Category Archives: Space Exploration

If human beings intend to become an interplanetary species (or interstellar, for that matter), then we are going to need new propulsion methods that combine a significant level of thrust with fuel-efficiency. One option that NASA has been exploring for decades is spacecraft that rely on nuclear power, which can take the form of nuclear-electric or nuclear-thermal propulsion (NEP/NTP).

In the current era of space exploration, other space agencies are looking into this technology as well. For instance, the UK Space Agency recently signed a contract with the British automotive engineering firm Rolls-Royce. As per their duties, Rolls-Royce will investigate applications for nuclear power and propulsion. Given the companys record of mechanical, electrical, and nuclear power solutions

This contract represents the first step in a process that will define and shape nuclear power solutions for the UK Space Agency, as well as the European Space Agency (ESA). Based on previous studies and experiments from the early Space Race era, nuclear power has proven itself to be an effective means of propulsion and (best of all) relies on time-tested and validated technology.

Today, there is no shortage of researchers extolling the benefits of nuclear power as a means for space exploration. However, research into possible applications has been somewhat limited since the closing of the Apollo Era. As such, recent efforts to get the ball rolling again have been met with a great deal of excitement. As Dave Gordon, the UK Senior Vice President of Rolls-Royce Defense, explained in a company press release:

We are excited to be working with the UK Space Agency on this pioneering project to define future nuclear power technologies for space. We believe there is a real niche UK capability in this area and this initiative can build on the strong UK nuclear network and supply chain.

We look forward to developing this and other exciting space projects in the future as we continue to develop the power to protect our planet, secure our world and explore our universe.

As noted, research into nuclear propulsion dates back to the early Space Age. Between 1959 and 1972, NASAs Space Nuclear Propulsion Office (SNPO) conducted 23 reactor tests at the Nuclear Rocket Development Station at AECs Nevada Test Site, in Jackass Flats, Nevada. In 1961, NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) came together to embark on the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications (NERVA) program.

The purpose of this program was to develop a nuclear-thermal rocket (NTP) that could allow for rapid transport to the Moon, Mars, and other locations in deep space. In an NTP rocket, uranium or deuterium reactions are used to heat liquid hydrogen inside a reactor, causing it to ionize into a hot plasma that is then directed through nozzles to create thrust.

In contrast, a NEP rocket involves the same basic reactions generating heat, which is then used to generate the electricity that powers an electric engine (like a Hall-Effect Thruster). Unfortunately, shifting priorities and a changing budget environment led to cutbacks that forced NASA to shelve its work with nuclear propulsion by the end of 1972.

According to a technical report drafted by Doctor Michael G. Houts (the NTP principal investigator at NASA Marshall), an NTP rocket could generate 200 kWt of power using a single kilogram ofuranium for a period of 13 years which works out to a fuel efficiency rating of about 45 grams per 1000 MW-hr (twice that of chemical rockets). At that rate, a nuclear thermal rocket could make the trip to Mars in half the time (100 days!)

In recent years, research into nuclear propulsion has once again resumed at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center. With the UK Space Agency on board now as well, its likely that the ESA will be investigating nuclear propulsion for future missions as well. Roscosmos is also pursuing NEP technology with its Transport and Energy Module (TEM) program, with plans to make the first reactor tests in the early 2020s and the first orbital flight test by 2030.

In 2017, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC) the Chinese National Space Agencys (CNSA) main contractor released its Space Transportation Roadmap. In addition to the development of a reusable spaceplane (similar to the X-37B), this document also called for the creation of a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) spaceplane and fully-reusable rockets by the 2030s, and a nuclear-powered shuttle by 2045.

Between NASA, the ESA, Roscomos, China, and India, there are some very ambitious plans for space exploration in the coming decades. These include returning to the Moon (or sending astronauts there for the first time) and building bases that would allow for a sustained human presence. Between the 2030s and 2040s, all the major space players hope to have placed footprints (and possibly habitats) on Mars as well.

As Dr. Graham Turnock, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency, indicated in an agency press release:

Space nuclear power and propulsion is a game-changing concept that could unlock future deep-space missions that take us to Mars and beyond. This study will help us understand the exciting potential of atomic-powered spacecraft, and whether this nascent technology could help us travel further and faster through space than ever before.

According to UK Science Minister Amanda Solloway, this research also represents an opportunity for the aerospace industry. As government and industry search to find ways to rebuild on more sound and sustainable economic models, space exploration could use this time to introduce fresh and more far-seeing thinking:

As we build back better from the pandemic,it is partnerships like this between business, industry and government that will help to create jobs and bring forwardpioneering innovations that will advance UK spaceflight.

Nuclear power presents transformative possibilities for space exploration and this innovative study with Rolls-Royce could help to propel our next generation of astronauts into space faster and for longer, significantly increasing our knowledge of the universe.

In three years, the first crewed mission beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for the first time since the end of the Apollo Era (1972). By the end of the decade, we hope to have a permanent infrastructure on and around the Moon that will facilitate missions to Mars. By mid-century, we could even be sending astronauts to the Main Belt and have a permanent outpost on Mars.

Chances are, it will be spacecraft equipped with NTP or NEC engines that will be making the journey, transporting crews and cargo to and from Earth.

Further Reading: Rolls-Royce, UK Space Agency

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The UK is Considering Nuclear Propulsion in Space - Universe Today

In the near future, humanity stands a good chance of expanding its presence beyond Earth. This includes establishing infrastructure in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), on the surface of (and in orbit around) the Moon, and on Mars. This presents numerous challenges, as living in space and on other celestial bodies entails all kinds of potential risks and health hazards not the least of which are radiation and long-term exposure to low gravity.

These issues demand innovative solutions; and over the years, several have been proposed! A good example is Dr. Pekka Janhunens concept for a megasatellite settlement in orbit around Ceres, the largest asteroid in the Main Belt. This settlement would provide artificial gravity for its residents while the local resources would allow for a closed-loop ecosystem to created inside effectively bringing terraforming to a space settlement.

Dr. Janhunen a theoretical physicist based in Helsinki, Finland is no stranger to advanced concepts. In addition to being a research manager with the Finnish Meteorological Institute, he is a visiting professor with the University of Tatu and a senior technical advisor to Aurora Propulsion Technologies where he is overseeing the commercial development of the Electric Solar Wind Sail (E-sail) concept he proposed back in 2006.

The paper that describes his concept recently appeared online and has being submitted for publication to the scientific journal Elsevier. Its a concept that Dr. Janhunen described to Universe Today as, [T]erraforming from the user perspective: creating an artificial environment, near Ceres and of Ceres materials, that can scale up to the same and larger population than Earth has today.

Rotating space habitats are a time-honored proposal and a suggested alternative to (or in conjunction with) habitats on other celestial bodies. The first recorded instance was Konstantin Tsiolkovskys 1903 book, Beyond Planet Earth, where he described a pinwheel station in space that would rotate to provide artificial gravity.

This was followed by Herman Poto?niks expanded proposal in The Problem of Space Travel (1929), the Von Braun Wheel (1952), and Gerard K. ONeills revolutionary proposal in The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space (1976) that called for a rotating cylinder in space aka. the ONeill Cylinder. However, all these concepts were for stations in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) or at an Earth-Sun Lagrange Point.

As Dr. Janhunen told Universe Today via email, a megasatellite constellation in orbit of Ceres could leverage the local resources to create Earth-like conditions:

They provide Earth-like 1 g gravity, which is essential for human health, in particular essential for children to grow to healthy adults with fully developed muscles and bones. Ceres has nitrogen for making the habitat atmospheres, and it is large enough to provide almost unlimited resources. At the same time it is also small enough that its gravity is rather low so that lifting material from the surface is cheap.

According to his study, the megasatellite settlement would consist of spinning habitats attached to a disk-shaped frame through passive magnetic bearings. This would allow for simulated gravity within the habitats, facilitate intra-settlement travel and ensure that population density remains low.

Dr. Janhunen estimates that it could be kept to 500 people per km2 (190 people per mi2), whereas cities like Manhattan and Mumbai have densities of roughly 27,500 and 32,303 people per km2 (or 71,340 and 83,660 people per mi2), respectively. The settlement would initially be furnished with soil 1.5 m (~5 ft) in depth, which could be upgraded to 4 m (~13 ft).

This would allow for greenspaces with gardens and trees that would produce the settlements oxygen and scrub the atmosphere of CO2 (as well as additional radiation shielding). Similarly, Ceres is known to have abundant supplies of ammonia salts on its surface (particularly around the bright spots in the Occator crater) that could be imported to the settlement and converted to nitrogen for use as a buffer gas.

Planar and parabolic mirrors located around the frame would direct concentrated sunlight to the habitats, providing illumination and allowing for photosynthesis to occur. While the creation of such a settlement presents many technical challenges and would require a massive commitment in resources, it would actually be easier in many respects that colonizing the Moon or Mars.

For that matter, it would also be much easier than terraforming the Moon or Mars. As Dr. Janhunen explained:

In some aspects easier (no need of planetary landing, no dust-storms, no long night). In all cases the main challenge is probably bootstrapping the industry in a remote place one needs some robotics and AI, but they are coming to existence now, broadly speaking.

But perhaps the most exciting aspect of this proposal is the fact that it allows for a space elevator! On Earth, such a structure remains impractical (as well as extremely expensive) because Earths gravity (9.8 m/s2, or 1 g) imposes some serious restrictions on space exploration. In short, a rocket must achieve an escape velocity of 11.186 km/s (40,270 km/h; 25,020 mph) to break free of Earths gravity.

On Ceres, however, the gravity is a fraction of what it is here on Earth 0.28 m/s2 (less than 3%), which results in an escape velocity of just 510 meters per second (1836 km/h; 1140 mph). As Dr. Janhunen added:

Lifting material from Ceres is possible by many methods because the escape speed is low. One way is reusable chemical rockets with fuel made from Ceres resources. However, the space elevator is more energy-efficient than the rocket methods. It is also a simple solution, and because the Ceres escape speed is low, the elevator cable does not require exotic materials.

Of course, theres also the benefit that such a settlement would have for exploring (and colonizing) the outer Solar System. With a large population and infrastructure around Ceres, ships destined for Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond would have a stopover point to refuel and take on supplies. Potential destinations for colonies could include the Galilean Moons, the moons of Saturn, or orbiting habitats in both systems.

This would give humanity access to the abundant resources of these systems and usher in an age of post-scarcity. In the meantime, this Ceres megaconstellation would provide an Earth-like environment for a sizeable population within the Main Asteroid Belt, one that could be upgraded to make room for many more people. As Dr. Janhunen indicated:

The Ceres megasatellite could scale up to hundreds of billions of people, probably, so it would suffice at least for a few centuries [O]nce there is experience living in an artificial habitat, one could build the follow-up habitat anywhere with small body material available, and energy. The Kuiper belt comes to mind.

At its core, Dr. Janhunens concept is a marriage of space construction and in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) with some key elements of terraforming thrown in. The end result of this is a design for a scalable settlement that could allow human beings to colonize otherwise uninhabitable parts of the Solar System. When addressing the future of humanity in space, both the challenges and the rewards are clear.

In order to get to the rewards, we need to get mighty creative and be prepared to commit!

Further Reading: arXiv

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A Habitat at Ceres Could be the Gateway to the Outer Solar System - Universe Today

Back in 2011, Morgan Stanleys head auto analyst Adam Jonas made a bold call which made many other analysts on Wall Street chuckle.

He said that the nascent and largely unproven electric vehicle market which, at the time, accounted for less than 0.1% of global passenger car sales was going to explode higher over the next decade to 5.5% penetration by 2020. Eventually, Jonas argued, EVs would disrupt everything we know about autos.

Few believed him. But he was spot on.

Most projections imply that electric vehicle penetration will hit exactly 5.5% this year, with many countries targeting 20%-plus EV penetration by 2025, and 50%-plus penetration by 2030-2035.

Jonas was right. EVs are disrupting everything we know about autos.

Those savvy investors who listened to Jonas back in 2011 made a bunch of money. Especially those who bought Jonas top pick Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) at a split-adjusted stock price of about $5.

Today, Teslas stock trades hands at $850 implying a jaw-dropping return of 169,000%.

Source: InvestorPlace

Sorry you missed out on Tesla? Dont be.

Jonas crowned the mad scientist by many on Wall Street has set his eyes on a new industry. Space travel.

Much like his EV prognostication a decade ago, Jonas believes the commercial space market is on the cusp of breakthrough growth over the next few decades.

Thanks to technological advancements and increasing investor and public interest, Jonas and his team at Morgan Stanley see the commercial space market potentially growing by almost 400% to $1.7 TRILLION in 2040.

Hes not wrong

Hes spot on.

The commercialization of space in the 2020s and 2030s and the creation of a multi-trillion-dollar Space Economy will be one of the greatest investment megatrends of our lifetimes.

Heres the story.

Space has always held great potential. But after Americans won the Space Race in 1969, public and financial interest in space exploration died down. Not because the potential became any less promising. But because time and time again we failed to turn that potential into something tangible, as our progress was consistently limited by technological shortcomings.

Until now.

In 2020, rapidly falling manufacturing costs converged with an injection of private funding, multiple technological advancements, and growing public-sector interest to breathe life back into the long-forgotten space market.

The result? Were going back to space.

In 2020 alone, NASA flew astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time since 2011, leading rocket company SpaceX launched a record-breaking 26 space missions, and leading space tourism company Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE) completed its first two successful glide flights with its SpaceShipTwo spacecraft.

This momentum will only pick up in 2021.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully deployed a Turkish communications satellite in early January. Virgin Galactic plans to fly its Chairman, billionaire Richard Branson, into space this year. Peer rocket company Blue Origin just completed a successful test flight of a human-capable rocket last week, and said that it is very, very close to flying humans on suborbital launches.

Folks things couldnt get any clearer.

We are on the cusp of being able to fly devices and people to and from space as easily as it would be to fly them from city to city.

This ease of mobility opens the door for the birth of a multi-trillion-dollar Space Economy.

You see there is so much untapped economic opportunity in space.

Theres the much hyped-up space tourism category, which will be big because lets face it who doesnt want to see Earth from space?

Theres the satellite imaging market, which will become increasingly important in the self-driving era since dynamic satellite imagery will provide important landscape and terrain data for autonomous vehicles.

Theres the satellite tracking market, too, which will also become more and more important in the IoT era where everything is smart and trackable, and companies will leverage satellites to track their IoT assets.

And how could I forget the connectivity market? Companies will increasingly use satellites to fix the worlds internet problem and beam high-speed connectivity to everyone, everywhere.

Or what about the space solar market? Thatll be big, too, since every square foot of solar panel in space gets about 10X more energy than every square foot of solar panel on Earth.

Dont even get me started on space mining. There is an abundance of water in asteroids, the Moon and Mars. Theres a shortage of drinkable water on Earth. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to connect those dots no pun intended.

Get the point?

The economic opportunities in space are infinite.

And today represents the beginning of humans unlocking all those opportunities.

Of course, that means there has never been a better time to invest in space stocks. Its no wonder that the widely respected Catherine Wood and Ark Invest are launching a brand-new space exploration ETF (ARKX) this year.

You should follow their lead. Space stocks will breakout in 2021 like EV stocks broke out in 2020. The returns will be enormous.

My favorite names in the group? Space tourism leader Virgin Galactic, space infrastructure expert Maxar Technologies (NYSE:MAXR), and space mobility technology provider Momentus (NASDAQ:SRAC).

Theres a triple-digit winner sitting in that group and maybe two or three.

On the date of publication, Luke Lango did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.

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The Big 3 Stocks to Buy for the Emergence of the $2 Trillion Space Economy - InvestorPlace

Last week, NASA awarded a contract modification to Boeings contract to support the International Space Station by providing six additional solar arrays to the ISS. The additional solar arrays will generate additional power generating capacity to support the ISSs growing research capabilities and commercial opportunities. The modification to Boeings ISS sustainment contract with NASA calls for Boeing to deliver the six additional solar arrays to NASA for installation beginning in 2021.

Combined with the eight original, larger arrays, this advanced hardware will provide a 20 to 30 percent increase in power, helping to maximize the stations capabilities for years to come. The arrays will provide ISS with electricity to sustain its systems and equipment, plus augment the electricity available to continue a wide variety of public and private experiments and research in the stations unique microgravity environment.

The additional power generating capacity will advance the position of the ISS as a reliable and cost-effective testbed for research and a starting point for future deep space exploration missions.

Boeing is NASAs prime contractor for sustaining the ISS. Boeing employees in Alabama work closely with NASA at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville to provide sustaining engineering and manufacturing support for the ISS.

Economic developer Nicole Jones said: Boeing, a global leader in aerospace and defense, is NASAs prime contractor tasked with sustaining the International Space Station (ISS). In this role, Alabama-based Boeing employees collaborate with NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville to provide continued engineering and manufacturing support for the ISS. Boeing has been in Huntsville since 1962. The companys local presence brings tremendous economic benefits to north Alabama, our entire state, and our nation. We are in another space race, and Boeings technological advances highlight Alabamas important role in the aerospace industry as well as national security.

The new 63-foot-by-20-foot arrays will together produce more than 120 kilowatts of electricity from the suns energy, enough to power more than 40 average U.S. homes.

When it comes to game-changing research and technological development, the space station is currently hitting its full stride, said John Mulholland, the ISS vice president and program manager for Boeing. These arrays, along with other recent upgrades to the stations power system and data-transfer speed, will ensure that ISS remains an incubator and business model in the commercial space ecosystem for the coming decades. Access to this unique lab will continue to pay off as researchers study the challenges of future deep-space exploration and make discoveries that improve life on Earth.

Most of the ISS systems, including its communications systems, batteries and scientific equipment racks, have been upgraded since humans began a continuous presence on the orbiting laboratory in November 2000.

Two International Docking Adapters, manufactured by Boeing, have been attached to the ISS to allow commercial spacecraft to dock autonomously to the station. Boeing is the prime contractor for ISS sustainment. The companys studies have determined that the ISS could safely operate beyond 2030 if NASA and its international partners choose to do so.

Deployable Space Systems of Santa Barbara, California, will produce the structure of the new arrays, including the canister and frame that will unfurl to hold the solar-array blankets in place. Deployable Space Systems also built the canister, frame and solar array blanket for a prototype of the new arrays that was successfully tested aboard the ISS in June 2017.

Spectrolab, a Boeing company based in Sylmar, California, produces the arrays XTJ Prime solar cells, which will be some of the most powerful ever launched into space. They are the same solar cells that power Boeings CST-100 Starliner spacecraft in flight and while docked to the ISS.

Spectrolab also produced the stations original solar cells, as well as the solar cells tested on the prototype.

The XTJ Prime space solar cells are much more efficient than any of their predecessors and are fit to support the cutting-edge research being done aboard the International Space Station, said Tony Mueller, president of Spectrolab.

Boeing is the worlds largest aerospace company and leading provider of commercial airplanes, defense, space and security systems, and global services.

As the top U.S. exporter, the company supports commercial and government customers in more than 150 countries and leverages the talents of a global supplier base. Building on a legacy of aerospace leadership, Boeing continues to lead in technology and innovation, deliver for its customers and invest in its people and future growth.

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Boeing to provide solar arrays for the International Space Station - alreporter.com

In December, as investors pulled more than $15 billion out of active U.S. equity funds and as half of the largest fund managers suffered outflows six-year-old ARK Investment Management was having its best month yet.

Investors allocated $8.2 billion into ARKs exchange-traded funds last month, among the highest net inflows of any U.S. fund manager, according to Morningstars end-of-year fund flows report. It was the culmination of a breakout year for the ETF firm founded by Cathie Wood, which grew from $3.1 billion at the end of 2019 to $34.5 billion by the end of 2020.

ARKs December surge in assets representing a 35 percent increase over Novembers inflows followed a year of outperformance by the firms actively managed ETFs, which focus on what ARK describes as disruptive innovation. The Morningstar report suggested that investors might be chasing those funds outperformance, as five of the firms six ETFs delivered triple-digit gains in 2020 that put them at or near the top of their respective categories.

These included the firms flagship ARK Innovation ETF, which benefitted as its largest holding, Tesla, soared 743 percent over the course of the calendar year. The ETF attracted about $3.14 billion in assets in December, ranking as the fifth-most-popular U.S. fund for the month.

It was closely followed by the ARK Genomic Revolution ETF, which recorded roughly $3.09 billion in net inflows. The ETF, which focuses on health care innovations including gene-based therapies, had the sixth-highest flows of any U.S. fund in December.

[II Deep Dive: Cathie Wood Still Thinks Tesla Is Going to $6,800. Why?]

Altogether, ARK ranked fifth in total U.S. fund flows, according to Morningstar. This put the ETF firm in company with asset management giants including BlackRocks iShares. One of the largest ETF businesses in the U.S. with over $2 trillion in assets, iShares recorded $11.7 billion in net inflows in December.

The growth of ARK ETF Trust is nothing short of impressive, Morningstar said.

ARK, which recently struck a deal to keep founder and CEO Wood as the firms majority shareholder, is already looking for new ways to expand in 2021. Last week, the firm filed plans with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a new ETF targeting space exploration.

See more here:

Ten-fold Growth and a 740 Percent Stock Gain: Cathie Wood's Breakout Year by the Numbers - Institutional Investor

January 14, 2021

Editor's note:This is the third of three parts of the story of ASU's geologists.Read the firstand second installments.

Michael Crow became the 16th president of ASU in 2002. After he arrived, he met with the geology faculty. Ed Stump was at the meeting.

He basically said, Hey, you guys, you're the best department in the university, at least from the standpoint of dollars, which we were. I mean, at one point we had more money than chemistry or biology, and we had a third or half or less than half of the faculty per capita. We were way out ahead of the rest of the university, Stump said. And he said, So give me a plan. What do you want to do? You know, it was carte blanche.

After weeks of fumbling around and coming up with Venn diagrams with no vision at all, as Stump recalled, Crow, planetary geologist Philip Christensen (who had massive NASA funding) and some faculty who are no longer at ASU came up with the idea to merge with the astronomers from physics and make the geology department a superdepartment whose main emphasis was interdisciplinary geoscience and astrophysics research: the School of Earth and Space Exploration.

It started operations in 2006.

Crow wanted something bigger and splashier and more interdisciplinary, Professor Emeritus Jim Tyburczy said. Not everybody was totally gung ho, but by far the biggest majority said, Well, this is our path to the future. Lets take it.

Ramon Arrowsmith came to ASU in 1995, bridging the Troy Pw era with the creation of the School of Earth and Space Exploration.

I got a few other offers, but this was really the best, the most interesting, I felt like the most challenging, he said. I'm also from Albuquerque. So I liked being in the Southwest.

Arrowsmith studies earthquake geology, paleoseismology and the geomorphology of fault zones, publishing about their history of activity and hazards. Hes a field geologist. Prepandemic, he had racked up about 120,000 frequent-flyer miles. East Africa, the Himalayas, western China and southeast Asia are all places he has worked. He has floated the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon six times (including once withPw and again on the trip wherePw called in on a ham radio).

Ramon Arrowsmith

One of the exciting things that geology does is it gives you this ability to sort of see in four dimensions, you know, what's going on and what has happened and maybe think about what will happen, Arrowsmith said.

Arrowsmith is now associate director of operationsof the school. He has been called one of its key developers.

I think what really propelled everything was the high stature, big missions, big money associated with planetary science, he said. But to do it well you have to have some good geologists around who are studying the Earth because Earth analogs training of those planetary scientists, so theres that partnership.

Kip Hodges came to ASU in 2006 to be the founding director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, a position he held until 2013.

Ask him where his research lies and hell give you a 15-minute, four-paragraph answer. Continental tectonics. Structural geology. Geochemistry. Geochronology and thermochronology. Planetary science.

So it's not an easy answer to your question, he said. I'm sorry. I can't just say, This is the field that I pursued.

For geologists today, thats a common answer. It all tends to run together.

That's one of the goals of the school and one of the reasons I was recruited to be the founding director, Hodges said.

Kip Hodges

Hodges came from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of his tasks there was to try to get engineers and scientists to work together better than they historically had.

I had done a lot of work on that, and had a lot of success on that, he said.

The idea was this new school was going to have geological sciences, planetary sciences, astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and forays into systems engineering. Hodges liked the idea.

President Crow was kind enough to make it a presidential initiative at ASU, he said. And so he put lots and lots of resources into it to make it the great school that it is right now. So that's what convinced me to come and do it.

It was not a particularly hard sell when I heard the description of what the school was going to be. I won't lie to say that there were no bumps in the road, but on the other hand for the most part, the faculty were very engaged and very enthusiastic and bought into the vision for the school. And so any success I had was directly associated with how willing the faculty at ASU were to buy into that.

The schools astronomers and astrophysicists have benefited from rubbing elbows with the geoscientists. The perfect example is the hottest field in astronomy and astrophysics now: exoplanets. As of December 2020, 4,307 have been confirmed, according to NASA. There are 5,683 candidates.

In the early years of exoplanets, it was really just about looking at brightness variations as something passed in front of a star to identify the existence of an exoplanet. Now scientists are getting to the point where they have to think about exoplanets as planets. Geoscientists know an awful lot about the evolution of one planet in particular.

It's a beautiful connectivity between astronomy, astrophysics and geological sciences, if we can take advantage of it, Hodges said. We're trying hard to take advantage of that. So I think it's a great evolution. The thing we have to understand is that those kinds of broad integrative ways of looking at problems are spectacularly important. The problem is that to do transdisciplinary science very well, youve got to make sure that you have rock-solid disciplinary science. And that's the difficulty in building a university program like the program we have: If we become too planetary, or if we become too astrophysical, or if we become too geological, we actually tilt the balance. How do we stay deep, but also broad?

Kelin Whipple is a geomorphologist interested in the interactions among climate, topography and tectonics. He worked with Hodges at MIT. When Hodges was hired as the founding director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, he urged Whipple to join him.

It was just the excitement to come be a part of something new, Whipple said. Just to try to break new boundaries and do things that hadn't really been done before.

Faculty at the school work on developing interconnections in the spaces between different classical fields.

We don't really like to think of a strength in this or that, Whipple said. We like to think of we've got the strength to tackle this problem or that problem, wherever it might lie, in terms of disciplinary boundaries.

Kelin Whipple is a geomorphologistinterested in the interactions among climate, topography and tectonics and in the interactions between the space and geology segments of the school. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU

Rather than thinking of the strength of one group over another, Whipple looks at the school like an M.C. Escher staircase.

I'm probably never going to directly collaborate with, say, Evan Scannapieco, who works on the evolution of galaxies and so on, but you can follow a chain of people I work with and who they work with and you can follow that channel all the way around and you're going to get to someone with a collaboration with Evan Scannapieco. It's pretty cool that there is a link that you can follow between any faculty member and another and have interactions.

Fifty years ago that wasnt the case.

Thats the idea, Whipple said. To change things.

Like the lion and the lamb, the geomorphologist is unlikely to lie down with the astrophysicist. Unimportant, Whipple said.

We do still speak a pretty common language, right? We work with the same kind of differential equations. The same physics applies, just in different environments and different people need to get into physics to a different level to do their work. But there's still a common language and a common approach to what you do to do science.

Arjun Heimsath is a classic warrior poet. Raised on a Texas Hill Country ranch and in the Himalayan foothills, he climbs cliffs and mountains, races triathlons, writes poetry and speaks Hindi, Kiswahili and Nepali. When he was a child, his parents father a Texan professor, mother an Indian professor drove him and his brother from Germany to India in a VW bus, spent two years traveling around, then drove back.

I think that childhood combined with them, this passion to connect what humans are doing to the landscape, with how the landscape is operating, really brought home the importance of quantifying how our Earth surface works, he said. That just still resonates with me and still plays a role, I think.

A geomorphologist by accident, he has worked in Australia, Tibet, South Africa, the Himalayas, Kenya, Alaska and Chile. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Yale and joined the Peace Corps in Kenya working in water development.

Professor Arjun Heimsath does infiltration experiments in the Atacama Desert a couple years ago, with surface temperature above 130 degrees. Photo courtesy of Arjun Heimsath

That connection between what humans did to the Earth surface and water quality and water supply switched me from being an engineer to being an environmental scientist/geologist, he said.

Heimsath didnt study geology as an undergrad. He didnt go on field trips or culminate his studies in field camp.

I didn't actually recognize that this whole notion of field work was so integral to geosciences until I was a PhD student, and then very early on in my PhD training, I was working on a problem, he said. My adviser had me work on a computer model of what we were doing for this problem. And I hated it. I just hated it. I basically decided then that I was going to focus on field work rather than the modeling part. I mean, obviously you have to model in order to interpret your fields yourselves, and you have to model to actually tell a good story. But I think one of the aspects of my work that sets it aside, in some ways my emphasis has always been about collecting samples and then making the measurements that are all field-based. And sure, I love being in cool places.

Heimsath and three of his colleagues are working on a summary talk about the future of geomorphology for the upcoming American Geophysical Union conference. (One of the worlds biggest scientific conferences, its Lollapalooza for geoscientists. The School of Earth and Space Exploration has a booth there every year.)

The take-home message that Heimsath really wants to convey is to get off the computer and get out in the field and get back out on the landscape, because what is happening is so many earth scientists don't ever leave the computer screen anymore.

It's all done right here, instead of actually being out there digging holes or banging on rocks or collecting stream samples or measuring how much water is going down a river, he said.

Geomorphology is not like working on NASA missions. The public has no idea about any of it, and your chances of appearing on CNN are slim to none. Heimsath jokes that surface-process scientists just dig holes on small budgets and drive down dirt roads.

We don't get a lot of attention, but that's fine, he said. We love what we do. But in the surface-processes communities, ASU is known to be a very strong player.

Many people, including several youve heard from in this story, stumble into geology by accident, get hooked and pursue it as their lifes passion. Amanda Clarke is one of them.

She started as an intern aerospace engineer at Boeing, working on the 777. Boeings plant is close to Mount St. Helens, which caught her attention. The company offered Friday afternoon lectures, and one such was about what happens to aircraft when they fly through volcanic plumes. A chief pilot trainer discussed a KLM flight where all four engines failed and the plane nearly crashed, along with similar incidents.

And so that got me really interested, Clarke said.

Associate Professor Amanda Clarke is at the LUSI mud volcano site in East Java, Indonesia. It looks like a construction site because they are trying to contain the mud using human-made levees. Photo courtesy of Amanda Clarke

She wrote a Fulbright fellowship application to study sociocultural interactions with volcanic environments in the Philippines. Eventually she wound up studying for her PhD with a Penn State volcanologist. She has studied volcanoes in Italy, the Caribbean and Indonesia, as well as dead volcanoes in Arizona.

What I do in volcanoes and volcanology is a good mix of field science, but it kind of uses my background in fluid mechanics, she said.

Volcanologists are rare at U.S. universities (in a European institution there are often six or seven together). Clarke came to ASU because she liked the environment, and the fact that the university has a legacy of volcanology. The science, like every other branch of geology, has evolved into an interdisciplinary tree.

Associate Professor Amanda Clarke (left) is on La Fossa cone in Italy, collecting volcanic ash samples with graduate student Jisoo Kim. The eruptions are from about 15001890. Photo courtesy of Amanda Clarke

If you're a volcano scientist, you have to at least understand the language of lots of different things, Clarke said. So if you're looking at an active eruption, then you have to kind of understand the language of a seismologist, a geodesist, a petrologist and a gas geochemist, and what the deposits look like and the physical processes. That's one of the things I like about volcanology: If you work on active eruptions, you get to rub elbows with different kinds of engineers and geophysicist and chemists. I find it really fun.

Melanie Barboni is one of the most recent School of Earth and Space Exploration hires in geosciences. She studies volcanoes, the formation of the moon, the early evolution of the solar system and rocky planets.

I am the kind of person who gets bored if I just stay in the same field, because one field is not representative of the whole picture you need, the Swiss native said. It's a complex system. And that is the reason I wake up every morning still feeling excited about my job because it is not always the same thing. And at the end of the day, I feel like I have a better understanding of the big-picture processes if I don't only look at one tiny detail of each one of them, you know what I mean?

Plus, she finds lunar samples and meteorites irresistible. Barboni has always found rocks irresistible.

When I was a baby, I was already grabbing rocks around my blanket and putting them in my nose and in my mouth, which was trusting (of) my parents. And then when I was able to work, I just collected product and my room was full of rocks. I spent my whole childhood and teenage years collecting rocks and reading books about gemstonesm,Barboni said. And then I got interested in the processes behind them. And I asked my parents, What does it take to be a geologist? And I was maybe 7 at the time.

She came to ASU in 2018. It was the last of three interviews. The first two felt like interviews. The school did not.

Assistant Professor Melanie Barboni is on the Haleakala volcano on the Hawaiian island of Maui on June 20, 2016. Photo courtesy of Melanie Barboni

I had fun with my colleagues, she said. It was like an exchange of science. It was fun. They were awesome. And I felt like I'm a people person and I really need a family. Because I left mine in Switzerland. I felt that the department could be. And also, it turns out that the department was the best one by far.

Barboni trained as a geochemist. I can offer a lot of tools to people, she said. On her resume is a list of exotic analytical tools she works with: laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, isotope dilution thermal ionization mass spectrometry and others.

I don't think people at (the School of Earth and Space Exploration) see themselves as a little clan, she said. "This is what makes this department very different. We are one block. I have common interests with Christy Till. And I have a lot of common interests with Ed Garnero because we would like maybe to investigate how geochemistry and geophysics can be used together. We also have other interests outside (the school). Actually, he does woodworking I do too. He's a musician I'm also a musician. So he's a great friend.

"I have a connection with everyone there, she said. Every time I talk to a colleague, there is always that possibility that there could be a collaboration.

And collaboration will continue to be the key to unlocking the mysteries of mountains and volcanoes, deserts and canyons, the seen and the unseen.

"Oh, this smile that I have on my face is a geological smile a smile of who knows, looks at something, sees and understands. This very ravine is an open book to me, a page of Earths history on which I read a thousand fantastic things.

Monteiro Lobato, "O Poo do Visconde," 1937

Top photo by Pixabay

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Part 2: A change at the top as space comes into play - ASU Now

It was right around dawn on the frigid world of Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn, when the ice robots began to stir. Receiving their marching orders from half a billion miles away, the frozen rovers twitched and hummed and cracked in temperatures hundreds of degrees below freezing point.

These were not robots that had simply been covered in a thin layer of ice, like a car thats been left out on a cold winters night. Instead, they were hewn almost exclusively out of great chunks of ice; giant, frozen sculptures that moved and probed the surface of one of the solar systems most tantalizingly unexplored worlds, animated by the search for life.

A dramatic, science fiction way to open an article about a new concept for building robots? Quite possibly. But if researchers from the GRASP Lab (thats General Robotics, Automation, Sensing, and Perception) at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia are correct, this may not remain science fiction for too much longer.

Heck, it could pretty soon fall under the category of common sense.

Remote-controlled rovers have been used as part of space exploration going back decades. NASA included Lunar Roving Vehicles in three of its Apollo missions, starting with Apollo 15, which landed on the moon in July 1971. The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity was in active service on red planet for a decade-and-a-half, from 2004 until early 2019.

But while these kinds of exploratory robots are built to be robust, theres a limit to their survivability. The car-sized Curiosity picked up some severe tire damage while making its way across the martian surface, peppered as it is with sharp rocks. If there were mechanics on Mars, NASA may have taken the Curiosity rover into the shop by now, opined Space.com.

Meanwhile, the long-running Opportunity mission went dark for good following an intense dust storm in 2018. This obscured its solar panels, leaving it to run out of battery. NASA clung on for another year before finally admitting the mission had come to an early, unceremonious end. Its identical twin, Spirit, was previously pronounced dead in 2011 after becoming stuck in Martian sand.

This is a problem because, while the robots may cost millions to make, theyre at the center of missions that can cost in the billions of dollars. If they suffer damage or technical misfortune, no matter if its just damaged tires or dust on the solar panels, it means that all the effort up until then the construction process, the rocket launch, the landing is for naught. Its like having to abandon your new supercar for good at the side of the road because youve suffered a flat.

Thats why researchers want to build modular robots that can repair or otherwise augment themselves in scenarios where shipping in a replacement simply isnt feasible from a cost and logistics perspective. They could even, in theory, build replicas of themselves or other robots entirely. To do this, they would utilize local materials like, say, ice on an ice moon.

This is where the GRASP Labs IceBot project comes into the picture. IceBot is a first-of-its-kind robot made from ice, Devin Carroll, lead author on the project, told Digital Trends. [In our new work, we present] a proof-of-concept, two-wheeled robot to show the feasibility of building robots from ice. Our intent with this technology is to advance the self-repair, self-reconfiguration, and self-replication capabilities of exploration robots. In making a robot like this, we are one step closer to a true self-replicating system one that can use materials from the local environment to repair, augment, and replicate itself.

Carroll and collaborator Mark Yim began their project by exploring ways to build robots using found materials. This would help expand the robustness of such systems operating in distant or hostile locations by allowing them to recycle and reuse equipment that was found in the local environment.

We chose to use ice as our primary building material because of its design flexibility, Carroll continued. Interest in icy environments is relatively high due to research relating to climate change, as well as extra-terrestrial exploration. Using ice as a building material allows us to repair the robot on the fly, extending the total operational life of the system as it collects data in these remote and harsh environments.

This wouldnt have to be somewhere as far-flung as Enceladus, of course. It could be somewhere closer to home, like Antarctica, where remote-controlled robots can also be useful for conducting research. In either case, when the elements begin to wear away or break down, new ones could be created as replacements, much in the same way that biological bodies can regenerate.

The researchers have so far built a proof-of-concept demo robot thats able to operate for periods in both room-temperature and subzero environments, traveling over hard rubber surfaces and climbing icy, inclined ramps. Along with the ice body, it utilizes an Arduino Micro microcontroller, Bluetooth module, and a few other manufactured components.

Its still early days, however. Proving that a robot with a body made out of ice can function is one thing. But a big, and very difficult, part of the project manufacturing the ice components autonomously has yet to be demonstrated. The researchers are considering multiple approaches, including 3D printing, molding, and machining, each of which has its pros and cons.

Our immediate goal is to design a module joint that will allow us to automate the assembly process, Carroll said. We will be able use automation to join our actuators with the ice rather than building the robot by hand. In conjunction with this, we are developing an end effector to manipulate blocks of ice without permanently deforming them, as would happen through the use of traditional fasteners like screws.

He continued: An interesting design challenge we must solve with both of these directions is ensuring that we maximize the connection strength while the amount of energy used to join the components with the ice is minimized. In remote environments, energy is a valued commodity. Systems like IceBot will only be effective if we consider energy usage when designing them.

Projects like this are only going to become more important. In the pioneer tradition, being able to utilize new, local materials for everything from growing food to building habitats is a crucial part of surviving and thriving in space. Robots that dont have to be shipped, at vast expense, from Earth to wherever they need to go is one more piece of the puzzle.

A paper describing the IceBot project, titled Robots Made From Ice: An Analysis of Manufacturing Techniques, was recently presented at IROS (The International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Systems) 2020.

Read more:

The latest wild idea for space exploration? Robots made from hunks of ice - Digital Trends

In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as alarums and excursions: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.

This column, up until now, has been devoted to exploring works of fiction. But looking around my den recently, I realized there have been many non-fiction books that influenced my view of the future. Today, Im going to look at one of my early favorites, written by a pioneer of rocketry, Willy Ley. In the 1960s, it was impossible not to get caught up in the excitement of the space program, and I was fortunate to have a dad who worked in aerospace and was a collector of all sorts of fascinating books on scientific topics.

Some of my earliest memories involve poking through my fathers books, and one of my favorite discoveries was Rockets, Missiles, & Space Travel. Before I could read, I would simply look at the pictures printed on glossy paper at the beginning of the book, filled with both imaginary ships and the real rockets of the 1930s through 1950s. And as I learned to read, I started going through the book in earnest, consuming it in bits and pieces. Leys book was not my only source for information on the space programI spent hours scouring magazines like Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Life, and National Geographic for articles, as well as seeking out the fact-filled articles in my dads science fiction magazines (many of which were also written by Willy Ley).

I still have that very same copy of Rockets, Missiles, & Space Travel, tattered and yellowed. And you can tell it was last read by a young boy in the 1960s since its bookmarked with a now-vintage flyer promoting accessories for the Mattel Fanner-50 bullet-loading smoking cap pistol, a toy that was promoted because of the way it looked just like a real gun from the Wild West.

At a young age, I remember seeing Willy Ley on TV, as part of the Disneyland episode Man in Space. I did not see it on its first run (it was made the year of my birth), but instead saw it on the later show, The Wonderful World of Disney, or perhaps at elementary school, where the Disney documentaries were always enjoyed by me and my fellow students. That installment (which also featured Wernher von Braun) was basically a video summary of Rockets, Missiles, & Space Travel, with animated sections that helped illustrate concepts from the book in an entertaining way (barring the one scene which depicts the Chinese inventors of skyrockets in a condescending and racist manner). (Additional note: I recently found out that Man in Space is currently available for subscribers to the Disney+ streaming service.)

About the Author

Willy Ley (1906-1969) was a German rocket scientist who emigrated to the United States as the Nazis took power before World War II. He grew up near Berlins Museum of Natural History, and was interested in the sciences from an early age. Ley was very taken by pioneering scientist Hermann Oberths The Rocket into Interplanetary Space, but felt it was too complex for a wide audience. So, at the age of 19, he set out to write a more accessible book, which was published a year later as Travel in Outer Space.

Ley was an early member of Germanys Spaceflight Society, often known by the acronym VfR. In 1929, there was talk of using an actual rocket launch to popularize Fritz Langs film Woman in the Moon, and Ley and Oberth were involved in assisting the filmmakers with their portrayal of space travel. But while the movie caused a flurry of experimentation, the launch never took place. At about the same time, in German, Ley wrote his only science fiction novel. Things grew tough for rocket enthusiasts during the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s, as funds for rocketry experimentation dried up and disappeared. One of the few exceptions was work for the expanding German military, a path that some VfR members took, including Wernher von Braun. Ley chose to follow a different path. Horrified by the growing power and repulsive philosophies of the Nazi movement, in 1935, he fled first to England and then to America.

Ley became a popular writer of science articles for American science fiction magazines (first appearing in Astounding and Amazing, and eventually penning a long-running regular column in Galaxy), and wrote a few fictional tales as well, using the pen name Robert Willey. He also participated in American science fiction fandom. He wrote several influential books in addition to Rockets, Missiles, & Space Travel, including The Conquest of Space, published in 1949 and beautifully illustrated by Chesley Bonestell; Conquest of the Moon, written with Wernher von Braun and Fred L. Whipple in 1953; and The Exploration of Mars in 1954, also written with von Braun and illustrated by Bonestell. Ley was not so much a working engineer as a popularizer of, and advocate for, the field of space exploration, explaining the science in accessible terms to a wide audience. Unfortunately, Ley died just before the first moon landing in 1969, and was not able to witness the attainment of a goal he had championed for so many years. In 2016, he was referred to as a Prophet of the Space Age in Air & Space Magazine, in an interview with Jared Buss, author of a biography of Ley that uses that phrase as its title.

Rockets, Missiles, & Space Travel

This book originally appeared as Rockets in 1944, the third printing of which featured additional material. A rewritten version was published as Rockets and Space Travel in 1947, and a second printing with further additional material was published in 1948. Another revision, with the final title of Rockets, Missiles, and Space Travel, first appeared in 1951, and the fourth printing in 1951 contained newly added material. My fathers copy was from the sixth printing published in 1954. These multiple printings and changing editions demonstrate the hunger for information on the topic, as well as the rapidly changing state of the technology involved.

Ley was one of the earliest authors to pitch his writing on space travel toward the layman instead of scientists and engineers. He wrote in a conversational style, and his enthusiasm for the subject and opinions are always in the forefront. While the book is full of statistics, tables and appendices, it holds your interest, and Ley had a knack for presenting complex topics in a straightforward manner.

The first two chapters cover the early history of astronomy, and speculation about the heavens and the solar system. Ley takes great joy in chronicling not only those who contributed to the advancement of knowledge, but also eccentric dreamers full of far-fetched ideas, especially those who speculated about travel to other planets. The third chapter covers the earliest days of rocketry, from Chinese skyrockets to British war rockets (of the rockets red glare fame). These early chapters are the part of the book I remember best, and I recall reading them several times.

The book then moves on to early ideas about aviation, and schemes to use steam and gunpowder rockets to power these craft. As the book moves into the 1920s, the perspective changes, and the narrative becomes very Eurocentric. This is not just because the continent was the center for rocketry development in that era, but because Ley is writing about events where he was personally involved. There was clearly a lot of rivalry and jealousy in those days. He speaks highly of Professor Hermann Oberth, although he felt the mans book on space travel was impenetrable to lay people, and expresses pride in the efforts of his fellow members of the VfR rocketry society. Ley enjoyed working with Oberth in advising film director Fritz Lang, although their aforementioned attempt to build a real rocket to launch along with his movies premiere did not come to fruition.

Ley was less impressed with people like Max Valier who were known for staging stunts, like rocket-powered cars for the Opel automobile company, which he felt had no scientific value. He was hurt by American scientist Robert Goddards rebuffing of his German counterparts, feeling that if they had all shared information, more progress could have been made on liquid-fueled rockets. And he was deeply disappointed when Johannes Winkler became the first European to successfully launch a liquid-fueled rocket, beating a team Ley was working with.

In discussing these early efforts, Ley also does a great job portraying the engineering challenges these pioneers faced. Everyone knew the basic scientific principles involved. Newtons Third Law explains how the exhaust of a rocket would push the rocket forward. Combustion requires both a fuel and an oxidizer, which can either be contained in a solid form that burns when ignited, or kept in liquid state in separate containers. Properly shaped nozzles can maximize the effectiveness of thrust. But not all solid fuels are as stable as old tried-and-true, but not terribly effective, gunpowder. Oxygen is (of course) the best oxidizer, but needs to be stored in liquid form at extremely cold temperatures. Many oxygen-rich liquids that do not require refrigeration are highly corrosive. And the more powerful a fuel, the more prone it is to not only combust, but explode. Nozzles melt at the heats required to produce the necessary thrust. This was the part of the book I found most fascinating as an adult readerhow the pioneers faced and overcame each of these unique challenges.

The book then discusses rocketry efforts as World War II approached, and the viewpoint shifts again. Because Ley had emigrated to America, he learned about these events second-hand, after the war. The book describes the German rocketry program, culminating with the powerful V-2 rocket. Because of the V-2s lack of guidance systems, the rocket had little direct impact on the course of the war, although the idea of unstoppable rockets bringing destruction certainly impacted the morale of the British people. At the German rocket base of Peenemnde, headed by Leys former VfR compatriot Wernher von Braun, the science and engineering of rocketry made huge advances, unmatched by the efforts of any other nation. It will not come as a surprise to most modern readers to learn that, after the war, the United States executed Operation Paperclip to extract many of those German rocket personnel, forgiving their Nazi ties, and putting them to work on American rocketry programs.

The book then follows American rocketry efforts at the White Sands proving ground, where the first multi-stage rocket was launched, and a new facility on the Florida coast called Cape Canaveral. These sections, like many others in the book, are full of technical information of greater interest to me as an adult than as a child. In my youth, my attention was instead captured by the descriptions of efforts to break the sound barrier with rocket-propelled aircraft and the bravery of aviation pioneer Chuck Yeager.

And then the book shifts to subjects that again caught the interest of my younger self: How satellites could stay in orbit around the Earth. What tasks those satellites might perform. What impact space travel might have on humans. How space stations would work, how they could create quasi-gravity by spinning, how they could maintain stability, control temperatures, and dispose of waste. Plus a whole host of other technologies, like intra-orbital transports, space suits, and fully reusable launch vehicles. Ley also explores how getting facilities into orbit would provide a staging ground for travel to other planets, and the orbital paths explorers would use to get there. I first read these sections in the mid-1960s, and they provided fascinating details that explained what I was seeing on television and in the pictorial articles in Life magazine. I was enthralled by the potential wonders the future might bring.

The book concludes with a host of appendices with details on rockets, orbital mechanics, and other topics that might have bogged down the larger narrative. One in particular caught my younger eye: the Sanger antipodal bomber, a Nazi project from WWII that never got off the drawing board. It was a rocket-powered plane that would not orbit the earth, but would leave the atmosphere and then skip across its upper fringes like a smooth stone skips across a still lake. Being quite familiar with skipping stones, this concept always fascinated me, and I was disappointed to learn that the method had not proven feasible.

Rockets, Missiles, & Space Travel was an important element of the space program. At a time when actual space travel was still a dream, it helped capture the imagination of readers around the world. Without passionate and articulate advocates like Willy Ley, astronauts like John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin might have never have had a chance to make their pioneering journeys into the unknown.

Final Thoughts

Id be delighted to hear feedback from anyone else who was exposed to Rockets, Missiles, and Space Travel at an early age, or to the Disney Man in Space documentary that was based on the book. And Id also like to hear about your other favorite non-fiction resources as well: What books, documentaries, or magazines shaped your view of the future, and helped you learn about science, technology, and the universe we live in?

Alan Brown has been a science fiction fan for over five decades, especially fiction that deals with science, military matters, exploration and adventure.

The rest is here:

The Science of Space: Rockets, Missiles, & Space Travel by Willy Ley - tor.com

15 January 2021

This first contract between both organisations represents an exciting opportunity to define and shape the nuclear power solutions required in space in the decades to come.

Rolls-Royce is the only company in the world with a singular focus on creating mechanical, electrical and nuclear power solutions that will be essential in tackling the challenges of the future. Space is one such challenging and growing sector in which Rolls-Royce believe power, propulsion and thermal management will play a significant role.

Dave Gordon, UK Senior Vice President, Rolls-Royce Defence, said: We are excited to be working with the UK Space Agency on this pioneering project to define future nuclear power technologies for space. We believe there is a real niche UK capability in this area and this initiative can build on the strong UK nuclear network and supply chain.

We look forward to developing this and other exciting space projects in the future as we continue to develop the power to protect our planet, secure our world and explore our universe

Science Minister Amanda Solloway said: As we build back better from the pandemic, it is partnerships like this between business, industry and government that will help to create jobs and bring forward pioneering innovations that will advance UK spaceflight.

Nuclear power presents transformative possibilities for space exploration and this innovative study with Rolls-Royce could help to propel our next generation of astronauts into space faster and for longer, significantly increasing our knowledge of the universe.

Rolls-Royce has a rich heritage in nuclear and is well positioned to lead this specific work package to define the future nuclear power solutions for space. The multi-domain applicability of emerging nuclear power solutions will mean the options outlined by Rolls-Royce will also have strong commercial and defence terrestrial use-cases, creating world-leading nuclear power capability for multiple markets and operator needs.

Dr Graham Turnock, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency, said: Space nuclear power and propulsion is a game-changing concept that could unlock future deep-space missions that take us to Mars and beyond.

This study will help us understand the exciting potential of atomic-powered spacecraft, and whether this nascent technology could help us travel further and faster through space than ever before.

Innovative power and thermal management alongside novel nuclear technologies, digital capabilities and engineering know-how have considerable application in Space; from the manufacturing and launch of space vehicles, to powering the increasing demand for on-orbit activities, in-situ resource utilisation and exploration. Rolls-Royce has existing, proven capability in these fields as well as significant experience in electrification and the provision of other high-density and sustainable power solutions, which will all support the growing space sector.

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- Study launched to look into the potential of nuclear power for space exploration - Design Products & Applications

Interest in space stocks companies with products that are literally out of this world has been growing steadily thanks in no small part to the success of Elon Musks SpaceX and now exchange-traded fund (ETF) investment in these pioneering plays is poised to explode.

And the fingers are pointed at well-known disruptive technology portfolio manager and Tesla believer Cathie Wood, who is now planning to launch a new space focused ETF.

Wood clearly has her fingers on the technology pulse if her flagship ARK Innovation ETF near 150 per cent gain last year on the back of its biggest component, Tesla, rising more than 740 per cent, is any indicator.

This strong performance means that investors are now whipping out their chequebooks to snap up shares in space companies that could find their way into Woods new ARK Space Exploration ETF.

While SpaceX itself is privately-held and has no shares available for any intrepid investor or ETF to acquire on the market, there are several other companies that are on their radars.

Space tourism pioneer Virgin Galactic hit a high of $US33.40 on Thursday, up 21.4 per cent from the previous day while fellow pure space play Stable Road Acquisition jumped nearly 30 per cent to $US22. Just on news of Woods interest.

Virgin Galactic counts maverick business magnate Sir Richard Branson as one of its founders and seeks to open up space for tourists along with developing ultrafast hypersonic planes that will drastically reduce travel time.

The companys commercial spacecraft is air launched from specialised carrier airplane and seek to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists.

Stable Road, which is acquiring space transportation company Momentus, is developing space tugs that will deliver satellites to their final destination before collecting used cargo that can be repurposed or reused rather than be left in orbit as debris.

Said space tugs will hitch a ride on other rockets such as SpaceXs highly successful Falcon 9.

Other potential companies are US defence contractors with exposure to launch systems or satellites such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.

Space is a fast growing sector that is driven by growing demand for Earth observation imagery, satellite communications and exploration.

According to ResearchandMarkets.com, the global small satellite market is projected to grow from $US2.8bn in 2020 to $US7.1bn in 2025.

Much of this growth is fuelled by the use of small satellites for efficient Earth observation and tracking of weather phenomena as well as its use for broadband communications.

SpaceX is one of the leaders in the latter with just under 900 satellites launched out of its planned initial constellation of 12,000 satellites. This is just the first stage of its plans with filings submitted for 30,000 additional satellites.

While the Australian space sector is still tiny compared to its US counterpart, there are still a number of ASX small caps who are looking to make an impact.

In December, Kleos Space (ASX:KSS) signed a new evaluation agreement with the Chilean Air Force on the analysis of geospatial information data from the company.

The Chilean Air Force will participate in testing and evaluation of Kleos geospatial RF data collected by its first cluster of satellites for a three month trial period that will begin once the data is made available.

This will facilitate research on Kleos radio frequency spatial geolocation data and methods of collaboration to develop an added value proposition for current and future opportunities.

Kleos first cluster of four satellites was launched in November last year and is progressing towards data and revenue delivery.

Defence contractor Electro Optical Systems (ASX:EOS) also continues to progress its SpaceLink satellite communications system which will Medium-Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites.

These will provide high bandwidth and security, low latency while avoiding the limitations of geosynchronous equatorial orbit and low earth orbits.

EOS expects the first constellation of MEO satellites to be launched and be operational in 2024.

It has projected a net present value of $US1bn and internal rate of return of 20 per cent for each constellation.

XTEK (ASX:XTE) is looking to leverage its processing technology that allows it to make things lighter and stronger for use in the space industry while Sky and Space (ASX:SAS) remains in suspension as it heads towards an annual general meeting seeking shareholder approval for its recapitalisation and proposed re-listing.

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Cathie Woods ARK Innovation sees space as the next frontier for ETFs - Stockhead