There is no exciting time than now when it comes to space exploration and the growth of private space companies. Most of us have heard of SpaceX (Elon Musk) and some of us may have also heard of Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos). However, another private space company called Rocket Lab joins the race! The huge news with this company is that they launched their Electron rocket into orbit which had a payload of CubeSats for two clients. This puts them in a league of only a dozen other space companies that have launched successfully today. I will say that I find it hilarious that they called their rocket “Still Testing.” I love a space company with a good sense of humor. Rocket Lab is a unique company that was founded in 2006 by a New Zealander named Peter Beck. He had over a decade and a half of propulsion research and market development in the space community. Rocket Lab launched...

Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) could possibly pave the way for traveling in space and to planets. Sometimes I daydream and wish we could somehow speed up the process of getting to planets. It’s a very hard problem and we’re still testing out various solutions for different situations. History shows that humans have planned to go to the moon and beyond since the Apollo program in the early 1970’s. During that time the most advanced propulsion engines were nuclear fission thermal rockets. However, these rocks barely got any use as it was tested a handful of times before the Apollo program was ended. There is a fantastic and nostalgic video for you NASA and space fans on the subject of nuclear thermal rockets. But as science and technology move forward we learn more about space as well as the obstacles it presents. For example, in recent studies where radiation data was...