally, at a school site, students would gather in one room to participate. A licensed amateur radio operator would set-up equipment at the school that would connect students to the ISS at a scheduled time. However, this year, with the closure of schools, ARISS found a way to add the element of connecting students virtually from their homes. The solution was building a multipoint telebridge.

Antietam Elementary Gifted Education Teacher Kathy Lamont, who is also a member of the ARISS education and executive committee, volunteered Antietam students to take part in the first multipoint telebridge with the ISS. From their homes, each student dialed into a conference call and logged into ARISS newly created YouTube channel. From his home in Rhode Island, Steve Rys was the master control of the live YouTube feed, which included a graphic depiction tracking the location of the ISS. The channel also served as a way to share informational videos with students about ARISS and the technology used to conduct space chats with the ISS.

John Kludt, based at his home in Atlanta, Georgia, served as the program moderator. Kludt kept tabs on the ISS, shared information and introduced Fred Kemmerer, the radio operator responsible for making contact with the ISS. Kemmerer used his 40-foot antenna at his home in New Hampshire to contact Cassidy aboard the ISS. Rys shared a live video feed of the ISS as it started flying over Canada.

The students and volunteers were excited as the time drew closer to begin contact with the ISS, which would only be in range of Kemmerers radio signal for about 10 minutes.

November Alpha One Sierra Sierra this is Alpha Bravo One Oscar Charlie, any copy? Kemmerer called out. After several attempts, Kemmerer switched from his primary channel, then to his back-up channel and back to his primary channel. Five minutes had past before Kemmerer called his contact at NASA in Huntsville, Alabama. Cassidy was having technical difficulties with the radio on-board the ISS. Determined to have a successful space chat for the Antietam students, Kemmerer continued to call and finally made contact.

Miles, a second-grader, was the first to ask Cassidy a question, What does the sun look like from outer space? He can barely be heard through the teleconference connection. Kemmerer asked Miles to repeat the question and the audio was still hard to understand.

Cassidy, who had a list of the questions, volunteered to answer them. In response to Miles he said, Good question Miles. The sun is the same exact appearance that we see on Earth. Its the same size and the same intensity, although we dont have the protection of the atmosphere, so its very, very bright for us.

Cassidy continues with the next question, which is from Henry, a kindergartner, who asked, How comfortable is it to sleep in space? The astronaut explained that they float inside sleeping bags tied to a wall and once they get use to not having a pillow, its very comfortable.

Kemmerer chimes in asking Cassidy to stand-by, then asks Catherine, a kindergartener, to ask her question. Despite some static, the question can be heard by Cassidy. Two more student questions were heard and answered by Cassidy before the ISS moved out of the range of Kemmerers antenna.

Lamont was excited to provide this opportunity for students.

I love being able to connect students to real activities and real careers. Anything that gets students more aware of their surroundings and shows them that they are a part of the much larger community is key, she shared.

Check out the video to hear Antietam students making history by talking to an astronaut aboard the ISS from their homes. ARISS has also shared the full program on their YouTube channel.

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Students chat with the ISS from their homes - Brentsville District High

The Weekend Edition is pulled from the daily Stansberry Digest.

By Corey McLaughlin

Now seems like a great time to leave Earth...

A pandemic rages on. Some states are seeing their highest average of new daily cases since COVID-19 first struck the U.S. And for the past few weeks, cities across the country have surged with protests...

Police brutality is the flash point today, but we've been warning for years that mounting economic frustrations (much less virus-aided ones) would lead to more frequent and more intense civil unrest.

But we're not focusing on that today... Instead, we want to remind you about the types of triumphs that humankind can reach.

On Saturday, May 30, a pair of NASA astronauts got lucky...

Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley blasted off the planet from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on board a SpaceX rocket bound for the International Space Station 254 miles up in the sky.

It was a historic day for two big reasons...

It was the first time a private company, Elon Musk's SpaceX, launched NASA astronauts into space. And it was also the first time a crew left Earth via American soil at all since 2011.

For years, NASA astronauts have been hitching rides with Russian cosmonauts to the space station... reflecting an era of innovative stagnation, hesitation, and bureaucracy in U.S. space flight since the Columbia disaster, which killed seven astronauts during a reentry from space in 2003.

Enter SpaceX.

Musk, also known as the polarizing founder of Tesla (TSLA), started the company in 2002 with the crazy idea of colonizing Mars... putting a base on the moon... and having millions of people fly to both places from Earth, as if it were a flight from New York to Los Angeles.

As Musk said in a press conference after the successful launch...

This is hopefully the first step on a journey... of life becoming multiplanetary for the first time in the 4.5-billion-year history of Earth. That's seeming increasingly real with what happened today.

Hundreds of years from now, if someone looks back on today's essay in a blockchain-powered content archive, maybe they'll laugh and say, "Of course... we've been going to Mars every summer for years." Until then, though...

We're not living on Mars yet, but people seem interested...

NASA said that more than 10 million people watched the launch of the Crew Dragon Demo-2.

It was a welcome break that gave us a strange sense of normalcy amid an endless stream of chaotic images on the mainstream news.

NASA's broadcast included live feeds of the cockpit. Behnken and Hurley, a pair of former military test pilots, were mostly along for the automated ride, but they did test manual controls while docking the spacecraft with the space station on Sunday...

The events also included fresh footage of one of SpaceX's signature "reusable rockets" landing in routine fashion on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This part of the process might be something you've seen before. But it wasn't always done this way...

You see, during a "normal" NASA launch, the "first stage" of the rocket the most powerful and most expensive part would usually just break off and drop back to Earth, crash-landing somewhere in the ocean... never to be seen again.

SpaceX reinvented this standard part of rocket-launching over the past two decades... The company designed technology to guide the first-stage rocket back to Earth in a controlled descent so that it can be used again.

Just like we reuse commercial airliners or cars, reusing rockets saves time, money, and critical components. It's a phenomenal step toward Musk's dream business of flying people all over outer space on a daily basis.

Not long ago, SpaceX was best known for exploding rockets...

When the company started experimenting with Musk's idea of reusing rockets and landing them back on Earth in 2013, the early results were almost comical...

There were explosions on the ground and in the air, as well as rockets that tipped over sideways like candles falling in the wind.

But these repeated failures, followed by commitment to the plan when no one was watching, is precisely what led to SpaceX's breakthrough event with millions paying attention.

Nowadays, the "reusable rocket" idea is almost an afterthought to rocket operations. That's a testament to the routine... It has been successfully done at least 50 times.

Private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin headed by Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos provide the technology, testing, and resources to actually build the rockets and take on the liability. (If anything went wrong during the launch on May 30, you can bet SpaceX would have shouldered most of the blame, not NASA.)

In the meantime, entities like NASA train the astronauts and bring their facilities and experience to the table. It's a match made in space-heaven...

And this private-public partnership became a necessity to actually get things done...

Following the Columbia tragedy, NASA's whole identity was upended.

Operations were shut down for two years. And after that, engineers needed to get approvals on proposed items or changes from up to several boards, which essentially acted as "filters."

The bureaucracy stifled innovation. As Garrett Reisman, a former NASA astronaut and senior adviser for SpaceX, explained during a presentation at our annual Stansberry Conference in Las Vegas last October...

What's the best way to design something if you want to get through this process quick and inexpensive? Just do the same thing you've always. That's where we ended up, with very little innovation.

We didn't really have the freedom to fail anymore, and it was largely because of the accidents we had over time. After Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia, we got less and less willing to fail even in testing and development, where you need to be a bit reckless and push the boundaries in testing. Otherwise, you never do anything great.

Now, we can't discuss space any further without talking about the "Space Force"...

Forget for a moment that "Space Force" is the name of a TV sitcom on Netflix (NFLX), starring Steve Carell...

This newest branch of the U.S. military announced by President Donald Trump in December has actually been doing some interesting things in its short history. And the stakes couldn't be higher...

NASA's primary mandate from the White House is to put humans on the moon by 2024. And in the meantime, plenty of other projects are ongoing...

Even though reusable rockets and human spaceflight are what make headlines, satellites actually hold the key to the future in space. That's where companies are lining up to land government contracts...

In March, the Space Force launched its first rocket in the name of national security. The mission was to complete a "constellation" of military satellites... On May 16, the U.S. launched a robotic X-37B space plane into low-Earth orbit to complete a "secret" mission.

In the March issue of Stansberry Innovations Report, Dave Lashmet wrote about this mission. And he also outlined what the Space Force will actually do...

The Space Force will control our military and intelligence satellite launches, plus protect our assets in orbit. As such, it has two main missions...

The first is offensive. It will compete to control space as a U.S. observational post. It's almost a throwback to World War I, when the balloon corps used binoculars to see troop movements.

The Space Force's second mission is defensive. It must protect those satellites.

And it's wasting no time getting started...

One of the Space Force's big early tasks is to find the best partners to launch satellites into orbit and to construct the next generation of military technology technology that will keep us ahead of our enemies and competitors.

So there's money to be made in space on Earth...

Last month's high-profile launch was technically not a "Space Force" mission. But you could call it that by association...

Right now, four companies are competing to be the launch provider for the Space Force from 2022 to 2025... SpaceX is one of them. But if you're looking to make money with this company in the public markets, you can't right now. It's not publicly traded... at least not yet.

But you can make money with others right now...

For example, two of the other three companies in the "launch provider" battle are publicly traded. And a bunch of others could be in line for lucrative government contracts as we delve deeper into the final frontier and look down at Earth with more technology.

In the Stansberry Innovations Report, Dave and editor John Engel have identified the companies best-positioned to deliver big space-related returns. That includes one of the largest, most stable, publicly traded leaders in space technology... and a little-known American company that could have 1,000% upside.

Trillions of dollars will be made in the space industry, starting this year. Click here for all the details on these companies now.

All the best,

Corey McLaughlin

Editor's note: Dave and John see the space industry as a booming, profitable market. In their Stansberry Innovations Report, they've tracked down companies that are entering the newest "space race" and are well-positioned to earn you a profit. And recently, Dave and John shared the name of a little-known company entering the space industry... And you can take advantage of its 1,000% upside potential today. Click here to learn more.

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You Can Make Money in Space on Earth - DailyWealth

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question youd like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

In the zero-gravity airplanes or vomit comet, why does stuff behave like there is no gravity when it is just falling? Austin B., 11, Scranton, Pennsylvania

I have flown many times in zero-gravity airplane flights. Each time I still enjoy the feeling of floating free, the ability to fly across the cabin from just one gentle push on the wall, just like astronauts in the International Space Station, and the novelty of rotating your body in whatever direction you choose. The feeling is like the brief sensation on some roller coasters or off of a diving board, but for close to half a minute and without the air rushing past you its fun!

People feeling weightlessness without being in spaceflight might seem like a contradiction. But it is possible, and people frequently choose to do this for recreation or for research in an airplane that is flying in the atmosphere, not out in space.

I am a researcher in aerospace engineering and am interested in how to control and use liquids and gases in spaceflight. Examples are liquid rocket propellants in spacecraft or water in life support systems in human spacecraft.

When standing still, you actually experience the force we call gravity when you feel the Earth pull us toward its center. Gravity pulls you down, and the floor pushes up on your feet. If gravity disappeared, you could push off of the floor and float away, never returning to the floor unless you found a ceiling to push off of again. You would appear to float around like someone in a vomit-comet airplane flight or an astronaut in the International Space Station.

You may have learned that the space station orbits the Earth because the force of gravity on it is balanced by the sideways force caused by the circular flight path. This force is called centrifugal force, the same that you feel when turning in a car, train, amusement park ride or similar.

Airplanes fly closer to Earths surface, so gravity is a little stronger for the airplane than the International Space Station. But clearly the force of gravity caused by the Earth exists at the space station and at the vomit-comet, yet astronauts in space station and researchers or tourists in the vomit-comet look like there is no gravity. Why?

I have flown in the vomit-comet flights with science experiments and Purdue University students, and indeed, the experience feels like there is no gravity.

Yet each time I fly, gravity pulls the airplane down to the ground for the landing on the runway. Therefore, we know gravity must be present, and yet people look like and feel like there is no gravity during part of the vomit-comet flight.

These research flights are typically full of qualified researchers who have earned an advanced degree, in my case a Ph.D.

One everyday event might help you understand how apparently gravity is both present and absent at the same time. When you ride in a car that turns to the left, you feel pushed to right. You may even feel pushed against the right-hand side of the cars interior, and the door pushes back on you. Turning in the direction the car is traveling also changes what we call the velocity of the car.

Velocity encompasses both the speed of the car and the direction that it is traveling. Changing the direction feels like sideways gravity to you. Changing the speed, such as a sudden stop, feels like forwards gravity to you. Elevators starting and stopping feel for a moment like there is more or less gravity. These changes in velocity are called accelerations. Acceleration has an amount and direction, just like velocity does, and both are examples of vectors. Another vector is force, and one example is gravity, which pulls us down to the Earths surface.

You have experienced that acceleration feels the same as gravity does. Suppose you could find a way to create an anti-gravity acceleration: that is, an acceleration acting in the right direction and in the right amount to cancel out gravity. Is this possible?

The answer is yes this is what happens in a vomit-comet flight and in an orbit.

The shape of the vomit-comet flight path is called a parabola. Pilots achieve this by flying upwards at an angle of about 45 degrees and then they level out and dive at about 45 degrees, which creates the acceleration needed to cancel out gravity. The maximum speed for the airplane and how rapidly the airplane can pull up before and after a parabola determine how long this acceleration can last, about 25 seconds.

Gravity pulls down on us, and by accelerating down in just the right way in an aircraft or spacecraft, we can feel like we are in zero gravity. The correct physical term is weightlessness, but zero gravity is a descriptive term that also describes the sensation, so even in the aerospace research world and in NASA, zero gravity is the common term used most often by experts.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question youd like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit adults, let us know what youre wondering, too. We wont be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

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What is the 'zero gravity' that people experience in the vomit comet or space flight? - The Conversation US