Lifeboat Foundation

Elon Musk wants to launch a million people to Mars in the event some apocalyptic disaster eventually ruins Earth. And he wants it to be somewhat affordable — US $200,000 or less per person.

To that end the SpaceX CEO outlined his plan to colonise Mars on September 27, including how his Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) of rockets, spaceships, fuel pods, and other crucial components would get the job done.

Still, the full presentation at the International Astronomical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, barely scratched the surface.

Continue reading “Elon Musk just shared his 4-step plan for Mars — colonists should be ‘prepared to die’” »

What does the future hold for computing? Experts at the Networked Quantum Information Technologies Hub (NQIT), based at Oxford University, believe our next great technological leap lies in the development of quantum computing.

Quantum computers could solve problems it takes a conventional computer longer than the lifetime of the universe to solve. This could bring new possibilities, such as advanced drug development, superior military intelligence, greater opportunities for space exploration and enhanced encryption security.

Continue reading “The exciting new age of quantum computing” »

Nextbigfuture has interviewed Ryan Weed, CEO of Positron Dynamics. Positron Dynamics is developing antimatter catalyzed fusion propulsion which they will first demonstrate in a cubesat launch. They are getting around the still mostly unsolved difficulties of storing antimatter. They are doing this by using Sodium 22 isotopes.

Positron Dynamics has previously received a lot of press coverage when it was funded by the Thiel Breakthrough foundation to work on antimatter.

In Brief:

• Expensive, unsustainable rockets have served as our primary means to exit Earth, but space elevators present a cheaper way to enter outer space.
• Although new materials are needed, space elevator missions are in motion and we could see the first elevator constructed in the next several decades.

Getting into space with rockets is ridiculously expensive. A NASA Inspector General report says the agency will pay Russia $491.2 million to send six astronauts into space in 2018. That’s almost $82 million a seat.

NASA is offering $1.1 million in prize money in Phase 2 of the 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge for new ways to build houses where future space explorers can live and work.

The three-part competition asks citizen inventors to use readily available and recyclable materials for the raw material to print habitats.

Phase 2 focuses on the material technologies needed to manufacture structural components from a combination of indigenous materials and recyclables, or indigenous materials alone. NASA may use these technologies to construct shelters for future human explorers to Mars. On Earth, these same capabilities could also be used to produce affordable housing wherever it is needed or where access to conventional building materials and skills is limited.

Continue reading “NASA Offers Prize Money for 3D-Printed Habitat Ideas” »

Interesting!

An antimatter probe to a nearby star? The idea holds enormous appeal, given the colossal energies obtained when normal matter annihilates in contact with its antimatter equivalent. But as we’ve seen through the years on Centauri Dreams, such energies are all but impossible to engineer. Antimatter production is infinitesimal, the by-product of accelerators designed with a much different agenda. Moreover, antimatter storage is hellishly difficult, so that maintaining large quantities in a stable condition requires multiple breakthroughs.

All of which is why I became interested in the work Gerald Jackson and Steve Howe were doing at Hbar Technologies. Howe, in fact, became a key source when I put together the original book from which this site grew. This was back in 2002–2003, and I was captivated with the idea of what could be called an ‘antimatter sail.’ The idea, now part of a new Kickstarter campaign being launched by Jackson and Howe, is to work with mere milligrams of antimatter, allowing antiprotons to be released from the spacecraft into a uranium-enriched, five-meter sail.

Continue reading “Antimatter and the Sail” »

The inventor of the impossible EmDrive, Roger Shawyer, received a new patent for the next generation of his controversial engine and the US Department of Defense and the UK Ministry of Defense are both interested in obtaining the technology.

If the EmDrive works, which is under some debate, it would allow a military satellite to get close to its target without being detected, it would also revolutionize space travel, Shawyer told the International Business Times.

Continue reading “EmDrive Inventor Gets New Patent For Impossible Engine, US And UK Governments Interested” »

“That’s a troubling question for NASA, an agency whose most valuable piece of real estate—the $10.9 billion sandbar called Kennedy Space Center—is also its most threatened.”

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An antimatter propulsion drive probe could be the first human-made spacecraft to orbit the newly-discovered extrasolar earthlike planet Proxima b. Or so says Gerald Jackson, the president of the Chicago-based Hbar technologies, whose antimatterdrive.org began a $200,000 Kickstarter campaign this weekend.

The idea is to use the fledgling antimatter propulsion technology to travel 4.2 light years to the newfound exo-earth circling Proxima Centauri, the Sun’s nearest stellar neighbor.

“Our antimatter drive project proposes an initial mission taking as long as 90 years, traveling at 5% of the speed of light for the majority of that duration,” Jackson, a former Fermilab physicist, told me. The hope is that the craft could eventually go into orbit around a nearby earthlike planet such as Proxima b.

Continue reading “Antimatter Probe May Do Proxima b Interstellar Flyby” »