OK, I am Now Mildly Excited

I've been hearing about the EM drive for some time.

It's a space propulsion system which requires no reaction mass or fuel.

I've been dubious, but NASA has published a favorable report in a peer reviewed journal, which means that the concept is credible on a mainstream level.

I look forward to the tests:

NASA scientists have been daydreaming about a new kind of engine that could carry astronauts to Mars in 70 days without burning any fuel. Now, in a new paper published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Propulsion and Power, they say that it might really work.

The paper, written by astrophysicists at NASA's Eagleworks Laboratories, tested a electromagnetic propulsion system, or “EM drive,” that generates a small amount of thrust simply by bouncing microwaves around a cone-shaped copper chamber. No propellant goes in, no exhaust comes out, and yet, somehow, the engine can make things move.

If you think that news sounds too good to be true, you've got good instincts — it just might be. This “impossible” fuel-less engine appears to violate one of the fundamental laws of physics.

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That's Newton's third law of motion. It's the principle that explains why pushing against a wall will send an ice skater zooming in the opposite direction. It also explains how jet engines work: As hot gases are expelled out the back of the plane, they produce a thrusting force that moves the plane forward.

But the EM drive doesn't work that way. Its thrust seems to come from the impact of photons on the walls of the copper cavity. That would be like moving a car forward by just banging against the windshield.

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According to the new paper, yes. The Eagleworks scientists report that their machine generated 1.2 millinewtons of thrust per kilowatt of electricity pumped in. (That electricity could come from solar panels in a hypothetical spaceship.) That's a fraction of thrust produced by the lightweight ion drives now used in many NASA spacecraft, National Geographic noted, but it's a lot more than the few micronewtons per kilowatt produced by light sails, a proven technology that generates thrust using radiation from the sun.

I'd like to see some orbital testing, and a theoretical model explaining how it works, but I am now officially intrigued.

Am I the Only Who Sees Fail Written All Over This?

NASA is looking at handing operations of its space station to private business in the next decade:

NASA is giving us some more insight into its plans to get humans to Mars, under the blanket mission called ‘Journey to Mars,’ and during the press conference, NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development Bill Hill revealed that the current hope is to hand off control of the International Space Station to a commercial owner by sometime around the mid 2020s.

“NASA’s trying to develop economic development in low-earth orbit,” Hill said, speaking on a panel of NASA staff assembled to discuss the upcoming Mars mission. “Ultimately, our desire is to hand the space station over to either a commercial entity or some other commercial capability so that research can continue in low-earth orbit, so that research can continue in low-earth orbit.”

The timing fits with the end of The U.S. Government’s current funding of the ISS program, which was extended by President Obama’s administration from its original deorbiting date of 2016 through 2020. Operations were prolonged through 2024 to help give NASA a platform from which to run its near-Earth preparatory missions leading up to the ultimate manned mission to Mars.

If this works as well as the privatization of British rail, I would be very surprised.

Nestle Launches Mission to Mars

No, Nestle is not actually flying to Mars. That's just a snarky reference to Nestle's sucking water out of California in orderto bottle it.

When juxtaposed with some of Nestle's earlier behavior, the news that NASA's discovery that there are current water flows on Mars, it is an obvious bit of humor:

Spectroscopic data from NASA

’s 10-year-old Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have confirmed years of scientific suspicion that periodic dark streaks appearing on Martian slopes are the result of liquid water flowing on the planet’s surface.

The dark features, known as recurring slope lineae (RSL), have been observed for years by the orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and have appeared on dozens of sites at Mars. This imagery was later correlated with mineral mapping by another instrument, the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), which determined that the dark streaks are hydrated minerals — i.e., thin patches of damp soil. The salt lowers the freezing point of the water, allowing it to persist longer in Mars’ thin, cold atmosphere.

“Our quest on Mars has been to ‘follow the water,’ in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we’ve long suspected,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science and a former space shuttle astronaut, during a Sept. 28 press conference. “Mars is not the dry, arid planet that we thought of in the past. Under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found on Mars.”

This is actually rather significant.

Where there is water, on Earth at least, there is life.

H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for the picture.

Bad Day at the Office

The Orbital Sciences resupply mission to the International Space Station experienced what is euphemistically called "rapid disassembly" yesterday.

Thankfully, there were no casualties:

It's Been 45 Years Since We Walked on the Moon

And 42½ years since we last walked on the.

Depressed yet?

Buh Bye!

Voyager 1 is now officially in interstellar space:

By today’s standards, the spacecraft’s technology is laughable: it carries an 8-track tape recorder and computers with one-240,000th the memory of a low-end iPhone. When it left Earth 36 years ago, it was designed as a four-year mission to Saturn, and everything after that was gravy.

But Voyager 1 has become — thrillingly — the Little Spacecraft That Could. On Thursday, scientists declared that it had become the first probe to exit the solar system, a breathtaking achievement that NASA could only fantasize about back when Voyager was launched in 1977, the same year “Star Wars” was released.

………

The lonely probe, which is 11.7 billion miles from Earth and hurtling away at 38,000 miles per hour, has long been on the cusp, treading a boundary between the bubble of hot, energetic particles around the solar system and the dark region beyond. There, in interstellar space, the plasma, or ionized gas, is noticeably denser.

Dr. Gurnett and his team have spent the past few months analyzing their data, trying to nail down whether what they were seeing was solar plasma or the plasma of interstellar space. Now they are certain it was the latter, and have even pinpointed a date for the crossing: Aug. 25, 2012.

Kewl!

And He Will Name it Gingrich Base

Seriously, promising a permanent moon base in the next 8 years?

Who but Newt could be so full of themselves that they would dare to make it a campaign pitch.

You know, I'm beginning to think that being a science fiction fan might be a disqualifier for holding executive office.

Newt claims influence from Asimov's Foundation series, while Romney says that his favorite bit of sci-fi is Battlefield Earth.

Well, at least Newt has better taste in literature.

With the Space Shuttle Program Ending

Let me be contrarian, and say good riddance to bad rubbish.

I worked on the HRS (Radiator for the International Space Station) and among its specifications was a minimum stowed size which was large enough to rule out any other launcher.

It was one of the many lame ass attempts by NASA to create a need for the most expensive, least reliable, and least safe launcher that they ever created.

It was flayed in concept, it was flawed in execution, and it was flawed in basic architecture.

Vasimr Electric Propulsion System Heading Out to ISS

NASA will be sending the variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket (Vasimr) up to the International Space Station (Paid subscription required) for tests and validation. (Earlier posts)

It's expected to put out about 5.7 Netwons, about a pound, with an ISP (fuel economy) of somewhere between 10 and 30 times that of chemical propellants.

While a pound does not seem like much thrust, it's more than enough for station keeping and orbital, or for that matter interplanetary, maneuvering, as you can get the thrust for months, rather than hours, and compared to other electric thrusters systems, like the ion drive used on the Dawn Probe, it provides a lot more thrust. (Dawn has a thrust of only 90mN, about 1/50 that of the Vasimr).

SpaceX Falcon Nine Makes Successful Launch

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Falcon 9 on Pad


Dragon Manned Variant


Unmanned Variant


In Orbit with Solar Arrays Deployed


Engineering Model

It is actually rather rare for a rocket to have a successful launch on the first flight, but everything appears to be nominal, with, "Nominal shutdown and orbit was almost exactly 250km. Telemetry showed essentially a bullseye: ~0.2% on perigee and ~1% on apogee."

So it appears that the NASA/SpaceX public-private partnership is bearing fruit.

This is a verification of the launcher, not a verification of their Dragon reusable spacecraft, which is supposed to function as both a cargo and a crew transport and return module.

Generally, this is all around good news, so I am waiting for NASA to find a way to screw this up.

In any case, here is some picture pr0n.

NASA: Lame Beyond Belief

So, in an attempt to make NASA look cool again, they have signed up "The Rock", the wrestler turned actor who now goes by his given name, Dwayne Johnson, in order to make space travel look cool again:

Perhaps space travel has become old. Perhaps people have come to take it for granted. It's been seen in so many movies. So many space shuttles have taken off and returned to Earth that we think little more of them than we do of jumbo jets.

NASA therefore has to use its imagination to persuade tomorrow's generations that space travel continues to be a large step for man.

One small step in this process is a new public service announcement featuring that fearsome space creature, "The Rock." Dwayne Johnson himself, a man who has appeared in so many scientifically concocted movies such as WWF SmackDown, WWE Backlash, and WWE Crush Hour, is now telling kids that NASA is cool.

You know, going into space is cool, the fact that you have to lose an actor to convince people that it is is more of an artifact of your incompetence in running the space program than it is the fundamental coolness of space.

Learning to find one's own ass with one's own hands would be a good start.

Video below.

We Can Have Scotch and Water on the Moon

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LCROSS


Image of Plume at +20 after impact


Near-infrared spectrometer data. Yellow areas indicate the water absorption bands


Data from the ultraviolet/visible spectrometer

And we only need to bring the Scotch, because the LCROSS impact data indicates water on moon, and not just water on the moon, but lots of water on the moon.

It appears that we are talking gallons of water in an area the size of a football field, which is by earth standards pretty f$#@ing dry, but is actually enough to be "mined" as a resource.

This is interesting not just because it makes the possibility of a habitation there more interesting, but it also raises the question as to the source of the water.

The usual suspects here are comets, the solar wind, or some hitherto unknown lunar process.

Video of discussion after break.

Except for that Whole Parachute Failure Thing.....

So, the delayed launch of the Ares I launcher was deemed a success, except, of course, for the whole recovery parachutes failing and damaging the nominally reusable shuttle solid rocket booster derived first stage.

The first stage suffered some significant damage as a result of the failure, though, for now, at least, the rest of the flight is considered to be "nominal."

I'll wait for the full report.

Now, This is one Hell of a Photograph

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The shot


The camera set up


The camera, with busted lens

The photographer, Ben Cooper, won the 2008 Aviation Week & Space Technology Photo Contest in the space category for this photo of of the Delta 4 heavy/DSP-23 launch.

The payload, a missile early warning system, failed about a year later though.

Moon Crash Appears a Fizzle

At least to the visible eye and amateur astronomers, there is still a possibility of good data from the mission, but that will be a few weeks down the road.

NASA Looking at Inflatable Module for ISS

It looks like NASA is looking again at using the inflatable module technology that it first proposed as "TransHab" in the 1990s. on the International Space Station. (top pic)

Bigelo Aerospace has been working with the concept, and NASA's basic technology, to develop a tourist destination in orbit (bottom Pic), and it has successfully launched two prototypes populated with insects, and with this success, NASA is again considering adding an inflatable module to the ISS.

The concept was originally developed to provide for living quarters for a manned Mars Mission.

And Then My Head Exploded

So, I'm getting Charlie up for school, and he wants to talk about NASA's decision make its new Orion crew capsule reusable.

I told him that it really did not make a whole bunch of sense: It's a minuscule part of the cost of a launch, but if it were not reusable, it would be a very public admission by NASA that the entire shuttle program was a failure, and that they were unwilling to do this as an organization.

He asked why this would be a problem, since everyone else saw that this was a true, so their admission would not materially effect their budget (not an exact quote, but the gist is the same. He turns 10 tomorrow, which means that yes, he is scary smart).

I explained that, like many stupid decisions, this was driven by pride: NASA was unwilling to admit that the Shuttle was a failure because this conflicted with their self image.

They think that they are Captain Kirk.

His reply:

Who is Captain Kirk?

Excuse me, while I scrape bits of my skull off the ceiling.

NASA Assembles Ares I Test Stack

You can see the picture on the left.

The top stages are inert mass-representative, and the first stage is just a lengthened shuttle solid booster, so the pic implies a greater level of technical readiness than actually exists.