by Paul Gilster | Jul 8, 2008 | Tau Zero Foundation |
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 Zero Foundation’s practitioners will share their progress and insights with each other and on the public website. These practitioners have been selected to provide a complementary blend of disciplines (researchers, educators, journalists) and for their ability to deal with visionary subjects in a productively rigorous manner. Through these collaborations and by taking advantage of existing venues, occasional projects will be undertaken (books, documentaries, workshops). Once sufficient funding is secured, cycles of research will be supported, with a suite of tasks selected to advance a reasonable breadth of approaches. Within these, scholarships will also be offered to help promising students.
And where does Tau Zero stand in achieving its aims? Here are the envisioned stages of implementation. Right now, we are completing the Basics and moving onto our Debut, plus we’ve already started on some zero-cost opportunistic projects.
The Basics
- Legal details and defining documents
- First tier practitioners signed up (over 3 dozen)
- Web presence constructed
Debut and Thereafter (assumes at least modest donations)
- Continually add/refine Web content from specialty practitioner contributions
- Devise means to identify and add new practitioners
- Shift from “donations” to “membership” contributions
- Tackle opportunistic projects (books, student design projects, documentaries, awards)
Scaling Up (after substantial donations)
- Strategically select public education projects/products
- Grant awards to those who have demonstrated the appropriate blend of vision and rigor in their work.
- Complete formal process for inviting and supporting research tasks.
Fully Functional (requires annual donations beyond $6 million)
- Inviting, selecting and supporting research
- Regular conferences to review progress and prompt next proposals
Ultimate Embodiment
- Invitational sabbatical research institute
- Supporting actual interstellar missions
Tau Zero Scope
Based on the news about the forthcoming book, Frontiers of Propulsion Science (an example of an opportunistic project), some have asked if Tau Zero is focusing only on space drives and warp drives. No, Tau Zero covers the full span of the seemingly simple solar sails through the seeming impossible faster-than-light travel, and will even deal with sociologic implications of interstellar adventures. The Frontiers book represents the work of only some of our practitioners. Whereas prior interstellar flight publications dealt with technology, there was a void of reliable information about interstellar flight science, things like gravity control propulsion and faster-than-light travel.
Recently, other Foundation practitioners published the book Living Off the Land in Space, which deals with nearer-term technology rather than physics breakthroughs. A large portion of the Foundation’s practitioners are enthusiastic about nearer-term possibilities. Right now, it is premature to go into any of their contributions because I don’t want to make promises for things that we might not get the support to finish.
The sociological aspects are also important since they are the source of motivation (for humanity to survive and thrive) and affect how such work can be pursued in contemporary societal contexts. So far, the Foundation has barely begun to address such vital issues explicitly.
Not NASA
This brings me to another area for clarification; in part a legal obligation to address. The Foundation is NOT in any way affiliated with, or supported by, NASA. For me, NASA is my day-job and has occasionally allowed me to work the technical details of revolutionary spaceflight, but there is so much more that needs to be done than can fit within that day-job. It’s taken some time to work with the NASA lawyers to make sure that I what I do on Tau Zero does not conflict with my day-job and does not violate Federal regulations (you might be surprised about some of those regulations. Sigh).
For example, many of my contributions to the Frontiers of Propulsion Science book were done on NASA time (with clearance from legal & management), although the publisher is the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). AIAA is a professional society that provides a venue through which authors of multiple affiliations and nationalities could jointly contribute as well as providing the financing and distribution of the book to pertinent audiences. Although modest royalties will go to the non-government authors (government employees cannot accept honoraria for work done in their day-jobs), my NASA involvement in this book precludes any royalties going to the Foundation. The public companion book, however, will be handled differently.
I am also compelled to clarify the distinction from my NASA day-job because some of you have expressed the opinion that the government should support the things we do. Alas, that is not possible and the reasons are complex. This is where those sociological implications come in, and why my colleagues and I are seeking citizen and philanthropic support. As one example, when there was government funding, much of it was directed, via congressional earmarks, to boost weak regions rather than being sent to the best professionals.
Also, many of the Foundation’s activities are not allowed in US Government service. Unlike Federal agencies, this Foundation can: (1) Accept volunteer work (2) Accept donations directed for a specific purpose, (3) Create promotional materials as part of educational outreach, (4) Use the allure of science fiction as a thought-provoking tool, and (5) Earn revenue from products.
It’s not just an issue of money. It will not take that much money to make a significant difference. It is about adapting to current conditions and finding the best people. The kind of progress that we deliver is not the sort of thing that can just be assigned. It is a matter of finding today’s pioneers, wherever they may work, and bringing them together to amplify each other’s progress.
Our Niche
There are already well-run space organizations and this Foundation will not attempt to duplicate their fine efforts. Instead, this Foundation will rely on existing organizations whenever possible, channeling support to pioneers who can make the most out of existing research and publication venues.
For example, the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society is already a well-established peer-reviewed journal through which to expose and critique emerging concepts of interstellar flight. Numerous scientific and engineering journals exist for vetting more specific details. Advocacy organizations, such as The Planetary Society and the National Space Society already exist to urge our political leaders to become better educated and more supportive of space endeavors. The X-Prize organization, which is funded through donations, is doing a fantastic job of provoking near-Earth entrepreneurial space adventures. Already their first prize helped launch Virgin Galactic with Burt Rutan’s winning spacecraft. Their next prize is aimed at getting affordable robots to the Moon! The SETI Institute’s Project Phoenix, another privately funded effort, is focused on listening for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. And then there is academia, which teaches students how to become engineers and scientists. Lastly, there are NASA, the European Space Agency, and other government space organization that follow whatever charter their political leaders can agree on for them. Yes, that was a loaded comment, and I’ll drop it there.
What is missing from all this is an organization that looks beyond for the revolutionary advances that would change everything. And with that, providing the inspirations and reliable information from which students can become tomorrow’s pioneers. Being at the edge of knowledge can be risky. By accepting the challenge of the seemingly impossible goal of practical interstellar flight, we could very well discover what routine research overlooks, jumping significantly ahead. For example, science fiction will be deliberately used for its “what-if” and inspirational values, technical investigations will cover what others aren’t, and the provocative social implications will be explored, from the immediate effects of pursuing such a long-range endeavor, to pondering the implications of interstellar excursions, and of contacting extraterrestrial intelligence.
Since that kind of visionary work is difficult to support within established organizations, philanthropic support is sought. Consider for example SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It was once a government sponsored project that got nixed for being too visionary. With the support of wealthy philanthropists, it resumed its listening. The idea of going beyond that – beyond just listening to figuring out how to get out there – is even more daunting, but a niche that must be filled. The sooner we start working on those prospects, the better we will prepare humanity for the future.
Anticipated Roadblocks
I thought I’d share with you the difficulties we are likely to encounter as we get this Foundation running. It is my hope that, by providing you these insights, you can better grasp the real challenges we face. The goal is to find a way where our audience, you, can help us help you.
As we are finding out, trying to fit in this endeavor in addition to our day-jobs is proving more difficult that anticipated. That is why it is taking so long to get Tau Zero fully on line. Hopefully, as donations come in, we can offload some of the more routine tasks and perhaps even offer honoraria to help our practitioners accelerate their progress.
Obviously securing funding will be an issue. Finally we are now able to accept donations. Related to that is the condition that this Foundation cannot seek government funding so long as I am employed by the government or serving as the Foundation’s president. That does not, however, bar any of our practitioners from seeking government funding directly through their own affiliations, should government funding become available from time to time.
We are also likely to be overwhelmed with more requests that we can respond to. We do indeed want to hear what you think so that we can better serve you, but there are some inputs that are more helpful than others. For example, if you have encountered a book, article, or website that you have found particularly useful, please tell us about it. If there is something that you very much want us to teach on the site, please tell us about that too.
But that said, we’d prefer that you not send in your own work unless it has already been reviewed and published by another peer-reviewed source. If prior experiences are any indicator, I suspect that many enthusiasts will want us to evaluate their ideas. Because of the time-consuming difficulty of providing such reviews and because the results are seldom encouraging, we cannot provide such services. If I had a staff on hand to provide such evaluations, the cost of making the kind of thorough review necessary (given the sheer number of proposals) could reach $5000 per evaluation. Given the constraints not only on funding but the time of working scientists, we can only accept concepts that have been examined by a jury of professionals with solid credentials in the field.
I also know that many of you want us to provide a moderated forum where you can discuss your ideas with others. To a degree, we provide this function with the comment sections following the Centauri Dreams‘ articles, although Paul Gilster believes that weblog software is not optimized for this kind of discussion. I was recently informed that one of our practitioners has volunteered to experiment with methods to provide such online discussions. Given the volume of anticipated inputs and the difficulty of moderating such discussions – to let in provocative ideas while filtering out cranks – this service may take a while to debug. From my own experiences of trying to do this in the past, this is a daunting challenge. We may not succeed.
What we can do, and will do, is to provide guidance for how enthusiasts can advance their own work using all the mechanisms that already exist. This includes explaining – via the website and our publications – what has been already done, explaining the foundations of knowledge as they stand today, guiding you to what to study in school, and identifying suitable publishers to whom you can submit your work.
Closing
For humanity to reach other habitable worlds or be prepared to escape or prevent Earth disasters, much work is needed. While existing space organizations take the next obvious steps and entrepreneurial adventures bring the thrill of spaceflight to the people, this Tau Zero Foundation reaches beyond for the advances that others are not even looking for – advances that would revolutionize spaceflight. This is the realm of pioneers, risk-takers, and breaking with established norms. You can support this quest through your donations, by identifying the best-quality works to share, and by telling us what you need to know to make progress of your own. We will do what we can to share that information via publications and websites and to actually make the technical progress to take humanity to the stars – ad astra incrementis.
Sneak Preview of Tau Zero Website
by Paul Gilster | Jul 7, 2008 | Culture and Society |
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 and ‘parenthood’ in such a situation were fascinating to play around with in a society where death was nothing but an option.
Flash Frozen Humanity
Recently reader John Hunt wrote with some ideas that triggered memories of that story. A Canadian study looked at rapid freezing of human eggs, and 200 children who had been conceived in this way. The classic problem with freezing eggs has always been the formation of ice crystals in liquids within the egg, but ‘vitrification’ removes those liquids and replaces them with a kind of ‘antifreeze,’ after which they can be flash frozen in liquid nitrogen. Remarkably, 95 percent of eggs seem to survive this process, which is now available in the UK. This BBC story looks at the Canadian work and notes why people might use it today:
Aside from the wish to delay motherhood beyond their 30s and 40s, some women may use this technique for medical reasons, perhaps if they are facing cancer treatment which will render them infertile, or a premature menopause.
The researchers, from McGill university in Montreal found that the rate of birth defects among the 200 children conceived using vitrified eggs as 2.5%, roughly the same as in natural pregnancies and IVF.
Frozen eggs last how long, exactly? I suppose we don’t know, but both sperm and actual embryos have been frozen and successfully thawed as well. So if we could develop a technology to push something to a significant percentage of lightspeed — not unthinkable given our current understanding of physics — then a small craft, as Hunt suggests, could theoretically carry a human cargo. An interstellar transit of several hundred years should be workable in terms of survival, the trick being child-rearing at the destination. Here we make the leap to artificial intelligence and advanced robotics for a solution.
A ‘Coke Can’ to the Stars
It wasn’t so long ago that former NASA administrator Dan Goldin was raising eyebrows by talking about entirely new concepts for interstellar missions. Speaking to the 100th anniversary meeting of the American Astronomical Society in 1999, Goldin brought together lightsail technologies, genetic algorithms that ‘learn’ and adapt as they process code, and hyrbid systems that fuse biology with silicon. Throw in advances in neural nets and you wind up with an interstellar probe the size of a Coke can that builds itself into a full-sized probe when it mines carbon, iron and other materials in its destination star system.
“This reconfigurable hybrid system can adapt form and function to deal with changes and unanticipated problems,” said Goldin. “Eventually it will leave its host carrier and travel at a good fraction of the speed of light out to the stars and other solar systems… Such a spacecraft sounds like an ambitious dream, but it could be possible if we effectively utilize hybridized technologies.”
No one would argue that planting a human colony via frozen genetic materials and robotic childrearing is the optimal way to go. We’d all rather see fast transport via warp drive or other methods, and here’s hoping we find a way to achieve it. But as a hedge against species extinction, the possibility that we could create a human colony around another star without making any breakthroughs in the laws of physics is a notable prospect to consider. It firms up the belief that one way or another, we will see a human presence around nearby stars.
An Emerging Interstellar Ethic
While our goal should be to consider as many different ways of making an interstellar journey happen as possible, whether we would proceed with a mission like this may one day depend upon our understanding of the ethical issues involved. Do we have the right to subject human beings to these conditions, raised without true parents in a potentially hostile enviroment? The same question is posed by so-called ‘generation’ ships, in which crewmembers live entire lives on the vessel on a journey of thousands of years. We have yet to develop guidelines for what might be called a code of interstellar ethics, but one day we may have to do so. After all, we’re talking about what we owe to our descendants
While I know of no papers on rearing children via robots, Edward Regis Jr. has written a fascinating study of the multi-generational starship question. Regis concludes that there is no fundamental ethical distinction between raising children aboard such a ship and raising them aboard our own planet. He goes on to say this:
It is true that in the designing, outfitting, and launching of a space ark, planners will be committing others to conditions not of their own choosing. But this… is just what happens, and necessarily happens, on Earth… A multigenerational interstellar expedition is no more and no less than a microcosm of human life on our own planet. Launching one is like beginning Genesis anew: It is to place human beings on another heavenly body for its inhabitants to make of what they will. To do this, to put humans on a microplanet upon which they can live, procreate, dispose of their affairs under their own governance, and die, is to bestow upon them conditions quite analogous to those on our own planet, conditions they may use for good or for ill, just as we use the planet Earth.
There is much to mull over in Regis’ paper. It’s “The Moral Status of Multigenerational Interstellar Exploration,” in Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 248-259. And it strikes me as just the opening wedge of what will one day be a major and contentious debate. A code of interstellar ethics is waiting to be written as we confront issues our technology will one day make possible. Science fiction is the only current venue for their study.
Further Reading
A wider consideration of interstellar ethics has been begun by Robert Freitas. See his “The Legal Rights of Extraterrestrials,” in Analog Science Fiction and Fact (April 1977), pp. 54-67 (available online). Freitas also discusses the issues in “Metalaw and Interstellar Relations,” Mercury 6 (March/April 1977), pp. 15-17 (available here) — thanks to Dave Weeden for the links! Compelling questions continue to surface: If we send a nano-assembler probe to another star system, do we have the right to mine local resources in the presence of a potential intelligent species within that system?
Addendum: Tibor Pacher passes along this interesting reference: C. Cockell, “Essay on Extraterrestrial Liberty,” in the July Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. I haven’t had the chance to look at it yet. but an abstract is here.
by Paul Gilster | Jul 5, 2008 | Outer Solar System |
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 Churyumov-Gerasimenko. A flyby of asteroid 21 Lutetia (in 2010) is also scheduled along the way.
Image: Rosetta goes into passive cruise mode on the way to the asteroid belt. It observes the asteroids from a distance of a few thousand kilometres. Data recorded on board is transmitted to Earth after the fly-by. Credits: ESA/AOES Medialab
This is a mission marked by gravity assists, with three close passes by the Earth (the third scheduled for November of next year) and one by Mars. The news from ESA is that the spacecraft has been successfully awakened from the hibernation mode it entered in March and will now undergo extensive equipment checking while tracking Steins with its on-board cameras to tighten up our knowledge of the asteroid’s orbit. The September flyby will take Rosetta within a distance of 800 kilometers of the asteroid, passing it at 8.6 kilometers per second.
We may have a long way to go until arriving at Churyumov-Gerasimenko, but keep your eye on this ambitious mission as it proceeds. Rosetta’s orbiter will release a lander onto the comet’s nucleus and will spend two years orbiting it as the comet moves toward the Sun. We can hope for abundant data on how the cometary nucleus changes with rising temperatures, while the lander will give us our first images from a comet’s surface and first analysis of its materials from the actual site.
Behind all of that is the ever simmering astrobiological question. We know that comets contain compounds rich in carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, complex organics that are also the stuff from which nucleic acids and amino acids are made. The possibility of comets playing a role in seeding life on Earth continues to be provocative. Ancient cometary materials take us back to an era before the formation of the planets, so Rosetta’s studies of evaporating ices, dust and gas particles around Churyumov-Gerasimenko could prove fruitful indeed.
by Paul Gilster | Jul 4, 2008 | Asteroid and Comet Deflection |
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 likely point of impact for the comet wasn’t just anywhere over Canada, but located over Canada’s diamond-bearing fields. Instead of becoming the basis for rejecting his hypothesis, these items became the very best evidence to support it.”
Although hardly conclusive, the timing of the event is interesting. The impact would have occurred at a time when the wooly mammoth population disappeared, along with the Clovis culture, a prehistoric civilization that flourished around the end of the last glacial period. The so-called Younger Dryas event caused an extension of ice age conditions at that time, one that could be consistent with the kind of impact West is talking about. I see that TV producers galore — PBS, the History Channel, the Discovery Channel and the National Geographic channel — have zeroed in on Tankersley’s work, including these studies, so expect to hear a good deal more about the Younger Dryas soon.
An earlier Centauri Dreams discussion is here. And be aware of Firestone et al., “Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago that contributed to the megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 10.1073/pnas.0706977104 (27 September, 2007). Abstract online.
Addendum: Tim Jones digs deeply into this story on his remote central site. Good job! Also see this University of Cincinnati news release.
Related: The 61st Carnival of Space offers a number of weblog takes on the Tunguska event, whose anniversary came last week.
by Paul Gilster | Jul 3, 2008 | Exotic Physics |
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 extremely accurate measurement.
Victoria Kaspi (McGill University) calls this system “…precisely the kind of extreme ‘cosmic laboratory’ needed to test Einstein’s prediction.” Extreme is an understatement — we’re talking about the shattered remains of massive stars, objects the size of Cleveland that stream radio waves from the poles of their intense magnetic fields, recorded from our vantage as stuttering signals that match a rotation of up to hundreds of times a second.
Image: The illustration shows the two pulsars which orbit the common centre of mass in only 144 minutes. The system was discovered by astronomers from the University of Manchester as part of an international team in 2003 and it is the eclipses observed in this system that have lead to this study. Credit: Michael Kramer, University of Manchester.
Einstein’s theory tells us that when two massive objects are paired in a close system like this, the gravitational pull of one should cause the spin axis of the other to wobble. Earlier studies have demonstrated the effects of such wobbling (precession), but relativistic effects become more significant the larger and closer the objects under investigation are, making this the most accurate measurement of its magnitude. Changes to the spin axis of these pulsars appeared as changes to the signal blockages during the eclipse events, offering an exquisitely precise check on General Relativity’s predictions.
Says René Breton (McGill University):
“Pulsars are too small and too distant to allow us to observe this wobble directly, However, as they orbit each other every 145 minutes, each passes in front of the other and the astronomers soon realized they could measure the direction of the pulsar’s spin axis as the highly magnetized region surrounding it blocks the radio waves being emitted from the other. After patiently collecting the radio pulses over the past four years, they have now determined that its spin axis precesses exactly as Einstein predicted.”
Both Jodrell Bank and Green Bank are storied sites in the history of astronomy. Have the two observatories now confirmed General Relativity beyond all question? The answer is that again and again, Einstein’s work holds up to the tests being thrown at it. Both Newton and Einstein ‘work,’ but Einstein works better in a larger range of environments. And just as Einstein significantly extended Newton (making sense, for example, of anomalies in the Newtonian explanation for Mercury’s orbit), so we push on today to extend Einstein’s theory into the quantum realm, a search that is one of the most significant in modern physics.
