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Archive for the ‘space travel’ category: Page 461

Oct 12, 2016

Spherical shell laser sail would simplify interstellar laser sails

Posted by in category: space travel

The stability of a light sail riding on a laser beam is analyzed both analytically and numerically. Conical sails on Gaussian beams, which have been studied in the past, are shown to be unstable in general. A new architecture for a passively stable sail and beam configuration is proposed. The novel spherical shell sail design is capable of “beam riding” without the need for active feedback control. Full three-dimensional ray-tracing simulations are performed to verify our analytical results.

Arxiv — Stability of a Light Sail Riding on a Laser Beam (6 pages by Zachary Manchester, Abraham Loeb of Harvard)

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Oct 11, 2016

Obama wants to send humans to Mars by the 2030s with NASA, private company collaboration

Posted by in category: space travel

President Obama said Tuesday that he wants private companies to help send humans to Mars by the 2030s.

Obama first said in 2010 he wanted to send astronauts “to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth” by the mid-2030s with “a landing on Mars” to follow. In that speech at the Kennedy Space Center, Obama added that he expected to see such a landing in his lifetime.

In an opinion article Tuesday on CNN.com, Obama said private companies would be key to those lofty goals.

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Oct 11, 2016

The Barack Obama Mars 2030 Plan: Will It Really Work?

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel

As reported by the AP, President Obama Mars op-ed published at CNN today paints a vivid picture in which NASA — working in concert with other agencies and private industry — would sometime after 2030 finally make an expedition to the planet Mars. But is the Barack Obama Mars vision for NASA a tangible possibility, or will Elon Musk and SpaceX beat NASA to Mars long before that?

US President Obama says US is partnering with private firms to send humans to Mars by 2030s – CNN https://t.co/qc9rNIsW3V

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Oct 11, 2016

Two space agencies will attempt an historic landing on Mars next week

Posted by in category: space travel

The European Space Agency has teamed up with Russia’s Roscosmos program to land a spacecraft on Mars on Wednesday, October 19.

If they stick the landing, they’ll join NASA as the only space agencies in history to successfully land a spacecraft on Mars. And that will only be the beginning — the lander will then start a whole new quest to search for signs of life on the Red Planet.

If the landing is a success, it will actually see the agencies put one spacecraft up into Mars’s atmosphere, and one onto its surface, giving scientists a rare opportunity to record conditions above and below the planet simultaneously.

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Oct 10, 2016

China to launch pioneering pulsar navigation satellite in November

Posted by in category: space travel

China is already well on the way to establishing its own version of America’s GPS network with its Beidou satellite constellation, but now it is seeking to take navigation and timing to stellar levels.

In November China will launch the X-ray pulsar navigation satellite — XPNAV-1 — a satellite that will conduct the world’s first test of the possibilities of using the regular emission of X-ray signals from pulsars for spacecraft navigation.

The spacecraft will attempt to triangulate its position relative to the Sun using the highly regular emissions from pulsars.

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Oct 10, 2016

Starships of the Future [INFOGRAPHIC]

Posted by in categories: futurism, space travel

Want to reach for the stars? Here’s how to do it.

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Oct 9, 2016

A Train Into Space? Startram Project Could Make Colonizing Mars Easier

Posted by in category: space travel

https://youtube.com/watch?v=lJxV4kSWSUI

There has been a lot of talk recently about reusable rockets and asteroid mining making space travel cheaper, but a proposed idea for a maglev train into space might be the real answer.

Using existing maglev technology, the Startram project proposes to launch people and cargo down a 1,000-mile long tunnel 12 miles high at 20,000 mph using a superconducting cable.

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Oct 8, 2016

Interstellar Flight (Full Documentary HD)

Posted by in categories: education, robotics/AI, space travel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVett3htjBM

Interstellar travel is the term used for hypothetical manned or unmanned travel between stars. Interstellar travel will be much more difficult than interplanetary spaceflight; the distances between the planets in the Solar System are less than 30 astronomical units (AU)—whereas the distances between stars are typically hundreds of thousands of AU, and usually expressed in light-years. Because of the vastness of those distances, interstellar travel would require a high percentage of the speed of light, or huge travel time, lasting from decades to millennia or longer.

I Don’t Not Own Any Of This Content. Hope You Enjoy.

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Oct 6, 2016

China Wants to Build a 20-Seat, Reusable Space Plane for Rich Tourists

Posted by in category: space travel

The plan is heavy on ambition, light on specifics.

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Oct 5, 2016

DARPA chief Arati Prabhakar on self-driving ships, space travel, IoT, genetics, and more

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, genetics, internet, robotics/AI, space travel

Ww.geekwire.com/2016/iot-genetics-self-driving-ships-space-travel-darpa-chief-arati-prabhakar-tours-agencys-landscape/


The Internet of Things so widely predicted as the Next Big Thing in computing is full of promise but presents a correspondingly large vulnerability to cyber attacks, said Arati Prabhakar, director of DARPA, at the 2016 GeekWire Summit in Seattle today.

IoT offers “a huge value, but then with every advance comes more attack surface,” said Prabhakar during an interview with Alan Boyle, GeekWire’s aerospace and science editor. “Provably secure embedded systems is part of the answer.”

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