NASA Wants Your Ambitious High-Tech Contest Ideas 128
In an effort to create future Centennial Challenges, NASA is asking the general public to come up with (and submit) ambitious contest ideas. For the next six weeks, the Innovative Partnerships Program will be accepting ideas for new contests, with all submissions becoming public domain information. "According to NASA, any idea can be proposed for a prize competition that addresses challenges related to the mission of NASA in aeronautics, exploration, science, or space operations. Crosscutting topics or those that also address related national or global needs are especially valuable. The challenges must require basic and applied research, technology development or prototype demonstrations."
Active Structures (Score:3, Interesting)
I know it's a bit outside of NASA's purview, for the moment at least, but how about a contest to build structures that are held up by kinetic energy. You launch material to the top of your structure, catch it there, and throw it back down; transfering enough energy in the process to hold the structure aloft. This kind of thing could eventually be used to build Launch Loops or Space Fountains and is a pretty big engineering challenge that is probably solvable today with a little effort. And it's no more outlandish than a space elevator (probably less so in fact).
Re:Active Structures (Score:4, Interesting)
Care to explain? The system would certainly take energy, a significant amount of it in fact. But that energy could be produced on the ground as opposed to having to take it with you as is done in rocket launches. Put your moving pieces inside of an evacuated tube and fire/turn the projectiles using magnets there will be very little energy lost to friction. The current estimates for the power requirements of a launch loop are a 500 Mw power plant for 35 launches per day and can be scaled up to 80 launches per hour with sufficient power (17 Gw).
New Spacesuits - Mechanical Counterpressure (Score:4, Interesting)
MIT is working on a Mechanical Counterpressure Spacesuit, its called the Biosuit. The materials its made out of are not as advanced as they need to be, but some of the mechanical structures, and the concepts used to design the suits are ready.
http://mvl.mit.edu/EVA/biosuit/index.html [mit.edu]
Basically by being a skin tight suit the wearer is better equipped to handle long hours in a space suit, right now something like 80% of an astronaut's exertions are fighting the suit, with 20% left for actually working on the Space Station or Hubble or something.
In 'the future' we're going to spend a lot more time outside doing things, on orbit, on the moon, on mars and it'd be a lot better off if we didn't have to fight the suit to do the work.
MEME Yo dawg... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's certainly not the first time I've seen this meme, but can someone tell me where it originates? Is it yet another product of 4chan?
Re:Active Structures (Score:2, Interesting)
This system still requires energy input to launch things into orbit, but the key point is that it requires orders of magnitude less energy than a conventional rocket launch. Without going into the math, the key feature of the launch loop, space elevator, or other "skyhook" technology is that the propulsion system applies force against a structure that is anchored to the ground. This means that most of the energy goes into accelerating the payload.
In a conventional rocket, the propulsion system is pushing against the exhaust. Exhaust comes out of the rocket at very high velocity. This means that most of the energy in a conventional rocket goes into accelerating the exhaust, and only a small amount is available to accelerate the payload.
The other major advantage is that the fuel supply can remain on the ground, and does not need to be accelerated. In a conventional rocket, the first stage, for example, needs to accelerate not only the payload, but all the fuel in the second and higher stages.
If people are interested, I can supply some math.