Tau Zero Foundation

by | Jul 8, 2008 | | 51 Comments

by Marc G. Millis Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics program and founding architect of the Tau Zero Foundation, now gives us a look at the Foundation's current status and his thoughts on where it's going. To those who have been waiting for the Tau Zero Foundation to begin in earnest, your patience is greatly appreciated. We are definitely making progress and this article describes that status. Sneak preview For the readers of Centauri Dreams, the URL at the end of this article takes you to a sneak preview of our public website. Although the site is far from done (many corrections and additions still needed) enough content is there to give you an idea of what we're delivering. Donations can now be accepted via the "support us" page (hint, hint). Yes, even modest donations speed up progress. We are, after all, still an all-volunteer effort, setting this up in addition to our day-jobs. Stages of Implementation Initially a network of volunteers, the Tau...

read more

The Ethics of Interstellar Journeying

by | Jul 7, 2008 | | 47 Comments

We usually picture the far future in terms of the most exotic possibilities. And why not: Getting to the stars with warp drive or wormhole makes the entire galaxy accessible. But while we work toward such goals, a raft of technologies continue to develop that can get us to another star with currently understood physics. Imagine, for example, a starship pushed to ten percent of lightspeed by a powerful laser array, a tiny vessel enabled by nanotechnology to carry a cargo of human genetic material. I played around with the concept years ago in a story called "Until Anna Changed," which dealt with a colony around another star whose inhabitants had all been raised upon arrival by their starship's crew, beings called Adepts who were manifestations of artificial intelligence. The Adepts were to move on to another star when the colony was mature enough to survive, but the story looked at what happened to a particular colonist when his own Adept unexpectedly returned. The dynamics of growth...

read more

Comet Mission Zeroes in on Asteroid

by | Jul 5, 2008 | | 2 Comments

Much can be learned from a close look at an asteroid, as the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft will demonstrate this September. For one thing, interactions between the solar wind and the asteroid can deepen our knowledge both of the object and the forces that act upon it. For another, studying what's around the asteroid can be useful, especially now that we know some asteroids have even smaller asteroid 'moons.' But Rosetta's September target, asteroid (2867) Steins, is an interesting case in and of itself. E-type asteroids, which this one is, are relatively common in regions closer to the Sun but uncommon within the main belt itself. They're typically small and show a high albedo, reflecting more light from the Sun than the average asteroid. Moreover, while they're apparently made of silicates and basalts, their composition is only poorly understood. Thus the choice of (2867) Steins as a target within a larger mission plan that culminates in 2014 at comet 67/P...

read more

Canada: The Case for a Prehistoric Impact

by | Jul 4, 2008 | | 5 Comments

As America celebrates its Independence Day, I'm thinking not only of the fireworks in store for tonight but also those that may have lit up northern Canada almost 13,000 years ago. The case for an asteroid or comet impact there has been strengthened by work in Ohio and Indiana that examines an unusual fact: Gold, diamonds and silver found in the region owe their origins to the diamond fields of Canada. Did glaciers bring these deposits, which evidently arrived in the same period as the supposed impact, much further south? Or is geophysicist Allen West correct in flagging them as the signs of an ancient catastrophe? Ken Tankersley, an anthropologist at the University of Cincinnati, doubted West's notion and opted for the glacier theory until his recent work on the deposits. Says Tankersley: "My smoking gun to disprove (West) was going to be the gold, silver and diamonds. But what I didn't know at that point was a conclusion he had reached that he had not yet made public -- that the...

read more

An Eclipsing Confirmation of Einstein

by | Jul 3, 2008 | | 5 Comments

Putting the General Theory of Relativity to the test gives us a chance to look once again at Einstein's understanding of gravity to see how it conforms with reality. We know the theory is incomplete because it doesn't tell us what happens to gravity at the subatomic level. But on the macro-scale of the larger universe, General Relativity is again confirmed in new work involving an unusual pair of neutron stars. The work, performed by an international team using the Jodrell Bank telescope in Cheshire and the Green Bank instrument in West Virginia, examined two pulsars that orbit each other, the only known case out of some 1700 identified pulsars where two are found in such a configuration. Emitting beams of radio waves, the two stars offer another observational opportunity -- their orbital plane lines up nearly with their line of sight to Earth. The result: An eclipsing signal as one pulsar moves behind the ionized gas surrounding the other. The fortuitious lineup makes possible an...

read more

A Poetic View of the System’s Edge

by | Jul 2, 2008 | | 2 Comments

My wife is the most gifted poet I know. I often marvel at her ability to see things with new eyes, to take experiences we have shared and look at them with such a fresh and uncluttered view that the events are transformed and new meaning extracted from them. All of which came to mind this morning in a far different context as I pondered how good science does much the same thing. A case in point in this 'poetry of science' is offered by a view of the edge of the Solar System made not with photons but with neutral atoms, in data gathered by the twin STEREO spacecraft. It's a new kind of astronomy that draws on a different way of looking at the unexplored frontiers of the heliosphere. Our Voyager spacecraft, of course, are in this region, so we're getting new data all the time, but from an optical perspective, the outer heliosphere is invisible. This is where the solar wind -- that stream of charged particles moving outward from the Sun -- reaches the limits of the Sun's influence, a...

read more

NanoSail-D: Solar Sail Deployment Planned

by | Jul 1, 2008 | | 11 Comments

Solar sail development has surely been a frustrating thing for Sandy Montgomery, who knows that what stands in the way of pushing this technology into space isn't the need for scientific breakthroughs but adequate funding. Montgomery's team at Marshall Space Flight Center has been examining the potential of solar sails for a long time, and is well aware that leaving the propellant behind is a way to get more payload to your destination with considerably less overhead all around. And solar sails, which can ride the momentum imparted by photons from the Sun, are the ideal way to study 'propellantless' propulsion with near-term technologies. What a pleasure to see the launch window approaching for a solar sail deployment experiment in space, led by Montgomery's team and counterparts at NASA Ames. NanoSail-D is to be launched aboard a Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Falcon rocket some time at the end of July or the beginning of August. Montgomery calls it the "...first fully...

read more

Charter

In Centauri Dreams, Paul Gilster looks at peer-reviewed research on deep space exploration, with an eye toward interstellar possibilities. For many years this site coordinated its efforts with the Tau Zero Foundation. It now serves as an independent forum for deep space news and ideas. In the logo above, the leftmost star is Alpha Centauri, a triple system closer than any other star, and a primary target for early interstellar probes. To its right is Beta Centauri (not a part of the Alpha Centauri system), with Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon Crucis, stars in the Southern Cross, visible at the far right (image courtesy of Marco Lorenzi).

Now Reading

Recent Posts

On Comments

If you'd like to submit a comment for possible publication on Centauri Dreams, I will be glad to consider it. The primary criterion is that comments contribute meaningfully to the debate. Among other criteria for selection: Comments must be on topic, directly related to the post in question, must use appropriate language, and must not be abusive to others. Civility counts. In addition, a valid email address is required for a comment to be considered. Centauri Dreams is emphatically not a soapbox for political or religious views submitted by individuals or organizations. A long form of the policy can be viewed on the Administrative page. The short form is this: If your comment is not on topic and respectful to others, I'm probably not going to run it.

Follow with RSS or E-Mail

RSS
Follow by Email


Follow by E-Mail

		

			
Get new posts by email:

			

				
				
			

			

				
			

		

	


Advanced Propulsion Research




Beginning and End







Archives