Starship Century - Toward the Grandest Horizon is an anthology project of Gregory Benford , professor of Physics at UV Irvine and a noted science fiction writer, and his brother James Benford, president of Microwave Systems.
In this ground-breaking anthology James Benford and Gregory Benford combine their talents and celebrated intellects to bring together top scientific leaders and top science fiction writers—all focused on getting us (humans) to the next chapter in space travel, interstellar flight.
This week the Starship Century Symposium 2013 was held at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at the UC San Diego. Speakers included scientists and engineers Freeman Dyson, Paul Davies, Peter Schwartz, John Cramer and Robert Zubrin and science fiction authors Neal Stephenson, Allen Steele, Joe Haldeman, Gregory Benford, Geoffrey Landis and David Brin.
Here are two reports on the talks and discussions:
The Canadian based company General Fusion, which has gotten funding from a variety of sources including Jeff Bezos, seems to be making good progress with its innovative design for a fusion power system:
The latest presentation to the Future In-Space Operations (FISO) study group is now posted in the FISO Working Group Presentations Archive. Both slides (pdf) and audio (mp3) are available for the talk, Environmental Control and Life Support Systems: Current Status and Future Development, Robert Bagdigian & Robyn Carrasquillo – NASA MSFC – May.22.2013.
NASA is holding the Lunabotics Mining Competition at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex this week.
The Lunabotics Mining Competition is a university-level competition designed to engage and retain students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). There is particular relevance to NASA’s recently announced mission to find an asteroid by 2016 and then bring it to Cis-Lunar space, the technology concepts developed by the university teams for this competition conceivably could be used to mine resources on Asteroids as well as Mars. Robotic miners, just like these, will allow us to take samples at the returned Asteroid and give us valuable information to prepare for other deep space missions.
The challenge is for students to design and build a remote controlled or autonomous excavator that can collect and deposit a minimum of 10 kilograms of regolith simulant (aggregate) within 10 minutes. Regolith exists not only on Earth’s moon, but also on most planetary bodies such as Asteroids, Moons of Mars and Mars itself.
The complexities of the challenge include the abrasive characteristics of the simulant, the weight and size limitations of the robot, and the ability to control it from a remote control center. The scoring for the mining category will require teams to consider a number of design operation factors such as dust tolerance and projection, communications, vehicle mass, energy/power required, and full autonomy.
Here is a video in which the camera for the first half wanders around the event hall showing the student teams preparing their lunar mining robots for the contest. The second half shows the robots in the lunar simulant arena:
The Saturn V first stage engines recovered from ocean bottom by the Jeff Bezos F-1 Engine Recovery project will go on display this Friday at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center this week. Visitors will be able to watch restorers taking apart the engines for cleaning and coating with protective sealants. They will eventually be reassembled for exhibit.
More about the project and lots of pictures of the engines:
Here’s a message from The Society for International Space Cooperation :
The Society for International Space Cooperation (SISC) is an educational nonprofit organization whose board includes astronauts, cosmonauts, and luminaries like director James Cameron. We invite you to join the Space Explorers Club or Junior Space Explorers Club and be sent a different box every month with space goodies and space and science info from the past, present, and future of spaceflight.
The Junior Space Explorers Club is geared towards kids 6-12 years old and has many fun and educational activities. The Space Explorers Club is for Space Lovers aged 13-113.
The Society for International Space Cooperation is a 501(c)(3) so all donations are 100% tax deductible and all proceeds help support the educational programs of the society.
More info is available at http://www.spacesociety.org
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