What's NASA Up To And Other Space Stuff

This is fascinating. Anyone familiar with the EMDrive reactionless drive?

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Here’s the 411 on the EmDrive: the ‘physics-defying’ thruster even NASA is puzzled over

Even if you don’t keep up with developments in space propulsion technology, you’ve still probably heard about the EmDrive. You’ve probably seen headlines declaring it the key to interstellar travel, and claims that it will drastically reduce travel time across our solar system, making our dreams of people walking on other planets even more of a reality. There have even been claims that this highly controversial technology is the key to creating warp drives.

These are bold claims, and as the great cosmologist and astrophysicist Carl Sagan once said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” With that in mind, we thought it’d be helpful to break down what we know about the enigmatic EmDrive, and whether it is, in fact, the key to mankind exploring the stars.

So without further ado, here’s absolutely everything you need to know about the world’s most puzzling propulsion device.

This article is periodically updated in response to news and developments regarding the EM Drive and the theories surrounding it.

A new, leaked NASA paper points to potentially working EmDrive

A leaked NASA paper obtained by the International Business Times via a post by a user on the NASA Spaceflight forums. The post was originally deleted by the forum’s moderators, however, the document has since been posted and remains currently viewable here. The paper is ostensibly the same that was discussed earlier in the year (reported below). The information in the paper clearly points to a working version of the EmDrive, and while it’s yet to be published, it is still set to run in the Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ scientific journal, AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power.

As discussed below, this is a massive step forward for the EmDrive and for those who believe in the theoretical technology. If the paper on NASA’s findings does in fact pass muster and see the light of day — which seems very likely — it’ll be a boon for further research and development of the EmDrive tech. This would open the door for continued study and tests, and may finally put humans on the road to fast, lightweight space travel.

An EmDrive paper has finally been accepted by peer review

Originally, this article pointed out that previous studies and papers on the EmDrive have either not been submitted, or passed peer review. Those days are in the past, however, given a NASA Eagleworks’ paper on the EmDrive test which has reportedly passed the peer review process and will soon be published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power.

This is an important step for the EmDrive as it adds legitimacy to the technology and the tests done thus far, opening the door for other groups to replicate the tests. This will also allow other groups to devote more resources to uncovering why and how it works, and how to iterate on the drive to make it a viable form of propulsion. So, while a single peer-reviewed paper isn’t going to suddenly equip the human race with interplanetary travel, it’s the first step toward eventually realizing that possible future.

What is the EmDrive?

See, the EmDrive is a conundrum. First designed in 2001 by aerospace engineer Roger Shawyer, the technology can be summed up as a propellantless propulsion system, meaning the engine doesn’t use fuel to cause a reaction. Removing the need for fuel makes a craft substantially lighter, and therefore easier to move (and cheaper to make, theoretically). In addition, the hypothetical drive is able to reach extremely high speeds — we’re talking potentially getting humans to the outer reaches of the solar system in a matter of months.

The issue is, the entire concept of a reactionless drive is inconsistent with Newton’s conservation of momentum, which states that within a closed system, linear and angular momentum remain constant regardless of any changes that take place within said system. More plainly: Unless an outside force is applied, an object will not move.

Reactionless drives are named as such because they lack the “reaction” defined in Newton’s third law: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” But this goes against our current fundamental understanding of physics: An action (propulsion of a craft) taking place without a reaction (ignition of fuel and expulsion of mass) should be impossible. For such a thing to occur, it would mean an as-yet-undefined phenomenon is taking place — or our understanding of physics is completely wrong.

How does the EmDrive “work?”

Setting aside the potentially physics-breaking improbabilities of the technology, let’s break down in simple terms how the proposed drive operates. The EmDrive is what is called an RF resonant cavity thruster, and is one of several hypothetical machines that use this model. These designs work by having a magnetron push microwaves into a closed truncated cone, then push against the short end of the cone, and propel the craft forward.

This is in contrast to the form of propulsion current spacecraft use, which burn large quantities of fuel to expel a massive amount of energy and mass to rocket the craft into the air. An often-used metaphor for the inefficacy of this is to compare the particles pushing against the enclosure and producing thrust to the act of sitting in a car and pushing a steering wheel to move the car forward.

While tests have been done on experimental versions of the drive — with low energy inputs resulting in a few micronewtons of thrust (about as much force as the weight of a penny) — The first peer-reviewed paper has only been recently accepted, and none of the findings from other tests have ever been published in a peer-reviewed journal. It’s possible some positive thrust results may have been caused by interference or an unaccounted error with test equipment. The fact that NASA Eagleworks’ paper has been reportedly accepted by peer review and will be published in AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power does add quite a bit of legitimacy to these claims, however.

Although there’s been much skepticism regarding the EmDrive prior to the Eagleworks paper, it’s important to note that there’s been a number of people who have tested the drive and reported achieving thrust.

In 2001, Shawyer was given a £45,000 grant from the British government to test the EmDrive. His test reportedly achieved 0.016 Newtons of force and required 850 watts of power, but no peer review of the tests verified this. It’s worth noting, however, that this number was low enough that it was potentially an experimental error.

In 2008, Yang Juan and a team of Chinese researches at the Northwestern Polytechnical University allegedly verified the theory behind RF resonant cavity thrusters, and subsequently built their own version in 2010, testing the drive multiple times from 2012 to 2014. Tests results were purportedly positive, achieving up yo 750 mN (millinewtons) of thrust, and requiring 2,500 watts of power.

In 2014, NASA researchers, tested their own version of an EmDrive, including in a hard vacuum. Once again, the group reported thrust (about 1/1,000 of Shawyer’s claims), and once again, the data was never published through peer-reviewed sources. Other NASA groups are skeptical of researchers’ claims, but in their paper, it is clearly stated that these findings neither confirm nor refute the drive, instead calling for further tests.

In 2015, that same NASA group tested a version of chemical engineer Guido Fetta’s Cannae Drive (née Q Drive), and reported positive net thrust. Similarly, a research group at Dresden University of Technology also tested the drive, again reporting thrust, both predicted and unexpected.
Yet another test by a NASA research group, Eagleworks, in late 2015 seemingly confirmed the validity of the EmDrive. The test corrected errors that had occurred in the previous tests, and surprisingly, the drive achieved thrust. However, the group has not yet submitted their findings for peer review. It’s possible that other unforeseen errors in the experiment may have cause thrust (the most likely of which is that the vacuum was compromised, causing heat to expand air within it testing environment and move the drive). Whether the findings are ultimately published or not, more tests need to be done. That’s exactly what Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory intend to do. For EmDrive believers, there seems to be some hope.

In mid-2016, a new theory was put forth by physicist Michael McCulloch, a researcher from Plymouth University in the United Kingdom, which may offer an explanation of the thrust observed in tests. McCulloch’s theory deals with inertia and something called the Unruh effect — a concept predicted by relativity, which makes the universe appear hotter the more you accelerate, with the heat observed relative to the acceleration.

McCulloch’s new theory deals with the unconfirmed concept of Unruh radiation, which infers that particles form out of the vacuum of space as a direct result from the observed heating of the universe due to acceleration. This theoretical concept largely fits into our current understanding of the universe and predicts the results of inertia we currently observe, albeit with one notable exception: small accelerations on the scale of about what has been observed while testing the EM Drive.

This acceleration comes as a result of the Unruh radiation particles, whose wavelengths increase as acceleration decreases. Unruh particles at different wavelengths would have to fit at either end of the EM Drive’s cone, and as they bounce around inside the cone, their inertia would change as well, which would ultimately result in thrust.

McCulloch’s theory is, admittedly, a bit difficult to parlay into succinct layman’s terms. If you’re curious and want to delve into further reading on the theory, you can read McCulloch’s entire paper discussing his theory here. The point here is that, should the Unruh Effect and Unruh Radiation be confirmed, it offers an entirely plausible explanation for the EM Drive’s seemingly heretofore impossible thrust observations. This will require further research and experimentation, and gives the propulsion system even more momentum for testing.

Implications of a working EmDrive

It’s easy to see how many in the scientific community are wary of EmDrive and RF resonant cavity thrusts altogether. But on the other hand, the wealth of studies raises a few questions: Why is there such a interest in the technology, and why do so many people wish to test it? What exactly are the claims being made about the drive that make it such an attractive idea? While everything from atmospheric temperature-controlling satellites, to safer and more efficient automobiles have been drummed up as potential applications for the drive, the real draw of the technology — and the impetus for its creation in the first place — is the implications for space travel.

Spacecraft equipped with a reactionless drive could potentially make it to the moon in just a few hours, Mars in two to three months, and Pluto within two years. These are extremely bold claims, but if the EmDrive does turn out to be a legitimate technology, they may not be all that outlandish. And with no need to pack several tons-worth of fuel, spacecraft become cheaper and easier to produce, and far lighter.

For NASA and other such organizations, including the numerous private space corporations like SpaceX, lightweight, affordable spacecraft that can travel to remote parts of space fast are something of a unicorn. Still, for that to become a reality, the science has to add up.

Shawyer is adamant that there is no need for pseudoscience or quantum theories to explain how EmDrive works. Instead, he believes that current models of Newtonian physics offer an explanation, and has written papers on the subject, one of which is currently being peer reviewed (separate from the Eagleworks paper). He expects the paper to be published sometime this year. While in the past Shawyer has been criticized by other scientists for incorrect and inconsistent science, if the paper does indeed get published, it may begin to legitimize the EmDrive and spur more testing and research.

Despite his insistence that the drive behaves within the laws of physics, it hasn’t prevented him from making bold assertions regarding EmDrive. Shawyer has gone on record saying that this new drive produced warp bubbles which allow the drive to move, claiming that this is how NASA’s test results were likely achieved. Assertions such as these have garnered much interest online, but have no clear supporting data and will (at the very least) require extensive testing and debate in order to be taken seriously by the scientific community — the majority of which remain skeptical of Shawyer’s claims. Hopefully, with this new peer reviewed paper, more EmDrive tests will be undertaken, helping elucidate just how this thing works.

Colin Johnston of the Armagh Planetarium wrote an extensive critique of the EmDrive and the inconclusive findings of numerous tests. Similarly, Corey S. Powell of Discovery wrote his own indictment of both Shawyer’s EmDrive and Fetta’s Cannae Drive, as well as the recent fervor over NASA’s findings. Both point out the need for greater discretion when reporting on such instances. Professor and mathematical physicist, John C. Baez expressed his exhaustion at the conceptual technology’s persistence in debates and discussions, calling the entire notion of a reactionless drive “baloney.” His impassioned dismissal echoes the sentiments of many others.

Shawyer’s EmDrive has been met with enthusiasm elsewhere, including the website NASASpaceFlight.com — where information about the most recent Eagleworks’ tests was first posted — and the popular journal New Scientist, which published a favorable and optimistic paper on EmDrive. (The editors later issued a statement that, despite enduring excitement over the idea, they should have shown more tact when writing on the controversial subject.)

NASA Eagleworks’ paper opens the door for better understanding of the technology, and for further refinement of it. A demonstrable, working EmDrive could open up exciting possibilities for both space and terrestrial travel — not to mention call into question our entire understanding of physics.

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Link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/explainin...162741826.html

Sounds like bullshit. Most of the data mentioned in your link has either been attributed to experimental error or not replicable. Eagleworks, definitely the most reputable of everyone here, is highly skeptical of their own data. The first guy who designed it (Shawyer) is probably a true believer but that doesn't make him right.

Long story short: I'll believe it when I see it.

This is going to turn out like that faster than light neutrinos thing.

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

This is going to turn out like that faster than light neutrinos thing.

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Or cold fusion. Are you old enough to remember the cold fusion paper?

Anyway, it's fascinating because NASA's apparently going to publish a paper presumably showing experimental support.... Sure would be neat.

Anyone see Arrival? Spurred by the film, Space.com put together an article about human reaction/ protocols in the event of a SETI signal detection or an actual alien visit. Apparently there is an official protocol out there for a SETI detection, though with the various false alarms over the years, the protocol has always been ignored. I genuinely think the public would respond to an actual signal detection with a great big yawn. :o Half the majority would simply deny it's real and ignore it as a hoax/ conspiracy, regardless of the science behind it. The other half would be disinterested b/c it's indecipherable or just a meaningless beacon, and/or it's nature so esoteric nobody can personally connect to it.

An arrival, on the other hand, would be fucking scary, IMHO. There's no publicly known protocol to respond to such an event, though it wouldn't surprise me, or the article's author, if the Pentagon had a plan in a binder stashed in some dank basement planning room. Regardless of protocol, a hostile arrival would certainly mean our destruction -- indeed our first inclination the aliens were even here would probably occur the moment before our extinction.

A friendly arrival might or might not end in catastrophe, and I confess my expectation leans toward a more pessimistic outcome. How can it not? Really, I'm asking that. Who's an optimist here?

Here's the article. Didn't think it's worth quoting...

link: http://www.space.com/34722-alien-arr...adline+Feed%29

I love Stephen Hawking's brutal pessimism of late. I do wonder if he's getting a little wacky in his old age, or if his intellect is still solid and this is what he's seeing. I think he's right about the march of technology, that we're on the cusp of bringing the sky down on ourselves. It's not at all hard to reach that conclusion. Where I disagree with him is in multi-planet colonization as a solution. I just don't see humanity ever pulling that off, certainly not in the next 100 years, just in time to stave off extinction -- so not at all.

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Stephen Hawking Puts An Expiry Date On Humanity

IBTimes
Suman Varandani
November 16, 2016

Stephen Hawking believes that humanity has less than a thousand years on Earth before a mass extinction occurs, the leading theoretical physicist said during a speech Tuesday at Oxford University Union, U.K.

According to Hawking, the only way humans can avoid the possibility of extinction was to find another planet to inhabit. At the talk, Hawking gave a one-hour speech on man's understanding of the origin of the universe from primordial creation myths to the most cutting-edge predictions made by "M-theory," which presents an idea about the basic substance of the universe.

“We must also continue to go into space for the future of humanity,” he said. “I don’t think we will survive another 1000 without escaping beyond our fragile planet.”

Earlier this year, the 74-year-old predicted that technology would lead Earth to a virtually inevitable global cataclysm.

“We face a number of threats to our survival from nuclear war, catastrophic global warming, and genetically engineered viruses,” he said in January. “The number is likely to increase in the future, with the development of new technologies, and new ways things can go wrong. Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time.”

Hawking reportedly added that finding another planet was the only chance of survival.

“[We] have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race,” he said. “However, we will not establish self-sustaining colonies in space for at least the next hundred years, so we have to be very careful in this period.”

Since 2009, NASA has been working to discover Earth-like planets that can support life.

The discovery of more than 2,000 planets has been confirmed so far and over 4,500 “planet candidates” are waiting to have their existence confirmed.

“The first exoplanet orbiting another star like our sun was discovered in 1995,” according to NASA. “Exoplanets, especially small Earth-size worlds, belonged within the realm of science fiction just 21 years ago. Today, and thousands of discoveries later, astronomers are on the cusp of finding something people have dreamt about for thousands of years.”

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Link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/stephen-h...103124525.html

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Originally Posted by EyeKhan

Anyone see Arrival? Spurred by the film, Space.com put together an article about human reaction/ protocols in the event of a SETI signal detection or an actual alien visit. Apparently there is an official protocol out there for a SETI detection, though with the various false alarms over the years, the protocol has always been ignored. I genuinely think the public would respond to an actual signal detection with a great big yawn. :o Half the majority would simply deny it's real and ignore it as a hoax/ conspiracy, regardless of the science behind it. The other half would be disinterested b/c it's indecipherable or just a meaningless beacon, and/or it's nature so esoteric nobody can personally connect to it.

An arrival, on the other hand, would be fucking scary, IMHO. There's no publicly known protocol to respond to such an event, though it wouldn't surprise me, or the article's author, if the Pentagon had a plan in a binder stashed in some dank basement planning room. Regardless of protocol, a hostile arrival would certainly mean our destruction -- indeed our first inclination the aliens were even here would probably occur the moment before our extinction.

A friendly arrival might or might not end in catastrophe, and I confess my expectation leans toward a more pessimistic outcome. How can it not? Really, I'm asking that. Who's an optimist here?

Here's the article. Didn't think it's worth quoting...

link: http://www.space.com/34722-alien-arr...adline+Feed%29

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1. the chance that an alien civilisation exists during this same blink-of-an-eye period in which humans also presently exist is remote
2. even if one did exist during this same blink-of-an-eye period in which humans also presently exist, the chance that they would be of the right technological stage to be undertaking interstellar travel in this blink-of-an-eye period is more remote
3. even if one were of the right technological stage to be undertaking interstellar travel in this blink-of-an-eye period in which we exist, the chances of them wandering around or looking for life anywhere near this solar-system/quadrant of the galaxy/galaxy/this quadrant of the universe is even more remote than that

Ain't gonna happen. Alien civilisations have come and gone, and will continue to come and go throughout the life of this universe, but the chances of all the above conditions being met in such an infinitesimally small window of time during human existence almost certainly rules it out.

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Originally Posted by Timbuk2

1. the chance that an alien civilisation exists during this same blink-of-an-eye period in which humans also presently exist is remote
2. even if one did exist during this same blink-of-an-eye period in which humans also presently exist, the chance that they would be of the right technological stage to be undertaking interstellar travel in this blink-of-an-eye period is more remote
3. even if one were of the right technological stage to be undertaking interstellar travel in this blink-of-an-eye period in which we exist, the chances of them wandering around or looking for life anywhere near this solar-system/quadrant of the galaxy/galaxy/this quadrant of the universe is even more remote than that

Ain't gonna happen. Alien civilisations have come and gone, and will continue to come and go throughout the life of this universe, but the chances of all the above conditions being met in such an infinitesimally small window of time during human existence almost certainly rules it out.

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Just a few comments:

1. Here you are assuming all civilizations only exist for a blink of the eye, cosmologically speaking. but other possibilities exist, like one or some or many exist/ have existed for hundreds of millions to billions of years.

2. rests upon 1....

3. true only if there were only 1/ few civilizations and those civilizations were confined to a single/ few star systems and/or have not undertaken any kind of massive exploration effort, like with self-replicating exploration/ colonization machines (von neuman?)

Also - this only addresses visitors, not signals. Even if 1 above were true, any signals that they generated would long outlive them, especially if they set up long-lasting beacons for whatever reason, and those signals would overlap with the presumably multitude of other flash in the plan civilizations. Hard to say how many would make the effort to set up a sufficiently powerful signal, of course. And this line of thought leads back to the Fermi paradox...

Titan, the easiest world to colonize in the solar system? Really? I would never have thunk it. Getting there would be a problem, no matter how you dice it.

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Let's Colonize Titan
Saturn's largest moon might be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live
By Charles Wohlforth, Amanda R. Hendrix on November 25, 2016

The idea of a human colony on Titan, a moon of Saturn, might sound crazy. Its temperature hovers at nearly 300° below zero Fahrenheit, and its skies rain methane and ethane that flow into hydrocarbon seas. Nevertheless, Titan could be the only place in the solar system where it makes sense to build a permanent, self-sufficient human settlement.

We reached this conclusion after looking at the planets in a new way: ecologically. We considered the habitat that human beings need and searched for those conditions in our celestial neighborhood.

Our colonization scenario, based on science, technology, politics and culture, presents a thought experiment for anyone who wants to think about the species’ distant future.

We expect human nature to stay the same. Human beings of the future will have the same drives and needs we have now. Practically speaking, their home must have abundant energy, livable temperatures and protection from the rigors of space, including cosmic radiation, which new research suggests is unavoidably dangerous for biological beings like us.

Up to now, most researchers have looked at the Moon or Mars as the next step for human habitation. These destinations have the dual advantages of proximity and of not being clearly unrealistic as choices for where we should go. That second characteristic is lacking at the other bodies near us in the inner solar system, Mercury and Venus.

Mercury is too close to the sun, with temperature extremes and other physical conditions that seem hardly survivable. Venus’s atmosphere is poisonous, crushingly heavy and furnace-hot, due to a run-away greenhouse effect. It might be possible to live suspended by balloons high in Venus’s atmosphere, but we can’t see how such a habitation would ever be self-sustaining.

But although the Moon and Mars look like comparatively reasonable destinations, they also have a deal-breaking problem. Neither is protected by a magnetosphere or atmosphere. Galactic Cosmic Rays, the energetic particles from distant supernovae, bombard the surfaces of the Moon and Mars, and people can’t live long-term under the assault of GCRs.

The cancer-causing potential of this powerful radiation has long been known, although it remains poorly quantified. But research in the least two years has added a potentially more serious hazard: brain damage. GCRs include particles such as iron nuclei traveling at close to the speed of light that destroy brain tissue.

Exposing mice to this radiation at levels similar to those found in space caused brain damage and loss of cognitive abilities, according to a study published last year by Vipan K. Parihar and colleagues in Science Advances. That research suggests we aren’t ready to send astronauts to Mars for a visit, much less to live there.

On Earth, we are shielded from GCRs by water in the atmosphere. But it takes two meters of water to block half of the GCRs present in unprotected space. Practically, a Moon or Mars settlement would have to be built underground to be safe from this radiation.

Underground shelter is hard to build and not flexible or easy to expand. Settlers would need enormous excavations for room to supply all their needs for food, manufacturing and daily life. We ask why they would go to that trouble. We can live underground on Earth. What’s the advantage to doing so on Mars?

Beyond Mars, the next potential home is among the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. There are dozens of choices among them, but the winner is obvious. Titan is the most Earthlike body other than our original home.

Titan is the only other body in the solar system with liquid on the surface, with its lakes of methane and ethane that look startlingly like water bodies on Earth. It rains methane on Titan, occasionally filling swamps. Dunes of solid hydrocarbons look remarkably like Earth’s sand dunes.

For protection from radiation, Titan has a nitrogen atmosphere 50 percent thicker than Earth’s. Saturn’s magnetosphere also provides shelter. On the surface, vast quantities of hydrocarbons in solid and liquid form lie ready to be used for energy. Although the atmosphere lacks oxygen, water ice just below the surface could be used to provide oxygen for breathing and to combust hydrocarbons as fuel.

It’s cold on Titan, at -180°C (-291°F), but thanks to its thick atmosphere, residents wouldn’t need pressure suits—just warm clothing and respirators. Housing could be made of plastic produced from the unlimited resources harvested on the surface, and could consist of domes inflated by warm oxygen and nitrogen. The ease of construction would allow huge indoor spaces.

Titanians (as we call them) wouldn’t have to spend all their time inside. The recreational opportunities on Titan are unique. For example, you could fly. The weak gravity—similar to the Moon’s—combined with the thick atmosphere would allow individuals to aviate with wings on their backs. If the wings fall off, no worry, landing will be easy. Terminal velocity on Titan is a tenth that found on the Earth.

How will we get there? Currently, we can’t. Unfortunately, we probably can’t get to Mars safely, either, without faster propulsion to limit the time in space and associated GCR dosage before astronauts are unduly harmed. We will need faster propulsion to Mars or Titan. For Titan, much faster, as the trip currently takes seven years.

There is no quick way to move off the Earth. We will have to solve our problems here. But if our species continues to invest in the pure science of space exploration and the stretch technology needed to preserve human health in space, people will eventually live on Titan.

Charles Wohlforth and Amanda Hendrix are the authors of Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets

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https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...olonize-titan/

Interesting editorial advocating another re-jigger of NASA's role in crewed space flight. Unfortunately, given who's now (about to be, anyway) in charge, I think we're more likely to see NASA dissolved than redirected in any intelligent way. The very last thing I would expect to see from this arch-conservative, backward looking, ignorance-embracing administration is visionary change to space technology investment and development. :sour:

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NASA Should Build a Superhighway in Space
NASA needs to get out of the rocket business and start doing what it's uniquely qualified for
By Howard Bloom on January 4, 2017

Donald Trump will take power any minute now, and we need to take advantage of the change in the White House to change NASA's focus.

Why? NASA needs to get out of the rocket business and shift its attention to a permanent space transport infrastructure, an Eisenhower-style highway in the sky. An infrastructure with:

• Gas stations (propellant depots),
• Rest stops and permanent housing—roomy human habitats with windows and vegetable gardens,
• Truck stops and freight yards—logistics bases with cargo-handling equipment,
• Trucks, SUVs, and dune buggies—Moon-and-Mars ground vehicles; plus tugs to haul loads around in space,
• Fuel production equipment—units to turn the water of the Moon and Mars into rocket fuel, breathable oxygen, and drinkable water,
• Units to turn the carbon dioxide in Mars' atmosphere into plastics, graphene, and carbon fiber with which 3-d printers can build more habitats, tools, and rovers—more trucks, SUVs and dune buggies.
• Units to turn the rusty rocks lying around on the Martian surface into high strength steel for habitats.

Why move NASA into space highway construction? Because no one else will do it. And our future in space depends on it. Our future share in a space economy that United Launch Alliance (a joint venture rocket company from Boeing and Lockheed Martin) estimates will be worth $2.7 trillion in thirty years.

Look, a NASA under a new presidency has a brand new luxury. It can do for space what another government-supported project, the transcontinental railroad, did for trips to California in 1869. NASA can turn journeys to space from an expensive rarity to a possibility available to you and me.

How? The space industry has changed since the days when NASA was landing men on the moon. In that era, 1969 to 1972, really big rockets were made by governments. In fact, by only two governments, the governments of the Soviet Union and the USA. Big rockets were too expensive for anyone else. Rockets were like computers in the days when Thomas Watson, the head of IBM, supposedly said, “"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

That prediction was wrong. There are now over two billion computers in the world. You probably own at least two: one in your phone and another in your laptop. Like computers, really big rockets are being democratized. States like China, Japan, Israel, Iran, India, and Pakistan can afford them.

More important, two visionary American billionaires and their private companies have entered the rocket business: Elon Musk with SpaceX and Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin. And those two men are achieving a rocket revolution. The big rockets that government once made for nuclear war were disposable. Use them once and toss them away. So the rockets that governments made for space launches were also disposable. And rockets are expensive. Some have cost more than a billion dollars apiece. The result: using rockets for transportation was appallingly pricey.

Rocket transport was like buying a Rolls Royce, topping off its tank, driving it from LA to San Francisco, then throwing it away in the Pacific Ocean when it ran out of gas and buying another Rolls to drive back from San Francisco to LA. This approach would make the round trip from LA to San Francisco very expensive. The cost would be roughly $700,000. At that price, how many people would make the trip?

But if you bought a Rolls, drove it from LA to San Francisco, refueled it, filled it with paying passengers, and drove it back and forth filled with new passengers until the car wore out, what would that do to the price of the ride? It would bring it down dramatically. In fact, it would make the trip affordable even for your average middle class family.

That’s what Musk and Bezos are doing for space transport. Musk has sent rockets into space carrying satellites to orbit, then has landed those rockets in one piece free for reuse six times, either on an earthly launch pad or on one of his two Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship landing barges. Jeff Bezos has not quite gone as high into the sky, yet he has done Elon one better. He has launched a single rocket to the edge of space four times, pinpoint-landed that rocket on its landing pad, refueled it, then has flown that same rocket once again. By the end of 2017, both men will have accomplished what John Strickland, the Chief Analyst for a group Buzz Aldrin convinced me to start ten years ago, The Space Development Steering Committee, calls “the Reusability Revolution.”

Right now NASA is throwing money away. It is trying to create a new rocket—the Space Launch System—at a cost of $3 billion a year. In fact, the total development cost of that new rocket will be over $30 billion. And it’s a waste. The SLS will be able to launch 143 tons to orbit. Fabulous. Almost 10 percent more than the mighty Saturn V that put humans on the Moon 48 years ago. But Elon Musk is developing a rocket with nearly three times the throwing power—the Interplanetary Transport System. Meanwhile, by the end of 2017, Musk will launch a heavy lift rocket with twice the capacity of any other operational rocket on earth today, the 27-engine Falcon Heavy.

The NASA rocket, the Space Launch System, won’t be tested until 2018 and won’t be ready for its first manned flight until 2021. Musk’s Falcon Heavy will lift off by the end of this year and should be ready to launch humans in 2018. NASA’s Space Launch System, as you know, will cost over $30 billion to develop. The development of Musk’s Falcon Heavy will cost roughly $2 billion—one fifteenth the NASA cost.

More important, NASA’s SLS will cost between one and two billion dollars for each launch. Musk’s Falcon Heavy will cost roughly $90 million. In other words, you could buy between eleven and twenty two Falcon Heavy launches for the price of one SLS launch. You could buy an entire space program!

And there’s more. Musk has another rocket on the drawing boards, the Interplanetary Transport System, formerly known as the BFR (for Big F…ng Rocket). That one will carry almost four times the load of the Space Launch System. And it, too, will cost roughly one tenth of the SLS to develop and less than one-twentieth to launch.
But Musk is not alone. Jeff Bezos, too, has a really big rocket on the drawing boards. His current rocket is the New Shepard (for Alan Shepard, the first American launched to suborbital space). After that comes a bigger rocket, Bezos’ New Glenn (for John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth). Then an even bigger rocket, the New Armstrong (for Neil Armstrong, the first American to set foot on the Moon).

But so far, neither Musk or Bezos have announced development of the infrastructure that their rockets will need to make space transport a regular affair. Neither has revealed plans for permanent fuel stations, permanent rest stops, permanent apartments with windows, lawns, and greenery, permanent vehicles to tool around on the Moon and Mars, and the machinery to convert lunar and Martian ice into rocket fuel, oxygen and water. Neither are building the machines to convert Martian “air” into plastics, graphene, and carbon fiber. NASA is at its best when it does what others cannot do. And the new highway in the sky, the new Eisenhowering of space, is what Musk, Bezos, and you and I will need but cannot construct for ourselves.

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link: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...hway-in-space/

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Originally Posted by EyeKhan

In other news, KIC 8462852 (aka Tabby's Star) is even weirder. Apparently it's been dimming for the last 100 years, by like 20% -- the entire time period there are observational records. I so wish this is what all us sci-fi fans hope it is. But not very likely. Weird star, though. Really weird.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astro...t_century.html

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A new theory has been tabled regarding the odd dimming at Tabby's star. While planet gobbling is still pretty neat, it's nowhere near as fun as aliens building a mega-structure. This theory relies on incredibly unlikely timing, but because the competing mega-structure theory is even more incredible, this one has to be considered more plausible.

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A strange new theory may finally solve the mystery of an “alien megastructure” that has confounded scientists for months
WRITTEN BY Akshat Rathi

There isn’t a star like KIC 8462852. For the past 18 months, ever since a group of astronomers introduced the world to its strange, seemingly unnatural fluctuations in brightness, scientists have been obsessed with it.

What’s kept the interest so high is a hypothesis that the fluctuations happen because the star is surrounded by some alien megastructure. Unlike most alien hypotheses, it has so far stood up to challenges because no known natural phenomenon could better explain what astronomers are seeing.

That might be about to change. A study to be published on Monday (Jan. 16) in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society suggests that, if KIC 8462852 were to gobble up one or more of its own planets, that could create the patterns of light that put scientists on the case.

What are these patterns? Between 1890 and 1989, the mystery star lost about 14% of its brightness. In cosmological terms, that’s far too quick for any known natural dimming. Stranger still, over the few years before 2011, the Kepler space telescope caught the light from the star dipping for periods of just a few days, some times by as much as 22%.

The “alien megastructure” hypothesis, as Quartz explained previously, is this:

In the 1960s, renowned physicist Freeman Dyson argued that the energy demands of any intelligent race would, within a few millennia using advanced technology, outstrip whatever supply were available on the planet. In that case, the most effective way to start capturing more energy would be to build a solar-panel contraption to capture the star’s light. Such a structure would start small, but in theory eventually cover the whole star, in what is now called a “Dyson sphere.”

The suggestion, then, was that Kepler might have started observing KIC 8462852 while aliens were building a Dyson sphere around it. Hence the gradually declining brightness, as more of the star was surrounded by the sphere, and intermittent darkening as construction activity went on.

Brian Metzger of Columbia University and his colleagues have instead put up the planet-gobbling theory. Planets don’t usually fall into their stars, but one could if, say, a large body like a comet knocked the planet out of its orbit and sent it to its doom. They reason that when a star swallows something as large as a planet, for a cosmologically short period, between 200 years and 10,000 years, its brightness increases as it burns away the planet’s matter. Then it would decline again. So if we happen to have started watching the star towards the end of such a period, it might explain the 14% fall in brightness over 100 years.

Also, an eaten-up planet could leave behind large debris, such as its moon or large pieces of the planet that for some reason weren’t sucked in. These large bodies could be passing in front of the star in orbit, blocking some of its light and causing the brief dips seen by the Kepler space telescope.

As with all the other explanations about KIC 8462852, this is still just a hypothesis. However, if KIC 8462852 is indeed gobbling up planets, some other stars must do it too. Finding another one would be one way to throw away the alien-megastructure hypothesis. (Unless, of course, the other star also just happens to have a Dyson sphere being built around it.)

Jason Wright of Pennsylvania State University at University Park, who suggested the alien-megastructure hypothesis, believes that the planet-gobbling explanation from Metzger and his colleagues is a strong one. “This paper puts a merger scenario on the table in a credible way,” he told the New Scientist. “I think this moves it into the top tier of explanations.”

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Link: https://qz.com/884106/tabbys-star-al...=yahoo&ref=yfp

NASA to present new discovery regarding exoplanet(s) at news conference tomorrow. Lots of speculative buzz out there, but let's not get too excited! Probably just a "hey, we found an earth-sized planet in some star's goldilocks zone some zillion miles away." But you never know...

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Feb. 20, 2017
MEDIA ADVISORY M17-019


NASA to Host News Conference on Discovery Beyond Our Solar System


NASA will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 22, to present new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun, known as exoplanets. The event will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website.

Details of these findings are embargoed by the journal Nature until 1 p.m.

Limited seating is available in the NASA TV studio for media who would like to attend in person at the agency’s Headquarters at 300 E Street SW in Washington. Media unable to attend in person may ask questions by telephone. To attend in person or participate by phone, media must send an email with their name, affiliation and telephone number to Dwayne Brown at dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov by noon Feb. 22.

Media and the public also may ask questions during the briefing on Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA.

The briefing participants are:

· Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington
· Michael Gillon, astronomer at the University of Liege in Belgium
· Sean Carey, manager of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at Caltech/IPAC, Pasadena, California
· Nikole Lewis, astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore
· Sara Seager, professor of planetary science and physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

A Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) about exoplanets will be held following the briefing at 3 p.m. with scientists available to answer questions in English and Spanish.

For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and updated scheduling information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv


For more information on exoplanets, visit:

http://exoplanets.nasa.gov


-end-


Felicia Chou / Sean Potter
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726 / 202-358-1536
felicia.chou@nasa.gov / sean.potter@nasa.gov


Elizabeth Landau
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6425
elizabeth.landau@jpl.nasa.gov

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http://www.theonion.com/article/nati...ferences-51412

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

http://www.theonion.com/article/nati...ferences-51412

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LOL, I was actually thinking a little along those lines when I saw the press conference was scheduled. It would be nice if they are going to announce something huge, but if they were, well, it would have leaked already, right? So, yeah, it'll be something like there's water in the atmosphere of some planet about the size of Earth, about the right distance from it's star, 400 light years away. Nice, but not stunning. Now, if there was diatomic oxygen in that atmosphere....

They found seven (7) Earth like planets around a star 40 light years away, 3 in the habitable zone.

http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/e...6db1492cf0e4e6

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

They found seven (7) Earth like planets around a star 40 light years away, 3 in the habitable zone.

http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/e...6db1492cf0e4e6

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This is a potentially huge discovery. Reading in the NYT, the star is dim enough and close enough that astronomers believe they can study the planet's atmospheres and determine if gasses are present that only life, as we know it of course, could produce.

It's unlikely. The star is only ~500 million years old, and it took Earth quite a bit longer than that to start getting life. Could be good terraforming candidates though. At 40 light years away, that's going to take a couple thousand years in the best case - we should get started right away.

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Originally Posted by EyeKhan

This is a potentially huge discovery. Reading in the NYT, the star is dim enough and close enough that astronomers believe they can study the planet's atmospheres and determine if gasses are present that only life, as we know it of course, could produce.

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I know I'm normally the person to throw cold water on new discoveries, but I'm actually pretty interested in this one. Not because it's necessarily such a unique find - I suspect that as we study more systems with better instruments we will continue to find a plethora of exoplanets - but because it's (a) close and (b) relatively easy to study due to the aforementioned dimness.

If indeed there are interesting results from studies with the Webb telescope and its successors, I would actually think it might not be the worst idea to send a deep space probe there sometime in the next few centuries.

edit:

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Originally Posted by Wraith

It's unlikely. The star is only ~500 million years old, and it took Earth quite a bit longer than that to start getting life. Could be good terraforming candidates though. At 40 light years away, that's going to take a couple thousand years in the best case - we should get started right away.

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Okay, now the cold water. First, I'm not sure that the Earth is a useful yardstick to understand the likelihood and speed of life generation and evolution - sample size of one and all. There are some theories suggesting that life appeared on Earth at roughly the first moment it would have been feasible - which might be good news, since if we are to believe it might become feasible more quickly on other exoplanets, being younger doesn't necessary mean barren. Or it could be bad news since if it took Earth ~1 billion years to get to 'feasible' for life, it might take these planets quite a long time. On the other hand, it's possible those theories are wrong, and life was at least possible on Earth substantially earlier, it just didn't happen to occur until ~1 billion years. In which case it's anyone's guess if the other planets could have life, being a low-probability stochastic process.

As for terraforming and presumable colonization, I think that's a pipe dream until we have a lot better transportation and automation technologies. Feasible to start on the scale of centuries, perhaps, but not on the scale of decades. Also likely to be very expensive and of limited value to Homo sapiens for a long time to come.

This is the most excited I've ever been. No doubt those planets have already been colonized by spacefaring aliens.

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Originally Posted by Wraith

It's unlikely. The star is only ~500 million years old, and it took Earth quite a bit longer than that to start getting life. Could be good terraforming candidates though. At 40 light years away, that's going to take a couple thousand years in the best case - we should get started right away.

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Regardless of the system's youth, checking the atmospheres is still a hugely important data point. We have no idea how long is long enough for life to develop. And given the differences between our star system and this one, who the hell knows what conditions kept life from developing here before it did. Those conditions may have only existed with this newer star for a far shorter period of time.... or not at all. Making the observations will tell us a lot regardless of what is found.

What's interesting is that TRAPPIST-1 is one example of just about the most common type of cool, dim red dwarf star out there, making up approximately 80% of the stars in the galaxy, according to some people. And it's sporting 7 (seven) earth-sized planets, 3 marked as potentially habitable.

What that means is that either TRAPPIST-1 (more stars named after types of monks, please) is a particularly well-endowed example, or the conditions for life are just ridiculously common, suggesting a galaxy teeming with life even if TRAPPIST-1 itself turns out to be barren.

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

What's interesting is that TRAPPIST-1 is one example of just about the most common type of cool, dim red dwarf star out there, making up approximately 80% of the stars in the galaxy, according to some people. And it's sporting 7 (seven) earth-sized planets, 3 marked as potentially habitable.

What that means is that either TRAPPIST-1 (more stars named after types of monks, please) is a particularly well-endowed example, or the conditions for life are just ridiculously common, suggesting a galaxy teeming with life even if TRAPPIST-1 itself turns out to be barren.

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Right, and that leads us back to the Fermi Paradox.... where the fuck is everyone?

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Originally Posted by EyeKhan

Regardless of the system's youth, checking the atmospheres is still a hugely important data point. We have no idea how long is long enough for life to develop. And given the differences between our star system and this one, who the hell knows what conditions kept life from developing here before it did. Those conditions may have only existed with this newer star for a far shorter period of time.... or not at all. Making the observations will tell us a lot regardless of what is found.

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Yeah, the atmospheres will still be interesting, I just don't think this is going to be the system we find evidence of alien life in. It may be that Earth was just profoundly unlucky in how long it took to form life, but absent other evidence we should assume we were near the center of the probability distribution. But I agree that observing the atmospheres will still generate useful info and be good practice for when we do find that system. If nothing else, it'll help us in coming up with some more accurate guesses for more variables in the Drake equation.

edit: It just occurred to me, the system is so small, I'm actually wondering how stable their orbits are. Also tidal locking if they are stable.

I watched the press conference, but I was only half paying attention. The graphics they'd done suggested that pretty much all of them were tidally locked, and I did recall something about there being a fair bit of gravational interplay between the planets.

Also, one of the scientists mentioned that if you were on one of the planets, the other or some of the other planets would appear in the sky the same way the moon does in ours, not as points of light as we see, e.g. Mars or Venus. Would make for a pretty spectacular night sky.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

I watched the press conference, but I was only half paying attention. The graphics they'd done suggested that pretty much all of them were tidally locked, and I did recall something about there being a fair bit of gravational interplay between the planets.

Also, one of the scientists mentioned that if you were on one of the planets, the other or some of the other planets would appear in the sky the same way the moon does in ours, not as points of light as we see, e.g. Mars or Venus. Would make for a pretty spectacular night sky.

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Thanks, I didn't get to watch the conference and only heard about it second-hand from the press. The tidal locking sorta puts a damper on my colonial ambitions - I realize the terminators are still sorta usable, but we can do better. Oh well - maybe next system. Still need to get started on those seeding drones in case we can't find something ready made for us.

I don't think tidal locking is a block to colonisation - the outermost planet, for example, only gets as much sunlight as Mars, so it's hardly going to be a searing desert on the daylight side. Arguably, their similarity to Earth in mass and size makes them a more attractive colonisation target than Mars, whatever the conditions on them, because while you can deal with it being too hot, too cold or the wrong atmosphere with artificial structures, you can't make a planet closer to 1g than it already is.

We-e-eeell you could just make two of the smaller planets collide and cross your fingers. Might be worth a shot. I mean, there would probably be five left even if you were to fuck things up.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

I don't think tidal locking is a block to colonisation - the outermost planet, for example, only gets as much sunlight as Mars, so it's hardly going to be a searing desert on the daylight side. Arguably, their similarity to Earth in mass and size makes them a more attractive colonisation target than Mars, whatever the conditions on them, because while you can deal with it being too hot, too cold or the wrong atmosphere with artificial structures, you can't make a planet closer to 1g than it already is.

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Even if the temperatures are bearable there, it's still freezing on the other side limiting the habitable area, and you've still got the temperature differential that's going to cause some pretty awful weather conditions. Planets look like they're pretty abundant, so we can find better.

Also, if gravity's your chief concern, might I suggest Venus? It's probably not an easy terraform job, even as far as terraforming jobs go, but it is right there.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wraith

Even if the temperatures are bearable there, it's still freezing on the other side limiting the habitable area, and you've still got the temperature differential that's going to cause some pretty awful weather conditions. Planets look like they're pretty abundant, so we can find better.

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a) I don't think physical space is going to be an issue for a while
b) I think you mean, awesome weather conditions

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Also, if gravity's your chief concern, might I suggest Venus? It's probably not an easy terraform job, even as far as terraforming jobs go, but it is right there.

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I don't like Venus.

Btw, in other slightly less exciting but important NASA news:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017...ut-to-pay-off/