Related news: NASA silently cancelled the OSAM-2 (On-Orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 2) project which would have manufactured and assembled spacecraft components in low-Earth orbit. I think Scott talked about the project before. Apparently the design process was completed, but they didn't went ahead with manufacturing and launch. NASA's mission page doesn't mention a reason for the cancellation. This serves as a reminder that any of these cool new projects might be cancelled as well when (e.g.) the budget runs out.

Thank you Scott for speaking to us like we are already familiar with many of the concepts and terminology in your videos. That is the kind of respect that many creators lack and it sets you apart from the masses while simultaneously making it clear that you know what you're talking about.

@marius8014

4 ай бұрын

Yes!

These ideas are really cool, and the craziest thing is that I think most of them is not lacking too much tech-readiness. They are just lacking of an amount of money

@aelolul

4 ай бұрын

_well_

@LogicBeach

4 ай бұрын

I would donate a portion of my paycheck to funding stuff like this...

@ThatOpalGuy

4 ай бұрын

@@LogicBeach just take three percent of the defense budget, there is plenty of money.

@nikolaideianov5092

4 ай бұрын

​@@ThatOpalGuy3% ?? That much ? With that much yearly there would have been people on mars over 30 years ago

@nikolaideianov5092

4 ай бұрын

​@@ThatOpalGuythat would 2x the budget

The NIAC selections are always so interesting

@LouseGrouse

4 ай бұрын

I really love it when creative ideas like these are encouraged and given the room to breathe. It feels like scientific play haha.

Regarding the carbon monoxide rocket, carbon monoxide has been used for decades as fuel for steel mill blast furnaces. The blast furnace gives off oodles of CO as a byproduct, and while it's not that great a fuel, there's so much that it's worth recovering. That's the reason for the giant "downcomer" pipe coming off the top of the furnace.

@JeffreyBue_imtxsmoke

4 ай бұрын

I did not know that. Thanks!

@Stukov961

4 ай бұрын

Sweden extensively used carbon monoxide as a vehicle fuel during the heavy petroleum rationing during WW2. Bolt basically wood stove to the side of your tractor, and burn the wood oxygen poor. Pipe the CO to the combustion engine, and off you go. Slowly, since as you mentioned, CO isn't that good of a fuel. But having your tractor run on wood is absolutely worth it being severely underpowered compared to having no fuel at all.

@arturoeugster7228

4 ай бұрын

You know why CO is produced by heating? Look above and look up Bouduard equilibrium reaction.

@gregzsidisin

4 ай бұрын

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing that!

@gavinmclaren9416

4 ай бұрын

Flexicoking is a process developed by Exxon that uses a fluidized bed of hot petroleum coke to thermally crack bitumen, other heavy oils, or vacuum residue into lighter fuel products. The bed is regenerated by burning the excess carbon off, producing large quantities of CO. The CO-rich effluent gas is then combusted to CO2, usually in a CO boiler that produces high-pressure steam. This process has been used on a large industrial scale as part of bitumen upgrading to synthetic crude oil in Alberta. In that case, CO production is comparable to that of a large steel mill.

Wow, using the curvature of a wavefront as a distance measure is so simple yet so ingenious and interesting!

@blink182bfsftw

4 ай бұрын

Isn't that what triangulation is?

@nobody8717

4 ай бұрын

unless i misunderstand the point, ham radio has been using peak to peak wave lengths as basic measurement for decades. 2m, 70cm, 20m, 10m, 160m... all terms for different frequency ranges.

@jeromethiel4323

4 ай бұрын

It's also what makes phased array radars work. If you have a huge matrix of antennas and you can use the various arrival times of signals to determine range, position, etc. And when transmitting, if you can accurately enough delay the output pulse to those same antennas, you can "aim the beam." The military has been using this for decades now. What holds this back, is at the ranges they are interested in, you need a HUGE baseline. The bigger the better. Because the further away you are from the source of the signal, the "flatter" the wavefront appears to you. You combat that by having as large a baseline as you can.

@Chek94

4 ай бұрын

@@blink182bfsftw No. Triangulation is deducing the position of an emission source using distance-data from a sufficient number of sensors -- notice the sensors must already be able to measure distance and the conclusion is directional. The method discussed deduces the position of an emission source by correlating phase-data from multiple sensors -- both distance and direction concluded. In a non-curved space, the equal-phase-surface expands out in a sphere and measuring surface's curvature belies the center of the sphere. It's probably not that simple, given that the phase of a typical radio signal is periodic withing the capacity of measure of current technology and that space-time is typically not totally flat.

@unvergebeneid

4 ай бұрын

@@jeromethiel4323 yes, good point

I've got an idea for a really stupid horror movie - NASA ships a bear to ISS to study hibernation, the bear of course gets woken up at some point and starts roaming around in zero G murdering the crew. Hollywood, here I come xD

The radioactive thin-film rocket engine is so damn simple and yet clever. I can't believe that's never been thought of before. I wonder if you could combine it with some kind electromagnetic field control to collimate the alpha particles in one direction and increase thrust compared to having the radiation be randomly emitted in a half sphere. The extra mass and power requirements might not be worth it thought... Would still be interesting to see how it compares to ion engines in terms of both thrust and specific impulse.

@oohhboy-funhouse

4 ай бұрын

One thing Scott didn't point out was the surface area: 250m^2. This engine genius is because it's a bunch of really thin, lightweight panels that kicks out propellent at a good fraction of the speed of light. If you had the mass and power available to build a massive particle engine bell, just build a massive ion engine because that is what it is.

@-slasht

4 ай бұрын

I might be misunderstanding but as far as I see there's no controlling this thruster, it will "burn" at full power so to speak at all times until the foil and thrust have decayed too far to be useful. I guess you can still fold it up on itself when you don't want to push your spacecraft for a bit but then heat generation will be higher (?) and disabling it like that won't increase it's useful life anyway?

@jeromethiel4323

4 ай бұрын

@@oohhboy-funhouse Yeah, now that you say that, it *IS* an ion engine. Alpha decay is a helium nucleus, which is an ion (no electrons) and is naturally accelerated due to the radioactive decay. Plus, people launching rockets with radioactive materials makes people nervous. Undeservedly so, IMHO, but people are people.

@SynchronizorVideos

4 ай бұрын

@@-slashtWhat you could do is symmetrically point the panels outwards so that a portion of their thrust nulls out. Go all the way and your net thrust is zero. That would also avoid any heat addition to the spacecraft.

@SynchronizorVideos

4 ай бұрын

@@jeromethiel4323Yeah, but alpha radiation is essentially the Nerf dart of the radiation game. And we launch alpha emitters all the time in RTGs, so the risks and precautions are pretty well-understood.

"Magneto hydro drive" That's what powered the sub in the hunt for red October

@justfellover

4 ай бұрын

This is a far more realistic application for MHD. It doesn't scale well for sub propulsion for a dozen reasons.

@arturoeugster7228

4 ай бұрын

At the University of British Columbia a course in MHD was taught, it works but Alfvén waves must be controlled.

@justfellover

4 ай бұрын

@@arturoeugster7228 By "works", do you mean there exists a system that is quieter, smaller, and more efficient than existing turbine-driven screws for the same performance characteristics?

@arturoeugster7228

4 ай бұрын

@@justfellover quiet, yes More efficient, unless you actually test it, we don't know, efficiency has two parts, propulsion efficiency depends on the ratio of the jet speed w to the velocity v Etap = 2/(1+ w/v) The other is the energy lost by conduction through the salt water, and the power to built up the magnetic field, zero, using permanent magnets. And then you have to drive a generator to produce the current. With an engine. I would be surprised if the efficiency would be as good as a well designed propeller. Size, no limit, but you have to be concerned about the Alfvén waves.

@justfellover

4 ай бұрын

I haven't wrapped my head around Alfvén waves yet. I became convinced back in the 90's that keeping a sufficiently high field strength meant keeping the water channel too narrow to pass enough water. Thanks for sharing the info. Baltic Sea anomaly, here I come!

0:57 Solar system scale VLBI 3:30 Lunar Long-Baseline Optical Imaging Interferometer 6:24 Magnetohydrodynamic oxygen separation thingy. 8:11 Thin film radioisotope engine 10:22 sketchy Mars flying solar panel idea 11:35 Agnostic Life Finder (Mars bacteria or something) 13:14 Getting rid of perchlorates on Mars (but why? There's no nitrogen. Terraform Venus instead) 14:35 Swarms of small probes going to Proxima Centauri. 16:58 A "new" kind of antenna, I guess 17:30 Cryosleep for animals and maybe humans though a lot of animals can enter torpor and I think the Russians already did this with dogs? 18:31 Sample return from Venus, also carbon monoxide rocket 20:34 Autonomous tritium micropower sensors. 21:44 Electroluminescently cooled zero boil off propellant depots. This probably would have been more useful like a day ago.

@Lucius_Chiaraviglio

4 ай бұрын

Actually very useful now, for easily commenting on each item -- I'll attach my comments to each line of your post: 0:57 Solar system scale VLBI -- this sounds doable with current technology 3:30 Lunar Long-Baseline Optical Imaging Interferometer -- this sounds doable with current technology, but I think putting it in space away from any planet or moon would be better than putting it on the Moon. 6:24 Magnetohydrodynamic oxygen separation thingy -- this sounds doable with current technology. 8:11 Thin film radioisotope engine -- a potential problem already seen with polonium samples on Earth is that the radioactive atoms tend to knock each other off, so you lose a fair amount of them without getting the use of them, so to prevent this, you would have to have an inert layer over them, but then that will steal some of the alpha particle energy. 10:22 sketchy Mars flying solar panel idea -- this sounds doable with current technology. 11:35 Agnostic Life Finder (Mars bacteria or something) -- if you''re going to be splitting water on Mars, you're probably going to have to filter it anyway, so you might as well piggyback a science experiment onto the filter. 13:14 Getting rid of perchlorates on Mars (but why? There's no nitrogen. Terraform Venus instead) -- bioremediation of perchlorates would actually be useful in some contaminated sites on Earth, although _Bacillus subtilis_ doesn't sound like a tough enough bacterium to grow (as opposed to just spores remaining viable but dormant) on Mars; also, Mars actually does have a little bit of nitrogen 14:35 Swarms of small probes going to Proxima Centauri -- as advertised, this one is going to have to depend upon major preceding technological developments -- better work on those first; that said, some scaled-down analog for far solar system exploration (Kuiper Belt/Oort Cloud) might be workable with hefty but forseeable advances in technology. 16:58 A "new" kind of antenna, I guess -- always good to improve communication efficiency, and it might have applications closer to home. 17:30 Cryosleep for animals and maybe humans though a lot of animals can enter torpor and I think the Russians already did this with dogs? -- this might have medical applications on Earth (like use it to keep somebody alive while you basically take them apart to take out metastatic cancer that is currently beyond our surgical capabilities). 18:31 Sample return from Venus, also carbon monoxide rocket -- sounds doable, although I wonder if it would be better to use a lander/rover that can inflate a balloon when it is finished and then rendezvous with a high altitude balloon that has the rocket; also, both carbon monoxide and oxygen having the problem of requiring low temperature for storage at practical density, so I wonder if it would be better to use some kind of high temperature storage fuel, even if you have to pay extra to launch it from Earth? 20:34 Autonomous tritium micropower sensors -- Savine Hossenfelder had a video recently about betavoltaic cells, although they have the problem of VERY LOW power output. 21:44 Electroluminescently cooled zero boil off propellant depots -- European Space Agency has a 2020 posting on this that explains how it works (use voltage to drive something like an LED just short of the energy it actually needs to emit light, so that to emit light it has to steal a bit of extra energy from thermal energy), but it sounds like it is hard (potentially prohibitively hard) to get it to work efficiently enough for cooling something as cold as liquid hydrogen; a group at Berkeley also has a 2018 article on this that goes into more detail, although I haven't read the whole thing.

@ralph3333

4 ай бұрын

​@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio How does hydrogen "boil off" if it's in a sealed container? Does it squeeze between the container's atoms?

@Lucius_Chiaraviglio

4 ай бұрын

@@ralph3333 If you seal the container so that the hydrogen can't escape, then it will burst as the hydrogen heats up. The critical point of hydrogen is at 32.938 K, 1.2858 MPa (1 atmosphere = about 100 KPa), so above that temperature, you cannot keep it liquid by pressurizing it -- above 32.938 K, it will be a gas no matter what you do, and it will break any container that isn't so heavy that you wouldn't be able to launch it. And yes, if you make a container out of the wrong material, hydrogen does in fact squeeze between the atoms of that material as well, making it brittle, before it eventually escapes.

@ralph3333

4 ай бұрын

@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio Nice. I should have thought there be a pressure valve. Duh. Thx.

@Lucius_Chiaraviglio

4 ай бұрын

@@ralph3333 Since you asked how does hydrogen boil off if it is in a sealed container, I thought you meant stop up the pressure relief valve. If the pressure relief valve opens, then hydrogen will boil off and the vapor will escape through that. Note that for a liquid hydrogen tank on any planet with an atmosphere containing significant ingredients other than hydrogen and helium, you have to be careful that the pressure relief valve doesn't get stopped up with frozen air.

I love the fact that space exploration is so difficult that it forces us to constantly innovate to reach the ever expanding horizon of what's possible. I often hear sentiments like "why bother exploring space when there are so many problems to solve here on Earth?" And my reply is that doing difficult things causes us to innovate in ways that benefit the world. Not to mention the more direct examples of the benefits of space exploration such as satellites for GPS and communication in general.

@BlahVideosBlahBlah

4 ай бұрын

I like to reply "why bother with ANYTHING before solving every problem? Because you can do 2 good things at the same time, like feeding yourself while reading a book. If you can do it, I guarantee the whole world can do it on a larger scale."

@drewmandan

4 ай бұрын

Innovation in a powerpoint? The only people innovating right now are SpaceX.

@user-hs4ti2dg6l

4 ай бұрын

"And my reply is that doing difficult things causes us to innovate in ways that benefit the world." Reaching net zero in time to avoid climate catastrophe looks pretty fucking difficult, so by your own logic we should focus on that.

@thewisecow6323

4 ай бұрын

@@user-hs4ti2dg6l and how do we observe the changes in climate more accurately? We send satellites to monitor the changes over time. So my point isn't that there aren't pressing problems to solve here on Earth it's that the way to solve those problems is by innovating constantly and space exploration drives this innovation. I don't think radio telescopes were initially researched because we thought we could one day produce MRI machines. As is often the case innovation leads to discoveries that contribute to our lives in ways we couldn't have imagined before.

@paavobergmann4920

4 ай бұрын

Yup. Plus none of "all that (tax) money " is spent in space. It is ALL spent here on earth and pays workers and engineers, who then go and buy stuff from grocers....etc..

That Thin Film Nuclear Isotope Rocket idea actually looks fairly familiar. It seems that it's based on a Fission Fragment Rocket ("nuclear sail" type), with the difference being that it does not rely on a nuclear chain reaction to produce thrust, instead using the natural decay rate of rapidly decaying isotope.

@yastreb.

4 ай бұрын

Isotope sail is an old idea as well. I remember reading about it years ago at the Atomic Rockets site.

They should fund an AI that can read a research proposal and come up with an appropriate catchy acronym.

@jackturner3867

4 ай бұрын

I knew Ai would take my job someday

For those interested, Fraser Cain does hour-long interviews with NIAC applicants every year

I'll be honest, as much as I'd like to be wrong, I think the timeframe for going to different star systems (based on the study on the feasibility of sending information back), is almost hilariously optimistic. I imagine we won't have probes visiting other star systems before the 24th century. Because it's so far down the list of importance (you can just build absolutely insanely large radio interferrometry telescopes near sol instead, and just look at nearby star systems), and because I think a lot of space enthusiasts are essentially too optimistic about how fast space will be colonized and explored. It's essentially a completely new frontier with no currently existing infrastructure in place within it. With that said, I'd love to be proven wrong, heck I WANT to be wrong on that, but I also believe it's important to keep ones feet on the ground of reality.

@MichaelWinter-ss6lx

4 ай бұрын

I think the same for some time now. One step after the other. (Otherwise it's too easy to stumble ;•). A realistic time frame is 400 years, for exploring and colonizing the SolarSystem. To go beyond, we need propulsion systems that we can't even imagine yet. We don't even have the propulsion for beyond Low Earth Orbit! Chemical rockets. Nice for cargo and robot missions, but no more. It's crazy to even think about reaching the stars. The good thing is, that several nuclear propulsion systems are supposed to launch in 2027. The most conservative one by NASA/DARPA, will cut transfer times down to half. Another advantage is continueous thrust = gravity. The huge Starship can then bring more than 5 passengers to Mars, without them being unable to crawl outside without help. Lets hope the best for 2027. The 400 year count begins with the first crewd nuclear mission. 🚀🏴‍☠️🎸

@op4000exe

4 ай бұрын

@@MichaelWinter-ss6lx And a lunar mission, in fact not just mission but a base, makes everything else in space a lot more reasonable, and doable.

@marshalleubanks2454

4 ай бұрын

@@op4000exe I personally think that a lunar base will be necessary to provide things like laser power beaming on the far side (the logical place to put it).

@nikolaideianov5092

4 ай бұрын

Well it could be earlyer ,an example is that from the 1800s to the moon landing is less then 200 years .but i dont think theres a way to litteraly predict the future technologies and when they will comeout

@op4000exe

4 ай бұрын

@@nikolaideianov5092 The issue that I see, is that most of the industrial revolution, built upon things that already existed within infrastructure on earth. Space has zero infrastructure, not limited infrastructure but actually none. This means everything imaginable has to be built from scratch, and doing so (I imagine), is a problem much bigger than some would like to believe, and will take far more time to do as well.

I feel like most people dont understand how scary a

@The.Heart.Unceasing

4 ай бұрын

given that the sail surface is supposed to be ~250m², given a thickness of 10µm of thorium that's ~29.3 kg of the stuff, which do not sound like a lot, but it's *very* energetic ! If my calculs are correct, Th228 decay release ~27.5 W per gram, so the whole stack would emit ~805.7 *kW* , which is easy to handle when spread out over 250m², but is another story when its folded up in a tight bundle in a fairing. (just for fun I calculated how hot the sail would be, given that it is in essence a very big radiator, and assuming an emissivity of 0.9 the sail would reach thermal equilibrium at ~421K (147.8°C), which is very reasonable, it would only glow in the infrareds.)

@jogandsp

4 ай бұрын

@@The.Heart.Unceasing I'm talking about the radiation danger to any people nearby while it's being assembled

@MrMichalMalek

4 ай бұрын

@@jogandsp Alpha particles have very little energy, so they fail to penetrate even the most outer layers of the skin. So the workers wearing a very basic suit that prevents them from inhaling/ingesting the radioactive stuff will be totally fine around the spacecraft.

The big problem with optical interferometry in space is that you need to keep the baselines steady to within a fraction of micrometer, and that is very hard to do with free flyers. The lunar gravity and surface regolith means that problem is much easier on the lunar surface. Irwin Shapiro and his team at MIT worked on this, on a proposed Apollo Application Program mission called POINTS. After AAP died POINTS was moved to a free-flyer and eventually subsumed into the JPL led SIM, which was eventually canceled. So, there is a bit of history on that one.

The radioactive rocket engine was actually first described in 1939 in a book by a german engineer and Sci-Fi author Hans Dominik. I don´t know if there is an english version avaliable but in german it is called Treibstoff SR.

An important risk to consider for lunar interferometry is that of lunar dust, interfering with lasers, and covering mirrors. There is a great deal of evidence that once suspended in the air, electrostatic charges allow dust to stay suspended for very long periods of time and stick to any surface. This phenomenon needs to be studied, understood, and overcome in order for this technology to work properly.

@oldfarthacks

4 ай бұрын

True, but the Moon for all practical purposes has no air.

@nikolaideianov5092

4 ай бұрын

​@@oldfarthacksi think thats specificly a problem for habitats

@TheEvilmooseofdoom

4 ай бұрын

More R&D on the moon is required.

@ParameterGrenze

4 ай бұрын

The constant landings and departures of rockets, as well as construction and material mining will make that problem worse…

@m2heavyindustries378

3 ай бұрын

What air? there's no air up there to suspend anything

magneto hydro dynamic drive. First thing that popped into my head was "Why is someone making the red october"

I would love to hear deeper dive into how the committee decides what is explorable science and what is too far into science fiction.

@Michaelonyoutub

4 ай бұрын

Well a lot of it probably has to do with the proposals. When people propose stuff, they likely have to specifically state their goals and how they plan to achieve them. If people have the means to actually do what they say, it is pretty convincing and detailed, generally with work/education backgrounds and previous work/publications backing that up. Most of these are likely based on peer reviewed papers the applicants wrote, and they now want funding to do a follow up to confirm it is not just all theory and could work in practicality.

@nias2631

4 ай бұрын

​@@Michaelonyoutub

I've used a radio luminescent generator before. They're not very strong but they do function at a decent milliamp. I constructed my own years ago using a few small tritium and monocrystalline panels. It wasn't very efficient but it was cool to actually make one. I still have it and I now have some ultracapacitors that are running the right voltage I would like to try to set into the circuit. It was rather hard to get the little tritium rods in the middle of the solar panel cube without having anything obstructing the light but once I install the two rods I noticed that I was getting a rather noticeable output. At the moment I am able to build up to about 4.7v which means I can charge a lithium ion battery. Unfortunately, you can't buy tritium like you used to. I am actually applying for a nuclear materials license for research. I'm hoping that I won't have to relinquish my tritium because I would have to tear my little radio luminescent generator apart... That would really upset me. Like nickel metal hydride, it's one of the few things it's very important for my experiments but I can't get a hold of it without a nuclear materials license now... I get to a certain points in my experiments where I need special materials and they are damn near impossible to get ahold of if you don't have millions of dollars. One of the most important key ingredients I need right now is rhodium. I've been working with hydrogen generators for over a decade and a half now. I have tried to harvest my own tritium as well as deuterium from the hydrogen generators but the amount of time it takes to generate that much tritium is in the order of a decade. Electrolysis units do in fact produce tritium as well as concentrate the deuterium but it takes far too long because it's on the level of parts per trillion. Maybe it's just my love of Syfy but I can't wait for the day that rtgs become a normal staple in everyday life.

@TheAechBomb

4 ай бұрын

where do you live that you can't buy tritium tubes? you can still get them in the US

@ddegn

4 ай бұрын

Someone on KZread has a video where they made a tritium powered cell similar to the one you describe. Have you seen it? If you're interested, I could probably find it again. I'm not sure but I think it was on the channel *Thought Emporium.* Let me know if you'd like help finding it.

Always great to see another one of your amazing videos! Thanks Scott!

Pure water isn’t conductive -that’s a feature used to assess water purity !

@speziell1575

4 ай бұрын

Everything is conductive with enough voltage

@agsystems8220

4 ай бұрын

Which is also why you don't electrolyse pure water. You are not wrong, but this is not relevant to this application because the water needs to be conductive anyway.

Ah, my colleague and I made it to the semi-final stage of the NIAC this year. We got informed of the rejection on the 7th of January. A little bittersweet to see the successful cases here, as interesting as they are! We'll resubmit again and I'll keep rolling the D20 for luck.

This is such a wild coincidence! I've been researching a KSP1 RSS Venus solar-plane return probe for the past 3 days😂.

@stevenblackwell4903

4 ай бұрын

Kolby, I've been wanting rss for some time now. where can I find the versions that it will run on? Thnx

As bat-shift crazy as most of these ideas sound, they all get me very excited! If even 10% of them pan out, we get smarter as a species. I've often wondered how big the antennas would have to be at both ends to talk to Alpha Centauri. And how many megawatts we would need for any significant bitrate. Getting something there with the power to send data back seems like it would be difficult, to say the least.

@linecraftman3907

4 ай бұрын

I'm guessing something that reflects our very powerful signal back in a modulated way would be more mass efficient than sending a very powerful antenna out there

@dazuk1969

4 ай бұрын

Another big problem that hasn't been addressed is it is all well and good sending things to Alpha Centauri at 20% the speed of light but how do you slow them down when they get there ?. All the concepts I have seen involve tiny devices propelled by lasers so have no onboard propulsion. Something has to slow them down which won't be easy from 20% the speed of light.

@joshuacheung6518

4 ай бұрын

Gravity braking maybe?

@antonf.9278

4 ай бұрын

​@@joshuacheung6518Gravity will accelerate the probes first and slow them down the same amount after they passed the gravity source. 0.2c is also way to fast for that to make any difference unless you target a black hole or neutron star.

@somethingsomthing2456

4 ай бұрын

@@dazuk1969 Here the neat part, they don't! the goal (for now) is to get there take flyby science and done, it's not really realistic currently for going to orbit in another solar system. Even a flyby with phone camera would still give higher resolution image than our best telescopes could get.

What I’m really interested in over the next decade is what capabilities will starship unlock. If you can refuel your vehicle in orbit so that it can take a 100t or larger payload to much of the solar system, you can do some pretty wild things, and be a lot less worried about weight budgets.

@mathewferstl7042

4 ай бұрын

ULA wanted this back in the 2000's not a new idea

@absalomdraconis

4 ай бұрын

Honestly, if you can get 100 tons to orbit in a single launch then you don't need to refuel Starship, you can just allocate that 100t to a dedicated vehicle. If that's not enough, then repurpose those refueling flights to bringing up more stuff. Starship is designed to launch & land, not to stay in space, so if you ditch it for inter-planetary purposes then you can get a better optimization for your vehicle.

@mathewferstl7042

4 ай бұрын

@@absalomdraconis fair point, but it if refueling is cost effective enough you might as well do it, to reduce interplanetary flights or bring more with the same amount of flights. you can also use it to decrease your transfer times/extend your range.

Today's insane is tomorrow's regular 😊

Sorry about this one Scott, but just started watching some of these. Back when we had the 'VLT' and the 'ELT' and various other 'T' telescopes, it wasn't long after when I was asking "So when are we going to get the 'FHT'?" Not everyone was amused, apparently. But some of these proposals would actually qualify!

Thanks for making us aware of these almost sci-fi technologies, many of which I had no idea existed. You really got me with electroluminescent cooling! Now I have my night's reading cut out for me. Fly safe!

I thought that ALF stood for Alien Life Form 👽 👾

@footballct14

4 ай бұрын

I work on the team - that was the naming inspiration!

@patrickday4206

4 ай бұрын

What makes this concept more advantageous than a light sail?? Is it traveling different directions?

No one does this type of content better than Scott Manley.

I got to participate in a NIACs Phase 1 study in 2022. It was super cool to be given money to do really exploratory science! As is traditional, NASA loves their clever acronyms for projects!

Would be nice if they'd fund a demonstrator of the magnetic "propeller" solar sail concept. Pluto in a month with near current tech seems like a no brainer to try. Jeff Greason from Tau Zero has been trying to get that going for some time. A mission to ʻOumuamua looks like a good candidate. It might be possible to match velocities using the same drive as long as the rendezvous is past the heliopause.

@nobody8717

4 ай бұрын

getting there in a month is no big deal. stopping so you don't whizz by at 300k mph is another story all together.

@LouseGrouse

4 ай бұрын

Oh that sounds fascinating gonna have to look into this more, thanks!

@planetsec9

4 ай бұрын

@@nobody8717 NASA seems just fine with flybys for more expensive and slower missions. I really love the idea of using the magnet sail to send out swarms of cheap and fast probes to just get more freaking images of our solar system, not just Pluto but Triton, Neptune, Uranus, etc, these are all less than 1 year travel away from Earth if the magnet drive works

@planetsec9

4 ай бұрын

Its not a solar sail but a solar wind drive of sorts, Oumuamua flyby with it in less than a year from launch should be possible yeah, man that would be so cool.

@peterd9698

4 ай бұрын

@@nobody8717 getting to Pluto in a month and wizzing by at 300k mph would fricken absolutely be a big deal. 😎

Geoffrey Landis is a well known and published Science Fiction writer (re: Analog Magazine and novels) as well as NASA scientist.

@sdelmonte

4 ай бұрын

With Hugos and Nebulas to his name.

Awesome, I was literally just looking at the 2024 NIAC selections!!

I’m all for the Very Large Baseline Interferometer. I have no faith in Cepheid Variables as Standard Candles

This is such a great video; do more coverage of research! I also love how two of these are directly related to plot points in The Martian.

I have read a german Sci-Fi Book from 1939. "Hans Dominik: Flug in den Weltraum (Treibstoff SR)" where they used a Rocket with a radioactive thin-film engine

Hibernating animals in space? I'm just going to assume this involves putting bears on the ISS. At least I hope it does.

@ceejay0137

4 ай бұрын

LOL! Maybe hedgehogs or squirrels to begin with . . .

@bbartky

4 ай бұрын

😂 Ha! In reality, it will almost certainly be a rodent.

@whatabouttheearth

4 ай бұрын

Bears don't hibernate they torpor. We used to think they hibernate but they just go into a lighter sleep (torpor) to not expend energy when food resources are low.

the thorium sheet is a neat idea! i volunteer to hibernate in space.

you're awesome Scott!!

Thanks so much for creating and sharing this informative and timely video. Great job. Keep it up.

@Scott Manley, you're the first person I can tolerate saying "idear". Truly!! You have such good content!!

The navigation concept for the radioactive thin-film rocket engine, opening and closing panels to direct thrust, sounds a little like the navigation used by Professor Cavor's moonship in H.G. Wells's "First Men in the Moon".

Great explanations! I hope you can do more videos in this style, covering different papers across multiple subjects. Anyway... Tangent! Any thoughts on you including starter prompts/questions we could use with ChatGPT or similar AIs to dive deeper into different subjects? Maybe mentioned in the video or just posted in the comments? I can sort of come up with my own, but getting them from a much more knowledgeable and experienced scientist would be a huge help.

Super interesting video, this edge of science stuff explained by someone knowledgable is great! Thanks Scott!

Amazing tour through the edge of science. Very cool that NASA funds those studies.

It would be very interesting to see NASA also spend some money on the thermo-electric coolers talked about in that radiation engine. If we could get them to be more efficient, they could really be useful. A Superconductor Peltier Chip would be worth looking into, even just to find the problems with it.

Best science explainer for us basic "I like science" types. Thank you Scott!

On the curvature of signals, how much is that impacted by passing objects with heavy gravity distorting the original signal shape?

Wow, TFINER is such a cool and yet relatively simple concept. That would be awesome if we could start making some spacecraft like that to explore the solar system, or maybe beyond. Also, I don't know how good humans hibernating in space would be. If the astronauts can't exercise wouldn't their bodies waste away in zero g?

@JacobSmith_emjds

4 ай бұрын

It's one of those ideas that you hear about and go "how did we not think of that already?" and those are always the ones that change the world.

@oberonpanopticon

4 ай бұрын

@@JacobSmith_emjdsAgreed. If nothing else it’s certainly a captivating concept.

ESA's LISA experiment is doing laser interferometry to detect gravity waves in space with 3 satellites kilometers apart at Lagrange point 1 ^_^

@MichaelWinter-ss6lx

4 ай бұрын

Not exactly. For placing only kilometers apart would be a stupid waste of money for no advantage over ground systems. The detectors are to be positioned at L3, L4 & L5. All on Earths orbit: one ahead of, and one behind Earth. The 3rd point is exactly behind the Sun. If these satellites also get equipped with NASAs new laser communication modules, this would be the beginning of a real Deep Space Network. This way taking care of dead spots that result from Earths orbit. 🚀🏴‍☠️🎸

@LouseGrouse

4 ай бұрын

HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS?!

@LouseGrouse

4 ай бұрын

@@MichaelWinter-ss6lx From ESA’s LISA webpage: “Spacecraft and orbit: The mission will comprise three spacecraft flying in a triangular formation behind the Earth as our planet orbits the Sun. The spacecraft will sit in a heliocentric orbit about 50 million km from Earth, with a distance of around 2.5 million km between each spacecraft. The positioning of this trio will be measured precisely using laser interferometry - necessary to measure the tiny variations caused by a passing gravitational wave” I don’t think youtube allows links to be posted in comments sections so I can’t link them but there are animations of the orbit the craft will follow, too. From what I understand I think they orbit a single lagrange point, there isn’t going to be one positioned behind the sun. BUT, having telescopes at different lagrange points all communicating together to detect gravitational waves would be very *very* cool.

Gas stations in orbit make Single Stage to Orbit vehicles make sense. Gas stations on the moon make SSTO vehicles make sense to the moon and back. Consider a trip across the United States. We do that easily in a car, because there are gas stations along the way. If we have to carry all of our fuel for the round trip, that would be a much larger vehicle. Lot of neat tech ideas here. :0)

So, a thorium reactor producing U-232 as a byproduct could separate the U-232 and sell it as spacecraft fuel. Cool.

Thanks for the great content!

Thanks Scott. Interesting items :)

The thorium powered sail sounds exciting but something about seems off. Wouldn't the absorbtion plate eventually absorb so much heat that it starts to radiate it back out in all directions and slow the craft down?

@xl0xl0xl0

4 ай бұрын

The sail would emit thermal radiation in both directions, as it is very thin, and both sides will have the same temperature. Besides, thorium emits alpha particles aka Helium nuclei, which have actual mass, and, my intuition is, this produces a lot more thrust than thermal radiation which emits electromagnetic waves. Love this proposal, the idea is pretty straightforward, the benefits are very significant. Hope the math is not off.

@agsystems8220

4 ай бұрын

​@@xl0xl0xl0the math hits the right range. ~1% reaction mass at 20,000km/s would give a delta v of 200km/s. Details are complicated, but that sounds plausible. The issue would be building and launching it. If that launch goes bad you have real problems. RTGS at least are a lump that will tend to stay together even if it didn't quite make orbit and re-entered fast. This would both have significantly more mass of an absurdity energetic source and in a less robust configuration than a typical rtg. This is also stupidly inefficient. It needs the configuration to work, and the first decay will disrupt that. Half the time the parent nucleus will shoot out rather than the alpha particle, and the other half it embeds in the shield deep enough that the rest of the alphas cannot escape. It only makes use of the first decay. Probably ~45% of the energy goes into the shield, and ~45% is spent on decays in space. If you had 30kg of thorium you would do much better with an rtg powering a particle accelerator as a thruster, and at that point you are better off with a full on nuclear reactor. An ISP of 100,000s and 15% (of dry) propellant mass nets you a delta v of close to 150km/s too, while the same reactor powering a 50,000s thruster and 60% propellant mass would grant you closer to 250km/s. Once you start looking at nuclear options this looks kinda piddly as a thruster while being a monster to work with. Nuclear reactors have the major advantage of not being massively radioactive till you turn them on, meaning getting them to space is much less risky.

Great video, Scott...👍

Allways a good idea to put some type of detectors around the solar system to get a heads up when comets, meteors and alien invaders approach.....👍

Re Carpenter's interferometer on the Moon: the importance of lunar basing is that the Moon is a stable platform. Keeping the apertures relatively stable in space turns out to be very difficult.

The two interferometry projects bring to mind the Very Dangerous Array from the webcomic _Schlock Mercenary_ . Long story short: the chief scientist of a company of mercenaries wanted to do some astronomical observations of the system they had just entered, while the commanding officer needed a long-distance sensor net for detecting incoming hostiles. The scientist, Kevyn, solved both by outfitting several hundred autonomous drones with miniaturized optical and radio telescopes and other sensor suites, which he then programmed to act as a VLA telescope which also maintaining a look out for incoming threats. These were then stationed throughout the local star system for maximum effect. These drones were still armed, so if an attack occurred, the drones would swarm the attackers. He described the resultant 'Very Dangerous Array' as 'proactive target acquisition' to the commander.

That thin film propulsion idea is so flippn cool

Criminally early. Thanks for consistently great content:)

That first one, just off the cuff, sounds very close to an Idea I've back of the enveloped: the S6 missions "simultaneous solar scale stereoscopic star survey". That would be put ~0.5-1.0m class optical scopes (something like HiRISE or a bit bigger) on busses like New Horizons and, every window for gravity assists past Jupiter, launch 3 or more of them (one in plane, one-up, one-down). Within 10-15 years you would have >10AU baseline optical measurements. And you would need big dishes on them to back-haul the data so you might as well put good clocks and RF science packages as well and get some work done in those bands as well.

So its basically DARPA but for space science and exploration. Cool, had no idea this existed. Also the passive radiation thrust general concept is so brilliant in its simplicity.

Pretty esoteric. Thank you

Solar PV cells could be advantageously placed under the wings too and profit from the surface high infrared radiation even during long Venus nights.

@ddegn

4 ай бұрын

Do solar cells convert infrared light to electricity? I've seen articles suggesting this sort of tech is being researched but I'm not aware of any practical applications (so far).

@jeromethiel4323

4 ай бұрын

Current PV cells work in the UV range. You'd need specific PV cells that work in the IR range, and i am not aware of any such. But who knows, i haven't looked either.

@jeromethiel4323

4 ай бұрын

Huh, just looked, and it seems IR PV cells are a thing, just not mass manufacturable yet. But the same thing was true of silicon PV cells not all that long ago. If the scientists and engineers can get IR PV cells to cheap mass manufacturing levels, that will be a game changer for PV solar. It might actually get solar to be viable as a renewable energy source here on earth. Of course, we still need to figure out the energy storage part of the problem as well, as that still needs to be figured out before getting rid of fossil fuels for electrical generation.

@halnineooo136

4 ай бұрын

Current silicon technology has its highest spectral response in the near infrared actually and drops sharply in the UV spectrum. It so happens that the irradiance in the visible part of the spectrum is higher on earth due to the composition of our atmosphere. How much of the IR radiation could get through the thick atmosphere of Venus from the surface up to a high altitude drone may be enough to power the flight indefinitely alongside some experiments and communications to orbiting satellites

@jeromethiel4323

4 ай бұрын

@@halnineooo136 I do not think that is correct. I just looked at the spectral response of silicon PV, and it drops off markedly in the longer wavelengths. It peaks in the UV spectra, according to what i just looked up. And the macroscopic cross section for absorption of silicon is in the UV region. I can also state confidently, that panel heating is a major loss of power in silicon PV cells, due to leakage currents. Which is why carbon based PV cells, which are optically transparent at those frequencies is a hot topic for researchers right now. If you can add a transparent layer that absorbs the IR before it can hit the silicon, you avoid the heating (which is a problem) without effecting the performance of the PV cell, while also capturing at least some of the IR energy.

You can measure phase of incident light via spin direction of photoexcited electrons in certain semi-conductors.

LOVE this. IF your staff had the ability, would be interesting to look at those past projects that were borne out by what ever criteria. Thank you.

@QuantumHistorian

4 ай бұрын

I don't think he has staff? IIRC, he's said in the past that he does all the research, writing, and editing himself.

@hamjudo

4 ай бұрын

Fraser Cain of Universe Today interviews scientists that have submitted proposals for NIAC grants. The interviews are typically on the order of an hour each. If the scientist is willing Fraser does additional interviews as the projects progress. Scott has a very different style and skill set than Fraser, so it would be cool to see Scott's take on those topics. Scott has been in several Universe Today videos, so they know each other. Universe Today content is also available as text and as podcasts.

With that Film Isotope engine, I wonder what happens to all the spare electrons.

I love these. Would be cool to so see some recreated in KSP

I was proposing the radioactive propulsion back when i was in school. Never did a calc for it. Would really interest me how a real aplication would perform.

The main problem with perchlorates is that they are toxic _for us_, at much lower concentrations than on Mars (it'll screw up your Iodine methabolism, ie thyroid hormone production), and they accumulate in the edible parts of the plant. I am testing some microorganisms with Mars-like perchlorate amounts in the lab right now, and some of my food-safe strains basically don't care. Now the question is, do they degrade that stuff, or do they just not care. The former would be good, the later not so much because then we have perchlorate-contaminated food.

@patrickdurham8393

4 ай бұрын

We could build some awesome fireworks though!

@SomeoneExchangeable

4 ай бұрын

@@patrickdurham8393yep. There is at least one paper considering extracting them from Mars soil and using them as oxidizer in in-situ propellant production (and oxygen supply for the colonists. I don't remember what they proposed doing with the remaining chlorine though)

One topic I would love to learn more about is the subject of temperatures in space. Not until having to consider the orbital refueling challenge, my belief was always that temperatures in space were very, very cold. However, now I am considering how temperatures can vary in space. How those temperatures vary, under what circumstances, and what challenges these face for all missions would be a great topic to dive into!

@absalomdraconis

4 ай бұрын

Usually the temperature doesn't matter, but instead illuminance vs blackbody radiation. Balancing that is important, and why James Webb has all those solar reflectors.

@rwolfe180

4 ай бұрын

@@absalomdraconis Thanks for the insight!

i made a MAGGIE in ksp to get my stranded kerbals around eve lol (with electric engine propellers mod)

12:07 This has me *EXCITED* ! One of my semi-irrational fears it that some sample of Exterrestrial Life gets inadvertently destroyed, so making something like this required would hopefully prevent that. Could make some obnoxious backronym like FIRST - “For ISRU Record and Study THEN use” or something, but in my armchair opinion pushing for that in space law, along with reducing Space Junk, and requiring “cleanliness” and all that (some of which is already done, again armchair here lol).

I know that there are much better hibernating animals but me first thought was Bears...in.. SPAAAAACE!

@MichaelWinter-ss6lx

4 ай бұрын

Yep. Bears, but: _AquaBears_ in space.

Thanks Scott! 🙂😎🤓❤

I love it when we talk about space science in a broader and more inclusive realm, which includes physics, biochemistry, geology, etc. I love all of it except for the animal testing part of it.

Really cool concepts! Is that the red dressing gown of doom hanging on the door?

6:96 have fun keeping the dust out.

Electro luminescent cooling in space using similar tech which I am using to view your video on KZread would be so cool, no pun intended. Passive infrared cooling in space has had it's day.

Aerospace engineer here - a lot of these really are borderline sci-fi fantasy stuff, but then you need to to these sorts of studies at times because they'll either re-direct attention to things that can work or they'll uncover something on the side or something will be developed along the way that finds uses in other industries.

I like the idea of the long-baseline optical interferometer, but my main worry is the levitated electrostatically charged dust. Seems like the act of maintenance my be a big contaminating factor. A long-baseline array at say, L3 or L4 (I know, it's a long way to go for maintenance, but it may be able to maintain its spacing better without the nearby gravitational influence of the Earth and Moon) might have a longer useful lifespan, and maybe even a longer baseline possible.

@abramwicasatheca6324

4 ай бұрын

Maybe the charged dust could be repelled using the same charge?

6:24 that's my research professor (i'm working on different project with him though)! literally the best 🥰

My research advisor is mentioned here!!! Shoutout to Dr. Romero-Calvo!!!

3:18 would you wanna do this with a trio of sensors? For triangulation? Or unnecessary?

Great idea for a video. The only way we are going to crack the space-travel nut is with innovative breakthroughs. That’s the product of inspired minds.

That TFINER project's claimed 150 km/s delta-V requires a 16 meter by 16 meter sheet, though; is that a reasonable size just to push a little 30kg payload? I don't really know anything about the sizes and masses involved in stuff like this but that *feels* way too much.

@MrMichalMalek

4 ай бұрын

I'd say accelerating 30 kg of payload to 150 km/s using just 16x16m of very thin sheet is incredibly good price.

Really appreciate your exposing these interesting ideas. I am an old geezer now. Sure hope some curious kid appreciates these ideas and decides to get good at math so that his purpose in life is also interesting and satisfying and productive.

These conspiring ideas will have monumental impacts on innovation

I'd like to see them test the swarm idea on a closer target like Eris or Haumea.

Fun to see Professor Calvo’s name mentioned here. I had him last semester.

The weak point fo the thin film thorium drive idea is, I think, the requirement for folding hinges for attitude control. Aren't bearings notorious for failing in space over long duration journeys?

@cbuchner1

4 ай бұрын

Aren‘t alpha particles charged? So, one could magnetically fine steer them using some coils and electric current - or by applying high voltage using electrostatic forces

@TheSpacecraftX

4 ай бұрын

@@cbuchner1 This would be a much more convincing proposition. Although it would suspect that may take more power to operate. And would you still need a moving part to cover the exit when yu want zero thrust or is that acheivable with electromagnets too? Possiibly a solenoid slide could work for that too and hopefully be less failure prone than hinges.

I'm curious if you could begin testing the feasability of very long baseline visual interferometry in space using very cheap cubesats. Test methods of achieving the required coordination over large distances in potentially perturbed orbits, that is, without actually building the whole telescope. I want to see interferometry done between two earth-sun LaGrange points. I wonder at what point you start to get something that approaches the resolution of the putative solar gravitational lens telescope.

The interferometry ones are a concept i’ve toyed with in my imagination! Legit made me so happy to see this haha. I wonder if improvements in processing speed would eventually allow optical interferometry on an orbital solar system scale like the radio one many many years down the line. Optical satellites was how i originally wondered about it. I’m not knowledgeable in physics but i’m so glad i was at least _somewhere_ along the right lines and that there are people wanting to look into it.

@carlosvasquez9890

4 ай бұрын

Thats an extraordinarely good observation. The answer is, I believe, yes...and is not as far away as we might think. ELT, currently in construction in Chile might very well be not only the largest telescope ever bulit...but the largest telescope we will ever build. Thanks, mate...confidence in humanity, restored

@LouseGrouse

4 ай бұрын

@@carlosvasquez9890 I’m just building on concepts i’ve seen n heard of haha, here’s a text wall rundown of how I came to it. I’d heard about the radio interferometry used in the Event Horizon telescope to resolve the M87 black hole image, which was my first intro to interferometry as a concept. I remember also watching a channel called Astronomy Live, and he I _think_ used or at least discussed the possibility of optical interferometry in images taken by his setup and another remote ground based telescope, (so I suppose not physically using/sharing the light through the same mirrors like how the VLT does). My memory gets hazy on exact details and, again, I don’t know how the physics of it works haha. These both led me to wonder if you could scale it up and have an array of satellites orbit the sun to more finely resolve objects, I think more specifically I was wondering about exoplanets. There’s a fantastic Tom Scott video that showcases the VLT and upcoming ELT (i’m very excited for that haha) and explained, in very simplified terms, the current limitations in optical interferometry compared to radio but also how technology improving will make it more possible in to do so in real time, which had me wondering if perhaps it *was* possible to do the large scale satellite array after all. I’d imagine regardless of if the physics and technology works out it’d be VERY EXPENSIVE though:D

@LouseGrouse

4 ай бұрын

@phosphorustitan If the technology to manage it were developed, that would be very interesting! And if it were, I imagine even then it would be many many decades until any satellites arrays were launched. Still good to dream of though haha. But yes, for now it seems it is impossible at least for optical and higher frequencies.

@jamesmnguyen

4 ай бұрын

​@@LouseGrouse It could be possible we will create computers fast enough to handle visible light interferometry but they'd have to be at least ~2 orders of magnitude faster than they are today.

@LouseGrouse

4 ай бұрын

@@jamesmnguyen I’m doubtful it’ll happen in my lifetime, if ever. Will be a great asset for the astronomers of the future if so, though:)

How would they even produce and safely handle the required thorium?

Just in time for breakfast! Thanks!