Lifeboat Foundation

I first met Dr. Young Bae, NIAC Fellow, at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) sponsored 2011, 100 Year Starship Study (100YSS) at Orlando, Fla. Many of us who were there had responded to the NASA/DARPA Tactical Technology Office’s RFP to set up an organization “… to develop a viable and sustainable non-governmental organization for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make long-distance space travel viable …”

Yes, both DARPA and NASA are at some level interested in interstellar propulsion. Mine was one of approximately 35 (rumored number) teams from around the world vying for this DARPA grant, and Dr. Bae was with a competing team. I presented the paper “Non-Gaussian Photon Probability Distributions”, and Dr. Bae presented “A Sustainable Developmental Pathway of Photon Propulsion towards Interstellar Flight”. These were early days, the ground zero of interstellar propulsion, if you would.

Dr. Bae has been researching Photon Laser Thrust (PLT) for many years. A video of his latest experiment is available at the NASA website or on YouTube. This PLT uses light photons to move an object by colliding with (i.e. transferring momentum to) the object. The expectation is that this technology will eventually be used to propel space crafts. His most recent experiments demonstrate the horizontal movement of a 1-pound weight. This is impressive. I expect to see much more progress in the coming years.

At one level, Dr. Bae’s experiments are confirmation that Bill Nye’s Light Sail (which very unfortunately lost communications with Earth) will work.

Continue reading “Is Photon Based Propulsion, the Future?” »

Recent revelations of NASA’s Eagleworks Em Drive caused a sensation on the internet as to why interstellar propulsion can or cannot be possible. The nay sayers pointed to shoddy engineering and impossible physics, and ayes pointed to the physics of the Alcubierre-type warp drives based on General Relativity.

So what is it? Are warp drives feasible? The answer is both yes and no. Allow me to explain.

The empirical evidence of the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887, now known as the Lorentz-FitzGerald Transformations (LFT), proposed by FitzGerald in 1889, and Lorentz in 1892, show beyond a shadow of doubt that nothing can have a motion with a velocity greater than the velocity of light. In 1905 Einstein derived LFT from first principles as the basis for the Special Theory of Relativity (STR).

So if nothing can travel faster than light why does the Alcubierre-type warp drive matter? The late Prof. Morris Klein explained in his book, Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty, that mathematics has become so powerful that it can now be used to prove anything, and therefore, the loss of certainty in the value of these mathematical models. The antidote for this is to stay close to the empirical evidence.

Continue reading “The Feasibility of Interstellar Propulsion” »

Vannevar Bush’s prediction, half a century later, rings true: “The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.”

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Small gadgets such as smart watches can be frustrating to use because their tiny buttons and touch screens are tricky to operate. Google has two possible solutions for the fat finger problem: control your gadgets by subtly rubbing your finger and thumb together, or by swiping a grid of conductive yarn woven into your clothing.

The first of those two ideas works thanks to a tiny radar sensor that could be integrated into, say, a smart watch and can detect fine motions of your hands from a distance and even through clothing. Levi Strauss announced today that it is working with Google to integrate fabric touch panels into its clothing designs. The new projects were announced at Google’s annual developer conference in San Francisco Friday by Ivan Poupyrev, a technical program lead in Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects research group.

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“If he was paid by the oil and gas industry lobby he couldn’t have written a more favorable article for them.”—Elon Musk

Video & Article on Criticism about Incentives

“[T]he United States needs a more systematic way to help its bottled-up new-science innovators deliver their ideas to the world.”

A better way to deliver innovation to the world

Human Capital Report 2015 WEF

“Can tech companies really offer better experiences than the taqueria, flower shop or dry cleaner down the street, while taking a cut for themselves? Not necessarily. Quality control is a challenge when the supervisor is just software.

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“The idea is not just to teach city governments new techniques on harvesting open data to tackle urban problems and measure performance, but to replicate successful approaches that are already out there.“Read more