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 |  | Concepts for the Future
By Gentry Lee
SPACE.com Columnist
posted: 10:00 am ET
11 October 2000
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SPACE.com columnist Gentry Lee is a noted space systems engineer, TV producer and SF author. This month, he brings us a closer look at concepts for the future.
Imagine a spacecraft accelerating out of the solar system, propelled by an artificially inflated magnetic field reflecting high-speed particles of the solar wind. Or a tether hundreds of miles (kilometers) long grabbing a payload in low Earth orbit and slinging it to the Moon. Not wild enough for you? Then how about a free-flying optical telescope, whose primary and secondary mirrors are separated in space by over a mile, that has the capability to image Earth-sized planets in orbit around other stars. Or perhaps a programmable group of plants, already located on our Red Planet neighbor, that can be commanded by a Mars-bound human crew, upon their departure from Earth, to start producing fiber for construction, or even to initiate production of key pharmaceuticals. Science fiction? Nope. Not completely. Every one of these imaginative concepts, as well as dozens of others, are currently being studied by scientists and technologists funded by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) in Atlanta, Georgia.
One of the most difficult management challenges in any mature high-technology institution or organization is fostering the generation and development of new ideas. Without continuous access to "out of the box" thinking, the growth and even the very survival of these high-tech organizations is threatened. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has now been in existence for over 40 years. As it has grown through the decades, NASA has unfortunately developed a significant natural inertia throughout its hierarchy that impedes the recognition and endorsement of revolutionary ideas.
Russian Space Agency director Yuri Koptev, left, and NASA administrator Dan Goldin appear in a press conference after the July 12, 2000 launch of the Proton rocket carrying the Zvezda service module.
Several years ago NASA Administrator Dan Goldin and his key staff members, searching for a method to continue the infusion of cutting-edge ideas into the national space program, decided to try a truly novel approach for stimulating and cultivating new thinking. Convinced that brand new ideas did not always receive a proper hearing inside the confines of the NASA organization itself, the agency contracted with the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) to create a small, independent entity dedicated solely to the development of revolutionary aeronautical and space concepts. This entity, the aforementioned NIAC, has now been in existence for two and a half years.
The charter for NIAC is carefully defined. NIAC is to solicit and fund the development of ideas for revolutionary architectures and systems that could significantly impact the way NASA conducts its major missions in the time period 10 to 40 years in the future. It is important to note that the NIAC charter explicitly calls for architectures and systems. Specifically excluded from the charter is the fostering of isolated technology development. If an overall architecture or system requires enabling technology, however, then the development of that enabling activity can certainly be a part of the work accomplished under the NIAC grant or contract.
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How does NIAC operate? Roughly every nine months or so the institute, which is virtually managed through its comprehensive website at http://www.niac.usra.edu, issues a competitive call for Phase One proposals. The details for each call are posted on the NIAC website. Basically, successful respondents propose to study, over a six-month period for a total of less than $75,000, a revolutionary space or aeronautics concept that would have significant benefits for a future NASA mission. Grants are issued quickly after a peer evaluation process managed by Dr. Bob Cassanova and his tiny staff at NIAC headquarters in Atlanta. Generally about 15 grants are made in each Phase One cycle.
The winners of these Phase One grants are called NIAC fellows. They meet once or twice a year under NIAC auspices to present the status of their work to the other Phase One grantees, Dr. Cassanova and key NASA personnel. At the conclusion of each round of Phase One activity, the fellows are eligible to propose additional work on their concept in response to a Phase Two call for proposals. The Phase Two awards are much larger, up to $500,000, and can last for as long as two years. Approximately 30 percent of the Phase One winners are successful in the competition to obtain more funding for their studies. Phase Two work is done under contract, and NIAC is the technical monitor for the contracted effort.
Among the Phase One grants that were awarded by NIAC in early 2000 are two that sound more like science fiction than possible engineering concepts. One of the concepts, in fact, is based on an idea popularized by Arthur C. Clarke, pictured here.
NIAC is essentially the steward for these revolutionary concepts from germination through the end of each of the Phase Two studies. After the Phase Two activity has been completed, according to the understanding between NIAC and NASA, any concept that shows exceptional promise will be picked up and funded by the mainstream NASA organizations. This "hand over" process from NIAC to NASA is currently being defined in detail to prepare for the completion, before the middle of 2001, of the first set of six NIAC Phase Two studies.
So far, NIAC has funded 45 Phase One studies and has awarded 11 Phase Two contracts. At present, a call for a fourth set of Phase One proposals is posted on the NIAC website. Interested scientists and engineers who wish to propose are urged to read through a representative sample of the final reports of the earlier studies, all of which are posted on the NIAC website. From those reports, prospective NIAC fellows of the future not only will gain valuable insight that will help them with their proposals, but also will glean an appreciation for the breadth of the effort currently being funded by the institute.
In its first two and a half years of existence, NIAC has received an overwhelming number of exceptional proposals associated with future planetary and astronomical missions. However, in other major NASA disciplines -- most notably aeronautics, Earth science and life science -- the number and quality of the proposals has not been as outstanding. NIAC is openly soliciting visionary and revolutionary proposals in those three key disciplines in this current call. In addition, the institute is sponsoring a major workshop in November to help engender ideas for NIAC studies in the abovementioned fields that are consistent with the long-range NASA mission plan.
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It is difficult not to be effusive in praising NIAC for its progress thus far. The institute has spent a total of less than 10 million dollars and has, in almost everyone’s opinion, uncovered at least a handful of nuggets that will change the way NASA implements its suite of future missions. Consider for example the Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion system ingeniously conceived by Dr. Robert Winglee of the University of Washington. In his concept, Dr. Winglee creates and inflates an artificial magnetic field from a flying spacecraft. This huge magnetic field, in turn, is distorted by the solar wind, thereby exerting a propulsive force on the spacecraft. Dr. Winglee’s revolutionary concept could significantly reduce the cost and flight time of missions to the outer solar system, or even to the Oort Cloud and other stars.
With his unique concept for X-ray interferometry, which could result in a telescope with the ability to detect an object no larger than an automobile at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, Dr. Webster Cash of the University of Colorado has created widespread excitement throughout the entire astronomical community. As part of his NIAC study, Dr. Cash is both defining the system parameters for a future X-ray interferometer and demonstrating the feasibility of his overall concept with laboratory experiments. Dr. Neville Woolf of the University of Arizona, another NIAC astronomer, will conclude his Phase Two study entitled "Very Large Optics for the Study of Extrasolar Terrestrial Planets" before the summer of 2001. His system approach, which has been called "Life Finder" in several articles, features an enormous, free-flying primary reflector in space and a secondary mirror over a mile away. Life Finder has the theoretical capability of taking photographs of thousands of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones around other planets.
"The outstanding early accomplishments of NIAC are a tribute both to thehelmsmanship of the institute's director, Dr. Bob Cassanova, and to the vision of the top NASA executives who conceived the idea for an independent institute of advanced concepts in the first place."
Among the Phase One grants that were awarded by NIAC in early 2000 are two that sound more like science fiction than possible engineering concepts. One of the concepts, in fact, the space elevator being studied by Dr. Bradley Edwards of Eureka Scientific, Inc., is based on an idea popularized by Arthur C. Clarke in his award-winning novel The Fountains of Paradise. In general, a space elevator is a cable that is strung from Earth to beyond geosynchronous orbit. In his NIAC grant, Dr. Edwards is performing a system assessment study to see what technologies still need to be developed to make such a space elevator feasible.
Dr. Christopher Brown from Dynamac Corporation is the investigator studying the design and possible development of a system of programmable plants that will marry the nascent technologies of functional genomics and nanotechnology. The potential for such a system to play a major role in future human planetary missions is almost unlimited. Are either space elevators or programmable plants viable concepts for real NASA missions in the first half of the 21st century? Probably not. Nevertheless, they are both exciting, revolutionary ideas that are worth low-cost system studies of their feasibility in the next few decades.
NIAC’s primary challenge is to steer a middle course between the Scylla of pie-in-the-sky ideas that have no hope of ever being actually realized, and the Charybdis of narrow, negative thinking that too often crushes new and unique ideas before they have a chance to germinate. Charting that course requires both imagination and vision on the one hand, and pragmatic engineering judgment on the other. The outstanding early accomplishments of NIAC are a tribute both to the helmsmanship of the institute’s director, Dr. Bob Cassanova, and to the vision of the top NASA executives who conceived the idea for an independent institute of advanced concepts in the first place.
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