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ARCA is the romanian google X prize competitor.

I like the 4 stage system. But how did they solve the plume issue ?

The plume issue is not that difficult. I think they used something similar on Apollo LES. The problem is stabilizing the entire system, which is extremely difficult. The entire system will most likely plummet down after the solar balloon phase (which is the only phase they tested before). At least they are not using government money :).

well a bit misleading title...

As I mentioned it into my thesis, this engine bridges the gap between chemical and low-thrust propulsion systems. To be more specific: Isp should vary between 1000 and 30000s, and the thrust amplitude should reach up to 1200 N. It is interesting to see that the concept is actually moving forward ...

NASA should revive its own ACT, expert panel says.

how "large" could these distances be? - ready for SPS?

I don't think that the distance is the important criteria... It seems that the directivity is of the order of a laser one, so the divergence will be equivalent. Perhaps the important criteria is that the cost of these type of light sources could be cheaper...? and also perhaps what power transmission is achievable? It seems also that now that this concept could be used for to focus cheap lasers, instead of using complex optics in cd-rom players, etc... see http://news.softpedia.com/news/Highly-Directional-Semiconductor-Laser-Created-at-Harvard-90839.shtml

Combined method of construction and transportation for access to space of distributed heavyweight cargo and personnel with safe, economical and renewable characteristics.

Home Page of The ACT

Home Page of The ACT

Sounds cool. Needs application.

ASMO - ESMO .... hmmmm who copied whom?

Anyone out there still doing propulsion stuff? Two more papers just waiting to get busted... http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1429v1 http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803

One reply to Pacome, though the discussion exceeds by far the relevance of the topic already. Baryonic DM is strictly limited by cosomology, if one believes in these models, of course. Anyway, even though most DM is cold, we are constantly bombarded by some DM particles that come together with cosmic radiation, solar wind etc. etc. If DM easily interacted with normal matter, we would have found it long ago. In the paper they consider DM as neutralinos, which are neither baryonic nor strongly or electromagnetically interacting.

well then I agree, how the fu.. they want to collect them !!!

what to think about that? spoiling important ressources, smart idea?, and is it really cheap?

Chris Moore is a good guy and one very open minded to new ideas and concepts at NASA; the fact that this was picked up by fox news must be that they could relay this to "gas stations" :-)

additional info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himba_people#Exceptional_color_perception

Yeah that's interesting stuff... We have one prof in the lab who used to do some research related exactly to this (http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/socce/staff/tonybelpaeme/research.html). Similar question (i.e. if/how language is involved in the formation of a concept) is also valid for numbers, see for instance this recent story: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20095-without-language-numbers-make-no-sense.html

The scientific rationale behind it is that at km-depth there could be a) water resources (which could support a biosphere) and b) understand the formation of Mars. I would argue that an efficient drilling (robot) is also valuable for possible developing underground habitation (caves) at some point. This paper mentions two drilling concepts, but we could come up with many more (bio-inspired) probably. Daniel already came up with a nice one.. microwave drilling Also, the NASA InSight probe to Mars in 2016 is using a DLR-designed 'Mole' drill that is designed to reach a depth of... 5 meters

In this case I was thinking more about a smaller and controlled digging effort.. not ablating a football field sized hole

Nice one! plenty of examples in nature for this

Our friends from NASA have come out with a plan to the human exploration of Venus in the time that everyone is speaking about Mars.

Love the concept acronym, which pretty much says it all... Not sure which astronaut would fancy floating around in an atmosphere where clouds are made of sulphuric acid. Besides I don't see the point of a manned mission if one can't reach the surface.. tele-operation would be easy and so much cheaper.

More in the ethic realm, I once was in a talk by Ivan Schuller (http://ischuller.ucsd.edu/) where he revisited the concept of Langmuir's Pathological Science (http://yclept.ucdavis.edu/course/280/Langmuir.pdf), defined as the act in which "people are tricked into false results ... by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions" providing a list of aspects common to fraudulent science. Unfortunately there is no video of this very interesting talk, but the slides are available here: http://ethics.ucsd.edu/seminars/seminars/2006/summaries/Pathological_Science.pdf

12 new NIAC 1 studies - many topics familiar to us ... please have a look at those closest to your expertise to see if there is anything new/worth investigating (and in general to be knowledgeable on them since we will get questions sooner or later on them)
Principal Investigator Proposal Title Organization City, State, Zip Code
Atchison, Justin Swarm Flyby Gravimetry Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD 21218-2680
Boland, Eugene Mars Ecopoiesis Test Bed Techshot, Inc. Greenville, IN 47124-9515
Cash, Webster The Aragoscope: Ultra-High Resolution Optics at Low Cost University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309-0389
Chen, Bin 3D Photocatalytic Air Processor for Dramatic Reduction of Life Support Mass & Complexity NASA ARC Moffett Field, CA 94035-0000
Hoyt, Robert WRANGLER: Capture and De-Spin of Asteroids and Space Debris Tethers Unlimited Bothel, WA 98011-8808
Matthies, Larry Titan Aerial Daughtercraft NASA JPL Pasadena, CA 91109-8001
Miller, Timothy Using the Hottest Particles in the Universe to Probe Icy Solar System Worlds John Hopkins University Laurel, MD 20723-6005
Nosanov, Jeffrey PERISCOPE: PERIapsis Subsurface Cave OPtical Explorer NASA JPL Pasadena, CA 91109-8001
Oleson, Steven Titan Submarine: Exploring the Depths of Kraken NASA GRC Cleveland, OH 44135-3127
Ono, Masahiro Comet Hitchhiker: Harvesting Kinetic Energy from Small Bodies to Enable Fast and Low-Cost Deep Space Exploration NASA JPL Pasadena, CA 91109-8001
Streetman, Brett Exploration Architecture with Quantum Inertial Gravimetry and In Situ ChipSat Sensors Draper Laboratory Cambridge, MA 02139-3539
Wiegmann, Bruce Heliopause Electrostatic Rapid Transit System (HERTS) NASA MSFC Huntsville, AL 35812-0000

Eh, the swarm flyby gravimetry is very similar to the "measuring gravitational fields" project I proposed in the brewery

"The experiments involve an oil droplet that bounces along the surface of a liquid. The droplet gently sloshes the liquid with every bounce. At the same time, ripples from past bounces affect its course. The droplet's interaction with its own ripples, which form what's known as a pilot wave, causes it to exhibit behaviors previously thought to be peculiar to elementary particles - including behaviors seen as evidence that these particles are spread through space like waves, without any specific location, until they are measured." Pilot-wave theory reresurrected. Maybe something for the next "fundamental" :P physics RF?

And for the next 'Experimental Physics Stagiaire' position why not try to do "Unpredictable Tunneling of a Classical Wave-Particle Association" http://stilton.tnw.utwente.nl/people/eddi/Papers/PhysRevLett_TUNNEL.pdf, there are some rumors online that the results of Yves Couder Experiments can be reproduced with simple DIY vibrating tables! It is very funny to see the videos of the MIT's replication of this experiment (with lightening legends for those who are uncomfortable with the concepts involved https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF5iHQMjcsM)

Several new components for biological circuits have been developed by researchers. These components are key building blocks for constructing precisely functioning and programmable bio-computers. "The ability to combine biological components at will in a modular, plug-and-play fashion means that we now approach the stage when the concept of programming as we know it from software engineering can be applied to biological computers.

Here we explore the electrochemical performance of pyrolyzed skins from the species A. bisporus, also known as the Portobello mushroom, as free-standing, binder-free, and current collector-free Li-ion battery anodes. At temperatures above 900 °C, the biomass-derived carbon nanoribbon-like architectures undergo unique processes to become hierarchically porous. Basically they burned a Portobello mushroom and used it as a battery... now thats an multidisciplinary advanced concept