Carnival of Space Week 40

Carnival of Space #40 is up at orbiting frog

I contributed my article on SpaceX's progress on the Falcon 9 rocket

Hobby space updates the activites of Bigelow Aerospace who are making an inflatable space hotel

Centauri Dreams lives up to its siet name with a talk about the Longshot space mission. It was a plan to develop technologies over 20-30 years for a 100 year mission to reach the alpha centauri solar system.

Longshot was conceived as being built with modular components on the ground and then launched to low-Earth orbit for assembly at the space station presumed to be operational there. The enabling technologies included a “pulsed fusion micro-explosion drive” (I’m quoting from the Project Longshot report) with a specific impulse of 1 million seconds, along with a long-life fission reactor with 300 kilowatts power output.

The Longshot pdf report is here