Menu

Blog

Archive for the ‘space travel’ category: Page 483

Apr 12, 2016

NASA funds Direct Drive Fusion Propulsion

Posted by in categories: energy, information science, physics, space travel

The Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) concept provides game-changing propulsion and power capabilities that would revolutionize interplanetary travel. DFD is based on the Princeton Field-Reversed Configuration (PFRC) fusion reactor under development at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. The mission context we are proposing is delivery of a Pluto orbiter with a lander. The key objective of the proposal is to determine the feasibility of the proposed Pluto spacecraft using improved engine models. DFD provides high thrust to allow for reasonable transit times to Pluto while delivering substantial mass to orbit: 1000 kg delivered in 4 to 6 years. Since DFD provides power as well as propulsion in one integrated device, it will also provide as much as 2 MW of power to the payloads upon arrival. This enables high-bandwidth communication, powering of the lander from orbit, and radically expanded options for instrument design. The data acquired by New Horizons’ recent Pluto flyby is just a tiny fraction of the scientific data that could be generated from an orbiter and lander. We have evaluated the Pluto mission concept using the Lambert algorithm for maneuvers with rough estimates of the engine thrust and power. The acceleration times are sufficiently short for the Lambert approximation, i.e. impulsive burns, to have some validity. We have used fusion scaling laws to estimate the total mission mass and show that it would fit within the envelope of a Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle. Estimates of the amount of Helium 3 required to fuel the reactor are within available terrestrial stores.

Read more

Apr 12, 2016

Watch Stephen Hawking Deliver a Mysterious Announcement on Space Exploration

Posted by in categories: innovation, space travel

Stephen Hawking will be making a big announcement today about space exploration. What will it be? Find out at noon, EST.

Hawking and Yuri Milner of the Breakthrough Prize have been building up to an announcement on Project Starshot. So far, the only thing known about the new project is that it has to do with space exploration.

But what’s Hawking’s big reveal about the project? No one knows yet—but it’ll be streaming live right here at noon, EST. Watch along with us.

Continue reading “Watch Stephen Hawking Deliver a Mysterious Announcement on Space Exploration” »

Apr 12, 2016

​Inside a Billionaire’s New Interstellar Mission

Posted by in categories: futurism, space travel

Yuri Milner is spending $100 million on a probe that could travel to Alpha Centauri within a generation—and he’s recruited Mark Zuckerberg and Stephen Hawking to help. In an interview with The Atlantic, Milner makes his case for star travel.

In the Southern Hemisphere’s sky, there is a constellation, a centaur holding a spear, its legs raised in mid-gallop. The creature’s front hoof is marked by a star that has long hypnotized humanity, with its brightness, and more recently, its proximity.

Since the dawn of written culture, at least, humans have dreamt of star travel. As the nearest star system to Earth, Alpha Centauri is the most natural subject of these dreams. To a certain cast of mind, the star seems destined to figure prominently in our future.

Continue reading “​Inside a Billionaire’s New Interstellar Mission” »

Apr 12, 2016

Billionaire pledges $100m to send spaceships to Alpha Centauri

Posted by in category: space travel

Regardless of whether or not this particular project achieves it’s aims, hopefully it will encourage other obscenely wealthy philanthropists to funnel their donations into private (or governmental ) outer-space related endeavors!


Yuri Milner has backed a plan to research sending tiny, laser-powered spacecraft to the nearest star at 20 per cent of the speed of light.

Read more

Apr 12, 2016

How Self-Replicating Spacecraft Could Take Over the Galaxy

Posted by in categories: alien life, robotics/AI, space travel

Forget about generation ships, suspended animation, or the sudden appearance of a worm hole. The most likely way for aliens to visit us — whatever their motive — is by sending robotic probes. Here’s how swarms of self-replicating spacecraft could someday rule the galaxy.

Top image by Alejandro Burdisio via Concept Ships.

Back in late 1940’s the Hungarian mathematician John Von Neumann wondered if it might be possible to design a non-biological system that could replicate itself in a cellular automata environment, what he called a universal constructor. Von Neumann wasn’t thinking about space exploration at the time, but other thinkers like Freeman Dyson, Eric Drexler, Ralph Merkle, and Robert Freitas later took his idea and applied it to exactly that.

Continue reading “How Self-Replicating Spacecraft Could Take Over the Galaxy” »

Apr 12, 2016

NASA reveals winning concepts to explore alien worlds

Posted by in categories: alien life, space travel

Future space missions, including the journey to Mars, edge closer to reality as NASA reveals its top picks from a series of competitions designed to crowdsource innovative concepts.

Read more

Apr 11, 2016

NASA Begins Testing of Revolutionary E-Sail Technology

Posted by in category: space travel

Testing has started at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, on a concept for a potentially revolutionary propulsion system that could send spacecraft to the edge of our solar system, the heliopause, faster than ever before.

The test results will provide modeling data for the Heliopause Electrostatic Rapid Transit System (HERTS). The proposed HERTS E-Sail concept, a propellant-less propulsion system, would harness solar wind to travel into interstellar space.

“The sun releases protons and electrons into the solar wind at very high speeds — 400 to 750 kilometers per second,” said Bruce Wiegmann an engineer in Marshall’s Advanced Concepts Office and the principal investigator for the HERTS E-Sail. “The E-Sail would use these protons to propel the spacecraft.”

Continue reading “NASA Begins Testing of Revolutionary E-Sail Technology” »

Apr 11, 2016

Reconstituting Asteroids into Mechanical Automata

Posted by in categories: computing, robotics/AI, space travel

Jason Dunn Made In Space, Inc.

The objective of this study is for Made In Space (MIS) to establish the concept feasibility of using the age-old technique of analog computers and mechanisms to convert entire asteroids into enormous autonomous mechanical spacecraft. Project RAMA, Reconstituting Asteroids into Mechanical Automata, has been designed to leverage the advancing trends of additive manufacturing (AM) and in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) to enable asteroid rendezvous missions in which a set of technically simple robotic processes convert asteroid elements into very basic versions of spacecraft subsystems (GNC, Propulsion, Avionics). Upon completion, the asteroid will be a programmed mechanical automata carrying out a given mission objective; such as relocation to an Earth-Moon libration point for human rendezvous or perhaps to set an Earth-threatening NEO on course to the outer solar system and out of harm’s way. This technique will create an affordable and scalable way for NASA to achieve future roadmap items for both the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) and the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) such as Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), New Frontiers Comet Surface Sample Return, and other Near Earth Object (NEO) applications. It is estimated that an order of magnitude increase in NEO targets can be explored for the same mission cost with the RAMA approach compared to the SOA Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) architecture by removing the need to launch all spacecraft subsystems and instead converting the asteroid into them in-situ. Assuming the development trends continue for industry based AM methods as well as NASA and industry investments in ISRU capabilities, Project RAMA will create a space mission architecture capable of achieving the aforementioned NASA goals within a 20–30 year time frame. Furthermore, as described in the proposal, the identified study path will provide insight into near term Mission ‘Pull’ technologies worth investment in order to create the development roadmap for the proposed ‘Push’ technologies for achieving NASA’s long term strategic goals.

Read more

Apr 10, 2016

Interesting Space travel Animation

Posted by in category: space travel

From science fiction to reality.

Read more

Apr 10, 2016

SpaceX reusable stages, drone ship technology and the SpaceX Heavy

Posted by in categories: drones, robotics/AI, space travel

https://youtube.com/watch?v=EmN9IJyzBG0

Initially SpaceX plans to reduce the cost of a Falcon 9 rocket with a reused booster to $43 million per flight, a savings of 30 percent.

SpaceX will try to return the booster that was just landed on the drone ship back to Cape Canaveral, in Florida, by Sunday. After running a series of tests on the Falcon, the company plans to fire its engines 10 times in a row on the ground. “If things look good it will be qualified for reuse,” Musk said. “We’re hoping to relaunch it on an orbital mission, let’s say by June.”

Continue reading “SpaceX reusable stages, drone ship technology and the SpaceX Heavy” »