We went out to FAR Friday afternoon and setup to test. On Saturday FAR was a busy place, monprops, biprops, hybrids, solids, static tests, flights, with a lot of people. The whole Masten crew came out to watch us fly the blue ball. We brought food, fired up the grill and tried to make sure [...]...

Paul Breed posts: Today we tested a new catalyst pack for the blue ball. This is not the motor that we have been machining recently, its a new solid catalyst for the older stainless motor we flew last year. The test was almost perfect. We had no setup issues and everything just worked. The catalyst ...

Paul Breed posts: The Cat screens and Cat assembly is complete. The modified Motor for the Blue ball is 100% ready to test. We hope to test next weekend. Depending on how the 2009 LLC rules turn out we could be doing flight test in as little as two or as many as 10 weeks. If [...]...

Paul Breed posts: I’m building a screen based catalyst for the blue ball. Unfortunately I can’t talk much about the catalyst construction, I have a NDA with a third party that covers parts of the design I have parts that are from public sources and parts are my own creation alas its hard to tell...

We were going to go out to the test site and static test the blue ball with a “solid� catalyst. (The FAR event was canceled due to 75mph winds forecast on Saturday as I was typing this.) John Carmack sent me several catalyst styles, one kind was a pourable ring catalyst from cpilink.com It looks...

(NASA) - This stereo view shows fractured mounds on the southern edge of Elysium Planitia on Mars. It combines two images taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. When seen through red-blue glasses, the view appears three di...

Here are a couple status updates that were posted this month: SC by Kristian von Bengtson, 2008-12-04 We are working hard on the development of the space craft. The main shell has now been frozen for boiler plate production, and laser cutting files has been created for the top and buttom cone parts....

(NASA) - The mission extension day has paid off for the shuttle and station crews as well as the ground teams today. The crews are ahead of schedule with transfer activity, and their hard work on a tricky water recycling unit and the massive solar array joint are showing signs of improvement. The Ur...

(NASA) - The STS-126 crew members completed the day’s scheduled inspections of space shuttle Endeavour’s heat shield at 8:54 p.m. EST Saturday. They used Endeavour’s robotic arm and an attached boom extension to check the spacecraft’s underside, nose cap and leading edges of the wings as...

MARS RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER HIRISE IMAGES July 16, 2008 o Mystery Mounds http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_008778_1685 o Layering and Inverted Streams http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_008774_1755 o Cratered Cones in Utopia Planitia u http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_008767_2055 o Layered Rocks in ...