August 2020
Interstellar aspirations
..., even if it took a long time (perhaps a century) to develop. So, NASA and DARPA sponsored a project called ‘100 Year Starship’, the highlight of which was to be a large meeting in Orlando, Florida in 2011. However, the idea was widely criticised...
August 2020
Interplanetary spaceflight and restorative justice
... commander would probably also need to be empowered to decide whether further action on return to Earth was necessary SpaceX Starship approaching Mars - a journey to the red planet could take up to nine months. Secondly, although the discussion may...
September 2020
Commercial opportunities beyond Earth orbit
... notably Blue Origin’s New Glenn launcher, which has a strong element of reusability, and SpaceX’s Super-Heavy/Starship combination with both stages being reusable. A successful lunar economy will lead to further deep space exploration...
September 2021
Developing an in-orbit servicing and manufacturing economy
..., of IOSM and of some of the future opportunities are growing quickly. Alongside this, technology advances such as SpaceX’s Starship developments are offering the prospect of launching vastly increased payload mass. Multiple new space stations are...
November 2021
The philosophy of space missions today
... and perhaps for many could make human life in space not worth living. Artist’s rendering of a SpaceX Starship taking off from Mars. A settlement mission can be said to have the strongest possible justification; the survival...
March 2022
Space travel and environmental sustainability
... price to orbit by at least two orders of magnitude. Clearly, this is the goal of SpaceX’s current development work on its Starship and Super Heavy vehicles. The benefits of only a few tens of thousands visiting low Earth orbit (LEO...
