Thursday, August 9, 2007

Is a breakthrough in space transportation in our (near) future?

Tony Williams just completed filling our panel for this year's "Revolutionary Changes in Space Transportation" session. We started this theme last year, with several folks who are pretty "seasoned" in trying to revolutionize space transportation - including Pete Worden and Gary Payton, as well as representatives from industry, NASA and FAA that are also directly engaged.

This year we're going to look at the challenges from a more entrepreneurial and innovative perspective. Panelists will include Buzz Aldrin, Jim Bensen, Stuart Witt (Mojave Spaceport) and Doug Comstock (NASA Innovative Partnerships).

We had a lot of fun last year, a standing-room only crowd, and a very participative audience. As anyone knows who has heard any of these folks speak about the future of space transportation, we're in for another lively couple of hours - and I expect they will prompt every bit as much audience discussion as last year.

Come join us: Session 44-STSA-8, 10:00-12:00, 19 September

79 comments:

Anonymous said...

Our team is getting pretty confident that a breakthrough in space transportation is in our near future.

We want to put a certain type of high-vacuum pump in orbit.

--At perhaps 325 kilometers, we'd be absorbing mostly oxygen.

--We would have to generate thrust in orbit to counter what we've absorbed. Our leading candidate for thrust is an electrodynamic tether.

Our hope is for an order-of-magnitude collapse in the cost of LOX in orbit. Michael Griffin has estimated NASA's future demand for LOX at maybe 250 metric tons around 2020.

We could get this up and running in 5 years with a crash program, but we can also get up on a shoestring in 10 years.

Paul Klinkman said...

I'm going to add an e*mail to my previous comment. You can figure it out (and most robots can't).

psychware [at> y a ho o d ot c om

Dr. Wilkes and I speak at 4:00 on the 20th.

Anonymous said...

.

the #1 spaceflighs' revolution would be "VERY LOW PRICES" ...maybe, 1/10th than now

http://www.ghostnasa.com/

.

Anonymous said...

My technology is more than a breakthru.

http://nlspropulsion.net

mthomas

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A breakthough in earth to orbit propulsion would also meant a breakthrough in ICBM propulsion, which would be a national security nightmare in today's political environment. First we need a breakthrough in global politics.

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