HackingTheUniverse

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Hyabusa (Falcon), the little engine that could in space, is on the way back from the asteroid belt.
Nov 3, 2005
Japan’s Hayabusa Closes in on Asteroid Landing Site - [space.com]
Stunning imagery is being returned by Japan’s Hayabusa space probe as it draws closer to its celestial target: asteroid Itokawa.
Now just a few miles distant from the [...]

VASIMR is a high powered plasma engine being developed by Ad Astra Rocket Company in Houston. The VAriable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket is a drive that creates propulsion by expelling ionized hyrdrogen plasma and uses superconductors to increase the strength of the magnetic field involved and maximize thrust.
VASIMR - [adastrarocket.com]
The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket [...]

It has long been known that water exists in comets, asteroids, on Mars and on the Moon, but the key question has always been, “how much is there?” Shadows in craters at the Moon’s poles have been suspected to hold some ice, but there was little hope of finding enough moisture across the rest [...]

Spider bots placed inside an active volcano that can self-organize into a mesh network of wireless sensors may be providing a prototype for exploring harsh environments in both space and here on Earth.
‘Spiderbots’ talk amongst themselves inside active volcano - [newscientist.com]
Fifteen spiderbots, so-named because of the three spindly arms protruding from their suitcase-sized [...]

Freeman Dyson has proposed a Von Neumann probe (self replicating) that is a hybrid of mechanical and biological components (cyborg) designed to find propulsion fuel, maintain itself, reconfigure itself as needed and eventually produce copies of itself in it’s mission to explore outer space. It would only weigh one kilogram and use solar energy from [...]

Generating small amounts of thrust with photons is possible under the right conditions. The BAE Institute has demonstrated that it is possible to concentrate light and reflect it back and forth enough times to transfer some of the momentum to a target mirror. While this does not create a large amount of thrust, [...]

Refueling at spaced out intervals instead of requiring space propulsion units to carry all of their fuel with them for the entire trip can enable both longer trips and smaller fuel containers.
Orbiting gas station could refuel lunar missions - [newscientist.com]
This would allow NASA to mount moon missions without spending billions of dollars developing the gigantic [...]

Space elevator concepts have been around for a long time in various forms. In 1895 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky proposed building a tower that was tall enough to reach into space. In 1959 Yuri Artsutanov pondered using a satellite with a counter-weighted cable to lift objects into orbit. In the 1960s and 70s several more [...]

In chapter six of his book, “Engines of Creation“, Eric Drexler describes a conceptual spacesuit that utilizes nanotechnology.
Space and Advanced Technology
Imagine that you are aboard a space station, spun to simulate Earth’s normal gravity. After instruction, you have been given a suit to try out: there it hangs on the wall, a gray, rubbery-looking thing [...]

This describes a concept of building spacecraft using “flux pinned interfaces” (FPI) that make the spacecraft easily reconfigurable. Flux pinning is the process of maintaining structural integrity by using superconductors and magnetic fields to create “non-contacting virtual structures”.
Flux-Pinned Spacecraft - [ spacecraftresearch.com] (at Cornell Univ.)
The effective stiffness and damping of a flux-pinned connection increases [...]