by National Space Society | May 31, 2020 | Commercial Space, NASA, Space Development
By George Mancuso “On 20 July 1969 humans landed on the Moon. This was not merely a historical achievement, but an evolutionary and even cosmic feat.” — Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens The SpaceX “good ship” Endeavour accomplished a soft capture with the...
by National Space Society | May 31, 2020 | Commercial Space, Space Development
By Dale Skran Starting March 28, 2018, I initiated a series of blog posts tracking the “SpaceX Triple Trifecta” – a bold attempt by SpaceX to achieve three amazing milestones in space development: To develop and fly reliably the Falcon 9 Block 5, demonstrating...
by National Space Society | May 30, 2020 | Commercial Space, NASA, Space Development
By George Mancuso “Taking more and more passengers out into space will enable them, and us, to look both outwards and back but with a fresh perspective in both directions.” — Steven Hawking On May 30, 2020 at 3:22 p.m. EDT, a SpaceX commercially owned Crew Dragon...
by National Space Society | Apr 24, 2020 | Commercial Space, Space Development
By Dale Skran On Wednesday April 22 a SpaceX Falcon 9 launched another 60 Starlink satellites into orbit (see image above), bringing the total in the network to over 400, and allowing for initial service to northern latitudes. Other key facts on this launch include:...
by National Space Society | Apr 14, 2020 | Commercial Space, Space Development
By George Mancuso Boeing announced on April 6th it would fly a second uncrewed Orbital Flight Test (OFT) of its CST-100 Starliner. The flight goal is to confirm that problems encountered during last year’s OFT-1 December 20th flight have been corrected. Boeing will...
by National Space Society | Apr 12, 2020 | Space Development
By Dale Skran With most of us under some form of pandemic lockdown, and focused on the terrible events unfolding around us, it is easy to lose track of events, many of which, quite reasonably, get little attention in the current dire situation. I thought some of you...
by National Space Society | Mar 27, 2020 | Commercial Space, NASA, Space Development
By Dale Skran, Chair of the NSS Executive Committee NASA today announced that SpaceX has been chosen to provide a cargo vehicle, the Dragon XL (illustrated above), to support the lunar Gateway as part of the Artemis program. It is expected that a second cargo provider...
by National Space Society | Feb 5, 2020 | National Space Society, Space Development, Space Policy, Space Solar Power
Abstract The National Space Society (NSS) proposes a public/private partnership approach to develop and demonstrate space solar power at a sufficiently high level of technical maturity that commercial energy providers can subsequently build initial operational systems...
