space travel engine

NASA engine capable of travelling at nearly the speed of light detailed in new report

As more countries join the race to explore space, a NASA scientist has revealed a new propulsion method that could give his agency the edge.

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A NASA scientist has cooked up plans for a bonkers new rocket engine that can reach close to the speed of light — without using any fuel.

Travelling at such speeds, the theoretical machine could carry astronauts to Mars in less than 13 minutes, or to the Moon in just over a second.

However, the real purpose of the so-called “helical engine” would be to travel to distant stars far quicker than any existing tech, according to NASA engineer Dr David Burns.

Dr Burns, from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre in Alabama, unveiled the idea in a head-spinning paper posted to NASA’s website.

“This in-space engine could be used for long-term satellite station-keeping without refuelling,” Dr Burns writes in his paper .

“It could also propel spacecraft across interstellar distances, reaching close to the speed of light.”

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Travelling at these speeds, light would struggle to keep up with you, warping your vision in bizarre ways.

Everything behind you would appear black, and time would appear to stop altogether, with clocks slowing down to a crawl and planets seemingly ceasing to spin.

Dr Burns’ mad idea is revolutionary because it does away with rocket fuel altogether.

Today’s rockets, like those built by NASA and SpaceX, would need tonnes of propellants like liquid hydrogen to carry people to Mars and beyond.

The problem is, the more fuel you stick on the craft, the heavier it is. Modern propellant tanks are far too bulky to take on interstellar flights.

The helical engine gets around this using hi-tech particle accelerators like those found in Europe’s Large Hadron Collider.

Tiny particles are fired at high speed using electromagnets, recycled back around the engine, and fired again.

Using a loophole in the laws of physics, the engine could theoretically reach speeds of around 297 million metres per second, according to Dr Burns.

The contraption is just a concept for now, and it’s not clear if it would actually work.

“If someone says it doesn’t work, I’ll be the first to say, it was worth a shot,” Dr Burns told New Scientist .

“You have to be prepared to be embarrassed. It is very difficult to invent something that is new under the sun and actually works.”

In its simplest terms, the engine works by taking advantage of how mass changes at the speed of light.

In his paper, Dr Burns provides a concept to break this down that describes a ring inside a box, attached to each end by a spring.

When the ring is sprung in one direction, the box recoils in the other, as is described by Newton’s laws of motion: Every action must have an equal and opposite reaction.

“When the ring reaches the end of the box, it will bounce backwards, and the box’s recoil direction will switch too,” New Scientist explains.

However, if the box and the ring are travelling at the speed of light, things work a little differently.

At such speeds, according to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, as the ring approaches the end of the box it will increase in mass.

This means it will hit harder when it reaches the end of the box, resulting in forward momentum.

The engine itself will achieve a similar feat using a particle accelerator and ion particles, but that’s the general gist.

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“Chemical, nuclear and electric propulsion systems produce thrust by accelerating and expelling propellants,” Dr Burns writes in his paper.

“Deep space travel is often a trade-off between thrust and large propellant storage tanks that eventually limit performance.

“The objective of this paper is to introduce and examine a unique engine that uses a closed-cycle propellant.”

The design is capable of producing a thrust up to 99 per cent the speed of light without breaking Einstein’s theory of relativity, according to Dr Burns.

However, the plan does breach Newton’s law of motion — violating the laws of physics.

That’s not the only thing holding the helical engine back: Dr Burns reckoned it would have to be 198 metres long and 12 metres wide to work.

The gizmo would also only operate effectively in the frictionless environment of deep space.

It may sound like a harebrained scheme, but engine concepts that do away with rocket fuel have been proposed before.

They include the EM drive, a machine that could theoretically generate rocket thrust using rays of light. The idea was later proved impossible.

“I know that it risks being right up there with the EM drive and cold fusion,” Dr Burns told New Scientist .

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission

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Pushing the Limits of Sub-Kilowatt Electric Propulsion Technology to Enable Planetary Exploration and Commercial Mission Concepts

NASA has developed an advanced propulsion technology to facilitate future planetary exploration missions using small spacecraft. Not only will this technology enable new types of planetary science missions, one of NASA’s commercial partners is already preparing to use it for another purpose—to extend the lifetimes of spacecraft that are already in orbit. Identifying the opportunity for industry to use this new technology not only advances NASA’s goal of technology commercialization, it could potentially create a path for NASA to acquire this important technology from industry for use in future planetary missions.

The New Technology

Planetary science missions using small spacecraft will be required to perform challenging propulsive maneuvers—such as achieving planetary escape velocities, orbit capture, and more—that require a velocity change (delta-v) capability well in excess of typical commercial needs and the current state-of-the-art. Therefore, the #1 enabling technology for these small spacecraft missions is an electric propulsion system that can execute these high-delta-v maneuvers. The propulsion system must operate using low power (sub-kilowatt) and have high-propellant throughput (i.e., the capability to use a high total mass of propellant over its lifetime) to enable the impulse required to execute these maneuvers.

After many years of research and development, researchers at NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) have created a small spacecraft electric propulsion system to meet these needs—the NASA-H71M sub-kilowatt Hall-effect thruster. In addition, the successful commercialization of this new thruster will soon provide at least one such solution to enable the next generation of small spacecraft science missions requiring up to an amazing 8 km/s of delta-v. This technical feat was accomplished by the miniaturization of many advanced high-power solar electric propulsion technologies developed over the last decade for applications such as the Power and Propulsion Element of Gateway , humanity’s first space station around the Moon.

Benefits of This Technology for Planetary Exploration

Small spacecraft using the NASA-H71M electric propulsion technology will be able to independently maneuver from low-Earth orbit (LEO) to the Moon or even from a geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) to Mars. This capability is especially remarkable because commercial launch opportunities to LEO and GTO have become routine, and the excess launch capacity of such missions is often sold at low cost to deploy secondary spacecraft. The ability to conduct missions that originate from these near-Earth orbits can greatly increase the cadence and lower the cost of lunar and Mars science missions.

This propulsion capability will also increase the reach of secondary spacecraft, which have been historically limited to scientific targets that align with the primary mission’s launch trajectory. This new technology will enable secondary missions to substantially deviate from the primary mission’s trajectory, which will facilitate exploration of a wider range of scientific targets.

In addition, these secondary spacecraft science missions would typically have only a short period of time to collect data during a high-speed flyby of a distant body. This greater propulsive capability will allow deceleration and orbital insertion at planetoids for long-term scientific study.

Furthermore, small spacecraft outfitted with such significant propulsive capability will be better equipped to manage late-stage changes to the primary mission’s launch trajectory. Such changes are frequently a top risk for small spacecraft science missions with limited onboard propulsive capability that depend on the initial launch trajectory to reach their science target.

Commercial Applications

The megaconstellations of small spacecraft now forming in low-Earth orbits have made low-power Hall-effect thrusters the most abundant electric propulsion system used in space today. These systems use propellant very efficiently, which allows for orbit insertion, de-orbiting, and many years of collision avoidance and re-phasing. However, the cost-conscious design of these commercial electric propulsion systems has inevitably limited their lifetime capability to typically less than a few thousand hours of operation and these systems can only process about 10% or less of a small spacecraft’s initial mass in propellant.

By contrast, planetary science missions benefiting from the NASA-H71M electric propulsion system technology could operate for 15,000 hours and process over 30% of the small spacecraft’s initial mass in propellant. This game-changing capability is well beyond the needs of most commercial LEO missions and comes at a cost premium that makes commercialization for such applications unlikely. Therefore, NASA sought and continues to seek partnerships with companies developing innovative commercial small spacecraft mission concepts with unusually large propellant throughput requirements.

One partner that will soon use the licensed NASA electric propulsion technology in a commercial small spacecraft application is SpaceLogistics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Northrop Grumman. The Mission Extension Pod (MEP) satellite servicing vehicle is equipped with a pair of Northrop Grumman NGHT-1X Hall-effect thrusters, whose design is based on the NASA-H71M. The small spacecraft’s large propulsive capability will allow it to reach geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) where it will be mounted on a far larger satellite.  Once installed, the MEP will serve as a “propulsion jet pack” to extend the life of its host spacecraft for at least six years.

Northrop Grumman is currently conducting a long duration wear test (LDWT) of the NGHT-1X in GRC’s Vacuum Facility 11 to demonstrate its full lifetime operational capability. The LDWT is funded by Northrop Grumman through a fully reimbursable Space Act Agreement. The first MEP spacecraft are expected to launch in 2025, where they will extend the life of three GEO communication satellites.

Collaborating with U.S. industry to find small spacecraft applications with propulsive requirements similar to future NASA planetary science missions not only supports U.S. industry in remaining a global leader in commercial space systems but creates new commercial opportunities for NASA to acquire these important technologies as planetary missions require them.

NASA continues to mature the H71M electric propulsion technologies to expand the range of data and documentation available to U.S. industry for the purpose of developing similarly advanced and highly capable low-power electric propulsion devices.

Project Lead

Dr. Gabriel F. Benavides, NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC)

Sponsoring Organizations

Planetary Science Division - Planetary Exploration Science Technology Office (PESTO); Space Operations Mission Directorate - Commercial Space Capabilities Office (CSCO); Space Technology Mission Directorate - Game Changing Development (GCD) program; Space Technology Mission Directorate - Small Spacecraft Technology (SST) program

Related Terms

• Planetary Science
• Planetary Science Division
• Science-enabling Technology
• Space Operations Mission Directorate
• Space Technology Mission Directorate
• Technology Highlights

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A Mythical Form of Space Propulsion Finally Gets a Real Test

Since the birth of the space age, the dream of catching a ride to another solar system has been hobbled by the “tyranny of the rocket equation ,” which sets hard limits on the speed and size of the spacecraft we sling into the cosmos. Even with today’s most powerful rocket engines, scientists estimate it would take 50,000 years to reach our closest interstellar neighbor , Alpha Centauri. If humans ever hope to see an alien sunrise , transit times will have to drop significantly.

Of the advanced propulsion concepts that could theoretically pull that off, few have generated as much excitement—and controversy—as the EmDrive. First described nearly two decades ago, the EmDrive works by converting electricity into microwaves and channeling this electromagnetic radiation through a conical chamber. In theory, the microwaves can exert force against the walls of the chamber to produce enough thrust to propel a spacecraft once it’s in space. At this point, however, the EmDrive exists only as a laboratory prototype, and it’s still unclear whether it’s able to produce thrust at all. If it does, the forces it generates aren’t strong enough to be registered by the naked eye, much less propel a spacecraft.

Over the past few years, however, a handful of research teams, including one from NASA, claim to have successfully produced thrust with an EmDrive. If true, it would amount to one of the biggest breakthroughs in the history of space exploration. The problem is that the thrust observed in these experiments is so small that it’s hard to tell if it’s real.

The resolution lies in designing a tool that can measure these minuscule amounts of thrust. So a team of physicists at Germany’s Technische Universität Dresden set out to create a device that would fill this need. Led by physicist Martin Tajmar, the SpaceDrive project aims to create an instrument so sensitive and immune to interference that it would put an end to the debate once and for all. In October, Tajmar and his team presented their second set of experimental EmDrive measurements at the International Astronautical Congress, and their results will be published in Acta Astronautica this August. Based on the results of these experiments, Tajmar says a resolution to the EmDrive saga may only be a few months away.

Many scientists and engineers dismiss the EmDrive because it appears to violate the laws of physics. Microwaves pushing on the walls of an EmDrive chamber seem to generate thrust ex nihilo, which runs afoul of the conservation of momentum—it’s all action and no reaction. Proponents of the EmDrive, in turn, have appealed to fringe interpretations of quantum mechanics to explain how the EmDrive might work without violating Newtonian physics. “From the theory point of view, no one takes this seriously,” Tajmar says. If the EmDrive is able to produce thrust, as some groups have claimed, he says they have “no clue where this thrust is coming from.” When there’s a theoretical rift of this magnitude in science, Tajmar sees only one way to close it: experimentation.

In late 2016, Tajmar and 25 other physicists gathered in Estes Park, Colorado, for the first conference dedicated to the EmDrive and related exotic propulsion systems. One of the most exciting presentations was given by Paul March, a physicist at NASA’s Eagleworks lab , where he and his colleague Harold White had been testing various EmDrive prototypes. According to March’s presentation and a subsequent paper published in the Journal of Propulsion and Power , he and White observed several dozen micro-newtons of thrust in their EmDrive prototype. (For the sake of comparison, a single SpaceX Merlin engine produces around 845,000 Newtons of thrust at sea level.) The problem for Harold and White, however, was that their experimental setup allowed for several sources of interference, so they couldn’t say for sure whether what they observed was thrust.

Tajmar and the Dresden group used a close replica of the EmDrive prototype used by Harold and White in their tests at NASA. It consists of a copper frustum—a cone with its top lopped off—that is just under a foot long. This design can be traced back to the engineer Roger Shawyer, who first described the EmDrive in 2001. During tests, the EmDrive cone is placed in a vacuum chamber. Outside the chamber, a device generates a microwave signal that gets relayed, using coaxial cables, to antennas inside the cone.

This isn’t the first time the Dresden team has sought to measure nearly imperceptible amounts of force. They built similar contraptions for their work on ion thrusters, which are used to precisely position satellites in space. These micro-newton thrusters are the kind that were used by the LISA Pathfinder mission, which needs extremely precise positioning ability to detect faint phenomena like gravitational waves. But to study the EmDrive and similar propellantless propulsion systems, Tajmar says, required nano-newton resolution.

Their approach was to use a torsion balance, a pendulum-type balance that measures the amount of torque applied to the axis of the pendulum. A less sensitive version of this balance was also used by the NASA team when they thought their EmDrive produced thrust. To accurately gauge the small amount of force, the Dresden team used a laser interferometer to measure the physical displacement of the balance scales produced by the EmDrive. According to Tajmar, their torsion scale has a nano-newton resolution and supports thrusters weighing several pounds, making it the most sensitive thrust balance in existence.

Reece Rogers

Louryn Strampe

Brendan I. Koerner

Scott Gilbertson

But a really sensitive thrust balance isn’t much use unless you can also determine whether the detected force is in fact thrust and not an artifact of outside interference. And there are plenty of alternate explanations for Harold and White’s observations. To determine whether an EmDrive actually produces thrust, researchers must be able to shield the device from interference caused by the Earth's magnetic poles, seismic vibrations from the environment, and the thermal expansion of the EmDrive due to heating from the microwaves.

Tweaks to the design of the torsion balance—to better control the EmDrive's power supply and shield it from magnetic fields—took care of some of the interference issues, Tajmar says. A more difficult problem was how to address “thermal drift.” When power flows to the EmDrive, the copper cone heats up and expands, which shifts its center of gravity just enough to cause the torsion balance to register force that can be mistaken as thrust. Tajmar and his team hoped that changing the orientation of the thruster helped address that issue.

Over the course of 55 experiments, Tajmar and his colleagues registered an average of 3.4 micro-newtons of force from the EmDrive, which was very similar to what the NASA team found. Alas, these forces did not appear to pass the thermal drift test. The forces seen in the data were more indicative of thermal expansion than thrust.

All hope is not lost for the EmDrive, however. Tajmar and his colleagues are also developing two additional types of thrust balances, including a superconducting balance that will, among other things, help to eliminate false positives produced by thermal drift. If they detect force from an EmDrive on these balances, there’s a high probability that it is actually thrust. But if no force is registered on these balances, it likely means that all the previous EmDrive thrust observations were false positives. Tajmar says he hopes to have a final verdict by the end of the year.

But even a negative result from that work might not kill the EmDrive for good. There are many other propellantless propulsion designs to pursue. And if scientists ever do develop new forms of weak propulsion, the hyper-sensitive thrust balances developed by Tajmar and the Dresden team will almost certainly play a role in sorting science fact from science fiction.

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New Propulsion System Could Enable Flying at Speeds Up to Mach 17

By University of Central Florida May 17, 2021

A conceptual hypersonic aircraft, powered by an oblique detonation wave engine, is pictured. Background image credit: NASA. Aircraft and composite image credit: Daniel Rosato, UCF.

The UCF-developed propulsion system could allow for flight speeds of Mach 6 to 17 (more than 4,600 to 13,000 miles per hour) and would have applications in air and space travel.

University of Central Florida researchers are building on their technology that could pave the way for hypersonic flight, such as travel from New York to Los Angeles in under 30 minutes.

In their latest research published recently in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , the researchers discovered a way to stabilize the detonation needed for hypersonic propulsion by creating a special hypersonic reaction chamber for jet engines.

“There is an intensifying international effort to develop robust propulsion systems for hypersonic and supersonic flight that would allow flight through our atmosphere at very high speeds and also allow efficient entry and exit from planetary atmospheres,” says study co-author Kareem Ahmed, an associate professor in UCF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. “The discovery of stabilizing a detonation — the most powerful form of intense reaction and energy release — has the potential to revolutionize hypersonic propulsion and energy systems.”

The system could allow for air travel at speeds of Mach 6 to 17, which is more than 4,600 to 13,000 miles (7,400 to 21,000 kilometers) per hour. The technology harnesses the power of an oblique detonation wave, which they formed by using an angled ramp inside the reaction chamber to create a detonation-inducing shock wave for propulsion.

Unlike rotating detonation waves that spin, oblique detonation waves are stationary and stabilized.

The technology improves jet propulsion engine efficiency so that more power is generated while using less fuel than traditional propulsion engines, thus lightening the fuel load and reducing costs and emissions.

In addition to faster air travel, the technology could also be used in rockets for space missions to make them lighter by requiring less fuel, travel farther and burn more cleanly.

Detonation propulsion systems have been studied for more than half a century but had not been successful due to the chemical propellants used or the ways they were mixed. Previous work by Ahmed’s group overcame this problem by carefully balancing the rate of the propellants hydrogen and oxygen released into the engine to create the first experimental evidence of a rotating detonation.

However, the short duration of the detonation, often occurring for only micro or milliseconds, makes them difficult to study and impractical for use.

In the new study, however, the UCF researchers were able to sustain the duration of a detonation wave for three seconds by creating a new hypersonic reaction chamber, known as a hypersonic high-enthalpy reaction, or HyperREACT, facility. The facility contains a chamber with a 30-degree angle ramp near the propellent mixing chamber that stabilizes the oblique detonation wave.

“This is the first time a detonation has been shown to be stabilized experimentally,” Ahmed says. “We are finally able to hold the detonation in space in oblique detonation form. It’s almost like freezing an intense explosion in physical space.”

Gabriel Goodwin, an aerospace engineer with the Naval Research Laboratory’s Naval Center for Space Technology and study co-author, says their research is helping to answer many of the fundamental questions that surround oblique detonation wave engines.

Goodwin’s role in the study was to use the Naval Research Laboratory’s computational fluid dynamics codes to simulate the experiments performed by Ahmed’s group.

“Studies such as this one are crucial to advancing our understanding of these complex phenomena and bringing us closer to developing engineering-scale systems,” Goodwin says.

“This work is exciting and pushing the boundaries of both simulation and experiment,” Goodwin says. “I’m honored to be a part of it.”

The study’s lead author is Daniel Rosato ’19 ’20MS, a graduate research assistant and a recipient of UCF’s Presidential Doctoral Fellowship.

Rosato has been working on the project since he was an aerospace engineering undergraduate student and is responsible for experiment design, fabrication, and operation, as well as data analysis, with assistance from Mason Thorton, a study co-author and an undergraduate research assistant.

Rosato says the next steps for the research are the addition of new diagnostics and measurement tools to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomena they are studying.

“After that, we will continue exploring more experimental configurations to determine in more detail the criteria with which an oblique detonation wave can be stabilized,” Rosato says.

If successful in advancing this technology, detonation-based hypersonic propulsion could be implemented into human atmospheric and space travel in the coming decades, the researchers say.

Reference: “Stabilized detonation for hypersonic propulsion” by Daniel A. Rosato, Mason Thornton, Jonathan Sosa, Christian Bachman, Gabriel B. Goodwin and Kareem A. Ahmed, 10 May 2021, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2102244118

The study was funded by the long-term support of the Energy, Combustion, and Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics Portfolio of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in the area of detonation via grants 16RT0673/FA9550-16-1-0441 and 19RT0258/FA9550-19-0322 (Program Manager: Chiping Li), the National Science Foundation and the NASA Florida Space Grant Consortium.

Co-authors of the study included Jonathan Sosa ’15 ’18 ’19PhD, a postdoctoral research scientist with UCF’s Propulsion and Energy Research Laboratory and currently an aerospace engineer at U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and Christian Bachman, an aerospace engineer at U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

Ahmed is an associate professor in UCF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, part of UCF’s College of Engineering and Computer Science. He is also a faculty member of the Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research and the Florida Center for Advanced Aero-Propulsion. He served more than three years as a senior aero/thermo engineer at Pratt & Whitney military engines working on advanced engine programs and technologies. He also served as a faculty member at Old Dominion University and Florida State University . At UCF, he is leading research in propulsion and energy with applications for power generation and gas-turbine engines, propulsion-jet engines, hypersonics and fire safety, as well as research related to supernova science and COVID-19 transmission control . He earned his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics associate fellow and a U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and Office of Naval Research faculty fellow.

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56 comments on "new propulsion system could enable flying at speeds up to mach 17".

Travel at up to 17 times speed of sound (~12,000 mph)…When that engine becomes available, it may take much more time to develop an airframe capable of hosting that engine. At near orbital re-entry speeds, aerodynamic heating would be ferocious. Imagine a space shuttle capable of sustained flight. Quite a challenge!

Yes, it does seem to be a case of putting the horse before the cart. Assuming that the problems regarding the engine are solved, if there isn’t an airframe design that can withstand (And, dissipate!) the heat generated, the engine will never be used in the atmosphere.

Without a robust airframe, every flight of such a hypersonic vehicle would be a potential Columbia disaster!

Use the ceramic re-entry tiles used now until some composite material which will be lighter and be able to stand the temps can be devised. Let the Communist Chinese cull of their stolen knowledge. They’ll combine the best thefts for the optimal solution. After gun pouder, the retards haven’t had an original thought.

This type of research continues until some much less ambitious use appears or the grant money runs out.

This is very interesting and I hope to see more advancements in the prototype in the future.

Hi. IF YOU DO. YOU WILL WARM UP THE STRATOS SPHEOE AND CREATE EVCN MORE GLOBAL WARMUNG

30 minutes, New York to LA would be wonderful, but if it still takes 30 minutes to open the door, not so much.

I wish we would spend as much time and effort in the research of Inner-Space as we do for Outer-Space. We still haven’t solved our species civilizational needs of cooperating together and universally. There appears to be an AAG (“adversarial anarchy gene”) that has yet to be tamed and in turn, delays so much of our species real progress and advancement. The Next War could turn our lights out – FOREVER ~

You are assuming that if the Killer Ape were to become docile, altruistic, and cooperative that we would benefit. It might mean the end of evolution of humans. It would almost certainly mean the end of individualism. Personally, big cities are already too much like a hive existence for my taste.

While we need more cooperation globally, you can’t force people to get along, and research will not solve that effectively. But if you want to research these things, go for it. Why leave it up to others?

And those stupid chinks in the Chinese government are already trying to steal the plans for this new engine. Please don’t let those scumbags steal it and try to pass it off as their own achievement.

Trying???? They have it immediately! If not, Biden, their employee will order DARPA to give it to them. After the Chinese invented gun powder, they became ret*rds.

Sh*t give me a rough blu-print And I’ll fab a cabin in my sleep!!! Steel fabricator Milwaukee.. Old school, real world…

Look up into the sky. So many stars, galaxies, things waiting for your eyes to see and hands to feel! In order for humanity to see the vastness of space, it’s body must change. Some say that happens in the next life, that this life is merely a “test”. I think they’re right. Humanity or this life is not insignificant! This is the lie perpetuated by an evil/negative force which goes against all that is alive! It wants you to do wrong, not care, or do harm, to forget! In so that it may propagate to other things, space, and time and corrupt them too! And so then the cycle of decay and fade repeats. It does not have to!

Do what is right and listen to what the universe is already telling you. It’s vibrations, a harmony of information if one may listen or even feel! In a second it could all be turned off; gravity fail or an asteroid impact. But no! How great is that! In time we loose the things we care so much about; decay, broken, lost, died. These things are the force against which the universe is! The universe is everlasting information. But what it doesn’t have enough of is something that transcends space and time. Far beyond the strength of gravity and light. Something so profound and infinitely complex. And from that and all the things you see or know in the galaxy and beyond, created you. To see, hear, listen feel, smell, remember, touch, taste, cry, anger, decide. How great it is to look to the sky and proclaim “I Love You” to what created you. “Thank you” for what has given you the senses! For the reason why it did shouldn’t be questioned when trying to populate spaces illuminated by light. But may it be so simple that it did so in order to remember and be aware of itself? In that the universe (information) never die, grow old, or forget. Maybe it just needs a bit of light now and then to see what’s next.

Wow, well said. I totally agree. The Universe is magical.

Funny how this comes out after the pentagon releases videos of craft able to fly 4000-13000 mph. Coincidence..i higly doubt it. This is the “slow disclosure” theyve been planning for decades.

Ok. But looks like whoever is controlling or inside the ufos have already beaten us to the punch.

Those people would invent anything rather than tell you the truth they’ve into water like it wasn’t there military pilots been reporting them 50 years pilots say there everything from sauser shaped to triangular can stop in midair defy all laws of phisics including ingredients turns that would kill any human aboard all to cover the recently release navy photos of them 100s they said and the national security personnel best in the business said there real and they can’t be explained and now the pentagon would like to give you what ever plausible denial to cover there as of not revealing the up and coming president trumps ufo mandate.it means more horses#!t that they either don’t know or more likely working with some intelligence.and who knows with china,China, states,States, on mars with Russia planning to go with European space agency in 2022 thats five country’s,everything we’ve seen on mars is all mirrors and trick of sight including the 20 years of denying water on mars even after the ice poles melt during its 600 and some odd day summer that water was never there and it didn’t flow anywhere. You,ll get to know cover before you ever see it. Equator on mars reaches 80 degree farenheight so you put it together.they think they can baffle you with horse rap about everything.

I wouldn’t trust this piece of alien crap im holding to get a message to someone without it being read,you think id believe some coverup story for the up and coming 1000s of uaf or ufo the pentagon has to answer hard questions about, their own pilot 50 year ufo reports

Well,maybe this explains all the UFO sightings…the craft were clocked at speeds of up to 13,000 mph…..

Can I survive mach 7 to 13? Just thought I’d ask before boarding.

What about all the satellites? That would be an interesting game?!?

As God says knowledge will increase children getting smarter way early than ever before all things automatic mankind will not be able to hide mankind learns to fly like the birds ps YouTube videos guy Cramer hyper stealth Corp bending light invisibility nano bots metamaterial Tesla antigravity spacecraft Ronald Reagan star wars program force shields force fields laws lasers jasper maskyln the war illusionists

you suffer from punctuation deficit syndrome go see an md neuropunctualist perhaps its not too late you never know but I’ve never observed such a severe case you need electroshock regiment maybe they can save your life if combined with enough therapy you’ll be able to perhaps punctualize and your worthless life might be saved but the nonsense you right is a complete different condition not enough research has been done on nonesenseitis because democrats haven’t found a constituency

Which begs the question. If you fart in a pressurized cabin while the jet accelerates, how would the gas move? Would it be pushed toward the back of the plane? Anyone have a formula or computer simulation to calculate this? Thanks.

You know nothing about physics! The farm is inside a close system. To the people inside the plane, it would just linger in place. To an outside observer, it wouldn’t last long enough to be observed.

Now we need to look at insulation which may be in the isotopic enriched boron nitride aerogel catagorys with graphene paint for electronics

Then we need a radio trophic grown craft aka myco aerodynamics an enhanced with ai DNA smart tech to connect driver with vehicle

Good thinking! Then we’re going to need oxiboron-trinide to stop ovaloid acidic basic 2nd stage flux!

Why would anyone want to travel that fast ??? Slow down smell the flowers ,Notice other dimensions.. After a few disasters ,anyone involved would be shamed and blackballed..this is more comedy then science.. Freeze this explosion ..Just Farted Loud….

Ummmm..have we forgotten a little thing called G-forces? The current generation of fighter jets already push pilots to their physical limits. There is no way we will see a passenger jet flying at the speeds of a current fighter jet, let alone speeds faster than one. Traveling at Mach 17 would kill everyone on board that plane.

Yeah, schmuck, if the American Airlines pilot decides he wants to dive and then loop vertically to an ascend!

This technology was discussed decades ago.

These people are idiots and have watched the Jetsons and Buck Rogers too much…I hope no person is Stupid enough to buy into this.

This will never see the light of day even if they’re successful. The military will scoop this up and it will never become commercially viable. Too much chance of the enemy getting a hold of this technology.

Hmmm. Isn’t the limit used for low cycle fatigue about 10,000 cycles. One flight?

Full ahead 1/2 impulse.

So, by publishing all this you’ve made it even easier for the Communist Chinese to steal the technology. Ah, Biden, their employee, would have given it to them anyway!

you make it so that the fuel exists in a thick armorred semispereical long oval cavity so that if a crash happens that passengers wont blow up.the hardcore survival stories of the future awaits.

I’ve been in a flight simulator when I was a kid at Mach 5 and it is too slow for me I can do Mach 7

You have to slow down the speed on the inside well it’s faster on the outside just got to control the gravity

Zero gravity inside so when you go really really fast your body is still and your brain won’t become spaghetti I’m a Scientists and freelance biologist you don’t have to have a license to be either one

Got a pic of this ship in my SKY, it is in play now

“King David’s Spaceship” Jerry Pournell

Actually going that speed would be fine as long as the acceleration deceleration were gradual and no sharp lateral movements. But the uaps recently seen by pilots break all those rules. A person inside would be smashed like a pancake. Ther would have to be s Gforce compensatorbeyond our understanding of physics.

It’s not new technology.. just suppressed from the public. They’ve known about this technology for years, just choosing to announce it now. Ain’t that right George Jetson?

baware of the chinese communist….

This has been operational since 1993. Drawing is spot on leaves a green vapor trail…seen entering White Sands Test Range one am 1993.

XJ15 flew at 5700 mph anything is possible.Where Americans we can an have done the impossible.

It’s strange how much the photo likes like the UFOs that are government has finally admitted having seen them.and now there coming out with new power . strange how that works.lol

So, no dinner and movie on this flight ?

Great idea now the psychopaths living among us can spread covid much faster and easier, yes wonderful 👏

They are coming out with all these lies to cover up what we have already known for years.. the government is about to reveal all the lies about UFOS that’s why they are coming out with these new story’s about traveling faster then we have .. it’s called reverse technology…

I like the idea of traveling faster than the speed of sound, but what is even more interesting is getting the vehicle to stop. If the geodiscs were accurate we could determine coordinates set them from where we will be, meaning the earth the sun and the spaces we occupy change instantaneously, so a projection of where we will be to the point or points of where we would like to be. First you would need to map the solar system, the associated galaxy and the details, of our math and mapping abilities of us being somewhere in the universe. Now that may p*ss a lot of people off but think about it, the globe, a sphere of light u able to be seen from beyond the local geographical and limited to our narrow eye sight, imagine how much we do not see, and so they might, but you’ll st I digress, not at all start with the center of the earth and count, like a nautilus and start with the acid of a gyroscope, one by one one two by two. . Start 285714, infinite coordinates at least we can show something not had before as the probability of reaching beyond the atoms feathers of the sun and moon will be even greater achievements, yet not thinking about the sensory of the totality of the waters on the exterior of our relative shell, now use sense and see the proton cube working in the midst, tritium, 3domensions 1 by 1, 2 by 2, 15 by 15, 25 by 25. 30 by 50 what’s left omega, copl stuff. Alcoa omega the eye of the needle, the center if the omega… so stretch the limit put it on its side and start thinking of ogr iris, ths feathers associated with the cmos an observatory system of of centralized or computerized macular observativion system, like early auditory recognition systems, hear tfat tone gow much do we miss… the limit is infinite like out imagination, never close down ot turn away from that dream, dreaming a dream, they say in sync with the dreamer of dreams nothing is impossible it has to be, like a vacuum, what’s there nothing is something, so run with the force of the proton requirement of being equal to it greater than the matter to be moved mass delta, and push open the heavens so as to create your own earth like Abraham, and the altar he built between so, the eye and the Bethel, which was the city of light, Luz, and think how we can create vuancy in the air so thin to have our homes as we have them now in the heavens of the space we still need to define. Dont let the intimjdators or those that call you wrong stop you, thing of the earth being made as an arch not by the tools of man but by ny the dreams of our thoughts in the refined space of our existence, waters from the waters what are we missing, the majority of the waters outside of our current t grasp, start with a gyroscope and begin to fly, using the magnetic energies of tbe wings of the scope to steer you as you sit in the, what is called the hero seat, the center, of the gyroscope, eager yes, realty also, movement said isaac, come with a little push of the envelop, someone once said we push through. . I agree, don’t push it but hut push through it we still have a long way to go, imagine the wilderness we have in yet to discover. The area between the nucleus, a proton, a neutron of centrifugal force as the earth turns and focuses our light on the heaviness of the clear blue skies, like the clear moon today, a true beauty, and the threshing floor of the velocities of light carving our place in space, kike a broom pushing aside the water in the ocean, imagine the requirements yo keep it sustainable got our human requirements, look and see. Feel and know, the objective is not to not others think for you but think of the wonders of the world and create them, the linear focus of the area inside or global sphere of solar power, and keep going in leaning in, there you sandy, goldberg right, gram flo and isadore, is a door, like the shining door, shenendohowa, grab some and fly the, so we do, but not yet with our own wings, plan for it. If you wish for with God, is all things and by GOD WE ARE, possibilities become pronounced as we believe they are, believe it and so it will be. BELIEVE, and you’ll have the wings beneath your feet, and at the true temples of thought, zues, what’s that he says, I follow, the apo llo, i have said a lot, but not enough, keep the faith. Selah.

Has anyone considered the volume of a sonic boom produced by an object flying at mach 17? 30 minute flight from New York to Los Angeles sounds cool for the people in the plane, but everyone on the ground aren’t gonna agree.

Half hour from LA to NY is doubtful. It takes time to climb and descend no matter what you are flying. Top end speed would be momentary. It would take 20-30 minutes just to descend and slow down to a reasonable landing speed.

ok, not a ufo person I just had a dream to make this type of tech possible I guess I am a little late to party on this one but it keeps coming night after night. I do not Have an Aerospace background. It involves using an artificial vacuum I can Draw it out just need someone to go over the math if that makes sense. I can provide a paper on it if needed I do things old school nothing on a computer.

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An illustration shows what an EmDrive looks like.

NASA's 'Impossible' Space Engine Tested—Here Are the Results

The first independent tests of the EmDrive suggest there's a mundane explanation for the wildly controversial device.

Spaceflight is hard. Blasting heavy cargo, spacecraft, and maybe people to respectable speeds over interplanetary distances (not to mention the luxury of stopping at destinations) requires an amount of propellant too massive for current rockets to haul into the void.

That is, unless you have an engine that can generate thrust without fuel .

It sounds impossible, but scientists at NASA’s Eagleworks Laboratories have been building and testing just such a thing. Called an EmDrive, the physics-defying contraption ostensibly produces thrust simply by bouncing microwaves around inside a closed, cone-shaped cavity, no fuel required.

It would be a bit like Han Solo flying the Millennium Falcon just by head-butting the dashboard, and if you think that sounds controversial, you’re right.

The device last made headlines in late 2016 when a leaked study reported the results of the latest round of NASA testing. Now, independent researchers in Germany have built their own EmDrive, with the goal of testing innovative propulsion concepts and determining whether their seeming success is real or an artifact.

So, what did they find?

The NASA Eagleworks EmDrive sits inside a test chamber.

“The ‘thrust’ is not coming from the EmDrive, but from some electromagnetic interaction,” the team reports in a proceeding for a recent conference on space propulsion .

The group, led by Martin Tajmar of the Technische Universität Dresden, tested the drive in a vacuum chamber with a variety of sensors and automated gizmos attached. Researchers could control for vibrations, thermal fluctuations, resonances, and other potential sources of thrust, but they weren’t quite able to shield the device against the effects of Earth’s own magnetic field.

When they turned on the system but dampened the power going to the actual drive so essentially no microwaves were bouncing around, the EmDrive still managed to produce thrust—something it should not have done if it works the way the NASA team claims.

The researchers have tentatively concluded that the effect they measured is the result of Earth’s magnetic field interacting with power cables in the chamber, a result that other experts agree with.

“In the EmDrive case, interactions with the Earth's magnetic field seems to be the leading candidate explanation of the small thrusts seen,” says Jim Woodward of California State University, Fullerton.Woodward has theorized a propulsive device of his own called the Mach Effect Thruster, which the Dresden group also tested.

To determine what’s going on with the EmDrive, though, the group needs to enclose the device in a shield made of something called mu metals, which will insulate it against the planet’s magnetism. Importantly, this kind of shield was not part of Eagleworks’ original testing apparatus either, which suggests the original findings could also be a consequence of leaking magnetic fields.

That sounds like a blow to the concept of the EmDrive, but Woodward is not ready to close the case on the contraption just yet. Aside from the lack of mu metal shielding, the Dresden lab’s tests were run at very low power levels, meaning that “any real signal would likely be swamped by noise from spurious sources,” he says.

So, perhaps an even more powerful test is what the space doctors ordered to help settle the debate.

For Hungry Minds

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NASA veteran’s propellantless propulsion drive defies laws of physics

Nasa expert dr. charles buhler believes he and his team have discovered a “new force”..

Chris Young

An artist's impression of a space propulsion system.

Love Employee / iStock

Dr. Charles Buhler, a seasoned NASA engineer and co-founder of Exodus Propulsion Technologies, claims his company’s propellantless propulsion drive defies the laws of physics.

The NASA veteran states the propulsion drive is capable of generating enough thrust to counteract Earth’s gravity without expelling mass.

It’s a bold claim, and this may end up being filed alongside similar controversial concepts like the propellant-free EmDrive.

However, Buhler’s history as NASA’s subject matter expert on electrostatics has forced people to take note.

New claims of propellant-free space travel

Buhler and his team set out to explore propellantless propulsion concepts more than two decades ago. Their propulsion drive is based on a novel approach that takes advantage of asymmetry in electrostatic pressure to propel the drive forward.

The team presented their drive concept at a recent Alternative Propulsion Energy Conference (APEC). There, Buhler detailed his team’s progress over the years. 

From 2016 to 2020, for example, the team’s best devices were producing a little over one hundred thousandth of a gravity. Ultimately, though, they set out to achieve “unity,” Buhler told The Debrief in a recent interview. Unity refers to the moment the drive produces enough thrust to lift itself in Earth’s gravity.

As with similar projects like the EmDrive, Buhler and his team have worked exhaustively to eliminate any alternative explanation for the tiny, though measurable, force they were seeing in experiments.

In 2023, Buhler said the propellantless drive finally reached one full Earth gravity. He and his team claim that their propulsion system has demonstrated the ability to exert a force equivalent to Earth’s gravity without emitting mass via propellant. Essentially, they believe they have discovered a new force that was previously unknown. 

“This discovery of a New Force is fundamental in that electric fields alone can generate a sustainable force onto an object and allow center-of-mass translation of said object without expelling mass,” Buhler told The Debrief.

“There are rules that include conservation of energy, but if done correctly, one can generate forces unlike anything humankind has done before,” he added.

“It will be this force that we will use to propel objects for the next 1,000 years… until the next thing comes.”

Are Exodus Propulsion Technologies the real deal?

If Buhler and his team’s claims are true, their propulsion experiments would undoubtedly constitute a massive breakthrough. A propellant-free system would massively drive down costs, enable far-reaching missions, and revolutionize spaceflight. So why has the news broken with such little fanfare?

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It’s because we have been here before. Proponents of the EmDrive and IVO LTD’s Quantum Drive have made similar claims in the past. Neither of these has so far provided tangible results in space.

In his interview with The Debrief , Buhler claims that his team’s drive is the result of rigorous experimentation and tangible results. Buhler’s history also lends credibility to the project – he has worked in programs such as NASA’s Space Shuttle, the International Space Station (ISS), and The Hubble Telescope. 

Still, Exodus Propulsion Technologies’ massive claim will likely be met with skepticism until it is able to demonstrate its technology in space.

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ABOUT THE EDITOR

Chris Young Chris Young is a journalist, copywriter, blogger and tech geek at heart who’s reported on the likes of the Mobile World Congress, written for Lifehack, The Culture Trip, Flydoscope and some of the world’s biggest tech companies, including NEC and Thales, about robots, satellites and other world-changing innovations. 

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Nuclear fusion breakthrough: What does it mean for space exploration?

Some scientists say nuclear fusion propulsion is inevitable. But how far away is it, given recent breakthroughs?

The announcement this week of fusion ignition is a major scientific advancement, one that is decades in the making. More energy was produced than the laser energy used to spark the first controlled fusion triumph. 

The result: replicating the fusion that powers the sun .

On Dec. 5, a team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF) achieved the milestone . As noted by Kim Budil, director of the laboratory: "Crossing this threshold is the vision that has driven 60 years of dedicated pursuit — a continual process of learning, building, expanding knowledge and capability, and then finding ways to overcome the new challenges that emerged," Budil said.

The nuclear fusion feat has broad implications, fueling hopes of clean, limitless energy. As for space exploration, one upshot from the landmark research is attaining the long-held dream of future rockets that are driven by fusion propulsion. 

But is that prospect still a pipe dream or is it now deemed reachable? If so, how much of a future are we looking at?

Related: Major breakthrough in pursuit of nuclear fusion unveiled by US scientists

Data points

The fusion breakthrough is welcomed and exciting news for physicist Fatima Ebrahimi at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in New Jersey. 

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Ebrahimi said the NIF success is extraordinary.

"Any data points obtained showing fusion energy science achievement is fantastic! Fusion energy gain of greater than one is quite an achievement," Ebrahimi said. However, engineering innovations are still requisite for NIF to be commercially viable as a fusion reactor, she added.

Ebrahimi is studying how best to propel humans at greater speeds out to Mars and beyond. The work involves a new concept for a rocket thruster, one that exploits the mechanism behind solar flares . 

The idea is to accelerate particles using "magnetic reconnection," a process found throughout the universe , including the surface of the sun. It's when magnetic field lines converge, suddenly separate, and then join together again, producing loads of energy. By using more electromagnets and more magnetic fields, Ebrahimi envisions the ability to create, in effect, a knob-turning way to fine-tune velocity.

As for the NIF victory impacting space exploration, Ebrahimi said for space applications, compact fusion concepts are still needed. "Heavy components for space applications are not favorable," she said.

Necessary precursor

Similar in thought is Paul Gilster, writer/editor of the informative Centauri Dreams website. 

"Naturally I celebrate the NIF's accomplishment of producing more energy than was initially put into the fusion experiment. It's a necessary precursor toward getting fusion into the game as a source of power," Gilster told Space.com. Building upon the notable breakthrough is going to take time, he said.

"Where we go as this evolves, and this seems to be several decades away, is toward actual fusion power plants here on Earth . But as to space exploration, we then have to consider how to reduce working fusion into something that can fit the size and weight constraints of a spacecraft," said Gilster.

There's no doubt in Gilster's mind that fusion can be managed for space exploration purposes, but he suspects that's still more than a few decades in the future. 

"This work is heartening, then, but it should not diminish our research into alternatives like beamed energy as we consider missions beyond the solar system ," said Gilster.

Exhaust speeds

Richard Dinan is the founder of Pulsar Fusion in the United Kingdom. He's also the author of the book "The Fusion Age: Modern Nuclear Fusion Reactors." 

"Fusion propulsion is a much simpler technology to apply than fusion for energy. If fusion is achievable, which at last the people are starting see it is, then both fusion energy and propulsion are inevitable," Dinan said. "One gives us the ability to power our planet indefinitely, the other the ability to leave our solar system. It's a big deal, really."

Exhaust speeds generated from a fusion plasma, Dinan said, are calculated to be roughly one-thousand times that of a Hall Effect Thruster, electric propulsion hardware that makes use of electric and magnetic fields to create and eject a plasma.

"The financial implications that go with that make fusion propulsion, in our opinion, the single most important emerging technology in the space economy," Dinan said.

Pulsar Fusion has been busy working on a direct fusion drive initiative, a steady state fusion propulsion concept that's based on a compact fusion reactor.

According to the group's website, Pulsar Fusion has proceeded to a Phase 3 task, manufacturing an initial test unit. Static tests are slated to occur next year, followed by an in-orbit demonstration of the technology in 2027.

Aspirational glow

"The net energy gain reported in the press is certainly a significant milestone," said Ralph McNutt, a physicist and chief scientist for space science at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. "As more comes out, it will be interesting to see what the turning point was that pushed this achievement past the previous unsuccessful attempts," he said.

McNutt said that getting to a commercial electric power station from this recent milestone is likely to be a tough assignment. "But the tortoise did eventually beat the hare. Tenacity is always the virtue when one is handling tough technical problems."

With respect to space exploration, it certainly does not hurt in providing an example that great things can still be accomplished, McNutt said. 

"All of that said, it should be still a sobering thought that despite all of the work on NERVA/Rover there is still no working nuclear thermal rocket engine, and the promise of nuclear electric propulsion for space travel only had a brief glimmer with SNAP-10A in April of 1965," recalled McNutt. 

The actual use of ICF in a functional spacecraft has been a long-held dream, McNutt said, but that is very unlikely to change for a long time to come.

"Space travel has always been tough. That NASA has 'blazed the trail' that many commercial entities are now following does not mean space has gotten easier, but the new ICF results have added to the aspirational glow on the horizon of the future," McNutt added. 

"That said, no one should be fooled into thinking that space will somehow not be tough someday. It's called 'rocket science,' with all that implies in popular culture for a reason," he concluded. 

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook .  

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Leonard David is an award-winning space journalist who has been reporting on space activities for more than 50 years. Currently writing as Space.com's Space Insider Columnist among his other projects, Leonard has authored numerous books on space exploration, Mars missions and more, with his latest being "Moon Rush: The New Space Race" published in 2019 by National Geographic. He also wrote "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet" released in 2016 by National Geographic. Leonard  has served as a correspondent for SpaceNews, Scientific American and Aerospace America for the AIAA. He has received many awards, including the first Ordway Award for Sustained Excellence in Spaceflight History in 2015 at the AAS Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium. You can find out Leonard's latest project at his website and on Twitter.

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• bwana4swahili And producing 3.15MJ of output for 300+MJ is somehow a major breakthrough!? We're still a long, long, long way from anything useful!! Reply
• Vernon Brechin In order to embrace the ground-based and spaced-based fusion concepts covered in this article one likely assumes that we have 20-30 years to turn this 'Titanic' around. Such dreamers typically have become masterful at excluding the following warnings from their consciousness. IPCC report: ‘now or never’ if world is to stave off climate disaster https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/04/ipcc-report-now-or-never-if-world-stave-off-climate-disaster UN chief: World has less than 2 years to avoid 'runaway climate change' https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/406291-un-chief-the-world-has-less-than-2-years-to-avoid-runaway-climate * This statement was made 4-years ago. Reply
• bwana4swahili Always gloom and doom, gloom and doom! Homo sapiens will adapt or die just as billions of species before them. Reply

bwana4swahili said: Always gloom and doom, gloom and doom! Homo sapiens will adapt or die just as billions of species before them.

• Unclear Engineer There is nothing about the climate that is going to kill off all humans by 2025, 2050 or even 2100, even if we continue to emit more CO2 than we pledged. What will happen is that a lot of our coastal infrastructures will be inundated and need to be moved or replaced, and a lot of people will find their climate has changed - some for the worse and some for the better. In the long run, if we continue as we are doing, sea level will top out at about 300' higher than today. The predictions that Earth will become unfit for life are not likely outcomes, because there will be social feedbacks that force changes in our ways. The bigger issue is whether those changes result in wars over migration that will existentially threaten our species in the nearer term. Reply

Unclear Engineer said: There is nothing about the climate that is going to kill off all humans by 2025, 2050 or even 2100, even if we continue to emit more CO2 than we pledged. What will happen is that a lot of our coastal infrastructures will be inundated and need to be moved or replaced, and a lot of people will find their climate has changed - some for the worse and some for the better. In the long run, if we continue as we are doing, sea level will top out at about 300' higher than today. The predictions that Earth will become unfit for life are not likely outcomes, because there will be social feedbacks that force changes in our ways. The bigger issue is whether those changes result in wars over migration that will existentially threaten our species in the nearer term.

• Unclear Engineer Vernon, you are drastically underestimating my credentials and experience, as well as my interest in the natural ecosystems beyond just human comfort. So, please drop the attitude that I am naïve, undereducated or otherwise unaware about the things you are advocating. I have been actually involved in the issues we are discussing for decades, so this is much more than an academic exercise for me. And, I am well aware of the IPCC and other reports on global warming - I have been following the issues since the 1970s, and am updating the projected sea levels (and local land subsidence) for impacts on my home every time there is an update, as well as following the research on the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica to see how new knowledge is likely to affect those estimates. I am also working on a solar installation for my property. I am also involved in habitat restorations and preservations in my local area. I don't just post about things that matter, I get out and do things that I hope will matter. So, you are going to have to adopt a more balanced style for discussing the issues if you want to have any effect on my understanding of them. Trying to come across as possessing superior education, experience or knowledge isn't getting you any traction. Debate the issues with facts, please. Reply
• Helio Vernon, ask yourself why RCP8.5 was replaced with RCP4.5? Climate modeling still doesn't have a strong grip on all the variables and how they affect climate, though it is critical that they keep improving this work. I like the use of the phrase, "climate sensitivity", to better address the real effort in climate modeling of all those variables, like the impact from CO2. Language is important and it has been abused. Consider how stupid the phrase "climate denier" sounds, which is, no doubt, intended as an ad hominem. I can't imagine anyone claiming there is no such thing as a climate? I wonder how many realize that more will die from cold than from heat in the next 12 months.? The CDC shows significantly more from cold in the US, which is based on death certificates. Other sources, however, say it is about even. Yet, world-wide, the mortality from cold is likely more than 5 to 1. here] Heat in the winter requires, currently, fossil fuels. Air conditioners made the south livable, also requiring fossil fuels. We are playing with lives of the vulnerable if we move off fossil fuels too quickly, and rhetoric suggests that's the direction being taken. Wind and solar can help but we must understand their limitations. More science, less hullabaloo. Reply

Admin said: Nuclear fusion has broad implications, fueling hopes of clean, limitless energy and the long-held dream of future rockets that are driven by nuclear propulsion. Nuclear fusion breakthrough: What does it mean for space exploration? : Read more

• Unclear Engineer Yes, that is interesting. Pulsar Fusion has made other types of engines, but not fusion based, yet. See https://pulsarfusion.com/ . Considering that their website says "NUCLEAR FUSION SET TO BE THE WORLD’S DOMINANT POWER SOURCE BY 2100", I put them in the "advocate" category rather than the "objective forecaster" category. So, when I read "Pulsar has now proceeded to phase 3, the manufacture of the initial test unit. Static tests are to begin in 2023 followed by an In Orbit Demonstration (IOD) of the technology in 2027," I am hopeful but not overly optimistic. Research groups have been building fusion devices here on Earth for decades, and none are yet "continuous" or even close to it. True, an open system is much easier to run continuously than the closed systems that the other current projects hope to create for electric power production here on Earth's surface. "Containment" becomes "direction" in open systems designed to produce thrust. But, considering how slow the progress has been on other fusion projects, I will be amazed if Pulsar Fusion gets a successful orbital demonstration as early as 5 years from now. Reply
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Universe Today

Space and astronomy news

Ion Propulsion: The Key to Deep Space Exploration

When we think of space travel, we tend to picture a massive rocket blasting off from Earth, with huge blast streams of fire and smoke coming out the bottom, as the enormous machine struggles to escape Earth’s gravity. Rockets are our only option for escaping Earth’s gravity well—for now. But once a spacecraft has broken its gravitational bond with Earth, we have other options for powering them. Ion propulsion, long dreamed of in science fiction, is now used to send probes and spacecraft on long journeys through space.

NASA first began researching ion propulsion in the 1950’s. In 1998, ion propulsion was successfully used as the main propulsion system on a spacecraft, powering the Deep Space 1 (DS1) on its mission to the asteroid 9969 Braille and Comet Borrelly . DS1 was designed not only to visit an asteroid and a comet, but to test twelve advanced, high-risk technologies, chief among them the ion propulsion system itself.

Ion propulsion systems generate a tiny amount of thrust. Hold nine quarters in your hand, feel Earth’s gravity pull on them, and you have an idea how little thrust they generate. They can’t be used for launching spacecraft from bodies with strong gravity. Their strength lies in continuing to generate thrust over time. This means that they can achieve very high top speeds. Ion thrusters can propel spacecraft to speeds over 320,000 kp/h (200,000 mph), but they must be in operation for a long time to achieve that speed.

An ion is an atom or a molecule that has either lost or gained an electron, and therefore has an electrical charge. So ionization is the process of giving a charge to an atom or a molecule, by adding or removing electrons. Once charged, an ion will want to move in relation to a magnetic field. That’s at the heart of ion drives. But certain atoms are better suited for this. NASA’s ion drives typically use xenon, an inert gas, because there’s no risk of explosion.

In an ion drive, the xenon isn’t a fuel. It isn’t combusted, and it has no inherent properties that make it useful as a fuel. The energy source for an ion drive has to come from somewhere else. This source can be electricity from solar cells, or electricity generated from decay heat from a nuclear material.

Ions are created by bombarding the xenon gas with high energy electrons. Once charged, these ions are drawn through a pair of electrostatic grids—called lenses—by their charges, and are expelled out of the chamber, producing thrust. This discharge is called the ion beam, and it is again injected with electrons, to neutralize its charge. Here’s a short video showing how ion drives work:

Unlike a traditional chemical rocket , where its thrust is limited by how much fuel it can carry and burn, the thrust generated by an ion drive is only limited by the strength of its electrical source. The amount of propellant a craft can carry, in this case xenon, is a secondary concern. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft used only 10 ounces of xenon propellant—that’s less than a soda can—for 27 hours of operation.

In theory, there is no limit to the strength of the electrical source powering the drive, and work is being done to develop even more powerful ion thrusters than we currently have. In 2012, NASA’s Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) operated at 7000w for over 43,000 hours, in comparison to the ion drive on DS1 that used only 2100w. NEXT, and designs that will surpass it in the future, will allow spacecraft to go on extended missions to multiple asteroids, comets, the outer planets, and their moons.

Missions using ion propulsion include NASA’s Dawn mission, the Japanese Hayabusa mission to asteroid 25143 Itokawa, and the upcoming ESA missions Bepicolombo , which will head to Mercury in 2017, and LISA Pathfinder , which will study low frequency gravitational waves.

With the constant improvement in ion propulsion systems, this list will only grow.

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9 Replies to “Ion Propulsion: The Key to Deep Space Exploration”

This is the warp drive which is being used here and now, matured since decades. It gets way too little attention and appreciation in the public space nerd community.

According to the logarithm of the rocket equation, tenfolded speed change requires 20,000 times more fuel, or 10 times higher exhaust velocity. Ion thrusters are already at 30 if not even 50 times higher exhaust velocities. Thanks to this magic, which is really happening, the sky is no longer the limit.

So it is slow and boring. Chemical explosions emit energy much more rapidly than any solar or nuclear power plant. Human space travel needs to be more rapid than what ion thrusters can provide. However, ion thrusters can be used to pre-deploy equipment, and chemical fuel to be used for fast travel when needed. Humans could be transferred quickly chemically in low-mass capsules between Earth, a Mars cycler and a Mars surface base which all have been pre-deployed by ion propulsion.

Oopsters.. I deleted my post.. dang.

The current sticking point for getting more powerful thrusters is a good enough power source. It’s very hard to get permission to launch lumps of Pu-238 out of the gravity well using a controlled explosion, let alone U-235 or Pu239 but hopefully the commercial drivers for electric cars and some of the recent breakthroughs with capacitor efficiency will allow us to accumulate enough power from solar collectors to run megawatt ion drives and open up the Solar System. Relayed charging points might even be feasible out to the orbit of Mars, dock the craft at the collector, and grab the accumulated charge by whatever clever means possible

Boeing seems to be working on a 1 MWe photovoltaic array for spacecrafts (at 1 AU, in ten years). The space station has about a tenth of that at 100 kWe, and is in the shadow about half of the time. So I think that solar electric power can go a long way even for human spaceflight to Mars. Not a long way from the Sun, though, Jupiter could be the limit.

Capacitors allowing a substantial storage of electric power would be super nice. Nuclear would be great, but solar power does well for the small scale local space flight we’ll see in our lifetime. The electric power generated by the plutonium RTG of Curiosity corresponds to only one sixth (1/6) of a horsepower! It mostly generates heat, which is also valuable up to some small scale above which the heat instead becomes a problem.

See slide 3.

I’m not sure it was mentioned bu when the two atoms collide and an ion is released and ejected isn’t it hot/cold? And how does it know where to exit? How is sufficient electricity supplied when the unit is out of range from the Sun or a Star or radiation?

Answers to your last two questions. “Once charged, an ion will want to move in relation to a magnetic field. ”

Outer planets are possible targets. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune are our outer planets.

Hello, Ponce.

“I’m not sure it was mentioned bu when the two atoms collide and an ion is released and ejected isn’t it hot/cold?” The ionized xenon (or other fuel) particle WILL be more energetic (a.k.a. “hotter”) after its collision with the ionizing electron. That heat doesn’t contribute very much to the thrust achieved however.

“And how does it know where to exit?” From the article: “Once charged, these ions are drawn through a pair of electrostatic grids—called lenses—by their charges, and are expelled out of the chamber, producing thrust.” In other words, the positively charged ions are drawn magnetically to the exit by the negatively charged grids.

Ordinarily, these ions would be accelerated through the grid… and then be drawn right back to it by their charge, which would reduce or eliminate thrust altogether. However the neutralizing beam adds an electron back to the ions, which cancels out the positive charge before this can occur.

“How is sufficient electricity supplied when the unit is out of range from the Sun or a Star or radiation?” This is the $Zillion Question. The engine itself doesn’t care where it gets the electricity from, only that it gets it. Therefore, options such as large capacity batteries, capacitors, RTGs and even full-blown fission (or someday, fusion) reactors are potential energy sources once an ion-drive-equipped craft reaches areas where solar arrays are no longer effective.

“Unlike a traditional chemical rocket, where its thrust is limited by how much fuel it can carry and burn, the thrust generated by an ion drive is only limited by the strength of its electrical source. The amount of propellant a craft can carry, in this case xenon, is a secondary concern. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft used only 10 ounces of xenon propellant—that’s less than a soda can—for 27 hours of operation.”

This almost makes it sound like “As long as you have SOME fuel, the amount doesn’t actually matter,” which of course is not the case. The distinction between an ion engine & a chemical rocket is that an ion engine uses its fuel by the atom; a chemical rocket uses its fuel by the pound (not to say “by the TON”).

Eventually, even an ion engine will run out of fuel, and the more energy one applies to the reaction, the more quickly one will run out of fuel.

Pardon me please for a couple of things: The first is for being older than methuselah and the second is for having a memory afflicted by that age – but – I remember a kid’s comic strip from some time around the years of 1938-1942 in which the characters were traveling in space either from planet to planet or star to star using “a new system” called ION PROPULSION. I can’t imagine how one might find that strip today but I swear to you that it did mention ion propulsion. It also referred to the “click sound made when each ion was expelled from the engine”. This is an honest memory and an honest query: How do we go back to find that comic strip?

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A Groundbreaking Scientific Discovery Just Created the Instruction Manual for Light-Speed Travel

In a first for warp drives, this research actually obeys the laws of physics.

If a superluminal—meaning faster than the speed of light—warp drive like Alcubierre’s worked, it would revolutionize humanity’s endeavors across the universe , allowing us, perhaps, to reach Alpha Centauri, our closest star system, in days or weeks even though it’s four light years away.

The clip above from the 2016 film Star Trek Beyond showcases the effect of a starship zipping through space inside a faster-than-light warp bubble. You can see the imagined but hypothetically accurate warping of spacetime.

However, the Alcubierre drive has a glaring problem: the force behind its operation, called “negative energy,” involves exotic particles—hypothetical matter that, as far as we know, doesn’t exist in our universe. Described only in mathematical terms, exotic particles act in unexpected ways, like having negative mass and working in opposition to gravity (in fact, it has “anti-gravity”). For the past 30 years, scientists have been publishing research that chips away at the inherent hurdles to light speed revealed in Alcubierre’s foundational 1994 article published in the peer-reviewed journal Classical and Quantum Gravity .

Now, researchers at the New York City-based think tank Applied Physics believe they’ve found a creative new approach to solving the warp drive’s fundamental roadblock. Along with colleagues from other institutions, the team envisioned a “positive energy” system that doesn’t violate the known laws of physics . It’s a game-changer, say two of the study’s authors: Gianni Martire, CEO of Applied Physics, and Jared Fuchs, Ph.D., a senior scientist there. Their work, also published in Classical and Quantum Gravity in late April, could be the first chapter in the manual for interstellar spaceflight.

Positive energy makes all the difference. Imagine you are an astronaut in space, pushing a tennis ball away from you. Instead of moving away, the ball pushes back, to the point that it would “take your hand off” if you applied enough pushing force, Martire tells Popular Mechanics . That’s a sign of negative energy, and, though the Alcubierre drive design requires it, there’s no way to harness it.

Instead, regular old positive energy is more feasible for constructing the “ warp bubble .” As its name suggests, it’s a spherical structure that surrounds and encloses space for a passenger ship using a shell of regular—but incredibly dense—matter. The bubble propels the spaceship using the powerful gravity of the shell, but without causing the passengers to feel any acceleration. “An elevator ride would be more eventful,” Martire says.

That’s because the density of the shell, as well as the pressure it exerts on the interior, is controlled carefully, Fuchs tells Popular Mechanics . Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, according to the gravity-bound principles of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity . So the bubble is designed such that observers within their local spacetime environment—inside the bubble—experience normal movement in time. Simultaneously, the bubble itself compresses the spacetime in front of the ship and expands it behind the ship, ferrying itself and the contained craft incredibly fast. The walls of the bubble generate the necessary momentum, akin to the momentum of balls rolling, Fuchs explains. “It’s the movement of the matter in the walls that actually creates the effect for passengers on the inside.”

Building on its 2021 paper published in Classical and Quantum Gravity —which details the same researchers’ earlier work on physical warp drives—the team was able to model the complexity of the system using its own computational program, Warp Factory. This toolkit for modeling warp drive spacetimes allows researchers to evaluate Einstein’s field equations and compute the energy conditions required for various warp drive geometries. Anyone can download and use it for free . These experiments led to what Fuchs calls a mini model, the first general model of a positive-energy warp drive. Their past work also demonstrated that the amount of energy a warp bubble requires depends on the shape of the bubble; for example, the flatter the bubble in the direction of travel, the less energy it needs.

☄️ DID YOU KNOW? People have been imagining traveling as fast as light for nearly a century, if not longer. The 1931 novel Islands of Space by John W. Campbell mentions a “warp” method in the context of superluminal space travel.

This latest advancement suggests fresh possibilities for studying warp travel design, Erik Lentz, Ph.D., tells Popular Mechanics . In his current position as a staff physicist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, Lentz contributes to research on dark matter detection and quantum information science research. His independent research in warp drive theory also aims to be grounded in conventional physics while reimagining the shape of warped space. The topic needs to overcome many practical hurdles, he says.

Controlling warp bubbles requires a great deal of coordination because they involve enormous amounts of matter and energy to keep the passengers safe and with a similar passage of time as the destination. “We could just as well engineer spacetime where time passes much differently inside [the passenger compartment] than outside. We could miss our appointment at Proxima Centauri if we aren’t careful,” Lentz says. “That is still a risk if we are traveling less than the speed of light.” Communication between people inside the bubble and outside could also become distorted as it passes through the curvature of warped space, he adds.

While Applied Physics’ current solution requires a warp drive that travels below the speed of light, the model still needs to plug in a mass equivalent to about two Jupiters. Otherwise, it will never achieve the gravitational force and momentum high enough to cause a meaningful warp effect. But no one knows what the source of this mass could be—not yet, at least. Some research suggests that if we could somehow harness dark matter , we could use it for light-speed travel, but Fuchs and Martire are doubtful, since it’s currently a big mystery (and an exotic particle).

Despite the many problems scientists still need to solve to build a working warp drive, the Applied Physics team claims its model should eventually get closer to light speed. And even if a feasible model remains below the speed of light, it’s a vast improvement over today’s technology. For example, traveling at even half the speed of light to Alpha Centauri would take nine years. In stark contrast, our fastest spacecraft, Voyager 1—currently traveling at 38,000 miles per hour—would take 75,000 years to reach our closest neighboring star system.

Of course, as you approach the actual speed of light, things get truly weird, according to the principles of Einstein’s special relativity . The mass of an object moving faster and faster would increase infinitely, eventually requiring an infinite amount of energy to maintain its speed.

“That’s the chief limitation and key challenge we have to overcome—how can we have all this matter in our [bubble], but not at such a scale that we can never even put it together?” Martire says. It’s possible the answer lies in condensed matter physics, he adds. This branch of physics deals particularly with the forces between atoms and electrons in matter. It has already proven fundamental to several of our current technologies, such as transistors, solid-state lasers, and magnetic storage media.

The other big issue is that current models allow a stable warp bubble, but only for a constant velocity. Scientists still need to figure out how to design an initial acceleration. On the other end of the journey, how will the ship slow down and stop? “It’s like trying to grasp the automobile for the first time,” Martire says. “We don’t have an engine just yet, but we see the light at the end of the tunnel.” Warp drive technology is at the stage of 1882 car technology, he says: when automobile travel was possible, but it still looked like a hard, hard problem.

The Applied Physics team believes future innovations in warp travel are inevitable. The general positive energy model is a first step. Besides, you don’t need to zoom at light speed to achieve distances that today are just a dream, Martire says. “Humanity is officially, mathematically, on an interstellar track.”

Before joining Popular Mechanics , Manasee Wagh worked as a newspaper reporter, a science journalist, a tech writer, and a computer engineer. She’s always looking for ways to combine the three greatest joys in her life: science, travel, and food.

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NASA to test nuclear rocket engine that could take humans to Mars in 45 days

This is the first time a nuclear powered engine has been tested in fifty years

NASA has revealed plans to create a nuclear-powered rocket that could send astronauts to Mars in just 45 days.

The agency, which has partnered with the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to design the rocket, announced on Tuesday (Jan. 24) that it could build a working nuclear thermal rocket engine as soon as 2027.

NASA’s current rocket systems (including the Space Launch System which last year sent the Artemis 1 rocket on a historic round-trip to the moon) are based on the century-old, traditional method of chemical propulsion — in which an oxidizer (which gives the reaction more oxygen to combust with) is mixed with flammable rocket fuel to create a flaming jet of thrust. The proposed nuclear system, on the other hand, will harness the chain reaction from tearing apart atoms to power a nuclear fission reactor that would be “three or more times more efficient” and could reduce Mars flight times to a fraction of the current seven months, according to the agency.

Related: To the moon! NASA launches Artemis 1, the most powerful rocket ever built

"DARPA and NASA have a long history of fruitful collaboration in advancing technologies for our respective goals, from the Saturn V rocket that took humans to the Moon for the first time to robotic servicing and refueling of satellites," Stefanie Tompkins , the director of DARPA, said in a statement . "The space domain is critical to modern commerce, scientific discovery, and national security. The ability to accomplish leap-ahead advances in space technology… will be essential for more efficiently and quickly transporting material to the moon and, eventually, people to Mars."

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NASA began its research into nuclear thermal engines in 1959, eventually leading to the design and construction of the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (NERVA), a solid-core nuclear reactor that was successfully tested on Earth. Plans to fire the engine in space, however, were mothballed following the 1973 end of the Apollo Era and a sharp reduction of the program's funding.

Nuclear engines can fire more efficiently than  their chemical counterparts, and for extended periods of time — propelling rockets faster and further. They are split into two types: Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP) reactors, which work by generating electricity that strips electrons from noble gases such as xenon and krypton before blasting them out of the spacecraft’s thruster as an ion beam; and Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) reactors, which is the type being investigated by NASA, uses the fission reaction to heat a gas (typically hydrogen or ammonia) so that it expands through a nozzle to provide thrust.

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The Artemis 1 flight was the first of three missions testing the hardware, software and ground systems intended to one day establish a base on the moon and transport the first humans to Mars . This first test flight will be followed by Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 in 2024 and 2025/2026, respectively. Artemis 2 will make the same journey as Artemis 1 but with a four-person human crew, and Artemis 3 will send the first woman and the first person of color to land on the moon's surface, at the lunar south pole.

"It's historic because we are now going back into space, into deep space, with a new generation." NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said following Artemis 1’s launch. "One that marks new technology, a whole new breed of astronauts, and a vision of the future. This is the program of going back to the moon to learn, to live, to invent, to create in order to explore beyond."

Ben Turner is a U.K. based staff writer at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, among other topics like tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he's not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.

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May 15, 2024

A Brand-New Spacecraft Will Visit the International Space Station Soon

Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser is set to make its inaugural trip to orbit to deliver supplies to the International Space Station

By Sarah Scoles

Sierra Space

With its perpetually upturned pectoral fins, and blunt nose, the Dream Chaser looks more like a killer whale than a spacecraft. But unlike an orca, the Dream Chaser will soon be going to orbit: it’s set to take food and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year when it travels to space for the first time.

The Dream Chaser’s trip to space will make it the latest commercial vehicle to visit the ISS as part of NASA’s “commercial resupply services” program. But leaders at Sierra Space, the company that built this finned craft, have visions that go beyond such deliveries: they hope that someday Dream Chaser will carry people to space and that it can act as a kind of ready-made space program for countries that don’t want to or don’t have the resources to reinvent these particular wheels. Beyond that, Sierra Space officials think Dream Chaser could deliver supplies or people to various places on Earth for the Department of Defense by going from point to point around the world at a faster clip than a typical plane.

But before any of that happens, Dream Chaser must make its maiden voyage, set for sometime later this year.

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NASA’s Space Shuttle was the original grocery deliverer and taxi service for the space station. As the shuttle retired in 2011, “we had to go start taking a look at a couple of avenues to support the space station,” says Phil Dempsey, ISS Transportation Integration Office manager. NASA turned to private corporations .

If companies could build space deliverers, NASA could simply buy their services instead of having to build and maintain its own vehicles. NASA’s first phase of contracts went to SpaceX and Orbital ATK (now Northrop Grumman). In the second phase, Sierra Space became the third company to win a contract. Sometime this year the Dream Chaser will be loaded onto a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket at Cape Canaveral, Fla., whose runway it will land on upon return.

Northrop’s cargo craft is called Cygnus, and it looks like a tin can that grew aerodynamically ineffective wings. It goes up but does not come down, “destructively reentering” the atmosphere—to use NASA’s violent euphemism for the craft burning up as it flies through the air—which lets it dispose of the station’s trash after it leaves. SpaceX’s solution is the Dragon capsule, which bears more resemblance to the classic Apollo spacecraft of old—with a modern, minimalist twist—and does return safely to Earth in a splashdown, after which it is ready to be reused. The journeys of these two craft weren’t always smooth sailing. “Both of the initial providers had early launch failures,” Dempsey says. Perhaps Dream Chaser will become a dream “catcher,” with fewer difficulties.

Dream Chaser is a “lifting-body” spacecraft: it launches on a rocket but can land like an airplane on a runway, with its wide belly providing the lift that wings would on a conventional aircraft. It was initially intended for human occupants; the group had applied to take astronauts up to the ISS but didn’t win the contract. So when Sierra saw the option to send cargo, it decided to shoot for that star instead.

The company began modifying its people-pleasing design by taking out things that only humans need—such as windows and an abort system. It added the ability to carry up to 12,000 pounds of cargo total, with the addition of an attached capsule, and dispose of stuff on the way back down to Earth. Because Dream Chaser would ride to space in the five-meter fairing, or nose cone, of a rocket, the company redesigned the wings to fold up and be deployed in preparation for landing only once out of that claustrophobic space.

Dream Chaser is, in other words, a little less straightforward than Cygnus and Dragon. And because it lands on a runway, it can bring research home and hand off to scientists quickly—just half an hour after touchdown. During that touchdown, it will experience just 1.5 g ’s of acceleration, providing a softer landing than a typical splashdown.

Dream Chaser can also dump its cargo capsule to burn up in the atmosphere on the way back down, letting it and whatever’s inside crisp into nothingness. “It gives a mix of the capabilities that the other two providers have,” Dempsey says. That gives NASA the flexibility, he continues, to choose which cargo carrier is best suited to a particular mission. For instance, the agency might use Dragon for critical cargo that needs to come back to the planet, Cygnus to get a huge amount of cargo up and Dream Chaser for time-sensitive research.

Each Dream Chaser is designed to fly 15 times before needing to be retired, so between the model that’s complete—named Tenacity—and another on the production floor, 30 future missions are possible. The company is also committed to building a crewed version of the space plane and eventually taking astronauts up, says Angie Wise, Sierra Space’s chief safety officer and senior vice president of mission and quality assurance. That goal meshes with another wing of the company’s business, she adds, which is working with Blue Origin on a commercial space station called Orbital Reef. The reef dwellers will have to get there somehow .

Wise says Sierra Space is focused on making this first mission successful rather than getting overhyped about the future. But the company does have a loose plan with the United Nations, if funding is secured, to launch an uncrewed international mission. Although the details aren’t nailed down, the U.N.’s description says such a mission would carry “experiments, payloads, or satellites provided by institutions in the participating countries.” Sierra Space is also talking to other governments about potential “ free-flyer missions ,” where the plane would simply loiter in orbit. It could host microgravity experiments onboard or give small satellites a lift and then let them go.

Beyond those aims, though, Sierra Space is also looking to the Department of Defense, where it thinks Dream Chaser could be useful for things such as peering down at Earth or rush delivering supplies to troops in faraway parts of the planet. “We can land pretty much on any major commercial runway,” Wise says. That special kind of delivery involves what insiders call “point-to-point” rocket travel: shooting spacecraft from one spot on the globe to another via an arc that cuts suborbitally through space. Up there, the craft could go thousands of miles per hour, compared with an airplane’s hundreds, and then slice through the atmosphere above its intended destination.

There aren’t any operational contracts in this direction yet, but the defense sector is broadly interested in such capabilities, and Sierra Space has signed a research agreement with the U.S. Transportation Command to look into “timely global delivery of Department of Defense logistics and personnel,” according to a press release . The Air Force, in particular, has its eye on point-to-point delivery. In addition to Dream Chaser, SpaceX’s Starship and spacecraft from Blue Origin and Rocket Lab could be put to such uses.

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), whose goal is to better and more quickly bring commercial technology under the military umbrella, recently took proposals for a program it calls Novel Responsive Space Delivery . In this program, the unit is looking for “responsive and precise point-to-point delivery of cargo to, from, and through space,” DIU said in its solicitation. That means DIU wants the service to go from Earth to orbit, from space to a specific spot on Earth and within space between satellites. In the future, the winners of such a contract might take upgrade or repair parts to an ailing satellite or even rescue people in space, should the need arise.

But DIU is also looking to a future time when the DOD might store supplies in space, as the U.S. military has at caches across Earth’s surface for many years. Then it would be able to send them where they’re needed, as they’re needed, if the usual terrestrial supply lines were in jeopardy or a disaster called for rapid response. “There are certain commodities that we can preposition in orbit. Certain commodities kind of lend themselves to being okay sitting in a space vehicle for some duration,” says Austin Baker, deputy director for DIU’s space portfolio.

Whether Dream Chaser will ever perform tasks like that is currently up in the air as it gets ready for its first launch. Right now it’s busy going through the rocket ringer, being tested to see how it holds up to conditions of launch and space itself. Sierra Space is “just checking out everything works on the ground before we ever launch it,” Wise says—to give it the best chance of coming back to the ground safely.

Dailymotion

Highlights Of Dawn Aerospace's Suborbital Space Plane's First Rocket Powered Flight

Posted: May 18, 2024 | Last updated: May 18, 2024

Watch the Dawn Aerospace's Mk-II Aurora Spaceplane light up it rocket engine test flight. Credit: Dawn Aerospace

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The End of the Beginning

What comes next.

NASA, alongside industry, will soon begin designing a new jet engine concept for the next generation of ultra-efficient airliners — officially graduating to the project’s next phase.

As part of NASA’s goal to  make the aviation industry more sustainable , the agency is developing a small core for a hybrid-electric turbofan jet engine that could reduce fuel burn by 10% compared to today’s engines.

A jet engine’s core is where compressed air is combined with fuel and ignited to generate power. By making this core smaller, fuel efficiency can be improved and carbon emissions reduced.

The goal of the project, named Hybrid Thermally Efficient Core (HyTEC) , is to demonstrate this compact core and have the technology ready for adoption in engines powering next-generation aircraft in the 2030s. HyTEC is a key component of NASA’s Sustainable Flight National Partnership .

To achieve its ambitious goal, HyTEC is structured in two phases:

• Phase 1, which is wrapping up, focused on selecting the component technologies to use in the core demonstrator.
• Phase 2, starting now, will see researchers design, build, and test a compact core in collaboration with GE Aerospace.

“Phase 1 of HyTEC is winding down and we are ramping up Phase 2,” said Anthony Nerone, who leads HyTEC at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “This phase will culminate in a core demonstration test that proves the technology so it can transition to industry.”

Before researchers could start the design and build process for the core, they had to explore innovative new materials to use in the engine. After three years of notably fast progress, HyTEC researchers came up with solutions.

“We’ve been laser-focused since day one. We began the project with certain technical goals and metrics for success and, so far, we haven’t had to change course from any of them,” Nerone said.

To shrink the size of a core while maintaining the same level of thrust, heat and pressure must increase compared to standard jet engines used today. This means the engine core must be made of more durable materials that can withstand higher temperatures.

In addition to conducting materials research, the project also explored advanced aerodynamics and other key technical elements.

Phase 2 builds on Phase 1 to create a compact core for ground testing that proves HyTEC’s capabilities.

“Phase 2 is very complex. It’s not just a core demonstration,” Nerone said. “What we’re creating has never been done before, and it involves many different technologies coming together to form a new type of engine.”

Technologies tested in the HyTEC program will help enable a much higher bypass ratio, hybridization, and compatibility with sustainable aviation fuels.

The bypass ratio describes the relationship between the amount of air flowing through the engine core compared to the amount of air bypassing the core to flow around it.

By decreasing the core size while increasing the size of the turbofan it powers – while maintaining the same thrust output — the HyTEC concept would use less fuel and reduce carbon emissions.

“HyTEC is an integral part of our RISE program,” said Kathleen Mondino, who helps lead RISE program technologies at GE Aerospace. “GE Aerospace and NASA have a long history of collaboration to advance the latest aviation technologies. The HyTEC program builds on this relationship to help chart the future of more sustainable flight.”

Another piece of the puzzle is hybridization. HyTEC’s hybrid-electric capability means the core will also be augmented by electrical power to further reduce fuel use and carbon emissions.

“This engine will be the first mild hybrid-electric engine, and hopefully, the first production engine for airliners that is hybrid-electric,” Nerone said.

About the Author

John Gould is a member of NASA Aeronautics' Strategic Communications team at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. He is dedicated to public service and NASA’s leading role in scientific exploration. Prior to working for NASA Aeronautics, he was a spaceflight historian and writer, having a lifelong passion for space and aviation.

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Related Terms

• Advanced Air Vehicles Program
• Hybrid Thermally Efficient Core