Category Archives: Future space

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

Future space, Space Systems

Videos: Presentations at the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) symposium

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program held its annual NIAC Symposium this week in Raleigh, North Carolina. Videos of the presentations are now available on Livestream. (See also postings for previous NIAC symposiums.)

Here is a sampling of the sessions:

  • Joshua Rovey, University of Missouri, Rolla, Experimental Demonstration and System Analysis for Plasmonic Force Propulsion;
  • Philip Lubin, University of California, Santa Barbara, Directed Energy for Interstellar Study;
  • David Kirtley, MSNW, LLC, Magnetoshell Aerocapture for Manned Missions and Planetary Deep Space Orbiters

  • Michael VanWoerkom, Exoterra Resource, LLC , NIMPH: Nano Icy Moons Propellant Harvester;
  • Stephanie Thomas, Princeton Satellite Systems, Inc., Fusion-Enabled Pluto Orbiter and Lander;
  • Jonathan Sauder, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments (AREE);
  • Lynn Rothschild, NASA Ames Research Center, Urban biomining meets printable electronics: end-to-end destination biological recycling and reprinting

More about Stephanie Thomas’s presentation at NIAC Pluto mission talk now available online – Princeton Satellite Systems.

  • Robert Youngquist, NASA Kennedy Space Center, Cryogenic Selective Surfaces;
  • Melville Ulmer, Northwestern University, Further Development of Aperture: A Precise Extremely Large Reflective Telescope Using Re-configurable Elements;
  • Robert Skelton, Texas A&M University, Tensegrity Approaches to In-Space Construction of a 1g Growable Habitat

  • Bruce Wiegmann, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Heliopause Electrostatic Rapid Transit System “HERTS”;
  • Adrian Stoica, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Trans-Formers for Lunar Extreme Environments: Ensuring Long-Term Operations in Regions of Darkness and Low Temperatures;
  • Michael Paul, Pennsylvania State University, SCEPS in Space – Non-Radioisotope Power Systems for Sunless Solar System Exploration Missions

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Future space, Space Systems, SpaceCasts

Interstellar laser driven lightsails, planetary defense, and the Voices of Humanity Kickstarter

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 Dreams Turn Real – The Planetary Society

Lubin’s concept has become the baseline technology for the $100 million StarShot project announced last April by the Breakthrough Initiatives program.

VoicesOfHumanity-WaferSatSpacecraft
WaferSat Spacecraft

The key element of the concept is the use of a phased array of many commercially available lasers rather than one hugely powerful laser. The concept is presented on their Directed Energy website and on the DEEP-IN page at UCSB. Lubin’s team has won two grants from the NASA Innovative Advance Concepts (NIAC) program to develop the concept further: DEEP IN Directed Energy Propulsion for Interstellar Exploration –  NASA.

Lubin gave a seminar at the SETI Institute in 2014 about the use of such a phased array of lasers for not only propulsion but also for defense against large objects heading for earth: Video: Philip Lubin (UCSB) on planetary defense with beamed power. Find resources on this at DE-STAR (Directed Energy Planetary Defense).

Lubin and Brashears recently opened a crowd-funding campaign to fund development of the Humanity Chip, which would carry all sorts of data submitted by the public to space in 2017 (not by laser) and eventually to another star: Voices of Humanity – The World’s Space Time Capsule by Prof. Philip Lubin & Travis Brashears — Kickstarter

Our goal is to directly engage all humanity in space exploration. We want to send your dreams and aspirations to the stars! With our basic funding goal of $30,000, we will put your data on a custom spacecraft that will be launched in 2017 initially into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), then to more distant missions to the moon, Mars, etc in subsequent missions. In the future, we intend to offer the Humanity Chip to all spacecraft being launched.

With 25 days to go, they have gotten $5,515 pledged towards a $30,000 goal.

Here are a couple of videos from the Kickstarter:

 

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Future space, Solar Sci-Fi, Speculation

Video: Science Fiction/Future Now panel at Comic-Con

Here is a video for the Science Fiction/Future Now panel at Comic-Con:

Science fiction has ever been the muse of real-world advances, but now ideas can be achieved almost as soon as they are thought up. So how do writers, out-dream the dream makers? How do writers handle the truth of real science and the fiction that is needed for writing their stories? Is it a crisis for the writer’s imagination? Or does it serve to inspire?

The panelists include:

Future space, Space Systems, Speculation

Videos: “From Here to the Stars” interview series by the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop

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The Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop  (TVIW) recently initiated a Youtube video series titled, From Here to the Stars, that consists of interviews with scientists and leading thinkers in the area of interstellar travel. Here are the first four entries in the series:

In Episode 1, Stephen Euin Cobb, Host of “Future and You” podcast, interviews Marc G. Millis, Founder and Director of Tau Zero Foundation, in association with Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop (Les Johnson, Executive Producer).

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In Episode 2, Stephen Euin Cobb, Host of “Future and You” podcast, interviews Dr. Louis D. Friedman, Co-Founder of The Planetary Society with Carl Sagan and Bruce C. Murray and Planetary Society Executive Director Emeritus, in association with Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop (Les Johnson, Executive Producer).

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In Episode 3, Stephen Euin Cobb, Host of “Future and You” podcast, interviews Dr. Philip Lubin, a professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a co-recipient of the 2006 Gruber Prize in Cosmology along with the COBE science team for their groundbreaking work in cosmology. This series is produced in association with Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop (Les Johnson, Executive Producer).

See the see DEEP-IN webpage for more about the work of Lubin’s group at UCSB on “Directed Energy Interstellar Precursors”.

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In Episode 4, Stephen Euin Cobb, Host of “Future and You” podcast, interviews Dr. Gregory L. Matloff, Emeritus Associate and Adjunct Associate Professor of Physics at New York City College of Technology (NYCCT), Fellow of the British interplanetary Society, and Hayden Associate at the American Museum of Natural History. This series is produced in association with Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop (Les Johnson, Executive Producer).

Asteroids & Comets, Future space, Space industry and microgravity R&D

Video: Asteroid mining – Nina Cooper – TEDxHarvardCollege

Harvard College astrophysics student Nina Hooper gives a TEDx talk on the potential of asteroid mining: Spotlight TEDx Talk: How asteroid mining could help us live in space – TEDx Innovations Blog  

Imagine a world with ubiquitous, affordable space travel, where getting in a spaceship is no stranger than getting in an airplane. Harvard undergraduate Nina Hooper, an astrophysics student, shows how mining asteroids for platinum could be the way to make space travel cheap and accessible to civilians.

Nina Hooper is a Harvard College student from Melbourne, Australia studying astrophysics. She loves traveling and adventure and is working towards what she believes is the ultimate adventure – going to space. She is also a private pilot, a songwriter and a major foodie. Nina intends to pursue a graduate degree in aerospace and astrospace engineering either in the US or UK.