Michael Belfiore
Space & Technology Writer
Articles by Michael Belfiore
popularmechanics.com, March 5, 2009 North Korea is about to launch its first satellite. Iran launched its first last month. India's space agency recently got the green light to send people into space, and China's announced plans to build a space station. Getting to space is no longer for a few, technically apt nations. Here's a look at seven countries that have their sights on orbit and the capabilities to get there.
Air & Space, March 2009 In the old days it was straightforward enough. The planet had two corps of astronauts, Soviet and U.S., and to join one, you had to be a military test pilot. But now the rules have changed. You don’t have to be an American or a Russian anymore, and you don’t even have to be a government employee.
Popular Science, August 2006 Reda Anderson doesn’t believe in intangibles. She made good money in Southern California real estate, and she sees no reason to put funds in an investment she can't see, touch, and ask pointed questions about. That’s why she’s in Guthrie, Oklahoma, peering into the sawed-off fuselage of an old business jet. She has a lot at stake in this investment—this old bird will soon be taking her into space.
Popular Science, February 2006 It has a jet engine's roar but not the accompanying whine—just an ear-shattering thunder. And the airplane is far too small, like a Volkswagen with a semi's air horn. It blasts down the runway, climbs steeply, and then hurtles away from the crowd lining the fences at Las Cruces Airport in New Mexico, dwindling rapidly into a clear October sky. The roar fades, disappears. The plane, dubbed the EZ-Rocket, sails through a turn, wings back toward the spectators. Rick Searfoss, the Air Force—trained test pilot and former space-shuttle commander at the controls, glides in silence until he relights one of the two isopropyl-alcohol-powered rocket engines. He banks left, blasting through a high S-curve at 160 mph to come back around parallel to the runway, and swings the rocket's faint blue exhaust toward the cheering crowd. These people have come to the first annual commercial- spaceship expo, the 2005 X Prize Cup, to see the next generation of rocket vehicles, and they aren't disappointed. But no one's having as much fun as Searfoss. "Let me just tell you, it's a kick in the pants," he exults after landing.
Popular Science, October 2005 In the spring of 2004, t/Space was little more than two guys with a vision of economical spaceflight—one of many plans that have been floated in recent years. But founders David Gump and Gary Hudson's approach, in addition to their technology, was different. They proposed a radical idea to NASA: Use contracts that NASA was offering for mere paper studies on next-generation spaceships to instead build actual, working hardware. In Gump's plan, incremental progress toward a fully functional vehicle would be rewarded with additional funding, allowing the project to move forward. “You're crazy,” Hudson had told Gump when the latter first broached the idea. “NASA will never give us any business. And even if they did, it would be agony to work with them.”
Popular Science, March 2005 When it comes to grand ambition, the impresarios of the Strip are mere pikers next to Budget Suites owner Robert Bigelow. For his next hotel enterprise, Bigelow is looking beyond the bright lights of Las Vegas—beyond Earth’s atmosphere, in fact. He is actively engaged in an effort to build the planet’s first orbiting space hotel. Bargain-basement room rate: $1 million a night. For its water show, this hotel will have all of Earth’s blue oceans flying past its windows at 17,500 miles an hour. Guests on board the 330-cubic-meter station (about the size of a three-bedroom house) will learn weightless acrobatics, marvel at the ever-changing face of the home planet, and, for half of every 90-minute orbit, gaze deep into a galaxy ablaze with stars. |
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