The Mission of NASA's
Institute for Advanced Concepts

"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that
will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision
against the play-it-safer's, the creatures of the commonplace,
the slaves of the ordinary."

— Sir Cecil Beaton

Inspiring revolutionary advanced concepts begins with a foundation of creative and innovative thinking extending throughout and beyond the traditional aerospace communities. The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) seeks to encourage a broad cross-section of innovators and seeks to inspire unbridled thinking across age groups.

NASA has always recognized as an inherent part of its mission the need to plan and lay the groundwork for ambitious and far-reaching missions well into the future. A number of missions and programs are now planned by NASA that build on decades of the nation's aerospace experience and will stretch the limits of current and evolving technology. NIAC was envisioned to be "an independent source of revolutionary aeronautical and space concepts that could drastically impact how NASA develops and conduucts its mission." As a result, the sole focus of NIAC is revolutionary concepts for architectures and systems – grand ideas with significant potential impact on future plans and missions.

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Monday, October 10, 2005

Welcoming Remarks
Robert Cassanova, Director, NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts

Summary: NIAC seeks proposals for revolutionary aeronautics and space concepts that could dramatically impact how NASA develops and conducts its missions. It provides a highly visible, recognizable, and high-level entry point for outside thinkers and researchers. NIAC encourages proposers to think decades into the future in pursuit of concepts that will "leapfrog" the evolution of current aerospace systems. While NIAC seeks advance concept proposals that stretch the imagination, these concepts should be based on sound scientific principles and attainable within a 10 to 40-year time frame.

Run Time: 28:19   Bit Rate: 36 kbps

Microbots for Large-Scale Planetary Surface and Subsurface Exploration
Steven Dubowsky, Massachussets Institute of Technology

Summary: Future missions to planets such as Mars will require explorer/worker robots to per-form tasks of increased complexity such as exploring, mining, conducting scienceexperiments, constructing facilities, and preparing for human explorers. To meet the objectives of missions in the year 2010 to 2040 timeframe, planetary robots will need to work faster, travel larger distances, and perform highly complex tasks with a high degree of autonomy. They will also need to cooperate in teams and reconfigure themselves to meet their mission objectives. Current electromechanical technologies of motors, optical encoders, gears, bearings, etc. will not be lightweight and robust enough for these robots.

Run Time: 25:38   Bit Rate: 45 kbps

Sailing the Planets: Science from Directed Aerial Robot Explorers
Alexey Pankine, Global Aerospace Corporation

Summary: At the center of the DARE concept are balloons that can float in planetary atmospheres for many days. Balloons have long been recognized as low-cost observational platforms and are routinely used in observations of the Earth's atmosphere. However, what has restrained the wider use of balloons in planetary exploration was the inability to control their paths in strong atmospheric winds. Attaching an engine to a balloon would convert it into an airship and make it too heavy, too power dependent and too expensive to send to another planet or high into the atmosphere. Global Aerospace Corporation has proposed to use a wing that hangs on a several kilometer tether below the balloon. Strong winds and denser atmosphere at the wing altitude create a sideways lifting force that pulls the entire system across the winds. DARE platforms would carry high-resolution cameras and other instruments to study surfaces and atmospheres of the planets.

Run Time: 25:10   Bit Rate: 38 kbps

Tailored Force Fields for Space-Based Construction
Narayanan Komerath, Georgia Institute of Technology

Summary: In the vacuum of space, weak forces acting over long periods can achieve large results. Familiar examples are microthrusters and solar sails for deep space craft. Potential fields can be used to assemble and construct solid structures over a wide range of size scales. A unique set of experiments by our team had shown that by tailoring potential fields, large numbers of objects can be moved into desired positions and desired shapes can be constructed in reduced-gravity environments. This project has started planning for using such force fields to build large, massive structures in space using extraterrestrial materials. The promise of this idea is being investigated for several types of force fields suitable for automated construction at levels ranging from micrometer-scale discs and fibers, to kilometer-scale habitats.

Run Time: 29:41   Bit Rate: 33 kbps

Astronaut Bio-Suit System for Exploration Class Missions
Dava Newman, Massachussetts Institute of Technology

Summary: Our current research focuses on developing an EVA system that could exponentially expand an astronaut's EVA capabilities, especially on extraterrestrial surfaces, by providing enhanced mobility and life support based on the concept of providing a 'second skin' capability for astronaut performance. Known as the Bio-Suit, our system is a modular design based on mechanical counterpressure in which the body is pressurized using elastic tension in a skin-tight garment rather the gas in a traditional spacesuit such as the EMU. The inherent simplicity and elegance of the Bio-Suit concept has the potential to simplify life-support system design, reduce the energy expended by the astronaut in using the suit and and diminish the risk of depressurization and other EVA hazards.

Run Time: 27:35   Bit Rate: 42 kbps

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Far Out Aeronautics and Motions
Paul MacCready, AeroVironment, Inc.
(Keynote Address)
Auxiliary Movie: Doing More with Less (69 MB)
Auxiliary Movie: Helios Prototype (20 MB)

Summary: If you want to move mountains, you just go move mountains. If you don't have a big enough shovel, you get some friends to help you. If you have the enthusiasm to charge ahead, you can do all sorts of things. Some things you can't do. You can't invent a perpetual motion machine. You've got to select your targets. But people can do so much more than they realize... I alternate between pessimism and optimism, and I've found the best pessimism summary comes from the great philosopher, Woody Allen, who said, "Civilization is at a crossroads. One road leads to misery and devastation, the other to total destruction. We must choose wisely." And there is a lot more to that statement than you might think.

Run Time: 53:01   Bit Rate: 33 kbps

New Worlds Imager
Webster Cash, University of Colorado, Boulder

Summary: In its most advanced form, the New Worlds Imager would be able to capture actual pictures of planets as far away as 100 light-years, showing oceans, continents, polar caps and cloud banks. If extra-terrestrial rainforests exist, they might be distinguishable from deserts. One of the most interesting challenges in space astronomy today is the detection of exo-solar planets. The New Worlds Imager is an affordable concept with very practical technology that would allow us to conduct planet imaging in visible and other wavelengths of light.

Run Time: 33:04   Bit Rate: 43 kbps

A Deep Field Infrared Observatory near the Lunar Pole
Simon "Pete" Worden, University of Arizona

Summary: We have studied the feasibility and scientific potential of a 20 - 100 m aperture astronomical telescope at the lunar pole, with its primary mirror made of spinning liquid at less than 100K. Such a telescope, equipped with imaging and multiplexed spectroscopic instruments for a deep infrared survey, would be revolutionary in its power to study the distant universe, including the formation of the first stars and their assembly into galaxies. Our study explored the scientific opportunities, key technologies and optimum location of such a Lunar Liquid Mirror Telescope (LLMT). An optical design for a 20 m telescope with diffraction limited imaging over a 15-arcminute field has been developed. The LLMT could be used to follow up discoveries made with the 6 m James Webb Space Telescope, with more detailed images and spectroscopic studies, as well as to detect objects 100 times fainter, such as the first, high-red shift stars in the early universe.

Run Time: 27:42   Bit Rate: 40 kbps

NIAC Post Phase 2 Funding Opportunities
Paul Mexcur, NASA SBIR and STTR Offices

Summary: NASA's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs are a three- phased approach for the small business concern to develop a technology in response to a specific set of NASA mission driven needs as presented in the NASA SBIR/STTR Annual Solicitation. The STTR program involves a research institution partnering with a small business to develop a technology based on specific mission needs. Please check the NASA SBIR/STTR schedule for important dates.

Run Time: 11:04   Bit Rate: 55 kbps

Investigation of the Feasibility of Laser Trapped Mirrors
Elizabeth McCormack, Bryn Mawr College

Summary: An investigation into the feasibility of using laser light to construct ultra-light weight large mirrors for space-based astronomical research is being conducted as a collaboration among astronomers and physicists. The concept involves using two sets of laser beams to give structure to an ultra-thin layer of particles, which could serve as a mirror surface for astronomical observations. Theoretically, a laser-trapped mirror measuring 115 feet wide (35 meters wide) could be just 100 nanometers thick — a tiny fraction of the width of a human hair — and require less than 3.5 ounces (100 grams) of material.

Run Time: 29:40   Bit Rate: 32 kbps

Redesigning Living Organisms for Mars
Amy Grunden and Wendy Boss, North Carolina State University

Summary: On Mars, plants would have to tolerate conditions that would usually cause them a great deal of stress: severe cold, drought, low air pressure, soils that they didn't evolve for. Oddly, there are already Earth creatures that thrive in Mars-like conditions. They're not plants however. They're some of Earth's earliest life forms -- ancient microbes that live at the bottom of the ocean, or deep within Arctic ice. Ordinary plants already possess a way to detoxify superoxide, but Pyrococcus furiosus uses a pathway that may work better. P. furiosus lives in a superheated vent at the bottom of the ocean, but periodically gets spewed out into cold sea water. So, unlike the detoxification pathways in plants, the ones in P. furiosus function over an astonishing 100+ degree Celsius range in temperature. That swing could match what plants would experience in a greenhouse on Mars.

Run Time: 34:57   Bit Rate: 39 kbps

Robotic Lunar Ecopoiesis Test Bed
Paul Todd, SHOT, Inc.

Summary: Ecopoesis is the process of creating conditions capable of autonomously evolving a self-sustaining ecosystem. The intent is to create commercial systems that will allow other laboratories to readily engage in ecopoeisis research, both in the lab and on the Moon. The long-term concept of the project is to let a living ecosystem create itself in an engineered dome on the moon under controlled Mars-like conditions. Under robotic control, a community of organisms creates its own environment that is no longer hostile to living things. This would be a precursor to terraforming studies for Mars, but accessible and controllable owing to the relative proximity of the Moon.

Run Time: 28:19   Bit Rate: 36 kbps

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These lectures were recorded with financial assistance
from the US National Science Foundation.