Hasta La Gadget!

NASA’s really into 3D printing, but its latest project goes far beyond pizza. The space agency has manufactured its largest rocket part ever, an injector plate, which successfully helped produce around 20,000 pounds of thrust on a test bed. They modified the design of an existing machined injector in order to create a 3D printed version using two parts instead of 115 — which NASA said performed “flawlessly” in tests. Such parts could one day reduce rocket costs while potentially increasing safety, since they’re less-complex and have fewer points of failure. NASA will ramp up the thrust on subsequent tests, but meanwhile, if you don’t want to see a rocket motor firing with 10 tons of thrust, don’t head after the jump.

Filed under: Transportation, Science, Alt

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Via: Ars Technica

Armadillo Aerospace was once at the forefront of efforts to foster private spaceflight, but it has been quiet ever since its STIG-B rocket crashed in January. We’re now learning why: founder John Carmack has revealed that the company is now in “hibernation.” The transition from contract work to vehicle building just didn’t pan out, he says. Having more full-time staff backfired, as workers were bogged down in planning and reviews; the team also repeated many of NASA’s mistakes in material choices, limiting its production capacity. As Carmack isn’t prepared to invest more of his personal funds to keep Armadillo going, the firm will likely remain on ice until there’s a new investor who’s ready to pay to keep up with Branson and Musk in the space race.

[Image credit: Official GDC, Flickr]

Filed under: Transportation

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Via: The Verge

Source: NewSpace Journal

We’ve already invented a (partially) reusable spacecraft. But the rockets that were used to boost NASA’s space shuttles – and other spacecraft in general – were all designed for one-time use only. That makes space travel wasteful and expensive. That’s why the space transport company SpaceX is working on creating reusable rockets.

Like other rockets, the SpaceX Grasshopper takes off vertically. But instead of returning to Earth as a thousand molten bits when its work is done, the Grasshopper gracefully lands vertically, like a gymnast with a flaming butt. Have you seen one of those? They’re amazing. The video below shows it rising up to a height of 1,066 ft. before landing smoothly on the same launchpad that it came from. SpaceX claims that, thanks to its advanced navigation sensors, it was “directly controlling the vehicle based on new sensor readings, adding a new level of accuracy in sensing the distance between Grasshopper and the ground, enabling a more precise landing.”

Either that or they just played the first half of the video in reverse. Then again, the geniuses at SpaceX literally specialize in rocket science, so uh, rocket science… isn’t rocket science for them. I think I broke an idiom. Anyway, let’s just believe in them and egg them on so that one day a SpaceX rocket can teach me how to parallel park.

[SpaceX via Reddit]

Doctor Who has become sort of like an icon among his many fans, with the show inspiring a whole range of products and mods, like the Doctor Who wall clock, Dalek planter, and TARDIS bunk bed.

A Kickstarter campaign inspired by the show was recently successfully funded, but it’s not for another Doctor Who-themed product. Instead, it’s a campaign that will be sending a real-life TARDIS into space – as cargo on a commercial satellite launch.

The 50th anniversary of Doctor Who is coming up (it’s on November 23rd) and what better way to commemorate the event than by sending the Doctor’s space and time machine into orbit?

The miniature TARDIS satellite has already been built and it’s equipped with a GoPro Hero 3 which will be recharged by solar panels (hidden in the police booth windows) that have been set up to provide it with power indefinitely. The team behind the launch hopes to get some nice photos of Earth from orbit, and they’re offering data space on the TARDIS as rewards for the backers of the campaign.

It’s about time someone made this happen! Now they just need to figure out how to get it to work as a time machine.

[via Dvice]

Yes, you read that right. A maniacal Frenchman piloted a home-made rocket-powered bicycle to what he claims was a speed of 163 mph. On a bicycle. Holy crap!

François Gissy developed the rocket bicycle with the help of the Swiss company Exotic Thermo Engineering, which created the hydrogen peroxide powered propulsion unit. A GPS placed on the bike was used to measure the speed. The video is quite short, as François holds on to the rocket bicycle as it rushes past a car.

He made the run on a disused air force runway this past Sunday and the speed record is as yet unverified. Other sources state that the bicycle went much slower, but we’ll soon find out if this really was the fastest bicycle on Earth.

[via Bikeradar]