Free Republic

What's unusual about the technology Stellar Exploration developed with Malin Space Science Systems of San Diego is its power, said Mike Loucks, president of Space Exploration Engineering, a Seattle company that specializes in cis-lunar, lunar and deep space missions. The new thruster fueled with hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide is designed to move a 12-unit cubesat, which weighs about 28 kilograms, at a speed of two kilometers per second. "The miniaturized bi-prop system Stellar has developed suddenly allows cubesats to take on the missions normally associated with much larger and more expensive spacecraft," Loucks said by email. "None of the currently...

The laws of physics have won again, it would appear. For the past few years, researchers at NASA's Eagleworks advanced-propulsion lab have been putting a controversial and potentially revolutionary space engine called the EmDrive to the test. The EmDrive, which was originally developed by British scientist Roger Shawyer in the early 2000s, purportedly generates thrust by bouncing microwaves around inside a conical chamber. Because the engine doesn't require any fuel, it could theoretically make spaceflight far cheaper and more efficient, opening the heavens to exploration The EmDrive really shouldn't work. The engine doesn't blast anything out a nozzle, so Newton's...

DALLAS — Warp-drive technology, a form of "faster than light" travel popularized by TV's "Star Trek," could be bolstered by the physics of quantum thrusters — another science-fiction idea made plausible by modern science. NASA scientists are performing experiments that could help make warp drive a possibility sometime in the future from a lab built for the Apollo program at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. A warp-drive-enabled spacecraft would look like a football with two large rings fully encircling it. The rings would utilize an exotic form of matter to cause space-time to contract in front of and expand...

TUSTIN, Calif., Sept. 7, 2007 -- An amplified photon thruster that could potentially shorten the trip to Mars from six months to a week has reportedly attracted the attention of aerospace agencies and contractors. Young Bae, founder of the Bae Institute in Tustin, Calif., first demonstrated his photonic laser thruster (PLT), which he built with off-the-shelf components, in December. The demonstration produced a photon thrust of 35 µN and is scalable to achieve much greater thrust for future space missions, the institute said. Applications include highly precise satellite formation flying configurations for building large synthetic apertures in space for earth...

Efforts by Stanford University and NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory to buy an unusual, bismuth-fueled electric propulsion system from Russia have hit a snag at NASA headquarters, where managers have concerns about the legality of the proposed deal, NASA officials said. American scientists hope to test the thruster inside a vacuum tank at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and then design their own version. The scientists want to learn whether a thruster fueled by bismuth, a metallic element that is fairly plentiful, has the durability to propel an unmanned probe on long voyages to the outer planets. The bismuth...