Getting Closer to the Final Frontier: On to Mars and the Stars

Published: Feb. 7, 2017, 3:30 a.m.

b'Hosts Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon discuss colonizing Mars and exploring interstellar space.\\n\\nTrump may fund the Spacex Mars Colonization plan\\n\\nElon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, has made trips to Trump Tower. He met with Trump and the Washington Post has been reliably told, discussed Mars and public-private partnerships...\\n\\n\\xa0\\n\\nHow an Interstellar Starship Could Actually Explore Alpha Centauri\\n\\nAs part of the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, Milner plans to invest $100 million in an effort to develop an ultra-light autonomous lightsail that can be accelerated to one-fifth the speed of light (60,000 km/s, or 37,350 miles/s). At this ludicrous speed, a sail-driven robotic probe could reach Alpha Centauri\\u2014the closest star system to Earth\\u2014in just 20 years, as opposed to 100,000 years using traditional chemical thrusters.\\n\\n\\nBreakthrough Starshot Initiative\\n\\nBreakthrough Starshot aims to demonstrate proof of concept for ultra-fast light-driven nanocrafts, and lay the foundations for a first launch to Alpha Centauri within the next generation. Along the way, the project could generate important supplementary benefits to astronomy, including solar system exploration and detection of Earth-crossing asteroids.\\n\\n\\xa0\\n\\nQuestion asked: is this a foretaste of ad-hocracy?\\n\\n\\nWT 263-572'