Ars Technica: The European Space Agency is planning to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid. The Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission would actually comprise two spacecraft—one to crash, and the other to gather data. The first, called DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), would impact a near-Earth asteroid, 65803 Didymos, at a velocity of 6.25 km/s. The second, AIM (Asteroid Impact Monitor), would carry multiple sensors to observe the asteroid before, during, and after the impact. Such a study could aid research into asteroid deflection to prevent potential catastrophes caused by near-Earth objects striking the planet. Because DART’s velocity would be fast enough to vaporize pieces of the asteroid, the event could also provide the opportunity for researchers to study conditions that may have existed during the early solar system.
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Hi Folks;
I greatly applaud all robotic interplanetary mission, but we now need to develop new propulsion methods and plan bold mission that are far ranging as nothing has ever been done before, not even during the Apollo Program.
To that end, I had some whimsical anecdotes to share regarding personal musings on the socalled Christmas Tree Light Sail Starships I have been theorizing about.
First, you ever wonder if there is a kind of middle ground between good old fashion relativistic rocket propulsion and the still very exotic concepts such as superluminal warp drive, wormhole travel, macroscopic teleportation, macroscopically induced quantum tunneling and the like still very speculative concepts.
Well let me provide an answer. Yes there is! My Christmas Tree Light Sail concepts which process incident light from all directions into a propulsive thrust may be the baby, or should I say, the bad boy you have been looking for. Here, negative electromagnetic refraction index meta-materials are the key. Such materials have already been demonstrated to be pulled on by impinging light instead of being pushed on by the light.
Such systems in effect achieve a psuedo-free-lunch in that the closer the spacecraft comes to light speed, the greater the thrust in the spacecraft frame can become. The level of spacecraft acceleration can grow according to the approximate 4th power the the spacecraft gamma factor, so long as the spacecraft can handle the acceleration and the heat generated by incident photonic and massive species.
No doubt, at some point even speculative neutronium and quarkionium shielding would fail so eventually shields made out of pure non-quantized non-atomistic space-time-mass-energy would be required. Even such Yelm shields may fail as some point perhaps requiring shields made out of pure spirit for lack of a better, wordwhich themselves may eventually fail upon attainment of sub-transfinite gamma factors.
What may be required is the conversion of the craft into cold dark matter, or better yet, the provision of a cloaking mechanism. Some method of causing the heat and destructive friction energy build up to be dumped into a teleportive sink as a heat loss mechanism would likely be required. Perhaps quantum energy teleportation could work here for sub-ensemble gamma factors.
Second, less extreme middle ground starships would include light sail starships. These craft, which are still Bad Boys in my opinion are truly craft propelled by electromagnetic fields.
For example, such craft can include solar sails and solar dive and fry sails which are propelled by light itself. Sounds almost like a conspiracy theory of covered up electromagnetism experiments doesn’t it. Well, such a method is no conspiracy and is part of NASA’s public visible agenda for sporting about the solar system and behind. Even NGO’s are getting involved such as the Planetary Society’s efforts to launch and deploy solar sail test spacecraft.
Third, beam sails can include powerful electromagnetic beams sent to a distant spacecraft to propel the craft directly without the need to carry any rocket fuel. Electrodynamic breaking without reverse rocket thrust can bring beam ships to a stop at distant stellar ports of call.
Now, when a spacecraft is accelerated to ever closer to the speed of light more and more of the universe becomes translated to be located in front of the spacecraft, even from at rest angular positions from the backward direction or point of origin. Now, imagine if the state of such translation could be frozen or suddenly cut loose from the kinematics of the spacecraft near light speed travel. Perhaps the spacecraft would simply pop up somewhere almost as if out of nowhere. I am taking about a special relativistic application here that is exotically on steroids. The notion just occurred to me as I was out walking at Manassas National Battlefield Park here in Northern Virginia. However, the fact is, I have no idea how to make this happen. It would seem that the mathematics of speculative wormhole concepts is better understood than this special relativistic break free or cut free mechanism.
What dreams may come from starship middle ground or transition modes of starship propulsion methods. These methods are sort of like living in the shadows: Not warp drive, nor wormholes, and not reactionary rocket thrust methods. Because such methods sort of live in the shadows, they are often overlooked by major space agencies such as NASA which seems to be perpetually stuck in chemical rocket mode. It is time to step out of the shadows and to consider such methods.
Check out my new blog at http://cosmicchristmassails.wordpress.com/
I have personally decided to do my part in Humanity’s stepping out of the starship shadows.
Regards;
Jim