Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - On The Edge of Science: The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts

Episode Date: November 8, 2004

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Research at the bleeding edge of space, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. Got a wild idea that just might work? You're in luck. We're headed for the frontiers of space science and engineering with the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts. The Institute's director, Robert Casanova,

will join us in a couple of minutes. Poor Bruce Betts. You'll hear him struggle through what's up later in this half hour, providing our new space trivia contest in spite of his cold. Before we hear from Emily, here are some of this week's headlines. Say cheese, image number 50,000 was captured by the Mars Exploration Rovers last week, and we're proud to report it was a lovely portrait of Spirit's dust-covered panoramic camera calibration target, otherwise known as the Mars Dial.

You can see the picture of the first interplanetary sundial at planetary.org. While you're there, take a look at some other stunning snapshots of Saturn's moon Titan, taken by Cassini's radar imager during the recent flyby. The absence of any obvious craters has scientists thinking the surface of Titan is a very dynamic place, changing at a relatively fast pace in geologic, or would that be titologic terms? It's just possible that some of the close-ups have revealed the hypothesized hydrocarbon seas we've talked about. Much more work is needed before anyone can say so with confidence. And with the $10 million XPRIZE just handed to Bert Rutan, NASA has decided prize competitions are a pretty good idea.

The agency has announced the Centennial Challenges program will seek, quote, novel solutions to NASA's mission challenges from nontraditional sources of innovation in academia, industry, and the public. Details are at centennialchallenges.nasa.gov. Bob Casanova and his own NASA-funded Walk on the Wild Side will be here right after this timely tale from Emily. Back in a minute, Relatively Speaking. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked,

do clocks and watches work the same in space as they do on Earth? Modern clocks and watches are designed to be as free of environmental effects as possible, so they do indeed work the same in space as they do on the Earth. But working the same doesn't mean that a clock in space will necessarily measure the same time as a clock on the Earth. But working the same doesn't mean that a clock in space will necessarily measure the same time as a clock on the Earth. Why not? There are two different phenomena that could make an astronaut's wristwatch differ from an Earth-bound person's, both of which have to do with relativity. One of them is the different speeds at which the two clocks are traveling.

In 1971, two physicists each took an atomic clock on a commercial airplane flight around the world. One of them traveled eastward, and one of them traveled westward, so that their velocities about the Earth would be different. When they came back together to compare clocks, the two no longer agreed on the absolute time. The eastbound clock lost 60 nanoseconds, and the westbound clock gained 273 nanoseconds. How else can going to space desynchronize watches? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out.

You might say Dr. Robert Casanova gets paid to evaluate dreams. What's more, if his agency likes your dream, he might pay you to keep having it. As director of NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts, hundreds of people, and not just scientists and engineers, send him ideas that might get laughed at elsewhere. He recently joined us from NIAC's Atlanta, Georgia headquarters. Bob Casanova, thank you very much for joining us today on Planetary Radio. My pleasure. I look forward to the conversation.

You know, you already told me off the air that you have not yet gotten an application from Zephram Cochran, which I had to ask for the benefit of all the Trekkies out there. No, we haven't, no. Well, for those who aren't into the myth, Zephram Cochran, some decades off will invent the Earth version of warp drive that gets Captain Kirk and others to the stars. But then that's not supposed to happen for quite a while. So I hope the Institute will be around long enough to give him a grant. How long has the Institute been in existence and how did it come about?

We've been in existence since February of 1998. And the Institute was the vision of NASA. of 1998, and the Institute was the vision of NASA. When NASA decided they would like to have an independent Institute to try to inspire innovators from outside of NASA to contribute ideas that may extend the possibilities of performance in space well into the future, they did create the Institute, and we've been in existence ever since then and have received over 800 proposals. We funded over 100 proposals, and a lot of them are really stretching our imagination, which is what we're trying to do is to get people to look beyond the realities of technologies now

and stretch far into the future. Putting aside any journalistic objectivity here, I find this concept absolutely inspiring that the United States government through NASA would fund something so really speculative but quite exciting. You are funded by NASA, but you're not part of NASA. That's correct. NIAC is actually an institute of the University Space Research Association, USRA in short. USRA has a contract with NASA to operate the institute.

All the employees of NIAC are either employees of USRA or one of our subcontractors answer. We work very closely with NASA in some respects, but we are independent, which means we do our own solicitations, we make our own decisions, we issue the contracts, and we do a lot of nurturing with the contractors to try to help them with their very far-out ideas. I want to assure our audience that we're going to save the second half of the interview to talk about some of your favorite projects that these contractors have submitted. You say that you've submitted 800 or so, over 800 have been submitted? Right. We received over 800 proposals in the last six years, and we funded over 100.

Now, that includes both Phase I and Phase II proposals. We operate in a two-part process. Phase I are short grants or contracts that run about six months for up to about $75,000. And those grants are aimed at trying to give the investigator time to sort of put meat on the bones of the idea to determine the real feasibility of a concept for which enabling technologies may not be currently available. And phase two is a down select from the phase ones to do a more thorough investigation and to come up with a roadmap for further development and hopefully lay the groundwork for additional funding from NASA or other agencies.

How many phase one projects make it to the second phase? Usually about a third. We generally fund anywhere from 12 to about 18 Phase I's every year, and about five of those are down-selected for Phase II funding. You must get a certain percentage out of those 800 that go up on the office wall to give everybody a good laugh. But it sounds like there might be fewer of those than some people would assume. I think that's probably true. Frankly, we do have proposals that really are science fiction.

science fiction. In fact, some of the investigators literally state in their proposals that they've read about this concept in some science fiction novel, and they think it's a neat idea, and they'd like to develop it. So they hope to work with NIAC to make it happen. Some of these, frankly, are not based on scientific principles that we understand at this point. Although we have funded some concepts that are probably better known in science fiction circles than in scientific circles. For instance, the momentum exchange rotating tether system appeared in a science fiction book by Robert L. Forward back in the 1980s. And it became one of the concepts that's been just a tremendous success here at NIAC.

It was based on sound scientific principles and looks like it really would work, and as it turns out, NASA has put additional money into it after it was completed here at NIAC. Another example would be the space elevator. Of course, Arthur C. Clarke made that one famous in his book, Fountains of Paradise. But the space elevator actually predates Arthur C. Clarke by quite a few years. It was described first in scientific circles, and then Arthur C. Clarke used it in his book, and it became more visible, and Kim Stanley Robinson has included it in one of his books.

It's in the Mars trilogy. Right. And various other people have written about it in scientific literature, but NIAC decided to fund it a few years ago based on the availability of materials that would enable it to happen now. Up until now, we just haven't had the materials to build a cable that's strong enough to make the space elevator work. I'll mention that Arthur Clark, who is a past guest on this program,

he's quoted on your website, Clark's second law, the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. Right. Yeah, we like that quote. It was one of our quotes that first inspired us when we began NIAC. In fact, Arthur C. Clark was involved with NIAC sort of on the edge initially. We had a kickoff workshop back in May of 98,

and Arthur C. Clark participated by a phone line for about 15 minutes in that workshop. And he also sent us an inspirational videotape of himself talking about advanced concepts and talking about NIAC. And I know that since we've, particularly since we funded the space elevator, he has stayed in close touch with what NIAC is doing. So Arthur has been a big supporter of NIAC ever since we began. A few of our longtime listeners may remember Arthur on this program, talking about his personal hope for something that would be appropriate for NIAC, I guess, which would be vacuum energy.

Bob Casanova, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, I would like to go through some of those other personal favorites of yours, projects or proposals that have received NIAC funding, and maybe give people an idea of how they can make their own proposals. Okay, look forward to it. We'll be back with Robert Casanova, the director of the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, right after this. This is Buzz Aldrin.

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He is Dr. Robert Casanova, the director of the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts. Stuff that is way out there, but maybe not quite as far out there as some people thought. And Bob, I said that we would wait until now to talk a little bit more about some of your favorites among those 100 or so proposals

that have been funded, either phase one or phase two or both. I noticed that you get some repeat offenders, some people who make multiple proposals. That's right. In fact, NIAC chooses ideas strictly based on the strength of the idea. We're not trying to spread the wealth around evenly. We're after people that have lots of ideas, and so some of them do get funded several times. It's lucky for everybody else that Leonardo da Vinci isn't around, or he might have gotten half of your grants. Yes, he probably would. In fact, in our annual

report that will be posted soon on our website, we're using some of the figures from Leonardo da Vinci. How appropriate. Well, talk about some of your favorites that, you know, really generated a lot of excitement. Well, let me step back just a little bit and explain something. A sign of success of a NIAIC concept is that it's accepted by NASA and appears in one of their long-range plans, which means it's been intellectually accepted by NASA. We've had a number of those. We've had some that have actually received additional funding from NASA. But going back to when NIAC initially began,

we funded some concepts that have shown a lot of success in terms of being mentioned in NASA's long-range plans, and actually some of them have started up a funding line to keep going. One is the Life Finder by Nick Wolfe, University of Arizona. This is a... Pardon me, you said the Life Finder? Life Finder.

This is a space-based observatory that would be located probably at one of the quasi-steady Lagrange points. L5 among them. L1, L2, L5, one of those that are quasi-steady. And it would be composed of formation flying components, and these components may be flying over several kilometers, but it would be a giant observatory that would collect lots of light from distant targets and galaxies. And presumably, you'd be able to gather enough light information to determine whether or not life is possible on these planets. Another one would be the X-ray interferometer, which is also in a NASA long-range plan. An X-ray interferometer would be able to image

in some detail black holes, for instance. Another one that has been just a tremendous success is a momentum exchange tether propulsion system. You mentioned that in the first half of the program. I think I've seen diagrams of how this might work. Yeah, this is really very innovative. It's a tether that is rotating lengthwise in, say, low Earth orbit. And if you could imagine, as the tether is rotating, the bottom part coming down,

tether is rotating, the bottom part coming down, you'd be able to pick up objects that are coming up in a non-orbital launch, pick up these objects, and as the tether rotates around, it actually throws them towards some other target in space, like the moon or Mars or somewhere else. And so it's a tremendous idea for saving fuel. And it looks like that will work. And as I mentioned before, this was described in a science fiction book by Robert L. Forward. And he formed a company called Tethers Unlimited. And unfortunately, Robert Forward died last year, but his company is continuing on, being led by a young Ph.D., Robert Hoyt.

And so that program is continuing and shows a lot of promise. I mentioned earlier the space elevator, and actually we were a little concerned when we first funded it because we thought we might be accused of funding science fiction. funded it because we thought we might be accused of funding science fiction. But the response we received from the scientific community has been just tremendous. Usually the response is something like, gee, we're glad someone finally funded this to take a good look at it. You know, Arthur C. Clarke has often said that he believes that through use of carbon nanotubes, once we can figure out how to create long enough structures out of those,

that you actually could build a space elevator. Does that have anything to do with the proposals that you've looked at? Yes, it does. In fact, the technology that enables the space elevator is carbon nanotubes. And, of course, the cable would have to stretch about 62,000 miles from the Earth's surface out into space. But the physics and the material properties now are telling us that this is feasible. And that's another one that NASA has funded to continue also. Bob, we are almost out of time. I want to give you a chance to mention maybe one more project,

Bob, we are almost out of time. I want to give you a chance to mention maybe one more project, but then also have some time to tell people how they can get in on this and submit a proposal to the NIAC. Well, one general category that looks like it shows great promise not only as a propulsion system but also a radiation shield is the general category of what we call plasma sails. These are concepts that use plasmas for capturing the solar wind to provide a thrust and a propulsion through space. And since they're deflecting the solar wind, they also deflect the solar radiation. They won't deflect galactic cosmic rays, but they will deflect the solar radiation. So that looks quite promising. but they will deflect the solar radiation, so that looks quite promising. But we will have another Phase 1 call for proposals coming out within the next couple weeks, so everyone should stay tuned to our website.

Anyone can propose, anyone within the U.S., except employees of NASA or JPL. They have their own funding sources, but we're trying to attract people from outside of NASA and JPL. The call for proposals will be posted on our website, and the address is www.niac.usra.edu, and the due date will be early February of 2005. Okay, and we will put that web address, that URL, on our website right next to where people can hear this radio program. And we'll have to check back with you to see what other interesting kinds of proposals come through in this next wave and receive initial funding from NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts.

Bob Casanova, we are out of time. I want to thank you very much for joining us on Planetary Radio. My pleasure. And we will return with What's Up and Dr. Bruce Betts right after this return visit from Emily. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. Relativity can cause two perfectly operating clocks to fall out of synchronicity in two ways, through the speed of their motion relative to each other and through the effect of the Earth's gravity. As a clock is carried to higher elevations, the relative

weakening of the Earth's gravity causes the clock to run faster than another one left behind at sea level. What's particularly interesting about the gravity effect on orbiting clocks is that it counteracts the motion effect. You see, satellites move faster in their orbits when they are near the Earth. Moving faster makes their clocks run relatively slowly, but the gravitational effect of their altitude tries to make their clocks run relatively quickly. The gravitational and motion effects cancel each other out at an altitude of about 3,200 kilometers or 2,000 miles, where an orbiting clock runs at exactly the same rate as a clock on the Earth.

Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. It's time for What's Up on Planetary Radio, and we are joined by Dr. Bruce Fetz, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. Welcome back, Bruce. Thank you very much.

What have you got for us this week? Well, we've still got those four naked-eye planets you can see in the pre-dawn sky. So if you go out there, you'll see Jupiter and Venus very close together after practically nuzzling each other in the sky on November 4th and 5th. They will stay fairly close together. Venus is the brighter object to the lower left of Jupiter. They will gradually grow apart in the coming weeks.

We're so sad for them. Is there a planetary marriage counselor? I don't know. Mars, god of war, so not much help, is to the lower left of Jupiter and Venus, looking much dimmer and a little bit reddish. Very low on the horizon, still a bit of a tough thing to see. I need to look right before dawn. You know, Mars is like men and Venus is like women. Really? How so?

I had the book upside down, that's why. Women are brighter? Yes, but don't tell them we said so. Okay. Anyway, let's go with Saturn. Saturn, I knew there was another planet out there. It's got rings, did you know? Saturn, you can see in the predawn sky in the southwest.

It's over in Gemini, outshining Castor and Pollux. And you can also see it in the evening. It's our one evening friend. And it rises around 9 or 10 p.m. and comes up in the east, northeast. Look over there near the bright stars, Castor and Pollux, the brighter Saturn. On to this week in space history. On November 12th, 1980, we should remember this in the wake of the glorious Cassini encounters with Titan and Saturn. On November 12th, 1980, Voyager 1 flew past Saturn, giving us our best views of Saturn and its system up to that time. We had on November 14, 1969, 35 years ago, Apollo 12 launched the second group of people headed off to party on the lunar surface. On to random space fact!

The Roche limit is the orbital distance at which a satellite with no tensile streak or strength, in other words, a liquid satellite, will begin to be tidally torn apart by the body it's orbiting. So you pretty much always find rings inside the so-called Roche limit. They have been ripped apart larger bodies that got a little too close for comfort, or as Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 did many years ago with Jupiter on its first pass by, it got ripped apart.

On to trivia questions. Last time, we asked you, how many member states are there in the European Space Agency, in ESA? How'd we do, Matt? The listeners did great. And I thought that Barry Olson had won before, but I couldn't find him in the records anywhere. And so, Barry, whether this is your first or second time, congratulations. Barry Olson in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, came up with the right answer this week. It is that there are 15 member states in the European Space Agency.

Lots of people gave us the number 15, but Barry was one of few who actually named them in alphabetical order. Should I read these? Oh, please do. Here goes. Ready? How fast can you read them? I'm going to try and go really fast. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy,

the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. And Canada is a cooperating state. Nicely done. And I didn't practice either. Would you believe that? God, you're a professional. I try. He's going to win our fabulous Planetary Radio t-shirt. If you'd like to do the same please enter our trivia contest here is the trivia question for this

time around what is the only large moon in our solar system to orbit retrograde backwards in other words backwards so the planet's spinning one direction. The moon is orbiting around the planet in the opposite direction. There are very small, piddly moons out there doing this. We don't care about them. We want a real moon, big moon, orbiting retrograde in the solar system. Tell us what it is. Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to email us your wonderful answers.

And, you know, if you want to say something funny while you're at it, please go ahead. Yeah, would you? Go ahead. I enjoy that. I even reply sometimes. November 15, noon Pacific time. November 15, noon Pacific time to get that into us and be eligible for this newest space trivia contest on What's Up. And you might be the next to win that Planetary Radio t-shirt.

Tell us what size you'd like to get. I'd like to tell people about another opportunity they have to win some fabulous prizes. The Planetary Society, in conjunction with the European Space Agency and their 15 member states, is holding an art contest asking people to imagine what they would see and what will be seen as Huygens probes into the Titan atmosphere and goes beneath the veil of the hazy covering of Titan. That's exciting. And we've started to see things from orbit this last wonderful pass by Cassini, but still it's really hard to figure out what's going on there.

So we challenge the artists within all of you to come back and give us some artwork. So go to planetary.org slash Saturn to learn more about the art contest. Your entries are going to be due at the end of right before the end of November. So get to that website quickly. You can submit them electronically or you can submit them in physical form and there's really no restriction on what kind of wacky, zany medium you can use. But here's the real fun. It's not just a T-shirt this time around. The grand prize winner, we will fly to Darmstadt, Germany for the Huygens encounter on January 14th of 2005 to be in operations, ESA operations. That's the grand prize.

Lots of good other prizes for people. One limitation, you do have to be over 10 years old because of restrictions going around the operations center, and there are some restrictions on your country of origin to win the grand prize, but no restrictions, so we encourage people from everywhere to enter for the first prize and second prize. Can we give them a T-shirt, too? Well, yeah, we could.

All right, the grand prize winner now gets a Planetary Radio T-shirt. Bruce, I think we're done. I just want to acknowledge, I mean, if I had a hat, it would be off to you. You are under the weather, as we say, and you got through it. You've completed another fine WhatsApp. Oh, thank you, Matt. I'm touched. All right, everyone, I you got through it. You've completed another fine what's up. Oh, thank you, Matt. I'm touched. All right, everyone.

I hope we're done. Go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about how nice it is when you can live without congestion. Thank you, and good night. And that's Bruce Betts, Director of Projects here at the Planetary Society, who often joins us in better health here on What's Up. I hope you'll join us again next week as we prepare to go sailing in space.

We'll cover the announcement of plans for the launch of Cosmos 1, the solar system's first solar sail. We hope your own voyage goes smoothly till then.