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Liberals are salivating at the idea of taxing cars by the distance they travel, to better rake in money for their nefarious purposes. In California, they are taking the idea one step farther, planning to tax space rockets by the mile as well.

In 2000, with his six-year-old business Amazon.com well on its way to becoming a retail empire, Jeff Bezos quietly launched his childhood dream: a rocket company. Called Blue Origin, Bezos kept the operation cloaked in secrecy for many years; only the occasional interview, or rare explosion in the deserts of west Texas (where test flights occur), divulged his plans. The company's initial goal was to launch people to the edge of space and back — all while recovering the rocket to dramatically lower the cost of flight....

American astronauts may be walking on Mars in the next eight years, or ideally the next four, if President Donald Trump has his way. But the new timetable has baffled experts in space travel. (AUDIO-AT-LINK) The surprise announcement — or rather instruction — took place this week during a live video conference between President Trump and veteran astronaut Peggy Whitson, who is currently aboard the International Space Station. During the conversation, Trump asked Whitson when it would be possible to send a human to Mars. She gave a careful and detailed answer explaining that a trip to the Red Planet...

Images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft show the closest-ever views of Saturn's swirled atmosphere and its massive hurricane. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute ================================================================================================================================ NASA's Cassini spacecraft is giving earthlings their closest-ever views of Saturn's swirled atmosphere and its massive hurricane, beaming a trove of images and data back to Earth after the craft made its first dive between Saturn and its rings Wednesday. Cassini is "showing us new wonders and demonstrating where our curiosity can take us if we dare," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division. The raw images are being fed into a photo stream on NASA's website,...

NASA is set to use a radical new 'tricorder' DNA sequencer to work out what a mysterious fungus found growing on the International Space Station is. Astronauts have reported funding the strange microbial growths on walls and surfaces, and it has even clogged waterlines. Now, two instruments onboard will be used to analyse it in orbit, allowing mission controllers to work out how to deal with it

Tian Yulong, secretary general for China's space agency, confirmed the plans ESA has described its 'Moon Village' as a launching pad for missions to Mars The lunar site could also support space mining missions and even tourism It could also act as a 'pit stop' for the further exploration of deep space China is talking with the European Space Agency about collaborating on a human settlement on the moon. The secretary general for China's space agency, Tian Yulong, disclosed the talks today in Chinese state media. The ESA has previously described its 'Moon Village' as a potential international launching pad...

NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson set the endurance record for time in space by a U.S, astronaut today, Monday, April 24, during her current stint of living and working aboard the International Space Station (ISS) along with her multinational crew of five astronauts and cosmonauts. Furthermore Whitson received a long distance phone call of exuberant congratulations from President Donald Trump, First Daughter Ivanka Trump, and fellow astronaut Kate Rubins direct from the Oval Office in the White House to celebrate the momentous occasion. “This is a very special day in the glorious history of American spaceflight!” said President Trump during the...

What we are reporting here isn't fake news. But it doesn't feel exactly like real news, either. It's in that foggy realm of Trump news in which everything is slightly ambiguous and wobbly and internally inconsistent and almost certainly improvisational and not actually grounded in what you could call “government policy.” What happened was: Trump called the International Space Station and talked to astronauts and, in passing, mentioned that he's going to send Americans to Mars, and soon, like really lickety-split. Trump was marking the historic achievement of astronaut Peggy Whitson, the commander of the International Space Station, who set...

Goldman Sachs is bullish on space mining with "asteroid-grabbing spacecraft." In a 98-page note for clients seen by Business Insider, analyst Noah Poponak and his team argue that platinum mining in space is getting cheaper and easier, and the rewards are becoming greater as time goes by. "While the psychological barrier to mining asteroids is high, the actual financial and technological barriers are far lower. Prospecting probes can likely be built for tens of millions of dollars each and Caltech has suggested an asteroid-grabbing spacecraft could cost $2.6bn," the report says. $2.6 billion (£2 billion) sounds like a lot, but...

At 87 years old, famed astronaut Buzz Aldrin is still breaking barriers and having a damn good time doing it. The USAF Thunderbirds invited the icon for a ride in their F-16D while they starred in the Melbourne Air & Space Show over the weekend. Aldrin now holds the record of being the oldest person to ever fly with the USAF Flight Demonstration Team. Melbourne is located south of Cape Canaveral—where Buzz blasted off to the moon in a Saturn V rocket in 1969 as part of the pioneering Apollo 11 crew. Just a few years earlier he rocketed into...

In case you haven't been paying attention, it has been a pretty exciting last few years for what astronomers call the "observable universe." It's been a particularly rewarding stretch for Albert Einstein too, even though he died in 1955. For instance, last year astrophysicists made the first observations of gravitational waves, which Einstein, exactly 100 years ago, predicted should exist. These waves, which I won't even try to explain, were observed when two black holes crashed into one another and merged. A black hole is formed from matter so dense, and with gravity so strong, that anything near it -...

An asteroid as big as a bus came closer to Earth than the moon last night. The object, dubbed 2017 FJ101, zoomed passed within 202,000 miles (325,087 km) of our planet. But the near-Earth asteroid posed no threat to our planet or the moon, scientists said. The asteroid, which is 26ft (eight metres) wide, was first spotted by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope located on the summit of the Haleakalā volcano on Maui, Hawaii on March 25. On average, the moon orbits around 238,855 miles (384,400km) away from our planet. But the bus-sized object came around 36,8555 miles closer to the...

After more than two years of landing its rockets after launch, SpaceX finally sent one of its used Falcon 9s back into space. The rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this evening, sending a communications satellite into orbit, and then landed on one of SpaceX’s drone ships floating in the Atlantic Ocean. It was round two for this particular rocket, which already launched and landed during a mission in April of last year. But the Falcon 9’s relaunch marks the first time an orbital rocket has launched to space for a second time. "This evening’s mission was a critical...

Scientists have made a discovery that could lead to a revolutionary drug that actually reverses ageing. The drug could help damaged DNA to miraculously repair and even protect Nasa astronauts on Mars by protecting them from solar radiation. A team of researchers developed the drug after discovering a key signalling process in DNA repair and cell ageing. During trials on mice, the team found that the drug directly repaired DNA damage caused by radiation exposure or old age. 'The cells of the old mice were indistinguishable from the young mice after just one week of treatment,' said lead author Professor...

Professor Stephen Hawking says he is planning to travel into space on Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. The physicist and cosmologist, 75, said he had not expected to have the opportunity to experience space but that the Virgin boss had offered him a seat. Discussing the meaning of happiness on Good Morning Britain, he said: 'My three children have brought me great joy. 'And I can tell you what will make me happy, to travel in space. 'I thought no one would take me but Richard Branson has offered me a seat on Virgin Galactic, and I said yes immediately.'

A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean Sunday (March 19), returning to Earth with more than 2 tons of science experiments and other gear from the International Space Station.

<p>MOSCOW: A top official of Russia's space agency has been found dead in a prison where he was being held on charges of embezzlement.</p>

Bizarre flashes of cosmic light may actually be generated by advanced alien civilizations, as a way to accelerate interstellar spacecraft to tremendous speeds, a new study suggests. Astronomers have catalogued just 20 or so of these brief, superbright flashes, which are known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), since the first one was detected in 2007. FRBs seem to be coming from galaxies billions of light-years away, but what's causing them remains a mystery. "Fast radio bursts are exceedingly bright given their short duration and origin at great distances, and we haven't identified a possible natural source with any confidence," study...

Considered lost since 2009 when radio contact with it was lost, India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has been found orbiting the moon. The spacecraft has been found by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. Earlier, JPL's calculations indicated that Chandrayaan-1 was circling some 200 kilometres above the lunar surface, but it was generally considered "lost." Chandrayaan-1 was India's first mission to the moon, was launched successfully on October 22, 2008 from Sriharikota. ISRO says the "satellite made more than 3400 orbits around the moon and the mission was concluded when the communication with the spacecraft was lost on August 29,...

Humanity is planning its forays out to reach Mars over the next few decades. Such trips would have to traverse an average 140 million miles of vacuum, and take about three years, roundtrip. But the health effects of space are only becoming better understood now. Cancer risks could be seriously increased by the exposure to radiation out in the void, according to a new study published in the journal Leukemia. Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center researchers found a double-whammy effect: the radiation not only caused mutations in key cells, but also weakened immune response – meaning the body would not...