DailyDirt: More Manned Spaceflight

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Thu, Oct 27th 2011 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Manned spaceflight has obviously seen better days. There aren't that many ambitious spaceflights that actually have solid funding these days, but there are still a lot of plans and desire for manned space exploration to resume again. Here are just a few projects that might get off the ground.

DARPA has $500,000 in seed money to get folks thinking about interstellar space travel. The 100-Year Starship Study will encourage discussion about what it would take to make a trip to another star system, and a lot of the proposals will be science fiction for a very long time. [url]
The US Air Force has a "secret" mini space shuttle that might be able to take astronauts into space, and return them just like the retired space shuttle used to. The X-37B space plane could spawn a larger X-37C model that is twice a long, but the budget for producing these vehicles isn't exactly guaranteed. [url]
The concept of using nuclear reactions isn't a particularly new idea for space propulsion, but NASA engineers are designing aneutronic fusion reactor schemes that could be useful for shooting satellites across our solar system more efficiently. Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup. They slither while they pass they slip away across the universe... [url]
To discover more links on space exploration, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: fusion, space, spaceflight, spaceplane, starship, x-37b, x-37c
Companies: darpa, nasa, usaf

6 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 27 Oct 2011 @ 5:27pm

On the fusion engine... how does shooting a laser at a sheet of metal create a beam of protons?
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Jeffrey Nonken (profile), 27 Oct 2011 @ 5:54pm

Somebody's been listening to the Beatles.
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- Michael Ho (profile), 27 Oct 2011 @ 10:13pm
  
  Re:
  yup. seemed like an appropriate song... :)
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 27 Oct 2011 @ 8:46pm

Project Orion ...
What if nuclear power was the only way to progress to the next level?
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Oct 2011 @ 2:36am

I thought we weren't supposed to invent fusion power until 2050? Those guys should be working on inventing those microwave satellites instead.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Oct 2011 @ 6:59am

Build the Enterprise.
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