by National Space Society | Dec 11, 2019 | Commercial Spaceflight, Space Development, Space Tourism
By Bob Brodbeck After a one-day delay due to high winds and then fog, Blue Origin this morning Wednesday, December 11th, made its last test flight of 2019 with the New Shepard suborbital rocket system. The twelfth New Shepard system flight (NS-12) launched at 11:43 am...
by National Space Society | Oct 27, 2019 | Commercial Space, Space Development
By Dale Skran, Chair, NSS Executive Committee I recently gave a talk titled “New Rides to the Moon” at the Morris Museum Astronomical Society in New Jersey (the link goes to my slides for the talk). The talk provided an update on new rockets suitable for...
by National Space Society | Oct 13, 2019 | Commercial Space, Space Development
By Dale Skran Copyright 2019 On October 9th, a Russian Proton lofted Northrup Grumman’s first satellite life-extension vehicle from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV) is designed to extend the life of satellites by providing...
by National Space Society | Oct 1, 2019 | Space Development
From Dale Skran, Chair of the NSS Executive Committee: Karlton Johnson, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the National Space Society, has a great Op-Ed at Space.com titled “Spread the Word: Space Development Benefits Earth.” I urge every NSS member to...
by National Space Society | Sep 29, 2019 | Commercial Space, Space Development
By Dale Skran On the evening of Saturday September 28th, Elon Musk provided an exciting update on Starship progress at Boca Chica, Texas. By the time you read this, you’ll have probably seen some good articles in the space press summarizing the talk (the entire talk...
by National Space Society | Sep 1, 2019 | Commercial Space, Space Development
By George Mancuso On August 27, Starhopper, utilizing a single Raptor methane-fueled rocket engine, rose 150 meters above Boca Chica, Texas and successfully landed. This is the last Starhopper flight; in the future the rocket will be used as a static ground test...
by National Space Society | Jul 27, 2019 | Commercial Space, Space Development
By George Mancuso On July 25, 2019 Starhopper rose to an altitude of approximately 20 meters at the SpaceX McGregor Texas facility while also performing a pad translation. Starhopper is a low fidelity prototype, intended to test Raptor engines and control systems for...
by National Space Society | Jun 26, 2019 | Commercial Space, Space Development
By Dale Skran Chair of the NSS Executive Committee Image: First SpaceX recovery of payload fairing In March of 2019 I wrote a Dragon 2 focused update on the “SpaceX Triple Trifeta.” In that article I reviewed the status of SpaceX’s three ambitious goals for 2018: •...
