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

Something interesting from our Russian friends. A documentary from Roscosmos, "Women's Space" (2013) with English subtitles:

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I just saw the images on the bbc of the photo of Earth and its Moon from Saturn and WOW!!! It just makes you feel so small to think that we are a dot in the universe. I also was astounded with the image that showed a part of the saturn rings and the earth. I always thought that when you got up close to saturn that they rings would be kind of spread out and you could see the rocks etc. But from looking at the photo it looks so dense, also looks very beautiful too.
 
Another very cool kickstarter campaign, that needs some help and message spreading
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597141632/cat-a-thruster-for-interplanetary-cubesats?ref=search
We are currently developing the CubeSat Ambipolar Thruster (CAT), a new plasma propulsion system which will push small spacecraft like CubeSats around in orbit or far beyond the Earth.

This new thruster technology will enable us to send low-cost satellites from the Earth to distant destinations in the Solar System. You can be a part of space exploration history! By contributing to the CAT, you can help future spacecraft make amazing discoveries about extraterrestrial bodies and further our understanding of the near-Earth environment, the Solar System, and beyond. Who knows, maybe we’ll even be able to find life on those beckoning watery moons of Jupiter or Saturn!

Any amount of support is appreciated. Be a part of the mission and receive: patches, T-shirts, and even laser engraving of your name and message on gold plated spacecraft panels. Since the spacecraft will ultimately be ejected deep into space, think of it as an “interplanetary message in a bottle,” lasting for hundreds of millions of years in orbit around the Sun.

"In-space propulsion technologies employing water, like the CubeSat Ambipolar Thruster, will be of increasing importance as access to water from volatile-rich asteroids becomes reality." -- Hannah Goldberg, Senior Systems Engineer, Planetary Resources, University of Michigan Alumnus
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This needs to be made, cube Sats are extremely cheap to make with mobile phones etc. now this could provide cheap propulsion, then we just need a cheap launch vehicle of which a couple are under design.
This would be majour opening for education and small scale private space reserch.
 

Outlined in the video above is a possible path forward for space exploration and settlement. Settlement because it is a worthy goal and settlement because it is the only way to explore on a reasonable NASA budget. The entire point of this exercise is that NASA is capable of doing something great, while what it is doing now is a waste.

Without a goal and a strategy the talented work force of NASA and the tax payer dollars are being squandered on ‘running in place’ projects like the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion. These systems are not sustainable, do not lead to space settlement, break faith with the flexibility and talent of the NASA workforce and waste money competing with the commercial sector who should be their partners.
Instead of this go-nowhere-stay-nowhere ‘strategy’, NASA should be given the freedom and vision to pursue the already fruitful partnerships with the commercial space industry and return to blazing the trail and igniting the imagination of the nation and the world. There is another way.
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I agree with SLS needs to be scrapped now, spaceX is ahead of them anyway. Orion is questionable as well with the dragon capsule, but at least Orion has more benefits than the SLS.

Most importantly nasa need to be given a 20-30 year plan and congress needs to stop changing goals. They need another apollo mission. How many billions have been wasted by NASA due to congress.
 
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