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"Flights into space are limited," said University of Central Florida Associate Professor Joshua Colwell. "This is an excellent opportunity to gather additional data that can only be obtained from these kinds of flights and which is essential for our research to move forward." --> the same was mentioned a few times during the NEOMeX workshop...

Trying the new rocket with humans right away (and 1.5 years to go). What can possibly go wrong? The Trump administration has directed NASA to study whether it is feasible to fly astronauts on the debut flight of the agency's heavy-lift rocket, a mission currently planned to be unmanned and targeted to launch in late 2018, officials said on Friday.

A recently published review on insect flight appeared in Review of Modern Physics. It might be of interest to the biomimetics unit.

the Alaskan bar-tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica baueri) (Figure 1), makes its eight-day, 11,000-km autumn migration from Alaska to New Zealand in one step, with no stopovers to rest or refuel. This roughly doubles the previous maximum direct flight distance in birds, challenging experts to square this remarkable marathon migration with our understanding of aerodynamic theory and endurance physiology.

"Some segments of the research community would get their preferences under the House spending bill. For example, it matches the president's request for a 1.5% increase for NASA, to $19 billion, including a 12% increase, to $5 billion, for the space science program. Legislators had already worked out a deal with the White House on the future of the manned space program, and they included funding for an additional shuttle flight in 2011. They even added $35 million to the $20 million increase that the president requested for NASA's education programs, boosting them by a whopping 30% to $180 million. "

Some segments of the research community would get their preferences under the House spending bill. For example, it matches the president's request for a 1.5% increase for NASA, to $19 billion, including a 12% increase, to $5 billion, for the space science program. Legislators had already worked out a deal with the White House on the future of the manned space program, and they included funding for an additional shuttle flight in 2011. They even added $35 million to the $20 million increase that the president requested for NASA's education programs, boosting them by a whopping 30% to $180 million.

Non-steady state aerodynamics of flapping flight. Rather for aerospace engineers but in my eyes interesting...

Basics of Space Flight is a tutorial designed primarily to help operations people identify the range of concepts associated with deep space missions, and grasp the relationships among them.

he new SR-72 will use a turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) that will employ the turbine engine at lower speeds, and use a scramjet at higher speeds. A scramjet engine is designed to operate at hypersonic velocities by compressing the air through a carefully designed inlet, but needs to be traveling supersonic before it is practical to begin with. So far research projects from NASA, the Air Force and other Pentagon entities have not been able to solve the problem of transitioning from the subsonic flight regime, through hypersonic flight with a single aircraft. Same problem as Reaction Engines is trying to solve, so I am not sure whether they actually cracked it. In any case, nice pictures. Not sure why the exhaust color is purple in color. Its not running on Argon I believe.

Weird article. Intermediate thruster stage (Ramjet) is missing. Scramjet has supersonic combustion and a normal turbine delivers subsonic flows. Even with afterburner - the Scramjet inlet would decelerate the flow down to subsonic velocity with "normal" subsonic combustion. The only thing I can imagine is that the Scramjet stage is bi-functional and covers both, subsonic and supersonic combustion. But the article doesn't say anything about it.

The Robobee takes off without guide wires! It is still powered via a wire, and the control is done with the help of a VICON system and on an external computer, but this still is an amazing feat!

The way they make this thing is just as impressive. The manufacturing technique is "pop-up book" folding, a method that has been developed by the same group and that allows a two dimensional monolithic MEMS structures to be easily assembled into a 3D structure. I actually put this as an item of the "Technology List 2020" on the wiki this morning.

I agree, manufacturing is the amazing thing here ..... as soon as the power-consumption/density problem is solved these things will really take off :)

"chances are that if 700 passengers are flown annually, up to 10 of them might not survive the flight in the first years of the operations." most remarkable also the question who is to blame if a dead and burned space tourist corps comes crashing down from the sky into your car.

This calls for some we serious simulations by the Petkow code it seems to me ...

I still would need some serious input data...

Drones for microgravity.

Have you seen this?!

no! quite impressive indeed! thanks for sharing it here

On the way towards autonomous flying deliveries and building a Megazord formation!

The drone derived craze takes on new life. Still not too bad for electric.

Engineers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida are partnering with counterparts at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland to develop systems to bring potential future robotic "service tow trucks" to orbiting spacecraft in need of aid

In case you have not seen this one yet...

Nice one, very impressive (also filming it with a drone :)! I noticed at 0:56 that the exhaust flames do travel upwards on the descent. I wonder how much of a problem this would be for the actual reusability / next flight approval?

impressive!

The SpaceX Falcon 9 explosion was caused by a failed strut that allowed a helium bottle to burst free inside the rocket's liquid oxygen tank, CEO Elon Musk said Monday. "One of those struts broke free during flight," Musk told reporters on a conference call to discuss the June 28 blast on what was supposed to be a routine cargo mission to the International Space Station.

I guess this is how it starts as they mentioned they will inspect struts individually before each flight. Also for the space shuttle they believed a rapid inspection between launches would be feasible, but in the end there was a need for individual assessment almost. And we haven't even considered human spaceflight yet.

as predicted, first failure, first inquiry board, first new safety procedures ... and certainly many more will follow and all will make sense but with the risk of loosing the competitive edge

"Today, I'm excited to share that we've successfully completed our first test flight of these aircraft in the U.K.," 

"Ladybug Fail" video is the best :-)

They look set to replicate project Mercury. At the same costs too. Wonder if they will send any chimps first :).