Only an imagination made of stone could fail to stir at the thought of a real-world USS Enterprise blasting away from Earth within 20 years, reaching Mars in three months and restoring a sense of epic grandeur to mankind’s spacefaring dreams.
Posts tagged "travel"
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Could a 21st Century USS Enterprise Really Fly? →
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Getting to the moon on drops of fuel →
Imagine reaching the Moon using just a fraction of a liter of fuel. With their ionic motor, MicroThrust, EPFL scientists and their European partners are making this a reality and ushering in a new era of low-cost space exploration. The complete thruster weighs just a few hundred grams and is specifically designed to propel small (1-100 kg) satellites, which it enables to change orbit around Earth and even voyage to more distant destinations — functions typically possible only for large, expensive spacecraft. The just-released prototype is to be employed on CleanSpace One, a satellite under development at EPFL that is designed to clean up space debris, and on OLFAR, a swarm of Dutch nanosatellites that will record ultra-low radio-frequency signals on the far side of the Moon.
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Highways to wirelessly charge moving cars →
A Stanford University research team has designed a high-efficiency charging system that uses magnetic fields to wirelessly transmit large electric currents between metal coils placed several feet apart. The long-term goal of the research is to develop an all-electric highway that wirelessly charges cars and trucks as they drive down the road.
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Airport Laser Lets You Keep Your Liquids →
So, you’re standing in the security line at the airport when you realize that bottle of duty-free Jameson is still in your bag. Also, you just cracked the seal on some not-so-easily-chuggable Kombucha. And that priced-gouged bottle of sunscreen you bought in Tulum? It was almost $10 and it’s still nearly full.
Normally, these liquid-filled bottles would need to be surrendered to the trash can held by a smirking TSA agent. But have no fear frequent fliers, new screening methods may soon be clear for take off.
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Stratolaunch Systems, A Paul G. Allen Project plans to build low cost launch vehicles to make space travel more accessible to the every-man.
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Chinese Test train can hit 500 km/h (310mph) →
The first test train that can reach speeds of up to 500 km an hour stands on a railway line in Qingdao, Shandong province, on Thursday. Dou Xin / Xinhua
Beijing - China’s largest train maker, CSR Corp Ltd, launched over the weekend its first test train that can reach speeds of up to 500 km an hour.
The six-carriage train with a tapered head is the newest member of the CRH series. It has a maximum drawing power of 22,800 kilowatts, compared with 9,600 kilowatts for the CRH380 trains now in service on the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which hold the world speed record of 300 km per hour.
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Superflies bred to be the first astronauts on Titan →
Artist Andy Gracie is attempting to breed a strain of fruit fly that could survive on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. The first stage of his work, The Quest for Drosophila Titanus, is part of an exhibition currently touring the UK.
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Flying car 'Transition' gets road approval from NHTSA →
The Transition is able to move between the sky and road by making use of push-button retractable wings that narrow the plane enough to allow it to fit on standard roads. In its current configuration, the Transition is 19 feet 9 inches long with a wingspan of 26 feet 6 inches wide and has a height of 78 inches in flying mode; with wings folded however, it’s just 90 inches wide, 18 feet 9 inches long and of course a little taller at 80 inches. It has room for a pilot and one passenger and also has airbags and utilizes an energy absorbing crumple zone similar to that used in many cars. Also, like race cars, it has a carbon fiber safety cage in case of rollovers.
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Elon Musk: I’ll Put a Man on Mars in 10 Years
In an interview with WSJ’s Alan Murray, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk makes the case for an affordable electric car, the likelihood of his company SpaceX sending a man to Mars, and why he isn’t exactly like “Iron Man“‘s Tony Stark.
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Astronauts4Hire.org - Even Astronauts are Outsourced! →
Astronauts4Hire Announces Selection of New Flight Members
Orlando, Florida – Astronauts4Hire is pleased to announce the selection of its third class of commercial scientist-astronaut candidates. The nine new recruits were selected through a rigorous process that included consultation with former NASA astronauts.
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Commercial Space Travel Rules of the Road →
Fast-forward 10 years and in addition to flying cars and unmanned aircraft, there are suborbital rocket rides launching from New Mexico, astronauts getting ready for a taxi ride to the space station, and people living in privately owned outposts in orbit.
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Exclusive footage of VSS Enterprise as she is released from her mothership, VMS Eve and glides fantastically back down to Mojave Space Port
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Spacebase Caribbean →
Mojave-based spaceplane makers XCOR Aerospace have teamed up with a group of Dutch entrepreneurs to offer suborbital flights from a futuristic-looking base on the Caribbean island of Curaçao. Known as Space Experience Curaçao or SXC, the venture is planning to start flights in January 2014, pending US government approval to export the technology to the former Dutch colony, which is located just north of Venezuela.
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'100 percent' chance for life on newly found planet? →
Gliese 581g may be the new Earth.
A team of astronomers from the University of California and the Carnegie Institute of Washington say they’ve found a planet like ours, 20 light years (120 trillion miles) from Earth, where the basic conditions for life are good.
