Interstellar Medium

Last July at the Aosta conference Greg Matloff presented a paper on using near-Earth objects for transportation. It’s an interesting concept (discussed here), one that takes advantage of the fact that there are a few such objects that pass close by the Earth and then go on to cross the orbit of Mars. Greg was [...]

One problem with journeys that are beyond today’s technologies is that we forget, in our zeal to get a payload to the target, how little we know about the regions we’ll pass through along the way. It’s amazing how little we know, for example, about the heliosphere around the Solar System, yet any probe pushing [...]

Findings that are outside our expectations seem par for the course as we explore the Solar System. From the volcanoes of Io to the geysers of Enceladus, unusual things show up with each new mission. Why should IBEX be any different? The Interstellar Boundary Explorer is the first spacecraft expressly designed to study what happens [...]

“Interstellar travel may still be in its infancy,” write Gregory Matloff and Eugene Mallove in The Starflight Handbook (Wiley, 1989), “but adulthood is fast approaching, and our descendants will someday see childhood’s end.” The echo of Arthur C. Clarke is surely deliberate, a sign that one or both authors are familiar with Clarke’s 1953 novel [...]