Jeff Bezos, of e-commerce giant Amazon fame, is currently the second richest person on Earth with ah estimated net worth of about 75 billion. Gates still tops the list at over 85 billion. But Bezos does some cool stuff with all that loot, and one of those interests is manned space exploration, pursued under the famously secretive NewSpace company called Blue Origin. This week we got an unusual peak into the design of one of their concepts:
Even as Blue Origin has talked up its ambitions to build a larger New Glenn rocket this year, the company also continues to finalize work on its suborbital space tourism vehicle, New Shepard. … The images show six leather, recumbent seats arranged around the interior of the spacecraft, and each seat features a large window view and a small personal view screen to track the flight.
Through laboratory experiments, the researchers found that under Titan-like atmospheric conditions, sand grains collide and become electrically charged, clumping together and remaining clumped for an incredibly long time. While wind-blown sand on Earth can also become electrically charged, the electrostatic forces are typically ephemeral and much weaker.