Advanced Concepts Team

"The latest idea comes from engineers at Glasgow's University of Strathclyde who suggest that a swarm of laser-wielding satellites could nudge Earth-bound asteroids off their collision course.... One proposed deflection technique involves using lasers to pulverize the surface of the asteroid, ejecting tiny bits of rock that would act as a propellant and push it onto a different course."

For those of you thinking of spin-offs.

What stroke me especially was the shape of the Marianas Trench (much wider than deep) [edit] This reminds me I used to have a printout of a similar, but more space-related, comic http://xkcd.com/482/ hanging on the wall next to my desk in estec... good ol' times...

and in case you missed it, check also the excellent Money infographic that guy created last year: http://xkcd.com/980/huge/

Ideas for ESTEC 2 ...

Interesting mater thesis that lead to the just announced new launcher ! Remember our discussion after the advanced concepts workshop!?!?!

do you know about this? https://www.qb50.eu/launch.php

I knew about the project only, but not about this very interesting missile ... "The launcher has a remarkable track record of several hundred successful launches and only 1 failure. Shtil is marketed by the State Rocket Center Makeyev."

What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light? --not sure it is correct, but it would be a lot of fun :)

www.esa.int -> site not found. oops.

try without the "www"; esa.int / nasa.gov / dlr.de / cnes.fr ...

and I will try this one also ! anybody ever used it ?

wow i've wanted one of these for years

I posted like this last year on Delicious, think Tobias installed it

why don't we use this for long-term space travel :-) ?? anybody wants to have a closer look into this?

"climate policy-makers need to pay much more attention to restricting short-lived pollutants, such as methane, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and aerosols. This could create significant changes in the local and global climate quite quickly, whereas the effects of efforts to reduce emissions of long-lived carbon dioxide will not be seen for many years."

interesting indeed ... but coming at the right time before copenhagn?

These conclusions come too late to have a real impact on decisions that will be taken in Copenhagen, I assume. But I think it is a hot topic as climate change 'solutions' that work QUICKLY are more and more needed!!

"slides which were presented by an executive at Toyota during some kind of task force meeting that discusses Japan's direction/strategy in space exploration"

apparently competitive with CNT and others in performance, while as you would expect very cheap. anyone know what happens to chicken feathers in a vacuum?

This is an interesting report from a student in sociology, who worked with a group of scientists on a synthetic biology project for the competition IGEM (http://2009.igem.org/Main_Page). This is what happen when you mix hard and soft sciences. For this project they won the special prize for "Best Human Practices Advance". You can read the part on self or exploded governance (p.34). When reading parts of this reports, I thought that it could be good to have a stagiaire or a YGT in human science to see if we can raise interesting question about ethics for the space sector. There are many questions I'm sure, about the governance, the legitimacy of spending millions to go in space, etc...

Let's go to Titan !!!

I bet we'll find there a black monolith which will take us to the stars... No, wait, was it that moon?

Space trip anyone?