100-Year Spaceship Program

At a news conference held in San Francisco on Saturday, NASA Ames director Simon Worden talked about what his division was doing with funding from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). Something he called the "Hundred Year Starship" project.

The project has been given $1 million dollars from DARPA and another $100,000 from NASA in the hopes of utilizing new propulsion ideas. One of which is familiar to Star Trek fans the world over: Electric propulsion.

Quoting Mr. Worden, “Anybody that watches the (Star Trek starship) Enterprise, you know you don’t see huge plumes of fire," he said. "Within a few years we will see the first true prototype of a spaceship that will take us between worlds.”

The Hundred Year Ship Project is now aimed at settling other worlds.

Mr. Worden is seeking out some billionaires the likes of which include Larry Page-Google founder, to help get the idea off the launch pad so to speak. Quoting again, "You don’t have to carry all the fuel," he said. "You use that energy from a laser or microwave power to heat a propellant; it gets you a pretty big factor of improvement. I think that’s one way of getting off the world.”

This news dovetails with a recent article published in the latest issue of Popular Science (November 2010), the cover article entitled "39 Days to Mars." It was an article that focus on former astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz and his Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) engine.

The VASIMR uses a electrical source such as a nuclear reactor or a solar generator to transform hydrogen gas into plasma. Powerful magnets then force the plasma out of the rocket engine up to 123,000 mph.

One can suppose that Mr. Worden was indeed referring to the VASIMR in his talks with Larry Page and at the news conference.

UPDATE (October 31, 2010): Found this interesting take on this subject here (http://www.suite101.com/content/newly-revealed-nasa-cover-up-another-possible-future-ufo-a302707).

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Ref. "NASA preps '100-year spaceship' program to boldly go where none have gone before" By Peter Farquhar. October 23, 2010. (http://www.news.com.au/technology/nasa-preps-100-year-spaceship-programme-to-boldly-go-where-none-have-gone-before/story-e6frfro0-1225941547507).

image is Star Trek USS Enterprise pulled off of the net from Paramount Pictures.

Use an Asteroid as a Space Station

President Obama says we should visit an asteroid instead of the Moon. Read what Ray Villard worte about on Discovery.com "Let's Build an Interplanetary Space Station." Link is in the Ref section as always, but I have included a few paragraphs as a preview below...

The Obama administration has directed NASA to send a manned mission to an asteroid by 2025. This is attractive because very little fuel is needed to land on an asteroid, and the journey is shorter than a trip to Mars.

There are over 1,000 NEAs to choose from. They've been popping up in the news almost weekly. Just this week a small townhouse-sized asteroid designated 2010 TD54 skimmed by us at an altitude just a few thousand miles above our geostationary communication satellites.

But rather than simply visiting a co-orbital asteroid and bringing back rock samples, the mission could be used as a step toward the ultimate goal of space colonization.

A carefully selected asteroid with the right density and strength could be hollowed out for an underground base to be established. This would provide a stable temperature, and shielding from micrometeorites and solar radiation. Solar power would be plentiful. This kind of engineering was talked about for a moon colony, but the freight costs to land people and equipment on an asteroid are much lower.

For the rest, please visit Discovery.com.

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Ref. Discovery.com. "LET'S BUILD AN INTERPLANETARY SPACE STATION" by Ray Villard. October 14, 2010. (http://news.discovery.com/space/lets-build-an-interplanetary-space-station.html).

Big Apple UFO

A shiny object that appeared over Manhattan's West Side made the news today. Police and FAA claim it was nothing more than balloons. The object first appeared about 1:30pm in the afternoon. It appeared to be about 5,000 feet altitude.

For more information, read the orignal news article with the link info below.

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Ref. NY Daily News. "Mystery shiny objects floating over Manhattan spark UFO frenzy" by BY Oren Yaniv, Rocco Parascandola and Lukas I. Alpert. October 13, 2010. (http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/10/13/2010-10-13_mystery_shiny_objects_floating_over_manhattan_spark_ufo_frenzy.html).

First Glide Flight of VSS Enterprise

October 10, 2010 over Mojave, California, Virigin Galactic tested its first commercial space craft in glide tests this date. VSS Enterprise (also known as SpaceShipTwo) was released from the White Knight carrier aircraft at an altitude of 45,000 feet. At the controls were Pete Siebold as pilot in command and Mike Alsbury as co-pilot.

For more details of this event, check out the actual news article. Pictures also came from this website.

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Ref.

1. Comspacewatch.com (http://www.comspacewatch.com/news/viewpr.rss.html?pid=31823).

Russian spy waves off cosmonauts

Russian spy waves off cosmonauts

A New Earth Size World Discovered!

Got this bit of news via the Drudge Report...

US astronomers reported on Wednesday that they have discovered a Earth-size planet that might be habitable, and it is orbiting a nearby star. They also added that they think there could be many more such planets in outer space.

The new planet, discovered by a team of astronomers from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and from the Carnegie Institution of Washington; the new world is orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581. Its right smack in the middle of that star's "habitable zone" they said.

The scientists have dubbed this new world Gliese 581g and it has a mass three to four times that of our own Earth, and a orbital period of just under 37 days (i.e. a year on this planet just takes 37 days to complete). It is no doubt a rocky world and it has enough gravity to hold onto an atmosphere. So Says Professor Steven Vogt of U of C, Santa Cruz. The world has a diameter of 1.2 to 1.4 times that of Earth. The gravity would be about the same or slightly higher than Earth "Normal."

Gliese 581 is about 20 light years away from our own solar system. Gliese581g is tidally locked to its star, meaning that one side is aways facing teh star and the other is facing away in perpetual darkness. The scientists gues that teh average surface temperture would be about -24 to +10 degrees Fahrenheit (-31 to -12 degrees Celsius).

More details will be published in the Astrophysical Journal and online at arXiv.org soon.

Quote: "Any emerging life forms on the new planet would have a wide range of stable climates to choose from and to evolve around, depending on their longitude," Vogt said.

In their report, the scientists in fact announce the discovery of two new planets around Gliese 581, bringing the total number of known planets around this star to six.

That is the most yet discovered in a planetary system other than Earth's solar system. End Quote.

UPDATE (September 30, 2010): Found image on Space.com. link posted below in Ref. section.

UPDATE 1 (September 30, 2010): From article posted to comcast.net this date.

"This really is the first Goldilocks planet," said co-discoverer R. Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Seems like R. Paul Butler has managed to already name the new world after his wife! Unofficially, its being called: Zarmina's World;

(http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-science/20100929/US.SCI.New.Earths/).

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Ref

1. Yahoo News/AFP. September 29, 2010.(http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100929/sc_afp/usastronomyplanet_20100929210707).

2. Space.com (http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=gliese-581-exoplanet-100929-02.jpg&cap=The+orbits+of+planets+in+the+Gliese+581+system+are+compared+to+those+of+our+own+solar+system.+The+Gliese+581+star+has+about+30+percent+the+mass+of+our+sun,+and+the+outermost+planet+is+closer+to+its+star+than+we+are+to+the+sun.+The+4th+planet,+G,+is+a+planet+that+could+sustain+life.+Credit:+Zina+Deretsky,+National+Science+Foundation+[%3Ca+href%3Dhttp://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/earth-like-exoplanet-possibly-habitable-100929.html%3EFull+Story%3C/a%3E]).

Russian Flying Cars Project

Article in its entirity quoted from the Gizowatch website...

The concept of flying cars is still in the materializing stage, and that flying saucer ambition from Moller International never went through. But that’s not a reason enough to stop Russian DIYer with his efforts for something new in the genre. Case in point is a flying saucer being developed by former pilot, Eugene Bugrov from Tyumen, Russia. An aircraft for the 21st century, which isn’t a fantasy, has earned Eugene several awards at international forums.

Eugene’s fundamentally new type of engine that operates on plasma has been notices and shown interest in by foreign companies. The flying saucer that has been patented could soon be seen surfing in the air because some like-minded creators have joined Eugene in the development of his flying project of course to speed up things.

Eugene’s arsenal of creations also includes a spider-man suitcase, which lets people escape high-rise buildings down the walls in case of emergency, and a laser that can cut through rocks and metal. Eugene claims a place in the “Book of Records of the Tyumen Region” as the most productive inventor of the area.

Maybe he can succeed where Moller has failed on the flying car dream.

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Ref.

1. Gizowatch.com (http://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/russian-diyers-flying-saucer-will-be-way-up-in-flying-cars/).