04-18-2012 09:47 by Dexter | Commercial Space flight
Seattle, WA - A new private space exploration company will unveil its master plan "to help ensure humanity's prosperity" on Tuesday, April 24. Several billionaire investors like Larry Google's Larry Page and filmmaker James Cameron are backing the new venture.
 While details of the company, called Planetary Resources, Inc., and its mission are still under wraps, officials with the enterprise did state that "the company will overlay two critical sectors — space exploration and natural resources — to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP," according to media alert sent to reporters today (April 18).
On April 24, Planetary Resources officials will announce details of their space exploration plans in a press conference at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Wash., according to the alert. The announcement will be held in the museum's Charles Simonyi Space Gallery, which is named after billionaire software developer Charles Simonyi, a Planetary Resources investor.
"This innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of 'natural resources,'" company officials said in the statement.
Planetary Resources was co-founded by two veteran commercial space pioneers: Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson.
01-16-2012 21:47 by Dexter | Commercial Space flight
California-based Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) announced today that it has delayed the launch of its Dragon space capsule.
SpaceX's capsule was scheduled to launch on February 7 aboard its Falcon 9 on a mission to the International Space Station, but the company had to delay the launch so that more engineering work could be done.
"In preparation for the upcoming launch, SpaceX continues to conduct extensive testing and analysis," spokeswoman Kirstin Brost Grantham said in an email announcement today. "We believe that there are a few areas that will benefit from additional work and will optimize the safety and success of this mission."
SpaceX stays vague about the length of the delay, be it a few days, a few weeks or even longer, but Grantham said that SpaceX is working with NASA to determine the best time to launch the test flight. "We are ...continue»
01-03-2012 21:57 by Dexter | Technology development
 A group of hackers say they want to escape online tyranny by sending up their own satellites to use for communication.
The threat of Internet censorship has spurred some to seek refuge in space. Hackers at the Chaos Computer Club’s Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin this year proposed an initiative called the Hackerspace Global Grid (HGG), which aims to create and freely make available satellite based communication as a fallback or to bypass stuffy legislation.
The bunch of “hobbyist hackers, tinkerers and part time scientists” are predominantly based in Stuttgart, Germany. They say their ultimate goal is to put a hacker on the moon in 23 years, but right now they’re keeping their goals small. They want to keep their freedoms safe from threats like the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), by creating a...continue»
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