Saturn V rocket on the launching pad - Official NASA photo (Click Image To Enlarge)
Nowadays, Kickstarter has evolved into a platform for launching big ideas and even bigger businesses. But for Paul Sahre, the crowdfunding platform is about launching a model Saturn V rocket his late father lovingly built 40 years ago. After months of preparation, the rocket never deployed its chute and instead crashed to the ground. It was never flown again.
It’s a powerful story of the Sahre family that resonated with the crowdfunding audience as captured in this color photo from 1969 (Click Image To Enlarge)
Through a Kickstarter campaign, Paul Sahre is continuing a storyline from his youth (Click Image To Enlarge)
Sahre writes on his Kickstarter page.
“It struck me that this was the first time I remember seeing him fail at ANYTHING. It reminded me of a time when our fathers were omnipotent; when any dispute with the kid down the block could be settled with ‘I’ll ask my dad.’”
Now, Sahre plans to try again. He’s going to build and launch a Saturn V of his own alongside his children and family. He’s already bought a vintage kit off eBay, and through Kickstarter funding, he’ll be documenting the experience in a photobook and short documentary video. The goal? To recreate a place and time in both his life and our society.
The idea isn’t just an opportunity to rewrite history in the present …
… but for Paul’s children to get to know a grandpa they never met (Click Images To Enlarge)
Sahre tells me.
“It’s easy to forget but there were seven missions to the moon over a four-year period between 1969-1972. It was a collective experience unlike anything happening today. All my friends wanted to be astronauts and many of them were into model rockets. My dad was an aerospace engineer (but his specialty was flight simulators). He built his 1/100 scale Saturn V and made it an event so we could relate in some small way to what we were watching on the TV every night.”
His father spent months building the rocket (or “years” according to his mom), photographing the progress all the while. But when the rocket failed to deploy its chutes, the photos stopped and the story ended. Sahre wants to continue with his photobook where his father left off.
A 40-yr old Centuri Saturn V rocket kit like the one Paul Sahre's father launched was found on eBay (Click Image To Enlarge)
The sheer amount of details make it a specific memory to be sure. Not everyone’s father was an aerospace engineer. Not everyone’s father built toy rockets. But there’s something about Sahre’s story--maybe it’s the golden age of the Space Race, maybe it’s every man’s quest to understand his father, maybe it’s just the extreme sincerity behind the whole project--that’s resonated with the crowd. Sahre’s family project has already exceeded its $14,000 goal, and there are still a few days left to back it.
Sahre says.
“The project is really about shared experiences and the nature of memory. And about loss of course. Why do certain things stay with us? And how do these experiences form the future you? Why do I remember this particular event with such clarity 40 years after the fact? And what effect might a do-over have on that memory?
“While I don’t necessarily expect answers, I like the idea of re-enacting this event, engineered by my father, for my two sons who never knew their grandfather. And seeing if i can make this experience stick for them.
“Or maybe I just simply miss my dad and this is a way to collaborate with him. Either way, I think he would have liked the idea of giving it another try.”
COMMENTARY: Click this link to view a list of YouTube videos about CBS NEWS Coverage of the launch of Apollo 11 (Parts 1 through 11). The video series is narrated by CBS News correspondent and icon Walter Cronkite. For your convenience, I have included Part 1 below:
I remember the launch of Apollo 11 to the Moon very well. It was a historic event, something you did not want to miss. People throughout the world were glued to their TV sets to watch the launch including the historic landing on the Moon, and witnessing U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong's memorable words: "That's one small step for Man, one giant leap for Mankind."
I think the Saturn V Relaunch project is a wonderful and fun idea and 507 Kickstarter donors thought so too, and they generously donated $19,753. This easily exceeded the goal to raise $14,000. I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of happy amateur rocketeers and families with young children when they receive their Saturn V rocket kit. Congrats to Paul Sahre for conceiving it, designing the Saturn V rocket parts for the kits, and posting it on Kickstarter.
He’ll rebuild a Saturn V model rocket his dad had built over 40 years ago (that crashed when it was launched) (Click Image To Enlarge)
Courtesy of an article dated November 13, 2012 appearing in Fast Company Design
EVERYONE’S FAVORITE HUMANOID ROBOT ASTRONAUT GETS REBUILT AS A STRENGTH-BOOSTING POWER SUIT, FOR USE IN ORBIT AND HERE ON EARTH.
NASA’s Robonaut, and subsequent Robonaut 2, have made countless headlines for potentially replacing astronauts in space. But now, score one for the meatbags. NASA is redesigning their robotic platform as an exoskeleton for humans.
NASA's Robonaut (top) and Robonaut 2 (Bottom) - Click Images To Enlarge
Designed, fabricated, and assembled in just nine months with the assistance of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition as well as Oceaneering Space Systems of Houston, the X1 is an experimental motorized suit that could be wearable both by astronauts in space or everyday people back on Earth. Weighing 57 pounds, it’s designed to either inhibit or enhance human movement; astronauts can wear the device as a resistance-based exercise machine to stay fit in low gravity, while those with limited mobility could wear it to empower their actions back on the ground.
NASA's X1 Robotic Exoskeleton (Click Image To Enlarge)
The four motorized joints at the hips and knees work against or for the user to fit their specific use case, offering power or resistance appropriately. The exoskeleton itself is made of 10 total joints, the other six of which are passive, allowing flexible sidestepping, turning, etc.
But how did NASA adapt their Robonaut skeleton for humans? The key, Project Engineer Roger Rovekamp tells us, was reshaping and calibrating Robonaut’s motors for human use. Additionally, the team created a collection of mechanical safeties to protect soft human flesh inside a robotic frame.
NASA X1 Team (Click Image To Enlarge)
Rovekamp writes.
“Some of the concerns that people may not realize have to do with the inclusion of the added levels of safety that this type of device requires. Oftentimes requirements for safety and requirements for performance are at odds, and in these cases a tough decision has to be made where the engineers must balance the correct level of safety with the appropriate level of performance. Fortunately this is something NASA has become very good at.”
NASA's X1 Robotic Exoskeleton (Click Image To Enlarge)
In terms of ease of use, Rovekamp calls the system “intuitive” but references room for improvement. The largest issue is adjusting the X1 to fit people of various shapes and sizes. Currently, their design requires a tool to make this possible, but NASA aims to make these adjustments self-contained.
NASA's X1 Robotic Exoskeleton (Click Image To Enlarge)
Rovekamp explains.
“[A tool-free design] is ideal for the space environment where small objects tend to want to float away, but it could also be a useful feature here on Earth.”
Indeed, nothing ruins the mood of afterburner-kicking an extraterrestrial supervillain more than pulling out a wrench to tighten a loose boot. NASA had better get to work.
COMMENTARY: I definitely see a need for a robotic exoskeleton suit like the X1 in the health and medical device industries, especially for patients recovering from strokes and other mobility issues. There is actually quite a large amount of research in developing robotic exoskeleton suits within the U.S. military. In a blog post dated July 25, 2011, I profiled Raytheon's XOS2 Robotic Exoskeleton Body Suit, which is being tested by the U.S. Army. In blog article dated March 16, 2011, I wrote about Cyberdine, Inc, the inventor of "HAL", a wearable strap-on Cybor-robotic exoskeleton that can expand and improve physical capability and Lockheed Martin developer of HULC, a titanium hydraulic-powered "anthropomorphic exoskeleton" that may ultimately go a little way toward transforming soldiers into superhumans.
Courtesy of an article dated October 31, 2012 appearing in Fast Company Design
2012 Social TV Ecosystem by Tendrr TV for Advertising Age (Click Image To Enlarge)
Social media-related TV businesses will grow at a double-digit percent basis in the next five years.One estimate from MarketsandMarkets says the entire business will rise to $256 billion by 2017 from its current $151 billion in 2012. The group says the business will expand every year by 11.2% during that five-week period.
These social TV numbers total interests from second-screen apps providers, smart TV manufacturers, content providers, middleware providers, advertising agencies and consumers.
Europe will take the biggest share -- $55 billion this year, rising to $78 billion in five years -- a compounded annual growth rate of 7%.
The research group says "the future for television is social interaction. Broadcasters are developing and enriching social TV integration; they are targeting the tune-in customer, engagement and their loyalty to boost the ratings."
Research says social TV business will be associated almost entirely with the device part of the market. The Hardware/Smart TV segment accounted for the largest share -- 97% of the overall social TV market, at $147 billion in 2012. This is expected to hit $244 billion by 2017, which is a compounded annual growth rate of 10.6% from 2012 to 2017.
COMMENTARY: Where do they think the income is coming from to support their estimates? According to Strategy Analytics global advertising spend in 2012 is likely to be $465bn, with 40% ($188.5bn) of that spent on TV with a further $83.2 spent on online.
The clue is in the footnotes which state: The Hardware/Smart TV segment accounted for the largest share; i.e. 97.6% of the overall Social TV market at $147.58 billion in 2012.
So, is the Social TV market really worth $151.14 billion? No.
Flipping the figures around we see that the true value of the social tv market based on technology and platforms may be closer to $3.56bn. Yet, that is still only according to an analyst firm that has a very poor grip on what social tv is about.
Even amidst a staggering global economy, the television industry is poised to grow. IDATE’s DigiWorld Institute, a leading center for Europe’s market analysis in the telecomm, internet and media industries, forecasts that the global TV market will grow at an annual rate of 4.7% to €355 billion (US $435B) by 2020.
The emerging technologies that are pushing TV ahead from behind the scenes deserve due credit for some of this growth. Gilles Fontaine, IDATE’s Deputy CEO and Project Manager for the report, envisions new distribution models: “the digital store (an open platform that makes all content available to viewers) and self-supply (thanks to the destruction of the exclusive link between the access network and the TV set)”. These distribution models are underpinned by technology that allows the industry to meet the digital demands of tech savvy consumers.
The infographic below from Bluefin Labs details the most social days, moments, premieres, finales, series, broadcast networks and cable networks.
Conyers says.
“This was the first full TV season with social TV measurement, so this data serves as a benchmark for future seasons. People will be interested in tracking the growth and adoption of social TV. Having this season’s data all in one place is a useful reference.”
Click Image To Enlarge
Another example of technology facilitating TV growth can be found in mobile and tablet devices. According to one of eMarketer’s ‘top digital trends for 2012 and beyond’, a majority of users will access the web via a tablet by 2015. Chris Horton, of Internet marketing company SyneCore Technologies, connects the dots; “many millions of users will be accessing TV shows through their tablets”. Device proliferation and better quality video, will drive up content consumption and the price of ad real estate.
The dollars at stake in the TV industry – and the tech sector’s ability to affect its growth – make it a lucrative and logical place for social media giants Twitter and Facebook to expand. Twitter is set to take in $1B a year in ad revenue by 2014. All Things D columnist, Peter Kafka, claims this puts Twitter on the road towards becoming a media company of its own. Meanwhile, Facebook is signing network deals of epic proportions, notably partnering with NBC for the Olympics and CNN for the elections.
Listen to Mark Silva, SVP of emerging platforms at global strategic design firm, Anthem Worldwide, and you’ll realize Twitter and Facebook aren’t the only players to watch; “there’s money to be made. But the winners won’t necessarily be the companies that already have a major presence in digital and social media”.
If you haven't already done so, I recommend you read my very comprehensive blog post dated November 29, 2011 where I describe what social TV is, size of the market and how broadcasters and advertisers benefit.
Courtesy of an article dated October 15, 2012 appearing in MediaPost Publications Media Daily News and an article dated July 15, 2012 appearing in Social TV Newsand an article dated June 23, 2012 appearing in Mashable
A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers — including filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page — is set to announce plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources such as precious metals and water.
Planetary Resources, Inc. intends to sell these materials, generating a healthy profit for itself. But it also aims to advance humanity's exploration and exploitation of space, with resource extraction serving as an anchor industry that helps our species spread throughout the solar system.
Click Image To Enlarge
Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Eric Anderson told SPACE.com.
"If you look at space resources, the logical next step is to go to the near-Earth asteroids, They're just so valuable, and so easy to reach energetically. Near-Earth asteroids really are the low-hanging fruit of the solar system."
Planetary Resources is officially unveiling its asteroid-mining plans at 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT) Tuesday (April 24) during a news conference at Seattle's Museum of Flight.
Precious metals and water
Two of the resources the company plans to mine are platinum-group metals and water, Anderson said.
Platinum-group metals — ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum — are found in low concentrations on Earth and can be tough to access, which is why they're so expensive. In fact, Anderson said, they don't occur naturally in Earth's crust, having been deposited on our planet over the eons by asteroid impacts.
Anderson said.
"We're going to go to the source. The platinum-group metals are many orders of magnitude easier to access in the high-concentration platinum asteroids than they are in the Earth's crust."
And there are a lot of precious metals up there waiting to be mined. A single platinum-rich space rock 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide contains the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever mined throughout human history, company officials said.
Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Peter Diamandis said in a statement.
"When the availability of these metals increase[s], the cost will reduce on everything including defibrillators, hand-held devices, TV and computer monitors, catalysts. And with the abundance of these metals, we’ll be able to use them in mass production, like in automotive fuel cells."
Click Image To Enlarge
Many asteroids are rich in water, too, another characteristic the company plans to exploit. Once extracted, this water would be sold in space, providing significant savings over water launched from the ground.
Asteroid water could help astronauts stay hydrated and grow food, provide radiation shielding for spaceships and be broken into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, the chief components of rocket fuel, Anderson said.
Planetary Resources hopes its mining efforts lead to the establishment of in-space "gas stations" that could help many spacecraft refuel, from Earth-orbiting satellites to Mars-bound vessels.
Anderson said.
"We're really talking about enabling the exploration of deep space. That's what really gets me excited."
In addition to Page, Planetary Resources counts among its investors Ross Perot Jr., chairman of The Perot Group and son of the former presidential candidate; Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google; K. Ram Shriram, Google board of directors founding member; and Charles Simonyi, chairman of Intentional Intentional Software Corp, who has taken two tourist flights to the International Space Station.
Cameron serves the company as an adviser, as does former NASA space shuttle astronaut Tom Jones.
The plan
The company is not ready to break ground on an asteroid just yet. Before that can happen, it needs to do some in-depth prospecting work.
Of the roughly 8,900 known near-Earth asteroids, perhaps 100 or 150 are water-rich and easier to reach than the surface of the moon, Anderson said. Planetary Resources wants to identify and characterize these top targets before it does anything else.
To that end, it has designed a high-performance, low-cost space telescope that Anderson said should launch to low-Earth orbit within the next 18 to 24 months. This telescope will make observations of its own but also serve as a model for future instruments that will journey near promising asteroids and peer at them in great detail.
The prospecting phase should take a couple of years or so, Anderson added.
"We will then, at that time, determine which of these objects to pursue first for resource extraction, and what mission we'll be facilitating," he said. "Before you decide where to put the gas station, you've got to understand where the trucks are going to be driving by."
Mining activities will be enabled by swarms of unmanned spacecraft, according to company materials. Planetary Resources will focus on near-Earth asteroids, with no immediate plans to extend its reach to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or to the surface of the moon, Anderson said.
He declined to estimate when Planetary Resources would begin extracting metals or water from space rocks, saying there are too many variables to lay out a firm timeline. But a recent study sponsored by Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies estimated that a 500-ton near-Earth asteroid could be snagged and dragged to the moon's orbit by 2025, at a cost of about $2.6 billion.
Whatever Planetary Resources' exact schedule may be, Anderson said the company is already well on its way to making things happen.
Anderson said.
"We're out there right now, talking to customers. We are open for discussions with companies — aerospace companies, mining companies, prospecting companies, resource companies. We're out working in that field, to really open up the solar system for business."
COMMENTARY: You know, I love big dreams, huge challenges, but this is just so much crock. Anderson makes it sound like all near-Earth asteroids are oozing with precious metals like platinum and gold ready to be mined. That's just not the case. Locating the right asteroids will take time, and finding those containing precious metals, and in sufficient quantities to make the venture economically feasible will take even longer. "Snagging" an astroid is not going to be an easy thing either. They rotate and wobble, and many of them are just plain huge. Towing the "snagged" asteroid will be a challenge. It is going to take a huge rocket. The best asteroids will probably contain ice that could be converted into water and then into hydrogen that could be used to fuel rockets for towing and running mining operations. We haven't returned to the Moon since the mid-1970's, so it's unlikely we will have the technology to tow an asteroid close to Earth by 2025. What we have here are a bunch of greedy individuals who probably drank a little too much liquor during lunch.
Courtesy of an article dated April 23, 2012 appearing in Space.com
KICKSTARTER IS A NEW MODEL IN FUNDING IDEAS, BUT IS THE SKY REALLY THE LIMIT?
John McGinnis may or may not be a little crazy.
He’s a designer, a manufacturer of composite products, and a self-proclaimed expert in fluid dynamics. But beyond a few profiles on experimental aviation sites, the only resume he’s offering the world is the Synergy, his aircraft that promises “10X the economy of a bizjet with greater range, at 10% the price.” It’s currently raising funds on Kickstarter.
As a kit plane, the Synergy wouldn’t be such an anomaly, except that it bucks conventional aircraft design: It doesn’t actually have wings. Instead, the Synergy deploys McGinnis’s own invention, a “double box” tail that he calls a “modern magic carpet," promising groundbreaking reduced drag to create “a big, fast, roomy airplane with double the usual speed or triple the usual economy.” This is no ultralight. McGinnis says the final product would be roughly the size and cost of a luxury SUV, but the plane would actually get better gas mileage. It’ll run on diesel.
McGinnis tells Co.Design.
“There are millions of pilots and millions more who’d like an excuse to [fly every day]. Flying an airplane is the easy part, and it could be a whole lot easier if we weren’t 90% occupied with nursing our obsolete tech through the air. Think about what [aviation would] be like if we went back to 1973 and put airplanes on the same track we put our telephones on.”
To McGinnis, that track is a plane in every garage, the Jetsonsonian future we all long for, the thus far fruitless desire that squeezes at least one flying car on the cover of Popular Science each year.
There’s just one catch, and it’s the catch we always see in this industry: The plane hasn’t been built yet. Right now, McGinnis has a ¼ scale R/C model in the air, and he’s raising money to build a full-scale prototype. And while there’s at least some debate as to whether or not his concept could actually work as advertised, there is no one to confirm nor call BS on the design (Kickstarters are no more aerospace engineers than Co.Design writers.)
A 1/4-scale version of the full-size Synergy (Click Image To Enlarge)
Yet the idea is resonating all the same. The project has already raised half of its $65,000 goal. And most interestingly, McGinnis is raising funds, not from people who expect to land a five-seater plane for a $250 deposit, but from enthusiasts--dreamers, even--who are are willing to just give away their money to see such a plane developed. A $10,000 deposit will get you no closer to the cockpit than a $10 one.
The 1/4-scale Synergy flys beautifully through the air after take-off. Reminds one of an eagle in flight (Click Image To Enlarge)
McGinnis says.
“We’re building a prototype, not taking orders for vaporware. How about we create a company that can live up to unprecedented demand first, that doesn’t beg their customers to front their risks in advance and then never delivers the goods?”
McGinnis and his team of designers are building the first full-scale Synergy prototype (Click Image To Enlarge)
McGinnis’s project is simultaneously inspiring and depressing. On one hand, we’re all drawn to the possibility of a brilliant garage inventor out-designing industry giants. But on the other, what the heck is everyone doing in the aviation industry, if McGinnis’s vision is remotely possible? And should such highly specialized technical designs be up to all of us normal people to gamble on?
If I fund one of Kickstarter’s clever iPhone cases, worst case scenario is that it just doesn’t fit my iPhone quite right. If I fund McGinnis’s plane, worst case scenario is that a plane actually crashes. But I guess, that’s exactly why the Synergy has been designed with a nose-to-tail rocket-deployed parachute.
COMMENTARY: As a young lad, I built a box kite. I thought the damn thing would never fly, but out Chinese neighbor's son said it would. And, yes it did. If you watched above video of the 1/4-scale Synergy plane it flew beautifully. It soared into the sky gracefully like a graceful eagle swooping for the kill. The 1/4-scale Synergy plane may not be 100% conclusive to armchair skeptics and even some aeronautical engineers, but it's good enough for me. I like the fact that the Synergy will come in kit form and will be made of composite materials making it lighter, but very strong. I just looked at McGinnis' project on Kickstarter, and he has 628 backers who have donated $74,759, putting him $9,759 over the $65,000 goal. However, I have a feeling that he will need more money to make Synergy a reality. Give John McGinnis the extra money I think he will need to build a full-size working prototype. I want to see Syngery fly and prove neysayers all wrong.
Today, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) made history when its Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial vehicle in history to successfully attach to the International Space Station. Previously only four governments – the United States, Russia, Japan and the European Space Agency – had achieved this challenging technical feat.
The vehicle was grappled by the station’s robotic arm at 9:56 a.m. Eastern or 12:56 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. Dragon’s passive common berthing mechanism successfully attached to the orbiting laboratory at 12:02 p.m Eastern.
SpaceX Mission Control at the moment that the International Space Station's grappling arm connects with the Dragon spacecraft (Click Image To Enlarge)
The ISS grappling arm holds the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft pior to docking maneuveur (Click Image To Enlarge)
When asked for his initial thoughts on Dragon’s capture and move into the history books, Elon Musk stated, “just awesome.”
Broadcast quality videos, including video inside of the SpaceX factory, may be downloaded at vimeo.com/spacexlaunch. For NASA TV downlink information, schedules and links to streaming video, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv. High-resolution photos are posted at spacexlaunch.zenfolio.com.
SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft slow moves forward to dock with the International Space Station (Click Image To Enlarge)
SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft successfully docks with the International Space Station (Click Image To Enlarge)
SpaceX CEO and Chief Designer Elon Musk will join NASA Space Station Program Manager Mike Suffredini, NASA COTS Program Manager Alan Lindenmoyer and NASA Flight Director Holly Ridings for a press conference to discuss the remarkable achievement at 1:00 PM Eastern.
This is SpaceX's second demonstration flight under a 2006 Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) agreement with NASA to develop the capability to carry cargo to and from the International Space Station. Demonstration launches are conducted to determine potential issues so that they might be addressed; by their very nature, they carry a significant risk. If any aspect of the mission is not successful, SpaceX will learn from the experience and try again.
Mission Highlights:
May 22/Launch Day: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched the Dragon spacecraft into orbit from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
May 23: Dragon orbited Earth as it traveled toward the International Space Station.
May 24: Dragon’s sensors and flight systems were subjected to a series of complicated tests to determine if the vehicle was ready to berth with the space station; these tests included maneuvers and systems checks in which the vehicle came within 1.5 miles of the station.
May 25: NASA gave Dragon the GO to attempt berthing with the station. Dragon approached. It was captured by station’s robotic arm and attached to the station.
Coming up next:
May 25 - 31: Astronauts open Dragon’s hatch, unload supplies and fill Dragon with return cargo.
May 31: Dragon is detached from the station and returns to Earth, landing in the Pacific, hundreds of miles west of Southern California.
COMMENTARY: Congratulations to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and his technicians and engineers for a job well done and successful docking with the ISS. Next comes the opening of the hatch, unloading of supplies inside Dragon, loading of supplies returning to Earth and safe return of the Dragon spacecraft to its splash in the Pacific Ocean off of the Southern California coast.
Courtes of a press release dated March 25, 2012 issued by SpaceX
On Tuesday, May 22, 2012, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft to orbit in an exciting start to the mission that will make SpaceX the first commercial company in history to attempt to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station – something only a handful of governments have ever accomplished.
At 3:44 a.m. Eastern, the Falcon 9 carrying Dragon launched from SpaceX’s launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Now Dragon heads toward the International Space Station. On that journey it will be subjected to a series of tests to determine if the vehicle is ready to berth with the station.
The Falcon 9 space ship lifts off successfull! Bon Voyage and congratulations SpaceX on the successful launch.
SpaceX staffers outside Mission Control 1 cheering the successful launch of the Falcon 9 space rocket.
The Falcon 9 space rocket is in orbit!! Sorry about the poor quality of the video. Trust me, it's up there!!
SpaceX CEO and Chief Designer Elon Musk high-fives Bulent Altan, SpaceX Senior Director of Avionics, after the successful launch.
More broadcast quality videos, including video inside of the SpaceX factory, may be downloaded at vimeo.com/spacexlaunch and high-resolution photos are posted at spacexlaunch.zenfolio.com.
At a press conference held after the launch, SpaceX CEO and Chief Designer Elon Musk began,
“I would like to start off by saying what a tremendous honor it has been to work with NASA. And to acknowledge the fact that we could not have started SpaceX, nor could we have reached this point without the help of NASA… It’s really been an honor to work with such great people.”
SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk stands alonside the Falcon 9 rocket (Click Image To Enlarge)
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on the ground at Cape Canaveral in Florida (Click Image To Enlarge)
The vehicle’s first stage performed nominally before separating from the second stage. The second stage successfully delivered the Dragon spacecraft into its intended orbit. This marks the third consecutive successful Falcon 9 launch and the fifth straight launch success for SpaceX.
Musk said.
“We obviously have to go through a number of steps to berth with the Space Station, but everything is looking really good and I think I would count today as a success no matter what happens with the rest of the mission.”
He continued by expressing his gratitude to the more than 1,800 SpaceX employees.
“People have really given it their all.”
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and its different configurations depending on the weight of the payload and launch costs in millions (Click Image To Enlarge)
Describing the scene inside of SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, he said,
“We had most of the company gathered around SpaceX Mission Control. They are seeing the fruits of their labor and wondering if it is going to work. There is so much hope riding on that rocket. When it worked, and Dragon worked, and the solar arrays deployed, people saw their handiwork in space operating as it should. There was tremendous elation. For us it is like winning the Super Bowl.”
Explaining the significance of the day, Musk stated,
"This mission heralds the dawn of a new era of space exploration, one in which there is a significant commercial space element. It is like the advent of the Internet in the mid-1990s when commercial companies entered what was originally a government endeavor. That move dramatically accelerated the pace of advancement and made the Internet accessible to the mass market. I think we're at a similar inflection point for space. I hope and I believe that this mission will be historic in marking that turning point towards a rapid advancement in space transportation technology."
This is SpaceX's second demonstration flight under a 2006 Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) agreement with NASA to develop the capability to carry cargo to and from the International Space Station. Demonstration launches are conducted to determine potential issues so that they might be addressed; by their very nature, they carry a significant risk. If any aspect of the mission is not successful, SpaceX will learn from the experience and try again.
Mission Highlights: During the mission, Dragon must perform a series of complex tasks, each presenting significant technical challenges (dates subject to change):
May 22/Launch Day: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launches a Dragon spacecraft into orbit from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
May 23: Dragon orbits Earth as it travels toward the International Space Station.
May 24: Dragon’s sensors and flight systems are subjected to a series of complicated tests to determine if the vehicle is ready to berth with the space station; these tests include maneuvers and systems checks in which the vehicle comes within 1.5 miles of the station.
May 25: NASA decides if Dragon is allowed to attempt berthing with the station. If so, Dragon approaches. It is captured by station’s robotic arm and attached to the station, a feat that requires extreme precision.
May 25 - 31: Astronauts open Dragon’s hatch, unload supplies and fill Dragon with return cargo.
May 31: After approximately two weeks, Dragon is detached from the station and returns to Earth, landing in the Pacific, hundreds of miles west of Southern California.
COMMENTARY: Friday, May 25, will be the crucial day. If all Dragon systems checkout okay, and if NASA gives the final okay, the dragon capsule will dock with the International Space Station shortly thereafter, probably over the Memorial Day weekend is my guess. It's a huge step for SpaceX to get American astronauts into space without relying on the Russians, which I don't trust as far as I can throw them. I look forward to the big day.
Congratulations to Elon Musk and his entire SpaceX team for a job well done. I knew you could do it. Now let's dock Dragon with the ISS.
Courtesy of a press release dated May 22, 2012 issued by SpaceX
YOU JUST HAVE TO FIGHT THE OTHER FIRST-CLASS PASSENGERS FOR ONE OF THE THREE SEATS.
On Virgin, I’ve appreciated my fair share of soothing purple lighting and touch-screen drink ordering. But for my next cocktail in the sky, I really want to visit their first-class cabin. In a design collaboration of Virgin Atlantic and VW+BS, first-class passengers from NYC to London will have the opportunity to walk not onto a plane, but into a glowing, spacious bar situated right inside the door, fitted like a Tetris piece against passengers’ seats.
Click Images To Enlarge
VW+BS’s Ian Macready tells Co.Design.
“Air travel used to be exciting and rare and we wanted to bring some of that excitement back. We were very much influenced by the rise of the pop up bar and the new speakeasy. We wanted to create a space that created a different dynamic for the passenger rather than just the straightforward bar shape. It should be a part of the aircraft that encourages interaction, that blurs slightly the boundary between the crew and the passenger, and that allows for places to stand, to sit, to lean and to perch.”
The atmosphere is meant to focus on the “immaterial” in which every surface reflects light like a JJ Abrams film, from the polished aluminum stools to the space’s champagne lacquered finish. It’s a mix of plastic, stone, and metal--all punctuated by color-changing LEDs to set the mood--combining to create an ethereal bar experience that might only make sense at 30,000 feet.
Click Images To Enlarge
Macready writes.
“The futuristic aesthetic was very much influenced by aviation. The way the project evolved was a very specific response to being up in the sky and does not necessarily work elsewhere, except possibly on a high-speed train or at the top of a new skyscraper. The language doesn’t have context to anything else on the ground.”
But the design isn’t just an opulent statement of aviation aesthetics; it’s a glitzy red herring for the entire clinical, safety-regulated flight experience. Few will even realize that the bar serves two lives, storing ice buckets, spirits, and stemware for entertainment, but also revealing oxygen kits and wheelchair storage for safety and comfort.
Indeed, what’s most impressive about Virgin’s new bar isn’t that it fits on a plane; it’s that it might not fit anywhere else.
COMMENTARY: That's what I call a cool bar. Drinking a Mai-Tai at 35,000 feet in a new Boeing 787 is going to be a thrill. I would love to fly Virgin Atlantic. All of their planes have names. For some incredible images of Virgina Atlantic's planes and world routes, click HERE.
Artist rendition of a robotic mining mission to a near-Earth asteroid (Click Image To Enlarge)
There’s gold in them there hills. You know, those ones floating around in space. Asteroids contain many tons of precious metals, making them irresistible to scientists, aerospace engineers, futurists, fiction writers … and tech billionaires.
A group of wealthy, adventurous entrepreneurs will announce on Apr. 24 a new venture called Planetary Resources, Inc., which plans to send swarms of robots to space to scout asteroids for precious metals and set up mines to bring resources back to Earth, in the process adding trillions of dollars to the global GDP, helping ensure humanity’s prosperity and paving the way for the human settlement of space.
Eric Anderson, founder of commercial space tourism company Space Adventures, and co-founded a new company along with Peter Diamandis said.
“The resources of Earth pale in comparison to the wealth of the solar system.”
Diamandis started the X Prize foundation, which offers prize-based incentives for advanced technology development.
Nearly 9,000 asteroids larger than 150 feet in diameter orbit near the Earth. Some could contain as much platinum as is mined in an entire year on Earth, making them potentially worth several billion dollars each. The right kinds of investment could reap huge rewards for those willing to take the risk.
Outside of NASA, Anderson and Diamandis are among the most likely candidates to realize such a dream. Space Adventures has sent seven private tourists to the International Space Station while the Ansari X Prize led to a spurt of non-governmental manned spaceships.
Diamandis said.
“We have a long track record of making large-scale space ventures real.”
Despite the promise of astronomical profits, the long time-scales and uncertain return on asteroid mining has historically driven most investors away from such undertakings. But the new company is also backed by a number of other billionaire luminaries, including Google’s CEO Larry Page and executive chairman Eric Schmidt, former Microsoft chief architect Charles Simonyi, and Ross Perot Jr. The venture also counts on filmmaker James Cameron, former astronaut Tom Jones, former JPL engineer Chris Lewicki, and planetary scientist Sara Seager as advisers.
Still, this new undertaking will be much larger and more ambitious than anything Anderson and Diamandis have attempted before. The hurdles are many and high. While the endeavor is technically feasible, the technology has not yet been developed. And beyond their initial steps, the details of Planetary Resources’ plans remain scarce.
The first hurdle will likely be ensuring that Planetary Resources has covered all its legal bases. While some have argued that governments need to set up specific property rights before investors will make use of space, the majority of space lawyers agree that this isn’t necessary to assure the opportunity for a return on investment, said space policy analyst Henry Hertzfeld at George Washington University in Washington D.C. Mining occurs in international seabeds — even without specific property rights — overseen by a special commission dedicated to the task, he said. A similar arrangement would likely work in space.
In terms of extraction, Planetary Resources hopes to go after the platinum-group metals — which include platinum, palladium, osmium, and iridium — highly valuable commodities used in medical devices, renewable energy products, catalytic converters, and potentially in automotive fuel cells.
Platinum alone is worth around $23,000 a pound— nearly the same as gold. Mining the top few feet of a single modestly sized, half-mile-diameter asteroid could yield around 130 tons of platinum, worth roughly $6 billion.
A mock-up of the Arkyd-101 Space Telescope will be used to identify asteroids with potentially valuables metals. Courtesy of Planetary Resources (Click Image To Enlarge)
Within the next 18 to 24 months, Planetary Resources hopes to launch between two and five space-based telescopes at an estimated cost of a few million dollars each that will identify potentially valuable asteroids. Other than their size and orbit, little detailed information is available about the current catalog of near-Earth asteroids. Planetary Resources’Arkyd-101 Space Telescopeswill figure out whether any are worth the trouble of resource extraction.
Within five to seven years, the company hopes to send out a small swarm of similar spacecraft for a more detailed prospecting mission, mapping out a valuable asteroid in detail and identifying rich resource veins. They estimate such a mission will cost between $25 and 30 million.
The next step — using robots to remotely mine, possibly refine ore, and return material to Earth safely — is probably the toughest phase, and Planetary Resources is still tight-lipped about its plans here.
This is an unprecedented challenge — the only asteroid material ever returned to Earth comes from the Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa spacecraft, which successfully returned a few hundred dust particles from asteroid 25143 Itokawa in 2010.
One possibility might be to find a useful asteroid and push it closer to Earth. A fairly low-power solar-electric ion engine could nudge a hunk of rock into orbit around the Earth, effectively creating a small second moon that could be easily accessed.
A recent white paper(.pdf) written by a team of scientists and engineers for the Keck Institute for Space Studies looked at exactly this proposition in order to use an asteroid for scientific and manned exploration. The team concluded that the technology exists, though such a plan would need at least $2.6 billion in funding. If Planetary Resources went this route, it would rack up a large initial investment, which doesn’t include actually mining and returning material back to Earth, potentially adding many hundreds more millions of dollars.
JPL engineer John Brophy, who co-authored the paper said.
“It’s one thing to understand the mining and refining processes and another thing to actually build it. And everything in space tends to be harder than you think it will be.”
Another option to simplify the process might be to bring the ore back to Earth for refining, though that presents its own set of challenges. Say for the sake of argument that you send a 5,500-pound robot (roughly the weight of a small car) to an asteroid and it can mine and carry back 100 times its own weight in asteroid material. On most asteroids, chopping up a one-ton chunk of regolith will generate less than an ounce of platinum. Even asteroids with the highest concentration of platinum yield only about two ounces of platinum per ton.
This means that with the current commodity prices, each of your robot miners will generate about $875,000, even on an asteroid with the highest platinum amounts. Given a mission cost that is at least hundreds of millions of dollars, it wouldn’t be advantageous to refine ore on Earth.
There are also unknown financial aspects of a successful asteroid mining operation. The sudden influx of hundreds of tons of platinum into Earth’s economy would certainly drive the commodity’s price down. Looking at historical analogues, the enormous gold and silver reserves the Spanish inherited from their New World conquests led to terrible inflation and possibly the decline of their empire.
But Planetary Resources sees a platinum price drop as one of its potential goals.
Anderson said.
“I would be overjoyed as a company if we brought back so much platinum that the price fell by a factor of 20 or 50.”
Aluminum was incredibly expensive in the 1800s, before new technology allowed it to be easily separated from its ore, said Diamandis. Today, aluminum is used in hundreds of applications, something that Anderson and Diamandis would like to see happen to the platinum-group metals.
While mining platinum and other rare metals is Planetary Resource’s way of bringing wealth to Earth, the world still has ample reserves of such material — South African platinum mines alone are expected to produce for another 300 years.
Brophy said.
“In my view, its questionable how the economics of asteroid-retrieval works if you’re going to bring it to the ground. It makes more sense if you’re going to use the materials in space.”
Asteroids contain one substance that is of extremely high value for astronauts: water. Water can be used for drinking and it can be broken into its constituents. Oxygen is valuable for life support in space-based habitats, while liquid oxygen and hydrogen are both used to produce rocket fuel.
Rather than having to lug all the fuel for a mission out of Earth’s deep gravity well — an expensive proposition — having a “gas station” in space could help enable missions to Mars and beyond. Such a refueling depot might allow people to permanently live and work in space, another goal of Planetary Resources.
Of course, this creates a sort of chicken-and-egg problem. Do you generate tons of resources for your nonexistent space civilization first or do you get your space civilization started and then utilize the available resources?
Wired Science’s resident space historian David S. Portree thinks asteroid mining might make more sense when we have a more established space-based habitats with a different economy and better technology.
He said.
“Right now it would be like a big oil tanker dropping anchor off the coast of medieval England. The medieval English might identify the oil as a useful commodity, but wouldn’t be able use enough to profit the tanker crew. Heck, they wouldn’t know how to get it off the tanker, except in wooden pails and rowboats.”
COMMENTARY: The idea of sendiung robots to mine asteroids for their valuable metals like platinum and gold is complete and total science fiction, and the economics just don't seem to make any sense. I wonder how Google CEO Larry Page and Eric Schmidt got suckered into financially backing Planetary Resources useless idea?
Courtesy of an article dated April 23, 2012 appearing in Wired
NASA's psychodelic concepts from the 1970's. Space colony housing units inside a huge mothership (Click Image To Enlarge)
A REMINDER THAT NASA NEEDS TO REMEMBER THE POWERFUL FORCE OF CONCEPTUAL DESIGN.
Our excitement for space didn’t end when we put a man on the moon in the 1960s. In the late 1970s, we were still obsessed with the voids beyond our atmosphere. A little film called Star Wars came out, of course, but we also had the rise of Carl Sagan as a household name. He was producing a nonfiction series called Cosmos that would be seen by 500 million people worldwide and become the most successful series in PBS history.
Unsurprisingly, it was a time when NASA, too, dreamed on the epic scale.
NASA'S psychedlic concepts from the 1970's. Huge mothership orbits in outerspace (Click Image To Enlarge)
Amongst their many projects at the time, NASA Ames proposed massive spaceships that would orbit communities of 10,000 people around the earth--planned communities in space--and they commissioned a series fantastical artistic renderings of the vision. “These orbital space settlements could be wonderful places to live; about the size of a California beach town and endowed with weightless recreation, fantastic views, freedom, elbow-room in spades, and great wealth,” describes Al Globus, Senior Research Associate for NASA Ames.
NASA's psychedelic concepts from the 1970's. Huge mothership in the shape of a ferris wheel that spins creating artificial gravity (Click Image To Enlarge)
The concepts look like America’s post-WWII suburban settlements popped LSD, as if every manicured bush is humming the national anthem while it soars through the galaxy on a psychedelic rainbow. Today, we’re convincing millionaires to book a glorified bus trip into the closest edge of space. In the 1970s, the same efforts could have leased them a two-bed, two-bath condo in the stars, complete with integrated Hi-Fi.
NASA's psychedelic concepts from the 1970's. Inside a huge space colony mothership shows a landscape enclosed in glass (Click Image To Enlarge)
As of late, NASA has lost something that’s a lot bigger than their funding--and a skeptic might say it’s the very reason they’ve lost their funding. Case in point: These jaw-dropping human colony concepts are now outsourced to students.
While our Mars rovers and the newly modified Hubble telescope have represented some of the greatest scientific accomplishments in human history, when is the last time that the common person was inspired by the vision and scope of the space program? When is the last time we got a wide-eyed, multicolor explosion of ideas from some of the greatest thinkers in the world pondering the largest problems in the universe? When is the last time physicists painted a picture of the future that they’d otherwise only glimpse in their mind’s eye?
NASA's psychedelic concepts from the 1970's. Scene of a space colony mothership in space complete with artificial landscapes that include hills, lakes, rivers, roads and bridges like on Earth (Click Image To Enlarge
Though they’re often silly in retrospect, concept designs are a powerful tool. They’re lucid dreaming that the public gets to share in. NASA, sometimes it’s worth coming down from orbit, just to remind us all how very, very high you’re trying to fly.
COMMENTARY: It's incredible just how much imagination and forward thinking early NASA scientists had about the future of space. The idea that humans would live in space in these humongous motherships or space colonies with lakes, rivers, bridges, mountains, flora and vegetation just like on mother Earth has yet to be realized. We're probably at least 100 years away from this even today. However, given the explosion in population on Earth and predictions of shortages of water and food, and mass famine caused by rising termperatures and sea levels due to due to global warming, probably means we should be planning on living in space. Perhaps we should consider living on the Moon or even on Mars. It's either this or moving our population centers underground.
Courtesy of an article dated April 27, 2012 appearing in Fast Company Design
Recent Comments