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“If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred. A fully reusable vehicle has never been done before. That really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to revolutionize access to space.” --Elon Musk

Multiple reviews of whether FBI agents’ political bias affected the Russia-Trump collusion case remain in their infancy, but investigators already have unearthed troubling internal communications long withheld from public view. We already know from FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok’s now-infamous text messages with his fellow agent and reported lover, Lisa Page, that Strzok — the man driving that Russia collusion investigation — disdained Donald Trump and expressed willingness to use his law enforcement powers to “stop” the Republican from becoming president. The question that lingers, unanswered: Did those sentiments affect official actions? Memos the FBI is now producing to the...

Dragon launched to the space station April 2 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to deliver 5,800 lbs. (2,630 kilograms) of experiment gear and other supplies for the station's six-person crew. This is SpaceX's 14th cargo delivery mission for NASA, and the second flight of this Dragon capsule. (It last flew in April 2016 on an earlier station cargo flight for NASA.) On this return trip, Dragon is carrying a wide variety of science gear, including mice that have been living in special habitats on the station to study the health effects of space travel. Other samples of plants, insects...

SpaceX is seeking permission to perform splashdowns of its Dragon spacecraft in the Gulf of Mexico, part of a shift in spacecraft recovery operations from the Pacific Ocean. In a draft environmental assessment prepared by the Federal Aviation Administration, SpaceX proposes to conduct up to six Dragon landings a year in waters off the Gulf coast, between Texas and Florida. The assessment, completed in March, was published in the Federal Register April 5. According to the report, the Gulf of Mexico would serve as a contingency landing site for both cargo and crewed Dragon missions should the primary landing zone...

The battle of the billionaires between Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson looks set to finally blast its first passengers into space next year. Speaking at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in Colorado, Jeff Ashby, a former NASA astronaut who is director of safety and mission assurance for Jeff Bezos' space firm Blue Origin, said the firm is now 'a year out' from human flights. It comes as Richard Branson claimed in October he will travel to space on his Virgin Galactic craft within six months. Elon Musk is also expected to soon reveal the launch schedule for a...

Cersei Lannister needs some anti-dragon air defenses. This past week on Game of Thrones, the self-appointed Queen of Westeros asks her cryptic right-hand man, Qyburn, to reveal his secret dragon-killer because Daenerys Targaryen and her trio of fire-breathers might be knocking on the door of King's Landing any day now. What he comes up with is this double-bowed monstrosity. He even tests it on an ancient dragon skull (which would be like firing an AR-15 through King Tut's sarcophagus, but whatever).

No bully, especially one as big and brash as China, likes to be defied. And that too very openly. But this is exactly what India, which Beijing perceives is a weakling, has been doing by not agreeing to withdraw Indian troops from the Dokhlam Plateau.All the threats issued by China – the hints of an imminent attack on India, planting reports of a massive buildup of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops and military hardware across the border, talk of interfering in Kashmir on behalf of Pakistan, trying to pass off a routine military exercise as a preparation for war and...

While the concept is not new — the space shuttles, for instance, flew multiple times in orbit — it’s important for saving money as well as technical reasons, he noted. SpaceX refurbished the Dragon for Thursday’s planned launch with a new heat shield and fresh parachutes for re-entry at mission’s end. There were so many X-rays and inspections that savings, if any, were minimal this time, said Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of flight reliability for SpaceX. The vast majority of this Dragon has already been to space, including the hull, thrusters and tanks. It’s packed with 6,000 pounds of station...

A TOURIST who refused to pay for a tour guide was mauled by a fearsome Komodo dragon. Lon Lee Alle, 50, from Singapore, ventured alone into a secluded area to watch the wild beasts gorging on goats and pigs in West Manggarai, Indonesia.

'Mud Dragon' Is Really 'Flood Dragon' by Tim Clarey, Ph.D. * Evolutionary scientists recently announced another spectacular dinosaur discovery. They nicknamed this one the Mud Dragon because it seems it died buried in mud. Junchang Lü and co-authors describe the new oviraptorid dinosaur in Scientific Reports.1 This is the sixth oviraptor-like dinosaur unearthed from the Ganzhou area of Jiangxi Province in southeastern China. The Chinese name for this poor creature is Tongtianlong limosus or “muddy dragon on the road to heaven” due to its unusual posture.

Forecasters predict mostly clear skies and light winds at the surface and aloft for Monday’s launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on a resupply mission to the International Space Station, favorable conditions for the booster’s liftoff and landing at Cape Canaveral. The official launch weather forecast released Friday by the U.S. Air Force’s 45th Weather Squadron calls for a 90 percent of acceptable conditions for liftoff at 12:45:29 a.m. EDT (0445:29 GMT) Monday. A weather axis draped over Central Florida will lift north over the weekend, setting up generally good weather Monday. “This will result in moderate temperatures and...

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.

There are several space stories we’re anticipating for 2016 but one story might appear — to some — to belong in the realm of science fiction: sometime in the coming year Elon Musk will likely reveal his plans for colonizing Mars. Early in 2015, Musk hinted that he would be publicly disclosing his strategies for the Mars Colonial Transport system sometime in late 2015, but then later said the announcement would come in 2016.

Measure it any way you like, but this hasn't been that championship season of the "can do" spirit of America. Most of the presidential campaigners spend their allotted minutes criticizing what's wrong with the country, how others have made a mess of things and why voters should put them in charge of changing things. It's difficult to find the formula through the haze of confusion and fog of rhetoric. There's far more blowhard nastiness than creative eloquence. That's what politics is about, of course, but it gets tiresome in the holiday season when we're craving inspiration from our better angels,...

The ideal Red Planet crewed site should be of high scientific value — allowing pioneers to search for signs of Mars life and investigate other intriguing questions — and also possess enough resources to help sustain expeditionary crews, scientists and engineers said. They came to these and other conclusions at the First Landing Site/Exploration Zone Workshop for Human Missions to the Surface of Mars, which was held here Oct. 27 though Oct. 30 at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. ... Nearly 50 locations on Mars were proposed as future locales for human landings. Those sites were all within 50 degrees...

Airplane maker Boeing has unveiled what it calls the "The Lightest Metal Ever"—called microlattice, the material is a construct that is 99.99 per cent air. It has been developed by Boeing's HRL Laboratories along with colleagues at the University of California and the California Institute of Technology. The material has been developed as a way to reduce weight on airplanes or even rockets—a paper describing the development of the material was written by the team and published in the journal Science back in 2011—though the researchers have not yet revealed what sort of changes have been made since that time....

Making spaceships and electric supercars isn’t enough for Elon Musk. Meghan Daum meets the entrepreneur who wants to save the world. The name sounds like a men’s cologne. Or a type of ox. It sounds possibly made up. But then, so much about Elon Musk seems the creation of a fiction writer—and not necessarily one committed to realism. At 44, Musk is both superstar entrepreneur and mad scientist. Sixteen years after cofounding a company called X.com that would, following a merger, go on to become PayPal, he’s launched the electric carmaker Tesla Motors and the aerospace manufacturer SpaceX, which are...

Budget plan would send a SpaceX capsule in 2020 to get samples. Would pick up samples left by Nasa's 2020 Rover. Comes as Amazon's Jeff Bezos unveiled 'megarocket' to take on SpaceX It could bring samples from Mars to Earth for the first time. Nasa employees have revealed details of a 'budget' plan to send a SpaceX capsule to the red planet in 2020 to return samples. Elon Musk has backed the idea - and even tweeted images of what the mission would look like. A Dragon on Mars: The mission would grab samples collected by Nasa's 2020 rover and...

Full Title: Buzz Aldrin developing 'master plan' to begin colonies on Mars by 2040 as he launches partnership with university Buzz Aldrin, 85, is partnering with Florida Institute of Technology. The Buzz Aldrin Space Institute will open in The Fall and focus on Mars Astronaut, the second man to walk on the Moon, has devised plan to get to the red planet using 'cycling pathways' and base on Mars's moon Phobos The second man to walk on the Moon is teaming up with Florida Institute of Technology to develop 'a master plan' for colonizing Mars within 25 years. Buzz Aldrin,...

Traveling to the Moon just got a whole lot cheaper. A NASA-funded study (PDF) has found that the cost of lunar missions could be reduced by a factor of 10 using a number of techniques – and it could also have implications for getting humans to Mars. The extensive NexGen Space study by the National Space Society (NSS) and the Space Frontier Foundation (SFF) said that partnerships with private companies could return humans to the Moon for $10 billion (£6.4 billion), rather than the previosuly estimated $100 billion (£64 billion) that had turned off potential suitors. Utilizing fuel sourced from...