Lifeboat Foundation

Track code: TD-3

Abstract:
Solar Sails are at the same stage of engineering development as electric motors were in the 1830’s. Each attribute of solar flux has been examined in isolation, such as photon, proton, plasma, and electrodynamic systems. This talk recommends designing a simple baseline system that converges multiple propulsion methods into optimized systems, as is currently done with electric motors. Many convergences can come from this solution space. Once a baseline design is created, AI genetic algorithms can “flight test” and refine the designs in simulation to adjust proportions and geometry. Once a base design is refined, a second AI evolution pass would design fleet systems that flock like birds to optimize performance. These could fly as a protective shield around Mars crewed fleets, provide space based solar power, deploy rapid reaction probes for interstellar comets, and be used in NEO asteroid mining. In the long term, fleets of solar energy management vehicles can provide orbital Carrigan event protection and Martian solar wind protection for terraforming. This talk is also a case study in how technology revolutions happen, and how to accelerate the creation and democratization of technical solutions.

Continue reading “FlexSail: Solar Sails and Tech Revolutions — Kent Nebergall — 2021 Mars Society Virtual Convention” »

The infamous twin paradox sends the astronaut Alice on a blazing-fast space voyage. When she returns to reunite with her twin, Bob, she finds that he has aged much faster than she has. It’s a well-known but perplexing result: Time slows if you’re moving fast.

Gravity does the same thing. Earth — or any massive body — warps space-time in a way that slows time, according to Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. If Alice lived her life at sea level and Bob at the top of Everest, where Earth’s gravitational pull is slightly weaker, he would again age faster. The difference on Earth is modest but real — it’s been measured by putting atomic clocks on mountaintops and valley floors and measuring the difference between the two.

Physicists have now managed to measure this difference to the millimeter. In a paper posted earlier this month to the scientific preprint server arxiv.org, researchers from the lab of Jun Ye, a physicist at JILA in Boulder, Colorado, measured the difference in the flow of time between the top and the bottom of a millimeter-tall cloud of atoms.

Georgia Tech scientists believe that microbes could be the key to producing the rocket fuel needed to take humans from Mars back to Earth.

Signs of a planet transiting a star outside of the Milky Way galaxy may have been detected for the first time. This intriguing result, using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, opens up a new window to search for exoplanets at greater distances than ever before.

The possible exoplanet candidate is located in the spiral galaxy Messier 51 (M51), also called the Whirlpool Galaxy because of its distinctive profile.

Continue reading “Astronomers may have discovered the first planet outside of our galaxy” »

Mars, International Space Station (ISS), Space tourism, One person spacecraft, Satellite servicing, Space repair, Asteroid, Phobos, Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), Space suit.

The information catastrophe.

A NASA telescope might have found the first ever planet outside of our own Milky Way galaxy.

If confirmed, the world would be thousands of times further away than the many exoplanets we have found in our own galaxy so far.

Scientists were able to do so using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, using techniques that could allow for the search for other worlds to dramatically the amount of space it is able to scan.

Strange black ‘superionic ice’ that could exist inside other planets.

Alfredo Munoz — Digital Twins of Martian Cities as a new frontier for Space Analogs.

From the 24th Annual International Mars Society Convention, held as a Virtual Convention worldwide on the Internet from October 14–17, 2021. The four-day International Mars Society Convention, held every year since 1,998 brings together leading scientists, engineers, aerospace industry representatives, government policymakers and journalists to talk about the latest scientific discoveries, technological advances and political-economic developments that could help pave the way for a human mission to the planet Mars.

Continue reading “Digital Twins of Martian Cities — Alfredo Munoz — 2021 Mars Society Virtual Convention” »