Sucks that these plans are so far off. Exploring Titan and Enceladus should be priority #1 for any space program right now. Nothing else we can feasibly do today could teach us more.
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^^
Watched the live stream, and I was sure they hadn't nulled out the rotation in time. Right after touchdown, my feed went "buffering" for a few seconds, and I thought I'd come back to find the thing toppled and exploded.
I had no idea that it was in orbit around the sun (not the earth) 75 million miles from Earth!
Wont be seeing any missions to fix it when its that far!
Kepler is already 3.5 years past it's expected life span so it's bound to shut down, real bummer though as the James Webb wont launch for at least 2 more years.
Kepler's orbit see's it lag behind earths by 10 days per year, we'll catch up and fix it in about 80 years.
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While Lubin and his team haven't yet tried out their system, their calculations show that photonic propulsion could get a 100-kg robotic craft to Mars in just three days.
A larger craft, like the kind humans might travel in, would take around a month to get there - one-fifth of the time it would take the Space Launch System (SLS), the world's most powerful rocket currently being developed to take us to Mars.
Lubin also explains that in the 10 minutes it will take to get the SLS into orbit, photonic propulsion could propel a spacecraft to an unheard-of 30 percent the speed of light - and it would also use a similar amount of chemical energy (50 to 100 gigawatts) to do so.
But the real benefit of photonic propulsion comes over longer distances, where the spacecraft has more time to speed up, and could eventually take us outside our Solar System and to neighbouring stars.
To be clear, the system isn't designed to send humans across interstellar distances - first of all, robots are far better equipped for that mission, and secondly, we'd be far too heavy. Instead, Lubin proposes wafer-thin spacecraft that can get close to the speed of light.
I know that this isn't sexy but its amazing non the less. Self Healing Concrete could be a boon for creating more durable and safer housing and other concrete structures. Especially in countries that suffer with things like quakes.
They accomplish this by injecting bacteria into the concrete when they're mixing it, As Cracks form the bacteria forms Calcite that heal the cracks.
Pretty smart and amazing.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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Kepler is already 3.5 years past it's expected life span so it's bound to shut down, real bummer though as the James Webb wont launch for at least 2 more years.
Kepler's orbit see's it lag behind earths by 10 days per year, we'll catch up and fix it in about 80 years.
They recovered and it's out of Emergency Mode. Now doing diagnostics to see if it can continue on.
While Lubin and his team haven't yet tried out their system, their calculations show that photonic propulsion could get a 100-kg robotic craft to Mars in just three days.
A larger craft, like the kind humans might travel in, would take around a month to get there - one-fifth of the time it would take the Space Launch System (SLS), the world's most powerful rocket currently being developed to take us to Mars.
Lubin also explains that in the 10 minutes it will take to get the SLS into orbit, photonic propulsion could propel a spacecraft to an unheard-of 30 percent the speed of light - and it would also use a similar amount of chemical energy (50 to 100 gigawatts) to do so.
But the real benefit of photonic propulsion comes over longer distances, where the spacecraft has more time to speed up, and could eventually take us outside our Solar System and to neighbouring stars.
To be clear, the system isn't designed to send humans across interstellar distances - first of all, robots are far better equipped for that mission, and secondly, we'd be far too heavy. Instead, Lubin proposes wafer-thin spacecraft that can get close to the speed of light.
Hawking on board. Also a tonne of high profile scientific minds.
Also 100 M has been put into it. The best part is that it is completely feasible based on current tech.
