Will Mankind Destroy Itself? - Michio Kaku

The physicist, Michio Kaku, sees two major trends in the world today: the first is toward a multicultural, scientific, tolerant society; the other, as evidenced by terrorism, is fundamentalist and monocultural.

Whichever one wins out will determine the fate of mankind.

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NASA: The Future benefits of CubeSats

Three cans of soda would fill the Firefly CubeSat to the brim but don't let its size fool youm NASA has big plans for these tiny satellites.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Hrybyk

To investigate climate change, scientists and engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center are developing the IceCube satellite, which will be no larger than a loaf of bread.

In 2016, this satellite will mature technology that scientists will use to analyze cloud ice in the atmosphere.

“We’re using IceCube to test a radiometer that we want to fly on a big space mission,” said Jeffrey Piepmeier, associate head of Goddard’s Microwave Instruments and Technology Branch.

“Climate scientists have never used this frequency to measure cloud ice from space before.”

The project highlights a growing trend toward testing instruments and running scientific experiments aboard CubeSats.

“Every pound that you send into space costs a phenomenal amount of money,” said Todd Bonalsky, an electrical engineer at Goddard.

“Hence in the investment in CubeSats, which are tiny, complete satellites that are cheaper and easier to build than their larger counterparts.”

At about a foot in length and four inches wide, these three-unit (3U) CubeSats are similar in design to IceCube.

Image Credit: NASA

Bonalsky’s Dellingr CubeSat is slated to launch in March 2015.

Employing a magnetometer system Bonalsky miniaturised for CubeSat use, Dellingr will measure magnetic fluctuations to help scientists better understand how space weather affects Earth.

Dellingr will be the first CubeSat to fly this type of science grade magnetometer system.

Scientists however face a number of challenges when working on CubeSats. Due to their size, CubeSats cannot power many of NASA’s formidable scientific instruments, and there are limits to what can be miniaturised.

The Hubble Space Telescope for example uses a mirror nearly eight feet wide to capture light and translate it into images that a smaller mirror could not produce.

Doug Rowland, a solar scientist at NASA, faced this dilemma when gathering data from his Firefly CubeSat.

He built it to investigate the correlation between lightning and gamma radiation, but his CubeSat can only download 20 milliseconds slots of data to Earth each day.

“The Firefly just doesn’t have enough electrical power to simultaneously run its GPS receiver, its communications antenna and our experiment at the same time,” Rowland said.

“On a big spacecraft, you’d have a thousand times as much data, at least, and you’d have other ways to transmit the data down to Earth.”

Todd Bonalsky holds the solar panel that will power the Dellingr satellite.

Image Credit: NASA/Kristen Basham

Despite such drawbacks, the size and cost of CubeSats open up new strategies for scientific investigations.

In conventional missions, every component must function exactly as designed, but, depending on the mission, a single CubeSat is expendable.

“Instead of pouring money into one big satellite, we try to make a swarm,” said Robert Clayton, a Goddard intern from Dartmouth College.

“It’s okay if we lose two or three from our swarm of 20. We instead focus on making each CubeSat as cheap and reproducible as possible.”

CubeSats can thus slash a scientific mission’s budget and allow scientists to measure multiple data points that would be unobtainable otherwise. Using multiple spacecraft for a single mission is by no means a novel concept.

The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory for example is a pair of nearly identical observatories that trace solar matter as it flows from the sun.

However losing one of these expensive observatories would spell catastrophe for the mission, as opposed to losing one CubeSat in a swarm.

Ka-Band: The Future of Space Communications

JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide performs maintenance work on the International Space Station during an Expedition 32 spacewalk. 

Antennas in the background include those being used for the SCaN Testbed's testing of software defined radios in S-band and Ka-band. 

Image courtesy NASA. 

Imagine you're in a restaurant and it's nearly empty.

You can talk to your companions, low-volume, easy and relaxed. But then more patrons start arriving and it gets more and more crowded.

The noise level rises; you have to shout to be heard. There's no room to move.

That's a picture of the demands on the world's communication frequency bands. Cellular phones, streaming entertainment, data communications, civil and commercial providers; they are all placing incredible strains on available spectrum bandwidth.

SCaN Testbed

In the electromagnetic spectrum, many NASA missions use what is referred to as S-band, and commercial businesses are putting pressure on the government to free up other bands within the electromagnetic spectrum.

NASA saw this trend years ago and started opening up a new part of the electromagnetic spectrum called Ka-band.

With the need to speed up transmission of high-rate science data from space missions, Ka-band, at 26 GHz, is now considered the spectrum of the future for NASA communications.

Compared with S-band, Ka-band has data transmission rates that are hundreds of times faster.

It's like the difference between the television antennas perched on houses decades ago that used transmission frequency called VHF or Very High Frequency and the satellite antenna dishes used today that use a much higher frequency, 50 times higher than VHF.

Those old antennas worked on frequencies that delivered one channel at a time whereas the TV antenna technology of today uses higher frequencies to deliver hundreds of shows to viewers.

But operating in Ka-band requires new hardware and software. Engineers at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and the Harris Corporation developed a radio that uses software to leverage the vast resources of Ka-band. R and D Magazine recognized this design in 2013 with its R and D 100 Award.

Richard Reinhart

"Every mission has a different set of needs," says Richard Reinhart, principal investigator for NASA's Space Communications and Navigation SCaN Testbed, where these radios are being put through their scientific paces aboard the International Space Station.

The testbed is being used to test and demonstrate NASA'S cutting-edge communications, networking and navigation technologies in the challenging environment of space.

"Software defined radios (SDR) allow us to upload new software to hardware already deployed in space. We can extend missions, solve problems and even adapt to new science opportunities by changing and adapting new software," adds Reinhart.

"Because these are signal processing platforms, or computers with an antenna, we can upload new software from the ground to change what the radio does," explains Reinhart.

"It still operates within Ka-band, but we can move the signal around because the electronics enable both signal and frequency flexibility and, for the SCaN Testbed system, we can change the data rate to anything we want between zero and 400 megabits-per-second."

"Why would we want to do that? When a mission goes up, it's generally designed to run at the same data rate throughout the whole mission but what if the transmitter starts to degrade or we detect interference?

We can back the signal rate down to whatever our communications system gives us and maybe extend the mission.

Maybe an antenna doesn't deploy enough; we can figure out what is left and change the software to accommodate whatever the system gives us," says Reinhart.

While there are a few missions sending data on Ka-band direct to Earth stations, the SCaN Testbed's radios are the first NASA mission to transmit through the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) system, a constellation of NASA communications satellites.

The advantage of this system is that data can be communicated from space to Earth 24 hours a day; whereas direct to Earth can only occur when receiving stations come in line with a direct satellite signal.

Aerion: Are there supersonic business jets (SSBJ) in the future

Could supersonic travel be available again before then? 

Quite possibly, if Aerion has anything to do with it and it will be in the form of supersonic business jets (SSBJ). 

Several companies have been working on these concepts, and while the credit crunch of 2008 slowed down progress, now it looks possible that an SSBJ could be in service by the end of the decade.

It should be a lot easier to get an SSBJ project off the ground. A smaller SST is less complex, and could use off-the-shelf components such as engines, so development costs should be lower.

In addition, advances in materials, especially carbon composites, mean advanced aerodynamics can now be converted from the CAD-CAM computer to reality.

For the business customer, the appeal is clear. Rather than being tied to an airline schedule, you can fly wherever – and whenever you want.

So even if an SSBJ wouldn’t quite match Concorde’s Mach 2 performance, the door-to-door time is likely to be much faster.

And aircraft manufacturers may find it easier to persuade multinational CEOs to buy SSBJs as a productivity tool than to convince the stony-faced airline accountants to invest millions in a fleet of supersonic airliners.

The race is on
Leading the race to get the first SSBJ to market is Aerion, which unveiled its radical concept in 2007.

Unlike most SST designs, the Aerion SBJ has been designed to operate subsonically as well as supersonically.

It uses supersonic laminar flow wings – short, unswept wings, rather than delta wings favoured by most SST concepts.

Aerion says this gives it the ability to cruise smoothly at just below the sound barrier, as well as supersonically at its maximum speed of Mach 1.6.

The subsonic performance is necessary as it is still illegal to operate supersonically over many land areas – such as the US, or western Europe.

With a range of around 7,500km it would be possible to fly directly from, say, Frankfurt to Chicago – flying subsonically over land and supersonically over sea.

This would take less than five hours, compared with around nine hours by conventional subsonic jet.

The Aerion SBJ uses carbonfibre composites for the wings, and a section of the wing has been tested successfully already, mounted underneath one of Nasa’s Boeing F-15 supersonic test planes.

As a result of its straight wing design and full-span flaps, typical approach speed will be 120 knots, similar to a regular bizjet, and the aircraft will be able to operate routinely from business airports with 2,000m-long runways – removing the need to join security queues at major airports.

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The Moon: The Future for Circumlunar flights and landings

Circumlunar flight can be more than just a test run. It can also be scientifically useful. The crew of Apollo 13 still managed to take useful photography of the lunar surface as they flew past, despite their circumstances.

A circumlunar mission presents the opportunities for observing the Moon, the Earth, and exploring the properties of deep space itself.

Return to the Moon
Much attention has been focused on plans by various nations to return astronauts to the Moon. At the moment, it doesn't seem that anyone will be landing there for at least another decade. America is revising its original plans for the Orion program, which calls for a return to lunar orbital missions and landings.

Some alternatives would see astronauts orbiting the Moon without landing, and also visiting asteroids.

Circumlunar Missions

There's one mission plan that's been discussed a lot in the past, but doesn't seem too popular right now. Circumlunar missions are a way of moving quickly beyond Earth orbit and reaching a target in space, without as much of the complexity of a landing or even entering lunar orbit.

Put simply, a circumlunar mission would send a spacecraft flying to the Moon, where it would pass around the Moon's far side, using the Moon's gravity to slingshot it back to Earth. A mission like this takes roughly six days to accomplish.

The Zond Program
In the 1960s, the Soviet Union introduced the Zond program, which was the world's first attempt at a manned circumlunar mission. Zond was a modified version of the Soyuz spacecraft, used to launch cosmonauts to Earth orbit. It would be launched to the Moon atop a Proton rocket, more powerful than the booster normally used to launch Soyuz.

Zond test missions were flown to the Moon and back with animals on board, but the missions were not entirely successful. The program was cancelled as America's Apollo program gained ground by sending astronauts to orbit the Moon, without a single cosmonaut flying a mission.

In 1970, the first manned circumlunar mission was flown, although the crew originally had no plans to make such a trip! Apollo 13 was intended to make America's third manned lunar landing.

Halfway to the Moon, the spacecraft experienced an explosion that crippled the Service Module and placed the survival of the astronauts in jeopardy. The crew was rescued by flying a circumlunar trajectory that used the Moon's gravity to help them return to Earth.

Today, circumlunar missions with Soyuz spacecraft have been proposed by at least one space tourism group. It is unclear when, or if, they will fly.

Circumlunar missions could be too expensive and complex for space tourism at the moment. But this shouldn't stop government space programs and aerospace companies from drawing plans.

A circumlunar mission could be a partial step towards a lunar orbital mission or a flight into deeper space. As the rescue of Apollo 13 demonstrated, the mission architecture has advantages of safety that aren't found in lunar orbital missions. This could take some of the risks out of testing new hardware in deep space.

Circumlunar flight can be more than just a test run. It can also be scientifically useful. The crew of Apollo 13 still managed to take useful photography of the lunar surface as they flew past, despite their circumstances. A circumlunar mission presents the opportunities for observing the Moon, the Earth, and exploring the properties of deep space itself.