{"id":19001,"date":"2017-04-07T21:30:07","date_gmt":"2017-04-07T13:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasa-funds-ideas-from-science-fiction\/"},"modified":"2017-04-07T21:30:07","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T13:30:07","slug":"nasa-funds-ideas-from-science-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasa-funds-ideas-from-science-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA funds ideas from science fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"
\""John
A scene from the 2012 movie \u201cJohn Carter\u201d shows an airship engaged in a Martian battle. The NASA-backed concept for a Martian airship isn\u2019t quite as ambitious. (\u00a9 2011 Disney \/ John Carter\u2122 ERB, Inc.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Truth can be stranger than fiction, but it shouldn\u2019t be strange to hear that NASA spends millions of dollars on efforts to turn science-fiction concepts into true technologies.<\/p>\n

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, also known as NIAC, has been backing far-out aerospace concepts for almost 20 years. It started out as the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, modeled after the Pentagon\u2019s DARPA think tank.<\/p>\n

NIAC\u2019s latest crop of 22 tech projects was announced this week, and they include a few concepts that were virtually ripped from the headlines of science fiction\u2019s pulp magazines. Here are our favorite five:<\/p>\n

\"Evacuated
Proposed structure of an evacuated airship. (Illustration: John-Paul Clarke)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Flying airships of Mars:<\/strong> The idea of sending airships floating through the Red Planet\u2019s skies dates back to Edgar Rice Burroughs\u2019 Barsoom novels of the early 20th century.<\/p>\n

One big problem: Mars\u2019 actual atmosphere is so thin that an airship would have to maintain a vacuum to become buoyant. That\u2019s exactly what Georgia Tech\u2019s John-Paul Clarke intends to do with an experimental double-shelled, reinforced vacuum airship.<\/p>\n

Maybe he should call it an \u201cairless-ship.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Transformation
Could bioengineered bacteria turn the Red Planet into a green planet? (Illustration: Adam Arkin)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bioengineered bugs for Mars:<\/strong> To transform the Red Planet from a cold, lifeless world to something greener, astronauts lay down a layer of bioengineered algae in the 2000 movie \u201cRed Planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berkeley\u2019s Adam Arkin and his colleagues plan to look into bioengineering strains of a type of bacteria known as Pseudomonas stutzeri, with the aim of detoxifying the perchlorate in Martian soil and enriching it with ammonia. That\u2019ll make it easier for Mars settlers to grow potatoes, like fictional astronaut Mark Watney did in \u201cThe Martian.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Solar
Could the sun serve as a gravitational lens for spotting alien planets? (Illustration: Slava Turyshev)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Solar gravitational lens:<\/strong> Earthlings figure out how to use the sun\u2019s gravitational field to focus light rays from the Milky Way galaxy\u2019s distant frontiers in \u201cExistence,\u201d a novel by David Brin.<\/p>\n

Slava Turyshev of NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will look into how a robotic probe sent to the far reaches of the solar system could actually use the sun as a gravitational lens to detect and study life on Earthlike planets up to 100 light-years away.<\/p>\n

\"Turbolift
The Turbolift system would assist astronauts during long-duration space exploration missions. (Illustration: Jason Gruber)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Artificial gravity:<\/strong> How do astronauts in space operas ranging from \u201cStar Trek\u201d to \u201cThe Expanse\u201d keep their feet on the floor as the walk around their interplanetary spaceships? It\u2019s challenging enough for real-life astronauts to keep their muscles and bones healthy in the zero-G conditions on the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

Jason Gruber of Medical Solutions Group and his colleagues want to develop an unorthodox method to give astronauts a dose of artificial gravity during long-duration space missions: Their \u201cTurbolift\u201d system is basically an elevator that lifts and drops an astronaut for one-second bouts of 1G acceleration. \u201cThe experience is likely to be analogous to bouncing mildly on a trampoline,\u201d Gruber says.<\/p>\n

\"Continuous
Continuous electrode inertial electrostatic confinement fusion is the focus of one of the NIAC-supported projects. (Illustration: Raymond Sedwick)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fusion thrusters:<\/strong> Until the warp drive is invented, propulsion fueled by nuclear fusion is about the best we can do. Fusion power plants are built into fleets of fictional spaceships, including Discovery One in \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey\u201d and the starship Avalon in \u201cPassengers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several NIAC projects will look into fusion power and other unorthodox propulsion technologies: Check out the concepts from Michael LaPointe at NASA\u2019s Marshall Space Flight Center, Raymond Sedwick at the University of Maryland, John Brophy at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Heidi Fearn at the Space Studies Institute.<\/p>\n

Check NASA\u2019s website for the full list of 15 Phase I projects, including ideas for asteroid-mining robots and solar-surfing probes.<\/p>\n

Each of the Phase I projects is slated to receive up to $125,000 for a nine-month feasibility study. If those studies are successful, the teams can apply for Phase II grants, worth as much as $500,000, that are meant to support follow-up studies for two years.<\/p>\n

NASA says five Phase II projects have been selected for the class of 2017:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Venus Interior Probe Using In-situ Power and Propulsion<\/strong>, Ratnakumar Bugga, JPL<\/li>\n
  • Remote Laser Evaporative Molecular Absorption Spectroscopy Sensor System<\/strong>, Gary Hughes, California Polytechnic State University.<\/li>\n
  • Brane Craft Phase II<\/strong>, Siegfried Janson, The Aerospace Corporation.<\/li>\n
  • Stellar Echo Imaging of Exoplanets<\/strong>, Chris Mann, Nanohmics.<\/li>\n
  • Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments<\/strong>, Jonathan Sauder, JPL.<\/li>\n
  • Optical Mining of Asteroids, Moons, and Planets to Enable Sustainable Human Exploration and Space Industrialization<\/strong>, Joel Sercel, TransAstra.<\/li>\n
  • Fusion-Enabled Pluto Orbiter and Lander<\/strong>, Stephanie Thomas, Princeton Satellite Systems.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    NASA selects NIAC projects through a peer-review process that evaluates innovativeness and technical viability. The program is designed to support technologies in the early stages of development. Most of them are expected to require at least 10 more years of development before they\u2019re incorporated into a NASA mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A scene from the 2012 movie \u201cJohn Carter\u201d shows an airship engaged in a Martian battle. The NASA-backed concept for a Martian airship isn\u2019t quite as ambitious. (\u00a9 2011 Disney \/ John Carter\u2122 ERB, Inc.) Truth can be stranger than fiction, but it shouldn\u2019t be strange to hear that NASA spends millions of dollars on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[190,4523,4482],"class_list":["post-19001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nasa","tag-niac","tag-science-fiction"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19001"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19001\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}