DailyDirt: How Will Anyone Get To Mars?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Traveling to mars is going to be a really, really long term project. We had some fun on the moon and drove around up there in a nifty moon buggy, but we didn't have a commitment to stay there for very long -- or even plans to keep going there once we knew it could be done. Getting astronauts to mars requires a completely different level of planning than going to the moon. Current technology won't get us there (well, at least not alive and healthy), but maybe we're still making some progress with a few untested propulsion systems.

• Russia's national nuclear company Rosatom could build a nuclear-powered engine to get to mars in 90 days -- if it had the funding. The technology was first developed in the 1960s, but no one has really continued to work on various kinds of nuclear-powered propulsion for manned spacecraft (hmm, wonder why..?). Launching radioactive materials on a ship that might not make it into outer space could end in a spectacular disaster, but maybe if someone could build it in space from several small payloads of fissionable material? (Or better yet, build it from fissionable materials already in space....) [url]
• It's possible to send something to mars in just 30 minutes with a (proposed) laser propulsion system. Chemical rockets to mars will take months, but using photonic propulsion could accelerate a small (lightweight, perhaps wafer-thing) object to very high speeds. One catch would be that there wouldn't really be a way to slow it down, unless there was a decelerating laser on the other side. [url]
• It's not beyond the imagination to think that people might someday be able to move asteroids around at will. Getting more water to mars by sending an icy asteroid there might be possible someday, and if we're able to do that we might as well hitch a ride on it. [url]

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Filed Under: astronauts, fission, laser propulsion, lightsail, manned missions, mars, nuclear energy, propulsion, rockets, space, space exploration, spacecraft
Companies: nasa, rosatom

DailyDirt: Scotty, We Need More Power...

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There could be a new Star Trek TV show ready in a couple years or so (trying to keep up with the Star Wars franchise, no doubt). But real space travel is also making some progress -- with a growing number of private companies trying out new approaches to making more cost effective launch systems. Check out a few of these propulsion concepts that could be powered by "di-lithium" crystals someday.

• A company called Escape Dynamics is testing microwave-powered propulsion technology to boost vehicles into space. Microwave transmitters on the ground would zap a ship's propellant to get it to heat up and create thrust (without needing to carry an oxidant on board), and a test vehicle has proven the concept by generating a specific impulse of 500 seconds. If they can refine the technology a bit, they claim to be able to put a 200kg payload into orbit with a single-stage, reusable spaceplane. [url]
• Ion thrusters provide a very efficient means of propulsion for artificial satellites right now, but perhaps a design change could make this type of propulsion more practical for longer trips and not just relatively short bursts of thrust. A "wall-less" Hall thruster design might last far longer than a typical 10,000 hours of operational time for existing Hall thrusters, but more testing will be necessary to optimize this novel ion thruster. [url]
• If you're looking for a bit more oomph, how about a specific impulse of 100,000-250,000 seconds -- generated from lasers aimed at a target for initiating a fusion reaction? Boeing filed a patent on this kind of propulsion in 2012 (which was granted US9068562B1), but it's highly doubtful that laser-initiated fusion/fission thrust will become a reality any time soon. [url]

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Filed Under: hall thrusters, ion thrusters, lasers, nuclear propulsion, propulsion, space, space exploration, specific impulse, star trek, star wars
Companies: boeing, escape dynamics

DailyDirt: Rocket Science Is Still Pretty Hard...

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Rockets fail all the time. There are just a lot of things that can go wrong, and if everything doesn't go right, the usual result is that the rocket and its payload self-destructs to prevent further damage (or just explodes all on its own). Fortunately, the hardware is getting cheaper with time, and more and more people are able to play with launch systems to get beyond Earth's gravity well. Here are just a few more examples of rocket projects that are trying to do more with less.

• Building a 22-ton rocket to reach the moon isn't easy, and a Kickstarter project to get some seed funding just ended. The Moonspike project didn't achieve its Kickstarter goal, but it's not totally dead yet. They still have their rocket designs, and the moon isn't going anywhere.... [url]
• Moon Express is a private moon landing mission to get a robot on the moon in 2017. The company has teamed up with Rocket Labs and received over $1 million in funding from Google/Xprize to get its mission off the ground and into space. [url]
• Smaller teams building rockets (instead of huge aerospace companies) are becoming a trend -- making innovative delivery systems for less than "billions and billions" of dollars. The Northwest Indian College Space Center didn't have the resources to actually get anything into space, just a grandiose name. That was enough, though, to get some additional funding. The school now participates in national competitions with some NASA guidance, and it's possible that a student-built rocket could make it into space someday. [url]

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Filed Under: lunar robots, moonspike, northwest indian college space center, propulsion, rockets, space, space exploration
Companies: kickstarter, moon express, nasa, rocket labs

DailyDirt: Plenty Of Spaceships... Sorta

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The number of ways to get a person into space is pretty limited at the moment. Only Russia and China have operational launch systems that can escape the Earth's gravity (with people as passengers). There are a bunch more spaceships in development, though, so if you really want to get into space without a Soyuz or Shenzhou, you'll have to be patient. There have been a few recent accidents, but it looks like engineers have figured out some of the problems.

• Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo crash was evidently caused by human error. Co-pilot Michael Alsbury prematurely unlocked the ship's braking system which deployed and led to a catastrophic structural failure. This spacecraft was designed with minimal automated systems to reduce complexity, but Virgin Galactic has added a safety feature to prevent this from happening again -- and the design philosophy that favors manual systems may need additional tweaking. [url]
• EmDrive is a theoretically impossible propulsion system that produces "anomalous thrust" which has been observed by at least two independent labs now. It's still not clear what is going on, but if this technology actually works, it would completely change the timetables for space travel. An EmDrive-powered vehicle could reach Pluto in 18 months -- instead of the years that it took New Horizons to do so. [url]
• If you want to just see the edge of space, there are more and more helium-balloon-like ways to get there. Stratospheric ballooning for space tourism might be a bit safer than a rocket to LEO, and maybe a little bit cheaper. (Who's counting pennies c-notes when we're talking about traveling to the edge of space?) [url]
• Blue Origin has tested its New Shepard suborbital system successfully, but it didn't recover its reusable booster stage. Ultimately, the New Shepard spaceship will hold 3 passengers and reach an altitude of 62 miles, but further unmanned testing will be done before passengers are allowed onboard. [url]

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Filed Under: emdrive, leo, new shepard, propulsion, shenzhou, soyuz, space tourism, spacecraft, spaceships, spaceshiptwo, stratospheric ballooning
Companies: blue origin, virgin galactic

DailyDirt: Riding Through Space On A Beam Of Light

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If you're looking forward to watching The Martian movie, you probably enjoy watching rockets blast off into space and seeing big explosions. However, really long distance space travel could be much less entertaining without rockets unless you like looking at the glow of an ion thruster. Spacecraft using the momentum of light won't even glow, but they could be part of more and more space ships. Check out a few of these projects.

• A yet-unexplained phenomenon creates propulsion when a laser hits a sheet of graphene sponge in a vacuum. A complete understanding of the momentum of light isn't too far off, and if this kind of propulsion can be harnessed, it could make some satellites much more useful. [url]
• Microwave propulsion technologies have been tested a bit. Microwaves might also be used for energy transmission to various kinds of vehicles, but it could be a while before anyone is powering drones or satellites with microwave signals. [url]
• The Planetary Society has successfully deployed its first LightSail cubesat to test its solar sail technology before it launches another LightSail cubesat next year. This test ran into a few glitches along with way, so hopefully, they'll work out all the bugs before the next mission. [url]
• Ikaros (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun) is a Japanese spacecraft that successfully used a solar sail in 2010. More solar sail spacecraft could get into space, as long as the demonstrations of the tech continue to work (and aren't cancelled). [url]

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Filed Under: cubesats, graphene, ikaros, lightsail, microwaves, propulsion, solar sail, space, space exploration, spacecraft
Companies: planetary society

DailyDirt: Sailing Through Space Without Rockets

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

One of the problems with space travel is that the chemical fuels required to get around in space.. really limit how far a spacecraft can go. A spacecraft can only carry around so much fuel, and then once that fuel is gone, the ship is basically drifting in space. There are some creative solutions to this challenge, though. If you aren't in a hurry, you can try to propel an object with the momentum of light. Or you can shoot very small atoms at high velocity to create thrust. But you cannot change the laws of physics!

• The Planetary Society is constructing a cubesat with a LightSail -- a 32-square-meter Mylar sail that will capture the momentum of sunlight for propulsion. This Kickstarter campaign will help fund the $5.45 million project to build a spacecraft that will be ready to launch in 2016 (on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket) along with another satellite that will inspect the LightSail and its performance. [url]
• NASA is still trying to verify the feasibility of "EM drive" technology -- that shouldn't work at all if the universe obeys the conservation of momentum. No peer reviewed papers on this kind of propulsion exist because no one understands how to fully explain the impossible (or merely erroneous) thrust that has been detected from it. [url]
• Electrically-driven satellites using ion thrusters do actually exist, and Boeing has built two of them. These satellites with xenon-ion thrusters are already in space and will move into their operational orbits by November. A few other electric-propulsion spacecraft from Airbus and Thales Alenia Space will join these satellites in space in the near future, too. [url]

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Filed Under: em drive, ion thrusters, lightsail, planetary society, propulsion, rockets, satellites, solar sail, space, space exploration, spacecraft
Companies: airbus, boeing, kickstarter, nasa, spacex, thales alenia space

DailyDirt: I'm Givin' Her All She's Got, Captain...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Space travel is filled with all kinds of complex challenges -- microgravity, radiation exposure, fuel constraints, etc. Thankfully, engineers and physicists are coming up with creative solutions to some of these problems, and new propulsion systems are being put through a battery of tests to verify their safety and reliability. Here are just a few cool propulsion designs (that may or may not work at all).

• NASA can't explain how it works, but there's a propulsion system that seemingly violates conservation of momentum -- and it actually produces a small amount of thrust. There are a few different versions of this propellant-free thruster, called a "Cannae Drive" or EmDrive.. and there's even a Kickstarter project to try to build a similar system. Is it April Fool's day every day? [url]
• NASA is looking into every possible means to improve space travel, including the very speculative faster-than-light "warp drive" that proposes to bend space-time to get to distant destinations in a matter of weeks instead of decades. Alcubierre drives are purely theoretical, and NASA explicitly states any kind of FTL warp drive is firmly in the speculation realm. [url]
• Vortex rockets provide a practical solution for reducing the weight of a traditional liquid-fuel rocket. Conventional rockets require some (heavy) complex cooling systems to prevent parts of the rocket itself from melting and/or vaporizing away, but a vortex rocket eliminates the need for cooling by creating a mini-tornado of burning fuel where the hottest temperatures are kept away from rocket structures. [url]

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Filed Under: alcubierre drive, cannae drive, emdrive, propulsion, rockets, space, space exploration, vortex rockets, warp drive
Companies: kickstarter, nasa

DailyDirt: Interstellar Travel -- 'To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before'

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If only interstellar travel were as easy as it is depicted in movies and TV shows like Star Trek... While we won't be traveling beyond our solar system anytime soon, there are already plenty of efforts underway to develop the technologies needed to make interstellar travel a reality. Here are a few examples.

• DARPA is funding the "100 Year Starship Initiative" which aims to make long-distance space travel possible within the next century. The initiative will focus on identifying and driving advancements in the technologies needed for interstellar flight, as well as using them to improve the quality of life on Earth. [url]
• According to an estimate of how much energy would be needed to make interstellar travel possible, it will be at least another 200 years before humans will have enough to trek to the stars. For example, a mission to send 500 people on a one-way trip into space would require 10¹⁸ Joules of energy for rocket propulsion. In comparison, a shuttle launch requires 10¹³ Joules of energy. [url]
• NASA's Glenn Research Center has compiled a list of some ideas for interstellar travel that are based on scientific knowledge that exists today. To make interstellar travel practical, we'll need to be able to control gravitational/inertial forces, travel faster than light, find ways to harness the energy in the vacuum of space, etc. [url]
• Icarus Interstellar Inc. is working on the concept of using powerful lasers to generate antimatter from the vacuum of space. The large amount of energy produced through matter-antimatter annihilation could then be used for interstellar propulsion. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: 100yss, darpa, exploration, interstellar travel, propulsion, space, star trek, starships
Companies: icarus interstellar, nasa

DailyDirt: Spaceworthy Engines That Will Take Us 'To Infinity And Beyond!'

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Humans -- not content to be stuck on this planet and itching to find alien life -- are hard at work developing better ways to send satellites and spacecraft into orbit and outer space. If we actually want to colonize Mars by 2023, then some new propulsion technologies might be in order. Here are a few examples of various efforts going on around the world.

• MIT researchers have developed a penny-sized rocket thruster that runs on jets of ion beams. The thruster is flat and square, like a computer chip, and covered with 500 microscopic tips that emit ion beams strong enough to propel a shoebox-sized satellite. Placing several of these thrusters on a small satellite could enable it to move to change its orbit, as well as turn and roll. [url]
• Engineers in the UK are testing some key technology for a propulsion system that could one day take a spaceplane, like the Skylon vehicle, straight into orbit without all the multiple propellant stages required with current throw-away rockets. The Sabre propulsion system, which is part jet engine and part rocket engine, burns hydrogen and oxygen to provide thrust. [url]
• Researchers at The Australian National University are working on a plasma thruster that could eventually be used to send satellites to Mars. The plasma thruster could be ready by 2014, and initial missions will attempt to send old satellites into "graveyard" orbits using the thruster. [url]
• The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency and NASA are both testing solar sail technology as a form of primary propulsion for spacecraft. The solar sail technology relies on the concept that surfaces exposed to electromagnetic radiation will experience "radiation pressure," which exerts a small pushing force against the surface. Japan's Ikaros 27-square-meter solar sail gets only 0.0002 pounds of force due to radiation pressure from the sun, but over a long period of time, incredibly high speeds could be achieved. [url]

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Filed Under: exploration, jaea, nasa, plasma thrusters, propulsion, rockets, skylon, solar sail, solar system, space