** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **

I missed the rapid unplanned disassemble.

Wonder what happened. Also wonder if they'll push forward CRS-5, in which case the landing barge won't be ready.

:( planetary resources had an arkyd-3 test bed on board :(



LOAM said:
Same here, unmanned but still shocking. $1.9b up in flames :o
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Not even close, it's a 1.9bn contract. But that's for 8 flights.
 
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Progress M-25M arrives at the station:


The craft is delivering almost three tons of food, fuel and supplies, including 1,940 pounds of propellant; 48 pounds of oxygen; 57 pounds of air; 926 pounds of water; and 2,822 pounds of spare parts, supplies and experiment hardware for the six members of the Expedition 41 crew currently living and working in space. Progress 57 is scheduled to remain docked to Pirs for the next six months.
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:(

Edit: Also had an email from Planetary Resources about the Antares failure, looks like it was carrying an Arkyd prototype satellite.

Hi Kickstarters,

Tuesday was a rough day for us, but we’re already moving forward with vigor and optimism! As you may have heard, a rocket bound for the International Space Station exploded just seconds after launch. The rocket carried supplies for the crew aboard the ISS, and a number of small satellites, including our own Arkyd 3 (A3) technology demonstrator.

We would like to emphasize an important point: this spacecraft was not your ARKYD Kickstarter space telescope. It was a vehicle designed to test many of the technologies that will fly on your ARKYD, when it’s ready. Our philosophy here at Planetary Resources is to use space as our test-bed for testing all our technologies. A3, was simply, our first of many test vehicles on the road to YOUR ARKYD and asteroid mining.

While these frustrating types of setbacks do happen from time to time (it’s rocket science after all), we prepare for these challenges and have never been more motivated to keep at it! We’re already hard at work developing our next test vehicle, the Arkyd 6, which is planned for launch in Q3 2015. These spacecraft all help prove technology for the Arkyd 100 spacecraft that will deliver your #SpaceSelfies and more. We also want to thank the community for your outpouring of support! Events like this definitely take an emotional toll on our team, but what makes it so easy to keep our heads up is having a strong community of backers behind us every step of the way. Space is hard, and we witnessed that this week.

In fact, our very own Kickstarter Backer and Community Vanguard David Broiles witnessed it first hand. He was at the launch site, and took the video below. David notes, “Seeing it go up in space is very important to us, it means the start of something bigger, exploring and building in space, and that can help avert something that could be truly tragic. Not exploring, not building in space is even more terrifying than what we witnessed."
http://youtu.be/70bpxuBdx5s

Want to know more ? Check out our latest blog post from Planetary Resources’ president, Chris Lewicki, on what happened Tuesday and how we’re taking it in stride.

On another note, you may notice that our new website has a section dedicated to YOU, called ARKYD Headquarters. All updates from our ARKYD Kickstarter campaign page have been moved to this new site, and in the future we will be working to expand the ARKYD Headquarters into an engaging community hub for all of you.

We appreciate your continued support as we move forward!

Caitlin O’Keefe

Community Foreman

Planetary Resources, Inc.
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A future where 3D-printing a lunar base is possible:



Could astronauts one day be printing rather than building a base on the Moon? In 2013 ESA, working with industrial partners, proved that 3D printing using lunar material was feasible in principle. Since then, work continues to investigate the technique. The shielding against radiation provided by a 3D-printed block of simulated lunar regolith was measured, providing important inputs for next-stage designs... Soon the Agency is due to investigate another lunar 3D printing method, harnessing concentrated sunlight to melt regolith rather than using a binding liquid.

But how might lunar 3D printing one day be used in practice? Foster+Partners, contributing architectural concepts for the original study, put together this outline of a hypothetical mission to 3D-print an entire a lunar base, illustrating the design factors that steered them in their work. The rim of Shackleton Crater at the lunar south pole was chosen for the base location. The Moon’s rotation is such that the Sun only grazes its poles at low angles. The result is a near-constant ‘peak of eternal light’ along the rim of Shackleton Crater, beside regions of permanent shadow. Building in the vicinity of such a site would offer plentiful solar power, and relief from the extremes of heat and cold found across the rest of the Moon.

In reality any lunar base remains firmly on the drawing board, but each small step forward in research makes future lunar colonisation a little more feasible. In November 2014 more than 350 experts came together for a two-day Additive Manufacturing for Space Applications workshop at ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. They discussed the potential of 3D printing – also known as Additive Manufacturing – to transform the way the space industry operates and begin preparing common standards for its use.
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