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solar sail missions a number of recent missions are based on solar sail technology e g the japanese ikaros probe lightsail 1 of the planetary society and nasa s sunjammer probe greg matloff recently proposed use of graphene as a material for solar sails 15 with an areal density of a fraction of a gram and high thermal resistance this material would be truly disruptive currently existing materials have a much higher areal density a number crucial for measuring the performance of solar sails material sciences has also advanced to a degree where graphene layers only a few atoms thick can be manufactured 16 thus manufacturing a solar sail based on extremely thin layers of graphene is not as far away as it seems small satellites with a mass of only a few kilograms are increasingly proposed for interplanetary missions nasa has recently announced the interplanetary cubesat challenge where teams are invited to develop cubesat missions to the moon and even deeper into space nasa 17 coming advances will thus stretch the capability of cubesats beyond low earth orbit recent proposals for solar power satellites focus on providing space infrastructure with power instead of earth infrastructure 18 19 the reason is quite simple solar power satellites are not competitive to most earth based alternatives but they are in space a recent nasa concept by john mankins proposed the use of a highly modular tulip shaped space power satellite supplying geostationary communication satellites with power large space laser systems have been proposed for asteroid defense 20 in order to explore various mission architectures and encourage participation by a larger group of people i4is has recently announced the project dragonfly competition in the context of the alpha centauri prize 21 we hope that with the help of this competition we can find unprecedented mission architectures of truly disruptive capability once this goal is accomplished we can concentrate our efforts on developing individual technologies and test them in near term missions if this all works out this might be the first time in history that there is a realistic possibility to explore a near by star system within the 21st or early 22nd century with modest resources i remember when the original project icarus study came out in the 1970s and i was absolutely enthralled with it at last interstellar exploration could be possible not fantasy then the icarus came out a couple of years ago the ship was more advanced but the size doubled how is that possible in this age of miniaturization i think it s because people love the idea of battlestar galactica or u s s enterprise sized interstellar craft you gotta have powerful engines and weapons to cope with angry aliens right andrea hein is being smart and paying respect to robert foward and freeman dyson by writing this study with up to date ideas which encompasses cube sat tech and other commercial space company technologies project dragonfly the case for small laser propelled distributed probes posted in advanced propulsion technology ai alien planets extra solar planets interstellar travel nanotechnology private space enterprises research robots rockets science fact space space exploration technology centauri dreams to build the ultimate telescope by dad2059 on august 26 2014 leave a comment paul gilster posts in interstellar terms a fast mission is one that is measured in decades rather than millennia say for the sake of argument that we achieve this capability some time within the next 200 years can you imagine where we ll be in terms of telescope technology by that time it s an intriguing question because telescopes capable of not just imaging exoplanets but seeing them in great detail would allow us to choose our destinations wisely even while giving us voluminous data on the myriad worlds we choose not to visit will they also reduce our urge to make the trip former nasa administrator dan goldin described the effects of a telescope something like this back in 1999 at a meeting of the american astronomical society although he didn t have a specific telescope technology in mind he was sure that by the mid point of the 21st century we would be seeing exoplanets up close an educational opportunity unlike any ever offered goldin s classroom of this future era is one i d like to visit if his description is anywhere near the truth when you look on the walls you see a dozen maps detailing the features of earth like planets orbiting neighboring stars schoolchildren can study the geography oceans and continents of other planets and imagine their exotic environments just as we studied the earth and wondered about exotic sounding places like banghok and istanbul or in my case growing up in the bronx exotic far away places like brooklyn webster cash an astronomer whose aragoscope concept recently won a phase i award from the nasa innovative advanced concepts program see aragoscope offers high resolution optics in space has also been deeply involved in starshades in which a large occulter works with a telescope bearing spacecraft tens of thousands of kilometers away with the occulter blocking light from the parent star direct imaging of exoplanets down to earth size and below becomes possible allowing us to make spectroscopic analyses of their atmospheres pool data from fifty such systems using interferometry and spectacular close up images may one day be possible image the basic occulter concept with telescope trailing the occulter and using it to separate planet light from the light of the parent star credit webster cash have a look at cash s new worlds pages at the university of colorado for more and imagine what we might do with the ability to look at an exoplanet through a view as close as a hundred kilometers studying its oceans and continents its weather systems the patterns of its vegetation and who knows its city lights our one limitation would be the orbital inclination of the planet which would prevent us from mapping every area on the surface but given the benefits this seems like a small issue we would have achieved what dan goldin described seth shostak whose ideas we looked at yesterday in the context of seti and political will has also recently written on what large maybe i should say extreme telescopes can do for us in forget space travel build this telescope which ran in the huffington post shostak talks about a telescope that could map exoplanets with the same kind of detail you get with google earth to study planets within 100 light years the instrument would require capabilities that outstrip those of cash s cluster of interferometrically communicating space telescopes at 100 light years something the size of a honda accord which i propose as a standard imaging test object subtends an angle of a half trillionth of a second of arc in case that number doesn t speak to you it s roughly the apparent size of a cell nucleus on pluto as viewed from earth you will not be stunned to hear that resolving something that minuscule requires a telescope with a honking size at ordinary optical wavelengths honking works out to a mirror 100 million miles across you could nicely fit a reflector that large between the orbits of mercury and mars big yes but it would permit you to examine exoplanets in incredible detail or of course you can do what shostak is really getting at which is to use interferometry to pool data from thousands of small mirrors in space spread out over 100 million miles an array of the sort we are already building for radio observations and learning how to improve for optical and infrared work on earth shostak discusses a system like this which again is conceivable within the time frame we are talking about for developing an actual interstellar probe as a way to vanquish what he calls the tyranny of distance and he adds you can forget deep space probes i doubt we would do that however because we can hope that among the many worlds such a space based array would reveal to us would be some that fire our imaginations and demand much closer study the impulse to send robotic if not human crews will doubtless be fired by many of the exotic scenes we will observe i wouldn t consider this mammoth space array our only way of interacting with the galaxy then but an indispensable adjunct to our expansion into it of course shostak takes the long sensor derived view of exploring the universe his life s work is radio telescopes gilster is correct that interferometry will be an adjunct to sending robotic probes to distant interstellar worlds you can t make money by just gawking at places or can you original post posted in alien planets interstellar travel kardashev scale planets research robots rockets science simulated reality tagged bracewell probes extrasolar planets interstellar travel radio telescopes seti space space craft space technology space telescopes centauri dreams creative constraints and starflight by dad2059 on march 17 2014 leave a comment i discovered karl schroeder s work when i was researching brown dwarfs some years ago who knew that somebody was writing novels about civilizations around these dim objects permanence tor 2003 was a real eye opener as were the deep space cultures it described schroeder hooked me again with his latest book he s dealing with a preoccupation of mine a human presence in the deep space regions between ourselves and the nearest stars where resources are abundant and dark worlds move far from any sun how to maintain such a society and allow it to grow into something like an empire karl explains the mechanism below science fiction fans of which there are many on centauri dreams will know karl as the author of many other novels including ventus 2000 lady of mazes 2005 and sun of suns 2006 by karl schroeder my newest science fiction novel lockstep has just finished its serialization in analog magazine and tor books will have it on the bookshelves march 24 reactions have been pretty favourable except that i ve managed to offend a small but vocal group of my readers it seems that some people are outraged that i ve written an sf story in which faster than light travel is impossible i did write lockstep because i understood that it s not actual starflight that interests most people it s the romance of a star trek or star wars type interstellar civilization they want not the reality but the fantasy even so i misjudged the well the fervor with which some people cling to the belief that the lightspeed limit will just somehow magically and handwavingly get engineered around this is ironic because the whole point of lockstep was to find a way to have that star wars like interstellar civilization in reality and not just fantasy as an artist i m familiar with the power of creative constraint to generate ideas and for lockstep i put two constraints on myself 1 no ftl or unknown science would be allowed in the novel 2 the novel would contain a full blown interstellar civilization exactly like those you find in books with ftl creativity under constraint is the best kind of creativity it s the kind that really may take us to the stars someday in this case by placing such mutually contradictory even impossible restrictions on myself i was forced into a solution that in hindsight is obvious it is simply this everyone i know of who has thought about interstellar civilization has thought that the big problem to be solved is the problem of speed the issue though as opposed to the problem is how to travel to an interstellar destination spend some time there and return to the same home you left near c travel solves this problem for you but not for those you left at home ftl solves the problem for both you and home but with the caveat that it s impossible okay okay for the outraged among you as far as we know to put it more exactly we can t prove that ftl is impossible any more than we can prove that santa claus doesn t exist i ll concede that read the rest 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