Antimatter Propulsion

New and Improved Antimatter Spaceship

A Good introduction to anti-matter propulsion
Here is a recent report from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts on research into anti-matter propulsion systems. The article is not too technical for the average technology buff yet provides some good leads for those who want to study further.

Anti-Matter (or "Mirror-Matter") is more or less exactly the same as "ordinary matter" (the kind we are familiar with) except for the fact that the electrical charges are reversed. "Anti-electrons" carry a positive charge instead of a negative charge. For this reason, they are sometimes referred to as "Positrons".

When anti-matter and matter meet, they annihalate with a complete coversion of the matter into energy. This provides an extraordinary amount of power from very little mass. In contrast, nuclear weapons convert only a small percentage of mass into energy - in the neighborhood of three percent depending on the properties of the weapon. But we're not talking about weapons here. I only mentioned them as an example of mass to energy conversion that many people could comprehend intellectually.



Harnessed for propulsion, a matter/anti-matter reaction would provide incredible power. However, as you can imagine, there are a few problems to address first. One of these is the radiation given off by some matter/anti-matter reactions. High energy gamma rays penetrate matter, tear about molecules in cells and fragment matter they touch, causing that matter to become radioactive. No so healthy for people or the spacecraft they ride.

The NIAC research described in this article is studying whether a new anti-matter engine design (shown above), based on positrons, would produce gamma rays about 400 times less energy than previous designs. If the data looks promising, a number of significant advantages are within grasp.

• Safety (from less powerful gamma rays as well as reduced exposure during travel)
• Radioactivity (unlike a nuclear reactor, a positronic reactor does not become radioactive)
• Speed (Earth to Mars in 45 days or fewer, compared to 180 with chemial propulsion)
• Mass (ten milligrams of antimatter vs. tons of chemical fuel)

Each of these provides significant motivation to the hunt for a viable anti-matter engine. Other significant challenges must be conquered as well:

• Anti-matter is rare (only a small amount is manufactured each year by particle accelerators)
• Confinement (remember, we don't want matter and anti-matter to come into contact; magnetic "bottles" are a promising approach

Each of these are subjects of research projects that are also underway.

Robot legs that could replace wheelchairs

"A biped robot WL-16RIII carrying a student descends a flight of stairs during a demonstration at the campus of Waseda University in Tokyo on April 26, 2006."

A robot that demonstrates the ability to go up and down stairs while carrying a human passenger who controls the robot's speed and direction with a joystick. The vehicle is the product of a research program aiming to develop a wheelchair subsitute. However, robots planned for the next year or two are aimed at "enthusiasts" who might use the robot to play a version of polo. An automated wheelchair-substitute robot with mature technology is expected within five years. The team is also investigating alternatives to the joysticks, which may be hard for the elderly or disabled to use. The field of human-computer interaction research, including robotic control, is pursuing a multiplicity of options ranging from Segway-like "balance" control to direct neural interfaces.


Source:
Japanese researcher shows robot legs that could replace wheelchairs

NASA: Not A Technology Agency?

NASA Watch: "An e-mail written by NASA Administrator Michael Griffin and obtained recently by The Plain Dealer comes right out and says that research centers, like Glenn, just don't fit the overall mission anymore: 'We are not, any longer, a technology agency to any significant extent. Wishing otherwise is nice, but irrelevant.'"

If this is so, then what reason does NASA have to exist? All major aerospace companies have robust technology programs - it is what makes them competitive, improves their products, and reduces risk while at the same time opening new opportunities.

What is it that NASA Centers can offer that "Industry" cannot? Is our only purpose to organize how best to spend large sums of taxpayer dollars? If we don't have anything technical to do -- if there is no engineering or technology that we (NASA) cannot strive to be the best -- to be ahead of industry -- then NASA should not exist. The NSF does a perfectly fine job of funding science, including very large projects.

9th Annual Robo-One Competition

The Robo-One Competition pits home-made yet surprising sophisticated robots against one another in sumo wrestling, "pose down", and other categories of judging.

"The 9th Robo-One rally was held in Panasonic central Tokyo.Think whenever you see the Robo-One rally.'Interesting up to now --' is satisfied this time. Having come to the hall while entering 140 is 100. It was 82 to have passed the examination of qualification. The ring broadened this time and a round broadened. Any robot was moving well by no feeling of the area."

The RAYERD-X robot busts crazy transformer moves that really show off its versatility. It did very well in the demonstration judging but I'm not sure how well it did in the wrestling.

OMNIZERO.2

This mech is not only a mechanical marvel, but the "sumo" match with other robots shown on this page is very entertaining.

"The robot that literally ran away with the top prize in the Demonstration phase of the 9th Robo-One competition held here in Tokyo on March 18-19th, 2006, was OMNIZERO.2, the brainchild of Takeshi Maeda. Not only is the robot a technical tour-de-force, Maeda is also quite a showman. His 2 minute demonstration of the robot's capabilities included putting it to sleep, waking up, running, jumping, posing, and visual object tracking."

Biomemetic Solution for Bipedal Robot Locomotion

Speedy Robot Legs It to Break Record

The significance of the "speedy robot" described in this article is not its speed, but how the robot attains systematic and reliable control over its attitude (position) and articulation of its limbs. Most walking robots (with the notable exception of many of the behavior based robots robots built by Robot Locomotion Group at MIT) use powerful computing, a multiplicity of sensors, and physics-based modeling software to monitor and control robotic motion. This team from Germany and Scotland are part of a new wing of robotics research which is inspired by "biomemetics". In plain speak, "copy nature's solutions". In building their walking robot they explicitly sought to develop a simple system, copying and infering as much as they could from nature's solution to bipedal locomotion. With just a few sensors, and a simple "neuronal" (aka "neural net") software program, their system rapidly adapts its control algorithm to achieve the target walking behavior. Multiple other groups have developed many-legged walking robots using similar techniques, but the research described in this article is one of the few applying biomemetics to bipedal locomotion.

The International Journal of Robotic Research (vol 25, issue 3)



Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience



Robot Locomotion Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Also cool videos for robot fans.

Walking at a Steady Speed



Learning to Walk Rapidly

Itokawa vs. ISS

A picture of asteroid Itokawa (Wow!) taken by Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft which 'landed' on the asteroid twice. Shown next to the asteroid is the International Space Station, scaled correctly for size. (Historic Japanese Asteroid Data Amaze Researchers). Itokawa is a Near Earth Object (NEO), and among that group, an 'Earth crossing' asteroid. This means that Itokawa's orbit around the Sun intersects Earth's orbit. So what? Well, the short story is that such objects could HIT the Earth. The good news about Itokawa is that a collision is probably a million or more years away. The bad news is that asteroid distribution models suggest that we've only discovered about 10% to 15% of the NEOs - the Earth-crossing asteroids usually after they have zoomed right by Earth. I just bought the DVD 'Deep Impact'. My scientist friends scoff at the movie, suggesting it paints too rosy a picture of an actual asteroid impact in the ocean. Sorry, I started out 'gee whiz' and ended up on a downer. So cheer up. You should concentrate on driving safely and not worry about asteroids!"