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4 days ago | 
planetocracy.org | Peter Hague
On Monday, six women went on a suborbital space tourism flight on board Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft, including journalist Gayle King and pop star Katy Perry. The presence of the latter especially made this a media event that had reach substantially beyond the space community, and generated a huge amount of headlines and comment. To be clear, this was not a particularly important mission, either for spaceflight or the advancement of women.
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1 week ago | 
unherd.com | Peter Hague
Blue OrigindiverseElon MuskJeff BezosKaty PerryLauren SánchezSocietySpaceX Unless something goes wrong, most spaceflights are little reported in the news. Monday’s launch of a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, though, was an exception. Its all-female crew attracted a huge amount of attention, thanks in part to the inclusion of the pop star Katy Perry.
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1 week ago | 
planetocracy.org | Peter Hague
The Kardashev is a staple of discussions about the development and colonisation of space. Initially proposed as three discreet classifications of civilisations by Nikolai Kardashev in 1964, where a Type 1 civilisation would control the energy of a planet, a Type 2 civilisation would control the energy of a star, and a Type 3 civilisation would control the energy of a galaxy . It was later refined into a continuous scale by Carl Sagan using the following formula.
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1 week ago | 
planetocracy.org | Peter Hague
SpaceX have continued to push the boundaries of human spaceflight, flying the first human mission to a polar orbit. Fram2 flew 90 degrees to the equator, giving astronauts the first view of the poles with their own eyes. The highest inclination missions that have been flown before this are the dual missions of Vostok 3 through 6 in 1962 and 1963.
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3 weeks ago | 
planetocracy.org | Peter Hague
This month probably the most significant news was the Starship program suffering another setback. Flight 8 was delayed from March 3rd to the 6th, and its flight unfortunately ended in the same way as that of Flight 7, so Block 2 of Starship has yet to complete a second stage burn. Despite the two anomalies in a row, SpaceX is pressing on and its preparing for Flight 9 in April.
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1 month ago | 
planetocracy.org | Peter Hague
The petition I have submitted to the UK government asking them to increase spending on space to 1% has now gone live. The goal is to have one penny out of every pound of government spending go to space, through a combination of science, colonisation, and military objectives. You can sign the petition through that site, or go to it directly here. If the petition gets 10,000 signatures, the government will give a written response. If it gets 100,000, it will be considered for a debate in Parliament.
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1 month ago | 
planetocracy.org | Peter Hague
What if, tomorrow, the Russian rocket forces launched an anti-satellite weapon at a British Skynet satellite and destroyed it? How would we respond? Russia almost certainly has the capability to do this. They demonstrated a low Earth orbit direct ascents ASAT weapon in 2021, and reaching geostationary altitudes with such a weapon is not beyond their technical capabilities.
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1 month ago | 
planetocracy.org | Peter Hague
As I write Starship is preparing for its eighth all up test flight. The Flight 7 anomaly has delayed the program, but the FAA has allowed Flight 8 to proceed while the investigation is ongoing. Last month I reported that the FCC licence gave a NET date of 24th February, and the flight is currently scheduled to fly on March 3rd. This is going to be a pivotal year for Starship, and losing the ship on the first flight of the year is a delay SpaceX could have done without.
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1 month ago | 
planetocracy.org | Peter Hague
The problem with talking to people about the future is that most of them don’t really, deep down, believe it exists. If Thursday is more or less the same as Wednesday, if the routine of one week blurs into the next, it is easy to simply live in an ever recurring present. I have a very busy work and family life, and I can empathise - there is always plenty to think about and do right now, without considering what the world will be like decades or even centuries hence.
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2 months ago | 
planetocracy.org | Peter Hague
Almost all spacecraft these days are powered by solar energy. Absent the Earth’s atmosphere, the power collected is about 50% greater, there is no disruption due to weather, and the eclipse of each orbit is always far shorter than a terrestrial night - or almost entirely absent in geostationary orbit. For decades it’s been proposed that this power be transmitted back to the Earth for use here, using microwaves, but this has not yet been realised.
