Space
Ever Dreamed of Going to Space? A Spaceplane Could Get You There
Nasa’s space shuttle operated in low-Earth orbit for 30 years before its retirement in 2011. However, the US space agency’s replacement for this vehicle, Orion, returned to the conical capsule design familiar...
Private Enterprise is America’s Key to the Modern Space Race
A new space race is developing between the United States and China. The future of this strategic competition will reshape space exploration and the industries that make it possible. As...
Mission Design Platforms Will Mass Produce Space Launches
The successful Apollo 11 mission that placed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon was the product of billions of dollars, thousands of personnel, and years of planning. Almost...
NATO Braces for Space Warfare
Space capabilities are a vital aspect of modern security and defense architecture, but their deployment presents increasing challenges. The use of satellites for intelligence gathering, reconnaissance, navigation, and communication has...
America Can’t Sit Out of the New Space Race
With overwhelming bipartisan support and his infamous sharpie in hand, former President Donald Trump made Ronald Reagan’s dreams a reality. Nearly four decades after the Cold War-era president called for...
America’s Low-Earth Orbit Strategy Has Gotten Lost in Space
Last month, Russia announced that it will quit the International Space Station (ISS) after 2024 and launch its own orbiting station. Many believe that Russia is using the cooperation related...
Space: The Final Frontier of U.S.-China Competition
With the International Space Station scheduled to be decommissioned by 2030, Beijing will soon be the sole operator of such a station in the cosmos. China’s Tiangong Space Station (天宫,...
Don’t Believe Elon Musk’s False Satellite Promises
The war in Ukraine has been good for Elon Musk, allowing him to grab headlines and commercial opportunities. Online followers delighted in his waggish posts (including a mano-a-mano challenge to...
Remembering Neil Armstrong’s 1962 Out-of-This-World Test Flight
The world remembers Neil Armstrong as a towering figure in the United States space program and popular culture at large, mostly as the first man to walk on the moon. Armstrong...
China’s Anti-Satellite Weapons Could Conquer Taiwan—Or Start a War
On July 1, 2021—the one-hundredth birthday of the Chinese Communist Party—President Xi Jinping declared that China will “advance peaceful national reunification” with Taiwan. It would be easy to dismiss such statements as mere...
With This Cannon, the Soviet Union Brought Warfare into Space
In the decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, many Americans have taken to assuming that victory for the United States was assured. From our vantage point in the...
Why Is There So Little Water Left on Mars?
Mars is known for its thin atmosphere, where CO2 dominates and provides most of the atmospheric mass and pressure. In fact, the pressure is similar to that in the Earth’s stratosphere,...