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Do you have a passion for food? (Hello, yes you do, that's why you're here!!). How about a passion for space travel? Well if you're savvy enough about both, NASA wants to give you up to $500,000 to figure out a way to get astronauts fresh food while on deep space missions. No biggie, right?

It's called "The Deep Space Food Challenge" and it's designed to help NASA figure out how to provide "future space explorers and people on Earth nutritious foods they will enjoy" so they don't always have to rely on that freeze-dried stuff while hanging out in deep space.

Fresh fruit and veggie deliveries "provide profound psychological benefits," according to the paper Space Food for Thought: Challenges and Considerations for Food and Nutrition on Exploration Missions. Such deliveries would be virtually impossible on a deep space mission, such as one to Mars, according to UPI, and any method to produce food on a spaceship would face time, space, and environmental restrictions due to the nature of these ships.

That's where you come in! Solve the problem of figuring out how to get fresh and healthy food that can safely and easily be grown and harvested on a ship and you've got yourself a winner! The competition's page also notes that such a solution, which would make efficient use of volume, water, and other constraints, could be used to benefit areas facing hunger and food shortages on Earth. Win-Win!

If you're up for the challenge, you must register by May 28, and your Phase 1 ideas must be submitted by July 30. NASA will give $25,000 to up 20 of their favorite ideas from this round and they'll be asked to go on to Phase 2. More info here, BTW. Good luck!!

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NASA Is Offering Up To $500K To Figure Out How To Provide Astronauts With Fresh Food In Deep Space - Delish.com

Jeff Bezos announced Tuesday that he was going to devote more time to his rocket company Blue Origin after stepping down as Amazon CEO later this year.

In a letter to Amazon employees, Bezos said that as Amazon's executive chairman he will "stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus" on projects such as Blue Origin, the Washington Post, his Day 1 Fund, and the Bezos Earth Fund.

Bezos will therefore be more involved in Blue Origin's stated goal of transforming space travel. It wants to continue to build more rockets and engines to launch people, and other payloads, beyond Earth's orbit, and to ultimately colonize the solar system.

"We're committed to building a road to space so our children can build the future," the company says on its website.

Blue Origin is an American aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight company headquartered in Kent, Washington. It's owned by Bezos and is currently headed by CEO Bob Smith.

Bezos, the world's second-richest person, founded Blue Origin in September 2000, with the goal of making space travel cheap, frequent, and more accessible, through reusable launch systems.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in 2019. MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images

Bezos said in a 2018 interview with Axel Springer that the spaceflight company was his "most important work," more important than Amazon.

"I'm pursuing this work because I believe if we don't, we will eventually end up with a civilization of stasis, which I find very demoralizing," he said.

The billionaire's passion for his space-travel company stems from his childhood. Insider's Dave Mosher reported in 2018 that Bezos spent his childhood summers on his grandparents' large ranch in South Texas learning about machinery. He also went to the local library to read science fiction novels about space exploration.

Blue Origin's motto is "Gradatim Ferociter," Latin for "step by step, ferociously."

Bezos often uses the hashtag in his Instagram posts about the firm.

Blue Origin has a host of projects in the pipeline for Bezos to get stuck into.

NASA greenlighted Blue Origin in December for future Earth observation missions, planetary expeditions, and satellite launches with its New Glenn rocket, taking the space company one step closer to the stars.

In May, Blue Origin was awarded $1 billion from NASAto produce initial designs for a human-landing system for the Artemis 3 mission, which aims to land humans on the moon in 2024.

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. John Locher/AP and Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images

Blue Origin is competing against Elon Musk's SpaceX and Alabama-based Dynetics to land NASA astronauts on the moon in 2024. Bezos said in an Instagram post in December the company could possibly take the first woman there, too.

Read more: Meet the Washington Post executive working with Jeff Bezos to turbocharge the media titan's IT system

The aerospace firm was also among 17 US companies to be picked by NASA in November to develop new tech for space missions to "the moon and beyond." The selected companies will get access to NASA's testing facilities and expertise, which it valued at about $15.5 million.

Bezos is pouring billions into the design, building, and launching of Blue Origin's orbital and suborbital space vehicles.

Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

The company's New Shepard suborbital rocket, named after Alan Shepard, who was the first American to go into space, ultimately aims to offer a 100-kilometer (62-mile) journey above Earth's surface that lasts 11 minutes.

The most recent successful flight of New Shepard was on January 14, when it carried a crash-test dummy named "Mannequin Skywalker" into space.

The New Glenn rocket, named after pioneering astronaut John Glenn, is a 310-foot reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle that can carry payloads to orbit.

Blue Origin said that New Glenn is designed for a minimum of 25 flights, and can lift 45 tons into low-Earth orbit as a comparison, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy can lift 70 tons into low-Earth orbit. It's expected to be launched in 2021.

In 2019, Bezos unveiled a giant lunar lander called "Blue Moon" that he said is "going to the moon" and would help Blue Origin populate space. The final goal is to establish what the company calls a "sustained human presence" on the moon.

Blue Origin has also developed five rocket engines since its founding - BE-1, BE-2, BE-3, BE-4, and BE-7. In line with the company's reusability objective, the engines are designed for multiple uses and are tested at its test site in Van Horn, Texas.

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Everything we know about Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space exploration firm - Business Insider - Business Insider

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. said Monday it will send four space tourists to orbit later this year on a mission to raise awareness for a childrens hospital.

SpaceX said the launch will take place no earlier than the fourth quarter. Jared Isaacman, founder and chief executive of Shift4 Payments Inc. FOUR, +2.79%, is paying for the flight and donating three seats aboard SpaceXs Dragon spacecraft to members of the general public, who will be announced in the weeks ahead, the company said. Isaacman, a trained pilot, will be the flights commander.

When youve got a brand new mode of transportation, you have to have pioneers, Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Inc. TSLA, -0.55%, told NBC News in an interview aired Monday night. Things are expensive at first, and as youre able to increase the launch rate, increase the production rate, refine the technology, it becomes less expensive and accessible to more people.

Aspiring astronauts are being asked to either donate to St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital or to launch an online store and share an inspirational business story on Twitter for a chance to win a seat.

Billionaire Isaacman didnt say how much hes paying for the flight, but said hes pledging $100 million to St. Jude and hoping to raise an additional $100 million for the hospital.

I appreciate this tremendous responsibility that comes with commanding this mission and I want to use this historic moment to inspire humanity while helping to end childhood cancer here on Earth, Isaacman told NBC News.

A former NASA astronaut will also be on board, the Associated Press reported. The flight will travel across a low Earth orbit on a multi-day journey, SpaceX said.

SpaceX said the crew will receive commercial astronaut training, including mission simulations and emergency preparedness training.

The flight path will be carefully monitored at every step by SpaceX mission control and at the end of the mission the spacecraft will do a soft water landing off the coast of Florida, the company said.

Isaacmans company, Shift4 Payments, had its initial public offering in June after delaying the IPO a few months because of the pandemic. The company handles payments for hotels, resorts, restaurants and other leisure-related businesses.

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SpaceX to fly four space tourists by end of the year - MarketWatch

On January 31, 1961, an intrepid chimpanzee called Ham was launched on a rocket from Cape Canaveral in the United States, and returned to Earth alive. In this process, he became the first hominin in space.

In the 1950s, it was unclear whether humans could survive outside Earth both physically and mentally. The science fiction writer and warfare expert Cordwainer Smith wrote about the psychological pain of being in space.

Plants, insects and animals had been taken to high altitudes in balloons and rockets since the 18th century. The Soviet Union sent the dog Laika into orbit on Sputnik 2 in 1957. She died, but from overheating rather than the effects of space travel itself.

Read more: How animal astronauts paved the way for human space flight

While the USSR focused on dogs, the US turned to chimpanzees as they were the most like humans. The stakes became higher when US President John F. Kennedy promised to land humans on the Moon by the end of the 1960s.

Ham was born in 1957 in a rainforest in the Central African nation of Cameroon, then a French territory. He was captured and taken to an astronaut school for chimps at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

The astrochimps were trained to pull levers, with a banana pellet as a reward and an electric shock to the feet for failure. The chosen chimp would test life support systems and demonstrate that equipment could be operated during spaceflight. Ham showed great aptitude, and was selected the day before the flight.

On January 31, 1961, Ham was launched into space, strapped into a capsule inside the nosecone of a Mercury-Redstone rocket. The rocket travelled at 9,000km/h, and reached an altitude of 251km. The whole flight took 16 minutes from launch to return.

Throughout the journey Ham was obliged to pull a lever. He received two shocks for not doing this correctly, out of 50 pulls. He achieved this with a 16cm rectal thermometer in place to monitor his temperature.

He experienced 6.6 minutes of free fall and 14.7_g_ of acceleration on descent much greater than predicted. The biomedical data showed Ham experienced stress during acceleration and deceleration.

Jane Goodall, an expert in primate behaviour, said she had never seen such terror in a chimps expression. However, Ham was calm when weightless.

Ham survived the flight itself, but nearly drowned when the capsule started filling with water after its ocean splashdown. Fortunately, the helicopter recovery team reached him in time. Hams treat on emerging from the spacecraft was an apple, which he devoured eagerly.

After his flight, Ham lived for 20 years by himself, in a zoo in Washington DC. People wrote him letters, and some were answered by zoo staff signed with Hams fingerprint. In 1980 he was sent to another zoo to live with a group of chimps. He died in 1983 at the age of 26.

A proposal to stuff and display his body was abandoned after an outcry. But he did undergo a postmortem. Hams flesh was stripped from his skeleton, cremated, and buried at the Space Hall of Fame in Almogordo, New Mexico. The National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington DC retains his bones.

Ham sits at an interesting intersection of race, gender and species. Ham was an acronym for Holloman Aero Medical, but as American philosopher of science Donna Haraway has pointed out, Hams name inevitably recalls Noahs youngest and only black son.

While the chimps were in training at the Holloman Airforce Base, women were actively excluded from spaceflight. Pilot Jerrie Cobb said she would take the place of one of the chimps if it meant having a shot at space.

Read more: Almost 90% of astronauts have been men. But the future of space may be female

The astronauts of the 1960s Mercury program felt their masculinity threatened by performing the same tasks as chimps. In a scene from the 1983 film The Right Stuff, based on Tom Wolfes book for which he did extensive interviews with the astronauts, one says:

Well none of us wants to think that theyre going to send a monkey up to do a mans work what theyre trying to do to us is send a man up to do a monkeys work.

In the I Dream of Jeannie episode Fly me to the Moon (1967), astronauts Tony Nelson and Roger Healey train Sam the chimp for spaceflight.

They are envious that Sam gets to go to the Moon before them. He cant make any decisions, we might as well have a robot up there, says Major Nelson.

This refers to an ongoing battle among both Soviet and US astronauts about how much autonomy they would have as pilots. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, being controlled by machines was felt to diminish masculinity.

Chimps in space also threatened the accepted evolutionary order. In some versions of the famous March of Progress illustration of human evolution, the first figure is a knuckle-walking ape and the last is an astronaut. Ham was leapfrogging to the front of the evolutionary queue in a Planet of the Apes-style interspecies competition.

Hams spaceflight made him more than animal, but still less than human.

A mere 10 weeks after Hams feat, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space when he orbited Earth on April 12. On November 26, Enos the chimp completed an orbit.

We dont send animals into orbit any more as proxies for human experience. But there is one chimp still in space. The calls of a wild chimp were recorded on the Voyager Golden Records, now heading out beyond the Solar system.

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Apes, robots and men: the life and death of the first space chimp - The Conversation AU

It started with a movie. Supernovas filled the screen and exploded with galactic color. The voice of Neil DeGrasse Tyson narrated the beginning of the universe. At only 14 years old, Alana Sanchez was hooked.

Prior to high school, Sanchez was primarily interested in visual arts and movies. She taught herself animation and aspired to work in the creative realm. However, her dreams quickly transformed after watching the popular science documentary, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Today, Sanchez is an MIT senior majoring in physics with a focus on astronomy. After watching Cosmos, I fell in love with space. I got really into STEM after that, says Sanchez.

Her fascination with space increased as she took on her Florida high schools AP Physics curriculum. While she occasionally struggled as the only female student and student of color in her class, Sanchez says her passion helped her through the course. I wasnt the best student in my physics class, but I was the most interested one, she says.

Sanchez transitioned to MIT by first attending Interphase EDGE, an enrichment program for newly admitted students. She credits the program for helping her meet other students from underrepresented groups, as well as her closest friends. Sanchez also has been a resident of McCormick Hall, the only all-female dormitory on campus, since her first year. McCormick is a major hub for meeting people from all types of different backgrounds. Getting involved with the community has been one of the highlights of my MIT experience, she says.

While Interphase and McCormick helped her find her first friends at MIT, Sanchez remembers her first classes as being particularly difficult. The heightened challenges of physics class began to push her away from the topic. She often experienced self-doubt about her skills. Eventually, she decided to take 8.282 (Introduction to Astronomy) with Professor Anna Frebel, who was Sanchezs first female professor at MIT. The class reinvigorated Sanchez. Frebel began the course by presenting pictures of herself alongside telescopes around the world, reminding Sanchez what she, too, was capable of accomplishing.

In the end, it was my motivation that got me through the beginning, rather than innate talent, says Sanchez. I saw my professors work and knew that thats what I wanted to do. I decided I just had to stay motivated and keep going.

She has this message to other MIT students who may be facing similar moments of imposter syndrome: Youre struggling against the smartest kids youve ever known. Youre not alone, and a grade is not a reflection of who you are or your abilities.

Sanchez also credits doing research for giving her more confidence as a student. Her first project was with the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, and focused on identifying exoplanets planets outside of our solar system. Exoplanets can be identified when they move in front of a red dwarf, since theres a shift in light output, Sanchez explains. The data can then be used to help researchers catalog characteristics about exoplanets, some of which might be habitable.

While Sanchez found the research interesting, she knew that any exoplanet she discovered would be unapproachable in a human lifetime. She decided she wanted to pivot toward working on research with a more immediate impact.

Her desire was fulfilled with another project she pursued the summer before her junior year. Drawing upon her early interests in visual arts and space, Sanchez finally found a subject to make her two worlds unite. The project, led by Professor Michael Person, the head of the MIT Wallace Astrophysical Observatory, focused heavily on fieldwork. Sanchez and the group often traveled together to Waltham, Massachusetts, to use the local telescope and take pictures of the night sky. Most of what we know about stars comes from light recordings and images, she adds.

For one notable event, Sanchezs team collaborated with 10 other observatories to track the transit of Titan, one of Saturns moons, as it moved in front of a local star. With these images, the team predicted when and where this transit would be witnessed again. NASA then used the teams projected coordinates to fly their telescope to the next observation site. It was amazing to see the tangible effect our data could make. It was more along the lines of research I could see myself doing into the future, she says.

Today, Sanchez works with the Space Enabled research group in the MIT Media Lab. The group focuses on designing accessible space systems that advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Sanchezs own work combines her technical and visualization expertise to create a sustainable rocket fuel source out of beeswax. The mission is to incentivize the deorbiting of retired satellites, since many are left as dangerous waste in our atmosphere. Her labs fuel will be tested on the upcoming Blue Origin flight and on the International Space Station this year.

Our group was theorizing how to use materials that may already be present in satellites to help them deorbit, such as the wax in the units insulation, explains Sanchez. By turning the leftover wax into a fuel source, it could mitigate costs and make deorbiting more efficient.

Sanchez also continues to incorporate imaging into her research. To turn the wax into a fuel source, we heat and spin it until it slowly solidifies and forms a fuel grain. We can track the solidification process based on videos that I take with a GoPro camera, she says, enthusiastically.

When she isnt doing research, Sanchez pursues her interest in art as a public programming assistant in the MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology. Her help behind the scenes, from website to installation management, allows visual artists to share their work with the MIT community. The best part of the job, she adds, is getting to witness these presentations, which have included a variety of movie screenings, performance art, and visual displays.

Sanchez is currently applying for PhD programs in aerospace engineering. Sustainability in space continues to be her key focus, inspired by her work with Space Enabled. While most of her chosen programs are focused on real-world applications for space travel, Sanchez still admits to being fueled by her childhood curiosity in what lies beyond our atmosphere.

I think the biggest thing that drew me to space research is trying to understand the universe. Why is it that this planet can sustain life, while others are barren wastelands? she ponders. While we can appreciate Earth, most of us will never be able to experience space in our lifetime.

So, whats out there?

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An art lover dreams of space - MIT News

The company, run by Richard Branson, said, "The flight window will open on February 13 with opportunities to fly throughout February, pending good weather conditions and technical readiness". He further informed space tourism enthusiasts that pre-flight preparation is already underway at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

The company also added that their space flight would test remedial work first, and then call the future astronauts to join in. Apparently, SpaceShipTwo, as they call it, was expected to take its first passengers into space later this year.

Till now, 600 people have already paid nearly $250000 for the upcoming journey and the space company calls them "future astronauts", who have been waiting for years to take off. In 2014, the development of the flight was delayed due to a devastating crash of the first spacecraft that was attributed to the pilots error.

As soon as the spacecraft is fully functional, it will be taken up in the sky by another special plane and it will be released at high altitude. After a few seconds, the spaceship will leave and ignite its engine and go upward into the space. It definitely seems like we are looking at the future of travel world.

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Space tourism on cards soon as Virgin Galactic tests new flights - Happytrips

When Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham started to collaborate, turning Franck's long-running role-playing game into a novel called Leviathan Wakes, their friends warned them they were wasting their timebecause space opera was a dying genre.

Still Franck and Abraham persevered, selling Leviathan Wakes to Orbit Books under the pen name James S.A. Corey. When the book was published, the front cover sported a quote from George R.R. Martin: "It's been too long since we've had a really kickass space opera."

Now, of course, Leviathan Wakes has been followed by eight sequels and a TV show, The Expanse, whose fifth season ends tonight. And the shelves at your local bookstore are crammed with kickass space operas by authors like Valerie Valdes, Becky Chambers, Ann Leckie, Yoon Ha Lee, Arkady Martine, Kameron Hurley, Nicky Drayden, Karen Lord, Tim Pratt, John Scalzi, Nnedi Okorafor, and Karen Osborne.

The Expanse - Season 5

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A lot of these new space opera books share some of the same DNA as Corey's Expanse series: they feature underdog characters, who are just trying to get paid, or survive, or get justicethey aren't exactly crisp-uniformed explorers like Captain Kirk, or chosen ones like Luke Skywalker. These books also feature somewhat more realistic physics, with way less hand-wavingfor example, faster-than-light travel is usually impossible without some kind of wormhole. And these books often have a touch of weirdness and body horror, along the lines of The Expanse's alien protomolecule.

Meanwhile, media space opera has given us a new wave of shows about down-on-their-luck adventurers, like Killjoys, Vagrant Queen, etc. etc. Star Trek is back, and a little dirtier and messier than it used to be.

In their introduction to the 2007 anthology The New Space Opera, Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan note that space opera was born during the "full flowering of the British Empire... and the settling of the West." The first great space opera novel, Skylark of Space by E.E. "Doc" Smith, was written in 1915, right as one of the genre's pioneers, Jack Williamson, was traveling west in a horse-drawn wagon. Later, in The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Williamson wrote that space opera was the "expression of the mythic theme of human expansion against an unknown and uncommonly hostile frontier."

The New Space Opera

Space opera has always carried a lot of baggage, thanks to its roots in imperialism, colonialism and the myth of the rugged explorer who brings civilization with him. It didn't help that Smith started introducing themes of eugenics into his Lensmen novels, and notoriously racist editor John W. Campbell inserted his ideas of the "superior man" into many of space opera's formative works.

There was no room for ordinary people in a lot of classic space operajust square-jawed heroes and demigods. And when space opera enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s and early 2000s, there was no longer any room for humans at all: these stories were populated entirely by immortal posthumans, all-knowing artificial intelligences, and badass cyborgs. As science learned more about the difficulties of space travel, we could no longer imagine regular people being able to travel among the stars.

So the rise of space opera about ordinary human beings, who are often just trying to get by, is doubly worth celebrating.

Author Nicky Drayden tells me she wrote Escaping Exodus in part because she dreamed of "seeing myself on a spaceship as something other than a side character." As a young Black nerd in the 1980s, she watched shows like V and Buck Rogers, but never felt like their visions of the future included her. With her novel and its sequel, Escaping Exodus: Symbiosis (out this month), she felt free to "explore race, class, and sexuality within an all Black, queer, matriarchal society that happens to live in the belly of a space-breathing, tentacled beast the size of a small moon."

At its best, this new wave of space opera doesn't just offer alternatives to those old themes of manifest destinybut also offers a critique of them. In the fourth James S.A. Corey novel, Cibola Burn, the thuggish Murtry makes a speech in which he says he and his fellow explorers don't bring civilization with them, they build it. "And while we're building it, a whole lot of people die." This speech is presented, almost verbatim, in the television show, and in both cases, Holden responds by taking Murtry down.

Victories Greater Than Death (Unstoppable Book 1)

The Expanse combines its cast of blue-collar characters with plausible physicsand the scientific realism makes the heroes' struggles feel that much more believable. "I feel like there should be a connectionthat realism in issues of labor and class are related to issues of realism in science and technologybut I keep coming up with exceptions," co-author Daniel Abraham tells me. The "working class touchstones" for The Expanse, Alien and Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, both "play fast and loose with their scientific rigor."

Also, don't discount the weirdnessThe Expanse, and a lot of other recent space epics, throw in some truly bizarre alien artifacts alongside their plausible space flight. Drayden says writing about space-travelers living amongst a monster's gut flora allowed her to be "as weird and nerdy as I want."

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We love space opera, in part, for its escapism and funso it's a good thing that alongside the grimy social realism of The Expanse and other recent adventures, we've also seen a flowering of colorful, joyfully unrealistic storytelling. Animated shows like Steven Universe and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power have taken over our eyeballs, alongside young adult adventures like Aurora Rising, Once and Future and Bonds of Brass, not to mention Catherynne M. Valente's gloriously campy Eurovision-in-space novel Space Opera.

This is an amazing time for anyone who loves seat-of-your-spacesuit adventures and star-spanning voyages. And it's just getting started. As Drayden tells me, "I look forward to reading the mind-blowing tales that happen when you open the future up to everyone."

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The Space Opera Was Dying. Then 'The Expanse' Transformed the Genre For a New Generation. - Esquire

SpaceX has attempted two high-altitude tests of its Starship rocket.

It was the second high-altitude test for the Starship rocket, which is designed for lunar voyages and interplanetary space travel.

A test conducted in December ended in a fiery explosion, but the company said it had gathered valuable data that would be used to refine future iterations of the rocket.

SpaceX again failed to stick the landing for the second consecutive test. The vehicle came down slightly lopsided and exploded on impact as the company attempted to bring it safely back to the launch pad at its testing site in Boca Chica, Texas.

Weve got a lot of good data on flap control, and again, weve just got to work on that landing a little bit, principal integration engineer John Insprucker said during a webcast of the test flight.

Chief Executive Elon Musk, who quickly tweeted an enthusiastic reaction following the December test flight, said prior to the latest test that he was taking a break from Twitter.

Insprucker said the flight appeared to be going smoothly up until the very end.

This is a test flight, he said. Weve got a lot of data and the primary objective, to demonstrate control of the vehicle in the subsonic reentry, looked to be very good. We will take a lot out of that.

SpaceX has already assembled a new Starship prototype on another launch pad it operates at its Boca Chica facility and appears eager to continue testing.

The Hawthorne-based company had for weeks been seeking approval from the Federal Aviation Administration for the test flight conducted Feb. 2.

An FAA spokesperson told the Washington Post that the company had launched its December test flight without a public safety waiver that the agency had earlier denied. The FAA eventually approved corrective actions taken by SpaceX just prior to its latest launch.

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SpaceX Test Flight Ends in Another Crash - Los Angeles Business Journal

SpaceX is launching its first all-civilian multi-day mission to space and back. Here's what you need to know, including eligibility requirements.

SpaceX will launch its first-ever all-civilian mission soon, bringing a few lucky individuals on a multi-day voyage to space and back. Three seats are up for grabs to members of the public, but not everyone will be eligible for the journey. SpaceX has been quite busy of late, from producing over a hundred satellites on a monthly basis to support its Starlink project to launching rockets on space missions.

In 2020 alone, the privatized aeronautics company successfully launched more than 20 space missions. This includes manned space travel, unmanned supply runs and even historic lift-offs, to name a few. Now, SpaceX is plotting a course for yet another historical space odyssey, where its participants won't have to be as wealthy as its CEO to take part.

Related: SpaceX Plans To Deliver 10Gbps Starlink Download Speeds In The Future

According to its mission log, SpaceX will be utilizing a reusable Falcon 9 rocket to launch the world's first commercial astronaut space flight mission, known as Inspiration4. The company is targeting a launch date that's no earlier than the fourth quarter of 2021. As for the voyage itself, it will last for several days, starting with its launch at Complex 39A of NASA's Kennedy Space Center, traveling through a customized flight path that's carefully monitored by SpaceX mission control, before finally landing off the coast of Florida.

Unlike SpaceX's militaristic ventures, one of the purpose ofthe Inspiration4 mission is to raise awareness and funds for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. The mission will be led by decorated pilot and Shift4Payments CEO Jared Isaacman, who will be occupying the Leadership seat. Isaacman will also be donating seats to individuals that meet certain requirements across three categories: Generosity, Prosperity and Hope. To be eligible for the Generosity seat, participantsare asked to donate at least $10 to the St. Jude's hospital fundraising campaign.Besides the grand prize, there will be additionalrewards on offer including hats and autographed posters. Those who don't want to donate can still enter the sweepstakes by fillinginafree entry form. As for the Prosperity seat, participantsneed to sign-up for Isaacman's Shift4Shop ecommerce platform, and post their inspirational business startup story on social media. When it comes to the Hope seat, SpaceX explains this will be allocated to "a St. Jude ambassador with direct ties to the mission."

Regardless of the seat, the entry process will end on February 28, with the finalized crew due to be announced in March. It's worth noting that only legal U.S. residents over the age of eighteen are eligible, and that the winners will have to be physically and psychologically fit to undergo SpaceX's various astronaut and emergency preparedness training before embarking on the mission. While securing a seat might sound unlikely, it's still an indication ofSpaceX moving to the next stagebyallowing civilians to take part in space missions, and not just professional astronautsortheir stuffed toys.

Next: Elon Musk & SpaceX Plan On Drilling For Natural Gas In Texas

Source: SpaceX, Inspiration4

Star Wars Begins The Process Of Making Gray Jedi Canon

Kyle Encina is a writer with over five years of professional experience, covering topics ranging from viral entertainment news, politics and movie reviews to tech, gaming and even cryptocurrency. During his free time, he indulges in composing melodies, listening to inspiring symphonies, physical activities, writing fictional fantasies (stories) and of course, gaming like a madman!

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SpaceX First All-Civilian Mission To Orbit Earth: What You Need To Know - Screen Rant

Mass Effect Andromeda almost included a space exploration system that allowed you to manually drive the Tempest.

Mass Effect Andromeda featured a variety of new systems thatiteratedon preexisting ones from the series' original trilogy. For example, a lot of work was put into developing the Nomad, a land vehicle designed for traversing rough terrain on certain planets. Given the amount of flak directed at the first Mass Effect game's Mako, which handled like an anti-gravity go-kart with two missing wheels, the improvements to the Nomad were warmly welcomed by many players.

As it turns out, this wasn't the only transport enhancement that was on the cards during development of Andromeda. According to Dorian Kieken - who was a development director at BioWare during Mass Effect 2 and 3, before becoming franchise development director in the early days of Andromeda - there was also a playable prototype for completely revamped space travel.

I remember playing a pretty good prototype of space exploration back in 2015, Kieken says. You would basically pilot your ship from planet to planet."

I wasn't in the company anymore when that decision [to cut it] was made, but I'm not surprised," Kieken explains. "Not because it was not fun. It was. But it would have likely required a lot of effort to make work, and so, keeping it would have cost other parts of the game.

Related:How Mass Effect Inspired The Games Industry And Beyond

We tried to do too much with Andromeda, from large explorable planets with a ground vehicle to space exploration with tons of planets. Something had to eventually give.

It's fascinating to think about how this could have fared in Andromeda. I personally thought that planet design was one of the game's strongest elements, so having the opportunity to consciously flit between them at the helm of the Tempest instead of fast-travelling via the Galaxy Map could have been brilliant. Hopefully we see this prototype realized in a future Mass Effect game.

In related news, Kieken also told us about a Han Solo-inspired Mass Effect spin-off that was scrapped before Mass Effect 2. While he and several other devs at BioWare thought the idea was solid, there simply wasn't enough bandwidth to focus on it while also working on Mass Effect 2.

Next:Mass Effect 3 Could Have Had A Completely Different Ending

Pokemons Ice-Type Is A Problem. Heres How They Could Fix It

Cian Maher is the Lead Features Editor at TheGamer. He's also had work published in The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Verge, Vice, Wired, and more. You can find him on Twitter @cianmaher0.

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Mass Effect Andromeda Had A Playable Prototype For Space Exploration, But It Was Scrapped - TheGamer

The total solar eclipse in Svalbard on March 20, 2015.

When this pandemic is all over do you want to have travel experiences that give you a new perspective? So go experience a total solar eclipse. And the aurora borealis. And a dark sky with the Milky Way arcing over your head.

This week has seen the results of the Travel Photographer of the Year 2020 plastered all over the media, but the star turns wereas is so often the casethe images taken not of Earth, but of our sky.

The overall winner was Russian photographer Vladimir Alekseev, whose portfolio featured this articles main imagea total solar eclipse in Svalbard on March 20, 2015. In the morning, a blizzard began, and the sky was covered with clouds, said Alekseev about eclipse day. But an hour before the eclipse, the weather improved, and I managed to capture this amazing moment.

Alekseev also showcased this image, below, of the aurora borealis taken at a reindeer herders camp in Russias Yamal Peninsula.

Northern Lights at the reindeer herders' camp, Yamal Peninsula, Russia.

Another standout night photographer in the competition was 16-year-old American Nayana Rajesh, who ran out a runner-up in the Young Travel Photographer of the Year category.

Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico.

In Rajeshs portfolio is this photo, above, of Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico, while below is a shot of July 2020s Comet Neowise taken from Muenster, Texas.

Due to the global pandemic this was one of the few times this year I was able to shoot the night sky, said Rajesh. I was able to see and photograph Comet Neowise C/2020 F3 about 90 minutes away from my home.

Comet Neowise C/2020 F3 from Muenster, Texas, USA.

Rajesh also showcased this photo, below, taken in Lone Pine, California. It features the Milky Way, which in the northern hemisphere is best seen between May and September.

It was a thrilling experience for me to be under truly dark skies and to be able to see the night sky in all its glory, said Rajesh.

The Milky Way from Lone Pine, California, USA.

Now its back to the aurora borealis with Frances Nicolas Raspiengeas, who was highly commended in the Travel Portfoloo category.

His images included this image, below, of the polar lights from Flakstad beach in Norways Lofoten Islands. He used a headlamp to illuminate the foreground.

Flakstad beach, Lofoten, Norway

Another of Raspiengeas images included this one, below, of the aurora borealis above Senja Island, Norway.

Senja Island, Norway

However, it is surely two images of solar eclipses in Raspiengeas portfolio that really stand out. The first, below, shows the total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 at Smith Rock National Park, Oregon, USA.

This is the most technical photo I have taken, and one that I dreamt of achieving for years, said Raspiengeas. I wanted to compose a strong image with meaning, putting the human being back in contemplation before this unique celestial phenomenon.

A total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017 from Smith Rock National Park, Oregon, USA.

Not happy with that one, Raspiengeas then created an equally compelling image during totality a couple of years later when he captured this stunning image, below, during the total solar eclipse in Argentina on July 2, 2019.

I wanted to include a human element, though I didnt have any precise idea as to how, said Raspiengeas. I guided my partner by walkie-talkie, until the moment of the totality, and it was there that, during those crucial few seconds, she touched the Sun.

A total solar eclipse on July 2, 2019 from San Juan, Argentina.

Finally in this round-up of the astro-images from the Travel Photographer of the Year 2020 is a stunning capture, below, from Italys Alessio Mesiano.

Commended in the Travel Portfolio category, Mesianos images were all shot in the Faroe Islands, an archipelago if windswept islands in the North Atlantic between the UK and Iceland.

Northern Lights from Vestmanna, Streymoy, Faroe Islands.

You can see the rest of the the winning shots on TPOTY's onlinewinners gallery.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

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10 Jaw-Dropping Space Photos From The Travel Photographer Of The Year 2020 - Forbes

The Flight of the Starling is the story of two test pilots trying out this new warp drive, which allows ships to travel close to the speed of light and finally open the door to interstellar travel.

The plot is straight forward the Starling is launched on its first test-flight, they use the warp drive to accelerate to speeds close to the speed of light, then return to Earth to discover thousands of years have passed in their absence. They land, team up with some future humans, raid a supercomputer defended by some less friendly degenerate future humans, and discover how to put their spaceship into negative space so they travel back in time again. Oh and theres a subplot where the nerdy scientist narrator and nasty bully jock space pilot are vying for the affections of the genius professors shy-yet-pretty niece.

Its an adventure story with a Planet of the Apesesque twist, and extremely of its time. The really meaty bit of the story comes here:

Driven by atomic energy, the generators created a force as the generators of the past created electricity. In some respects the force was electricity, but it was of a higher energy order, containing inherent magnetic properties in a complete union of a kind only vaguely suggested by the term electro-magnetic, in which the two forces involved are more or less mutually exclusive, the one giving rise to the other. The force created in the immediate vicinity of the ship a warp in space a moving warp, which could with fair accuracy be called a ripple in the fabric of space. The ship rode this moving warp or ripple as a surf board rides the moving crest of a wave. The intensity of the force controlled the speed of the warp up to a certain limit.

So we have, from the off, the idea of propelling the ships through a warp in space, created here by powerful electromagnetism.

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Star Trek Didnt Invent the Term Warp Drive, This Sci-Fi Story Did - Den of Geek