Monthly Archives: July 2017

Elon Musk's name is associated with Tesla, SpaceX and of course Mars colonies, but what about other planets andobjects in space? At a talk at the International Space Station Research and Development conference in Washington D.C., Musk said he believes having some sort of moon base would help further his mission to the Red Planet.

On stage Wednesday he told Kirk Shireman, ISS program manager, that getting a base on the moon would help get people fired up about space. If we wanna get the public real fired up, weve got to have a base on the moon, after pausing for some applause from the crowd he said, That would be pretty cool, and then going beyond that getting people to Mars.

Read: 8 Photos That Show What SpaceX And Elon Musk Think Traveling To Mars Will Look Like

In the detailed plans to visit Mars that Musk has revealed in the past at conferences and in writing, the moon was never really mentioned. The moonalso played no part in a video of the SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System that Muskrevealed at the International Astronautical Congress last year.

But on Wednesday when Shireman asked Muskwhat he believes the future of commercializedspace travel will look like he brought up the moon. Having some permanent presence on another heavenly body, which would the kind of moon base and then getting people to Mars and beyond. And you know thats the continuance of the dream of Apollo that people are really looking for, he said on stage.

Musk also said that he is hoping to discuss how his plans to reach Mars have changed since his presentation last year at the upcoming International Astronautical Congress. So its possible that some sort of plans for a moon colony or base could be included in those new Mars plans.

Read: Mission To Mars: Will NASA Or SpaceX And Elon Musk Get There First?

During the ISS R&D conference Wednesday he only mentioned that the plans had evolved quite a bit and that the key thing SpaceX had figured out was how to pay to go to Mars. Plans to downsize the Mars vehicle and make it capable of doingEarth-orbit activity as well as Mars activity would hopefully help with the sky-high travel costs. Musk also said that the revised plans are a little more realistic, I think this ones got a shot at being real on the economic front, he said with a slight laugh to sum up.

While fielding questions from the crowd Musk said he saw a way for his Boring Company to overlap with colonization plans. Its unclear whether this will also be involved in the updated plans he hopes to present at the next IAC.

You can watch his talk with ISS Program Director Kirk Shireman below:

See more here:
Moon Colony? Elon Musk Now Wants Lunar Colonization Before Mars - International Business Times

Some Republican senators, like Dean Heller of Nevada, should be gearing up for fights with Democratic challengers next year, but instead are trying to duck primary threats inspired at least in part by a president of their own party.

The professional deficits have been topped with dejecting personal tragedies. Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who has spent the better part of the last six months racing around the world defending a generation of American international positions, announced Wednesday night that he had brain cancer. The third-most-powerful House Republican, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, lingers in a hospital bed, recovering from gunshot wounds sustained during a mass assassination attempt this summer.

Instead of preparing for a month at home of crowing about the accomplishments of a unified government, Republicans have been diminished to trying to confirm relatively minor nominees Democrats are stalling them and getting a spending bill or two passed. They have been forced to cut their August recess short, all because they have nothing particularly positive to celebrate.

Even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who was seen gliding through the Capitol on Thursday, normally loquacious on all matters of party strategy, politics and the possibilities of moon colonization, had nothing to say. He stared straight ahead when asked about Republican woes.

Things are starting to feel incoherent, said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, reflecting on the health care efforts, which have turned many Republican senators against one another as efforts to negotiate the future of the Medicaid program have caused large rifts.

With no small measure of understatement, Mr. Corker conceded, Theres just not a lot of progress happening.

While congressional Republicans problems stem largely from the chaos at the White House, many reflect fissures within their party over government spending, social issues, immigration and the role of America in the broader international order.

And once again, rather than trying to forge bipartisan alliances with moderate Democrats, Republican leaders appear determined to go it alone with one-party bills that must unite the hard right with the center right.

For example, a spending bill passed by House appropriators that would provide millions of dollars for Mr. Trumps proposed wall on the Mexican border sets up a potential fight on the floor with Republicans in the Senate, who earlier this year rejected a similar effort.

A nearly $700 billion appropriations bill that would fund the Pentagon faces an impending battle over an amendment, championed by Representative Vicky Hartzler, Republican of Missouri, that would end the Obama-era practice of requiring the Pentagon to pay for medical treatment related to gender transition. (Transgender service members have been permitted to serve openly in the military since last year.)

The same measure narrowly failed on a broader defense policy bill passed recently by the House, as some Republicans joined Democrats to reject it.

Some members of the House Freedom Caucus, many of whom were originally elected on a platform of reined-in federal spending, have said they will not vote for a bill that does not include substantial wall funding, as well as the transgender amendment, drawing fault lines around Mr. Trump within the party.

What we havent been able to figure out is how to meld people with such different policy positions together to get the consensus, the majority it takes to pass bills, Representative Bradley Byrne, Republican of Alabama, said.

Republicans blame Democrats for many of their woes: for slowing down nominations with procedural tricks because of their ire over health care, for not helping them to repeal the Affordable Care Act and for passing it in the first place. But increasingly, Republican senators are suggesting it would be better to work with the minority party to fix the laws flaws.

Even in the House, Republicans and Democrats joined, at least momentarily, over the issue of congressional approval for authorizing war. The effort was led by Representative Scott Taylor, Republican of Virginia and a former Navy SEAL, who joined forces with Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat of California, demonstrating that foreign policy in the Trump era has provoked even more desire for a legislative role.

I feel very strongly that Congress is handing over its war making authority to the executive branch, said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma. It did so under Obama, and it is doing so under Trump. In their desire to spare their members from tough votes, the leadership of both parties have weakened the power of Congress. This belief is widely shared by the rank and file in both parties.

Appropriators in the Senate are also working in a friendly and bipartisan manner on bills, but it remains to be seen how the process will play out on legislation that will require 60 votes to pass. Still, some Republicans are using optimism as oxygen as they head home after yet another week of chaos and disappointment.

We will continue to focus on the priorities that restore hope and create opportunities for the economically vulnerable, Senator Tim Scott, the ever-buoyant Republican from South Carolina, said. Our focus, not as Republicans or Democrats but as Americans, is our future.

Emmarie Huetteman contributed reporting.

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A version of this article appears in print on July 21, 2017, on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Ambitious Agenda Stalls in Cruel Summer for Republicans.

Continued here:
In a Cruel Summer for the GOP, 'Things Are Starting to Feel Incoherent' - New York Times

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. It is now 48 years since Apollo 11's moon landing on July 20, 1969. That history-making first human touchdown on the lunar landscape was celebrated here last Saturday during an evening gala held near a massive Apollo Saturn V booster.

While primarily a reflection on decades past, the event also proved to be a look into the future, courtesy of remarks by Jeff Bezos, the retail mogul of Amazon.com fame and fortune and the head of Blue Origin, a company with big plans to pioneer the space frontier. [Photos: Glimpses of Secretive Blue Origin's Private Spaceships]

Jeff Bezos receives the first annual Buzz Aldrin Space Innovation Award from Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin at an Apollo 11 anniversary gala on July 15, 2017.

The gala was hosted by Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin. He was joined by Apollo veterans Michael Collins, the Apollo 11 command module pilot; Walt Cunningham of 1968's Apollo 7 mission; and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt from Apollo 17, the last expedition to the moon, in December 1972.

The Apollo 11 gala event was the first part of a three-year fundraising campaign devised by the ShareSpace Foundation, which will culminate in the summer of 2019 with global activities coinciding with the 50th Anniversary of the first moon landing.

Bezos was on hand to accept the first annual Buzz Aldrin Space Innovation Award. The unique glass award was produced by the Soneva Resorts' Glass Art Studio in the Maldives.

Taking part in the July 15, 2017, gala at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, left to right: Apollo 7's Walt Cunningham; Michael Collins of Apollo 11; Buzz Aldrin; and Harrison Schmitt of Apollo 17.

"I pride myself on thinking out of the box of being innovative," Aldrin said, saluting those same characteristics in Bezos.

"Jeff Bezos told me on a recent visit to Blue Origin that he's been dreaming of space since the age of 5 years old. He watched Neil [Armstrong], Mike and me journey to the moon during Apollo 11 in 1969. Since then, he has charted his course through innovation, and he's been quietly breaking barriers with Blue Origin," Aldrin said.

Aldrin highlighted Blue Origin's New Shepard, a fully reusable, vertical-takeoff/vertical-landing system that will fly suborbital space tourism and research missions. He also detailed the company's reusable New Glenn orbital rocket, which is under development, as well as Blue Origin's powerful BE-3 and BE-4 engines.

"I don't think there's been anything quiet about rockets in the first place," Aldrin said, "but Blue Origin is primed to make the loudest noise yet." [Blue Origin's Giant New Glenn Rocket in Pictures]

Evening festivities at the Kennedy Space Center brought together astronauts and space industry pioneers, who were there to stress the need for education and inspiration for space exploration.

Bezos said the Apollo program was inspirational, helping to fuel his desire and passion to make a difference in space exploration.

"I have won this lottery," Bezos said. "It's a gigantic lottery, and it's called Amazon.com. And I'm using my lottery winnings to push us a little further into space."

Bezos said he is not in the camp of the "Plan B argument" for the colonization of space that one day Earth is going to be destroyed or uninhabitable, so we better have another place to live.

"I hate that idea I find it very unmotivating," Bezos said. "We have sent robotic probes now to every planet in this solar system, and believe me, this [Earth] is the best one."

Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin reflects on the first human landing on the moon, which occurred on July 20, 1969.

While we should and will colonize space (via the harnessing of solar energy and asteroid resources), Bezos said, there's also a need to avoid stagnation here on Earth by putting controls on population or energy usage per capita. That's sure to be a boring world, he said, and not compatible with freedom or liberty.

Bezos' visionary scenario is being held back by a central issue, he said.

"Space travel is just too darn expensive. And we know why it's too expensive. It's because we throw the rockets away," Bezos explained. "We're never going on to do these grand things and to expand into the solar system as long as we throw this hardware away. We need to build reusable rockets, and that is what Blue Origin is dedicated to taking my Amazon lottery winnings and dedicating to it's a passion, but it's also important."

Space pioneers reflect on the past and the future at the Kennedy Space Center gala, left to right: Buzz Aldrin, Jeff Bezos, Jack Schmitt, Michael Collins and Walt Cunningham.

Bezos also said at the gala that "it's time for America to go back to the moon, this time to stay."

"We should build a permanent settlement on one of the poles of the moon," he said. In that lunar locale, water in permanently shadowed regions, such as the bottoms of craters, can be accessed. And "peaks of eternal light" in polar regions mountaintops or crater rims that are always bathed in sunlight can provide solar power.

"We didn't know back in the '60s and '70s, but we know now, that the poles of the moon are extremely interesting places, and we should go back, and we should stay," Bezos said. "If we have reusable rockets, we can do it so much more affordably than we have ever done it before. We have the tools. We have the young people with a passion to do it. We can get that done today."

Leonard David is author of "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet," published by National Geographic. The book is a companion to the National Geographic Channel series "Mars." A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. This version of this story was posted on Space.com.

More here:
Jeff Bezos' Vision: 'A Trillion Humans in the Solar System' - Space.com