Space farming, a brief description

As more and more (and more) groups announce their intent to venture to Mars, it’s perhaps inevitable that we’d see some fairly odd life-sustaining science developing; and now Chinese state media is reporting that their nation’s space program has developed the ability to grow vegetables on the red planet! The technique tested here on earth, in Beijing would enable astronauts on China’s planned missions to the moon and to Mars to not only grow vegetables, but also to maintain an “ecological life support system” that would also produce air and water.

Scientists at the Chinese Astronaut Research and Training Center created the plant- and algae-based “ecological life support system,” a 300 cubic meter cabin, so that “Chinese astronauts may get fresh vegetables and oxygen supplies by gardening in extra-terrestrial bases in the future,” according to a report from the Xinhua news agency. Such missions are likely to include China’s efforts to send a manned mission to the moon, following a planned unmanned moon landing.
When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora called Arabidopsis thaliana were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.
Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity.

 The flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide. The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.

Previously, Biosphere 2 was an Earth systems science research facility currently owned by the University of Arizona since 2011. It also explored the possible use of closed biospheres in space colonization, and allowed the study and manipulation of a biosphere without harming Earth's. The name comes from Earth's biosphere, Biosphere 1. Earth's life system is the only biosphere currently known. Funding for the project came primarily from the joint venture's financial partner, Ed Bass' Decisions Investment, and cost $200 million from 1985 to 2007, including land, support research greenhouses, test module and staff facilities.

With a size comparable to two and a half football fields, it remains the largest closed system ever created. The glass facility is elevated nearly 4,000 feet (1300 m) above sea level at the base of the Santa Catalina Mountains, about a half hour outside of Tucson.
Biosphere 2 contained representative biomes: a 1,900 square meter rainforest, an 850 square meter ocean with a coral reef, a 450 square meter mangrove wetlands, a 1,300 square meter savannah grassland, a 1,400 square meter fog desert, a 2,500 square meter agricultural system, a human habitat, and a below-ground level technical infrastructure. Heating and cooling water circulated through independent piping systems and passive solar input through the glass space frame panels covering most of the facility, and electrical power was supplied into Biosphere 2 from an onsite natural gas energy center through airtight penetrations.

Among the problems and miscalculations encountered in the first mission were overstocked fish clogging systems, unanticipated condensation making the "desert" too wet, population explosions of greenhouse ants and cockroaches, and morning glories overgrowing the "rainforest", blocking out other plants.
There was further controversy when the public learned that the project had allowed an injured member to leave and return, carrying new material inside. The team claimed the only new supplies brought in were plastic bags, but others accused them of bringing food and other items. More outrage was raised when it was learned that, likewise, the project had been pumping oxygen inside, to make up for a failure in the balance of the system that resulted in the amount of oxygen steadily declining.
The oxygen inside the facility, which began at 20.9%, fell at a steady pace and after 16 months was down to 14.5%. This is equivalent to the oxygen availability at an elevation of 4,080 meters (13,400 ft). Since some biospherians were starting to have symptoms like sleep apnea and fatigue, Walford and the medical team decided to boost oxygen with injections in January and August 1993.
A vast majority of Biosphere II was built out of concrete, which contains calcium hydroxide. Instead of being consumed by the plants to produce more oxygen, the excess carbon dioxide was reacting with calcium hydroxide in the concrete walls to form calcium carbonate and water.

Ca(OH)2 + CO2 -- CaCO3 + H2O

This hypothesis was confirmed when scientists tested the walls and found that they contained about ten times the amount of calcium carbonate on the inner surfaces as they did on the outer surfaces. All of the walls in Biosphere II are now coated with a protective layer, but oxygen levels continue to be somewhat problematic.
Though much of the research conducted by NASA and other space agencies is important to the space programs, the impact of space farming has many real-life applications for Earth. The main benefit and purpose of learning how to farm in space is to enable long-term space exploration it's critical that astronauts have a regenerative food source.
Researchers hope to transfer what they learn about growing food in the inhospitable climate of space to equally challenging and hostile climates on Earth. They are collecting detailed information about how plants grow and hope this information will help as land becomes scarcer and less fertile. Goals include higher quality crops, higher crop yields and better controlled agricultural systems and greenhouses.
Space farming has led to some other surprising and useful applications here on Earth. One is a special device called Bio-KES which converts ethylene into carbon dioxide and water using ultraviolet light. Ethylene causes plants to ripen and eventually spoil. A device like Bio-KES, used in food storage units and display cases, could help increase the shelf life of produce, flowers and other perishable items. Ultraviolet light has other applications besides helping to reduce the amount of rotten food we must discard. It can also be used to kill pathogens like anthrax, help wounds heal faster and improve the effectiveness of some cancer treatments.

There’s the cultural legacy, a general awareness of Earth itself as a largely-closed system that can be easily and unpredictably perturbed. The venture into space may need to adopt a holistic approach when farming food supplies. Maintaining oxygen levels and recycling programs maybe part of the important factors for space or planet farming. From psychological studies of scientists overwintering in Antarctic research stations. The study of this phenomenon is "confined environment psychology", and according to Jane Poynter (a Biosphere resident researcher) not nearly enough of it was brought to bear on Biosphere 2. Intimate friends had become enemies, that were barely on speaking terms. Potential conflict had been pointed to as a possibility since this was the first experiment ever in closed, confined, system, over such a "long" period of time.
The end result that space farming might be a test on ones character, as well as endurance and discipline. The lessons learned from Biosphere two could prove important as the possibility of living away from the earth slowly becomes a reality. As space tourism, military bases, manufacturing plants and other avenues of a zero gravity environment become a reality. The need for food and air will be a growing industry too...

Synthetic meat, the humane food of the future

Test-tube meat, vat-grown meat, victimless meat and vitro meat. This form of meat has been described, sometimes derisively, as "laboratory-grown" meat. In vitro meat should not be confused with imitation meat, which is a vegetarian food product produced from vegetable protein, usually from soy or gluten. The terms "synthetic meat" and "artificial meat" may refer to either. The original NASA research on in vitro meat was intended for use on long space voyages. 

Experiments for NASA space missions have shown that small amounts of edible meat can be created in a lab. But the technology that could grow chicken nuggets without the chicken, on a large scale, may not be just a science fiction.
In a paper in the June 29 issue of Tissue Engineering, a team of scientists, including University of Maryland doctoral student Jason Matheny, propose two new techniques of tissue engineering that may one day lead to affordable production of in vitro lab grown meat for human consumption. It is the first peer-reviewed discussion of the prospects for industrial production of cultured meat. "There would be a lot of benefits from cultured meat," says Matheny, who studies agricultural economics and public health. "For one thing, you could control the nutrients. For example, most meats are high in the fatty acid Omega 6, which can cause high cholesterol and other health problems. With in vitro meat, you could replace that with Omega 3, which is a healthy fat. Cultured meat could also reduce the pollution that results from raising livestock, wouldn't need the drugs that are used on animals raised for meat.

The lab-grown meat created so far has been grown from stem cells taken from foetal calf serum. This is usually a by-product of slaughter, although stem cells could be harvested in smaller volumes without killing animals. Prof Julian Savulescu, the director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Ethics, says it doesn't matter how the product is made and "the fact that the meat is made from animal by-products is morally irrelevant".
To grow meat on a large scale, cells from several different kinds of tissue, including muscle and fat, would be needed to give the meat the texture to appeal to the human palate.

Professor Post's group at Maastricht University in the Netherlands has grown small pieces of muscle about 2cm long, 1cm wide and about a mm thick. They are off-white and resemble strips of calamari in appearance. These strips will be mixed with blood and artificially grown fat to produce a hamburger. The cost of producing the hamburger will be £200,000 but Professor Post says that once the principle has been demonstrated, production techniques will be improved and costs will come down. At a news conference, Prof Post said he was even planning to ask celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal to cook it.
At a major science meeting in Canada, Prof Mark Post said synthetic meat could reduce the environmental footprint of meat by up to 60%. "We would gain a tremendous amount in terms of resources," he said.
Meat demand is going to double in the next 40 years. Right now we are using 70% of all our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock.
More than 40 billion chickens, fish, pigs, and cows are killed every year for food in the United States alone.
In vitro meat would spare animals from this suffering. In addition, in vitro meat would dramatically reduce the devastating effects the meat industry has on the environment.

A study by researchers at Oxford and the University of Amsterdam found that in vitro meat was "potentially much more efficient and environmentally-friendly", generating only 4% greenhouse gas emissions, reducing the energy needs of meat generation by up to 45%, and requiring only 2% of the land that the global meat/livestock industry does.
On April 21, 2008, PETA announced a $1 million X-Prize style reward for the first group to successfully produce synthetic meat that is comparable to and commercially viable against naturally sourced meat products. While later in August 2012, the Thiel Foundation gave a $350,000 grant to Modern Meadow, a biotech startup. Their plans are to apply new techniques from tissue engineering and 3D printing to the problem of producing affordable in vitro meat.

The company claims that by carefully layering mixtures of cells of different types in a specific structure, in-vitro meat production becomes feasible. It’s set a short-term goal of printing a sliver of meat around two centimeters by one centimeter, and less than half a millimeter thick, which is edible. Modern Meadow explains in a submission to the United States Department of Agriculture: “The technology has several advantages in comparison to earlier attempts to engineer meat in vitro. The bio-ink particles can be reproducibly prepared with mixtures of cells of different type. Printing ensures consistent shape, while post-printing structure formation and maturation in the bioreactor facilitates conditioning.”

Although the science of synthetic meat is still in its infancy, the need to have a humane and environmentally friendly alternative to steak is at last being addressed. Despite the Grey area in which vegetarians would succumb to eating this type of meat, animal rights organizations are willing to throw money for the temptation. In keeping up with a growing population, perhaps research and development many be a wise decision. The other option is a unethical science fiction idea that mimics the film Soylent green.
Whereby fictionally In 2022, with 40 million people in New York City alone, and homeless people fill the streets and food is scarce;  most of the population survives on rations produced by the Soylent Corporation. The concluding idea is that rations are the extracted nutrients of dead humans. In any case future proofing our food supply at this stage is probably the best option then cannibalism somewhere down the road...

Robots on the moon, lets race again

NASA intends to deploy a robotic lunar rover on the Moon in 2017 to search for water and other resources necessary for space travel, and that NASA may have secured support from the White House for an actual manned outpost a space station floating above the far side of the moon.

Rumors of such a deep-space outpost surfaced as early as February of this year, when a leaked memo from a NASA administrator detailed an idea to build a "human-tended way point" at Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 2 (EML-2): a point in space where balanced gravitational forces allow an object to remain in stationary orbit relative to both the Earth and the Moon. From there, NASA could launch missions deeper into space possibly, to Mars, or a near-Earth asteroid using the base as a stepping stone.

At present, NASA could only confirm that the Space Launch System's first unmanned mission (Exploration Mission 1) is still slated for 2017 and a second manned mission (Exploration Mission 2) with a crew of four would likely occur in 2021, that astronauts would attempt to land on an asteroid by 2025, and arrive at Mars sometime in the 2030s. NASA did caution though, that there's no current plan to land people on the Moon itself.
Private firms have been working on commercial space travel for a while, with the SpaceX Dragon capsule successfully completing its first resupply mission to the International Space Station just last month, but recently there's been some interest in space mining as well: Planetary Resources, a company backed by James Cameron, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, plans to launch a spaceship within two years and begin mining by 2022.
A company using technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University plans to put a robotic rover on the moon in 2015. Astrobotic Technology recently signed a contract with SpaceX, an aerospace company run by Elon Musk, to carry the robot to the moon. The Carnegie spin-off is now the first entrant in the $30 million Google Lunar X-Prize competition to sign a launch contract.
Moon Express, another Google Lunar X PRIZE contender, announced that it has established the "Moon Express Robotics Lab for Innovation" (MERLIN) and has hired a team of the nations' brightest engineering students who became international superstars through the FIRST Robotics Competition, overall there are 25 active teams from different countries competing for the prize.

The Google Lunar X PRIZE offers a total of US$30 million in prizes to the first privately funded teams to land a robot on the Moon that successfully travels more than 500 meters (1,640 ft) and transmits back high definition images and video. The first team to do so will claim the US$20 million Grand Prize; while the second team to accomplish the same tasks will earn a US$5 million Second Place Prize. Teams can also earn additional money by completing additional tasks beyond the baseline requirements required to win the Grand or Second Place Prize, such as traveling ten times the baseline requirements (greater than 5,000 meters (3 mi)), capturing images of the remains of Apollo program hardware or other man-made objects on the Moon, verifying from the lunar surface the recent detection of water ice on the Moon, or surviving a lunar night. Additionally, a US$1 million Diversity Award may be given to teams that make significant strides in promoting ethnic diversity in STEM fields. Finally, Space Florida, one of the "Preferred Partners" for the competition has offered an additional US$2 million bonus to teams who launch their mission from the state of Florida.
The end of 2015 may seem like a long way off, a little more than three years away. However, because of the long lead times associated with the development of these missions, as well as obtaining launch contracts, even those running the GLXP acknowledge that the competition is now in a critical time. Even failing to win the prize doesn’t deter some teams, who have a vision and business plan that extends beyond the prize competition. This will not be just about winning the prize. It’s about creating a whole new industry.Considering what is around the corner for establishing an infrastructure in orbit then a possible colonization of the moon. Robots pave the way for exploration, and in this case a ten or fifteen year time window makes it a hopeful future...

     

Opticle tweezers can't pick up space ships

The concept of radiation pressure was considered by James Clerk Maxwell (1873) as he probed the consequences of his description of electromagnetic radiation. Optical tweezers (originally called "single-beam gradient force trap") are scientific instruments that use a highly focused laser beam to provide an attractive or repulsive force (typically on the order of piconewtons), depending on the refractive index mismatch to physically hold and move microscopic dielectric objects. Optical tweezers have been particularly successful in studying a variety of biological systems in recent years.
The detection of optical scattering and gradient forces on micron sized particles was first reported in 1970 by Arthur Ashkin, a scientist working at Bell Labs. Years later, Ashkin and colleagues reported the first observation of what is now commonly referred to as an optical tweezers: a tightly focused beam of light capable of holding microscopic particles stable in three dimensions.
In 1986, Arthur Ashkin and colleagues published a seminal paper in Optics Letters, ‘Observation of a single-beam gradient force optical trap for dielectric particles’ which outlined a technique for trapping micrometre-sized dielectric particles using a focused laser beam, a technology which is now termed optical tweezers. This paper provided a background in optical manipulation technologies and an overview of the applications of optical tweezers. It contains some recent work on the optical manipulation of aerosols and concludes with a critical discussion of where the future might lead this maturing technology.

The most basic form of an optical trap is a laser beam is focused by a high-quality microscope objective to a spot in the specimen plane. This spot creates an "optical trap" which is able to hold a small particle at its center. The forces felt by this particle consist of the light scattering and gradient forces due to the interaction of the particle with the light. Most frequently, optical tweezers are built by modifying a standard optical microscope. These instruments have evolved from simple tools to manipulate micron-sized objects to sophisticated devices under computer-control that can measure displacements and forces with high precision and accuracy.

In practice, optical tweezers are very expensive, custom-built instruments. These instruments usually start with a commercial optical microscope but add extensive modifications. In addition, the capability to couple multiple lasers into the microscope poses another challenge. High power infrared laser beams are often used to achieve high trapping stiffness with minimal photo-damage to biological samples. Precise steering of the optical trap is accomplished with lenses, mirrors, and acousto/electro-optical devices that can be controlled via computer. Figure 3 is meant to give an idea of the number of elements in such a system. In short, these are very complicated instruments that require a working knowledge of microscopy, optics, and laser techniques.
Tractor beams -- the ability to trap and move objects using laser light -- are the stuff of science fiction, but a team of NASA scientists has won funding to study the concept for remotely capturing planetary or atmospheric particles and delivering them to a robotic rover or orbiting spacecraft for analysis.

One experimental approach the team plans to study the optical vortex or "optical tweezers" method involves the use of two counter-propagating beams of light. The resulting ring-like geometry confines particles to the dark core of the overlapping beams. By alternately strengthening or weakening the intensity of one of the light beams in effect heating the air around the trapped particle researchers have shown in laboratory testing that they can move the particle along the ring's center. This technique, however, requires the presence of an atmosphere.



In 2011, researchers in China calculated that a type of laser called a Bessel beam, which puts out light in concentric rings, could be designed to make a particle inside the beam emit photons on the side facing away from the beam source. These photons should allow the particle to recoil towards the source. The effect is different from that employed in "optical tweezers" approaches, in which tiny objects can be trapped in the focus of a laser beam and moved around; this new force, the authors propose, would be one continuous pull toward the source. If such a Bessel beam were to encounter an object not head-on but at a glancing angle, the backward force can be stimulated. As the atoms or molecules of the target absorb and re-radiate the incoming light, the fraction re-radiated forward along the beam direction can interfere and give the object a "push" back toward the source. But nobody has so far managed to put the idea into practice.
optical solenoid beams, diffractionless solutions of the Helmholtz equation whose diffraction-limited in-plane intensity peak spirals around the optical axis, and whose wavefronts carry an independent helical pitch. Unlike other collimated beams of light, appropriately designed solenoid beams have the noteworthy property of being able to exert forces on illuminated objects that are directed opposite to the direction of the light's propagation. The light in the corkscrew can then be tilted at an angle that kicks the spheres backward even as the beam itself moves forward. Like a tennis player sprinting away from the net while deftly lobbing the ball back at an opponent, this tilt can potentially push an object all the way back to the beam’s source. Or it can be rotated to push forward. Physicist David Grier of New York University commented on this idea and says “You’d need a terawatt [or trillion-watt] laser to pull a person,” says Grier. Being struck by that much energy, though, would likely incinerate the person being pulled. “It would be a short trip.”
The prospect of using laser light to pull objects may be along way down the road as todays technology can only manage to hold nano sized particles. Nasa is funding three different methods to possibly retrieve rock samples for future exploration. I would like to hope that it might be possible for a tractor beam but large objects might prove very difficult. Even if the power was to increase the intensity of light will have a burning effect on the object it was trying to pull. Perhaps if light could change its property in the way it becomes solid, it might work. The idea of teleportation maybe not possible for earth to spaceship transportation but a simple netting matrix around an objet for pulling is abetter method of tractor beam. At this point in time laser technology hasn't got the pulling power...

The Space race is a private affair...

I am not opposed to sending untrained tourists to outer space as many people like to think that the romance of space travel lives up to the Hype. As Virgin Airlines CEO, Richard Branson goes on CBS news he make a bold statement of population of Mars. Making plans to be among the first of the few people to fly into low earth orbit at $200,000, hoping that the money earn from that adventure will lead to bigger and better things.

He is not alone in this prediction of future travel, as Elon Musk co-founder of PayPal and CEO of Tesla Motors and spaceX, mentions his interest. SpaceX recently signed a contract with NASA, agreeing to re-stock the International Space Station for twelve missions. In terms of sustaining human life on Mars, Musk explained, "You need to live in a dome initially but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on. ... So it's a fixer-upper of a planet." "In order for us to have a future that's exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we're a space-bearing civilization."

Sadly recent plans for the US government to cut the budget of Nasa for the next year or so will probably stop future plans for any unmanned Mars missions. While governments pull out of the space race, alternatively the commercial sector step up plans to create a need to go into space. Nasa has already asked  three companies to transport cargo into space on a pay by mission contract. Sierra Nevada Corporation, headquartered in Louisville, Colo. Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), headquartered in Hawthorne, Calif and The Boeing Company, headquartered in Houston.
Emerging companies around the world seem to have a converged their dates for a regular space-flight infrastructure to a few years from now.
Virgin Galactic has already collected deposits from more than 500 customers willing to pay $200,000 for a seat aboard SpaceShip Two. Virgin officials say they hope to begin rocket-powered flight tests of SpaceShip Two later this year, with commercial operations perhaps starting in 2013 or 2014.

XCOR Aerospace's Lynx is a two-person suborbital space plane designed to take off and land on a conventional airport runway. XCOR has already signed a deal with the Southwest Research Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Boulder, Colo., to fly some of its scientists and experiments to suborbital space. The Lynx could be in flight-test operations by the end of 2012, according to XCOR officials. The company plans to charge $95,000 per seat when the space plane is up and running.

Armadillo Aerospace, a Texas-based company founded by computer game entrepreneur John Carmack, is developing a vertically launched spaceship for suborbital flights. Armadillo's spacecraft will have room for two passengers. The space tourism firm Space Adventures is booking seats on the craft for $110,000 each. An Arizona man recently won a free flight on the vehicle in a contest sponsored by Space Adventures and Seattle's Space Needle, though the date of his trip has yet to be set.

The Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace designs and builds large, expandable habitats that it aims to link up in orbit, creating private space stations.
Bigelow has already launched two prototype test habitats into orbit, one in 2006 and one in 2007. The company's current module, the six-person BA 330, provides about 11,650 cubic feet (330 cubic meters) of usable volume. Bigelow envisions joining at least two BA 330s together in space. The company has separate partnerships with Boeing and SpaceX, whose craft would ferry passengers to and from Bigelow's huge space hotels. Potential clients include space agencies, government departments and research groups.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen recently teamed up with pioneer aerospace engineer Burt Rutan on a venture called Stratolaunch Systems. The company plans to launch rockets into space from a carrier plane that would be the biggest aircraft in history, with a wingspan of 385 feet (117 meters). Stratolaunch aims to send cargo and satellites into space initially, but it hopes to launch astronauts eventually as well. The firm is aiming for an initial test flight in 2015, with a first operational launch coming in 2016.
ATK teaming up with Lockheed Martin and European aerospace firm Astrium on the venture, which would use the 300-foot-tall (91-meter) Liberty rocket to blast a seven-passenger capsule into orbit. ATK is aiming to begin test flights of the Liberty system in 2014, with the first manned mission expected to occur in late 2015, officials said. If all goes well, Liberty could be available to NASA and other potential customers by 2016.

Blue Origin, a secretive company set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, hopes to win a NASA contract to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station with its Space Vehicle. The Space Vehicle is a biconic craft designed to carry seven passengers, or a mix of cargo and crew. Blue Origin is developing a reusable first-stage booster to help get the Space Vehicle to orbit relatively cheaply. Company officials have said the Space Vehicle should be ready to begin commercial operations between 2016 and 2018. Blue Origin is also working on a suborbital spacecraft called New Shepard, which would be launched by a reusable propulsion module.
Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser is a small space plane designed to carry seven astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit. The spacecraft, which is based on a NASA concept vehicle from the 1980s called the HL 20, will launch vertically atop a rocket but land on a runway like an airplane. NASA's CCDev program granted Sierra Nevada more than $100 million in the past two years to aid in the Dream Chaser's development. Company officials say the space plane should be ready to begin operations by 2016.

Aerospace giant Boeing is developing a space capsule called the CST-100 to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station and other destinations in low-Earth orbit. NASA's CCDev program has invested roughly $120 million in the CST-100, which is designed to seat up to seven passengers. The capsule, which measures 14.8 feet (4.5 meters) across at its widest point, utilizes proven technology from NASA's Apollo and space shuttle programs, Boeing officials have said. The CST-100 is expected to make ground landings, though it will also be capable of splashdowns in emergency situations. Each capsule is designed to make 10 space-flights, and the CST-100 could be operational by 2016.
SpaceX is also working on a crewed version of Dragon, which would carry up to seven astronauts to the orbiting lab or deep space destinations such as Mars. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said he founded the company with the primary goal of helping make humanity a multiplanet species.

Gov. Jerry Brown announced he had signed legislation intended to boost the fledgling private space travel industry. Brown said he had signed the bill by Republican Assemblyman Steve Knight, which limits private space companies' liability from civil lawsuits.
Under AB2243, the companies cannot be held liable for the injury or death of customers because of the obvious risks associated with space travel. They still can be sued in cases of gross negligence or willful disregard for participants' safety. The bill also does not limit the ability to sue parts manufacturers. Brown said the legislation will allow companies such as SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and the Spaceship Company "to innovate and explore without the worry of excessive liability."

Wheels are in motion for space travel, allowing fledging companies to build a travel infrastructure. only time will tell if those companies will survive the next ten years or so. Inventor Alan Bond co founder of Reaction Engines LTD estimates 10 years until a working prototype for a new type of rocket engine, that will easy fly in space and in earths atmosphere. This type of engine privately funded by the same people with investment in space, could bring prices down. So while Companies are rushing to plan a Space-Agency with the Available technology, The real Age of space Travel will likely to start in Ten years, when SKYLON goes online.

Faster then light, from small experiments

The experiment created a form of neutrinos, muon neutrinos, at CERN's older SPS accelerator, on the Franco–Swiss border, and detected them at the LNGS lab in Gran Sasso, Italy. OPERA researchers used common-view GPS, derived from standard GPS, to measure the times and place coordinates at which the neutrinos were created and detected.
As computed, the neutrinos' average time of flight turned out to be less than what light would need to travel the same distance in a vacuum. In a two-week span up to November 6, the OPERA team repeated the measurement with a different way of generating neutrinos, which helped measure travel time of each detected neutrino separately. Five different teams of physicists have now independently verified that elusive subatomic particles called neutrinos do not travel faster than light. New results, announced today in Japan, contradict those announced last September by a 170-member crew working with the OPERA particle detector in Italy's subterranean Gran Sasso National Laboratory. The OPERA team made headlines after they suggested neutrinos traveled 0.002% faster than light, thus violating Einstein's theory of special relativity. The OPERA results were debunked,Prof Antonio Ereditato oversaw results, has resigned from his post. Earlier in March, a repeat experiment found that the particles, known as neutrinos, did not exceed light speed.
Paradoxically, a concept for a real-life warp drive would be able to go faster then light was suggested in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre.
Alcubierre proposed a way of changing the geometry of space by creating a wave which would cause the fabric of space ahead of a spacecraft to contract and the space behind it to expand. The ship would then ride this wave inside a region of flat space known as a warp bubble, and would not move within this bubble, but instead be carried along as the region itself moves as a consequence of the actions of the drive.

An Alcubierre warp drive would involve a football-shape spacecraft attached to a large ring encircling it. This ring, potentially made of exotic matter, would cause space-time to warp around the starship, creating a region of contracted space in front of it and expanded space behind.
The only problem is, previous studies estimated the warp drive would require a minimum amount of energy about equal to the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter. But recently Dr Harold White of NASA's Johnson Space Center, calculated what would happen if the shape of the ring encircling the spacecraft was adjusted into more of a rounded donut, as opposed to a flat ring. He found in that case, the warp drive could be powered by a mass about the size of a spacecraft like the Voyager 1 probe NASA launched in 1977.

For now, the researchers at Johnson Space Center are trying to create tiny warps in space-time. It would at least prove White’s theory that shape can make all the difference. Physicists have found loopholes in some mathematical equations—loopholes that indicate that warping the space-time fabric is indeed possible. Dr. White's team is trying to find proof of those loopholes. They have "initiated an interferometer test bed that will try to generate and detect a microscopic instance of a little warp bubble" using an instrument called the White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer.
Although this is just a tiny instance of the phenomena, it will be existence proof for the idea of perturbing space time—a “Chicago pile” moment, as it were. Recall that December of 1942 saw the first demonstration of a controlled nuclear reaction that generated a whopping half watt. This existence proof was followed by the activation of a ~ four megawatt reactor in November of 1943. Existence proof for the practical application of a scientific idea can be a tipping point for technology development.

A Michelson-Morley interferometer may be a useful tool for the detection of such a phenomenon. The photo above depicts a warp field interferometer experiment that uses a 633nm He-Ne laser to evaluate the effects of York Time perturbations within a small (~1cm) spherical region. Across 1cm, the experimental rig should be able to measure space perturbations down to ~1 part in 10,000,000. The energy density character over a number of shell thicknesses suggests that a toroidal donut of boost can establish a warp spherical region. Based on the expected sensitivity of the rig, a 1cm diameter toroidal test article (something as simple as a very highvoltage capacitor ring) with a boost on the order of 1.0000001 is necessary to generate an effect that can be effectively detected by the apparatus. The intensity and spatial distribution of the phenomenon can be quantified using 2D analytic signal techniques comparing the detected interferometer fringe plot with the test device off with the detected plot with the device energized.Figure 5 also has a numerical example of what the before and after fringe plots may look like with the presence of a spherical disturbance of the strength just discussed.

Using an interferometer to warp space seems like a plausible experiment, however the warping of space is much more intangible then Nasa might think. The use of a high magnetic fields for a small change in the light array, seems ridiculous and probably not worth pursing. Star-trek fans might have a romantic notion that antimatter and crystals might have a potential to change the fabric of the universe, while some people theorize that dark energy has a better chance for warping space. It is more likely that a abundant source of exotic matter can possibly have a effect with the environment, although such materials can not be manufactured by any process other then particle accelerator (but not in large quantities). Despite my views on warp technology being a unattainable goal, I still think there is a lot of current technologies to help boost speeds in space travel. Plasma drives powered by a nuclear reactor and teleportation of data streams for communications. I assume the laws of physics can not be broken just yet with our current technology and realistically think its best to fully develop the ones that are reachable...

          

Can the Mars rover land and tell us if we can colonize the planet yet?

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. Named after the Roman god of war, Mars, it is often described as the "Red Planet" as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the volcanoes,

Theoretically, Mars and Earth are closest together when Earth is at farthest point from the Sun(aphelion) and Mars is at its closest to the Sun(perihelion). At that point the two would be within 54.6 million km of each other. That point is said to be theoretical because it has not been observed during recorded history. The closest known approach was in 2003, when Earth and Mars were separated by only 56 million km. On the opposite end of the scale, Mars and Earth can be 401 million km apart when they are in opposition and both are at aphelion. The average distance between the two is 225 million km.

Nasa have made plans to travel the vast expanse to mars and explore the gale crater a 96 mile wide dent in the Martian crust. An unusual feature of Gale is an enormous mound of debris around its central peak, officially named Aeolis Mons (after having been named for a short while "Mount Sharp" rising 5.5 km (18,000 ft) above the northern crater floor and 4.5 km (15,000 ft) above the southern crater floor - slightly taller than the southern rim of the crater itself.

The mound is composed of layered material and may have been laid down over a period of around 2 billion years. The origin of this mound is not known with certainty, but research suggests it is the eroded remnant of sedimentary layers that once filled the crater completely, possibly originally deposited on a lakebed.
Mars Science laboratory MSL is a robotic mission to Mars launched on November 2011 that will attempt to land Mars rover "Curiosity" on the surface off the Mars with luck in the Gale Crater in 4 days on sunday.

Its $2.5 billion price tag ensures that Mars rover is equipped to handle the harrowing journey, the complex landing procedure and the main mission goals.

The rover is powered by radioactive plutonium-238. As the plutonium undergoes decay, its heat is converted into electricity to power the rover’s electronic devices. These long-life nuclear batteries are not only energy dense, but they are also power dense – the current output per unit mass is comparable to that of a lithium ion battery, but they last far longer. I can just imagine what it would be like to have a laptop whose battery never needed to be recharged.

The mission goals for the Mars Rover project is to determine mars could have supported life, weather patterns, geology and further data to determine the plan of a human mission to Mars.
Curiosity is roughly 3m in length about the size of a mini cooper car with the weight of 174-kg including a 6.8 kg of scientific instruments.

NASA Jet propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California which designed the rover is also managing the mission. There is a lot riding on the safe lading of the Mars Rover. First the capsule will be arriving into the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds, a parachute will deploy and the heat shield will be dislodged. Traveling at 900 miles and hour, the back shield will be separated one mile above the surface. A rocket platform will then slow its decent further until 20 meters or so as "Curiosity" is then lowered by cables by the Sky crane. With its six wheels  gently touching the ground, the sky crane is no longer needed and flys somewhere safe out of harms way.

Its hard to predict a safe landing as there are many factors, mainly because its the largest rover to land on Mars. There are many complicated steps in the landing procedure, also a 14 minuet delay to communicate from Mars to earth. The whole landing system would be automated and would drop out of communication from the start of entering the Atmosphere, by 14 minuets or so the rover would transmit signal or not. On August 5th 11:31 pm EDT or 3:30 Aug 6th GMT we will find out if  "Curiosity" has landed, hopefully live coverage will be on NASA TV. If all goes well Mars rover will be able to answer all the questions of life on our nearest plant and if it is safe for humans to colonize it.