Propulsion

Another rocket failure yet again. — Recently SpaceX launched another rocket into space, Starship, or at least attempted to. The rocket blew up and spread particulate matter halfway across Florida, leaving the launchpad in ruins. The whole Starship program has cost billions, and each launch costs approximately $10 million, although they want to drive the cost…

Electric propulsion offers low thrust with high fuel efficiency, making it well-suited for longer missions. The new Aerospace EP3 vacuum chamber is the largest in the world for testing these devices. — The need for increased agility in the space environment has prompted research into forms of propulsion that are capable of meeting the objectives of increasingly ambitious missions. …

From his post here, which may not be visible to the public:

It seems almost magical to watch a rocket launch into space, and the many historic moments that have happened because of rocket launches from the Moon landing in 1969 to the first ever Asteroid Redirection Test that launched on November 24, 2021. None of these amazing feats would have been…

Originally I wanted to write an article with a bombastic title “The entrepreneurial powerhouse of Apollo Fusion”. Sadly, there probably isn’t enough substance to support the title and so I go with a subtle version. Originally I had two goals — make fun of Astra and describe the remarkable team…

We have already covered the technical sides of the electric solar wind sail and the plasma brake in earlier blog posts. We have also reported the ESTCube-1 development process and two years of operations, as well as the ESTCube-2 plasma brake mission, deep-space experiments and 2022 update. The Multi-Asteroid Touring…

Launching payloads and objects to space takes a considerable amount of force. This includes propelling and guiding the travelling object to a desired location as well as helping it overcome the gravitational and drag force that the launch vehicle experiences. Propulsion systems serve this very purpose. During launches, these systems…

The electric solar wind sail, or electric sail, or E-sail, and the artwork by Alexandre Szames have been personal inspirations of mine for more than a decade. I remember the day in September 2011 when I opened electric-sailing.fi for the first time. It was absolutely fascinating to learn that…

Preface There has been much discussion about how soon we will see a manned mission to Mars. Anticipation has been fed by exciting movies and science fiction literature. The general public greatly underestimates the difficulty of the mission, and even among experts there remains no consensus on the total cost and…