Member concepts

NASA Seeks Innovative Ideas for Revolutionary Concepts

The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts is seeking revolutionary ideas to advance the Vision for Space Exploration. Interested parties from outside the agency are invited to submit 2006 Phase 1 proposals by February 13, 2006.

The focus for solicitations is on revolutionary, advanced concepts for architectures and systems that meet NASA mission "grand visions." The institute's intention is to discover ideas that may result in beneficial changes to NASA's long-range plans.

So, if as in institute, ATS participates in the NASA grant competition, we could really land a lot of noteriety. Give your ideas. Don't be shy.


t2www.nasa.r3h.net...
www.niac.usra.edu...
www.niac.usra.edu...

Might as well go first!

Micro-Singularity Slingshot

What do you think? LOL took me all of ten minutes to come up with so not sure if its groundbreaking.

PS. Give it a second to load, couldnt be bothered with a loading screen but its a tiny file.

[edit on 19-12-2005 by Shadow88]

NASA: ::kicks tire on spaceshuttle... tile falls off:: "uh, anybody got any other idea's?"

Lol, it's good to see NASA is realizing they need to have some vigor and new ideas pumped in. Hopefully they'll get some new innovative ideas to work on.

I have to say great find Frosty

Not a a bad move by NASA IMHO its good to think out side the box sometimes. Its not like they have anything to lose by being open to concepts from the public.

I have wanted to see NASA conduct a ocean probe mission to Europa for a long time. They have showed interest but know real major moves, IMHO that should be top proirity for NASA. I would love to see if anyone can think of ways to make that mission possible.

I can't really think of anyway it can be done without a nuclear reactor to melt through to miles of ice and perhaps power the sub as well. I dont know how keen NASA is on shooting a nuclear reactor into space so perhaps someone can think of a way to get through the ice and power the probe without it.

We dont havn't reached the level of technology yet for a mission to Europa. Since it wouldn't be like a Titan mission. It would need a good power source, and a solid state laser, to be able to melt a (possibly) mile of solid ice, since drilling isn't a good idea...if the bit breaks or goes dull...then the mission in over.
I would a nuclear power source, and burn a hole straight down, then have the small unmanned sub be lowered roboticaly by a winch, and have it swim around it its battery dies.


I like NIAC, its kinda Nasa's version of DARPA. It was created back in 98', and its intentions were to develop concepts that are anywhere from 10-40 years out.

My favorite concept of theirs is the Mag-Beam...who doesn't like a concept that can take you to Mars in just 45 days? (versus 7 or so months).

I'm also glad that they believe in the Space Elevator, and are currently funding a Phase II study, in which they paid out $600,000 for.

Originally posted by Murcielago
to be able to melt a (possibly) mile of solid ice, since drilling isn't a good idea

Most likely more like 25km of ice though Estimates, or rather guesses, put the ice at anywhere between five and 100 km thick. Its really hard to say but most people from looking at impact craters think its about 25km.
link
I guess a Nuclear heating element is the only choice for something that deep.

Another problem would be how does a probe send back information through 25km of ice? Is that even possible? I would think any type of umbilical would be out of the question with convential materials. Controling the probe would have to be done with onboard AI which is not impossible. You could design it to sniff for the chemicals released from thermal vents as thats the likely spot for any life. But if you cant send that info back to earth its pointless.

I would be a hard mission no question about that but I believe its doable. Also the payoffs from a mission could dwarf anything eles NASA will ever do in this solar system.

Well, I don't know if I'm doing whats asked, but I think, that to eplore space better, we need to deveop plama propulsion, NASA was wroking on research on a plasma engine called VASIMIR, but from what I've read, funding ws ct, soI think funding needs to be put into that, also to truly explore space, we will inevitably require a technology capable of allowing us interstellar travel in relatively short time periods, in other words a device capable of faster than light travel, or a way to circumvent the light speed barrier altogether, which is also somethign I have read that NASA put some research into, one of the most notable theories, was the "Alcubierre WARP drive", which essentially in theorie used negative energy, and shrunk space in front of the vessel, and expanded it behind it.

But for more in system discovery and stuff, I think the development of A.I, plasma propulsion, direct energy weapons (for defense and blowing things like meteors up).

Two words. "SPACE ELEVATOR" All research monies besides the money earmarked for telescopes(Minus the Hubble, it should crash and burn as the obsolete piece of hardware that it is) should be devoted to a space elevator as that is the only thing that will make space insanely profitable instead of just reasonably profitable.

Also more Binocular Telescopes are needed. The bigger the better. Build a half dozen pairs OWL telescopes(I think thats the acronym) in Binocular configuration in different spacing configuration to give us stereo vision of as many objects as possible. We should focus on everything within a 500 Lightyear radius looking for signs of others earth-like planets and possible signs of life or even *gasp* Civilization(longshot though it is possible with certain optics techniques to image individual continents on earth sized planets)

[edit on 20-12-2005 by sardion2000]

I came up with this idea after viewing Shadow88's video, but unfortunately it's just as technically unfeasible. Plus, since I'm not not all that computer adept, so just a description from me.

Anyway, have a tube of X length again. For the sake of arguement, let's say X equals 2 miles. Have it in space, say built so it can spin and the entire length of the tube will be under the effects of centripital forces. So, I guess we'll need some rope and counter weights. For our purposes that could be carbon nanotubes and an asteroid. At the outward part of the tube, where the ship will be "falling" towards, have some sort of teleportation transmitter. At the opposite of the tube would be the receiver.

The craft would move down the tube slowly at first, but once it teleported to the center again it would fall another two miles and gain more velocity. So after a few hundred thousand teleportations of the craft you could have built up an immense velocity. Then you switch where there transmitter transmits to. So now instead of the "inside" of the tube it's a receiver that would point the ship towards Pluto, Alpha Centauri, the LMG, or anywhere else you would want to go.

Also, we may want to find a way to suspend bits and pieces of physics as we're accelerating the ship. That's simply because as the craft gets to the end of the two miles it's velocity in the direction the tube is spinning will be far greater than what the velocity of the receiver's spinning is. This could lead to the craft smacking into the side of the tube and just botching the entire mission.

Possibly, a cone could be used to correct for this and the pilot would have to line it up on their own every time through. That poses a bigger problem though. If the craft has to be corrected, there may be a minute or so for the first few drops, but what about after one hundred thousand? There may only be a fraction of a second. Definitely not enough time for some sort of tricky manuevering!

How bout some original concepts? Space elevator? Plasma propulsion? Those are already being worked on.

Here is one of my brilliant ideas:

In order to better study asteroids, from the asteroid belt, we need to bring an entire asteroid back to earth. And I mean a sizeable rock as well. My idea hinges on using either of two concepts:

1. We can plan a mission to launch a probe to land on an asteroid say the size of a two car garage. Next, the probe will use thrusters to bring back the asteroid to earth and land it in rural Alaska or a dessert in either Utah, New Mexico or Arizona or at worst, the moon. If the moon is a feasible options then I think we could take bigger asteroids, say like 10x the size of a two car garage.

2. We can plan a mission launch a probe to fly by small asteroids, about the size of basketballs etc, and hopefully use gravity to an advantage to have these asteroids trail the probe back to earth to land in one of the previously stated locations.

or...

If NASA does not like the idea, we sell it off to the DoD as a black project. Imagine, rather than firing missiles on a country or doing some covert-op that may look like the CIA or someone else's hands are in on it we can launch probes to gather asteroids, orbit the moon and then on a moments notice head towards earth and have the projectiles fall over a specified country. No one would ever believe it was the work of the US, they would just think that the country has become extremely unlucky and that cosmic anomolies have been the culprit.

Wow Frosty, your a genius dude, I can honestly say, that kind of thing never crossed my mind, just promise us you don't become an evil genius, we'd all be screwed than.




But yeah, I was tired, hence why I did not come up with something, but I suppose I'll try now.

This one is a bit, farfetched sounding, and way beyond our technical know how, but what about bringing mercury into orbit around the Earth, or better bringing Venus or Mars into a bi-planetary sytem.

For colonisation of other worlds, I think instead of just terraforming them, we should biofrom ourselves, as in genetically modifying the individuals who are going to live there, to live normally in that enviroment.

And my last one, building a spaceStation, an extremely strong one capable of atmospheric entry and landing, in orbit around a planet that is to extreme of an enviroment, like Mar's, and than after awhile landing the station to become a colony on the planet, would cut down on the amount of vehicles entering the planet with materials, and would cut down on the amount of fuel and resources for return flights.

Holy Crap! I've heard of the idea of landing on an asteroid to divert it from hitting earth, but steering it into an enemy country.... wow!


...CNN reporting live from Baghdad where we are getting reports from scientists worldwide that indeed a 1km wide asteroid is on collision course with the earth. This is not a film plot, we are getting word that it may strike within the hour. It is believed that it will hit somewhere in a swath between eastern India and western Iran. It is unknown what sort of an impact such an object will have with scientists guessing how much of the object will burn up and what the resulting object's size will be. Some experts estimate that the impact will be similar to a 100 megaton nuclear blast.....

I'm pretty sure that NASA doesn't concern itself with weaponization though. They are more about exploration, mapping, experiments, etc. It doesn't rule out that they will experiment with landing/steering asteroids, and that the tests could be used to justify an investment by black ops or space command. However, if an asteroid does hit the earth in the meantime, we here at ATS will be able to wonder to ourselves....hmmmm

This will probably happen in the next 100 years but... imagine being able to download your conciousness into a robot. If possible then long distances are not an issue. Just have a few hundred volunteers download copies of themselves into robots. Put those robots into long flight starships, no need of habitat or atmosphere. Place genetic material for all known species onboard with an artificial womb and send it off to a likely star system.

No need for humans to go at all. Send the robots as nursemaids and teachers and have them breed a new colony. It's cheaper and more rational than trying to send full grown adults either in stasis or frozen.

It would make it possible to colonize the galaxy.

HUMBUG i stick my tongue out to you all!

Lol just kidding. How about Wormhole technology? that would be a lot more efficient overall.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

The idea of dropping an asteroid on your enemy has been around for quite a while (they used to call it a mass driver system). Big questions were raised as to wheteher this constituted a weapon of mass destruction in space (i.e banned under international treaty)

Originally posted by paperplane_uk
Big questions were raised as to wheteher this constituted a weapon of mass destruction in space (i.e banned under international treaty)

I would say that would have to depend on the size of the projectile. A 20ft tungsten rod really would be a WMD, But a Asteroid of a few kilometers surely would since they could dwarf nuclear bombs in power.

I think thats why the US is looking at open about looking at programs like "Rods from God" which they clearly dont consider a WMD. Just how big a Object would have to be until considered a WMD thats hard to say.

The Space Elevator's the one, but as has already been stated since it's already been worked on we should concentrate on new ideas. How about a practical (ish) cocnept on a physics experiment to see what happens when you go faster than the speed of light? I actaully beleive most of current theory about what happens when you go faster than the speed of light to be complete pish. I'm not saying I'm cleverer than Einstien or anything, it's just that gravity moves faster than the speed of light, it's just a local physical limit (for light) in our part of the universe. And the speed of light is variable, that has already been observed, a bunch of scientists trapped and held a photon for just over a second a month or so ago, it can and does slow down and speed up. Personally I think when you go faster than the speed of light you just get somewhere really quickly, I really don;t see why you need to achieve infinite mass or anything. Lots of inertia, sure. Anyhow, wandering a bit. I propose a scientific station on the top of the Space Elevator (when it's built), which is basically a lab on a big tether. As the Space Elevator counterweight is currently estimated to be a mid-sized asteroid 36 000 km or so out into space, an automated lab (with lots of cameras could be "fed out" on an ever increasing tether. Since the asteroid is geo-stationary and the lab is tethered to the asteroid, the further out the lab is the faster it is moving as the earth is spinning it. Actually, you know what? I just went away and did the maths for this and to get to our local speed of light (1,079,252,849 Km/H) the tether would need to be around half a billion kilometers long. Sorry, I thought I was onto something here

Hmm... how about this for something revolutionary?

Mag-shot.

In orbit around the earth, set up a number of hollow rectangles, with magnets on the inside of them, and manuevering thrusters. Make it so that the hollow rectangles are in a straight line receding away from the earth.

Now, you launch a shuttle or something similar, and have it pass through each rectangle which then magnetically speeds it up, giving it an extra push. After about a dozen of these, you'd probably have a real good speed going to quickly get to Mars or Venus.

Once the ship passes through the rectangles, manuevering jets reposition the rectangle so that it position will stay in place.

Going along with the Mag-shot idea

What about a massive rail gun that could launch a craft into orbit. In thoery if you made one big enough and strong enough you could launch things into orbit without any chemical fuel. The initial cost of building a system like this would be massive but after it was built orbital launches could be done on the cheap and quickly.

Originally posted by Eddie Peoples
Personally I think when you go faster than the speed of light you just get somewhere really quickly, I really don’t see why you need to achieve infinite mass or anything.

Not only infinite mass, but they say that if you go faster then the speed of light (which is currently thought of as impossible), you essentially rewind time, everything will happen backwards for you. Basically it just gets to damn mind boggling.

Eddie Peoples
I propose a scientific station on the top of the Space Elevator (when it's built), which is basically a lab on a big tether. As the Space Elevator counterweight is currently estimated to be a mid-sized asteroid 36 000 km or so out into space

You’re not the first to suggest a lab on the elevators cable, that concept has been on people minds for decades.
BTW, the idea of capturing an asteroid and using it as a counterweight went with the dinosaurs. The current plan it to just have a lot of weight at the other end, which would be accomplished (in the beginning) by using normal rockets and launch weight up there.
Oh, and the cable is going to be 100,000km long.
And you wouldn't want a science lab on the end of it, since the very end of it is where you would have the most gravity. It would be a good place for a building though...like a hotel or something...since you would have gravity...but from the earths prospective you would be walking up-side down......which would be cool, if you can imagine waking up for breakfast on your orbital vacation, walk (normal) into the restaurant, and have the ceiling be a huge glass domed roof, you can look up and see the earth...Now that would be a sight to behold.