Categories
Mars Moon Landing Science Fiction Space Exploration

Others Will Follow [Short Sci-Fi Film]

A great short science fiction film, “Others Will Follow”, created and directed by Andrew Finch and published on Vimeo, tells the story of a crewed Mars mission. An accident occurs and the spacecraft breaks apart, the last survivor (we don’t see what happens to the rest of the crew, but presumably they have died) manages to send an inspirational message back to Earth. A must-watch.

Categories
Mars Science Fiction Solar System Space Exploration

Making Life Multiplanetary [Musk reveals a new plan to colonize Mars]

The billionaire founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk has revealed a new plan to colonize Moon and Mars with giant reusable spaceships. He provided an update on their Mars colonization plan at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC, see notes 1) in Adelaide, Australia this week. Musk plans to send 1 million people to Mars using BFR (see notes 2), and “making life multiplanetary”. He has highly ambitious plans, like launching and landing at least two uncrewed cargo ships on Mars as early as 2022.

The newly announced BFR is smaller than the one Musk revealed at the same event last year, 106 meters (348 feet) tall and carrying capacity of 150 tonnes compared to the previous design’s 122 meters (400 feet) and 300 tonnes. But, (naturally) it’s way cheaper than the previously announced version, and according to Musk, “lower cost is the biggest update”. And, still, it is more powerful than any of SpaceX’s or NASA’s other planned rockets.

Categories
Astronomy Science Fiction

The Planet with Three Suns: KELT-4Ab

Can a planet have three suns? In March 2016, astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovered a Jupiter-sized hot planet with three suns: KELT-4Ab. The planet orbits the star KELT-4A, in the star system KELT-4 system that is 680 light-years away from us.

Categories
Science Fiction Space Exploration

SpaceX Falcon 9 lands on a barge [and the Science Fiction sees the future again!]

April 8, 2016, was a historical day that marked a new milestone in humanity’s space adventure: after delivering CRS-8 cargo on its way to the International Space Station, SpaceX Falcon 9 Flight 23, the third flight of the full thrust version landed vertically on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You over the Atlantic Ocean, 300 km (185 miles) from the Florida coastline, achieving a long-sought-after milestone for the SpaceX reusability development program.

Here are the videos of that historical moment: