From:                              Integrity Research Institute <jackie@integrityresearchinstitute.org>

Sent:                               Monday, August 25, 2014 11:36 PM

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  FUTURE ENERGY eNEWS

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 August 2014

 

Greetings!    

 

News Brief: the new EM Pulser is now selling in quantity to new distributors throughout the country every week. We can't seem to keep them in stock. Try one out today! www.BioenergyDevice.org

 

We at IRI receive lots of info that seems to relate to future energy and try to be very selective about what to include in the reprint section below. Some of the runner-ups include "Deep-sea warming slows down global warming" which explains some of the recent cool spells and "Putting the heat on Mother Nature" which reports the end of a Little Ice Age geologically. I find that any updates help us to gauge the urgency of the global need for future energy.

 

Now for the amazing collection of three (3) space stories in this FE eNews, we look at Story #1 for our future XS-1 "space rental car" thanks to Northrop and DARPA, and Story #2 for where the space planes and rental cars will launch from in the UK, and Story #3 for a new place to go besides the International Space Station when these vehicles go online in the next couple years...all of which is very exciting. We look forward to the future they will bring as long as the cost starts to go down as the popularity of space travel grows.

 

Now more down to earth is how to power some of the great bioelectronics that are emerging for lots of applications. Our Story #4 follows the development of wireless power suited for medical implants. IRI hopes that the epidemiological studies also follow to ensure that any long-term exposure meets established safety standards.

 

Next, we welcome any cheap, portable, and very useful solar sticker to turn any surface into a power source and yes, it is emerging with our Story #5.

 

Lastly, what do we do with all of that CO2 we humans are pumping into the atmosphere at billions of tons per year? We can now thank a Princeton student for coming up with such good ideas that it turned into the Liquid Light company in our story #6.

 

Have a great weekend,

 

Thomas Valone, PhD, PE.

Editor

 

IN THIS ISSUE

1) NORTHROP GRUMMAN'S SPACE PLANE REVEALED

2) UK TO LAUNCH COMMERCIAL SPACEPORT BY 2018

3) LUNAR HABITAT COMMISSIONED BY ESA

4) MAGNETIC FIELD POWERED IMPLANTS

5) SOLAR STICKERS MAKE ANY SURFACE A POWER SOURCE

6) CONVERTING CO2 INTO SOMETHING USEFUL

 

 

 

 

 

 EM Pulser 

 Our best selling device 

 

 

 

 

PREMIER Jr.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

QUICK LINKS

 

 

 

 

1) Northrop Grumman's Space Plane Revealed

By Mike Wall, Senior Writer   |   August 22, 2014 04:12pm ET 

http://www.space.com/26904-xs1-military-space-plane-northrop-grumman.html?cmpid=558130

 

The world is starting to get a better idea of what the U.S.  proposed new space plane might look like.

 

This week, aerospace firm Northrop Grumman released artwork depicting its conception of the XS1 space plane, which it's designing under a $3.9 million contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

 

 

 

Northrop Grumman is one of three companies competing for the right to build the unmanned XS-1, which is short for "Experimental Spaceplane." The other two are Boeing and Masten Space Systems, both of which also won yearlong "Phase 1" initial design contracts in July.

 

DARPA wants the XS-1 to make spaceflight much more routine and affordable. The reusable vehicle should be able to fly 10 times in a 10-day span and launch 3,000- to 5,000-lb. (1,361 to 2,268 kilograms) payloads to orbit for less than $5 million per flight, officials have said.

XS-1 will probably feature a reusable first stage and one or more expendable upper stages. The first stage will fly to suborbital space at hypersonic speeds, then return to Earth to be used again; the upper stages will deploy payloads to orbit.

 

Northrop Grumman is teaming with other aerospace companies on its design, tapping Scaled Composites to head manufacture-and-assembly work and Virgin Galactic to lead XS-1 operation.

"Our team is uniquely qualified to meet DARPA's XS-1 operational system goals, having built and transitioned many developmental systems to operational use, including our current work on the world's only commercial spaceline, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo," Doug Young, vice president for missile defense and advanced missions at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, said in a statement.

 

"We plan to bundle proven technologies into our concept that we developed during related projects for DARPA, NASA and the  Research Laboratory, giving the government maximum return on those ," he added.

 

Northrop Grumman is not alone in reaching out to other firms for assistance in developing an XS-1 design. Masten is working with XCOR Aerospace, and Boeing is teaming with Jeff Bezos' secretive firm Blue Origin.

 

DARPA expects to hold a Phase 2 competition next year to see which company makes it to the flight-test stage of XS-1 development. (The agency only has enough  for one XS-1 contractor in the end.) Officials currently envision that the first orbital mission of XS-1 will take place in 2018.

 

 

 

2) UK to Launch Commercial Spaceport by 2018

By Rob Coppinger, Space.com Contributor   |   August 06, 2014 12:58pm ET

http://www.space.com/26749-uk-spaceport-commercial-space-plane.html?cmpid=558125

 

 

The U.K. government is laying the groundwork for its first spaceport in anticipation of a growing space tourism demand and a growing space plane industry by 2030, according to a new timetable. Government officials also envision orbital launches from that country within the next 15 years.

 

According to the new timetable, unveiled at the Farnborough International.  Airshow last month, the U.K. is planning to build $85.5 million spaceport (50 million British pounds) and anticipates a space tourism market worth $65 million each year, as well as a space plane industry worth $33.9 billion (20 billion pounds) by 2030.

 

 

 

The timetable lays out a number of other specific dates: The spaceport could be operational from 2016; the first suborbital flight would occur in 2018; the first sub-orbital space plane satellite launch from the spaceport would take place in 2020; rocket engine testing for the orbital space plane would occur in 2026, and that space plane would be operational four years later.

 

U.K. Space Agency Director General David Parker published the timetable at the Farnborough International Airshow's Space Day Conference on July 15. He also signed a memorandum of cooperation for space plane operations with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation George Nield, and announced that Lockheed Martin will open a space technology  office in the English town of Harwell in Oxfordshire.
  

Choosing a spaceport site

 

From now until October this year, the U.K. Space Agency is undertaking a public consultation about possible spaceport sites. Selection of a site could take place before the end of 2016. The U.K. Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has identified eight sites across the United Kingdom's nations of England, Scotland and Wales after 18 months of work. Six of the sites are in Scotland, one is in Wales, and the one site in England is on the country's southern coast, at Newquay Cornwall Airport. Newquay is known in the United Kingdom for its surfing.

 

Andrew Nelson, chief operating officer and vice president of business development of Mojave, California-based space plane developer XCOR Aerospace, spoke to Space.com at the Airshow about his company's interest in one proposed site, Newquay. "Newquay is sort of interesting. It points right out to the water. You're not flying over anything under rocket power, which is nice." U.K. government officials interviewed Nelson and other XCOR staff in June and early July 2013 at Mojave, spending two to three days there, Nelson said. The officials also spoke to Virgin Galactic and Stu Witt, manager of the Mojave Air and Space Port. [See an animation of the Lynx in flight]

 

Previously, potential users, such as Virgin Galactic, have favored Lossiemouth, in Scotland. A 2009 report into spaceport candidate locations for the U.K. Space Agency's predecessor, the British National Space Centre (BNSC), found Lossiemouth to be the best site. Located in northern Scotland, Lossiemouth is on the coast of the North Sea and has a Royal Air Force base with a runway suitable for the types of launch systems used by Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. That company had already identified Lossiemouth as a possible U.K. spaceport; in 2009, then Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn, who was born in Scotland, spoke of his hope for a spaceport in the location. The 2009 report did not set a date for constructing such a facility. 

 

A September referendum on whether Scotland will remain a part of the United Kingdom could complicate that choice for a 2018 spaceport, however. If the yes vote in the referendum wins, Scotland could be an independent country by 2018. A poll last week by ICM Research found that 34 percent of Scottish voters would vote yes for independence, 45 percent would vote no and the remainder don't know. 

 

The $85.5 million spaceport price tag comes from a science report published in April by the U.K. Space Agency's parent body, the Government's Department for Innovations and Skills (BIS). Parker told Space.com that the cost estimate for the spaceport was an informed guess. The BIS report also proposed a national space propulsion facility that would cost about $10 million, or 6 million British pounds.

The eight spaceport sites and the detailed timetable published at the Farnborough Space Day Conference come from the CAA's report, "U.K. Government Review of Commercial Space Plane Certification and Operations," released this month. The report's timetable also envisages a number of other goals: wet lease agreements by 2016 under common FAA and CAA rules, pan-European space plane legislation regulation developed from 2016 and a vertical rocket launch site to be identified in northern Scotland by 2020. And from 2020 to 2030, the CAA expects space planes to be certified and no longer experimental, space plane operations to start from additional sites in the United Kingdom, and most U.K. spaceflights to use U.K. crews.

 

Whichever spaceport is selected, Xcor and Virgin Galactic are the most likely space plane developers to be in a position to launch from the spaceport in 2018. The report also identifies several other spaceport users: Airbus' Spaceplane, Bristol Spaceplanes' Spacecab, Orbital Sciences' Pegasus rocket, Stratolaunch Systems' air-launched system and Swiss Space Systems' Sub-Orbital Aircraft Reusable vehicle. [See photos of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo]

 

Market research by the U.K. small satellite maker Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL) calculated that the first year of space tourism operations would have 120 tourists with 150 tourists in year three. This assumed Xcor and Virgin Galactic were operating in the United Kingdom. It would mean revenue of $24 million by that year three, SSTL said. By year 10, SSTL expects more than 400 tourists and annual revenues of $65 million.

Red-tape barriers

 

Despite the United Kingdom-focused timeline, Xcor and Virgin employ U.S. rocket technology. The use of that technology outside of the United States is regulated under export controls. Called International Traffic in Arms Regulations or ITAR, it is the first obstacle to operating rocket-powered space planes outside of the United States. The U.K. Ministry of Defence has made progress on understanding this issue, said U.K. Space Agency Director for Growth,  and European Union Programs Catherine Mealing-Jones, speaking at the Space Day Conference.

 

Another regulatory issue is the legal process to allow the space planes to fly in U.K. airspace up to space. Under the Outer Space Treaty that the United Kingdom signed, governments are responsible for launches by their citizens. The U.K. Space Agency is the regulatory authority for the U.K. Outer Space Act 1986, and discharges the country's obligations under the four outer-space-related treaties. However, Parker told Space.com that because suborbital space planes do not go into orbit, the treaty does not apply. Instead, Parker's agency plans to treat space planes as experimental aircraft under U.K. and European aviation law. Passengers would have to agree to something like the informed consent concept that the FAA is using.

 

However, the report also states that the United Kingdom should not adopt the FAA approach and instead should remain in step with "future [European Union] developments." The European Union (EU) could have space plane legislation within the next five years. The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is an EU agency, and the United Kingdom is a member state of EASA. The EASA official drawing up the space plane legislation, Jean-Bruno Marciacq, told Space.com at the Space Day Conference that the legislative proposals are ready to go the European Commission's (EC) Department of Mobility  and Transport.

 

The delay has been due to the EU's European Parliament elections, held every five years.

 

back to table of contents

 

 

3) Lunar Habitat Commission by European Space Agency  

Phaidon August 2014

 

Foster + Partners designs 3D moon base Global architecture practice uses latest rapid prototyping to imagine a lunar base for European Space Agency

 



 

Architects are used to designing buildings to withstand extreme conditions - earthquakes, sub-zero temperatures, gale-force winds. But few flag up meteorites and gamma radiation in the brief. Foster + Partners' recent feasibility study for a lunar base had to take such a climate into account though clearly the firm took this assignment in its stride.

 

"As a practice, we are used to designing for extreme climates on Earth and exploiting the environmental benefits of using local, sustainable materials," says Xavier De Kestelier at Foster + Partners' Specialist Modelling Group, "Our lunar habitation follows a similar logic."

 

The practice was commissioned by the European Space Agency to create a concept for a four-person dwelling on the moon. But how do you get your construction materials and builders up there?

 

The architects' solution was to turn to 3-D printing. "Terrestrial 3D printing technology has produced entire structures," points out Laurent Pambaguian, who is leading the project for ESA. "Our industrial team investigated if it could similarly be employed to build a lunar habitat."

 

Scott Hovland of ESA's human spaceflight team explains the advantages of this approach: "3D printing offers a potential means of facilitating lunar settlement with reduced logistics from Earth. The new possibilities this work opens up can then be considered by international space agencies as part of the current development of a common exploration strategy."

 

One part of the base would be taken up there by rocket in a tubular module. Once up there, the module would become the base's entrance, which would lead into an inflatable dome. Inside the dome, a robot would operate the printer to print a protective layer using locally-sourced lunar soil over the outside of the dome. This would help protect those inside from your usual lunar hazards of space radiation and micrometeoroids.

 

The company supplying the printer, Monolite, is more au fait with creating sculptures than extra-terrestrial dwellings. But again, it seems unfazed. Company founder Enrico Dini explains the process:

 

"First, we needed to mix the simulated lunar material with magnesium oxide. This turns it into 'paper' we can print with. Then for our structural 'ink' we apply a binding salt which converts material to a stone-like solid."

 

 Monolite's current printer builds at a rate of around 2m per hour, meaning construction will be quite a slow process. However its next-generation design will be up to 3.5m per hour, so a whole building will be done and (moon) dusted within a week. More innovative invention with a sustainable edge can be found in Vitamin P2. For the lowdown on what more innovative building technologies can help facilitate check out The Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century Architecture

 

 

4) Magnetic Fields Power Implants   

By Suzanne Jacobs,  Technology Review , August 21, 2014

 

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530006/wireless-power-for-minuscule-medical-implants/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20140822

 

 

A novel way of powering implanted devices could enable new ways to control appetite, regulate insulin, and treat brain injuries. 

 

Medical implants like pacemakers, deep brain stimulators, and cochlear implants could someday be joined by still more bioelectronic gadgets-devices that regulate insulin levels, control appetite, lower blood sugar, or treat brain injuries (see "Nerve-Stimulating Implant Could Lower Blood Pressure").

 

But before we're all riddled with electronics, researchers have to figure out how to power it all. Pacemaker batteries are too clunky for tiny devices saddled up to nerves, and existing wireless methods, such as those used for cochlear implants, won't work with devices buried deep in the body.

 

That's where electrical engineer Ada Poon and her team at Stanford University say they might be able to help. The group has developed a new method of sending magnetic fields well below skin level to power devices that would otherwise need batteries.

 

Wireless systems like the one used in cochlear implants sit permanently on the skin and derive power from electromagnetic induction, in which a current running through a coil of wire generates a magnetic field that then induces a current in a nearby device. The problem is that a field generated this way decays exponentially with distance from the generating coil, so it only works with devices close to the skin's surface.

 

Poon and her team found a way to use electromagnetic induction through biological tissue without that exponential decay. They call the technique midfield wireless powering (as opposed to near-field, which refers to the exponentially decaying radiation, and far-field, which refers to the kind of radiation emitted from a cell tower).

 

The key, Poon says, is that instead of using a coil of wire, they use a flat plate adorned with a specially designed four-line pattern of conductive material. When they send current through the plate, that pattern produces a magnetic field capable of propagating through biological material without decaying over a short distance. The plate would most likely sit on the skin, providing constant power to an implant.

 

Morris Kesler, vice president of research and development at WiTricity, a Massachusetts-based company that develops wireless powering systems, says Poon's technique would be particularly useful for powering tiny devices.

 

To test their new powering scheme, the Stanford group implanted a pacemaker about the size of a grain of rice in a rabbit and then powered the device using a plate about six centimeters on a side. The setup worked with about 0.1 percent efficiency-meaning that nearly all the energy sent from the conductive material to the pacemaker was wasted. Nonetheless, Poon says that is sufficient for this kind of low-power medical device. It also met safety regulations limiting the amount of radiation delivered to a given amount of tissue in humans.

 

In the future, Poon says, the group plans to develop flexible versions of the plate that will be more comfortable against skin. One of her graduate students is also designing plates that will penetrate materials other than biological tissue.

 

Kip Ludwig, the program director for neural engineering at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health, says Poon's method is promising but years from any clinical application. Still, there is so much promise in bioelectronics, he says, and the powering issue needs to be addressed.

 

 

 back to table of contents 

  

 

5) Solar Stickers Makes Any Surface into a Power Source  

By Katherine Bourzac , MIT Technology Review, 2014

http://www.technologyreview.com/behindthescenes/523756/a-solar-sticker-could-turn-almost-any-surface-into-a-source-of-power/


 

An ingenious solar sticker made with techniques drawn from nanotechnology could turn almost any surface into a source of power.

 

Stanford professor Xiaolin Zheng often works in the esoteric fringes of nanoscience, but she also likes to find simple ways to fabricate complex materials that can be put to use in practical applications like solar-fuel systems, solar cells, and batteries. Last year she created solar cells in the form of flexible stickers-only a 10th as thick as plastic wrap-that can be applied to a window, a piece of paper, the back of a mobile phone, or anything else you want. These solar cells produce just as much electricity as rigid ones made of the same materials.

 

Zheng got the inspiration for this invention from her father. One day when they were talking on the phone-he in China, she in California-he said that it should be possible to put solar cells on the walls of buildings, not just the roof. And Zheng's daughter, like many kids, loves stickers.

 

All this was in the back of Zheng's mind when she read a research paper about graphene, a novel type of nanomaterial. The researchers grew the material on a layer of nickel on top of a silicon wafer. When they put the whole thing in water, the nickel separated from the surface, taking the graphene with it. "I couldn't believe that soaking in water would do this," she says.

 

Zheng has demonstrated this water-soaking approach as a way to peel off thin-film silicon solar cells grown on a rigid substrate. It turns out the phenomenon-called water-assisted subcritical debonding-had been known since the 1960s, but no one before had tried using it to make flexible electronics. She hopes the technology will be scaled up beyond the one-square-centimeter devices she's made so far, so that the sides of buildings can one day be papered with solar cells as her father suggested.

 

In this interview backstage at EmTech, 2013 Innovator Under 35 Xiaolin Zheng discusses making solar cells more broadly applicable. 

 

Watch: Xiaolin Zheng on stage at EmTech

 

 

 back to table of contents 

  

 

6) Converting CO2 into Something Useful

By Stephen Hall,  MIT Tech Review  July 2014

http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-35/2014/inventor/emily-cole/

 

As the chief science officer of a startup called Liquid Light, Emily Cole is attempting to accomplish something that has long thwarted chemists: finding an economical and practical way to turn carbon dioxide, the chief culprit in greenhouse warming, into useful chemicals.

 

The idea that could make this possible came from a visit to the Princeton University lab of Andrew Bocarsly. Back in 1994, Bocarsly had published an intriguing but largely ignored paper reporting a way to convert carbon dioxide into methanol without using a lot of energy. Bocarsly couldn't get funding to pursue the research, and the work sat on the shelf until he mentioned it to Cole. She was fascinated and decided to join his lab as a graduate student.

 

Cole kept tinkering with different catalysts and conditions, increasing the yields of the reactions and learning how to produce other valuable chemicals. The researchers have gone on to show they can convert carbon dioxide into isopropanol, acetone, and more than 30 other chemicals. Moreover, they have shown that light can be used to drive the reactions.

 

In 2009, Cole and Bocarsly cofounded Liquid Light in Monmouth Junction, New Jersey. The company is working to scale up the conversion process and hopes to market ethylene glycol, a chemical widely used to make plastics, as soon as 2017.

 

 

 

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