Lifeboat Foundation

Space has seen a number of high-profile, incredibly rich tourists in the past few months. The so-called “billionaire space race” kicked off in July, when Richard Branson rode his Virgin Galactic space plane to the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere. Shortly after, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos rode his rocket a little further. Whether they made it to “space,” though, has been hotly debated. Most space watchers agree these short suborbital trips aren’t quite the same as getting into low Earth orbit.

There will be no debate about the Inspiration4 mission. This flight takes the crew of four higher than Bezos or Branson and is different from those flights in key ways, even if it was bankrolled by another billionaire in Isaacman.

Continue reading “SpaceX Inspiration4 mission blasts off on history-making journey to orbit” »

Theoretical physics video nominated for international award.

A West Vancouver student may have the keys to interstellar travel. He just needs a few votes and a whole lot of mass.

Continue reading “West Vancouver student video explains how we could warp to Alpha Centauri” »

Tune in at 5:00pm PT / 8:00pm ET on Wed. Sept 15 for SpaceX’s first all-civilian mission to space. SpaceX coverage of pre-launch activities starts at 12:45pm PT / 3:45pm ET.

Imagine a time where humans have set foot on most of the planets in the galaxy, with even more to explore. This exoskeleton spacesuit coincides with that ultimate dream and our unstoppable quest for space exploration!

Venturing beyond the realms of planet earth comes with its unique set of challenges. The effects of gravity being on top of the list. NASA has put a lot of time and effort into developing new-age spacesuits to counter the effects of gravity in hostile environments. 14 years to be exact, and it has cost them a whopping $420 million already. The space agency is expected to churn out another $625 million in time for the next moon mission which was earlier planned for the year 2024.

The 2021 Humans to Mars Summit kicks off on Monday (Sept. 13), and you can watch it live online.

Going to hear the SpaceX fans complaining about this but it actually makes perfect sense. SpaceX is already “deep into development” of the vehicle they plan on using for a lander therefore they don’t get as much money as a group that hasn’t started on development yet. Keep in mind that NASA is well aware that SpaceX is already using their money to develop Starship and SuperHeavy so there is no real need to ‘double-down’ on taxpayer development funding to a company that is already spending that money on that development.

One need look no further than the “race” between SpaceX and Boeing over Commercial Crew. Dragon had been in development since 2004 (and funded by NASA since 2006 or cargo and 2010 for crew) while Boeing only started development of Starliner in 2010. SpaceX took 4 years longer than planned for the Cargo version, (2006 scheduled but didn’t fly till 2010) and a full decade after that using the same basic design to fly crewed (2020) Boeing’s Starliner, even if it doesn’t fly this year is still ahead of SpaceX’s development.

It should be rather telling that SpaceX got the lowest award of all the contracts. Starship has always been the ‘outlier’ of the lander designs.

Continue reading “NASA awards SpaceX, Blue Origin, and 3 other companies $146 million in contracts to make moon lander designs” »

Read these five articles to understand everything about the SpaceX Inspiration4 launch today.

The Inspiration4 crew members have never been to space. They’ve only trained for five months. Their spaceship has a new glass dome for the views.

A Shortfall of Gravitas: SpaceX’s new drone ship detailed

The ship supported its first mission on August 29. This was the 23rd Commercial Resupply Services mission, the latest in a series of launches for NASA that sends cargo to the International Space Station.

A Shortfall of Gravitas is a notable upgrade over previous ships. SpaceX explained during the mission launch livestream that it improves over its predecessors with a fully autonomous operation procedure. That means it can travel to sea, find its position, receive the rocket, grab the rocket with the “octograbber” robot and return it to land — all autonomously.