Discussing reasonable ways to colonize our solar system

Carnival Of The Space Geeks (Round 31)

Posted by on Dec 5, 2007 in Blog, Space Geeks | 1 comment

Last week Ken of Out of the Cradle hosted the Carnival of Space.

Unfortunately I was unable to submit a post for that round (’tis the season) although I should have a post by the end of today for the upcoming Carnival.

Nonetheless there were a few interesting posts, including one from Clark of Space Transport News in which he highlighted NASA moving up their COTS Phase 2 contract to next year, which may give SpaceX an unfair advantage over the competition.

Also, Brian Wang of Advanced Nanotechnology has an interesting post on how a Vasimr engines plus nuclear “batteries” could shorten a trip to Mars in under 40 days.

Submissions for the next Carnival of Space are due today, and willing participants can email Fraser at info [at] universetoday [dot] com or CarnivalOfSpace [at] Gmail [dot] com to be included into the next round.

More info regarding the Carnival of Space can be found over here.

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  • Faucets

    Phil McKenna over at NewScientist discussed some new changes in Nuclear batteries here, 20x more powerful than old methods:Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory in the U.S. and Alabama A&M University, also in the U.S., have developed layered tiles of carbon nanotubes, gold, and lithium hydride that can directly convert radiation from nuclear materials into electricity, potentially enabling high-powered nuclear batteries. According to the researchers’ calculations, the tiles could potentially harness up to 20 times more electricity from radioactive decay than conventional thermoelectric materials. The article says that the tiles could be embedded in radioactive materials or used to harvest electricity directly from the radiation of a fission reactor. David Poston of Los Alamos said, “I believe this work is innovative and could have a significant impact on the future of nuclear power.”