NASA CTO: Beamed Propulsion, Inflatable Re-entry Shields and CRATS on Agenda

NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun was at NASA Ames yesterday, touring the facility and talking about the space agency’s priorities for advanced research. I wasn’t able to attend his press conference due to other obligations, but the San Jose Mercury News has an excellent report.

The Mercury News reports:

Rather than NASA focusing exclusively on a destination such as the moon or Mars, and then building spacecraft to get there, Braun’s goal is to create new technologies that could leapfrog anything NASA can do now and help transport astronauts to any extraterrestrial destination.

One example of that kind of “disruptive” research into futuristic technologies is a study Congress funded this month and in which Ames will participate. In that joint effort with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the Pentagon’s research and development office, Braun said NASA will explore a technology called “power beam propulsion” that could direct a beam of energy at a spacecraft to power its flight, either to blast off from earth or to accelerate through space.

“There is no shortage of amazing ideas,” Braun said at a news conference at Ames, acknowledging that many of the technologies his office tries to nurture won’t work out. “We do intend to take considerable risks. If we’re going after a grand challenge, which we are in the Space Technology Program — this is not an incremental technology development program, this is a far-reaching technology program — for us to do that, we’re going to have to take a little bit of risk.”

Ames will have a key role in that work, Braun said, and he described two other recently funded cutting-edge studies NASA’s Silicon Valley base will participate in — a spacecraft that could fly off a runway like an aircraft and carry up to 44,000 pounds into orbit, and an inflatable system that could shield a spacecraft from the intense heat of re-entering the atmosphere, as opposed to the solid, blunt-body heat shield the Apollo capsule used, or the ceramic thermal tiles used by the space shuttle.

Read the full story.