Something I have been thinking about. I have heard of space elevators and statites and such---but has anyone thought about having two of them intersect? Imagine two large sail statites whose lines cross in the form of an "X"... The simple act of having the two sails tack towards or away from each other means the point of intersection can raise or lower. If a windlass/pully system rides that intersection and has its own tether----might an object be pulled to space using nothing but Archimedean type principles? I don't know that this can work on other---but Venus with stronger sunlight---or an object with lower gravity might use such a---we'll call it a SUNLIFTER. No powered elevator car needed. Other oddball ideas https://www.wired.com/story/its-not-sci-fi-nasa-is-funding-these-mind-blowing-projects/
The Journal of Spacecraft & Rockets turns 60: https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.A35640 Solar sails The latest player may give new life to the old plug-nozzle craft…I hope: https://www.stokespace.com/rocket/ https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=53164.msg2442151;topicseen#new Fuel as structure? https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52422.140 Japan https://twitter.com/HTVX_JAXA/status/1606212927786303488?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1606212927786303488|twgr^3d70bf4d2866d57c179c57ce3aa86433e708171e|twcon^s1_&ref_url=https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=38837.0 Lastly—this material will be a boon for impactors..like what holed Soyuz recently: https://phys.org/news/2022-12-team-protein-based-material-supersonic-impacts.amp
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4544/1 Virgin Galactic will start test flights.. again again, this time they think they'll need three before regular passenger flights. No timeline when the first one goes up, but they're giving more info than Blue Origin gave out last week about their own return to flight .
The best of times: https://twitter.com/stoke_space/status/1644028606908334081?s=20 No need for fancy 3D printers! Terran R coming faster…expendable second stage.
Europe looking at an HLLV https://commercialisation.esa.int/2023/05/protein-the-new-european-heavy-lift-launcher-study/ Maybe keep near docks…slide out a shipyard…slide back. Mystery craft https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/mystery-rocket-ship.13747/ I really like that concept
Neutron re-design Music of the spheres https://www.space.com/aeolus-wind-satellite-music-sonification-video