Space Shuttle

% Intro The future of space for both scientific and commercial missions is threatened by the escalating dangers of space debris. If an effort to remove debris does not take place soon, a "snow-ball effect" where satellite fragmentations cause further collisions leading to a dramatic increase in space debris \cite{ion}. As of 2007, nearly half of all Earth satellites are debris \cite{old}. %TODO finish intro %TODO where is space debris a problem? % History %TODO go more in-depth and…

taken to learn what is found in space is quite remarkable, we started out just looking with our naked eye wondering what we were even looking at, to now-a-days where we are trying to answer the question of should we live in space. Scientist, Head NASA officials, and so many more have expressed their personal opinions on what is going to happen next, and one bit of common ground that they can all come to is that money is going to be a main issue. With the International Space Station costing…

In Tuttle’s 2014 article "Space: risk 's final frontier" she calculates that the United States spent $41.26 billion and other governments allowed $32.84 billion. She comments that regardless of the government 's’ budget, “the industry grew 4% to a record $314.17 billion” (Tuttle). The article points to private companies for the cheapest space exploration missions of our time. One such company, SpaceX, Tuttle claims, “has managed to…

The goal of this project was to build a rocket with three fins, that can launch 100 M into the air and fall down to the earth without the egg breaking. It had to be done by November 2. Some constraints that we had to follow that limited our design was that we could only use recyclable materials, and we couldn’t use heavy materials such as metal or wood. We also didn’t have any instructions to follow, every idea came from our brains or the internet. My group decided on a design based on the…

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket made history on April 8, 2016, for it's successful upright landing on an offshore drone in the Atlantic Ocean. Amidst the jovial bouts of celebration, news of damage to the rocket slipped under the radar. The company believes the Falcon 9 will not be able to fly again. Now, skeptics are beginning to ask questions. Is this just a result of poor design, or is there a potential conspiracy to examine? Not to say that UFO's are the direct cause of this, but stranger things…

On the contrary, critics argue that funding of space exploration has some drawbacks. Most people believe that NASA’s activities consume too much taxpayer money from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The public also believes that NASA’s $17.647 billion budget on space technology is not being justified neither does it reap any benefits. However, this is a completely false allegation. NASA’s projects do not require a lot of funding as people think. According to Piantadosi (2012), “NASA’s large federal and…

Valerian: Luc Besson’s hero drives a Lexus A younger generation raised after Star Wars might think, when looking at Valerian, the film, that it borrowed many ideas from George Lucas blockbuster, but the reality is different: Valerian inspired Star Wars. Valerian, the film, picks the comic series from 1967 and mixes it with a promise of the future: the Skyjet vehicle designed by Lexus for a world set 700 years in the future. The first trailer from Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,…

The Ariane 5 Programming Failure In 1996, a European rocket ship called the Ariane 5 was into space from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, Guyane, a small French territory on the northeast coast of South America, only to swerve off course and then explode a mere 40 seconds later. An investigation by independent committee was launched (hehe) approximately one week later, to determine the cause and assess the appropriateness of testing, as well as to make recommendations to fix the problem and…

of the difficulties that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration encountered leading up to the failed 2009 audit which was conducted by independent auditors, Ernest & Young. The auditors encountered two major discrepancies in NASA’s financial data when evaluating and calculating the value of their largest assets based on estimates. Essentially, there are numerous external and internal factors that affect the accuracy of the U.S. Space Agency’s financial data. Ernest & Young pointed…

The brand new Asteroid Redirection Mission (ARM) has just gone under review from NASA, and it looks to be ready by 2021. We will see the agency try to get a space boulder from the surface of nearby asteroids and place it into lunar orbit. This isn't nearly as cool as blowing it up with a nuke, but it's a safe way to test the future of our planetary defense program. NASA'S ARM HAS OTHER PLANS While this highly-anticipated mission's main goal is to redirect asteroids, NASA has other uses for the…