h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello recently I read on the teletext about nanotechnology which is tiny probes that work in your body. I wonder if I have read the story right. Has anyone read about this new technology?

kat

Thanks to Prince Charles's latest "luddite" gaffe nanotechnology has been in the news quite a bit (he must have just read Michael Crichton's latest book )
But aside from nanites being the new baddies for sci-fi stories, I recently saw a tv show about some scientists who built a working "nano-abacus" out of individual atoms! It may be a long way from "Fantastic Voyage" (or whatever that shrinky film was called ) but its a step up from those little IBM adverts.

A879933.

Please can anyone explain to me in very simple terms what are GM crops and what are the pro's and con's of having them. My Mam has asked me what it is but I have not been able to explain to here what this new technology is.

Kat

The British National Space Centre (BNSC) is a voluntary partnership, formed from the eleven Government Departments and Research Councils, to co-ordinate the UK civil space activity. Together their expenditure on civil space amounts to around £188 million per year.

At the centre of UK civil space policy, BNSC facilitates co-operation on the national and international level. By representing both academic and industrial interests, the BNSC provides the UK space community with a strong voice in international negotiations.

European Space Agency ESA

The European Space Agency is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to all of the citizens of Europe.

ESA has 16 Member States which consist of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. and Luxembourg which is expected to become a member of ESA this year. ESA coordinates the financial and intellectual resources of its members, it can undertake programmes and activities far beyond the scope of any single European country.

The ESA has its headquarters in Paris and it is here that policies and programmes are decided upon. However, the ESA also has centres in Europe, each of with different responsibilities.

ESTEC, the European Space Research and Technology Centre, which is the design hub for most ESA spacecraft and technology development, and is situated in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

ESOC, the European Space Operations Centre, is responsible for the controlling ESA satellites in orbit and is situated in Darmstadt, Germany.

EAC, the European Astronauts Centre, trains astronauts for the future missions and is situated in Cologne, Germany.

ESRIN, the European Space Research Institute, is based in Frascati, near Rome in Italy. It is responsibile for collecting, storing and distributing satellite data to ESA’s partners, as well as acting as the Agency’s information technology centre.

In addition, ESA has liaison offices in Belgium, the United States, Russia; as well as a launch base in French Guiana; and ground and tracking stations in various areas of the world.

Warp Drive Underwater

By traveling inside drag-cutting gas pockets, new subsea systems can move much faster underwater than their conventional counterparts on the same amount of energy

When the Russian submarine K-141 Kursk sank it was rumored that the mysterious blasts that sent the big boat to the bottom of the Barents Sea were connected to testing of an ultrahigh-speed torpedo. The incident revolved around an amazing and little-reported technology that allows naval weapons and vessels to travel submerged at hundreds of miles per hour or sometimes faster than the speed of sound in water.

The Russian Shkval torpedo is thought to feature a flat disk cavitator at the nose to create a partial cavity that is expanded into a supercavity by gases injected from forward-mounted vents. Small starter rockets get the weapon moving until the cavity is formed, whereupon the large central rocket kicks in.

The next few years will see a revolution in unmanned space probes as new technologies are developed, according NASA.

Some of these new technologies will find their way on to space missions within the next decade, allowing them to travel through the Solar System with unprecedented speed.

When they get to their goals, probes will not just fly past them; they will have the ability to go into orbit for long-term scientific studies.

The hold back to this new technology is the availability of energy. Using chemical rockets, energy is not released efficiently. We have reached the limits of what chemical rockets can do."

Solar-electric propulsion systems are able to draw energy from the Sun, which converts it to electrical power to accelerate on-board fuel to generate thrust.

Compact, kilowatt-strength solar-electric propulsion systems onboard spacecraft could reduce the fuel loads and make room for larger science payloads.

Wlectric propulsion would be used to get a space mission going and when it reaches its goal it will use the technique of aerobraking - if the destination planet has an atmosphere.


Huge solar sails that use sunlight as a propulsive force are also being developed.

Tether technology, which involved dragging an electrically conducting wire, possibly several kilometres long, through the Earth's magnetic field. The interaction produces a propulsive force that can be utilised.

Faster and larger probes will be able to visit the planets.
The enormous energy that is released when matter and antimatter combine could, in principle, provide a far more efficient propulsion system.

For small unmanned probes, only grams of antimatter would be required.

SMART-1: The First Spacecraft of the Future - ESA European Space Agency

SMART-1 is a very efficient and effective engine and is economically made and has plenty of space for instruments. It weighs only 367 kilograms and fits into a cube just one metre across. The solar panel wings extends for about 14 metres.

Solar-electric propulsion, is one of the main technologies to be tested by SMART-1, which uses 'ion engines'. A continuous beam of charged particles ions are at the back of the engine. This produces a thrust in the opposite direction and therefore pushes the spacecraft forward. The energy to feed the engine comes from the solar panels.

It has been used for decades but only recently have the obstacles such as the lack of power availability from the spacecrafts solar panel have been overcome. It is also known as Solar-electric propulsion

Ion engines are very efficient and effective and can deliver about ten times as much impulse per kilogram of propellant used.

Such qualities stem from the fact that ion engines generate a very gentle thrust. SMART-1 will be accelerated just 0.2 millimetres per second per second.

Solar-electric propulsion can work only in the vacuum of space. For very distant destinations, this is not a problem.

Solar-electric propulsion, needs much less fuel on board, with more room for instruments. Yhese advantages are not viliable for short distances, such as from the Earth to the Moon.

The ion engine will be fully tested on a deep-space mission. Other space scientific missions will use the accurate spacecraft control provided by the very gentle thrust of the ion engines.

Use of SMART-1 will help to solve questions as the origin of the Moon and the existence of water on the Moon, as well the possibility of building a human coloney on the lunar surface.

Return to the Moon

http://www.space-frontier.org/Projects/Moon/

Deep Space One

http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/