The Saga of NASA's Heavy Lift Launcher

Last week, after years of studies and negotiations, NASA finally released a preliminary design for the new rocket that will replace the space shuttle. The new rocket will be a Shuttle-Derived Heavy Lift Vehicle, meaning that it will make maximum use of existing Space Shuttle components. Basically they will keep the Space Shuttle External tank and two Solid Rocket Boosters unchanged, remove the space shuttle, take the shuttle's three main engines and put them and the bottom of the External Tank, and put the cargo on top of the External Tank. This design is pretty much the solution proposed by the DIRECT team last year, called the Jupiter launch vehicle.

Giant 'straddling bus' rides above traffic

The Chinese are building a giant tramway that rides on stilts high enough so that it can ride over cars on busy streets, avoiding traffic jams. Cars will also be able to drive under them so as not to be stuck behind them when they are stopped at a bus stop.

Captain Kirk doesn't trust the VSS Enterprise

Virgin Galactic is proceeding with tests of its first SpaceShipTwo sub-orbital spacecraft, the VSS Enterprise, that will carry private, paying passengers on a short, 6 minutes flight to space. On October 10, 2010, it successfully completed its first glide flight dropped from the WhiteNightTwo mother ship, and company officials say that they are on schedule to start commercial operations in 2011.

Farewell, Discovery

The Space Shuttle Discovery will be launching for the last time on February 24th at 1:50pm PST. Mission STS-133 will be the 39th flight of the 27 year-old spacecraft, and will be bringing the Permanent Multipurpose Module Leonardo to the International Space Station, as well as the Robonaut 2 robotic astronaut helper.

With only two more Space Shuttle flights scheduled (Endeavour in April and Atlantis in June), this represents the end of an era of ambitious human space exploration, as after that the US will be left with no means of sending astronauts into space and will rely on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to reach the ISS.

With the cancellation of the Constellation moon program in October 2010, the only serious prospect for US manned space flights is the privately funded and operated Dragon capsule from SpaceX, which, although a remarkable achievement for a private company, is a return to 1970's designs, and is nowhere as advanced and capable as the Space Shuttle. And Dragon will not be operational before 2013 at the earliest.

Watch the historic flight live in HD on ustream TV.

Update: For those who missed it, here is the video of the launch.

Apollo 18 movie: Cloverfield meets the Space Program

We finally have a trailer for the upcoming movie 'Apollo 18', a horror science fiction movie about a hypothetical 18th Apollo moon landing. As most of you know, in real life the last Apollo mission was Apollo17th. The premise of the movie is that an 18th mission actually took place, but it was kept a total secret. The movie shows raw footage from portable cameras brought aboard by the crew, just like in the movie Cloverfield.

Ares I Resurrected! Give me Liberty

ATK, the makers of the Space Shuttle's Solid Rocket Boosters is joining force with European aerospace company Astrium/EADS, the makers of the Ariane 5 rocket, to propose a new rocket to launch US astronauts into space after the Space Shuttle retires later this year. The new Liberty rocket would be operational in 2015.

Gliese 581g, Mono Lake and the Drake Equation

In September 2010, scientists discovered a new extrasolor planet, Gliese 581g, that is to date the planet the most similar to earth that we found. It is in the Gliese 581 star system, only 20 Light-years from us, and orbits its sun at the right distance to have liquid water, so it is not too warm and not too cold. It has a gravity similar to earth (between 1.1 and 1.7 G) strong enough to maintain a thick atmosphere.