SpaceX Archives | Moss and Fog

Future

Starlink Offers High-Speed Internet from Anywhere, Thanks to Thousands of Satellites

November 15, 2021 Future

For decades, people living in rural communities or hard to reach places have had almost no options when it comes to internet connectivity. They could use painfully slow and obsolete dial-up, or expensive, and nearly-as-slow satellite internet, which was spotty and unreliable.

Starlink, by Spacex, promises a leapfrog in technology, thanks to thousands of small satellites, forming a constellation in low earth orbit.

Their advanced satellites, combined with next generation ground receivers, allow users to access true high speed internet, 100 Mb/s to 200 Mb/s and latency as low as 20ms. That’s up to 90x faster than traditional satellite internet. Their services promise to increase in speed as their constellation of satellites grows to over 45,000 units.

Their service costs $99/month, with equipment costs of $500 up front. In addition to providing internet to well-off, rural areas of the globe, we look forward to the technology being deployed in developing nations, where access to internet is sometimes impossible to find.

Future

Designer Imagines Future SpaceX Travel Card

May 18, 2021 Future

Imagining future space travel is fun, especially when companies like SpaceX seem to be bringing us so much closer to the possibility of visiting our solar system.

Designer Arun Raj has a clever mockup of a SpaceX TravelCard, where you simply tap on your destination, and a ticket is issued.

Obviously we are a few years off from moon trips and mars voyages, but it’s a fun thought experiment.

Future

SpaceX Poised to Send Astronauts to the Space Station for the First Time

May 26, 2020 Future

It’s been nearly a decade since the last Space Shuttle mission left earth, bound for the International Space Station. Since then, no American rocket has carried astronauts, and they’ve relied exclusively on Russian Soyuz rockets to reach orbit.

Now, after many years of preparation and testing, SpaceX, the private company founded by Elon Musk, is set to carry two American astronauts, using the Crew Dragon capsule.

Veteran astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will take the inaugural flight, in SpaceX’s custom new spacesuits, and brand new capsule.

The launch is set for May 27 at 4:30 pm Eastern, and if successful, will be a monumental achievement for the private company, which is under a multi-billion contract from NASA to bring astronauts to the space station.

Make sure to tune into the launch for this historic event.

Architecture

SOM Releases Plans for Permanent Moon Colony

April 16, 2019 Architecture

After decades of sitting quietly in space, the Moon is suddenly the talk of the town again, with NASA, private industry, even entrepreneurs and artists talking about visiting it in the near future.

Ideas and aspirations are fine, but plans and designs for those visits are more impressive, especially when award-winning architecture firms get involved.

Skidmore Owings, and Merrill (SOM), one of the biggest and most influential architecture firms in the world has released plans for the European Space Agency, along with engineering university MIT. Their Moon Village consists of inflatable habitats and a system of energy capture and production to create a permanent home on the lunar surface.

Five decades after humans first set foot on the Moon, a new initiative is underway to bring us back—and this time, the aspiration is to settle there on a permanent basis. Today, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM), in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has released a design for the “Moon Village,” a concept presented by ESA Director General Jan Woerner for the first full-time human habitat on the lunar surface. With ESA and MIT, SOM is master planning, designing, and engineering the settlement. -SOM

This design, along with NASA’s commitment to another moon mission, makes us excited for a colony that would permanently call the moon home. And aside from being just a fun headline, the SOM design represents some serious engineering and planning efforts, with some of the brightest minds in the world at MIT at work.

“The project presents a completely new challenge for the field of architectural design,” said Design Partner Colin Koop. “The Moon Village must be able to sustain human life in an otherwise uninhabitable setting. We have to consider problems that no one would think about on Earth, like radiation protection, pressure differentials, and how to provide breathable air.”

Future

Mars Base Alpha

September 26, 2018 Future

Humans have dreamed of traveling to Mars for centuries, and as recently as the 1930s, we thought there might be Martians scurrying about the red planet already.

However, after decades of sending robotic landers and rovers, we might actually be on the cusp of setting foot on the red planet. SpaceX is gearing up to take their BFR (Big Falcon Rocket) to the moon in the near term, and deliver gear to Mars as soon as 2022.

Following a number of supply missions, SpaceX hopes to build what they’re dubbing Mars Base Alpha as early as 2028, a mere decade away. This eclipses NASA’s timeline, which is more in the late 2030s for a manned mission.

Judging by Tesla’s delays, we can assume Musk is being a bit optimistic with these timelines, but even if they’re within 3-5 years of the stated trajectory, it’s still a massively exciting development, and will change the course of human history forever.

Below is a brief look at Mars Base Alpha, and the plans for expansion on the Red Planet. Via Engadget:

“You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great – and that’s what being a spacefaring civilization is all about. It’s about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.”

— ELON MUSK, CEO AND LEAD DESIGNER, SPACEX

Animals

SpaceX to Send Japanese Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and Fellow Artists to the Moon

September 18, 2018 Animals

In a press conference Monday night, SpaceX made it official that they’ll be sending the first private citizen to the Moon, in the year 2023, a mere five years from now. Even more impressive was the choice of crew, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, and his choice of six to eight artists from around the world.

The idea of sending a crew of artists to the moon almost boggles the mind, especially when considering how staid and conservative NASA is with their crews of military-background astronauts. Regardless, the team will undoubtedly have extensive training and preparation, before departing for the moon, where they’ll create the first artwork from the surface of the dusty lunar landscape.

The audacious project has been generously funded by Maezawa, and is entitled #DearMoon, a tribute to the beauty and everlasting intrigue of our satellite partner, that has inspired artists and musicians for millennia.

Clearly there’s a lot left to solve before this travel is undertaken, and SpaceX has a lot to prove with their massive BFR, or Big Falcon Rocket.

Below is a short video created for the event, explaining the hopes and dreams of the #DearMoon project. Via The Verge:

Future

SpaceX’s BFR To Whisk You Around the Globe

September 30, 2017 Future

SpaceX, run by Elon Musk, has serious plans for getting humans to the Moon, and Mars. But in order to fund these insanely ambitious operations, they’ll need to raise an insane amount of cash. One option? Use their developed rocket technology to transport people all around the globe with amazing speed. Indeed, they claim their new BFR (Big F-ing Rocket, no joke), will whisk people from New York to Shanghai in 39 minutes. 24 minutes from Los Angeles to Toronto. 30 minutes from New York to Paris. These unbelievable travel times would come with a hefty price tag, which would then help fund the more ambitious plans for interplanetary travel. Check out the brief video below for a look at the future of intercontinental travel. Via SpaceX:

SpaceX BFR — The tiny white speck is a human, showing the scale of the BFR.

Art

First Selfies on Mars

June 8, 2015 Art

Greetings From Mars is a quiet yet impactful series by Julien Mauve. In his photoshoot, he has some great “Martian” landscapes, complete with explorers holding selfie sticks and capturing their first impressions. And while we’re not there yet, NASA and SpaceX both have goals set to land a human on Mars in the 2030s, so photos like these may be a great foreshadowing of what’s to come.

JulienMauve-GreetingsFromMars-1

From the artist:

I have always wondered what it would be like to discover a totally different world, lifeless, full of wild landscapes and to photograph it for the first time as if I was Ansel Adams. So I came up with this project, which is about space exploration and discovery. But it’s also about our behavior in front of landscapes and how we create pictures that will share our personal story with the world.