Leonard David writes "Thought you might find this story of interest: Space elevators/carbon nanotube composites at http://space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_elevator_020327-1.html
– Leonard David, Senior Space Writer
SPACE.com"
[Editor's Note: additional information on the orbital tower concept and the potential use of fullerene-based composites as a construction material can be found in this Nanodot post from 3 May 2001.]
LawrenceTrutter writes "The Space.com story, Microscopic Nanotubes Could Make Ships Lightweight, Superstrong , discusses the predictions made by NASA's Nanotube team. Several applications of the nanotubes mentioned in the article include composite, nanoelectronics, biomedical applications, energy storage, and thermal materials.
Dr. Richard Smalley of Rice University is also quoted in this article. There is also a brief report on Richard Smalley's team progress."
from the gotta-get-off-this-rock dept.
According to an article from the Reuters news service ("Two Hefty Asteroids Pass Close to Earth", by Deborah Zabarenko, 16 January 2002), two hefty asteroids passed close to Earth on 16 January 2002, with at least five more set to swing near by January's end. One of the close-approaching asteroids measured between .6 and 1.8 miles in diameter, a big enough space rock to cause catastrophe if it collided with Earth. According to the report, at least five more fairly big asteroids were to pass close to Earth's orbit before Jan. 29, according to NASA's Near Earth Object Program. The article also notes there was some mild consternation over asteroid 2001 YB5, a 1,000-foot wide asteroid that got within 500,000 miles of Earth during the second week of January.
NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Tracking project watches for asteroids .6 miles or more across that have the potential to wreak havoc on Earth if they hit. Of the approximately 1,200 big dangerous asteroids believed to exist, scientists have detected 564. The vast majority of those — 471 — have been discovered since 1990.
Many scientists believe that an asteroid perhaps 3 miles across wiped out the dinosaurs and many other species when it crashed to Earth at the end of the Cretaceous era 65 million years ago. According to another press release (17 January 2002), at team of University of Arizona scientists will begin field work on an international project to core 1.8 kilometers into an immense crater created by the impact of an asteroid or comet 65 million years ago that is thought to be the object responsible for the Cretaceous extinctions. The project, the Chicxulub Scientific Drilling Project (CSDP), is located near Mérida, Yucatan, Mexico.
Rocky Rawstern writes "From Space Daily comes a story about about how artificial "hairs" can provide a precise method for steering small satellites. This technology may be useful with picosatellites. The study is being led by researchers at the University of Washington, and is featured in latest issue of the journal Smart Materials and Structures. The full story is here http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nanosat-02a.html"
[Editor's note: The article actually just reprints this press release from the University of Washington.]
An article by K. Eric Drexler that appeared in the October 1984 issue of the L5 News ("Space Development: The Case Against Mars") is now available on the Foresight webiste. The article argues that Mars is not a good target if the goal is development of a broadly-based human expansion into space. At the time, Drexler was Associate Editor of the L5 News and a member of the Society's Board of Advisors, but the article reflected his views rather than L5 Society policy. He now serves on the Board of Governors of the National Space Society, with which the L5 Society merged. Given that humans have made no progress beyond low Earth orbit in the intervening years, the arguments in the article are still valid.
from the Distant-airs dept.
(28 November 2001) – Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have been able to obtain data indicating the presence of sodium of a planet orbiting another star. This is the first direct detection and chemical analysis of the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system. Their unique observations demonstrate it is possible with Hubble and other telescopes to measure the chemical makeup of extrasolar planets' atmospheres and potentially to search for chemical markers of life beyond Earth. The planet orbits a Sun-like star that lies 150 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. Its atmospheric composition was probed when the planet passed in front of its parent star, allowing astronomers to see light from the star filtered through the planet's atmosphere. Additional information is available in this press release from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and an article in the New York Times.
from the historical-ironies dept.
(No, this isnít about nanotech. Itís an item in an occasional series of off-topic news and information for Fridays.)
United Press International reports that, according to White House tapes released by the Kennedy Library archives, President John F. Kennedy clashed with NASA's top officials over his desire to gain political points by landing a man on the moon before the Soviet Union ("Tapes: JFK pushed for lunar landing", 23 August 2001). According to UPIís transcription, Kennedy made the following comments during a White House meeting over spending for the space program on Nov. 21, 1962 (about a month after the Cuban Missile Crisis):
"This is important for political reasons, international political reasons, and this is, whether we like it or not, in a sense, a race," Kennedy said. "Everything that we do ought to really be tied to getting onto the moon ahead of the Russians."
"I do think we ought to get it really clear that the policy ought to be that this is the top priority program of the agency and one … of the top priorities of the United States government," Kennedy said. "Otherwise, we shouldn't be spending this kind of money because I'm not that interested in space."
On the same day the Kennedy tapes were released, UPI also reported that a Russian Progress M-45 cargo ship docked safely with the International Space Station, the day after the U.S. space shuttle Discovery departed for landing, carrying the crew of three who had staffed the station for over five months. That crew was commanded by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachev and included American astronauts Jim Voss and Susan Helms. They were launched into orbit on 8 March 2001 as the ISS's second permanent crew and logged almost 70 million miles during 5 ½ months aboard the orbital complex. The Progress cargo craft, which lifted off Tuesday from Kazkahstan's Baikonur cosmodrome, was carrying supplies to the current ISS crew that includes Russian cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Tyurin and their commander, U.S. astronaut Frank Calbertson.
The shuttle Discovery landed at the Kennedy Space Center on 22 August 2001.
from the congratulations! dept.
Tom McKendree writes "I am extremely happy to announce that last week I passed the defense of my Ph.D. dissertation at USC, on the subject of "Technical and Operational Assessment of Molecular Nanotechnology for Space Operations". This is a rewrite of my earlier dissertation draft, making molecular nanotechnology for space the explicit central focus of the document. The basic conclusion, that systems designed and built to atomic precision can outperform current technology for space operations, should not be a surprise to this audience. The heartening aspects are that I was able to substantiate this conclusion in much more detail, and that I was able to convince a dissertation committee of six, including five lecturing professors at USC, that this was sufficiently credible and important to deserve a Ph.D."
from the going-(way)-up;-watch-your-step! dept.
Brian Wang writes "An article from New Scientist posted at EurekAlert describes recent NASA studies on the feasibility of space elevators and orbital towers. The interesting aspect is the view of some solutions to making nanotubes cheaply and long enough to be the primary structural material."
According to the article, two independent NASA teams recently work out the technological requirements and found them to be feasible. The article also notes that "carbon has been elevated to the material of choice. In the form of diamond, it shows record-breaking mechanical properties. Diamond can't be spun into filaments, but there is a form of carbon that combines strength with length: nanotubes. These . . . exceed the tensile strength of steel by at least a factor of 100." The problem, as the article notes, is synthesizing nanotube molecules long enough construct the cable at the heart of the orbital tower.
Additional information about the space elevator studies can be found at this NASA website.
from the space-creatures-II dept.
David Coutts writes "I was writing A Crude Guide To Energy Levels In Our Solar System, and my mind started racing with ideas related to nanotechnology. Perhaps they are far-fetched and extreme, perhaps not. So I thought I'd subject them to Nanodot.org readers for some constructive criticism. Please be gentle… As you can see, this time I re-read some sections of Engines Of Creation before submitting my article."
