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Dream on you loopians, just don't expect me to fund your crazy ideas! There is a new company, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) that intends to revolutionize high speed continental travel. It’s CEO, Dirk Ahlborn, recently announced an agreement with the Slovakian government to build Hyperloops from Vienna, Austria to Bratislava, Slovakia, and from Bratislava to Budapest, Hungary. Its competitor, Hyperloop One, recently tested an open air propulsion test of a vehicle with its “Blade Runner” test rig. The Japanese “bullet trains” going at 200 mph are like snails in comparison. The new hyper-things are envisaged to do about 760 mph....

A new report suggests that young educated South Africans plan to leave the country to work abroad, rather than plough their knowledge back into the local economy. The report comes from PPS, an insurance, investment, healthcare and financial planning specialist for graduate professionals. The company’s latest Student Confidence Index (SCI), conducted among over 1,500 South African students, revealed that 54% of the respondents plan to move abroad for work purposes in the next five years following their graduation. It follows a report published by New World Wealth, which showed that white millionaire numbers have decreased dramatically in SA – from...

U.S. officials appear poised to make history by approving the first private space mission to go beyond Earth's orbit, according to people familiar with the details. The government's endorsement would eliminate the largest regulatory hurdle to plans by Moon Express, a relatively obscure space startup, to land a roughly 20-pound package of scientific hardware on the Moon sometime next year. It also would provide the biggest federal boost yet for unmanned commercial space exploration and, potentially, the first in an array of for-profit ventures throughout the solar system. The expected decision, said the people familiar with the details, is expected...

The nation cannot afford to simply put all of that critical intelligence gathering “on hold” for several years No matter which party wins the White House in November our next Commander in Chief will inherit a world far more unstable than at any point in recent history. From the rapid expansion of ISIS, to recent nuclear tests in North Korea, to the many problems in Afghanistan and Iraq, the very real threats to America and its allies have never been more evident. Roughly 150,000 U.S. troops are stationed in more than 150 countries around the world and they are the...

Delays in prepping the CST-100 crew capsule could cost Boeing millions -- or more. "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." -- attributed to Mark Twain And over at Boeing (NYSE:BA), "history" looks like it's about to rhyme with "misery" for the one-time space monopolist. As you may recall, Boeing (in the form of United Launch Alliance, its joint venture with Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT)) was forced to bow out of an Air Force competition to launch a GPS III satellite into orbit last year. ULA's withdrawal was partly Congress' fault, inasmuch as Congress had briefly enacted a law forbidding...

"Billionaires, tech CEOs and top members of the Republican establishment flew to a private island resort off the coast of Georgia this weekend for the American Enterprise Institute's annual World Forum, according to sources familiar with the secretive gathering. The main topic at the closed-to-the-press confab? How to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump. Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google co-founder Larry Page, Napster creator and Facebook investor Sean Parker, and Tesla Motors and SpaceX honcho Elon Musk all attended. So did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), political guru Karl Rove, House Speaker Paul Ryan, GOP Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cory...

The outcome of dueling versions of the National Defense Authorization Act could determine how much the U.S. lines Russia's pockets before what some lawmakers hope is a speedy transition to a domestically produced rocket engine. The RD-180 engine is built by NPO Energomash, a manufacturer mostly owned by the Russian Federation. It's used in the Atlas V rocket, built by Lockheed Martin and Boeing's United Launch Alliance. The House version of the NDAA approves all of the 18 requested engines. In the Senate, where there has been a lengthy battle over buying from Russia, the NDAA authorizes nine engines. Either...

NASA on Saturday successfully expanded and pressurized an add-on room at the International Space Station two days after aborting the first attempt when it ran into problems.

SpaceX is rapidly picking up the pace of rocket launches for their wide ranging base of commercial, government and military customers that is continuously expanding and reaping contracts and profits for the Hawthorne, Calif. based company. This commercial mission involves lofting Thaicom-8 to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) for Thaicom PLC, a leading satellite operator in Asia. This also counts as the second straight GTO launch and the second straight attempt to land a rocket on a sea based platform from the highly demanding GTO launch trajectory. Will this mission make for 3 successful Falcon 9 1st stage booster landings...

India successfully launched a scale model of a reusable spacecraft on Monday, a project that in time could pit the nation against billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk in the race to make access to space cheaper and easier. The winged vessel -- one-fifth of full size -- blasted off on a rocket from Sriharikota base on the southeastern coast, the Indian Space Research Organisation said. The spacecraft reached an altitude of 65 kilometers (40 miles) and glided back at supersonic speeds for a splashdown in the Bay of Bengal. The test took about 13 minutes.

Explanation: On May 6, the after midnight launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lit up dark skies over Merritt Island, planet Earth. Its second stage bound for Earth orbit, the rocket's arc seems to be on course for the center of the Milky Way in this pleasing composite image looking toward the southeast. Two consecutive exposures made with camera fixed to a tripod were combined to follow rocket and home galaxy. A 3 minute long exposure at low sensitivity allowed the rocket's first stage burn to trace the bright orange arc and a 30 second exposure at high sensitivity...

SpaceX personnel will recover Dragon by ship and then haul the spacecraft to Long Beach for processing. Dragon is the only robotic cargo vessel currently flying that's capable of bringing material safely from the ISS down to the ground. The other freighters — Orbital ATK's Cygnus spacecraft, Russia's Progress vessel and Japan's H-II Transfer Vehicle — are all designed to burn up in Earth's atmosphere and therefore are packed with garbage, not cargo, when they depart the orbiting lab.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket rises off the pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida carrying the JCSAT-14 communications satellite on May 6, 2016. Photos on site.

SpaceX has just published a 360-degree video of landing the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket on an at sea, barge.

The company said it is planning to send their Dragon spacecraft to the red planet as early as 2018 SpaceX is planning to be the first private company to land on Mars within the next two years. The company said it is planning to send its Dragon spaceraft to the red planet as early as 2018. Bosses announced their intentions in a statement on Twitter this afternoon. A spokesperson tweeted: "Planning to send Dragon to Mars as soon as 2018. Red Dragons will inform overall Mars architecture, details to come." Earlier this month the US aerospace company successfully landed a...

Links: SpaceX - CRS8 Booster at Port Canaveral 04-12-2016 CRS8 Comes Home - SpaceX Falcon 9 Booster 04-19-2016

Explanation: The International Space Station is the largest object ever constructed by humans in space. The station perimeter extends over roughly the area of a football field, although only a small fraction of this is composed of modules habitable by humans. The station is so large that it could not be launched all at once -- it continues to be built piecemeal. To function, the ISS needs huge trusses, some over 15 meters long and with masses over 10,000 kilograms, to keep it rigid and to route electricity and liquid coolants. Pictured above, the immense space station was photographed from...

Elon Musk’s private space company SpaceX made history on Friday finally landing its reusable Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

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Remember when Blue Origin made history by vertically landing a rocket after launching it into space? Remember when they reused that same rocket and then landed it again? Well, today Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, once again, launched that very same New Shepard rocket and successfully landed it for a third time. At 11:28 AM EST, Bezos announced the successful landing of the New Shepard suborbital rocket as well as the crew capsule that it was carrying into space. While the rocket will eventually be used for crewed missions, there were no humans on this flight. Unlike previous launches where the...