November 23, 2017

The Ultimate Frontier Market (Source: The Edge Markets)
The sky is no longer the limit. An explosion of emerging space industries is creating new and unprecedented opportunities for investors in Southeast Asia and the West. The last few years have seen a huge drop in the costs associated with emerging space industries, which has opened up major commercial applications, some of which, the experts say, are only a few years away from generating returns.

Where previously the opportunities were limited to government contracts in defence and aerospace as well as large communications conglomerates, today’s start-ups are pioneering new and exciting applications for both enterprise and mass-market consumers. The potential of this industry is astounding. According to news reports, in a note released last month, Morgan Stanley analysts estimate that the space industry will be worth more than US$1.1 trillion by 2040 with private companies driving much of the innovation, further cutting costs.

Although the analysts concede that the opportunities are still limited, they believe companies providing internet bandwidth services from space will carry most of the future value of the space industry. They estimate “a US$400 billion incremental revenue opportunity from providing internet access to underserved parts of the world”. (11/23)

Watch How SpaceX Salvages its $40 Million Rockets for Reuse (Source: Business Insider)
In just one year, SpaceX has made rocket landings routine. But we must not forget that this is a giant step toward reusable rockets and a new era of affordable space flight. Michael Wagner with USLaunchReport chronicles the historic return of many of these used rockets and posts them on the USLaunchReport's YouTube channel. Following is a transcript of the video. How SpaceX salvages $40 million rockets. Click here. (11/23)

Progress Slow at SpaceX's Planned South Texas Spaceport (Source: Austin American-Statesman)
More than three years ago, SpaceX founder Elon Musk gathered with state leaders at this remote South Texas beach to trumpet it as the future location of the world’s first commercial spaceport. But so far, the only liftoffs from the shifting dunes are being achieved by seagulls and pelicans.

SpaceX still counts the Boca Chica site in its plans. The company installed two large tracking antennas at the location this year, perhaps the most tangible indication yet of its intended purpose as a launch point. But progress on the Boca Chica facility — in which Musk vowed SpaceX would invest $100 million and initially predicted could be sending up rockets by late 2016 — has been slower than either SpaceX or state officials envisioned when it was announced in 2014.

The state has pledged a total of $15.3 million in incentives to the project, although SpaceX has returned a small portion of the state money it has received so far because it hasn’t met early job-creation goals. The slower rate of progress is partly the result of difficulties building on the beach after bedrock turned out to be deeper than expected and the water table turned out to be higher than expected. That prompted SpaceX to bring in hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of new soil to stabilize the site to support future structures. Most recently, SpaceX has said the first blast-off from Boca Chica could take place by the end of 2018. (11/23)

Private Mission May Get Us Back to Enceladus Sooner than NASA (Source: New Scientist)
Russian billionaire Yuri Milner has set his sights on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Milner founded the $100 million Breakthrough Starshot project, an attempt to send small probes to Alpha Centauri. Now, he has announced plans to explore funding a mission to Enceladus. The icy moon is thought to be a prime location in the search for alien life thanks to the global ocean under its surface. Geysers spray its water into space, making it easier to sample for signs of life.

In 2015, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft found molecular hydrogen in the plumes – a sign that there may be hydrothermal vents in Enceladus’s ocean. On Earth, microorganisms clus ter around such vents. “Can we design a low-cost, privately funded mission to Enceladus which can be launched relatively soon, and that can look more thoroughly at those plumes, try to see what’s going on there?” Milner asked. He says the mission would be a precursor to a costlier NASA mission that would take longer to get off the ground. NASA wouldn’t reach Enceladus for at least another decade even if it is selected as a future target. (11/22)

Dark Matter and Dark Energy: Do They Really Exist? (Source: Universite de Geneve)
The empty space plays a primordial role in Einstein's equations as it operates in a quantity known as a "cosmological constant", and the resulting universe model depends on it. Based on this hypothesis, Maeder is now re-examining the model of the universe, pointing out that the scale invariance of the empty space is also present in the fundamental theory of electromagnetism.

Do we finally have an explanation for the expansion of the universe and the speed of the galaxies? When Maeder carried out cosmological tests on his new model, he found that it matched the observations. He also found that the model predicts the accelerated expansion of the universe without having to factor in any particle or dark energy. In short, it appears that dark energy may not actually exist since the acceleration of the expansion is contained in the equations of the physics. Click here. (11/22)

The Short Life and Death of a Space Tourism Company (Source: Air & Space)
“The way to make money in space transportation is the Southwest Airlines model,” Jeff Greason said. “You keep the wheels in the wheel well. Every minute that [a vehicle] is not in the air gathering revenue is a minute wasted.” XCOR’s Lynx would be just such a vehicle: a two-seat spaceplane that could take off from conventional runways, use its innovative rocket engines to blast into space, swoop back down to Earth, and do it all over again, up to four times daily.

In April 2016, XCOR said that the composite-body, kerosene-powered Lynx might be ready to put its wheels on a runway in early 2017. Then everything fell apart. A month after making this prediction, XCOR laid off dozens of Lynx employees and announced that it was slowing development of the spaceplane in order to focus on building rocket engines for rival space vehicles.

And that was only the beginning of the company’s troubles. A year later, XCOR lost its engine-building contract too, and by the end of June 2017, all remaining employees had been laid off. Greason had long since departed to form a new space startup, and his replacement had been lured away by a senior job at the Pentagon. Click here. (11/22)

Canada’s Early Deep Space Gateway Plans (Source: SpaceQ)
In January 2018 the International Space Exploration Coordination Group will release third edition of the Global Exploration roadmap. The roadmap is essentially a step-by-step plan of how a group of 15 national space agencies plans to launch humans past low earth orbit, where the International Space Station (ISS) is, into deep space.

“Mars is the ultimate destination,” Says Pierre Jean. The current director of space exploration and strategic planning for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) served as the CSA program manager for the International Space Station for six years. “It doesn’t mean Mars is going to happen tomorrow, it just means that by keeping that destination in place, we have to manage and develop a sustainable route to take us there.” (11/21)

Armed with Tough Computer Chips, Scientists are Ready to Return to the Hell of Venus (Source: Science)
Neudeck and his Glenn colleagues are helping drive a technological leap that could transform the exploration of Venus, making it almost as accessible as Mars. Rather than barricading electronics within pressure vessels, by early next decade NASA may be able to land simple unprotected robots on Venus that can measure wind, temperature, chemistry, pressure, and seismic waves. And instead of running for a few hours, the landers could last for months. "We don't have the world's fastest chips," Neudeck says.

"We don't have the world's most complex chips. But in terms of Venus environment durability—that's what we got." If the chips live up to their potential, scientists' elusive dream of extended stays on Venus may at last be within reach.

Early this decade, engineers here began to build heat-resistant electronics out of a new type of semiconductor, with an eye to placing sensors inside jet engines. Neudeck kept adding transistors to build more complex circuits. Meanwhile, at meetings, Russian researchers told Kremic they were seeking U.S. help in creating a pressure-vessel probe for a possible return-to-Venus mission called Venera-D. Kremic recalled Neudeck's work and thought, "Maybe there's another way to do this?" (11/22)

Artificial Lights are Eating Away at Dark Nights (Source: LA Times)
Earth is losing its darkness. A new study using satellite data finds that artificially lit surfaces around the world are spreading and growing brighter, producing more light pollution at night. The findings, described in the journal Science Advances, track what researchers called a worrisome trend that has implications for the environment as well as human health.

Thanks to electric lights, outdoor lighting grew at a rate of 3% to 6% annually in the second half of the 20th century. While this has benefited human productivity and safety, it has come with a dark side: The night is no longer dark enough. Half of Europe and a quarter of North America have experienced seriously modified light-dark cycles, the study authors wrote, calling it a “widespread ‘loss of the night.’ ”

This light pollution can have serious consequences for living things, which have evolved in accordance with a natural day-night cycle, where the only major sources of light at night would have been the moon or more intermittent sources such as volcanoes, lightning, wildfires or auroras. (11/22)

The Tree Supporting NASA KSC's Famous Bald Eagle Nest Has Died (Source: Florida Today)
Nestled in a famous pine tree at Kennedy Space Center, pairs of bald eagles have stood watch for decades as towering vehicles of aluminum and carbon vaulted off pads just a few miles away. Their nest, located just west of the spaceport's primary north-south artery known as Kennedy Parkway, is famous for its large size and ability to make visitors crane their necks during bus tours just to catch a glimpse – and maybe a photo.

But the roughly 80-year-old tree supporting the nest has died, according to wildlife biologists who oversee the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which includes portions of KSC. The likely culprit? Hurricane Irma. (11/22)

How to Cover Rocket Blastoffs With an iPhone (Source: New York Times)
Rocket launches are routinely webstreamed now. And I can watch a launch on my phone while going to pick up my family at the airport, as I did this month when the latest cargo rocket, an Orbital ATK Antares rocket, headed to the space station. SpaceX has gotten really good at showing video from its rockets, even the boosters descending back to Earth. Click here. (11/22)

How Lockheed Martin Plans to Compete with NewSpace Startups (Source: Via Satellite)
The space community has latched onto the idea of “NewSpace” much like any tech industry gravitates to a sexy new buzzword. In reality, though, the division between NewSpace companies and their established predecessors — or “Old Space” — is a false dichotomy, says Rick Ambrose, Lockheed Martin’s executive vice president of space systems.

In an interview with Via Satellite, Ambrose said that the most glaring difference between the two is that small startups tend to have “a unitary focus” on one capability, while larger companies must keep their current businesses rolling while also repositioning to pursue new opportunities. But ultimately, both have the same goal — to provide a return to shareholders or investors — and must reinvent or create new technologies along the way to do so. Click here. (11/21)