The technology to make starships work is still way off — but that isn’t stopping us from thinking about how it might work.
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Category: space travel – Page 504
The Boeing Co. is one of two companies funded by NASA to develop spacecraft for the International Space Station. Its CST-100 Starliner is expected to fly with an astronaut on board no earlier than 2017.
The firm is best known for its large passenger jets. In space, it has performed work on the space shuttle and the ISS, among other projects.
The CST-100 is similar in shape to the Apollo spacecraft, but should have electronics that are half a century more advanced. Its gumdrop shape also looks somewhat like the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle being constructed right now by Lockheed Martin and its partners. Orion is designed to carry astronauts beyond low Earth orbit.
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In a bold but scientifically sound proposal, NASA-funded research has laid out a roadmap toward spacecraft with relativistic speeds for the exploration of nearby stars (Credit: NASA). View gallery (8 images)
How do you send man-made probes to a nearby star? According to NASA-funded research at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), the answer is simple: assemble a laser array the size of Manhattan in low Earth orbit, and use it to push tiny probes to 26 percent the speed of light. Though the endeavour may raise a few eyebrows, it relies on well-established science – and recent technological breakthroughs have put it within our reach.
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Space Propulsion « MSNW LLC
Posted in physics, space travel
The EMPT thruster, funded by NASA, is a 1 kW-class RMF thruster, operates on the same physics principles as the ELF thruster. This device, less than 4 inches in diameter, has proven that pulsed inductive technolgoies can be succesfully miniaturized. Indeed, this thruster has demonstrated operation from 0.5 to 5 Joules, as well as the first pulsed inductive steady state operation. The EMPT has demonstrated greater than 1E8 continuous plasma discharges.
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NASA, perhaps more than anyone else, knows that there’s only so much room for packing stuff onto a spacecraft. That’s why it’s testing expandable living modules on the International Space Station prior to sending them to Mars for work and living spaces. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module will ride along in an upcoming SpaceX Dragon resupply mission to the ISS and from there will be unpacked and attached to the side of the station.
After that it’ll be filled with air to expand from just over five feet in depth and almost eight in diameter to 12 feet deep and over 10 feet in diameter and have its pressure equalized with the rest of the station. In the video below, NASA says that it’s all going to be done pretty slowly given that it’s the first experiment of its kind.
The BEAM needs to prove its mettle against cosmic radiation, durability and long-term leak performance prior to going into deep space, however. Before the expandable spaces go near the red planet, they’ll have to survive two years on the ISS with crew members poking and prodding it for the aforementioned reasons. The video below is a rendering, and admittedly moves along much faster than NASA says the installation process will actually go, but it should give you an idea of what the ISS will look like when the bolt-on test module is in place.
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Chinese taikonauts will likely beat NASA astronauts back to the lunar surface in as little as five to ten years, longtime lunar scientist and geologist Paul Spudis now tells me. If so, that will happen primarily by default, as the lunar surface continues to drop off NASA’s crewed destination radar.
Of course, that doesn’t preclude Russia, the European Space Agency (ESA), or numerous commercial space ventures — who have all expressed a desire to return astronauts to the lunar surface — from getting there sooner. But for now, Spudis thinks the Chinese are most likely to next make it happen.
Spudis, author of the forthcoming, “The Value of the Moon: How to Explore, Live, and Prosper in Space Using the Moon’s Resources,” emphasizes that he does not object to a “Chinese presence” on the lunar surface. Rather, he objects to the U.S.’ long absence from the lunar surface and what he sees as “our abdication” of responsibility in creating a permanent American presence in cislunar space — the space between the Earth and the Moon. Such a presence, he argues, would guarantee unhindered access to both space commerce and resources available beyond low-Earth orbit (LEO).
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