Category Archives: Future space

Proposals, speculation, etc regarding the future of space and humanity’s place in it.

2014 Space Elevator Conference

The 2014 Space Elevator Conference, sponsored by the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC), will be held during August 22-24 at the The Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington. Check out the Program and Registration.

The latest ISEC news is available in the  ISEC Newsletter – July.2014.

Crowd-funding an integrated space plan

I expect that our crowd crafted space future will be quite different than what a crowd-funded space plan could ever predict. Nevertheless, should a plan can be an interesting exercise. Check out the : Integrated Space Plan – Envisioning Humanity’s Future by Integrated Space Analytics — Kickstarter

The campaign is supported by several space advocacy organizations. From the National Space Society and Space Frontier Foundation:

The National Space Society has now become a $500 logo backer to the “Integrated Space Plan” Kickstarter and encourages NSS members to help this Kickstarter effort reach its goal.  Many NSS members have already done so, but with only 5 days left, this Kickstarter is still $3000 short its $18,000 goal.

Become a “Backer” — visit the Kickstarter page to pledge your support.

The “Integrated Space Plan” project is to remake, maintain, and expand the uses of the Integrated Space Plan, a graphically detailed timeline of our future in space for the next 100 years.  NSS leader Ronnie Lajoie writes “The five team leaders are all NSS members, including Jay Wittner, a past NSS Officer and Director, and current chapter officer.  The ISP will complement and supplement our Roadmap to Space Settlement.”

Jay Wittner writes “20 years ago a detailed long term plan was created showing what was needed to develop a robust space infrastructure.  It was called theIntegrated Space Plan (ISP).  It was an early infographic developed to depict our future in space.  The original plan by Ron Jones was a hit in the space community and it’s time to update the ISP and post it online so everyone can see the path forward!”  Ron Jones is part of the new team.

NSS leader Gary Barnhard adds “While no one has a monopoly on insight into the future, the combination of perspectives should be integratable into a common framework which provides a context for understanding where we have been, where we are, and where we could go.”

As an extra incentive, all Backers at the $25 level or higher will get a free year of membership in the Space Frontier Foundation, one of our sister space advocacy organizations.

From the Moon Society:

There are any number of plans for the exploration of space out there in the marketplace of ideas. In the absence of much real-world progress, there is an inclination to plan for when there might be progress in the future. This often becomes a competition in the marketplace of ideas as agendas come into play, and some aspects of space exploration (and maybe development) are highlighted to the detriment of others as personal goals come into play.

One effort to address this was the Integrated Space Plan, which tried to take a meta- approach to looking at our space efforts and determine which activities and technologies fed into what aspects of humanity’s move out into the Solar System. Which aspects of exploration and development should be highlighted? How might they connect? What can help enable what else? Where are the synergies?

The Integrated Space Plan (ISP) was created in the 1980s as a wall-sized poster that ended up in universities and aerospace offices across the country and around the world. Its voluminous content encouraged exploration of how different goals could be achieved, almost like the technology tree structure of many civilization-type video games. It also encouraged many systems engineers, who thrive on complexity.

Now it’s time to revisit the Integrated Space Plan for a new generation of future space explorers, and update it for the new companies, new technologies, and new ideas in regards to things like the cislunar economy, interplanetary superhighways, and relevant resources.

Sci-Tech: Freeman Dyson’s future forecast

Freeman Dyson discusses a wide range of futuristic possibilities : Freeman Dyson Predicts the Future – IEEE Spectrum

Space elevator newsletter + Solar sail update + Mars One update

The International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) has a new edition of this newsletter out today: ISEC e-Newsletter – May.2014.

In this issue’s President’s Corner, ISEC President Dr. Peter Swan talks about the importance of Involvement – getting active with ISEC and Space Elevator activities.  ISEC has many activities ongoing and we can always use volunteers.  If you are interested, please email Dr. Swan at pete.swan@isec.org.

Also in this issue, we announce the release of the latest ISEC study; this on Design Considerations for Space Elevator Tether Climbers.  The latest in a series of these studies, this one concentrates on how a Tether Climber might operate and is a “must-read” for all those who take an active interest in space elevator technologies.

Dr. Swan also represented ISEC at the recent NSS/ISDC Conference in Los Angeles – more details are shown elsewhere in this eNewsletter.

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Here’s a status report on solar sail projects such as the Sunjammer Mission (to launch in 2015) : Are Solar Sails the Future of Space Travel? – Space.com

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And here is the latest Mars One newsletter: Mars One Astronaut Selection Process: The Next Steps

Sci-Tech: Suspended animation for medical apps and space travel

We don’t yet have self-aware robots or low cost transportation to orbit but we do have iPhones and Google search. The latter two are just as sci-fi as the former two technologies for someone who grew up in the 1960s. The future really is hard to predict.  Some tech that seemed almost in hand keeps getting pushed further into the future while occasionally something that seemed extremely far-fetched turns out to be well within reach.

For example, suspended animation, also referred to as induced hibernation or extended torpor (see post here), has been a common plot device in science fiction for ages. It played a prominent role, for example, in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey where several members of a crew going to Jupiter were put into hibernation to reduce the amount of food, oxygen, etc, needed for the trip. Until recently, I thought this was no closer to reality than Hal but  it looks like it might nearly be in hand  : Suspended Animation Human Trials About to Begin – IFLScience.

It shouldn’t in fact be too surprising. Maintaining patients in unconscious states for days is done routinely in hospitals. Coma patients can be kept alive for months, even years. Occasionally there are reports of someone awakening from a long term coma and continuing with a normal life. So the mechanics of maintaining the vital systems appears to be well understood.

The induced torpor research is aiming to go the next step and lower body temperature to slow metabolic processes even further than in a comatose state. As mentioned in the above article, doctors are using Therapeutic Hypothermia (TH) already to deal with some traumatic injuries.

In the video below (starting at 55:30)  from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium held back in February (see post here), John Bradford of SpaceWorks Engineering and his collaborator Douglas Talk discussed such issues in a presentation about their proposed Torpor Inducing Transfer Habitat For Human Stasis To Mars. Here are their slides (pdf) and see also this infographic (pdf).

As with Discovery-1 expedition, they are proposing to place a crew

in inactive, low-metabolic Torpor state for mission transfer phases by leveraging evolving medical advances in Therapeutic Hypothermia  and Total Parenteral Nutrition.

The benefits of this include:

Reduction in mission consumables due to inactive crew
– Reduced pressurized volume required for living quarters
– Eliminate many ancillary crew accommodations (food galley, eating  supplies, cooking, exercise equipment, entertainment, etc.)
– Minimize psychological challenges for crew

Watch live streaming video from niac2014 at livestream.com

John Bradford is posting updates on progress with their study at the blog Space Torpor. In a recent post he showed images of a proposed Artificial-Gravity Inducing Torpor Habitat!

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