NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) funds studies into all sorts of cool and often “crazy” ideas that just might work. This week (Mon-Wed) at the NIAC Symposium in Denver, Colorado, leaders of funded project will give updates on their studies. The presentations are being webcast live at 2017 NIAC Symposium on Livestream – Here is the agenda (pdf).
A symposium at Columbia University this weekend focused on “The Dawn of Private Space Science“. Videos of the many interesting talks are posted at Fiat Physica – Facebook. Here is a sampling: ** Pete Worden gave an update on the Breakthrough Initiatives, one of which is the development of a system to send tiny spacecraft to a … Continue reading Videos: “The Dawn of Private Space Science” – symposium presentations→
The Planetary Radio program had a recent interesting interview with Philip Lubin, Professor of Physics at UC Santa Barbara, and Travis Brashears, an undergrad at UC Berkeley, about their proposal to accelerate a tiny wafer sized lightsail spacecraft up to 10-25% of the speed of light using an array of lasers and sending the sail to a nearby star: Interstellar … Continue reading Interstellar laser driven lightsails, planetary defense, and the Voices of Humanity Kickstarter→
A hopping cube may be the best way to explore a small asteroid or comet: ‘Hedgehog’ Robots Hop, Tumble in Microgravity Hopping, tumbling and flipping over are not typical maneuvers you would expect from a spacecraft exploring other worlds. Traditional Mars rovers, for example, roll around on wheels, and they can’t operate upside-down. But on … Continue reading ‘Hedgehog’ robot may someday hop, tumble, and flip to explore a comet or asteroid→
More TMRO.tv Space Pod short reports. TMRO Space Pods are crowd funded shows. If you like this episode consider contributing to help us to continue to improve. Head over tohttp://www.patreon.com/spacepod for information, goals and reward levels. Don’t forget to check out our weekly live show campaign as well over at http://www.patreon.com/tmro * NASA is Maximizing Kennedy … Continue reading Videos: TMRO Space Pod reports on KSC mods, Comet hitchhiking, X-15 and X-37B, & animal astros→