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NASA Planning Lunar Mining Tests, Other New Tech
FleaPlus writes "NASA has released the initial details on its ETDD (Enabling Technology Development and Demonstrations) program to 'develop and demonstrate the technologies needed to reduce cost and expand the capability of future space exploration activities.' The ETDD program is initially planning on funding small-scale demonstrations in five technology areas: in-situ resource utilization (with a robotic lunar resource extraction mission in 2015), high-power electric propulsion, autonomous precision landing (building on the success of the Lunar Lander Challenge), human-robotic collaboration (2011/2012), and fission power systems. More info on NASA's larger-scale Flagship Technology Demonstrations (FTD) program is expected in the coming month."
lunar mining: Cheapest way to build a moonbase. Just keep tunneling and put several seals to keep air in. There is no point in going to the moon, or anywhere else, if we don't have a cheap mining unit to get resources and build a base. Otherwise it' was a wasted trip. Powerful electric propulsion and fission power plant: Excellent way to overcome the limits of of carrying fuel up the gravity well all of the time. Great way to re-use the ship you build out of it from mars so you can get a ferry going every few weeks. I'm not going to keep the lovefest going for the other ones, but I definitely think this is a change for the better.
these are the holdover missions that NASA will have to be content with until there is an administration that is serious about space exploration.
Even if this is a stealth attempt by Obama to kill off manned spaceflight, it still means that he's more serious about space exploration than any president since Lyndon B. Johnson.
Large masses are few and far between in space. Therefore to get anywhere we are probably going to looking at a series of space stations. The nice thing about this moon mining idea is that it may give the raw materials we need to build space stations, without falling to the 60's idea that the goal is to live on the moon. That is like flying cars. A neat idea, but what we really want are hover craft.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I cannot say for sure, but I do not believe that an inertial confinement system is decades away. In fact, there was a-lot of research into such systems during the 1960s. It was abandoned during the 70s when nuclear energy for space became politically untenable, but then it was picked up again during the 90s. During the late 90s it very abruptly stopped - or went dark. (Perhaps it was successful...)
In any case, it turns out that the energy required to compress fissile pellets (the size of a grain of sand) to critical density for fission requires particle beam equipment the size of a refrigerator - i.e., very achievable. The engineering challenges then are not related to creating fission, but rather to managing the high temperature plasmas to produce usable thrust without damaging the system. These engineering challenges are very similar to the challenges that VASIMIR has, and so if they can be solved for VASIMIR one would expect that they could be solved for a fission-powered system. I believe that the plasma temperatures for a micro pulse fission system (using water as a propellant mass source) are similar to those for VASIMIR, but I cannot say for sure.