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29.10.2023 - 04:21 / wccftech.com / Jeff Bezos / Bill Nelson
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Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin is also showing off its lunar lander as SpaceX ramps up testing activity for the Starship rocket in Boca Chica, Texas. SpaceX and Blue Origin went head to head for the first contract that SpaceX won, much to Blue's chagrin. Following the SpaceX win and a lengthy court process that saw SpaceX and NASA win, the space agency awarded Blue Origin with a second lunar lander contract as part of its efforts to build redundancy into the Artemis program. Blue Origin showed off its cargo lander demonstrator to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson earlier today as Mr. Nelson visited the company's facilities.
When it comes to rocket design and development, Blue Origin and SpaceX are on the opposite end of the spectrum. SpaceX operates as a 'hardware rich' firm that continuously tests its equipment and makes changes along the way. On the other hand, Blue Origin follows the traditional approach that sees it design the entire vehicle and then aim for a test.
Blue Origin is currently developing the heavy-lift New Glenn heavy-lift rocket, which falls in the same payload range as SpaceX's Falcon Heavy. The New Glenn is also central to Blue Origin's lunar landing ambitions and Amazon subsidiary Kuiper's low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet constellation.
Blue Origin was awarded a NASA contract for its lunar landing vehicle in May this year as part of an announcement that saw the firm share several features of the vehicle and funding details. The Blue Moon lunar lander falls under NASA's Sustainable Lunar Development contract, which is worth $3.4 billion, and at the contract announcement press conference, Blue Origin's vice president for lunar transportation, Mr. John Couluris, shared that his company was also contributing $3.4 billion to the effort.
According to Blue, the cargo lander will fly inside the New Glenn rocket's seven-meter payload fairing, and it will be capable of flying three metric tons of payload to any point on the lunar surface. The firm adds that the lander is designed to use in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) on the lunar surface, through which engineers aim to utilize lunar resources to produce liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.
The cargo lander is designed to stay on the lunar surface and will fly for the first time as part of Blue Origin's MK1-SN001 mission. This will be a demonstration mission, similar to a SpaceX Artemis lunar lander mission that will attempt to land the Starship rocket on the lunar surface before NASA can certify it to carry a crew.
While it has not provided any tentative launch dates for the first lunar cargo lander
Happy Friday, Polygon readers!
This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.
Publisher Netmarble and developer Netmarble F&C have released new information, footage, and screenshots for open-world action RPG The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin at G-Star 2023, which will run from today until November 19 at Busan Exhibition and Convention Center in South Korea.
Netmarble is working on an open-world action game based on The Seven Deadly Sins manga and anime, and it looks pretty ambitious if the latest trailer is any indication.
Publisher Netmarble and developer Netmarble F&C have released the G-Star 2023 trailer for open-world action RPG The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin, showcasing exploration and flashy battles in Unreal Engine 5.
When Baldur's Gate 3 left early access, everyone had to make new characters. This isn't surprising - so much had been added to almost every part of the game that it wouldn't have made sense to continue with a Tav made with the old mechanics in place. However, there was one class that actually had less content going into the fall launch: clerics.
NASA with SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft successfully launched its 29th commercial resupply mission yesterday from launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 8:28 pm EST on November 9, 2023. The resupply includes various scientific experiments and technology demonstrations along with optical communications and measurement of atmospheric waves was shipped to the International Space Station. Know what the resupply mission will deliver.
The commotion was really loud in the artificial intelligence world today, November 9, as a new technology sparked several controversies. In the first incident, reports have highlighted that Nvidia is soon going to release three AI chips for China. This comes weeks after the US government restricted trade of advanced semiconductors with China, forcing Nvidia to not sell its top-of-the-line A800 and H800 series chipsets to China. In other news, rapper Bad Bunny wrote a post on his WhatsApp Channel asking fans to leave if they choose to listen to the viral song on TikTok that has been generated using AI and mimics his voice. This and more in today's AI roundup. Let us take a closer look.
Commercial space tech is still a relatively new field. Before the turn of the century, space exploration and technology development were only handled by government-funded space agencies, such as NASA, ROSCOSMOS, JAXA, and ISRO, that worked to use the knowledge from various missions to help their respective nations. It was only after the entry of Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin and Richard Branson led Virgin Galactic, that people began looking at space tech as an entrepreneurial venture. However, even in 2023, a lot of its potential still remains to be uncovered. Case in point — Sierra Space's Tenacity, the company's first Dream Chaser spaceplane, which will used to resupply the International Space Station (ISS)
This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.
The listing for the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake on the Best Buy Canada website gained traction on social media after fans discovered that it appeared to advertise «a special origin story for fans to play through» that focused on the «fan favorite character» Pyramid Head.
With Konami and Bloober Team having been dead silent about the Silent Hill 2 remake since its announcement in October last year, fans have had to go looking for alternative sources of information on the game. Some of that seemed to emerge in a recent Best Buy pre-order listing for the highly anticipated survival horror remake, which claimed that the game would include a new playable origin story for the iconic monster known as Pyramid Head.