October 2024
Space exploration remains a crucial endeavour for humanity
... popular culture too, where movies such as Apollo 13 and songs like David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ encapsulate the challenges and triumphs of astronauts. These works not only entertain but also deepen...
October 2024
Space industry trajectory under the spotlight of cultural anthropology
... 1975 NASA Ames/Stanford University Summer Study by Donald Davis. In his painting, the artist wanted to emphasise the challenge of sustaining a closed ecosystem in space. The urge to explore outer space, to discover, to colonise and ensure humanity...
September 2026
Pregnancy among the stars - the biology of birth beyond Earth
... striking conclusion of Holden’s review is not that pregnancy in space is impossible. Rather, it is that many of the challenges appear scientifically approachable. Some may eventually prove no more difficult than adapting existing obstetric practice...
July 2014
X-51A Waverider, hypersonics, and the potential of airbreathing engines
... transition that occurs as a vehicle passes through Mach 1, the speed of sound, where there is a change in the fundamental behaviour of the air moving past the craft. Some of the challenges of hypersonic flight are connected to high temperatures and...
June 2015
Great expectations: launch markets, SpaceX, China, and other new players
... launch of a fully completed vehicle will not occur until the end of 2015, or the beginning of 2016. The challenge from Japan was unexpected. Insurers have already confirmed that the main Japanese launch vehicle, H-IIA, is reliable, while developers...
October 2015
The Global Space Governance Study – A new regulatory framework for New Space?
... McGill University Institute of Air and Space Law in Montreal, Canada. The challenge was to consider a new international initiative to bring an improved system of governance to the now blossoming field of new space activities. Some 120 participants...
