Throughout history the emergence of new technologies has enabled unforeseen breakthrough capabilities that rapidly transformed the world. Some global examples from the twentieth century include AC electric power, nuclear energy, and turbojet engines. At the systems level, success of both Apollo and the Space Shuttle programs depended upon taming hydrogen propulsion and developing high‐temperature atmospheric reentry materials. Human space development now is stymied because of a great need for breakthrough technologies and strategies. It is believed that new capabilities exist within the present states‐of‐the‐art of superconducting technology that can be implemented to transform the future of human space development. This paper is an overview of three other papers presented within this forum, which summarizes the principles and consequences of StarTram, showing how the resulting breakthrough advantages can lead directly to safe space tourism and massive development of the moon, Mars and the outer solar system. StarTram can implement cost‐effective solar power from space, simple utilization of asteroid material to protect humans from ionizing radiation, and effective defense of the Earth from devastating cosmic impacts. Synergistically, StarTram technologies will revolutionize ground transportation on the Earth, leading to enormous reduction in energy consumption and creation of millions of jobs. High energy lasers will also be discussed because of their importance to power beaming applications.


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    Title :

    Transformational Technologies to Expedite Space Access and Development


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    SPACE, PROPULSION & ENERGY SCIENCES INTERNATIONAL FORMUM SPESIF‐2010: 14th Conference on Thermophysics Applications in Microgravity 7th Symposium on New Frontiers in Space Propulsion Sciences 2nd Symposium on Astrosociology 1st Symposium on High Frequency Gravitational Waves ; 2010 ; Huntsville (Alabama)


    Published in:

    AIP Conference Proceedings ; 1208 , 1 ; 137-146


    Publication date :

    2010-01-28


    Size :

    10 pages





    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English






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    MIT-NASA Workshop: Transformational Technologies

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