Blue Origin and SpaceX will work “under supervision” over the NASA exploration of the moon

Competition is almost always good. When a company has a strong and worthy opponent, it spurred her to place greater emphasis on development and innovation. If we talk about private companies engaged in space exploration, the mind 2 the largest player — Blue Origin and SpaceX, each of which has its own unique achievements. But it seems that in the near future, these companies may collaborate in the framework of the lunar program, NASA.

Over the development of the moon are not only state agencies but also private companies

Who will master the moon?

Not long ago, the American space Agency NASA identified a number of companies that will share a grant of 43.2 million US dollars. And this money should go not on the companies ‘ development, i.e. development in the field of development and utilization of the moon. The winning companies will also contribute their own funds to projects, if necessary.

Now, many promising technologies are, so to speak, “turning point” in its development. — said one of the Deputy Director of NASA, Jim Reiter (approx.follows: the project itself the financing is called the “Tipping Point”, which translates as “the tipping point”, so the statement of Mr. Reiter’s looks even a little funny). This means that investment projects can just “die”. NASA is an additional impetus required companies and their projects for further development of the potential they hold. This is an important technology necessary for exploration of the moon and in future of Mars.

The largest award went to Blue Origin, which received 10 million USD for demonstration of technology for the liquefaction and storage of hydrogen and oxygen. This technology, according to NASA, in the end can be used to produce fuel on the moon. Thus hydrogen and oxygen do not need to “bring from Earth”. You can use the ice that is already on the moon. Plus the fact that hydrogen can be used as fuel for jet engines, for motors or generators based on fuel cells. Just hydrogen fuel and want to use Blue Origin. In particular, there is evidence that the lunar landing module Blue Moon lander will operate on hydrogen fuel.

See also: can the Moon help in finding aliens

Apparently, NASA wants to make a huge bet on hydrogen fuel in its future space exploration, because another company Infinity Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Inc. received $ 4 million for the development of scalable, cheap and reliable fuel cell systems. Do you believe in the promise of hydrogen fuel? Write about it in our chat in Telegram.

Ice on the moon could be key to space travel

As for SpaceX, the company Elon musk has received from NASA $ 3 million to work with the space flight Center George Marshall. This is a government research space center, which is owned by NASA and is engaged in the development and testing of engines for space vehicles. They will work on prototyping of coupling devices, to refuel ships in space. And, interestingly, more likely, it’s also can talk about hydrogen fuel, as the Center of space flights of a name of George Marshall lately led quite a few developments in this area. SpaceX had previously proposed a way to use refuel rockets in space via tankers launched from the Ground in advance. This would provide the necessary amount of fuel spaceships for missions to the moon and Mars.


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