There are many people who have the opinion about interstellar travel being impossible. They are looking at our current immature economy and immature space capability. They then extrapolate about some one off interstellar mission. We need to look at how humanity broke out of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea with a fleet of exploration ships. …
Jeffrey Gleason describes how to increase the space propulsion beaming range of an ion beam from 0.1 AU to 1000 AU by pinching the ion beam. He also describes getting 50 kilowatts per square meter of power by placing the beam generator at 0.05 AU (about the distance that the recent Parker Space Probe has …
Physicist Avi Loeb and his team have used NASA data of meteor impacts to identify interstellar meteors. The NASA data was so good they were able to pinpoint a candidate meteor that hit near Australia. They believe have recovered pieces of that meteor and begun analyzing parts. They believe it is interstellar and has technological …
How do we extract energy from space around a spacecraft? If there are differences in the speed of the solar wind or differences in flows of particles around a spacecraft or where a spacecraft is passing then highly efficient extraction of power can enable great capabilities. On earth, we had sailing ships millennia before turbines …
Philip Lubin and his team are continuing to make progress toward laser pushed sails. This is a way to achieve significant fractions of the speed of light for interstellar missions and a way to beam power for movement within the solar system at high speeds. One of the key aspects to this work is phase …
Philip Lubin, University of California, Santa Barbara, Directed Energy for Interstellar Study Starting at 26 minutes of this video. They are making progress with laser locking over kilometer distances. They are making 2 gram starchip prototypes. they are looking at making ultrathin starchips that would be a meter across but very lightweight. Arxiv – A …
Proposals using large light sails like the Starshot Breakthrough, require mirrors with lateral sizes of 4 × 4 m2, thicknesses of 0.05 lambda, reflectivities of 90 %, ppm level optical absorption and a total mass of only 1 gram. Photonics Crystal are designed with a lattice of holes which remove about 30 % of the …
Breakthrough Starshot plans to launch a fleet of tiny interstellar chipsize probes to Proxima Centauri in 30 or 40 years. Small chip probes have been launched into low Earth orbit on June 23. Sprites are ‘satellites on a chip,’. Research performed by Mason Peck and his team at Cornell University included Breakthrough Starshot’s Zac Manchester …
Stable flight of a laser sail is an essential requirement of beam-driven propulsion. Centauri Dreams talked to James Benford about work towards stable beam flight. It places considerable demand upon the shape of the sail and beam. James Benford takes a hard look at where we are now in the matter of sail stability. He …
The Carnival of Nuclear Energy blogs has changed its name to Nuclear Energy News Weekly. 1. Neutron Bytes – Dan Yurman – An Up and Down Week for Developers of Advanced Reactors In Washington, DC, the Third Way, a think tank, hosted a meeting of some of the country’s best thinkers, leaders, funders, and doers …
Northrop Grumman will help the U.S. Air Force mature its plans to use directed energy systems for self-protection on current and future aircraft under a contract awarded by the Air Force Research Laboratory. The laser weapon will be housed in a pod attached to a fighter-sized aircraft. The system will be tested on a tactical …