Month: August 2018

Enlarge (credit: Rocket Lab/Aurich Lawson)

Welcome to Edition 1.15 of the Rocket Report! This week, we have news about both Virgin rocket companies, an astounding number of Chinese launches, and the military waiting for SpaceX. There is also the scoop that the Trump White House is relying on an upgraded SLS rocket to meet its desire of putting humans on a station near the Moon.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Virgin nears LauncherOne captive-carry tests. Virgin Orbit has completed three flight tests with a specially designed launch pylon/payload adapter beneath its left wing, and the company will soon begin captive-carry tests, Aviation Week reports. If these tests are successful, the campaign will culminate with the release of an inert vehicle over a desert test range and is designed to clear the way for an initial attempt at air-launching the first rocket to orbit.

Enlarge / Time passes faster or slower for a skier going up and down a steep mountain, depending on what that skier is experiencing. (credit: Kolbjørn Skarpnes & Rita Elmkvist Nilsen / NTNU Communication Div. & KISN)

The philosopher Martin Heidegger suggested in the 1920s that time persists solely as a consequence of the events that take place within it. Now, a team of Norwegian scientists has confirmed the mechanism the brain uses to make sense of the passage of time as we experience something, thanks to the help of a chocolate-loving lab rat.

A sense of time

Manmade clocks may precisely measure time, but from a human perspective, the passage of time is remarkably fluid. It drags when you're doing your taxes but really does fly when you're having fun. Isolate yourself from any markers of time (night and day, watches or clocks) and you will feel less time has passed than actually has, because under those circumstances, the brain condenses time.

Time also seems to pass faster as we get older, apparently because our brain only encodes new experiences, not those we're already familiar with. Everything is new and different in childhood, but the older we get, the more we have experienced, so there are fewer novel events.