I am a 25 year old space engineering student (atm in Bremen, DE), this blog is about things that I find worth sharing.
“Ow hai, we are Festo and we build another flying thing that will blow your mind”
This is the Commercial Crew Progress Status Update. It is a good 100 minutes, but it is worth it if you want to be updated on the latest developments in the human commercial spaceflight and what we can expect the upcoming year. It becomes also clear that NASA is still very much involved in the development of all of the vehicles.
Here are ESA’s plans for 2013 in a nice and compact video.
Building ESA’s and CONAE’s new deep space antenna, which will be inaugurated this Tuesday.
New Space and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.
Two weeks ago Blue Origin succesfully tested their launch escape system. Click the link for more pictures.
Frankenfish: Artificial jellyfish built from rat cells
Bio-physicist and -engineers from Harvard and Caltech have joined forces and created a swimming artificial jellyfish merely from rat cells. The jellyfish, or ‘medusoid’, is genetically rat with a silicone polymer ‘nerve system’ to control motion. The medusoid cannot eat, feel or reproduce, but mimics exactly the motion of the common jellyfish.
The researchers are normally occupied with ‘creating artificial models of human heart tissues for regenerating organs and testing drugs.’ They want to use the medusoid, or similar engineered ‘animals’, to test heart-drugs.
Read more on Nature’s website
Published article (including more movies)
DuckDuckGo guide to filter bubbling (and why you should not advise people to just google it.)
Here is a promotional video explaining Mars One, the project I talked about in a previous post.
Mars One is an initiative to migrate small groups of people to Mars, using currently available technologies. The current schedule is to land the first group of four on Mars in 2023, with an additional crew landing every two years.
The design team has been working on the planning in 2011 and has recently sought publicity for their plans in order to secure funds. The power of this mission concept is that it uses technologies which are available today or in the near future, such as the falcon heavy and life support that is currently in use in the ISS.
With ambassadors as Prof. dr. Gerard ‘t Hooft (nobel prize winner), Mary Roach (writer) and Prof. dr. ir. Ambrosius (chairman of Delft Technical University’s Astrodynamics and Space Missions faculty) the group aims to be both visionary and feasible.
I wish them the best of luck. I hope to hear more from them soon. Go check out their website: http://www.mars-one.com/
