Related news: NASA silently cancelled the OSAM-2 (On-Orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 2) project which would have manufactured and assembled spacecraft components in low-Earth orbit. I think Scott talked about the project before. Apparently the design process was completed, but they didn't went ahead with manufacturing and launch. NASA's mission page doesn't mention a reason for the cancellation. This serves as a reminder that any of these cool new projects might be cancelled as well when (e.g.) the budget runs out.
These ideas are really cool, and the craziest thing is that I think most of them is not lacking too much tech-readiness. They are just lacking of an amount of money
Thank you Scott for speaking to us like we are already familiar with many of the concepts and terminology in your videos. That is the kind of respect that many creators lack and it sets you apart from the masses while simultaneously making it clear that you know what you're talking about.
unless i misunderstand the point, ham radio has been using peak to peak wave lengths as basic measurement for decades. 2m, 70cm, 20m, 10m, 160m... all terms for different frequency ranges.
It's also what makes phased array radars work. If you have a huge matrix of antennas and you can use the various arrival times of signals to determine range, position, etc. And when transmitting, if you can accurately enough delay the output pulse to those same antennas, you can "aim the beam." The military has been using this for decades now. What holds this back, is at the ranges they are interested in, you need a HUGE baseline. The bigger the better. Because the further away you are from the source of the signal, the "flatter" the wavefront appears to you. You combat that by having as large a baseline as you can.
@@blink182bfsftw No. Triangulation is deducing the position of an emission source using distance-data from a sufficient number of sensors -- notice the sensors must already be able to measure distance and the conclusion is directional. The method discussed deduces the position of an emission source by correlating phase-data from multiple sensors -- both distance and direction concluded. In a non-curved space, the equal-phase-surface expands out in a sphere and measuring surface's curvature belies the center of the sphere. It's probably not that simple, given that the phase of a typical radio signal is periodic withing the capacity of measure of current technology and that space-time is typically not totally flat.
The radioactive thin-film rocket engine is so damn simple and yet clever. I can't believe that's never been thought of before. I wonder if you could combine it with some kind electromagnetic field control to collimate the alpha particles in one direction and increase thrust compared to having the radiation be randomly emitted in a half sphere. The extra mass and power requirements might not be worth it thought... Would still be interesting to see how it compares to ion engines in terms of both thrust and specific impulse.
One thing Scott didn't point out was the surface area: 250m^2. This engine genius is because it's a bunch of really thin, lightweight panels that kicks out propellent at a good fraction of the speed of light. If you had the mass and power available to build a massive particle engine bell, just build a massive ion engine because that is what it is.
I might be misunderstanding but as far as I see there's no controlling this thruster, it will "burn" at full power so to speak at all times until the foil and thrust have decayed too far to be useful. I guess you can still fold it up on itself when you don't want to push your spacecraft for a bit but then heat generation will be higher (?) and disabling it like that won't increase it's useful life anyway?
@@oohhboy-funhouse Yeah, now that you say that, it *IS* an ion engine. Alpha decay is a helium nucleus, which is an ion (no electrons) and is naturally accelerated due to the radioactive decay. Plus, people launching rockets with radioactive materials makes people nervous. Undeservedly so, IMHO, but people are people.
@@-slashtWhat you could do is symmetrically point the panels outwards so that a portion of their thrust nulls out. Go all the way and your net thrust is zero. That would also avoid any heat addition to the spacecraft.
@@jeromethiel4323Yeah, but alpha radiation is essentially the Nerf dart of the radiation game. And we launch alpha emitters all the time in RTGs, so the risks and precautions are pretty well-understood.
0:57 Solar system scale VLBI 3:30 Lunar Long-Baseline Optical Imaging Interferometer 6:24 Magnetohydrodynamic oxygen separation thingy. 8:11 Thin film radioisotope engine 10:22 sketchy Mars flying solar panel idea 11:35 Agnostic Life Finder (Mars bacteria or something) 13:14 Getting rid of perchlorates on Mars (but why? There's no nitrogen. Terraform Venus instead) 14:35 Swarms of small probes going to Proxima Centauri. 16:58 A "new" kind of antenna, I guess 17:30 Cryosleep for animals and maybe humans though a lot of animals can enter torpor and I think the Russians already did this with dogs? 18:31 Sample return from Venus, also carbon monoxide rocket 20:34 Autonomous tritium micropower sensors. 21:44 Electroluminescently cooled zero boil off propellant depots. This probably would have been more useful like a day ago.
Actually very useful now, for easily commenting on each item -- I'll attach my comments to each line of your post: 0:57 Solar system scale VLBI -- this sounds doable with current technology 3:30 Lunar Long-Baseline Optical Imaging Interferometer -- this sounds doable with current technology, but I think putting it in space away from any planet or moon would be better than putting it on the Moon. 6:24 Magnetohydrodynamic oxygen separation thingy -- this sounds doable with current technology. 8:11 Thin film radioisotope engine -- a potential problem already seen with polonium samples on Earth is that the radioactive atoms tend to knock each other off, so you lose a fair amount of them without getting the use of them, so to prevent this, you would have to have an inert layer over them, but then that will steal some of the alpha particle energy. 10:22 sketchy Mars flying solar panel idea -- this sounds doable with current technology. 11:35 Agnostic Life Finder (Mars bacteria or something) -- if you''re going to be splitting water on Mars, you're probably going to have to filter it anyway, so you might as well piggyback a science experiment onto the filter. 13:14 Getting rid of perchlorates on Mars (but why? There's no nitrogen. Terraform Venus instead) -- bioremediation of perchlorates would actually be useful in some contaminated sites on Earth, although _Bacillus subtilis_ doesn't sound like a tough enough bacterium to grow (as opposed to just spores remaining viable but dormant) on Mars; also, Mars actually does have a little bit of nitrogen 14:35 Swarms of small probes going to Proxima Centauri -- as advertised, this one is going to have to depend upon major preceding technological developments -- better work on those first; that said, some scaled-down analog for far solar system exploration (Kuiper Belt/Oort Cloud) might be workable with hefty but forseeable advances in technology. 16:58 A "new" kind of antenna, I guess -- always good to improve communication efficiency, and it might have applications closer to home. 17:30 Cryosleep for animals and maybe humans though a lot of animals can enter torpor and I think the Russians already did this with dogs? -- this might have medical applications on Earth (like use it to keep somebody alive while you basically take them apart to take out metastatic cancer that is currently beyond our surgical capabilities). 18:31 Sample return from Venus, also carbon monoxide rocket -- sounds doable, although I wonder if it would be better to use a lander/rover that can inflate a balloon when it is finished and then rendezvous with a high altitude balloon that has the rocket; also, both carbon monoxide and oxygen having the problem of requiring low temperature for storage at practical density, so I wonder if it would be better to use some kind of high temperature storage fuel, even if you have to pay extra to launch it from Earth? 20:34 Autonomous tritium micropower sensors -- Savine Hossenfelder had a video recently about betavoltaic cells, although they have the problem of VERY LOW power output. 21:44 Electroluminescently cooled zero boil off propellant depots -- European Space Agency has a 2020 posting on this that explains how it works (use voltage to drive something like an LED just short of the energy it actually needs to emit light, so that to emit light it has to steal a bit of extra energy from thermal energy), but it sounds like it is hard (potentially prohibitively hard) to get it to work efficiently enough for cooling something as cold as liquid hydrogen; a group at Berkeley also has a 2018 article on this that goes into more detail, although I haven't read the whole thing.
@@ralph3333 If you seal the container so that the hydrogen can't escape, then it will burst as the hydrogen heats up. The critical point of hydrogen is at 32.938 K, 1.2858 MPa (1 atmosphere = about 100 KPa), so above that temperature, you cannot keep it liquid by pressurizing it -- above 32.938 K, it will be a gas no matter what you do, and it will break any container that isn't so heavy that you wouldn't be able to launch it. And yes, if you make a container out of the wrong material, hydrogen does in fact squeeze between the atoms of that material as well, making it brittle, before it eventually escapes.
@@ralph3333 Since you asked how does hydrogen boil off if it is in a sealed container, I thought you meant stop up the pressure relief valve. If the pressure relief valve opens, then hydrogen will boil off and the vapor will escape through that. Note that for a liquid hydrogen tank on any planet with an atmosphere containing significant ingredients other than hydrogen and helium, you have to be careful that the pressure relief valve doesn't get stopped up with frozen air.
Regarding the carbon monoxide rocket, carbon monoxide has been used for decades as fuel for steel mill blast furnaces. The blast furnace gives off oodles of CO as a byproduct, and while it's not that great a fuel, there's so much that it's worth recovering. That's the reason for the giant "downcomer" pipe coming off the top of the furnace.
Sweden extensively used carbon monoxide as a vehicle fuel during the heavy petroleum rationing during WW2. Bolt basically wood stove to the side of your tractor, and burn the wood oxygen poor. Pipe the CO to the combustion engine, and off you go. Slowly, since as you mentioned, CO isn't that good of a fuel. But having your tractor run on wood is absolutely worth it being severely underpowered compared to having no fuel at all.
Flexicoking is a process developed by Exxon that uses a fluidized bed of hot petroleum coke to thermally crack bitumen, other heavy oils, or vacuum residue into lighter fuel products. The bed is regenerated by burning the excess carbon off, producing large quantities of CO. The CO-rich effluent gas is then combusted to CO2, usually in a CO boiler that produces high-pressure steam. This process has been used on a large industrial scale as part of bitumen upgrading to synthetic crude oil in Alberta. In that case, CO production is comparable to that of a large steel mill.
I've got an idea for a really stupid horror movie - NASA ships a bear to ISS to study hibernation, the bear of course gets woken up at some point and starts roaming around in zero G murdering the crew. Hollywood, here I come xD
I love the fact that space exploration is so difficult that it forces us to constantly innovate to reach the ever expanding horizon of what's possible. I often hear sentiments like "why bother exploring space when there are so many problems to solve here on Earth?" And my reply is that doing difficult things causes us to innovate in ways that benefit the world. Not to mention the more direct examples of the benefits of space exploration such as satellites for GPS and communication in general.
I like to reply "why bother with ANYTHING before solving every problem? Because you can do 2 good things at the same time, like feeding yourself while reading a book. If you can do it, I guarantee the whole world can do it on a larger scale."
"And my reply is that doing difficult things causes us to innovate in ways that benefit the world." Reaching net zero in time to avoid climate catastrophe looks pretty fucking difficult, so by your own logic we should focus on that.
@@NickG-x6t and how do we observe the changes in climate more accurately? We send satellites to monitor the changes over time. So my point isn't that there aren't pressing problems to solve here on Earth it's that the way to solve those problems is by innovating constantly and space exploration drives this innovation. I don't think radio telescopes were initially researched because we thought we could one day produce MRI machines. As is often the case innovation leads to discoveries that contribute to our lives in ways we couldn't have imagined before.
Yup. Plus none of "all that (tax) money " is spent in space. It is ALL spent here on earth and pays workers and engineers, who then go and buy stuff from grocers....etc..
@@arturoeugster7228 By "works", do you mean there exists a system that is quieter, smaller, and more efficient than existing turbine-driven screws for the same performance characteristics?
@@justfellover quiet, yes More efficient, unless you actually test it, we don't know, efficiency has two parts, propulsion efficiency depends on the ratio of the jet speed w to the velocity v Etap = 2/(1+ w/v) The other is the energy lost by conduction through the salt water, and the power to built up the magnetic field, zero, using permanent magnets. And then you have to drive a generator to produce the current. With an engine. I would be surprised if the efficiency would be as good as a well designed propeller. Size, no limit, but you have to be concerned about the Alfvén waves.
I haven't wrapped my head around Alfvén waves yet. I became convinced back in the 90's that keeping a sufficiently high field strength meant keeping the water channel too narrow to pass enough water. Thanks for sharing the info. Baltic Sea anomaly, here I come!
That Thin Film Nuclear Isotope Rocket idea actually looks fairly familiar. It seems that it's based on a Fission Fragment Rocket ("nuclear sail" type), with the difference being that it does not rely on a nuclear chain reaction to produce thrust, instead using the natural decay rate of rapidly decaying isotope.
Ah, my colleague and I made it to the semi-final stage of the NIAC this year. We got informed of the rejection on the 7th of January. A little bittersweet to see the successful cases here, as interesting as they are! We'll resubmit again and I'll keep rolling the D20 for luck.
Thanks for making us aware of these almost sci-fi technologies, many of which I had no idea existed. You really got me with electroluminescent cooling! Now I have my night's reading cut out for me. Fly safe!
I'll be honest, as much as I'd like to be wrong, I think the timeframe for going to different star systems (based on the study on the feasibility of sending information back), is almost hilariously optimistic. I imagine we won't have probes visiting other star systems before the 24th century. Because it's so far down the list of importance (you can just build absolutely insanely large radio interferrometry telescopes near sol instead, and just look at nearby star systems), and because I think a lot of space enthusiasts are essentially too optimistic about how fast space will be colonized and explored. It's essentially a completely new frontier with no currently existing infrastructure in place within it. With that said, I'd love to be proven wrong, heck I WANT to be wrong on that, but I also believe it's important to keep ones feet on the ground of reality.
I think the same for some time now. One step after the other. (Otherwise it's too easy to stumble ;•). A realistic time frame is 400 years, for exploring and colonizing the SolarSystem. To go beyond, we need propulsion systems that we can't even imagine yet. We don't even have the propulsion for beyond Low Earth Orbit! Chemical rockets. Nice for cargo and robot missions, but no more. It's crazy to even think about reaching the stars. The good thing is, that several nuclear propulsion systems are supposed to launch in 2027. The most conservative one by NASA/DARPA, will cut transfer times down to half. Another advantage is continueous thrust = gravity. The huge Starship can then bring more than 5 passengers to Mars, without them being unable to crawl outside without help. Lets hope the best for 2027. The 400 year count begins with the first crewd nuclear mission. 🚀🏴☠️🎸
@@op4000exe I personally think that a lunar base will be necessary to provide things like laser power beaming on the far side (the logical place to put it).
Well it could be earlyer ,an example is that from the 1800s to the moon landing is less then 200 years .but i dont think theres a way to litteraly predict the future technologies and when they will comeout
@@nikolaideianov5092 The issue that I see, is that most of the industrial revolution, built upon things that already existed within infrastructure on earth. Space has zero infrastructure, not limited infrastructure but actually none. This means everything imaginable has to be built from scratch, and doing so (I imagine), is a problem much bigger than some would like to believe, and will take far more time to do as well.
An important risk to consider for lunar interferometry is that of lunar dust, interfering with lasers, and covering mirrors. There is a great deal of evidence that once suspended in the air, electrostatic charges allow dust to stay suspended for very long periods of time and stick to any surface. This phenomenon needs to be studied, understood, and overcome in order for this technology to work properly.
I got to participate in a NIACs Phase 1 study in 2022. It was super cool to be given money to do really exploratory science! As is traditional, NASA loves their clever acronyms for projects!
Sorry about this one Scott, but just started watching some of these. Back when we had the 'VLT' and the 'ELT' and various other 'T' telescopes, it wasn't long after when I was asking "So when are we going to get the 'FHT'?" Not everyone was amused, apparently. But some of these proposals would actually qualify!
The big problem with optical interferometry in space is that you need to keep the baselines steady to within a fraction of micrometer, and that is very hard to do with free flyers. The lunar gravity and surface regolith means that problem is much easier on the lunar surface. Irwin Shapiro and his team at MIT worked on this, on a proposed Apollo Application Program mission called POINTS. After AAP died POINTS was moved to a free-flyer and eventually subsumed into the JPL led SIM, which was eventually canceled. So, there is a bit of history on that one.
I've used a radio luminescent generator before. They're not very strong but they do function at a decent milliamp. I constructed my own years ago using a few small tritium and monocrystalline panels. It wasn't very efficient but it was cool to actually make one. I still have it and I now have some ultracapacitors that are running the right voltage I would like to try to set into the circuit. It was rather hard to get the little tritium rods in the middle of the solar panel cube without having anything obstructing the light but once I install the two rods I noticed that I was getting a rather noticeable output. At the moment I am able to build up to about 4.7v which means I can charge a lithium ion battery. Unfortunately, you can't buy tritium like you used to. I am actually applying for a nuclear materials license for research. I'm hoping that I won't have to relinquish my tritium because I would have to tear my little radio luminescent generator apart... That would really upset me. Like nickel metal hydride, it's one of the few things it's very important for my experiments but I can't get a hold of it without a nuclear materials license now... I get to a certain points in my experiments where I need special materials and they are damn near impossible to get ahold of if you don't have millions of dollars. One of the most important key ingredients I need right now is rhodium. I've been working with hydrogen generators for over a decade and a half now. I have tried to harvest my own tritium as well as deuterium from the hydrogen generators but the amount of time it takes to generate that much tritium is in the order of a decade. Electrolysis units do in fact produce tritium as well as concentrate the deuterium but it takes far too long because it's on the level of parts per trillion. Maybe it's just my love of Syfy but I can't wait for the day that rtgs become a normal staple in everyday life.
Someone on UA-cam has a video where they made a tritium powered cell similar to the one you describe. Have you seen it? If you're interested, I could probably find it again. I'm not sure but I think it was on the channel *Thought Emporium.* Let me know if you'd like help finding it.
As bat-shift crazy as most of these ideas sound, they all get me very excited! If even 10% of them pan out, we get smarter as a species. I've often wondered how big the antennas would have to be at both ends to talk to Alpha Centauri. And how many megawatts we would need for any significant bitrate. Getting something there with the power to send data back seems like it would be difficult, to say the least.
I'm guessing something that reflects our very powerful signal back in a modulated way would be more mass efficient than sending a very powerful antenna out there
Another big problem that hasn't been addressed is it is all well and good sending things to Alpha Centauri at 20% the speed of light but how do you slow them down when they get there ?. All the concepts I have seen involve tiny devices propelled by lasers so have no onboard propulsion. Something has to slow them down which won't be easy from 20% the speed of light.
@@joshuacheung6518Gravity will accelerate the probes first and slow them down the same amount after they passed the gravity source. 0.2c is also way to fast for that to make any difference unless you target a black hole or neutron star.
@@dazuk1969 Here the neat part, they don't! the goal (for now) is to get there take flyby science and done, it's not really realistic currently for going to orbit in another solar system. Even a flyby with phone camera would still give higher resolution image than our best telescopes could get.
The radioactive rocket engine was actually first described in 1939 in a book by a german engineer and Sci-Fi author Hans Dominik. I don´t know if there is an english version avaliable but in german it is called Treibstoff SR.
Would be nice if they'd fund a demonstrator of the magnetic "propeller" solar sail concept. Pluto in a month with near current tech seems like a no brainer to try. Jeff Greason from Tau Zero has been trying to get that going for some time. A mission to ʻOumuamua looks like a good candidate. It might be possible to match velocities using the same drive as long as the rendezvous is past the heliopause.
@@nobody8717 NASA seems just fine with flybys for more expensive and slower missions. I really love the idea of using the magnet sail to send out swarms of cheap and fast probes to just get more freaking images of our solar system, not just Pluto but Triton, Neptune, Uranus, etc, these are all less than 1 year travel away from Earth if the magnet drive works
Its not a solar sail but a solar wind drive of sorts, Oumuamua flyby with it in less than a year from launch should be possible yeah, man that would be so cool.
Well a lot of it probably has to do with the proposals. When people propose stuff, they likely have to specifically state their goals and how they plan to achieve them. If people have the means to actually do what they say, it is pretty convincing and detailed, generally with work/education backgrounds and previous work/publications backing that up. Most of these are likely based on peer reviewed papers the applicants wrote, and they now want funding to do a follow up to confirm it is not just all theory and could work in practicality.
given that the sail surface is supposed to be ~250m², given a thickness of 10µm of thorium that's ~29.3 kg of the stuff, which do not sound like a lot, but it's *very* energetic ! If my calculs are correct, Th228 decay release ~27.5 W per gram, so the whole stack would emit ~805.7 *kW* , which is easy to handle when spread out over 250m², but is another story when its folded up in a tight bundle in a fairing. (just for fun I calculated how hot the sail would be, given that it is in essence a very big radiator, and assuming an emissivity of 0.9 the sail would reach thermal equilibrium at ~421K (147.8°C), which is very reasonable, it would only glow in the infrareds.)
@@jogandsp Alpha particles have very little energy, so they fail to penetrate even the most outer layers of the skin. So the workers wearing a very basic suit that prevents them from inhaling/ingesting the radioactive stuff will be totally fine around the spacecraft.
Which is also why you don't electrolyse pure water. You are not wrong, but this is not relevant to this application because the water needs to be conductive anyway.
What I’m really interested in over the next decade is what capabilities will starship unlock. If you can refuel your vehicle in orbit so that it can take a 100t or larger payload to much of the solar system, you can do some pretty wild things, and be a lot less worried about weight budgets.
Honestly, if you can get 100 tons to orbit in a single launch then you don't need to refuel Starship, you can just allocate that 100t to a dedicated vehicle. If that's not enough, then repurpose those refueling flights to bringing up more stuff. Starship is designed to launch & land, not to stay in space, so if you ditch it for inter-planetary purposes then you can get a better optimization for your vehicle.
@@absalomdraconis fair point, but it if refueling is cost effective enough you might as well do it, to reduce interplanetary flights or bring more with the same amount of flights. you can also use it to decrease your transfer times/extend your range.
Wow, TFINER is such a cool and yet relatively simple concept. That would be awesome if we could start making some spacecraft like that to explore the solar system, or maybe beyond. Also, I don't know how good humans hibernating in space would be. If the astronauts can't exercise wouldn't their bodies waste away in zero g?
So its basically DARPA but for space science and exploration. Cool, had no idea this existed. Also the passive radiation thrust general concept is so brilliant in its simplicity.
Really appreciate your exposing these interesting ideas. I am an old geezer now. Sure hope some curious kid appreciates these ideas and decides to get good at math so that his purpose in life is also interesting and satisfying and productive.
Aerospace engineer here - a lot of these really are borderline sci-fi fantasy stuff, but then you need to to these sorts of studies at times because they'll either re-direct attention to things that can work or they'll uncover something on the side or something will be developed along the way that finds uses in other industries.
It would be very interesting to see NASA also spend some money on the thermo-electric coolers talked about in that radiation engine. If we could get them to be more efficient, they could really be useful. A Superconductor Peltier Chip would be worth looking into, even just to find the problems with it.
Gas stations in orbit make Single Stage to Orbit vehicles make sense. Gas stations on the moon make SSTO vehicles make sense to the moon and back. Consider a trip across the United States. We do that easily in a car, because there are gas stations along the way. If we have to carry all of our fuel for the round trip, that would be a much larger vehicle. Lot of neat tech ideas here. :0)
I have read a german Sci-Fi Book from 1939. "Hans Dominik: Flug in den Weltraum (Treibstoff SR)" where they used a Rocket with a radioactive thin-film engine
Electro luminescent cooling in space using similar tech which I am using to view your video on UA-cam would be so cool, no pun intended. Passive infrared cooling in space has had it's day.
Not exactly. For placing only kilometers apart would be a stupid waste of money for no advantage over ground systems. The detectors are to be positioned at L3, L4 & L5. All on Earths orbit: one ahead of, and one behind Earth. The 3rd point is exactly behind the Sun. If these satellites also get equipped with NASAs new laser communication modules, this would be the beginning of a real Deep Space Network. This way taking care of dead spots that result from Earths orbit. 🚀🏴☠️🎸
@@MichaelWinter-ss6lx From ESA’s LISA webpage: “Spacecraft and orbit: The mission will comprise three spacecraft flying in a triangular formation behind the Earth as our planet orbits the Sun. The spacecraft will sit in a heliocentric orbit about 50 million km from Earth, with a distance of around 2.5 million km between each spacecraft. The positioning of this trio will be measured precisely using laser interferometry - necessary to measure the tiny variations caused by a passing gravitational wave” I don’t think youtube allows links to be posted in comments sections so I can’t link them but there are animations of the orbit the craft will follow, too. From what I understand I think they orbit a single lagrange point, there isn’t going to be one positioned behind the sun. BUT, having telescopes at different lagrange points all communicating together to detect gravitational waves would be very *very* cool.
One topic I would love to learn more about is the subject of temperatures in space. Not until having to consider the orbital refueling challenge, my belief was always that temperatures in space were very, very cold. However, now I am considering how temperatures can vary in space. How those temperatures vary, under what circumstances, and what challenges these face for all missions would be a great topic to dive into!
Usually the temperature doesn't matter, but instead illuminance vs blackbody radiation. Balancing that is important, and why James Webb has all those solar reflectors.
I love it when we talk about space science in a broader and more inclusive realm, which includes physics, biochemistry, geology, etc. I love all of it except for the animal testing part of it.
The navigation concept for the radioactive thin-film rocket engine, opening and closing panels to direct thrust, sounds a little like the navigation used by Professor Cavor's moonship in H.G. Wells's "First Men in the Moon".
The thorium powered sail sounds exciting but something about seems off. Wouldn't the absorbtion plate eventually absorb so much heat that it starts to radiate it back out in all directions and slow the craft down?
The sail would emit thermal radiation in both directions, as it is very thin, and both sides will have the same temperature. Besides, thorium emits alpha particles aka Helium nuclei, which have actual mass, and, my intuition is, this produces a lot more thrust than thermal radiation which emits electromagnetic waves. Love this proposal, the idea is pretty straightforward, the benefits are very significant. Hope the math is not off.
@@xl0xl0xl0the math hits the right range. ~1% reaction mass at 20,000km/s would give a delta v of 200km/s. Details are complicated, but that sounds plausible. The issue would be building and launching it. If that launch goes bad you have real problems. RTGS at least are a lump that will tend to stay together even if it didn't quite make orbit and re-entered fast. This would both have significantly more mass of an absurdity energetic source and in a less robust configuration than a typical rtg. This is also stupidly inefficient. It needs the configuration to work, and the first decay will disrupt that. Half the time the parent nucleus will shoot out rather than the alpha particle, and the other half it embeds in the shield deep enough that the rest of the alphas cannot escape. It only makes use of the first decay. Probably ~45% of the energy goes into the shield, and ~45% is spent on decays in space. If you had 30kg of thorium you would do much better with an rtg powering a particle accelerator as a thruster, and at that point you are better off with a full on nuclear reactor. An ISP of 100,000s and 15% (of dry) propellant mass nets you a delta v of close to 150km/s too, while the same reactor powering a 50,000s thruster and 60% propellant mass would grant you closer to 250km/s. Once you start looking at nuclear options this looks kinda piddly as a thruster while being a monster to work with. Nuclear reactors have the major advantage of not being massively radioactive till you turn them on, meaning getting them to space is much less risky.
Fraser Cain of Universe Today interviews scientists that have submitted proposals for NIAC grants. The interviews are typically on the order of an hour each. If the scientist is willing Fraser does additional interviews as the projects progress. Scott has a very different style and skill set than Fraser, so it would be cool to see Scott's take on those topics. Scott has been in several Universe Today videos, so they know each other. Universe Today content is also available as text and as podcasts.
Do solar cells convert infrared light to electricity? I've seen articles suggesting this sort of tech is being researched but I'm not aware of any practical applications (so far).
Current PV cells work in the UV range. You'd need specific PV cells that work in the IR range, and i am not aware of any such. But who knows, i haven't looked either.
Huh, just looked, and it seems IR PV cells are a thing, just not mass manufacturable yet. But the same thing was true of silicon PV cells not all that long ago. If the scientists and engineers can get IR PV cells to cheap mass manufacturing levels, that will be a game changer for PV solar. It might actually get solar to be viable as a renewable energy source here on earth. Of course, we still need to figure out the energy storage part of the problem as well, as that still needs to be figured out before getting rid of fossil fuels for electrical generation.
Current silicon technology has its highest spectral response in the near infrared actually and drops sharply in the UV spectrum. It so happens that the irradiance in the visible part of the spectrum is higher on earth due to the composition of our atmosphere. How much of the IR radiation could get through the thick atmosphere of Venus from the surface up to a high altitude drone may be enough to power the flight indefinitely alongside some experiments and communications to orbiting satellites
@@halnineooo136 I do not think that is correct. I just looked at the spectral response of silicon PV, and it drops off markedly in the longer wavelengths. It peaks in the UV spectra, according to what i just looked up. And the macroscopic cross section for absorption of silicon is in the UV region. I can also state confidently, that panel heating is a major loss of power in silicon PV cells, due to leakage currents. Which is why carbon based PV cells, which are optically transparent at those frequencies is a hot topic for researchers right now. If you can add a transparent layer that absorbs the IR before it can hit the silicon, you avoid the heating (which is a problem) without effecting the performance of the PV cell, while also capturing at least some of the IR energy.
Re Carpenter's interferometer on the Moon: the importance of lunar basing is that the Moon is a stable platform. Keeping the apertures relatively stable in space turns out to be very difficult.
Awesome! More power to these “wonderful persons”! Just some thoughts: -Romero-Calvo: Why are centrifuges, a centuries-old technology, verboten in space? -Bickford: ‘Oumuamua!!! -Landis: Sounds great if you’re severely mass-limited. What if you’re not? [cough] Starship [cough]
12:07 This has me *EXCITED* ! One of my semi-irrational fears it that some sample of Exterrestrial Life gets inadvertently destroyed, so making something like this required would hopefully prevent that. Could make some obnoxious backronym like FIRST - “For ISRU Record and Study THEN use” or something, but in my armchair opinion pushing for that in space law, along with reducing Space Junk, and requiring “cleanliness” and all that (some of which is already done, again armchair here lol).
We might be able to save the idea: the proposal above suggests using engineered bacteria to digest the perchlorate. Remember what he mixed the soil with? A rich source of microorganisms. Perhaps some of them are naturally good at degrading perchlorate.
18:36 Heh, I’m pretty sure I saw a ksp1 video from tdchannel using rss/ro/rp-1 to do the exact same concept. They used a plane to get samples from venus, return them to a balloon, and then launch that to orbit
We NEED an optional NTP third stage for Starship!!! Also, an ISRU reusable NTP lunar lander shuttling payloads between the Lunar South Pole and LLO/NRHO would be awesome.
The solar sail has one main disadvantage - it does not have any independent propulsion. So your maneuverability is extremely limited by its distance from the star and its position to it. TFINER could aim its stable propulsion vector in any direction desired at any time.
@@MrMichalMalek Position is mostly irrelevant, as the sail can produce both prograde and retrograde thrust in an equally simple way (for a circular orbit, set it ~45 deg to the current orbital velocity), thus raising or lowering the orbit. Planetary shadow is not an issue, as with such small thrust both sails and TFINERs can travel only far away from planets. Distance is indeed an issue for trips far beyound the Solar System, but the "sail vs TFINER" comparison could establish the breakeven distance. It may happen that sails are still more effective inside, say, the Jupiter's orbit, or even inside the Neptune's one. UPD: though, I agree that for very elliptical orbits the sail indeed lack maneurability half of the time (no acceleration when descending, no deceleration when ascending). On the other hand, the solar wind may overpower the TFINER's thrust due to its large area.
Great explanations! I hope you can do more videos in this style, covering different papers across multiple subjects. Anyway... Tangent! Any thoughts on you including starter prompts/questions we could use with ChatGPT or similar AIs to dive deeper into different subjects? Maybe mentioned in the video or just posted in the comments? I can sort of come up with my own, but getting them from a much more knowledgeable and experienced scientist would be a huge help.
Wow, most of these concepts aren't even as sci-fi as I expected. The sad thing is, that a lot of these ideas could be realized or at least tested with today's technology. It's already possible to send probes to a distance of 10 AU (that's Saturn) or test something in zero gravity. The issue is money. If we'd spent less on wars we could be living on the moon right now (yes I know, war can also boost technology, like the V2 - but mostly it's about destoying stuff).
Great idea for a video. The only way we are going to crack the space-travel nut is with innovative breakthroughs. That’s the product of inspired minds.
Radioactive thin-film rocket engine will never work. Space is not empty; it contains matter and matter causes drag. The propulsive energy of alpha decay i.e. its dV density won't be enough to overcome the drag generated by the required panel area. Even if it got up to a velocity, impact damage by space 'debris' would cause too much damage to the structure. And then there is gravitation and photonic pressures which would act as vector based drag too. A- for effort.
Bears don't hibernate they torpor. We used to think they hibernate but they just go into a lighter sleep (torpor) to not expend energy when food resources are low.
Fascinating! Thanks, Scott! 😃 If they learn about hibernation, do you think they could shoot it off in me? 😬 Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Related news: NASA silently cancelled the OSAM-2 (On-Orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 2) project which would have manufactured and assembled spacecraft components in low-Earth orbit. I think Scott talked about the project before. Apparently the design process was completed, but they didn't went ahead with manufacturing and launch. NASA's mission page doesn't mention a reason for the cancellation.
This serves as a reminder that any of these cool new projects might be cancelled as well when (e.g.) the budget runs out.
The NIAC selections are always so interesting
I really love it when creative ideas like these are encouraged and given the room to breathe. It feels like scientific play haha.
These ideas are really cool, and the craziest thing is that I think most of them is not lacking too much tech-readiness. They are just lacking of an amount of money
_well_
I would donate a portion of my paycheck to funding stuff like this...
@@LogicBeach just take three percent of the defense budget, there is plenty of money.
@@ThatOpalGuy3% ?? That much ? With that much yearly there would have been people on mars over 30 years ago
@@ThatOpalGuythat would 2x the budget
Thank you Scott for speaking to us like we are already familiar with many of the concepts and terminology in your videos. That is the kind of respect that many creators lack and it sets you apart from the masses while simultaneously making it clear that you know what you're talking about.
Yes!
Wow, using the curvature of a wavefront as a distance measure is so simple yet so ingenious and interesting!
Isn't that what triangulation is?
unless i misunderstand the point, ham radio has been using peak to peak wave lengths as basic measurement for decades.
2m, 70cm, 20m, 10m, 160m... all terms for different frequency ranges.
It's also what makes phased array radars work. If you have a huge matrix of antennas and you can use the various arrival times of signals to determine range, position, etc. And when transmitting, if you can accurately enough delay the output pulse to those same antennas, you can "aim the beam." The military has been using this for decades now.
What holds this back, is at the ranges they are interested in, you need a HUGE baseline. The bigger the better. Because the further away you are from the source of the signal, the "flatter" the wavefront appears to you. You combat that by having as large a baseline as you can.
@@blink182bfsftw No. Triangulation is deducing the position of an emission source using distance-data from a sufficient number of sensors -- notice the sensors must already be able to measure distance and the conclusion is directional. The method discussed deduces the position of an emission source by correlating phase-data from multiple sensors -- both distance and direction concluded. In a non-curved space, the equal-phase-surface expands out in a sphere and measuring surface's curvature belies the center of the sphere. It's probably not that simple, given that the phase of a typical radio signal is periodic withing the capacity of measure of current technology and that space-time is typically not totally flat.
@@jeromethiel4323 yes, good point
The radioactive thin-film rocket engine is so damn simple and yet clever. I can't believe that's never been thought of before. I wonder if you could combine it with some kind electromagnetic field control to collimate the alpha particles in one direction and increase thrust compared to having the radiation be randomly emitted in a half sphere. The extra mass and power requirements might not be worth it thought... Would still be interesting to see how it compares to ion engines in terms of both thrust and specific impulse.
One thing Scott didn't point out was the surface area: 250m^2. This engine genius is because it's a bunch of really thin, lightweight panels that kicks out propellent at a good fraction of the speed of light.
If you had the mass and power available to build a massive particle engine bell, just build a massive ion engine because that is what it is.
I might be misunderstanding but as far as I see there's no controlling this thruster, it will "burn" at full power so to speak at all times until the foil and thrust have decayed too far to be useful.
I guess you can still fold it up on itself when you don't want to push your spacecraft for a bit but then heat generation will be higher (?) and disabling it like that won't increase it's useful life anyway?
@@oohhboy-funhouse Yeah, now that you say that, it *IS* an ion engine. Alpha decay is a helium nucleus, which is an ion (no electrons) and is naturally accelerated due to the radioactive decay.
Plus, people launching rockets with radioactive materials makes people nervous. Undeservedly so, IMHO, but people are people.
@@-slashtWhat you could do is symmetrically point the panels outwards so that a portion of their thrust nulls out. Go all the way and your net thrust is zero. That would also avoid any heat addition to the spacecraft.
@@jeromethiel4323Yeah, but alpha radiation is essentially the Nerf dart of the radiation game. And we launch alpha emitters all the time in RTGs, so the risks and precautions are pretty well-understood.
0:57 Solar system scale VLBI
3:30 Lunar Long-Baseline Optical Imaging Interferometer
6:24 Magnetohydrodynamic oxygen separation thingy.
8:11 Thin film radioisotope engine
10:22 sketchy Mars flying solar panel idea
11:35 Agnostic Life Finder (Mars bacteria or something)
13:14 Getting rid of perchlorates on Mars (but why? There's no nitrogen. Terraform Venus instead)
14:35 Swarms of small probes going to Proxima Centauri.
16:58 A "new" kind of antenna, I guess
17:30 Cryosleep for animals and maybe humans though a lot of animals can enter torpor and I think the Russians already did this with dogs?
18:31 Sample return from Venus, also carbon monoxide rocket
20:34 Autonomous tritium micropower sensors.
21:44 Electroluminescently cooled zero boil off propellant depots.
This probably would have been more useful like a day ago.
Actually very useful now, for easily commenting on each item -- I'll attach my comments to each line of your post:
0:57 Solar system scale VLBI -- this sounds doable with current technology
3:30 Lunar Long-Baseline Optical Imaging Interferometer -- this sounds doable with current technology, but I think putting it in space away from any planet or moon would be better than putting it on the Moon.
6:24 Magnetohydrodynamic oxygen separation thingy -- this sounds doable with current technology.
8:11 Thin film radioisotope engine -- a potential problem already seen with polonium samples on Earth is that the radioactive atoms tend to knock each other off, so you lose a fair amount of them without getting the use of them, so to prevent this, you would have to have an inert layer over them, but then that will steal some of the alpha particle energy.
10:22 sketchy Mars flying solar panel idea -- this sounds doable with current technology.
11:35 Agnostic Life Finder (Mars bacteria or something) -- if you''re going to be splitting water on Mars, you're probably going to have to filter it anyway, so you might as well piggyback a science experiment onto the filter.
13:14 Getting rid of perchlorates on Mars (but why? There's no nitrogen. Terraform Venus instead) -- bioremediation of perchlorates would actually be useful in some contaminated sites on Earth, although _Bacillus subtilis_ doesn't sound like a tough enough bacterium to grow (as opposed to just spores remaining viable but dormant) on Mars; also, Mars actually does have a little bit of nitrogen
14:35 Swarms of small probes going to Proxima Centauri -- as advertised, this one is going to have to depend upon major preceding technological developments -- better work on those first; that said, some scaled-down analog for far solar system exploration (Kuiper Belt/Oort Cloud) might be workable with hefty but forseeable advances in technology.
16:58 A "new" kind of antenna, I guess -- always good to improve communication efficiency, and it might have applications closer to home.
17:30 Cryosleep for animals and maybe humans though a lot of animals can enter torpor and I think the Russians already did this with dogs? -- this might have medical applications on Earth (like use it to keep somebody alive while you basically take them apart to take out metastatic cancer that is currently beyond our surgical capabilities).
18:31 Sample return from Venus, also carbon monoxide rocket -- sounds doable, although I wonder if it would be better to use a lander/rover that can inflate a balloon when it is finished and then rendezvous with a high altitude balloon that has the rocket; also, both carbon monoxide and oxygen having the problem of requiring low temperature for storage at practical density, so I wonder if it would be better to use some kind of high temperature storage fuel, even if you have to pay extra to launch it from Earth?
20:34 Autonomous tritium micropower sensors -- Savine Hossenfelder had a video recently about betavoltaic cells, although they have the problem of VERY LOW power output.
21:44 Electroluminescently cooled zero boil off propellant depots -- European Space Agency has a 2020 posting on this that explains how it works (use voltage to drive something like an LED just short of the energy it actually needs to emit light, so that to emit light it has to steal a bit of extra energy from thermal energy), but it sounds like it is hard (potentially prohibitively hard) to get it to work efficiently enough for cooling something as cold as liquid hydrogen; a group at Berkeley also has a 2018 article on this that goes into more detail, although I haven't read the whole thing.
@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio
How does hydrogen "boil off" if it's in a sealed container? Does it squeeze between the container's atoms?
@@ralph3333 If you seal the container so that the hydrogen can't escape, then it will burst as the hydrogen heats up. The critical point of hydrogen is at 32.938 K, 1.2858 MPa (1 atmosphere = about 100 KPa), so above that temperature, you cannot keep it liquid by pressurizing it -- above 32.938 K, it will be a gas no matter what you do, and it will break any container that isn't so heavy that you wouldn't be able to launch it. And yes, if you make a container out of the wrong material, hydrogen does in fact squeeze between the atoms of that material as well, making it brittle, before it eventually escapes.
@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio
Nice. I should have thought there be a pressure valve. Duh. Thx.
@@ralph3333 Since you asked how does hydrogen boil off if it is in a sealed container, I thought you meant stop up the pressure relief valve. If the pressure relief valve opens, then hydrogen will boil off and the vapor will escape through that.
Note that for a liquid hydrogen tank on any planet with an atmosphere containing significant ingredients other than hydrogen and helium, you have to be careful that the pressure relief valve doesn't get stopped up with frozen air.
Regarding the carbon monoxide rocket, carbon monoxide has been used for decades as fuel for steel mill blast furnaces. The blast furnace gives off oodles of CO as a byproduct, and while it's not that great a fuel, there's so much that it's worth recovering. That's the reason for the giant "downcomer" pipe coming off the top of the furnace.
I did not know that. Thanks!
Sweden extensively used carbon monoxide as a vehicle fuel during the heavy petroleum rationing during WW2. Bolt basically wood stove to the side of your tractor, and burn the wood oxygen poor. Pipe the CO to the combustion engine, and off you go. Slowly, since as you mentioned, CO isn't that good of a fuel.
But having your tractor run on wood is absolutely worth it being severely underpowered compared to having no fuel at all.
You know why CO is produced by heating?
Look above and look up Bouduard equilibrium reaction.
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing that!
Flexicoking is a process developed by Exxon that uses a fluidized bed of hot petroleum coke to thermally crack bitumen, other heavy oils, or vacuum residue into lighter fuel products. The bed is regenerated by burning the excess carbon off, producing large quantities of CO. The CO-rich effluent gas is then combusted to CO2, usually in a CO boiler that produces high-pressure steam. This process has been used on a large industrial scale as part of bitumen upgrading to synthetic crude oil in Alberta. In that case, CO production is comparable to that of a large steel mill.
I've got an idea for a really stupid horror movie - NASA ships a bear to ISS to study hibernation, the bear of course gets woken up at some point and starts roaming around in zero G murdering the crew. Hollywood, here I come xD
I love the fact that space exploration is so difficult that it forces us to constantly innovate to reach the ever expanding horizon of what's possible. I often hear sentiments like "why bother exploring space when there are so many problems to solve here on Earth?" And my reply is that doing difficult things causes us to innovate in ways that benefit the world. Not to mention the more direct examples of the benefits of space exploration such as satellites for GPS and communication in general.
I like to reply "why bother with ANYTHING before solving every problem? Because you can do 2 good things at the same time, like feeding yourself while reading a book. If you can do it, I guarantee the whole world can do it on a larger scale."
Innovation in a powerpoint? The only people innovating right now are SpaceX.
"And my reply is that doing difficult things causes us to innovate in ways that benefit the world." Reaching net zero in time to avoid climate catastrophe looks pretty fucking difficult, so by your own logic we should focus on that.
@@NickG-x6t and how do we observe the changes in climate more accurately? We send satellites to monitor the changes over time. So my point isn't that there aren't pressing problems to solve here on Earth it's that the way to solve those problems is by innovating constantly and space exploration drives this innovation. I don't think radio telescopes were initially researched because we thought we could one day produce MRI machines. As is often the case innovation leads to discoveries that contribute to our lives in ways we couldn't have imagined before.
Yup. Plus none of "all that (tax) money " is spent in space. It is ALL spent here on earth and pays workers and engineers, who then go and buy stuff from grocers....etc..
"Magneto hydro drive"
That's what powered the sub in the hunt for red October
This is a far more realistic application for MHD. It doesn't scale well for sub propulsion for a dozen reasons.
At the University of British Columbia a course in MHD was taught, it works but Alfvén waves must be controlled.
@@arturoeugster7228 By "works", do you mean there exists a system that is quieter, smaller, and more efficient than existing turbine-driven screws for the same performance characteristics?
@@justfellover quiet, yes
More efficient, unless you actually test it, we don't know, efficiency has two parts, propulsion efficiency depends on the ratio of the jet speed w to the velocity v
Etap = 2/(1+ w/v)
The other is the energy lost by conduction through the salt water, and the power to built up the magnetic field, zero, using permanent magnets.
And then you have to drive a generator to produce the current. With an engine.
I would be surprised if the efficiency would be as good as a well designed propeller.
Size, no limit, but you have to be concerned about the Alfvén waves.
I haven't wrapped my head around Alfvén waves yet. I became convinced back in the 90's that keeping a sufficiently high field strength meant keeping the water channel too narrow to pass enough water. Thanks for sharing the info. Baltic Sea anomaly, here I come!
That Thin Film Nuclear Isotope Rocket idea actually looks fairly familiar.
It seems that it's based on a Fission Fragment Rocket ("nuclear sail" type), with the difference being that it does not rely on a nuclear chain reaction to produce thrust, instead using the natural decay rate of rapidly decaying isotope.
Isotope sail is an old idea as well. I remember reading about it years ago at the Atomic Rockets site.
Ah, my colleague and I made it to the semi-final stage of the NIAC this year. We got informed of the rejection on the 7th of January.
A little bittersweet to see the successful cases here, as interesting as they are!
We'll resubmit again and I'll keep rolling the D20 for luck.
Thanks for making us aware of these almost sci-fi technologies, many of which I had no idea existed. You really got me with electroluminescent cooling! Now I have my night's reading cut out for me. Fly safe!
No one does this type of content better than Scott Manley.
Always great to see another one of your amazing videos! Thanks Scott!
I'll be honest, as much as I'd like to be wrong, I think the timeframe for going to different star systems (based on the study on the feasibility of sending information back), is almost hilariously optimistic. I imagine we won't have probes visiting other star systems before the 24th century. Because it's so far down the list of importance (you can just build absolutely insanely large radio interferrometry telescopes near sol instead, and just look at nearby star systems), and because I think a lot of space enthusiasts are essentially too optimistic about how fast space will be colonized and explored. It's essentially a completely new frontier with no currently existing infrastructure in place within it.
With that said, I'd love to be proven wrong, heck I WANT to be wrong on that, but I also believe it's important to keep ones feet on the ground of reality.
I think the same for some time now. One step after the other. (Otherwise it's too easy to stumble ;•). A realistic time frame is 400 years, for exploring and colonizing the SolarSystem.
To go beyond, we need propulsion systems that we can't even imagine yet. We don't even have the propulsion for beyond Low Earth Orbit! Chemical rockets. Nice for cargo and robot missions, but no more. It's crazy to even think about reaching the stars.
The good thing is, that several nuclear propulsion systems are supposed to launch in 2027. The most conservative one by NASA/DARPA, will cut transfer times down to half. Another advantage is continueous thrust = gravity. The huge Starship can then bring more than 5 passengers to Mars, without them being unable to crawl outside without help.
Lets hope the best for 2027. The 400 year count begins with the first crewd nuclear mission.
🚀🏴☠️🎸
@@MichaelWinter-ss6lx And a lunar mission, in fact not just mission but a base, makes everything else in space a lot more reasonable, and doable.
@@op4000exe I personally think that a lunar base will be necessary to provide things like laser power beaming on the far side (the logical place to put it).
Well it could be earlyer ,an example is that from the 1800s to the moon landing is less then 200 years .but i dont think theres a way to litteraly predict the future technologies and when they will comeout
@@nikolaideianov5092 The issue that I see, is that most of the industrial revolution, built upon things that already existed within infrastructure on earth. Space has zero infrastructure, not limited infrastructure but actually none. This means everything imaginable has to be built from scratch, and doing so (I imagine), is a problem much bigger than some would like to believe, and will take far more time to do as well.
An important risk to consider for lunar interferometry is that of lunar dust, interfering with lasers, and covering mirrors. There is a great deal of evidence that once suspended in the air, electrostatic charges allow dust to stay suspended for very long periods of time and stick to any surface. This phenomenon needs to be studied, understood, and overcome in order for this technology to work properly.
True, but the Moon for all practical purposes has no air.
@@oldfarthacksi think thats specificly a problem for habitats
More R&D on the moon is required.
The constant landings and departures of rockets, as well as construction and material mining will make that problem worse…
What air? there's no air up there to suspend anything
I got to participate in a NIACs Phase 1 study in 2022. It was super cool to be given money to do really exploratory science! As is traditional, NASA loves their clever acronyms for projects!
Sorry about this one Scott, but just started watching some of these. Back when we had the 'VLT' and the 'ELT' and various other 'T' telescopes, it wasn't long after when I was asking "So when are we going to get the 'FHT'?"
Not everyone was amused, apparently. But some of these proposals would actually qualify!
The big problem with optical interferometry in space is that you need to keep the baselines steady to within a fraction of micrometer, and that is very hard to do with free flyers. The lunar gravity and surface regolith means that problem is much easier on the lunar surface. Irwin Shapiro and his team at MIT worked on this, on a proposed Apollo Application Program mission called POINTS. After AAP died POINTS was moved to a free-flyer and eventually subsumed into the JPL led SIM, which was eventually canceled. So, there is a bit of history on that one.
Awesome, I was literally just looking at the 2024 NIAC selections!!
I've used a radio luminescent generator before. They're not very strong but they do function at a decent milliamp. I constructed my own years ago using a few small tritium and monocrystalline panels. It wasn't very efficient but it was cool to actually make one. I still have it and I now have some ultracapacitors that are running the right voltage I would like to try to set into the circuit. It was rather hard to get the little tritium rods in the middle of the solar panel cube without having anything obstructing the light but once I install the two rods I noticed that I was getting a rather noticeable output. At the moment I am able to build up to about 4.7v which means I can charge a lithium ion battery. Unfortunately, you can't buy tritium like you used to. I am actually applying for a nuclear materials license for research. I'm hoping that I won't have to relinquish my tritium because I would have to tear my little radio luminescent generator apart... That would really upset me. Like nickel metal hydride, it's one of the few things it's very important for my experiments but I can't get a hold of it without a nuclear materials license now... I get to a certain points in my experiments where I need special materials and they are damn near impossible to get ahold of if you don't have millions of dollars. One of the most important key ingredients I need right now is rhodium. I've been working with hydrogen generators for over a decade and a half now. I have tried to harvest my own tritium as well as deuterium from the hydrogen generators but the amount of time it takes to generate that much tritium is in the order of a decade. Electrolysis units do in fact produce tritium as well as concentrate the deuterium but it takes far too long because it's on the level of parts per trillion. Maybe it's just my love of Syfy but I can't wait for the day that rtgs become a normal staple in everyday life.
where do you live that you can't buy tritium tubes? you can still get them in the US
Someone on UA-cam has a video where they made a tritium powered cell similar to the one you describe. Have you seen it? If you're interested, I could probably find it again.
I'm not sure but I think it was on the channel *Thought Emporium.*
Let me know if you'd like help finding it.
As bat-shift crazy as most of these ideas sound, they all get me very excited! If even 10% of them pan out, we get smarter as a species.
I've often wondered how big the antennas would have to be at both ends to talk to Alpha Centauri. And how many megawatts we would need for any significant bitrate.
Getting something there with the power to send data back seems like it would be difficult, to say the least.
I'm guessing something that reflects our very powerful signal back in a modulated way would be more mass efficient than sending a very powerful antenna out there
Another big problem that hasn't been addressed is it is all well and good sending things to Alpha Centauri at 20% the speed of light but how do you slow them down when they get there ?. All the concepts I have seen involve tiny devices propelled by lasers so have no onboard propulsion. Something has to slow them down which won't be easy from 20% the speed of light.
Gravity braking maybe?
@@joshuacheung6518Gravity will accelerate the probes first and slow them down the same amount after they passed the gravity source.
0.2c is also way to fast for that to make any difference unless you target a black hole or neutron star.
@@dazuk1969 Here the neat part, they don't! the goal (for now) is to get there take flyby science and done, it's not really realistic currently for going to orbit in another solar system. Even a flyby with phone camera would still give higher resolution image than our best telescopes could get.
The radioactive rocket engine was actually first described in 1939 in a book by a german engineer and Sci-Fi author Hans Dominik. I don´t know if there is an english version avaliable but in german it is called Treibstoff SR.
@Scott Manley, you're the first person I can tolerate saying "idear". Truly!! You have such good content!!
Thanks!
Thank you!
For those interested, Fraser Cain does hour-long interviews with NIAC applicants every year
Would be nice if they'd fund a demonstrator of the magnetic "propeller" solar sail concept.
Pluto in a month with near current tech seems like a no brainer to try.
Jeff Greason from Tau Zero has been trying to get that going for some time.
A mission to ʻOumuamua looks like a good candidate. It might be possible to match velocities using the same drive as long as the rendezvous is past the heliopause.
getting there in a month is no big deal.
stopping so you don't whizz by at 300k mph is another story all together.
Oh that sounds fascinating gonna have to look into this more, thanks!
@@nobody8717 NASA seems just fine with flybys for more expensive and slower missions. I really love the idea of using the magnet sail to send out swarms of cheap and fast probes to just get more freaking images of our solar system, not just Pluto but Triton, Neptune, Uranus, etc, these are all less than 1 year travel away from Earth if the magnet drive works
Its not a solar sail but a solar wind drive of sorts, Oumuamua flyby with it in less than a year from launch should be possible yeah, man that would be so cool.
@@nobody8717 getting to Pluto in a month and wizzing by at 300k mph would fricken absolutely be a big deal. 😎
I would love to hear deeper dive into how the committee decides what is explorable science and what is too far into science fiction.
Well a lot of it probably has to do with the proposals. When people propose stuff, they likely have to specifically state their goals and how they plan to achieve them. If people have the means to actually do what they say, it is pretty convincing and detailed, generally with work/education backgrounds and previous work/publications backing that up. Most of these are likely based on peer reviewed papers the applicants wrote, and they now want funding to do a follow up to confirm it is not just all theory and could work in practicality.
@@Michaelonyoutub
They should fund an AI that can read a research proposal and come up with an appropriate catchy acronym.
I knew Ai would take my job someday
I think that’s about half the aerospace industry
This is such a wild coincidence! I've been researching a KSP1 RSS Venus solar-plane return probe for the past 3 days😂.
Kolby, I've been wanting rss for some time now. where can I find the versions that it will run on? Thnx
I feel like most people dont understand how scary a
given that the sail surface is supposed to be ~250m², given a thickness of 10µm of thorium that's ~29.3 kg of the stuff, which do not sound like a lot, but it's *very* energetic !
If my calculs are correct, Th228 decay release ~27.5 W per gram, so the whole stack would emit ~805.7 *kW* , which is easy to handle when spread out over 250m², but is another story when its folded up in a tight bundle in a fairing.
(just for fun I calculated how hot the sail would be, given that it is in essence a very big radiator, and assuming an emissivity of 0.9 the sail would reach thermal equilibrium at ~421K (147.8°C), which is very reasonable, it would only glow in the infrareds.)
@@The.Heart.Unceasing I'm talking about the radiation danger to any people nearby while it's being assembled
@@jogandsp Alpha particles have very little energy, so they fail to penetrate even the most outer layers of the skin. So the workers wearing a very basic suit that prevents them from inhaling/ingesting the radioactive stuff will be totally fine around the spacecraft.
magneto hydro dynamic drive. First thing that popped into my head was "Why is someone making the red october"
This is such a great video; do more coverage of research!
I also love how two of these are directly related to plot points in The Martian.
Amazing tour through the edge of science. Very cool that NASA funds those studies.
Geoffrey Landis is a well known and published Science Fiction writer (re: Analog Magazine and novels) as well as NASA scientist.
With Hugos and Nebulas to his name.
Best science explainer for us basic "I like science" types. Thank you Scott!
the thorium sheet is a neat idea!
i volunteer to hibernate in space.
Pure water isn’t conductive -that’s a feature used to assess water purity !
Everything is conductive with enough voltage
Which is also why you don't electrolyse pure water. You are not wrong, but this is not relevant to this application because the water needs to be conductive anyway.
you're awesome Scott!!
Thanks so much for creating and sharing this informative and timely video. Great job. Keep it up.
What I’m really interested in over the next decade is what capabilities will starship unlock.
If you can refuel your vehicle in orbit so that it can take a 100t or larger payload to much of the solar system, you can do some pretty wild things, and be a lot less worried about weight budgets.
ULA wanted this back in the 2000's not a new idea
Honestly, if you can get 100 tons to orbit in a single launch then you don't need to refuel Starship, you can just allocate that 100t to a dedicated vehicle. If that's not enough, then repurpose those refueling flights to bringing up more stuff. Starship is designed to launch & land, not to stay in space, so if you ditch it for inter-planetary purposes then you can get a better optimization for your vehicle.
@@absalomdraconis fair point, but it if refueling is cost effective enough you might as well do it, to reduce interplanetary flights or bring more with the same amount of flights. you can also use it to decrease your transfer times/extend your range.
I thought that ALF stood for Alien Life Form 👽 👾
I work on the team - that was the naming inspiration!
What makes this concept more advantageous than a light sail?? Is it traveling different directions?
Wow, TFINER is such a cool and yet relatively simple concept. That would be awesome if we could start making some spacecraft like that to explore the solar system, or maybe beyond. Also, I don't know how good humans hibernating in space would be. If the astronauts can't exercise wouldn't their bodies waste away in zero g?
It's one of those ideas that you hear about and go "how did we not think of that already?" and those are always the ones that change the world.
@@StarryCactusAgreed. If nothing else it’s certainly a captivating concept.
So its basically DARPA but for space science and exploration. Cool, had no idea this existed. Also the passive radiation thrust general concept is so brilliant in its simplicity.
6:24 that's my research professor (i'm working on different project with him though)! literally the best 🥰
Really appreciate your exposing these interesting ideas. I am an old geezer now. Sure hope some curious kid appreciates these ideas and decides to get good at math so that his purpose in life is also interesting and satisfying and productive.
Aerospace engineer here - a lot of these really are borderline sci-fi fantasy stuff, but then you need to to these sorts of studies at times because they'll either re-direct attention to things that can work or they'll uncover something on the side or something will be developed along the way that finds uses in other industries.
That thin film propulsion idea is so flippn cool
It would be very interesting to see NASA also spend some money on the thermo-electric coolers talked about in that radiation engine. If we could get them to be more efficient, they could really be useful. A Superconductor Peltier Chip would be worth looking into, even just to find the problems with it.
Gas stations in orbit make Single Stage to Orbit vehicles make sense. Gas stations on the moon make SSTO vehicles make sense to the moon and back. Consider a trip across the United States. We do that easily in a car, because there are gas stations along the way. If we have to carry all of our fuel for the round trip, that would be a much larger vehicle. Lot of neat tech ideas here. :0)
I have read a german Sci-Fi Book from 1939. "Hans Dominik: Flug in den Weltraum (Treibstoff SR)" where they used a Rocket with a radioactive thin-film engine
Electro luminescent cooling in space using similar tech which I am using to view your video on UA-cam would be so cool, no pun intended. Passive infrared cooling in space has had it's day.
ESA's LISA experiment is doing laser interferometry to detect gravity waves in space with 3 satellites kilometers apart at Lagrange point 1 ^_^
Not exactly. For placing only kilometers apart would be a stupid waste of money for no advantage over ground systems. The detectors are to be positioned at L3, L4 & L5. All on Earths orbit: one ahead of, and one behind Earth. The 3rd point is exactly behind the Sun.
If these satellites also get equipped with NASAs new laser communication modules, this would be the beginning of a real Deep Space Network. This way taking care of dead spots that result from Earths orbit.
🚀🏴☠️🎸
HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS?!
@@MichaelWinter-ss6lx From ESA’s LISA webpage:
“Spacecraft and orbit: The mission will comprise three spacecraft flying in a triangular formation behind the Earth as our planet orbits the Sun. The spacecraft will sit in a heliocentric orbit about 50 million km from Earth, with a distance of around 2.5 million km between each spacecraft. The positioning of this trio will be measured precisely using laser interferometry - necessary to measure the tiny variations caused by a passing gravitational wave”
I don’t think youtube allows links to be posted in comments sections so I can’t link them but there are animations of the orbit the craft will follow, too.
From what I understand I think they orbit a single lagrange point, there isn’t going to be one positioned behind the sun. BUT, having telescopes at different lagrange points all communicating together to detect gravitational waves would be very *very* cool.
Criminally early. Thanks for consistently great content:)
One topic I would love to learn more about is the subject of temperatures in space. Not until having to consider the orbital refueling challenge, my belief was always that temperatures in space were very, very cold. However, now I am considering how temperatures can vary in space. How those temperatures vary, under what circumstances, and what challenges these face for all missions would be a great topic to dive into!
Usually the temperature doesn't matter, but instead illuminance vs blackbody radiation. Balancing that is important, and why James Webb has all those solar reflectors.
@@absalomdraconis Thanks for the insight!
These conspiring ideas will have monumental impacts on innovation
I love it when we talk about space science in a broader and more inclusive realm, which includes physics, biochemistry, geology, etc. I love all of it except for the animal testing part of it.
Today's insane is tomorrow's regular 😊
The navigation concept for the radioactive thin-film rocket engine, opening and closing panels to direct thrust, sounds a little like the navigation used by Professor Cavor's moonship in H.G. Wells's "First Men in the Moon".
The thorium powered sail sounds exciting but something about seems off. Wouldn't the absorbtion plate eventually absorb so much heat that it starts to radiate it back out in all directions and slow the craft down?
The sail would emit thermal radiation in both directions, as it is very thin, and both sides will have the same temperature. Besides, thorium emits alpha particles aka Helium nuclei, which have actual mass, and, my intuition is, this produces a lot more thrust than thermal radiation which emits electromagnetic waves. Love this proposal, the idea is pretty straightforward, the benefits are very significant. Hope the math is not off.
@@xl0xl0xl0the math hits the right range. ~1% reaction mass at 20,000km/s would give a delta v of 200km/s. Details are complicated, but that sounds plausible. The issue would be building and launching it. If that launch goes bad you have real problems. RTGS at least are a lump that will tend to stay together even if it didn't quite make orbit and re-entered fast. This would both have significantly more mass of an absurdity energetic source and in a less robust configuration than a typical rtg.
This is also stupidly inefficient. It needs the configuration to work, and the first decay will disrupt that. Half the time the parent nucleus will shoot out rather than the alpha particle, and the other half it embeds in the shield deep enough that the rest of the alphas cannot escape. It only makes use of the first decay. Probably ~45% of the energy goes into the shield, and ~45% is spent on decays in space.
If you had 30kg of thorium you would do much better with an rtg powering a particle accelerator as a thruster, and at that point you are better off with a full on nuclear reactor. An ISP of 100,000s and 15% (of dry) propellant mass nets you a delta v of close to 150km/s too, while the same reactor powering a 50,000s thruster and 60% propellant mass would grant you closer to 250km/s.
Once you start looking at nuclear options this looks kinda piddly as a thruster while being a monster to work with. Nuclear reactors have the major advantage of not being massively radioactive till you turn them on, meaning getting them to space is much less risky.
21:45 Here's the definitive answer we were all looking for. RGB actually does cool computer components and, therefore, makes them run faster.
😉
Thanks Scott. Interesting items :)
Super interesting video, this edge of science stuff explained by someone knowledgable is great! Thanks Scott!
LOVE this. IF your staff had the ability, would be interesting to look at those past projects that were borne out by what ever criteria. Thank you.
I don't think he has staff? IIRC, he's said in the past that he does all the research, writing, and editing himself.
Fraser Cain of Universe Today interviews scientists that have submitted proposals for NIAC grants. The interviews are typically on the order of an hour each. If the scientist is willing Fraser does additional interviews as the projects progress.
Scott has a very different style and skill set than Fraser, so it would be cool to see Scott's take on those topics.
Scott has been in several Universe Today videos, so they know each other.
Universe Today content is also available as text and as podcasts.
Solar PV cells could be advantageously placed under the wings too and profit from the surface high infrared radiation even during long Venus nights.
Do solar cells convert infrared light to electricity? I've seen articles suggesting this sort of tech is being researched but I'm not aware of any practical applications (so far).
Current PV cells work in the UV range. You'd need specific PV cells that work in the IR range, and i am not aware of any such. But who knows, i haven't looked either.
Huh, just looked, and it seems IR PV cells are a thing, just not mass manufacturable yet. But the same thing was true of silicon PV cells not all that long ago.
If the scientists and engineers can get IR PV cells to cheap mass manufacturing levels, that will be a game changer for PV solar. It might actually get solar to be viable as a renewable energy source here on earth. Of course, we still need to figure out the energy storage part of the problem as well, as that still needs to be figured out before getting rid of fossil fuels for electrical generation.
Current silicon technology has its highest spectral response in the near infrared actually and drops sharply in the UV spectrum. It so happens that the irradiance in the visible part of the spectrum is higher on earth due to the composition of our atmosphere.
How much of the IR radiation could get through the thick atmosphere of Venus from the surface up to a high altitude drone may be enough to power the flight indefinitely alongside some experiments and communications to orbiting satellites
@@halnineooo136 I do not think that is correct. I just looked at the spectral response of silicon PV, and it drops off markedly in the longer wavelengths. It peaks in the UV spectra, according to what i just looked up. And the macroscopic cross section for absorption of silicon is in the UV region.
I can also state confidently, that panel heating is a major loss of power in silicon PV cells, due to leakage currents. Which is why carbon based PV cells, which are optically transparent at those frequencies is a hot topic for researchers right now. If you can add a transparent layer that absorbs the IR before it can hit the silicon, you avoid the heating (which is a problem) without effecting the performance of the PV cell, while also capturing at least some of the IR energy.
Re Carpenter's interferometer on the Moon: the importance of lunar basing is that the Moon is a stable platform. Keeping the apertures relatively stable in space turns out to be very difficult.
Pretty esoteric. Thank you
6:30 Isn't that the technical name for the Caterpillar drive on the Red October?
On the curvature of signals, how much is that impacted by passing objects with heavy gravity distorting the original signal shape?
Really cool concepts! Is that the red dressing gown of doom hanging on the door?
Awesome! More power to these “wonderful persons”! Just some thoughts:
-Romero-Calvo: Why are centrifuges, a centuries-old technology, verboten in space?
-Bickford: ‘Oumuamua!!!
-Landis: Sounds great if you’re severely mass-limited. What if you’re not? [cough] Starship [cough]
12:07 This has me *EXCITED* ! One of my semi-irrational fears it that some sample of Exterrestrial Life gets inadvertently destroyed, so making something like this required would hopefully prevent that.
Could make some obnoxious backronym like FIRST - “For ISRU Record and Study THEN use” or something, but in my armchair opinion pushing for that in space law, along with reducing Space Junk, and requiring “cleanliness” and all that (some of which is already done, again armchair here lol).
Thanks for the great content!
Love this info❤. Very cool. Although my mind is blown that Mark Whatney could not really have grown potatoes on Mars to save his life! 🤯
We might be able to save the idea: the proposal above suggests using engineered bacteria to digest the perchlorate. Remember what he mixed the soil with? A rich source of microorganisms. Perhaps some of them are naturally good at degrading perchlorate.
Allways a good idea to put some type of detectors around the solar system to get a heads up when comets, meteors and alien invaders approach.....👍
Thanks Scott! 🙂😎🤓❤
Oh Scott, I underestimated you again. I thought I would understand at least 20% of this.
18:36 Heh, I’m pretty sure I saw a ksp1 video from tdchannel using rss/ro/rp-1 to do the exact same concept. They used a plane to get samples from venus, return them to a balloon, and then launch that to orbit
My research advisor is mentioned here!!! Shoutout to Dr. Romero-Calvo!!!
I’m all for the Very Large Baseline Interferometer. I have no faith in Cepheid Variables as Standard Candles
Great video, Scott...👍
We NEED an optional NTP third stage for Starship!!! Also, an ISRU reusable NTP lunar lander shuttling payloads between the Lunar South Pole and LLO/NRHO would be awesome.
What about the 'Mars Direct' idea by Dr.Robert Zubrin ?
Perchlorates in the Martian soil…. So you mean the potatoes from The Martian were …. Sci fi??
I'd like to see a comparison of the thin film radioisotope engine with a solar sail of the same area.
The solar sail has one main disadvantage - it does not have any independent propulsion. So your maneuverability is extremely limited by its distance from the star and its position to it. TFINER could aim its stable propulsion vector in any direction desired at any time.
@@MrMichalMalek Position is mostly irrelevant, as the sail can produce both prograde and retrograde thrust in an equally simple way (for a circular orbit, set it ~45 deg to the current orbital velocity), thus raising or lowering the orbit. Planetary shadow is not an issue, as with such small thrust both sails and TFINERs can travel only far away from planets.
Distance is indeed an issue for trips far beyound the Solar System, but the "sail vs TFINER" comparison could establish the breakeven distance. It may happen that sails are still more effective inside, say, the Jupiter's orbit, or even inside the Neptune's one.
UPD: though, I agree that for very elliptical orbits the sail indeed lack maneurability half of the time (no acceleration when descending, no deceleration when ascending). On the other hand, the solar wind may overpower the TFINER's thrust due to its large area.
So, a thorium reactor producing U-232 as a byproduct could separate the U-232 and sell it as spacecraft fuel. Cool.
6:96 have fun keeping the dust out.
I know that there are much better hibernating animals but me first thought was Bears...in.. SPAAAAACE!
Yep. Bears, but: _AquaBears_ in space.
Honestly the picture of the sample return from Venus says it all.
Great explanations! I hope you can do more videos in this style, covering different papers across multiple subjects. Anyway...
Tangent! Any thoughts on you including starter prompts/questions we could use with ChatGPT or similar AIs to dive deeper into different subjects? Maybe mentioned in the video or just posted in the comments? I can sort of come up with my own, but getting them from a much more knowledgeable and experienced scientist would be a huge help.
I look forward to all of the articles on how NASA is developing a warp drive and/or a weather control satellite.
That was a fun walkthrough of the projects ... do more of that please. Seems like this is NASA's version of DARPA projects?!
Check out IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency) if you haven't already
Wow, most of these concepts aren't even as sci-fi as I expected. The sad thing is, that a lot of these ideas could be realized or at least tested with today's technology. It's already possible to send probes to a distance of 10 AU (that's Saturn) or test something in zero gravity. The issue is money. If we'd spent less on wars we could be living on the moon right now (yes I know, war can also boost technology, like the V2 - but mostly it's about destoying stuff).
Great idea for a video. The only way we are going to crack the space-travel nut is with innovative breakthroughs. That’s the product of inspired minds.
I would pay for a written article format of your content.
Radioactive thin-film rocket engine will never work. Space is not empty; it contains matter and matter causes drag. The propulsive energy of alpha decay i.e. its dV density won't be enough to overcome the drag generated by the required panel area. Even if it got up to a velocity, impact damage by space 'debris' would cause too much damage to the structure. And then there is gravitation and photonic pressures which would act as vector based drag too. A- for effort.
Hibernating animals in space?
I'm just going to assume this involves putting bears on the ISS. At least I hope it does.
LOL! Maybe hedgehogs or squirrels to begin with . . .
😂 Ha! In reality, it will almost certainly be a rodent.
Bears don't hibernate they torpor. We used to think they hibernate but they just go into a lighter sleep (torpor) to not expend energy when food resources are low.
Fascinating! Thanks, Scott! 😃
If they learn about hibernation, do you think they could shoot it off in me? 😬
Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊