Tag Archives: SpaceX

Let’s Talk About Elon Musk’s Submarine

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When word first broke that Elon Musk was designing a kid-sized submarine to help rescue the children stuck in Thailand’s Tham Luang cave, it seemed like a logical thing for Hackaday to cover. An eccentric builder of rockets and rocket-launched electric sports cars, pushing his engineering teams and not inconsiderable financial resources into action to save children? All of that talk about Elon being a real life Tony Stark was about to turn from meme into reality; if the gambit paid off, the world might have it’s first true superhero.

With human lives in the balance, and success of the …read more

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All 12 Thai Boys Rescued From Cave Without Help from Elon Musk’s ‘Impractical’ Submarine

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Elon Musk traveled inside the cave system that trapped the boys to deposit his rescue submarine, even though Thai official said it was “not practical” to use. Continue reading All 12 Thai Boys Rescued From Cave Without Help from Elon Musk’s ‘Impractical’ Submarine→

SpaceX’s Next Giant Leap: Second Stage Recovery

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With the successful launch of the Bangabandhu-1 satellite on May 11th, the final version of the Falcon 9 rocket has finally become operational. Referred to as the “Block 5”, this version of the rocket is geared specifically towards reuse. The lessons learned from the recovery and reflight of earlier builds of the F9 have culminated into rocket that SpaceX hopes can go from recovery to its next flight in as few as 24 hours. If any rocket will make good on the dream of spaceflight becoming as routine as air travel, it’s going to be the Falcon 9 Block 5. …read more

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American Capitalism Is Suffocating the Endless Possibilities of Space

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In April the US House of Representatives passed an Act that says, “Outer space shall not be considered a global commons.” Continue reading American Capitalism Is Suffocating the Endless Possibilities of Space→

HP Inkjet Printer Trains for Space

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The International Space Station is one of our leading frontiers of science and engineering, but it’s easy to forget that an exotic orbiting laboratory has basic needs shared with every terrestrial workplace. This includes humble office equipment like a printer. (The ink-on-paper kind.) And if you thought your office IT is slow to update their list of approved equipment, consider the standard issue NASA space printer draws from a stock of modified Epson Stylus 800s first flown on a space shuttle almost twenty years ago. HP signed on to provide a replacement, partnering with Simplexity who outlined their work as …read more

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Space Garbage Truck Takes Out the Trash

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On April 2nd, 2018 a Falcon 9 rocketed skywards towards the International Space Station. The launch itself went off without a hitch, and the Dragon spacecraft delivered its payload of supplies and spare parts. But alongside the usual deliveries, CRS-14 brought a particularly interesting experiment to the International Space Station.

Developed by the University of Surrey, RemoveDEBRIS is a demonstration mission that aims to test a number of techniques for tackling the increasingly serious problem of “space junk”. Earth orbit is filled with old spacecraft and bits of various man-made hardware that have turned some areas of space into a …read more

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