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Space travel visionaries solve the problem of interstellar slowdown ... Science Daily In April last year, billionaire Yuri Milner announced the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative. He plans to invest 100 million US dollars in the development of an ... Small sailing probes could be used to study nearby exoplanet -Science Recorder all 4 news articles »

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Space travel visionaries solve the problem of interstellar slowdown ... - Science Daily

Space travel can do more than make you weightless - it can change your DNA.

The first results of a study delving into the impact space travel has on a person's body were released this week.

Appropriately named the Twins Study, the research looks deep into the effect galaxy travel had on astronaut Scott Kelly compared to his identical twin brother and former astronaut Mark. The brothers shared biological samples before during and after Scott's nearly year-long foray into space last year. The entire time, Mark was earth-bound.

Scott, when he returned to Earth, was a full two inches taller. But the preliminary results went far deeper. Here's what was found:

- Scott's telomeres on the ends of his chromosomes in his white blood cells lengthened while in space. Researchers said it could be attributed to increased exercise and his reduced calorie intake during flight. The telomeres shortened when he returned. Talomeres typically decrease in length as a person ages.

- The study found the level of chemical DNA modification slowed while in space but then returned ot normal when returning to Earth.

- Scott's cognitive abilities in speed and accuracy slowed just slightly after the mission.

- Scott's bone formation slowed during the second half of his trip. Also, there was a spike in inflammation right after landing, which could be because of the stresses of re-entry.

- The study determined a stress hormone was "low normal" throughout the trip but increased over the course of the expedition. The study said the hormone, linked to bone and muscle health, was, "likely impacted by heavy exercise countermeasures during flight."

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Space travel changes DNA, study finds - STLtoday.com

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The new pods will see space travellers hibernate, bringing science fiction movies such as Interstellar and the recent Passengers movie, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, to reality.

As humanity gears up to colonise other planets the sleeper pods will help with the extremely long journeys.

Mars, which is the closest planet to Earth and the top of the interplanetary travel destinations, will take six months to travel to with current technology.

Pluto, on the edge of the solar system, took nine and a half years to reach in the fastest, unmanned, spacecraft.

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By lowering the average body temperature (37 degrees celsius) to around 32 degrees celsius, the heart rate and blood pressure are also lowered, inducing a state of sleep.

Medical professionals already use the tactic to treat sufferers of cardiac arrest and heart failure so that they have more time to asses the damage.

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The patients usually stay in a comatose state for up to four days, but Spaceworks the firm developing the pods using a method it calls therapeutic hypothermia believes that it could make the state last for months.

John A. Bradford, president of Spaceworks, told Quartz: Our goal is to get from days and weeks to months.

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Describing the pods, he said: There would be some robotic arms and monitoring systems taking care of [the passengers].

Theyd have small transnasal tubes for the cooling and some warming systems as well, to bring them back from stasis.

Spaceworks says that it will begin testing the pods on animals as early as next year with human testing to follow in space and aboard the International Space Station.

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Humans to be FROZEN IN TIME for space travel as scientists move to COLONISE other planets - Express.co.uk

Spaceflight changes astronauts brains, according to a new study that analyzed scans of people who traveled to space and back.

Researchers looked at MRI scans from 27 astronauts. Thirteen had flown on the Space Shuttle for a couple weeks, and 14 had spent about six months on the International Space Station. What they found was that the volume of grey matter in the astronaut brains actually decreased.

"We found large regions of gray matter volume decreases, which could be related to redistribution of cerebrospinal fluid in space," Rachael Seidler, a professor of kinesiology and psychology at the University of Michigan, said in astatement. "Gravity is not available to pull fluids down in the body, resulting in so-called puffy face in space. This may result in a shift of brain position or compression."

But thats not the full story.

They also detected increases in grey matter in the space travelers brains in the regions that are tied to leg movement and sensation. Astronauts, of course, use their legs differently in microgravity than they do down on Earth.

NASA DISPLAYS APOLLO CAPSULE HATCH 50 YEARS AFTER FATAL FIRE

The results are evidence of the brains plasticity that it changes in response to a persons environment or actions, like learning something new. And not surprisingly, the researchers saw the biggest changes in the space station astronauts brains, compared to Shuttle crew members, because they had spent the most time in space.

"In space, it's an extreme example of neuroplasticity in the brain because you're in a microgravity environment 24 hours a day," Seidler said in the statement.

NEW SATELLITE SENDS 'JAW-DROPPING' IMAGES OF EARTH

This study, published in the journal Nature Microgravity, is certainly not the only one to look at how space travel affects the human body. NASAs famous twin study in which astronaut Scott Kelly spent about a year in space while his identical twin brother spent that time back on Earth is just now producing some initial results, the space agencyannouncedMonday.

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Space flight changes astronauts' brains, research reveals - Fox News

Therapeutic Hypothermia

Manned, long-term, deep space missions are an exciting prospect, but one that remains in the realm of distant possibilitiesparticularly because we dont have all the technological innovations needed to make it happen.

One major consideration is the time it takes to reach the destination. Mars, which is at the top of various space programs go-to destinations for manned missions, is about six months if travel time away from Earth. If we wanted to explore even further, keep in mind that New Horizons, the fastest spacecraft to leave Earth, took nine and a half years to reach Pluto.

Science fiction conveniently sidesteps this challenge by putting the space explorers into deep sleepa state of suspended animation. But slowing the human metabolism down while ensuring that a person will stay alive for extended periods is a lot easier said than done.

Spaceworks however, led by John A. Bradford, is proposing to use a method they refer to as therapeutic hypothermia. The process involves cooling the body a little below the normal body temperature (37 C), to slow down heart rate and blood pressure. This process is already being used in the medical world. By bringing the body temperature of patients undergoing treatment for cardiac arrest or traumatic brain injuriesdown to 32 and 34 degrees Celsius, doctors have more time to address the issues.

The method normally allows patients to stay in stasis for about 2-4 days, but has worked for as long as two weeks. Spaceworks not only believes they can extend this for months, but also that they can create the technology needed to automate the process and apply it for deep-space missions.

Unlike the cryo-chambers depicted in films however, where row upon row of space travelers are left in suspended animation in individual pods, Spaceworks is conceptualizing an open chamber that allows the crew to go into stasis in shifts.

There would be some robotic arms and monitoring systems taking care of [the passengers]. Theyd have small transnasal tubes for the cooling and some warming systems as well, to bring them back from stasis, Bradford describes an interview with Quartz.

This not only addresses concerns of adding too much weight to a spacecraft, but also ensures that there will be people awake to manage possible emergencies and conduct standard monitoring.

As for the long-term health effects of space travel, Spaceworks is trying to find ways of incorporating exercise into stasis. The team is looking into using electrical stimulation, which is already used to aid physical therapy. Having this technology in place also solves a lot of logistical issues for manned space missions. With crew members awake, you have to factor in the volume of food, water, and air needed to keep them alive for months and years at a time. It could also help manage the psychological impact of long-term space travel and hopefully lower the risk of space crews succumbing to depression, claustrophobia, or anxiety.

According to Spaceworks, they are due to begin animal testing next year, with human testing set to follow after in space and on the International Space Station.

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A Real Life Hibernation Chamber is Being Made For Deep Space Travel - Futurism

February 1, 2017 Interstellar journey: The aim of the Starshot project is to send a tiny spacecraft propelled by an enormous rectangular photon sail to the Alpha Centauri star system, where it would fly past the Earth-like planet Proxima Centauri b. The four red beams emitted from the corners of the sail depict laser pulses for communication with the Earth. Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory, Univesity of Puerto Rico at Arecibo

In April last year, billionaire Yuri Milner announced the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative. He plans to invest 100 million US dollars in the development of an ultra-light light sail that can be accelerated to 20 percent of the speed of light to reach the Alpha Centauri star system within 20 years. The problem of how to slow down this projectile once it reaches its target remains a challenge. Ren Heller of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gttingen and his colleague Michael Hippke propose to use the radiation and gravity of the Alpha Centauri stars to decelerate the craft. It could then even be rerouted to the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri and its Earth-like planet Proxima b.

In the recent science fiction film Passengers, a huge spaceship flies at half the speed of light on a 120-year-long journey toward the distant planet Homestead II, where its 5000 passengers are to set up a new home. This dream is impossible to realize at the current state of technology. "With today's technology, even a small probe would have to travel nearly 100,000 years to reach its destination," Ren Heller says.

Notwithstanding the technical challenges, Heller and his colleague Michael Hippke wondered, "How could you optimize the scientific yield of this type of a mission?" Such a fast probe would cover the distance from the Earth to the Moon in just six seconds. It would therefore hurtle past the stars and planets of the Alpha Centauri system in a flash.

The solution is for the probe's sail to be redeployed upon arrival so that the spacecraft would be optimally decelerated by the incoming radiation from the stars in the Alpha Centauri system. Ren Heller, an astrophysicist an astrophysicist working on preparations for the upcoming Exoplanet mission PLATO, found a congenial spirit in IT specialist Michael Hippke, who set up the computer simulations.

The two scientists based their calculations on a space probe weighing less than 100 grams in total, which is mounted to a 100,000-square-metre sail, equivalent to the area of 14 soccer fields. During the approach to Alpha Centauri, the braking force would increase. The stronger the braking force, the more effectively the spacecraft's speed can be reduced upon arrival. Vice versa, the same physics could be used to accelerate the sail at departure from the solar system, using the sun as a photon cannon.

The tiny spacecraft would first need to approach the star Alpha Centauri A as close as around four million kilometres, corresponding to five stellar radii, at a maximum speed of 13,800 kilometres per second (4.6 per cent of the speed of light). At even higher speeds, the probe would simply overshoot the star.

During its stellar encounter, the probe would not only be repelled by the stellar radiation, but it would also be attracted by the star's gravitational field. This effect could be used to deflect it around the star. These swing-by-manoeuvres have been performed numerous times by space probes in our solar system. "In our nominal mission scenario, the probe would take a little less than 100 years or about twice as long as the Voyager probes have now been travelling. And these machines from the 1970s are still operational," says Michael Hippke.

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Theoretically, the autonomous, active light sail proposed by Heller and Hippke could settle into a bound orbit around Alpha Centauri A and possibly explore its planets. However, the two scientists are thinking even bigger. Alpha Centauri is a triple star system. The two binary stars A and B revolve around their common centre of mass in a relatively close orbit, while the third star, Proxima Centauri, is 0.22 light years away, more than 12,500 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth.

The sail could be configured so that the stellar pressure from star A brakes and deflects the probe toward Alpha Centauri B, where it would arrive after just a few days. The sail would then be slowed again and catapulted towards Proxima Centauri, where it would arrive after another 46 years about 140 years after its launch from Earth.

Proxima Centauri caused a sensation in August 2016 when astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) discovered an exoplanet companion that is about as massive as the Earth and that orbits the star in its so-called habitable zone. This makes it theoretically possible for liquid water to exist on its surface water being a key prerequisite for life on Earth.

"This finding prompted us to think about the possibility of stopping a high-velocity interstellar lightsail at Proxima Centauri and its planet," says Ren Heller. The Max Planck researcher and his colleague propose another change to the strategy for the Starshot project: instead of a huge energy-hungry laser, the Sun's radiation could be used to accelerate a nanoprobe beyond the solar system. "It would have to approach the Sun to within about five solar radii to acquire the necessary momentum," Heller says.

The two astronomers are now discussing their concept with the members of the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, to whom they owe the inspiration for their study. "Our new mission concept could yield a high scientific return, but only the grandchildren of our grandchildren would receive it. Starshot, on the other hand, works on a timescale of decades and could be realized in one generation. So we might have identified a longterm, follow-up concept for Starshot," Heller says.

Although the new scenario is based on a mathematical study and computer simulations, the proposed hardware of the sail is already being developed in laboratories today: "The sail could be made of graphene, an extremely thin and light but mega-tough carbon film," Ren Heller says. The film would have to be blanketed by a highly reflective cover to endure the harsh conditions of deep space and the heat near the destination star.

The optical and electronic systems would have to be tiny. But if you were to remove all the unnecessary components from a modern smartphone, "only a few grams of functional technology would remain." Moreover, the lightweight spacecraft would have to navigate independently and transmit its data to Earth by laser. To do so, it would need energy, which it could harness from the stellar radiation.

Breakthrough Starshot therefore poses daunting challenges that have so far only been solved theoretically. Nevertheless, "many great visions in the history of mankind had to struggle with seemingly insurmountable obstacles," Heller says. "We could soon be entering an era in which humans can leave their own star system to explore exoplanets using fly-by missions."

Explore further: Image: Hubble's best image of Alpha Centauri A and B

More information: Heller, R., & Hippke, M. (2017) "Deceleration of high-velocity interstellar sails into bound orbits at Alpha Centauri", The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 835, L32, DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/835/2/L32

The closest star system to the Earth is the famous Alpha Centauri group. Located in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur), at a distance of 4.3 light-years, this system is made up of the binary formed by the stars ...

ESO has signed an agreement with the Breakthrough Initiatives to adapt the Very Large Telescope instrumentation in Chile to conduct a search for planets in the nearby star system Alpha Centauri. Such planets could be the ...

A very rare gravitational lensing event, set to occur in 2028, has been predicted by a team of French astronomers led by Pierre Kervella of the CNRS/Universidad de Chile. It will provide an ideal opportunity to look for evidence ...

Scientists are preparing to unveil a new planet in our galactic neighbourhood which is "believed to be Earth-like" and orbits its star at a distance that could favour life, German weekly Der Spiegel reported Friday.

The hunt for exoplanets has been heating up in recent years. Since it began its mission in 2009, over four thousand exoplanet candidates have been discovered by the Kepler mission, several hundred of which have been confirmed ...

With the completion of New Horizons' Pluto fly-by, its primary mission, should we now set our sights even higher, ambitiously taking aim at other star systems? If so, Alpha Centauri would probably be considered as the best ...

The CO2 level in Mars' primitive atmosphere 3.5 billion years ago was too low for sediments, such as those found by NASA's Curiosity exploration vehicle in areas like the Gale Crater on the planet's equator, to be deposited. ...

(Phys.org)A European team of astronomers led by Oscar Barragn of the University of Turin in Italy reports the discovery of a low-mass warm Jupiter extrasolar planet orbiting a nearby K-type main-sequence star. The newly ...

A giant black hole ripped apart a nearby star and then continued to feed off its remains for close to a decade, according to research led by the University of New Hampshire. This black hole meal is more than 10 times longer ...

Galaxies today fall roughly into two categories: elliptically-shaped collections of reddish, old stars that formed predominantly during a period early in the history of the universe, and spiral shaped objects dominated by ...

An experimental Japanese mission to clear 'space junk' or rubbish from the Earth's orbit has ended in failure, officials said Monday, in an embarassment for Tokyo.

(Phys.org)A team of space researchers with members from Yale University, MIT and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has found a bump in X-ray readings from the Chandra-X-ray observatory that appears to be ...

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100grams is also pretty ambitious (as it includes the weight of the sail). Graphene weighs 0.77milligrams per square meter. So 100k square meter sail already 77g If you add any kind of reflective layer this will be WAY over the 100g mark. And you need some structural elements to make sure it doesn't collapse under the pressure of the radiation for accelerating/decelerating it.

The StarChip probe package is envisioned at a few grams with a 'compact laser for data transmission'. However I've not seen anyone mention how such a small laser can transmit data over 4 light years.

Sure, the 100 gram useless piece of space junk will be a $100Mil monument to the dumbass ego. Hopefully no aliens will notice it (only 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000012 chance they will, as no one lives in Alpha Centauri system).

What level of drag do you get from this size sail, from the thin interstellar medium? How do you compensate for the unknown medium and wind particulates drag near proxima?

Yes, to say the least, this presented concept is problematic. The asteroid belt contains sufficient kinetic energy to send a much larger probe out at as high or higher speed with far greater safety. Why don't they use that? Asteroids are just sitting there waiting for someone clever enough to start bouncing things around, so to speak. The physics is Newtonian for crying out loud.

I really have no idea how such a small probe can pack all of the systems needed for this probe to be worth while. How is it generating power, storing it, keeping itself warm. What about redundant systems for when a cosmic particle crashes through the probes electronics? Can the probe receive over the air software updates in order to fix the software glitch the system will no doubt be launched with. Can we really track this probe to sufficient accuracy in order to perform corrective trajectory manoeuvres? What bit rate can you achieve from such a tiny, low powered (where's the power coming from) laser? Is it possible to point lasers so accurate we can hit this probe from Earth, 4 light years away??? Surely bi-directional communication is required. Better not need to update the probe in a hurry, 4 years is some savage communication lag!!!!! Unfurling and furling of the sail repeatedly and probe stabilisation during the process...... GOOD F_cking luck with that!!!!!!

Even the swarm-antenna idea doesn't quite work as at the speed and how they are being sent they would only remain in a viable configuration for a tiny amount of time.

This article is about a much slower speed mission which I think might be impractical based on limited attention span of civilization. Also the possibility that we'll have much better propulsion systems before the probe could get there - the probe could find itself being passed by tourist ships on the way to the same destination. 😉

The gravitational focus concept is fascinating because it implies low power interstellar communications are possible. Alas, still limited to lightspeed.

You can graph the time it takes at which a probe (or manned craft) could get there. You can also graph the time it takes each time we double the capabilities of our thrust systems. By those graphs it currently makes no sense to launch, because technological advance will make a craft that is launched *later* arrive there earlier.

We shouldn't be concerned with how we get information back with technology we could make now. We should look to how to get information back at a time when we are close to the break-even point of "travel time vs. tech advance"

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Space travel visionaries solve the problem of interstellar slowdown at Alpha Centauri - Phys.Org

Space exploration has captured the worlds interest ever since the famous Space Race between the Soviet Union and the U.S. during the Cold War, which cu...

Space exploration has captured the worlds interest ever since the famous Space Race between the Soviet Union and the U.S. during the Cold War, which culminated in the U.S. landing the first humans on the moon in 1969. In fact, it was only mere decades ago that the idea of space tourismnot just for astronauts and scientific research but for leisure and recreationwas the stuff of science fiction: Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Today, space travel for the common man is no longer a matter of if but when, thanks to the ingenuity and imagination of self-funded business magnates with an eye on the sky.

A few major players have emerged in the race towards the first commercial flights to space. Prototypes from Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic space line are readying to take its first passengers on a suborbital space flight to the edge of Earths atmosphere. Meanwhile, SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer founded by Tesla Motors CEO and investor Elon Musk, has begun launching rockets into orbit, with the ambitious end goal of enabling human colonization on Mars.

Of course, the price of airfare to space is still well beyond most anyones meansa single seat on Virgin Galactic will put you out of $250,000. Luckily, the rest of us can still gaze upon the worlds beyond ours from our backyards. Stargazing remains a beloved nightly pastime, where views of phenomena like the northern lights and lunar eclipses can be seen for free with just the naked eye.

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Space Travel - Astronomy + Space Exploration - Leisure

(Photo: Courtesy of Virgin Galactic)

At dawn one morning last Novemberjust as the edge of Earth comprising Florida spun into the field of light bursting from roughly 93 million miles awayshe emerged one last time from the monstrous doors of the Vehicle Assembly Building, twelve stories long but dwarfed. This was what had been billed as the final mission of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, a 9.8-mile journey to her final resting place at the Kennedy Space Centers visitors complex. That Atlantiss journey would begin at the VAB525 feet tall, the largest single-story structure in the world, having sprouted a half-century ago in the frenzy of the space race, as stupendous an achievement as each of the space-faring rockets that would be assembled inside itmultiplied the emotion.

Very far away, still sheathed in its massive launch-apparatus exoskeleton, one could make out Launchpad 39A, site of the historic Apollo 11 moonwalking blastoff, where Atlantis had also taken off to orbit the Earth, once more and finally, in 2011, marking the last in NASAs 30-year-old shuttle program. The other surviving orbiters, Discovery and Endeavor, had already completed their extraordinary processionals to museums in northern Virginia and Los Angeles (the latter requiring hundreds of trees cut and roadways reconfigured to accommodate its size). A throng of personnel was on hand, those who had built and maintained and flown her, including some of the 7,000 whose jobs were ending with the program. With signs and T-shirts that read WE LOVE YOU ATLANTIS and THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES and WE MADE HISTORY, they fell in behind her. Many wiped away tears as she crept along at two miles an hour, past the dense, still swampland that had, many times before, exploded along with her, the alligators and pigs and birds flushing at her ignition, the fish heaving themselves from the water, the light from the trail of fire flashing from their scales.

Now the procession was funereal. For NASAs public-relations machine, desperate to engage Americans notoriously fickle interest, it would amount to an odd victory: Stories about Atlantiss retirement appeared in media outlets across the globe, all written as obituaries. The events of the following evening were equally bleak: A formal dinner at the nearby Radisson commemorating the mission of Apollo 17, whose lunar module had closed its hatch 40 years earlier and ferried the last man back from the moon. In attendance were ten surviving Apollo astronauts, an extraordinary group to say the least, the only men to have traveled to the moon, now gray-haired or bald. Their fears for the nations space future were well aired; many of themincluding the famously reticent Neil Armstrong, whose recent death had cast a significant pallhad written letters to President Obama saying his space policy portended the nations long downhill slide to mediocrity. Just as China rushes to land on the moon by the end of this decade, the astronauts noted ruefully, the U.S. is now essentially vehicleless. For a taxpayer-funded fare of almost $71 million per seat, American astronauts are now taxied to the International Space Station by their former archenemies, the Russians, aboard the old, reliable Soyuz rockets against which NASA once raced. The delivery of cargo is now outsourced to private companies. In a tear-stained column titled In an Earthbound Era, Heaven Has to Wait, the Timess Frank Bruni said that for Americans already profoundly doubtful and shaken, the shuttles end carries the force of cruel metaphor, coming at a time when limits are all we talk about. When we have no stars in our eyes.

All of which made the scene Id observed in a desert town in southern New Mexico a week earlier even more exceptional.

In a landscape redolent of Mars, a group of scientists, many of them young NASA astronauts recently decamped to private industry, practically evangelized about this very moment: Unbeknownst to most of the world, after decades of failed Jetsons-esque promises of individual jetpacks for all, peoplecivilians, you and me, though with a good deal more meansare finally about to ascend to the heavens. If the twentieth-century space race was about the might of the American government, the emerging 21st-century space age is about something perhaps even more powerfulthe might of money. The necessary technology has converged in the hands of a particularly boyish group of billionaires whose Right Stuff is less hard-boiled test-pilot, more high-tech entrepreneuring wunderkindand whose individual financial means eclipse those of most nations. A massive industry is coalescing around them. Towns and states and even some countries are fighting one another for a piece of it. In New Mexico, workers are putting the finishing touches on the first of at least ten spaceports currently under construction around the world. More than 800 people have paid as much as $200,000 apiece to reserve seats on commercial flights into space, some of which are expected to launch, at long last, within a year. Space-travel agents are being trained; space suits are being designed for sex appeal as much as for utility; the founder of the Budget hotel chain is developing pods for short- and long-term stays in Earths orbit and beyond. Over beers one night, a former high-ranking NASA official, now employed by Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin transportation conglomerate, put it plainly: We happen to be alive at the moment when humanity starts leaving the planet.

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space travel - NYMag.com

BUSINESS

November 26, 2013 | By Shan Li

Virgin Galactic, the company aimed at taking tourists to space, is accepting the digital currency bitcoin as payment for future space travel. Richard Branson, the British billionaire who founded the futuristic company, called bitcoin "a brilliantly conceived idea" that has "really captured the imagination recently. " "All of our future astronauts are pioneers in their own right," Branson wrote in a blog post titled "Bitcoins in space. " "This is one more way to be forward-looking.

HEALTH

November 2, 2013 | By James S. Fell

Col. Chris Hadfield, who until recently was commander of the International Space Station, has a workout regimen that is out of this world. Sorry. Couldn't resist. Hadfield's new book, "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth," goes into detail about what it takes to be in shape for space travel. What kind of shape do you need to be in to qualify for the space program? To qualify to live on the space station, you have to pass the hardest physical exam in the world. There has to be a high lack of a probability of a problem, whether it's your appendix or an injury.

TRAVEL

October 6, 2013 | By Jane Engle

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - I was inept at moonwalking. My rocket was a dud. And I crashed the space shuttle. Fortunately, I was just an astronaut wannabe and not the real deal. But it's as close as this middle-aged space geek is going to get. That geekiness, inspired by IMAX documentaries on space and news coverage of NASA's final shuttle launch in 2011, was what brought me to Adult Space Academy. The trip was a gift from my wife. The three-day program is among more than a dozen versions of Space Camp, which the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville created more than 30 years ago to give visitors a taste of what it's like to train as an astronaut.

ENTERTAINMENT

October 3, 2013 | By Scott Collins

NBC is hoping to get a space-travel reality show off the ground this time. The network is teaming up with producer Mark Burnett and billionaire Richard Branson to make "Space Race," a competition series that would send the winner up in SpaceShipTwo, a commercial space-travel service from Branson's Virgin Galactic. The series could offer Virgin a key opportunity to plug its services. FULL COVERAGE: Fall TV preview 2013 "Virgin Galactic's mission is to democratize space, eventually making commercial space travel affordable and accessible to all," Branson wrote in a statement.

SCIENCE

September 4, 2013 | By Geoffrey Mohan

A lemur that hibernates is strange and cute enough. But studying its lethargic state may provide a clue to sending humans on long-distance space travel or healing the ravages of heart attacks, stroke and head trauma, according to researchers at Duke University. The western fat-tailed dwarf lemur, a pocket-sized nocturnal primate native to Madagascar, is the closest genetic cousin of humans to hibernate for long periods, a discovery made by a German research team in 2004. The revelation that primates hibernated led to a happy coincidence at Duke, which happens to have a lemur center and a sleep laboratory.

ENTERTAINMENT

June 21, 2013 | By Joe Flint

A new distribution platform is emerging and no one knows what to make of it. The established players are wary of it and see it as more foe than friend. Others are afraid of losing their shirt by investing in it. Sound familiar? But this isn't the Internet. This was cable television in the early 1980s. Back then there were only a handful of networks and few were talking about 500 channels full of original content. "It was an unproven business, investors were not convinced that cable programming was a good investment," said John Hendricks, founder of Discovery Communications.

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Articles about Space Travel - latimes

NSS deeply regrets the tragic loss of SpaceShipTwo on October 31 and extends it's heartfelt sympathy to the families involved and to everyone who worked in this program.

"The process of creating a successful off-world tourism industry will be the key economic and technological driver enabling the human species to evolve into a real Solar System Species." John Spencer, author of Space Tourism and President and founder of the Space Tourism Society.

"SpaceShipOne [showed that] space travel was no longer just the domain of prohibitively expensive government programs subject to political whim. Now it was just like any other business that could be developed into a thriving industry." From Rocketeers.

2008: Tourists in Space: A Practical Guide, By Erik Seedhouse. Springer-Praxis. 314 pages. [Review]. [Amazon link]. The bulk of this book goes into considerable detail about what sort of training prospective spaceflight participants should undergo.

2007: Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space, by Michael Belfiore. Smithsonian Books. 304 pages. [Review]. [Amazon link]. An excellent and exciting read that allows you to meet the major players in the development of privatized space flight.

2007: Destination Space: How Space Tourism Is Making Science Fiction a Reality, by Kenny Kemp. Virgin Books. 262 pages. [Amazon link]. A more accurate title would be The Virgin Galactic Story because that is essentially all that is covered (note that the publisher is Virgin Books).

2005: The Space Tourist's Handbook, by Eric Anderson and Joshua Piven. Quirk Books. 192 pages. [Review]. [Amazon link]. A more accurate title would be The Space Adventures Story because author Eric Anderson is president of that company the first company to actually fly space tourists.

2004: Space Tourism: Do You Want to Go? by John Spencer. Apogee Books. 224 pages. [Amazon link]. A broad overview of the entire topic of space tourism, written by the founder and president of the Space Tourism Society. Offers unique perspectives not found elsewhere, such as parallels with the yachting and cruise industries. A significant contribution to the literature.

2002: Making Space Happen: Private Space Ventures and the Visionaries Behind Them, by Paula Berinstein. Plexus Publishing. 490 pages. [Amazon link]. A broad overview of space privatization featuring extensive interviews with the movers and shakers that are making it happen.

1998: General Public Space Travel and Tourism: Volume 1, Executive Summary. Joint NASA study concludes that serious national attention should be given to enabling the creation of in-space travel and tourism businesses, and that, in time, this should become a very important part of our country's overall commercial and civil space business-program structure. 40 pages. [PDF 100K]

1996: Halfway to Anywhere: Achieving America's Destiny in Space, by G. Harry Stine. M. Evans and Company. 306 pages. [Review]. [Amazon link]. Discusses what is involved in airline-like operations for spacecraft, and provides a history of the first re-usable rocket, the Delta Clipper.

"The sheer beauty of it just brought tears to my eyes. If people can see Earth from up here, see it without those borders, see it without any differences in race or religion, they would have a completely different perspective. Because when you see it from that angle, you cannot think of your home or your country. All you can see is one Earth...."

Anousheh Ansari, Iranian-American space tourist who flew to the International Space Station in September 2006.

"It was amazing. The zero-g part was wonderful. I could have gone on and on space here I come."

Stephen Hawking, renowned British astrophysicist who was able to leave his wheel chair and experience zero-gravity aboard a parabolic airplane flight on April 26, 2007. Hawking plans to fly on SpaceShipTwo.

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Space Tourism - National Space Society