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NASA Tests New Moon Engine

Posted by Soulskill on from the rocket-fuel-green-cheese-hybrid dept.

Iddo Genuth writes "Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of West Palm Beach, Florida has successfully completed the third round of its Common Extensible Cryogenic Engine (CECE) testing for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). CECE is a new deep throttling engine designed to reduce thrust and allow a spacecraft to land gently on the moon, Mars, or some other non-terrestrial surface." NASA is also set to launch a new satellite on Tuesday — the Orbital Carbon Observatory — that will monitor the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. On the research front, NASA has announced this year's Centennial Challenges. $2 million in prizes are available for a major breakthrough in tether strength (one of the major obstacles for developing a space elevator), and another $2 million is being offered to competitors who are able to beam power to a device climbing a cable at a height of up to one kilometer.

3 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Space elevator power? by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Another $2 million is being offered to competitors who are able to beam power to a device climbing a cable at a height of up to one kilometer.

    Wouldn't it just make more sense to have solar panels in orbit and transmit the power along the space elevator? If I remember correctly, this is what Kim Stanley Robinson envisioned with the space elevator in his science fiction novel Red Mars . Being able to bring power down would be a nice bonus for a tool to get up to orbit easily.

    1. Re:Space elevator power? by khallow · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why should it make more sense to not bother? Even if a space tether from Earth proves to be too difficult to bother with this century, we currently have the materials to make less ambitious tether strutures in orbit or a space elevator on the Moon.

    2. Re:Space elevator power? by TropicalCoder · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think one of the silliest notions I ever heard is the idea that we could propel a carriage without a horse, by using explosions from a highly explosive liquid substance. Obviously the first time they try this they are just going to blow the carriage sky heigh. The simple reason this will never work is that they forgot that a carriage has a thing called inertia, and it will quickly buckle under the force of the explosions rather than be propelled down the lane. Even if it could withstand the force of the explosions, could you imagine what kind of jerky ride you would have?