Rocket Men

ROCKET MEN
Rocket men are the driving factor to private industry beginning to break the surly bonds of Earth and move upward into the boundless realm of space.

A number of space projects, both current and past, have paved a stairway to the Heavens. Many of these projects are now run by private companies and individuals, some of which use their own funding. The rockets are smaller and the payloads they carry are smaller, sometimes they have only one man capacity. Source

Though the original project was canceled, Hermes offered up designs for a compact and more diminuative space shuttle. Today, Space Transport and Recovery Systems, LLC, or STAR Systems, is a startup aerospace venture dedicated to providing affordable access to space. We're comprised of a multidisciplinary team of engineers, scientists, students and other professional talents. Together, we're developing the Hermes, a suborbital spacecraft. We want you to have the experience of a lifetime, without using up your life savings. It's time to make your dream of going into space a reality. Link  http://www.hermesspace.com/

Balloon imaging satellite by Jim Newell went up 300 feet using common materials. The project snapped aerial photos from 300' up by suspending a hacked camera from 3 helium filled balloons.
http://makezine.com/projects/balloon-imaging-satellite/

Copenhagen Suborbitals is creating a rocket to launch a man in a suborbital flight. "Copenhagen Suborbitals is a suborbital space endeavor, based entirely on private donaters, sponsors and part time specialists. Our mission is to launch human beings into space on privately build rockets and spacecrafts. The project is both open source and non-profit in order to inspire as many people as possible, and to envolve relevant partners and their expertise. We aim to show the world that human space flight can be different from the usual expensive and government controlled project. We are working fulltime to develop a series of suborbital space vehicles - designed to pave the way for manned space flight on a micro size spacecraft." http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/mission.php

Thursday Jan. 10th, 2014  Orbital Sciences Corp: Solar array deployment is complete for Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Cygnus spacecraft, now traveling 17,500 mph in Earth's orbit to rendezvous with the International Space Station on Sunday, Jan. 12, for the Orbital-1 cargo resupply mission.

As part of the Ultra Space Administration, Humanoido launches into space, using the leased A1-B and other budget spacecraft. These suborbital space missions are currently human-based and skirt into near space. Missions, many of which have appeared on the pages of this blog, include a study of atmospheric pollution, deploying a night time mini space telescope, cartography, cloud study from the top down, and studying numerous fringe atmospheric and space phenomena.

http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2014/01/blast-off-into-space.html

President Obama Space

President Obama dramatically moves beyond the Space Shuttle

PRESIDENT OBAMA SPACE
How Does Obama Space affect Big Brain Science? Exactly what has Obama done for the space program?
 
As reported in the news, USA President Obama directed NASA to work toward getting astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s.

The agency is developing a huge rocket called the Space Launch System and a crew capsule called Orion. NASA hopes the SLS-Orion combo will begin launching astronauts by late 2021.

The Obama Administration has also encouraged NASA to hand over crew and cargo activities in low-Earth orbit (LEO) to private American companies. The aim is to fill the void left by the 2011 retirement of the space shuttle program, which was set in motion by President George W. Bush back in 2004.

NASA has doled out a total of $1.4 billion in the past two years to firms developing crewed vehicles. The agency wants at least two crewed commercial spaceships to be up and running by 2017; until then, the United States will remain dependent on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to provide this orbital taxi service.

The progress has been faster on the cargo front, with California-based SpaceX completing the first of 12 contracted supply flights to the International Space Station with its robotic Dragon capsule last month. NASA has also inked a resupply deal with Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp., which aims to launch a demonstration mission to the orbiting lab in the coming months.

Sources: NASA, FOX News, General Press