Over the past decade, entrepreneurial space companies in Southern California have set their sights on such goals as launching small satellites, carrying space tourists and colonising Mars.  As they hire young engineers, those companies and more-traditional aerospace giants are finding talent in an unlikely place: a college race-car competition.

This week, university teams will bring their prototype race cars to the Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) competition in Nebraska, where they will be judged on design, manufacturing, performance and business logic. The aerospace leaders who help judge the contest say it’s also an opportunity to hear students explain design and production decisions, present their business cases and adapt on the fly.

“Race cars and rockets are pretty similar,” said Bill Riley, a Formula SAE alumnus from Cornell and competition judge who is now a senior director of design reliability and vehicle analysis at SpaceX. “It’s lightweight, efficient, elegant engineering. Those basic principles are the same, no matter what you’re designing.”

An aerospace manufacturer will build a reusable spaceplane the size of a business jet that will launch from and land at Cape Canaveral, reports SpaceNews.

The Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) won the contract — valued at $146 million — with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency last month to build the spaceplane called the XS-1, or the Phantom Express.

Vertical takeoff of the plane is scheduled for 2020, and SpaceNews reports that the goal is for it to launch daily, with the ability to carry satellites to low Earth orbit.

Reusable rockets are becoming a staple for rocket companies to help lower the cost of launches and to be competitive in a growing commercial market. Kent, Wash.-based rocket company Blue Origin and Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX are pioneers in the reusable rocket field.

A group of Pattonville High School students have launched an app they created for use by parents, students, staff and community members in the Pattonville School District.

Students in Jeremiah Simmons' Computer Science Capstone class at Pattonville High School have been working since last summer to develop the app. Under Simmons' direction, the students worked with district officials as clients to develop an app that works on iOS and Android smartphones.

Students in the class who helped create the app are Mustapha Barrie, Kevin Bowers, Keturah Gadson, Ethan Holtgrieve, Mitchell Skaggs, Nathan Skelton, Micah Thompkins and Josh Zahner. 

The students used survey data collected by the Pattonville community relations department, along with their own primary research, to develop an app with features that would appeal to a variety of users. The students created a communication tool for the district that other school districts have developed using industry providers, usually costing thousands of dollars.  Read here full article

Meet Your Lucky Stars, Which Includes 5 Inspiring Women!

NASA has selected 12 astronaut candidates to travel to space. NASA’s latest class of astronauts consists of a diverse mix of people with a wide range of backgrounds.

​After receiving a record-breaking number of applications to join an exciting future of space exploration, NASA has selected its largest astronaut class since 2000. Rising to the top of more than 18,300 applicants, NASA chose 12 women and men as the agency’s new astronaut candidates.

Vice President Mike Pence joined NASA leaders Wednesday as they introduced the members of the 2017 astronaut class during an event at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. While at Johnson, the vice president toured the International Space Station mission control center, and the historic mission control center, which was used during early NASA spaceflights, including the first moon landing mission, Apollo 11. He also was presented with a model of the International Space Station and a framed U.S. flag that was flown to and from the orbiting laboratory this winter.

“These are 12 men and women whose personal excellence and whose personal courage will carry our nation to even greater heights of discovery and who I know will inspire our children and our grandchildren every bit as much as your forebears have done so in this storied American program,” said Vice President Pence. “And to this newest class of astronauts, it’s my honor to bring the sincere congratulations of the 45th President of the United States of America, President Donald Trump. Your President is proud of you, and so am I.”

Read more here

by Astronaut Stan Love

If you've read past the title, you've probably consumed a lot of books and movies about space. Guess what? Flying in space isn't just for science fiction characters. It's a real job. Real people can apply for it, and real people—like you—can get hired to do it.

Applying to be an astronaut is easy and costs you nothing. Like any other federal government job, the astronaut application is online. Applications are due Feb. 18. It's like a free lottery ticket. What are you waiting for? 

So what's it like if you get hired? It's hands down the coolest job on or off the planet. Training to work in space includes practicing crew tasks in a variety of simulators, flying in high-performance jet aircraft, and putting on spacesuits to work underwater on a life-size mockup of the International Space Station. The cherry on top is actually strapping into a rocket and blasting off to orbit around Earth (or, starting in a few years with Exploration Mission-2, the moon). You'll float peacefully in weightlessness and gaze out the window as our amazing planet rolls by underneath you at 25 times the speed of sound.  Click here to read full article

Let’s face it: by any rational measure so-called space tourism is a preposterously frivolous idea. Nonetheless, hundreds of thrill-seekers were willing to pay around $2,300 a minute for the ride as soon as Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic venture was launched in 2005. The first passenger-carrying flight was supposed to happen 10 years ago, in 2007. It slipped to 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013…now…maybe… next year. 

But if once it seemed like an idea whose time would never come (leaving aside for the moment the issue of whether it ever should) Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin team—not Branson—now seems more than ever likely to be the first to deliver. The two projects could not be more different. One, Galactic, is a hybrid of rocket and flying machine, the other, Bezos’s New Shepard, is purely ballistic, a rocket ride followed by descent in a six-passenger capsule under three parachutes.

Bezos has been testing his system in the remote tundra of west Texas, with five virtually flawless flights between November 2015 and October 2016.. Moreover, he has so much confidence in his approach that after several years of under-the-radar development he has become uncharacteristically boosterish. Whereas Branson over the years staged numerous junkets for the media in which success was claimed to be imminent, but warning that, “It’s a mistake to race to a deadline when you’re talking about a flying vehicle, especially one that you’re going to put people on.  Read more here