nanoracks
Latest
Hilton will design suites and sleeping quarters for Voyager’s private Starlab space station
What better company to design a cramped living space than a major hotel chain?
Billionaire space barons want to build 'mixed-use business parks' in low Earth orbit
With the Mir Space Station having deorbited in 2001 and the ISS scheduled for retirement by the end of the decade, tomorrow’s space stations are very likely to be owned and operated by companies, not countries.
NASA expands emerging space economy with a commercial airlock
The first commercially funded airlock is coming to the International Space Station, and luckily it's not being built by Weyland-Yutani.
NASA will build full-scale deep space habitats on Earth
NASA is already preparing for humanity's journey into the great unknown, and part of its efforts is developing a suitable habitat for future spacefarers. In order to create a place where people can live outside our own planet, the agency has teamed up with six private corporations to build full-scale ground prototypes of the habitats they designed. NASA has chosen those six out of all the proposals it got for the second Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships. And as you can see above, Boeing is one of them.
Spaceborne whisky returns to Earth
Interested in finding out what whisky matured in space tastes like? You may get a chance sooner than you think. Scottish distillery Ardbeg teamed up with the scientists at NanoRacks to put vials of whisky aboard the International Space Station three years ago, and those vials recently returned to Earth. The two companies are now analyzing molecules from the otherworldly beverage to see if they interact with oak any differently than otherwise identical samples that stayed on the ground. You'll find out the effects of microgravity on your stiff drinks when the research finishes up in 2015. Space may not have any significant impact on the flavor, let alone a good one, but it's easy to imagine distilleries eventually boasting of how long their whisky has remained free from the planet's clutches.
ISS ready for new zero-g experiments, students asked to float ideas
Those secret space experiments you've been scheming? They may never happen if you try to go it alone. Fortunately, the space science group NCESSE can get you a ride, having started the countdown for its fifth wave of microgravity experiments aboard the International Space Station. US and international students from grade 5 up to university level can submit ideas until September 12th, 2012, with final culling by December 7. The mini-labs -- which can include experiments in seed germination or crystal growth, for example -- are set to be ferried aboard a SpaceX flight in April 2013. Three similar missions have flown nearly 60 student experiments already, with a fourth set as soon as the Falcon 9 craft deigns to go. If you've got a flat-out good idea being prevented by big G, hit the source to see how you could get it fired off to the ISS.
