Kent Nebergall became involved with the Mars Society in 2004, when he won the Mars Society’s Kepler Prize to design the Mars Direct Earth Return Vehicle. He has given several convention track talks each year ever since, focusing on new inventions for space settlement, along with gaining a systematic and historical understanding of the human need and ability to do so.
Kent is a business analyst in the Chicago suburbs, where he’s worked in over a dozen industries. Kent served as astronomer for Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) Crew 32, commander of Crew 124, and has helped design and build the new MDRS science dome. He is on the Mars Society Steering Committee.
While much fuss is made over the possibility of EM-Drive, there are actually two propellant-less, low trust concepts being evaluated. Cannae has similar properties, but depends on superconductors to operate. There are plans to do a demonstration satellite in the next few years.
In the near term, these rockets could make extensive surveys of the asteroid belt and outer solar system possible for light spacecraft. They would provide another strong incentive to build space-rated nuclear reactors. Finally, we could get beautiful images of the planets around the Alpha/Proxima Centari system - by flying a probe in the exact opposite direction.
This newly-discovered ice field is half-way between the north pole and the equator. It contains as much water as Lake Superior, and covers an area the size of New Mexico. It is between one and ten meters below the surface - very easy to reach by drilling or excavation by future Mars colonists.
I'm in the process of converting the website to a professional design. The new site will the features you expect from a professional site, like e-mail update subscriptions and video. But the site itself will contain information and features I've not seen anywhere else. I'm very excited to introduce this new system to the web. And where better than on a site to help inventors and startups become the next generation of amazing enterprises
The internal deadline to finalize the professional layout is December 15. After that, some of the more advanced services will be turned on as they are developed.
“The goal of Space-X is really to build the transport system. It’s like building the Union Pacific Railroad. And once that transport system is built, then there’s a tremendous opportunity for anyone who wants to go to Mars and create something new, or build the foundations of a new planet. So, who wants to be among the founding members of a new planet, and like I said, build everything from iron refineries to the first pizza joint? We’ll want them all. And then there’s things on Mars that people can’t even imagine today, that might be unique, or would be unique, to Mars. That’s really where a tremendous amount of entrepreneurship and talent would flourish. Just as happened in California when the Union Pacific Railroad was completed. When they were building the Union Pacific, a lot of people said that was a super dumb idea because hardly anybody lives in California. But today, we’ve got the US epicenter of technology developments, and entertainment, and it’s the biggest state in the nation. But you need that transport link. If you can’t get there, none of those opportunities exist. So our goal is just to make sure you can get there.” – Elon Musk
And the goal of https://macroinvent.com is to create that very talent and opportunity for space settlement. I’m so happy to hear him say this. I was concerned (the term in business planning is threat analysis) that his announcement would include a fully designed space settlement, not just the rocket. But he’s leaving that to the rest of us. Thanks Space-X!!!
