May 27, 2018

Blue Origin Goes All In on Moon Settlements (Source: GeekWire)
Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos says his Blue Origin space venture will work with NASA as well as the European Space Agency to create a settlement on the moon. And even if Blue Origin can’t strike public-private partnerships, Bezos will do what needs to be done to make it so, he said here at the International Space Development Conference on Friday night.

Bezos laid out his vision for lunar settlement during a fireside chat with yours truly, which took place just after he received the National Space Society’s Gerard K. O’Neill Memorial Award. In the short run, Blue Origin’s objective is to reduce the cost of access to space — initially with its New Shepard suborbital spaceship, and then with its orbital-class New Glenn rocket in the 2020s.

In the long run, Bezos’ vision is to smooth the way for millions of people working in space. Those people just might live and work in hollowed-out asteroids — a concept that was proposed decades ago by O’Neill, a Princeton physicist whose ideas on space settlement fueled Bezos’ passion for the final frontier. The way Bezos sees it, moving heavy industry into solar-powered space outposts is the only way to ensure that our planet can cope with the rising demand for energy, and the stress that growing populations will put on Earth’s environment. (5/26)

NASA is Basically Trying to Get Hacked (Source: The Outline)
In 1999, a 15-year-old who called himself “c0mrade” hacked his way into NASA’s computers and stole $1.7 million worth of software that controlled the International Space Station. For his misdeeds, the teen was sentenced to six months in jail and was ordered to write a letter to the head of NASA saying he was sorry, as well as a similar letter to the Secretary of Defense (he also hacked the Pentagon).

According to a pair of reports issued this week by NASA’s Inspector General, the 2018 version of c0mrade the teen would have a pretty damn easy time of worming his hormonal way into NASA, too. One report focused on the agency’s Securities and Operations Center (SOC), which is meant to serve as NASA’s “cybersecurity nerve center.” It found that after ten years of existence, NASA hadn’t given its SOC much to really do, and even if it had, the SOC hadn’t developed the necessary tools to handle cybersecurity threats.

The second report audits the security of NASA’s supply chain and inadvertently points out the inherent weaknesses of the Trump administration’s vision for our space program — which involves essentially turning NASA into a company that buys and sells goods within the market of space. (5/26)

Chinese Astronauts Complete Desert Survival Training (Source: Xinhua)
Fifteen Chinese astronauts have just completed desert survival training deep in the Badain Jaran Desert near Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. Organized by the Astronaut Center of China (ACC), the program was designed to prepare astronauts with the capacity to survive in the wilderness in the event their re-entry capsule lands off target.

Before venturing into space, astronauts have to survive in various hostile environments as a part of their technical training. Wilderness survival training is an important part of astronaut training in space agencies worldwide, leaving space mission candidates stranded at sea, in deserts, in jungles or on glaciers. This is the latest survival training activity for Chinese astronauts after their sea survival training with two European astronauts in waters off the coast of Yantai in east China's Shandong Province in August 2017. (5/27)