NewSpace
2011 Conference Review
A report on the annual Space
Frontier Foundation's conference, held
this year at NASA Ames in Mountain View, California.
Topics of discussion ranged from entrepreneurial
space businesses to lunar miing to fully reusable
suborbital space vehicles.
Space
Access 11 Conference Review
A report on the annual Space
Access Society's annual conference in
Phoenix, Arizona. The focus, as always, was
on efforts by entrepreneurial companies to
achieve dramatically lower costs for getting
to space..
Here is the latest Virtual
SpaceTV 3D show, which was created by BINARY
SPACE with story content from HobbySpace.
The virtual presenter Amanda Bush gives a special report
on the development of space tourism over the past decade
and where it is going in the years ahead:
These videos are intended as demonstrations of an experimental
technique for generating animated presentations. The
show was generated autonomously by software and without
human interaction. The project is described in the Virtual
Producer whitepaper (pdf). For further information
contact info@binary-space.com.
Cornell University grad student Zac Manchester
has opened the Kickstarter project KickSat
-- Your personal spacecraft in space!.
The goal is to raise $30K to fund development
and launch of the tiny "Sprite" pico-satellites
that he and his collaborators have been
working on for three years. Their goal
is to bring down the huge cost
of spaceflight, allowing anyone from a curious
high school student or basement tinkerer
to a professional scientist to explore what
has until now been the exclusive realm of
governments and large companies. By shrinking
the spacecraft, we can fit more into a single
launch slot and split the costs many ways.
I want to make it easy enough and affordable
enough for anyone to explore space.
The project is described in detail at SpacecraftResearch.com
and here is an introductory video
SpaceX Announces Plans to
Develop a Fully Reusable Launch Vehicle
On October 17th more than 800 people attended
a ceremony at Spaceport
America near Las Cruces, New Mexico
to dedicate the new terminal building. Within
a couple of years, space tourists will arrive
at the terminal to take their Virgin
Galactic rides on SpaceShipTwo
rocket vehicles up across the 100 kilometer
border to space and back down. The terminal
will also serve as a hangar for the SpaceShipTwo
vehicles and their carrier WhiteKnightTwo
aircraft.
The WhiteKnightTwo "Eve" with
the SpaceShipTwo "Enterprise"
slung beneath it flew from Mojave, California
for the event. The vehicles are currently
undergoing an extensive test program in
Mojave, where Scaled Composites, which built
the vehicles, is located. Once the vehicles
are determined to be safe and reliable,
they will move to New Mexico to begin regular
service.
Richard Branson and members of his family,
along with several famous friends, participated
in the event. As shown in the video below,
Branson and his two children also joined
with the Project
Bandaloop dance troupe for the performance
that led up to the official dedication of
the building as the Virgin Galactic Gateway
to Space.
Run the Satellite
Tracking Tool from BINARY
SPACE right here at HobbySpace
in your browser. The program allows you to track a large
set of satellites in both low earth and geostationary
orbits. (Note: the program requires Microsoft
Silverlight, version 4 or higher). The Satellite
Observing section provides additional information
and web resources about the hobby of satellite tracking
and watching.
Real-Time
Space Viewers
Earth
Weather maps, remote sensing
and spysat images.
Space
Weather
Sun, solar wind, aurora images
and the latest data