The world’s space programs are vertically challenged. What’s needed is a revolutionary low-cost way to move payloads and people into Earth orbit and then outward to the asteroids, Mars and beyond. Now an upstart company of enterprising engineers and investment strategists want to tackle the ultimate high-rise project for the 21st century: the space elevator. They are on the ground floor of putting calculations to paper and wrestling with the toughest challenges. The message from the First International Space Elevator Conference, held here August 12-13, is that the concept is an idea whose time has come
August 7th, 2002
Superfast VASIMR Rocket in Funding Limbo
Trimming travel time between Earth and various space targets is crucial to keeping human and robotic surveys of the solar system prospering into the 21st Century. Faster rockets cut back on an astronaut’s radiation intake. Being a space speedster may also reduce loss of bone and muscle mass, as well as limit circulatory changes due to prolonged microgravity exposure. One approach to express lane rocketry is tagged the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR). With VASIMR’s oomph, a 10-month one-way trek to Mars — the standard assumed for today’s chemical rockets — would be reduced to just four months. Research on this high-tech propulsion method has turned controversial, however. VASIMR supporters see dream machinery in the making. Other propulsion experts claim the engine delivers more hype than hypervelocity.
August 1st, 2002
Boeing Admits To Propellentless Propulsion Research
A reported published July 29 by Jane’s Defense Weekly says Boeing has acknowledged it is conducting a variety of anti-gravity experiments that could rewrite the economics of conventional aviation technologies. According to Jane’s Defense Weekly (JDW) the research is being done at Boeing’s famous Phantom Works facility in Seattle where Boeing is working to gain the services of the Russian scientist Dr Evgeny Podkletnov who claims he has developed anti-gravity devices in Russia and Finland.
July 29th, 2002
Boeing challenges the laws of physics Financial Times
Anti-gravity, the taboo of the science and aerospace communities, takes a step into the limelight of respectability this week with news that Boeing, the world’s biggest aircraft-maker, is exploring concepts that could one day – perhaps even soon – overturn a century of propulsion technology. Boeing’s interest in anti-gravity is encapsulated in a company project known as Grasp – Gravity Research for Advanced Space Propulsion. A Grasp document, obtained by Jane’s Defence Weekly, the defence industry magazine, spells out what Boeing believes to be at stake if it can succeed in engineering real hardware. “If gravity modification is real,” it says, “it will alter the entire aerospace business.”
July 29th, 2002
Boeing tries to defy gravity
Researchers at the world’s largest aircraft maker, Boeing, are using the work of a controversial Russian scientist to try to create a device that will defy gravity. The company is examining an experiment by Yevgeny Podkletnov, who claims to have developed a device which can shield objects from the Earth’s pull.
July 25th, 2002
Photons double up for solar power PhysicsWeb
Solar cells could get an efficiency boost of 30% using a device proposed by physicists in Australia and Germany. Martin Green of the Centre for Third Generation Photovoltaics at the University of New South Wales and colleagues say that ‘down-converters’ could be connected to existing solar cells to double the number of ‘useful’ photons they capture (T Trupke et al 2002 J. Appl. Phys. 92 1668).
July 24th, 2002
NASA Developing Hypersonic Tech; Flight Vehicles Only Decades Away
Imagine taking off from any U.S. airport and landing on any other runway in the world in less than two hours. Or making a quick hop from that same airport to the International Space Station and back — a trip that normally takes days or weeks — to drop off science experiments, provisions and new equipment. Sound Far-Fetched? Not anymore. Technology now being developed by NASA and its partners could — within two decades — achieve such rapid trip times, yielding limitless possibilities for international travel, commerce and access to space.
July 11th, 2002
Planetary Society hopes to launch solar sail this year Spaceflight Now
Although launch is still months away, plans to fly the world’s first solar sail are progressing closer to liftoff as the Planetary Society-led Cosmos 1 team conduct a flurry of tests to ensure a successful flight. Engineers have recently redesigned some parts of the craft to increase the mission’s capabilities and to reduce the chances for failure.
July 9th, 2002
NASA Air-Breathing Engine Rockets On Paper
Initial design of a new prototype air-breathing rocket engine for NASA — one that could revolutionize air and space travel in the next 40 years — reached a major milestone ahead of schedule last week. The engine’s design team, the Rocket Based Combined Cycle Consortium (RBC3), completed its first major engine systems requirements review — an exhaustive examination of the engine’s design and performance parameters — three months earlier than originally planned.
July 9th, 2002
NASA Breaks Ground For Advanced Propulsion Research Lab
NASA broke ground Monday on a state-of-the-art research facility intended to revolutionize 21st century space propulsion, helping to power future space vehicles on journeys to the farthest reaches of the solar system — and, eventually, beyond it. The Propulsion Research Laboratory — part of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center — will be housed on a 21-acre site on Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala. It will be occupied primarily by propulsion scientists and technologists from the Marshall Center’s existing Propulsion Research Center.