Using Carbon-NanoTube (CNT) sheets that we can make now, we might push towards ~2,200 km/s. Of course there will be structural mass and the payload reducing the top speed – thus we might hit ~1,800 km/s tops with CNT sheets, if made perfectly reflective. Even for lower reflectivity the speed will be about ~1000-1500 km/s.
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Carbon is the material of the Future. Graphite, graphene, bucky-balls and nanotubes all have amazing properties. And then there’s diamond – which seems to come in several varieties, albeit rare and/or theoretical. Making enough of any of the allotropes – different carbon forms – is rather tricky, aside from raw graphite, which can be mined.
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Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest book “2312″ is set in that titular year in a Solar System alive with busy humans and thousands of artificial habitats carved from asteroids. Earth is a crowded mess, home to eleven billion humans, but no longer the home of thousands of species, now only preserved, flourishing in fact, in the
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If our Universe is open, either flat or hyperbolic in geometry, then it will expand forever… or at least until space-time’s warranty expires and a new vacuum is born from some quantum flip. Prior to that, most likely immensely distant, event the regular stars will go out and different sources of energy will be needed
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James Lovelock once estimated Earth’s biosphere would crash in about 100 million years when carbon dioxide levels dropped too low. James Kasting and Ken Caldeira updated the model to include a different photosynthetic cycle amongst land plants, pushing back Doomsday to about 900 million years in the Future. Those “900 million years” before Earth overheats
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A reverse chronological order anthology of my recent posts on the Falcon Heavy announcement and the plans of the Mars Society for a minimalist mission. SpaceX to Mars! …go Mars-Soc! SpaceX to Mars? …first discussion of the minimalist Mars mission of Mars Society. Mars – the New World! …why Mars is the New World of
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SpaceX has answered the skeptics recently with a frank discussion of its costs thus far in its May 4, 2011 Update. An excerpt of relevance is this… WHY THE US CAN BEAT CHINA: THE FACTS ABOUT SPACEX COSTS The Falcon 9 launch vehicle was developed from a blank sheet to first launch in four and
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Two recent arXiv preprints combined make for an interesting idea. Here’s the most recent Science headline maker… Some black holes may be older than time …which handily has the arXiv link… Persistence of black holes through a cosmological bounce …Carr & Coley pose the idea that some black holes get through a cosmological Bounce (a
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